and sorry I was married
and sorry also for yourself.
We didn’t have long together that day.
You had a client meeting scheduled
with a television presenter
about a gaudy extension – ‘a lot of glass
but not much class,’
you said.
It was not a job you wanted
but figured it might get your
name in Wallpaper.
Which it did.
We didn’t have any desire to be locked in a room that day.
It was different.
We crept through a gap in the wood’s fencing
and found the older part of the cemetery,
ivy-eaten headstones, a rusting car.
‘I love you,’ you said.
‘I love you,’ I whispered.
It was the first time we had declared it.
I pull out the sofa bed,
curl up on the mattress without bothering to use a
sheet or find a blanket.
Tanya got me drunk,
promising the binge was for her benefit,
reminding me she was thirty-seven and still single,
two fiancés down, childless.
‘I’m rich, smart and gorgeous.
What do men want?’
‘Someone who isn’t a cunt?’ I suggested.
The mattress springs claw my back.
I message Mark.
Are you free soon?
He won’t reply –
not when he sees what time I’ve sent it.
I wrap my right arm around my body,
imagine you are holding me.
I caress my left shoulder
and am kissing my hand,
desperate for warm skin and spit.
My fingers glide down my belly.
A toilet upstairs flushes.
‘Mum?’
It is Ruth.
‘Mummy, are you home?’
I stay spectral.
And eventually she is silent.
A pile of books
like building blocks
has toppled next to Ruth’s bed –
novels,
facts,
activities.
She is wearing her school socks,
the white soles brown.
The French plait I gave her this morning is
still in, tousled.
I place her heavy head back on to the pillow,
kiss her lips,
her breath orangey and hot.
And I am reminded of why
you could not leave.
Jon is in bed with Paul,
horizontally lying across the end
in only a pull-up.
His legs are splayed
like an open pair of scissors.
‘What time is it?’ Paul asks.
‘You’re awake,’ I say.
‘I’ll boil the kettle.’
I miss the way you answered my calls.
‘It’s you. Let me plug you in.’
And I would wait
until you found your headphones,
your voice bright when back to me.
‘This is a nice surprise,’ you’d say,
even if we’d only spoken an hour earlier.
I know I made you sad.
But there was joy too.
Wasn’t there?
Jon squeals on the roundabout
and the roundabout squeals back.
The metal slide is scalding.
Ruth’s legs stick to it.
‘Mummy, it hurts,’ she shouts.
A woman slumps herself next to me on the bench,
bouncing half a loaf on her lap.
‘For the ducks,’ she says,
as though I care,
as though I’m judging her for
nursing a Hovis.
The roundabout spits off a boy, who howls.
Not Jon.
In my jeans is a twenty-pound note.
An ice-cream van idles by the exit.
I line up as Tanya appears.
She is stuffed into leather trousers and stinking of hangover.
‘When do kids stop yelling?’
‘I’m getting some 99s. What do you want?’
‘A boyfriend who’s solvent,’ she says.
She ogles the weekend dads.
‘And a strawberry Cornetto.’
I remember when I coveted noise
to cushion the guilt,
when weekends were people and people and people.
Who could I invite?
Where could we go?
Fast-forward my hours away from you.
So Paul thinks it is what I want,
continues with Saturday and Sunday lunches,
friends, relatives, new potentials.
Unless he has found someone.
Unless he is the one doing the fast-forwarding now.
I open the oven, am attacked by heat,
roast potatoes hissing and sputtering.
The golden locket Paul bought me tips against my chest, burns.
‘Maybe turn down the heat a bit,’ he says. And, ‘Top up?’
offering more wine, a hand grazing my elbow.
‘No, thank you.’
When he is out of sight, I pour my own.
He cannot think he is winning.
Tanya says, ‘You’re cooking. Are you poorly?’
She speaks while checking her posture in the mirror.
She is rarely in one place.
‘Remember when you boiled up vats of bulgur wheat
cos that guy – what was his name,
Turkish, wasn’t he –
told you it was his favourite food?
You watered his plant over Easter,
thought it meant he loved you.
Didn’t he give you a stolen hotel bathrobe to say thanks?’
‘You’re so good for my self-esteem, Tanya.’
‘I’m the only damn person on this planet
who knows everything about you
and still loves you, Ana Kelly. Isn’t that right, Paul?’
Paul is skulking,
constantly changing the music:
nineties’ pop, the Rat Pack, acoustic folk,
The Godfather soundtrack, Ellie Goulding.
It is a form of psychological warfare:
keep everything spinning,
do not let Ana
stand still
or breathe
or notice the grain of things
in silence.
If there is noise,
she will not notice how little
we remember one another.
Ruth appears wearing Tinkerbell wings
and a Darth Vader mask.
‘You look wicked,’ Tanya tells her.
She stands taller.
‘I’m gonna get so many sweets at Halloween.’
‘Wash your hands for lunch,’ I say.
I sound like a proper parent,
someone who does this sort of thing daily,
though I don’t.
This is Paul’s domain.
The children:
his only chore.
The timer rings. I take out the chicken.
‘I’m veggie,’ Tanya says.
‘Since when?’
‘Since I saw that chicken.
It looks like it’s about to tango out of here.’
Paul returns and reaches for the wine.
It is drained.
‘Open another bottle,’ I suggest.
‘I’m working tomorrow,’ he says.
‘I’m going to take it easy.’
Tanya salutes him. ‘Yes, sir.
Sorry, sir. Don’t give us a detention, sir.’
He goes to the wine rack.
‘I guess it’s still early.’
She softens him
in a way I never manage to,
every movement of mine
a mistake,
every choice, an infraction.
He skewers the chicken. The juice runs pink.
‘You trying to kill us?’ he asks.
He chinks glasses with Tanya. ‘Cheers, Tan.’
It is as much as I can do not to skewer him.
Paul opened a door for me.
He was cute: clean hair, big eyes behind round glasses,
something gormlessly Clark Kent about the way he
stepped back to let me through
and bowed his head a bit,
dropped a book.
‘What a gent,’ Tanya said,
storming through before me.
She fancied everyone;
it was sort of a joke
and also a sickness.
Paul picked up the book.
‘Maths?’ I asked.
‘Economics,’ he said.
‘First year?’ I asked.
‘Third,’ he said. ‘I stay out of the sun.’
‘I worship it.’
‘I’ve seen you at School Disco,’ he said.
‘I never go to those,’ I replied.
School Disco was all traffic light parties
and girls in uniforms and pigtails.
Even when that sort of thing seemed tolerable,
I loathed it.
Tanya was ahead of me in the library,
putting cash on to her photocopying card
and calling, ‘Lend me two quid, Ana!’
‘I have two pounds,’ Paul said.
He fumbled in his pockets. ‘Here.’
I took the coins. It was his version of buying me a drink.
‘Thanks. Maybe I’ll go to School Disco.
Mondays, isn’t it?’
‘Wednesdays,’ he said.
‘Yeah, Wednesdays. I’ll wear a red badge.’
‘I’m amber,’ he said.
Tanya shouted, ‘Hurry up!’
Paul liked Tanya even then.
He thought she was the shark
that made me seem a mermaid.
No one had described me that way before
or compared me to Tanya
and held me up as the winner.
I gave Tanya the coins.
‘Please don’t shag that bloke,’ she said.
‘He’s soft-core Dungeons and Dragons by day
and hard-core dungeons and porno by night.’
‘And he sounds like he’s from Birmingham.’
‘Oh, Ana.’
‘Yeah.’
When I turned he was chatting with a spectacled girl
at the library door.
Was she his girlfriend?
I didn’t care.
I was better-looking.
‘Aren’t you freezing?’ you asked.
My tights had torn so I’d taken
them off
before we met,
undeterred by the cold.
I kept my right leg crossed over my left
to hide the worst of the spider veins.
My legs were goosebumpy.
‘Shall I pop to Boots?
Tell me what to get.’
‘I’m fine. Don’t be silly.’
‘We can’t have you icing over, my little Pingu.’
We were sharing a cheesecake,
sitting by a window for once.
You rubbed my bare thigh.
‘Let me go and get you some sexy stockings at least.
Order me another flat white.’
You returned after ten minutes
with one hundred-denier tights,
the kind I’d only ever worn to school in winter.
‘Put these on. Go on.’
‘Are you aroused?’ I asked.
‘Incredibly. I’m going to buy
you a puffer jacket next week.
Make you put it on in front of me.’
In the disabled toilet I hitched up the tights,
was immediately warmer.
If Paul had been so insistent
there would have been an argument.
But you weren’t Paul.
So it felt like love.
It felt like love too
when you compared me to Rebecca,
told me she was without ambition,
that you respected my work ethic,
my reluctance to be ‘just a stay-at-home mother’.
But when Rebecca was at home
with the kids and we were together fucking …
you benefited from her lack of drive then, didn’t you?
And benefited from my work ethic.
Helen comes in with photocopies.
‘Can I scoot early?’
‘Check with Graham.
By the way, did you hear from Ms Taylor
about the life insurance documents?’
She straightens her jersey dress.
A button is missing from the bottom.
‘Can I email her tomorrow?’
‘No. Call her now about the documents.’
Helen storms to the window and looks outside.
‘Pete’s picking me up in a few minutes.’
‘Then be quick.’
‘Is the smell of the sardines bothering you? Is that it?’
‘What? Eat whatever the hell you like.’
Outside a pigeon is cooing, shitting on the paintwork.
The tacks were meant to stop them landing on the window ledge.
‘Right. Well, in that case I’m off.
Leave a list and I’ll get in early.
I’m not asking Graham. He’ll say no.’
‘You have to ask him.
It’s your job, Helen. It’s your actual job to work here.’
The pigeon pecks at holey bubbles in the concrete.
Another looks to land but is bullied away.
I should put down poison.
‘I’ll make a cheese wrap for tomorrow.
I’m sorry if the smell of fish is sickening.
I told Pete I’d be right down.
Don’t turn into one of them.’
‘I need help, Helen.’
‘Tomorrow, sweetheart. You can count on me.’
She turns and leaves, quietly closing the door after her.
The pigeon flies away.
I find Rebecca’s phone number
and add it to the contacts in my mobile.
You had a way of pinching the bridge of your nose
when you were nervous
or lying.
Didn’t Rebecca ever notice when you arrived home late,
pinching
pinching
pinching
like some secret might escape
through your nostrils?
Didn’t she look across the table,
over the too-dry veggie lasagne,
and say, ‘What’s bothering you tonight?’
It was a Sunday.
The London Marathon was almost over,
weak-limbed novices in metal blankets
scattered all over the city – enthusiastic trauma victims.
You’d gone to support Mark,
missed him at the Cutty Sark, mile seven,
then at mile sixteen,
cut your losses and met me at the Pavilion Café
for a toasted ciabatta and a heated debate
on euthanasia –
you rallied for the life of the decrepit,
You pinched your nose and I said, ‘What’s happened?’
‘I’m expecting a call from Donna
telling me she’s a widow.’
‘Huh?’
‘Mark didn’t train,’ you explained.
‘He downed an oxycodone at sunrise instead.’
The melted brie from the ciabatta burned my lips.
‘It isn’t that. Something’s going on.’
‘You had sex last night,’ you said.
‘Don’t tell me cos I don’t want to know.
But you did. And I know, so … ’
A breeze came into the café and I wished I’d worn a coat.
‘What are you talking about?’
I liked this hint at jealousy,
a feeling you claimed never to own.
Your eyebrows knotted
like you were imagining.
And I allowed it – blowing on the brie
to give space to the idea.
‘Why would you say that?’ I asked.
‘You were offline for hours.
I’m not interrogating you.
I noticed, that’s all.’
‘And when did you last have sex?’ I asked.
I hoped you’d say three weeks earlier,
when we’d met at a Hampton Inn on the A1 for a few hours.
I had stopped sleeping with Paul.
It had been months.
‘Did you have sex last night?’
You cajoled, as though we were friends,
like knowing would mean nothing.
I smiled, leaned across the table
and nibbled your earlobe.
If we’d been alone I would have put my tongue
into your ear.
I wanted you. I wanted you.
‘No,’ I said breathily. ‘Did you, my sweet?’
You pinched your nose.
‘I better meet Mark.
Who runs a marathon without training?’
The breeze made the hairs on my arms rise up.
‘You did, didn’t you? Last night?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ you said. ‘I did actually.’
Afterwards,
were you satisfied or did you need
a second helping of her?
Was it hurried? Kind?
Every evening after that day at the Pavilion Café,
I took to my bed before ten o’clock
if I possibly could,
so I would be sleeping
if and when
you fucked your wife again.
I slept with Paul the next day to spite you,
and afterwards crept into the bathroom and
cried.
I never told you what I had done:
it was not you who felt the pain of my
betrayal.
I check your Tweets,
replies, likes, follows,
Facebook,
Instagram,
last seen on WhatsApp,
in case anything has changed.
In case this has all been
some grisly mistake.
Your will is glowing up my screen.
The details of your life.
What to give your wife now,
how much to put into trust for the boys.
I was never added to the beneficiaries,
not even near the end,
because you were only pretending to have chosen me.
‘I’m OK,’ Rebecca says. ‘It’s the kids.
Jamie’s fighting at school. David hardly talks.
Ned suddenly has himself a goth girlfriend.
Here is the Beehive Page 6
