‘That’s a funny way to put it,’ she said primly. I felt flat. I regretted saying anything at all; I was wrong to expect her understanding. I’d wanted her to be happy for me, to share my excitement. She knew how hard I’d been finding it coping with everything. She knew that I’d gone on the antidepressants. The truth was that I had expected her to be there for me. And she wasn’t. I didn’t seem to register with her the way I used to. There had been a time when she found me captivating. She had revelled in me – I used to see it in her eyes. Perhaps there is a stage in an intense female friendship when a sisterly irritation takes hold: once we have shared all our secrets, told all our stories, predicted each other’s responses, adopted the ones we like and discarded the others; when we become more interested in impressing strangers than each other; when we side with other people in discussions, even dropping an acerbic word or a scoffing laugh; when the solidarity has gone and a pointed neglect takes its place. In short, had she fallen out of love with me?
After we’d fed the kids and I was leaving, she gave me a big hug and said, ‘You’re an incredible person, Connie. You’re brave. You’re unconventional.’ (Appalling really how quickly my ego could be pumped up again, but I loved her saying this. I have a deep and visceral need to be special. We all have a driving need: Karl’s is to be liked (obviously). Ness’s is to be safe. And yours, Dr R, oh, it’s easy-peasy; you need to be needed – don’t you?)
When Karl left for Edinburgh, where he would be staying in a grand, romantic hotel that the company was putting him up in (I’d seen it online), we kissed each other goodbye at the door with a knowing smile and a little wave. I asked no questions. That was the deal. Alone in the house, with high-wire nerves, I had emailed Johnny under the pretence of writing an article about journalism. To my surprise, within the hour he’d emailed me back and we’d arranged to meet up in a bar near the LSE off Drury Lane on the Friday. I must have read that email fifty times. It was all so easy. I hadn’t expected everything to happen so quickly and I regretted it. What on earth were Karl and I doing? Wasn’t it enough just to be honest; did we really have to act on it? I texted Ness and she came round after she’d finished working. We drank wine and danced to Fun Boy Three on YouTube. For the next forty-eight hours I could think of nothing else, my imagination galloping off in ghastly Fifty Shades directions. Over the last ten years I had fantasized about bumping into Johnny, especially if I went to Brighton where I knew he now lived. In my fantasy I was cool and wisecracking and irresistible. In reality I would be no such thing. Even the thought of it made me a jabber. I’d lost my appetite. I woke up with my heart fluttering. It was ridiculous.
I’d googled him, of course. I’d seen a recent picture. He hadn’t aged badly: he had a few more wrinkles, a wider girth and a thinner head of hair, as might be expected, but he looked more or less the same. Presumably he’d googled me and seen similar slappings from the hands of time. I found myself staring into Karl’s shaving mirror with fresh eyes. My face used to be a simple affair: two eyes, a nose and a mouth. But now there was too much going on: eye bags, lines on my forehead, lines round my eyes, thin red veins and an albinic moustache which I swore hadn’t been there the previous day. My face had become too busy. It was depressing. But I did what I could: I lotioned and potioned my skin, I waxed and plucked that tash, I dyed and curled my lashes, I shaved my legs just in case and even managed to find time to have my bikini line done (by an overenthusiastic beautician, might I add; now my pubis resembled a pig’s trotter, which was certainly not the look I was going for). Don’t get me wrong – I wasn’t going to be showing it but I needed to be prepared for this new voyage aboard the good ship Freedom.
Then on the Friday itself I got seriously chilly feet. I nearly emailed pretending I was ill. I was ill; I felt sick with nerves. Ness came round when she got back from work to babysit and pass the once-over on my look. She’d been intrigued by the whole Johnny thing since I’d told her about Karl’s Janine up in the Highlands.
I’d been counting down the hours to the date. I’d even bought new clothes for the occasion. I spent ages trying on various combos, eventually resorting to the trusted staple of smart jeans and a plain black top, that casual look achieved with Herculean labour. Ness gave me the thumbs up, a squirt of Jo Malone and a neat tequila before pushing me out of the door. I put my hair up and then took it down, then put it up again and continued to do so the entire tube journey. By the time I got out at Leicester Square, I was almost shaking. I considered turning back. As I walked northwards and down Old Compton Street, I could feel my heart trying to do a runner back down to the tube. But I’d got what I asked for: I felt alive. I felt present.
I walked into the bar.
Johnny was there. He had reading glasses on and was looking at his phone. He glanced up and saw me and smiled. I felt a rush. I walked across the room. He got up slowly and we hugged awkwardly across the little table. He was drinking a dry Martini and I ordered the same. He felt familiar and foreign at the same time, like going back to an old house you once lived in: you know the shape of every cranny, but the decoration’s changed. Yes, I knew the shape of him: his voice, his laugh, the way he tapped his fingers together, the way he spoke, slowly, self-deprecatingly, those wry observations. But he was also different: he seemed smaller, his shoulders were hunched, his back stooped; there were marks around his mouth that spoke of disappointment and unhappiness; his spirit seemed heavier.
We had another drink and caught up on each other’s lives in a prescriptive way. He talked about his work and I talked about mine. We talked about his two girls, nineteen and twenty now, who lived with his ex-wife. I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask whether he had a girlfriend these days and he didn’t mention one. He asked about Karl. I implied that we were living separate lives but bringing up children together. We asked after each other’s parents. His mother had died and his father was in a home – we spent a long time talking about that; it’s a preoccupation at this time of our lives. Frankly the hours flew by; our intimacy seemed entirely normal. At one stage he took my hand in his and looked at it carefully. ‘I’d forgotten your hands,’ he said, ‘such pretty hands.’ We talked about how we had ended and, strangely, we both seemed to think the other person had ended it. What is the real narrative of events, Dr R? Do you ever believe anyone at all? He asked me what it was that I needed to ask him about journalism. I bluffed about media training and said I’d follow up with sending him some questions.
We went on to another bar. It felt like we had to start all over again out in the street; our bodies had to readjust to each other. He was smaller than Karl. I felt tall at his side. We found a table near the back and talked and he ate and time went too fast. When the waiters started stacking plates at the bar, we were both of us reluctant to part and so he walked me slowly to Waterloo station. It was a beautiful warm summer evening, London looked stunning, and as we crossed Hungerford Bridge I stopped to take a picture of the view. It felt magical: the night, the skyline, the river, him.
‘Hey,’ he said, turning to me. And my happy heart sang a little song.
‘Hey,’ I said, leaning against the balustrade.
‘I should go …’ he said, but he didn’t move. ‘What a lovely evening.’ He was smiling. He was looking at me. I mean really looking at me, Dr R, in that way only lovers are allowed. I remembered losing him all those years ago and a brief shadow of that pain passed through me. A group of twenty-somethings strolled past and I supposed we must have struck them as very old, but we didn’t care; we let their voices peter out. He moved closer in towards me and touched my face. I kissed him. How soft and full and familiar his lips were, how I remembered and had forgotten them. The way he held me, the smell of him, the taste of him, can you believe we forget these things? And what a kiss that was, to feel my whole being centred in my mouth. I’d sacrifice years for a kiss like that.
But then he pulled away. ‘I can’t,’ he said, but his arms were still around me.
M
y lips stung. ‘OK …’ I replied. ‘Why not?’
‘Well … I’m …’ He looked awkward; he shuffled his feet. ‘I’m with someone …’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right … of course.’
‘Um … It’s fairly new …’
‘Right,’ I said. I looked over at St Paul’s, at the bend of the river, the night sky, the lights, the water, the boats – they’d all lost a little of their majesty. I smiled at him. ‘Lucky girl,’ I said. I meant it.
‘I should have said. I just thought … Sorry. I wasn’t expecting this …’
‘Oh God, no,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t either …’ I wanted to leave now. ‘Look, thanks for walking me this far … I should go too.’
‘OK. Let’s be in touch,’ he said.
‘Yup,’ I replied, walking off backwards, thinking no, let’s not.
‘So good to see you!’ he said. He waved.
I stared out of the window on the train trying to make sense of it all. I’d got what I’d asked for, or had I asked for it? I felt alive all right: buzzing and excited but also sad and frightened. Thank God I had home and my lovely family to go back to. I checked my phone. A message from Ness: the kids were asleep at hers. Another earlier message: they were all going round to sleep at hers as our telly seemed to have lost its connection.
So I let myself in to a dark empty house. I went down to the kitchen and cleared things up. I turned off the lights and went upstairs, picking up various discarded garments of clothing en route. In the bathroom I washed my face and brushed my teeth, cleaning the sink with the other hand as I did so. I went back to the bedroom, drew the curtains, undressed and climbed into our huge cold bed, and lay there in the darkness listening to the noises of the house bereft of inhabitants; it felt strange, alien, lacking.
Yes, everything had changed now.
Annie had finished all the popcorn and we had slunk further down the sofa. We were sucking on Fab ice lollies and watching the climactic moments for poor Buzz and Woody trying to escape from the recycling machine, when I felt my phone buzz in my back pocket. I took it out. Karl’s name was on the screen. He was taking clients for dinner in Soho; presumably he’d finished early and fancied a pint. I swiped and answered. ‘Hello, love?’ I said.
I couldn’t hear properly because of the film. I covered my ear. ‘Hi!’ I said. He didn’t answer.
‘Hello? Karl?’ I said. I could hear him faintly, as if he were a long way off; I thought he was laughing. I unhooked Annie’s legs from me and got up from the sofa, phone pressed to my ear. I went into the playroom. ‘Karl?’ I called. And then I shouted, ‘Karl!’ But still he didn’t hear me. I listened carefully.
‘Oh, baby,’ he said. I thought he was messing with me.
‘Yes, baby?’ I said.
‘That’s it, baby,’ he said. He wasn’t messing; he sounded really intense. ‘Mmmm …’ he went, as though he was eating something delicious; pistachio ice cream, perhaps – that was his favourite. Yes, that’s what I honestly thought. And as a greasy feeling of dread slid through me from the pit of my stomach, my head kept whispering that this was the deal we had made.
‘Uhh … yess … that’s good …’ He wasn’t eating ice cream; it sounded more like kissing. ‘So good …’ he moaned.
Wrong again, not kissing.
‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Oh …’
No prizes here: those were the undeniable sounds of fellatio.
I know I should have just put the phone down, but there was something mesmerizing about it. I couldn’t. I stood there in the playroom, my foot on a Twister map, one hand holding a Fab lolly, the phone pressed to my ear, listening to my husband getting a blow job, unaware that I was in his back pocket, my ear and her mouth only inches apart, my heart punching against my breast, as it is even now as I write this. And still I listened.
‘Oh, you angel,’ he said.
He used to say that to me.
‘Oh, you sweetheart,’ he said.
He used to say that to me too. Why didn’t I just put the phone down?
‘You’re the best,’ he said.
He hadn’t said that to me for a very long time.
‘Stop! Stop!’ he cried, and for a moment I thought perhaps his conscience had got the better of him – he was thinking of me, he couldn’t go through with it. ‘I have to fuck you!’
I know, put the phone down, right? But I couldn’t, Dr R. Instead I listened to the muffled sounds of clothes being shed, zips being opened, snatched frenzied breaths. I’d been thrown on the floor now.
‘Oh my God, you do it for me. Oh those knickers, those white knickers, you just do it for me … everything about you does it for me …’
I stood there rigid, phone at my ear, listening to the frantic gasps, the little shrieks to the peaks, the painful pleasure at the summit, the shudders and sighs of satiation during the long trip back down.
And then I heard it: cheep cheep, cheep cheep went the cuckoo clock.
Yes, that was the shock, Dr R. That was why my hair fell out: my husband and my best friend were fucking.
Chapter 13
That night, Emma lay in bed, Hotel du Lac in her hand. She was so tired. She’d worked a fourteen-hour day: after she’d left Connie she’d had meetings – they were expecting a statement from her soon on the Mortensen case – and a brief appearance in court on a case that had been dragging on for months, plus a mountain of paperwork. Her eyes had slipped across the same sentence for the umpteenth time before finally closing. Her current page rate was pathetic – not even a page a night before she conked out – but it helped distract her mind from the indelibility of the real plot: what pushes a loving mother to breaking point. In this slumber her mind began to free-flow: the night sky on Hungerford Bridge, that kiss, real kissing, white knickers …
She let the book rest on her chest for a moment, vaguely aware of the sounds of Si pottering about next door. She didn’t have the energy to think about it but something wasn’t right between them; they were distant with each other and what was worse, neither of them appeared to mind the fact. This had become the normality; when he wasn’t working he was playing squash or was at rehearsal, and she barely seemed to be at home; her work was more demanding than ever. She would put some effort into them tomorrow. They really should do something together. She would make sure they did – the cinema perhaps, or a play. What was it Connie had said about art? She couldn’t remember.
She heard the flush of the loo from next door and with only a faint hum of irritation, her brain proceeded to clock Si’s movements in the bathroom and their inevitable consequences: tomorrow before work she would have to pick up the wet bath mat left skew-whiff on the floor, the towel stuffed across the bar, the tiny splashes on the mirror from his electric toothbrush, detritus left unrinsed in the sink, the small drops of pee around the toilet – the minute but continual daily male trail. After all these years, these things had only just begun to consciously bother her. She had always felt it was her problem, her fastidious tidiness, how difficult she must be to live with. Was it Connie who had awakened her to protest? With closed eyes she reached out and turned off her light.
She was nudged out of sleep by a hand resting on her hip. She was aware of the darkness of the room, the clicking of a radiator, the coolness of his fingers on her skin, making soft almost imperceptible movements that could only mean one thing. Wearily she knew that she had two choices: she could feign sleep, which would hardly even be feigning because technically she was asleep; or she could respond in an infinitesimal way and thereby give him permission to make love to her – she might not even have to open her eyes. She should choose the latter; she should try harder. Then in that murky shapeless twilight, neither awake nor asleep, another choice stepped out of the shadows: she thought of those smooth artistic fingers on the handlebars of his bike, the way he stood there on the towpath in his lycra, and she remembered how he had once looked at her many years ago; she recalled the night of that party when his knee had been pr
essed against hers on the sofa – she could even remember the sofa’s fabric, a thick brown corduroy – of course he had been aware of the fact that they were touching. When she left the party he had followed her and hovered around to say goodbye and if she had had more confidence, she could have let it be known that she wanted to be kissed by him, but instead she had scurried off.
But supposing she had not scurried off – supposing he had kissed her, those full lips gently brushing her own. What if she had changed her mind and stayed on at the party; if they had returned to that sofa, carried on drinking, thighs touching until they crashed out on that soft corduroy with all the other teenage bodies scattered about the room. She might have woken in the night to feel Dougie’s hand on her hip, just like this; his fingers stroking her skin, awakening every nerve in her body, setting off this sharp throbbing between her legs.
She shifted minutely to say yes to this touch on her skin and his fingers slipped over her hip, up the contours of her body to the fullness of her breast. He firmly squeezed her flesh in his hands, pinching at her nipple, quietly, so as not to wake the other inhabitants of the room. She opened her mouth to let out a silent moan in the safe confusing blindness where she felt free to express and suppress. She bit her lip so as not to wake the others, feeling him hard against her back in the confines of this small sofa. She placed her own hand over his, guiding it from her breast downwards, opening her legs, instructing his fingers on how to relieve this jabbing teenage ache. She moaned, barely audibly.
‘Turn over,’ Si said, and for a moment his voice broke the illusion and briefly her pleasure dimmed. But no, she did as he bade; she turned over. To her surprise, she was wet enough and soon he was inside her. Dougie was back, touching her as Si made love to her. And she was going to come. For sure. The whole thing had taken less than one minute and she was going to come. And he was going to come. They both cried out with pleasure.
Too Close Page 15
