by Frances Pye
For a moment, she thought about calling it off, forgetting the pact she had with Terry and Jules and just enjoying Sean herself. He certainly seemed satisfied this time with what she was giving him. Perhaps he’d come around to seeing things her way? After all, if there were no sharing, she could go home with him right now.
But then there was Jules, sitting in her little house, fantasizing about nappies and carry cots and building blocks. And Terry, whose relationship with Paul was so bad she was grateful he wasn’t swearing at her anymore. She couldn’t wave the possibility of a solution to their problems in front of them and then snatch it away to suit herself. So Clive had asked a few questions. Clive was always asking questions, it didn’t mean he was going to find out anything. No one apart from Terry, Jules, Mara, and herself knew. And they wouldn’t talk.
LILY CUDDLED up to Sean in the back of their limo. He put his arms around her and kissed her quickly. “I think it feels the same,” he said. Then kissed her again. “No, I’m not completely sure,” and lowered his head once more before pulling back and looking at her, weighing her up.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Just testing to see if it’s different, kissing the comedy actress of the year,” he said.
Lily laughed. “Wait till you try fucking her.” She was tempted to lean forward and pull the blind down between their compartment and the driver, but before she could do so, the limo drew up outside Jules’s little mews house. Damn. She was going to have to wait. Sean was Jules’s now. That was the deal to which she’d agreed. “Okay. We’re here. Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” Sean said, kissing Lily. “Wish me luck.”
Lily saw the door to the house open. Jules was standing there in a lacy wrap, her figure silhouetted against the light. “Of course I wish you luck,” she said. “Not that I think you’ll need it.” The sight of Jules, primed for seduction, was having a strange, unwelcome effect on Lily. If she didn’t know herself better, she’d have said she was jealous. Now desperate to get away, to forget about Sean and Jules and what they were about to do, Lily leaned over Sean and opened the door on his side. “Go on,” she said, “Jules is waiting.”
thirty-four
Sean stood in the shadowy, candlelit living room, a glass of champagne in his hand. Jules was sitting in front of him, her lacy robe giving him tantalizing glimpses of skin in spite of the fact that she had it pulled decorously around her. He took a sip of his drink, then another. It had all seemed so simple when they had talked at Rules, but now he realized that they hadn’t really discussed details. He’d been embarrassed and so had been happy to leave it all to Jules, once she’d reassured him that he wasn’t needed for the actual insemination part, but now he wished he’d been braver and found out exactly what he was supposed to do. And when. And into what. Instead, he was standing here, like a lemon about to be squeezed, waiting to be instructed by Jules. And she didn’t seem to be in any hurry.
“You look terrified,” Jules said.
“I’m okay.”
“Sean.”
“Well, I suppose I am a little nervous.”
“Please don’t be. This is such a special night.”
“Special?”
“Of course. Can’t you feel it?”
“I don’t know….”
“We’re about to make a baby.”
“Yes. Yes, we are.”
“The most wonderful thing that two people can ever do together.”
“A baby.”
“Yes.”
“A baby.” And Sean felt himself get caught up in the magic of the occasion. He’d never known the exact time he and Isobel had conceived either of the boys. The week, maybe, but not the hour, the minute, the second. Tonight would be different; he would know precisely, and the sense of strength, of potency that gave him was indescribable. He felt as if in some small way he was going to be part of creation itself.
“We’re going to create another human being,” Jules said, echoing Sean’s thoughts.
“A miracle.”
Jules stood up and moved toward him. “You hadn’t thought about that before?”
“Not until just now. It didn’t feel real. You know. It was just an idea. Not this.” He looked around the room, at the glowing embers in the fire, at the flickering candles, the warm, welcoming feel of the house, and was overcome with a sense of wonder. He was going to make a baby.
Jules took Sean’s glass from him, put it down on the invitation-cluttered mantelpiece, then placed one hand on his sleeve. “Do you think…?” She let her question hang in the air, unasked.
“Do I think what?” Sean asked softly. He felt very, very close to her at that moment.
“I’ve…I’ve got all the necessary things, but…Do you think we could do this the old-fashioned way?” Jules reached up and kissed Sean gently on the mouth.
Sean knew he should have been shocked. But he wasn’t. Somehow, any scruples he might have had, any loyalty to Lily, had been overtaken by the enormity of what they were about to do. What Jules was suggesting felt right. He wanted to take a true, full part in what was going to happen. To be there at the moment of conception, a real father, not an adjunct sitting in another room while Jules did whatever she needed to do.
She was waiting for his answer. He put his arms around her and hugged her to him for a moment. Then he pulled back and lifted her chin with his hand.
“Yes,” he said.
SEAN LAY back, his eyes fixed on the four-poster bed’s embroidered canopy. Jules was motionless beside him, her back turned, the occasional soft snore confirmation that she was still asleep.
Unlike him. Oh, he had dozed off for a short time after their lovemaking, feeling happier and more fulfilled than he could remember. It wasn’t that being with Jules had been so good, more that he had lost himself in the wonder of the act, in the purposefulness of making a baby. At the moment it was happening, it had felt as if that was what sex was for. Perhaps there was more of the Catholic left in him than he had thought. Or maybe it was an echo of all those years of training and catechism. What was it the Jesuits said? “Give me a child until he’s seven”? Well, part of them still had part of him.
But it was a small part. Now, without all the candlelight and the beauty and the excitement of the moment, he didn’t feel as if he were God’s instrument of propagation. He felt like an asshole. He’d had sex with his lover’s friend. A vulnerable woman, too desperate for the evening to have the right result to be held accountable for her actions. He should have stopped it. But he hadn’t. Instead, he had jumped right in. He hadn’t needed to be persuaded, one suggestion from Jules and he’d agreed. And betrayed Lily.
Jules stirred. Sean realized that he hadn’t heard a snore for a few minutes.
“Are you awake?” she whispered. Sean said nothing. Jules turned over. Though lots of the candles had gone out, sputtering in their own wax, there were still enough lit for her to be able to see that his eyes were wide open. And staring into space. Looking anywhere but at her. “Sean?”
“I better go.”
“You don’t want to do that. It’s the middle of the night. It’s raining.” Wind was blowing the drops hard against the window. Behind that, there was the faint rumble of approaching thunder. “And there’s a storm coming.”
“Still. I think I should.”
“What’s the matter?” Jules waited for an answer. There was none. “What is it?” Still nothing. “Lily?” she ventured.
“I can’t believe I did that. I love her. I don’t know how I could have…With one of her oldest friends. I’m sorry.”
Jules, who had woken up eager for another go-round with Sean, wasn’t in any mood to indulge his wallowing in guilt like this. The way she saw it, they’d done it once, they might as well do it again. And again. Time enough for him to regret it tomorrow or the day after.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m not.”
“But Lily…”
“Is fine. Sean, l
ook at me. Look at me.” Sean didn’t move for a moment or two, then finally turned slowly onto his side. His face was a foot away from Jules, their eyes on the same level. “She’s at home, fast asleep. She’s got no idea about this and there’s no need for her to ever know.”
“You won’t tell her?”
“Why would I?”
“Well, she’s your friend and…”
“What should I tell her? What have we done?”
“You know. She thought we were just going to…I was only a donor and now…”
“Now we’ve gone a little bit further. It’s nothing. I wanted your sperm. You were prepared to donate it to me. We changed the method of delivery. That’s all.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“Of course it’s true. Now, stop worrying about it. There’s no problem. I promise.”
Sean sensed that Jules was putting something over on him but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Her reasoning seemed soundish, if unusual. But this whole situation was unusual. No point in relying on old rules in a new world, he told himself. It was true that Lily had wanted him to do this, just not perhaps in exactly this way. But if she never knew, who was hurt? Jules was right about that.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it.”
“No.”
“I thought not.”
“But that makes it worse.”
“Does it? Why?”
“I don’t know. It just does.”
Jules sighed inwardly. If only he wouldn’t make it so difficult. She supposed she was going to have to go back to her original approach. “Hopefully, we made a baby. We didn’t hurt anyone, we didn’t use or abuse anyone. We did a wonderful thing. And I for one refuse to apologize for it. And I’m very disappointed that you seem to want to.”
“I don’t, truly, I don’t,” Sean said. And he didn’t. Looking back, even though he felt guilty about what they had done, he wouldn’t change things. Their baby-making efforts had been very special. And he couldn’t help preferring the idea of a child conceived in pleasure to one created by artificial means.
“Good.” Jules smiled. “So you won’t mind making sure?” As she leaned forward and kissed him, her right hand snaked its way down his body. “You know what they say about sheep and lambs?”
thirty-five
Lily sat huddled in her favorite chair. The thunder had passed over, leaving that eerie, clean, after-the-storm silence behind it. There was no noise from outside apart from the occasional echo of a passing car. No sound from the house apart from the odd creak of old, settling timber. She had tried to sleep, but after hours lying looking at the ceiling, trying to keep her mind off what was going on across town, she had given up and decamped downstairs. Normally, she had no problem getting to sleep, she just tended to wake up in the middle of the night and have a hard time dropping off again. But then, normally she wasn’t haunted by images of her lover and her friend in bed together.
If anyone had asked her before that night how she was going to feel about sharing Sean with Jules, she’d have said that she was sure she’d be pleased and proud. Pleased for Jules, who so desperately needed someone like Sean to help her; proud of herself for being such a generous, thoughtful, inventive friend.
But it hadn’t turned out that way. Lily could think of nothing else apart from Sean making love to Jules, enjoying it, maybe more than he did with her, getting things from Jules he couldn’t get from her, maybe deciding that he no longer wanted her but wanted Jules instead. No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on something else—since moving to her study she’d had a go at watching an old movie on TV, reading, working, listening to her favorite CD, anything she could imagine would be an effective distraction—visions of the two of them kept flooding into her head. Of them in bed, in the bath, lying in front of the fire, of them in each other’s arms, kissing, cuddling, touching, fucking…
She couldn’t understand why she was so obsessed. She was the one who didn’t want commitment, after all. What could it matter to her what Sean did in his spare time?
Hell, she was dying for a cigarette. When she’d gotten home, she’d had ten to last her until the following morning. It should have been no problem. Of course, she hadn’t planned on being up half the night, puffing away, agonizing about her feelings. Desperate for a comforting hit of nicotine, she got up and started rummaging through her desk, hoping that there would be an old pack she’d forgotten. Ah. There. Right at the back of the top middle drawer. An ancient, soft packet with one very old, very dry cigarette left. She pulled it out and lit it. It was way past its sell-by date, and staler than week-old bread, but it was still heaven.
She settled back in her chair to carry on where she’d left off. And decided that whatever other dire faults she possessed, she’d never been unwilling to share. So why was she so upset? Was all this noncommitment stuff self-delusionary? Deep down, did she want love and—ugh!—marriage? Surely not. She’d been doing the twice-a-week thing for years; if she was faking it, she’d’ve found out way before now.
So what was it? First-time nerves? Yes, that made some sense. She was just having a bit of trouble getting used to it. Nothing that needed all this soul-searching. Once she’d spoken to Jules, once she’d seen Sean and been reassured that the two of them weren’t in love, that she wasn’t going to lose her sometime lover to her friend, she’d be just fine.
thirty-six
“He called her a what?”
“Af…fucking bitch.” Paul’s headmaster, Mr. Wallace, stammered out the unaccustomed word.
“Oh.”
“The school views this kind of thing very seriously, Mrs. McKellar, very seriously indeed. We have standards to meet. Abuse of the teachers is completely unacceptable.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it….” Terry didn’t know what to say. Deep down, she had some sympathy for Paul. Mrs. Stroud, his maths teacher, was a fucking bitch. The kind of stuck-up cow who looked down her nose at the likes of Terry. The way the woman held on to her handbag whenever Terry was near made it look as if she believed that Terry was about to steal it.
“It was not the first time he has caused this particular teacher problems in class,” Mr. Wallace went on.
“But he’s been improving recently. Really he has. You must have noticed.”
“I would not call this improvement. I’m sorry. I’m afraid I have no alternative but to suspend Paul for two weeks. Any more trouble when he returns and we will have to consider expulsion.”
“Expulsion? For two little words?”
“For those two little words.”
“But you can’t do this—”
“I’m afraid I can, Mrs. McKellar. I’m sorry, but I do have the other pupils and parents to think of. Good evening.” And Wallace rang off.
Terry was shocked. Things had been going so well. Okay, Paul hadn’t been exactly loving, but he had stopped slamming about the house so much and occasionally even exchanged a few voluntary words with her. And now this.
Even if Mrs. Stroud had been the worst bitch in creation, Paul shouldn’t have said she was. He was in deep trouble. Expulsion. God. She hated to upset the delicate balance their relationship seemed to have reached, but she had to do something that would bring the seriousness of this home to him. And she could think of only one thing that might do that. The long-awaited trip to see Charlton play Chelsea was this weekend. Terry didn’t want to forbid his going. She couldn’t bear to deny her son his treat. It meant too much to him. But if she were to say she was thinking about canceling it, maybe he’d be shocked into realizing the gravity of what he’d done. And be frightened enough not to do it again. She was going out tonight; if she told him now, then gave him the evening to think things over…
“Paul,” she called as she climbed the stairs to his room, dreading his reaction to what she was about to say.
thirty-seven
“You were right, Lily. He is marvelous. Absolutely marvelous. We must have done it three
or four times each night.” Jules beamed at her friends. Once Sean had gotten over his attack of guilt, he had been everything she had expected. And more.
“God. You’ve got to be exhausted.” Terry drained her half-full glass of white wine and refilled it. Perhaps alcohol would help her get into the spirit of the evening.
“But nicely so. Very nicely so. Very, very nicely so.”
“He’s that good?”
“Definitely. If not better.”
“Fuck. If twenty years of failure hadn’t finally managed to drum some sense into my thick head, I’d almost be tempted to try again.” Terry made a pathetic stab at a grin. The scene with Paul had been even worse than she had imagined and she was having a hard time thinking of anything else.
“Not with Sean,” Lily blurted out. She, Terry, and Jules were sitting in a little Italian restaurant around the corner from Jules’s house, getting together for dinner to discuss the last few days. It had been Jules’s idea; she was so full of what had happened between her and Sean that she couldn’t wait to tell her friends, sure that they would share her feelings.
“What’s this, Lils? Getting possessive?”
“No, no, of course not. If you fancy Sean, be my guest.” Lily forced the words out. What the hell was wrong with her? First it was Jules, now Terry. She stiffened her inner upper lip and told herself sternly to behave. These were her friends. She loved them more than any man.
“Go on, Terry, it’s your turn.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You’d love being with him. I can vouch for it. He’s so considerate. It was the first time for me, you know, since Will, and I was worried I might be scared. Or have flashbacks to…to all that. But there was nothing. I couldn’t have imagined him hurting me. No question, you’d love it.”
