by Frances Pye
“Yeah, but I’m not sure she would,” Lily said.
“Why on earth not?” Jules asked.
“I just think…Ter, you always said one of the things you hated about sex was the way men ground away at you. And you might need someone a little more gentle than Sean if you’re going to try again.”
“More gentle?” Jules asked. “I’m not sure that’d be possible.”
Lily stared at her friend, shocked. “He…you thought he was gentle?” Sean’s aggression in bed was one of the things she liked about him. Most men she ran across nowadays thought all women wanted hearts and flowers, wishy-washy, tender sex, and it was rare to find one willing to be as in your face as Sean.
“Don’t you? But he was wonderful. Never a rough moment. Even the, the”—Jules searched for the right word—“the penetration was lovely. Slow and easy and kind. He’d be perfect for Terry. Perfect.”
“Thanks. But no thanks. I’m happy as I am. Celibate to the death, that’s me.” Terry glanced down at her watch. The more the evening went on, the more her thoughts were with Paul, at home. And whether her ploy had worked.
Lily slowly relaxed. Of course there was no chance of Terry wanting Sean. Plus, she’d been reassured by Jules’s use of the word “kind.” Kind didn’t imply heat or sweat or excitement. Kind was nice. Sweet. A task undertaken out of compassion. Not the sort of hot encounter that Sean would be eager to repeat. Not her Sean.
She smiled at her friend. “So when will you know?”
thirty-eight
The house was dark.
Terry fumbled for the switch. She was sure she’d left a light on in the hall. “Paul,” she called out.
No response.
She went up to the door of his room and listened for a moment. No music, no computer games, no snores. “Paul? Are you asleep?”
Nothing.
Gingerly, Terry opened the door to his room and peeked inside. It was empty. Where was he? Had he ignored being grounded and gone out?
She made a quick search through the flat.
There was no one in the living room. Or in her bedroom. The kitchen too was empty. In fact, it looked just as it had when she’d left a couple of hours before. Except for one thing. The table was covered with every bottle of alcohol she could remember having in her possession, even the hideous half bottle of peppermint Mintu Lily had bought as a joke gift when on a trip to Finland. And every single one of them was drained.
He couldn’t have drunk it all, could he? She went to the sink and sniffed, hoping to find traces of port and cherry brandy and Mintu. But all she got was a vague, underlying scent of bleach, left from when she’d cleaned the kitchen the previous day.
God, that much alcohol might kill someone who was unused to it. Where was he? She’d tried everywhere, kitchen, lounge, bedrooms…. She rushed to the one she hadn’t yet searched. The bathroom.
To find the door locked. He had to be inside.
“Paul? Paul? Are you in there? Are you all right?” She rattled the handle, pushed against the door, put her shoulder to it, and tried to force her way in, getting more and more frantic. But it held firm. What the hell was she going to do? She had to get him out of there, and quickly. She was going to have to get help.
She rushed to the phone, completely panicked. And rang the one person she was sure would understand.
Sean.
Twenty nerve-racked minutes later, he was at the door.
“How much was there?” he asked as he ran down the corridor to the bathroom.
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to work it out. Most of the bottles had only a bit in them. Stuff left over from parties, you know?”
“Yeah. The last dregs of a bottle of Amaretto you never throw away unless you move. I have lots myself. Stand back.”
Sean turned his shoulder to the door, ran at it, and battered it open. Inside, Paul was lying on the floor, surrounded by vomit, moaning softly. Sean bent over, picked him up, propped him up in the pink bath, and turned on the shower. Cold water rained down on him and Paul together.
Terry leaned against the sink unit, her hands gripping the tiles in an attempt to hide the shaking she was unable to control “Is he…will he be okay?”
“Don’t worry. He’s gotten rid of most of it. A cold shower, a lot of water, and a long sleep, and all he’ll have is a monster of a hangover.”
“I’M SORRY about your clothes.”
“What, an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt? Water won’t hurt. But please don’t tell anyone you saw me like this. ’Specially not any of the men on the site. God, I’d never hear the end of it.” Sean smiled. He was dressed in an old, dark red, embroidered chenille robe that Terry had found in a shop in Covent Garden. Luckily, she liked her flopping-around-the-house clothes extra, extra large. Even so, it gaped over his chest and reached only to just below his knee.
“I can’t even offer you a drink.”
“After that, I’m not sure I’d fancy one. Tea will do just fine.”
Terry put the kettle on. “Did he say anything?”
“Not a lot. And what he did say didn’t make much sense. I think he was embarrassed.”
“I shouldn’t have gone out.”
“Course you should. For all you know, he’d have done something worse if you’d been here.”
“But I told him I was thinking about forbidding him the one thing he most wanted and then I walked out and left him alone. And look what happened.”
“Terry. Don’t beat yourself up about this. Kids have tantrums.”
“That’s all it was? You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. He’s a teenager. Hormones are rushing around his body at the speed of light. He was worried and angry and he wanted you to know it.”
“I thought it was the only thing that would get through to him.”
“Perhaps it was. For all you know, it was just what he needed. Maybe he’ll never swear at a teacher again.”
“Maybe.”
“You aren’t going to stop him going to the Chelsea game? Not after all the trouble I had getting tickets?”
“Oh, no. I didn’t know it was so hard. We shouldn’t have asked you.”
“And I shouldn’t be teasing you when you’re like this.”
Terry tried to smile. “Sorry. Sense of humor failure.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s natural. You’re upset.”
“I’ve no idea what I’d’ve done tonight without you. Rushing round here in the middle of the night.”
“It was only ten-thirty.”
“Still. You came. I’ll never, never forget it.” And Terry burst into tears as the realization finally struck her. Paul was fine.
Sean moved to put his arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay. It’s all right. He’s safe.” He repeated the words like a mantra as Terry sobbed out her relief.
After a few minutes, she pulled herself away, grabbed a piece of kitchen towel, and wiped her eyes.
“I didn’t mean to do that.”
“It’s no problem.”
“You’ve already done enough for me for one night.”
“It was nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing. You were wonderful. You are wonderful. Thank you, thank you, thank you. God, that’s not enough.”
Sean held up his hand to stop Terry’s words. He was close to tears himself. It had been an emotional evening and any more might push him over the top. “Please, Terry. I like Paul. I was glad to help, okay?”
“Well, okay. But if you ever need me…”
“I’ll be sure to call. Now, the tea?”
thirty-nine
Sean wasn’t sure what he was going to do right up until the moment he walked into the fashionable Moroccan let’s-all-sit-on-overstuffed-floor-cushions-to-eat restaurant in the center of town and saw Lily, wearing what looked like a new and very expensive suede jacket, huddled under a low-lit brass lamp.
He’d spent the previous few days struggling to decide what to do about her
. Should he tell her the truth about what had happened with Jules? Or carry on as normal? Part of him felt the honest thing to do would be to call and cancel their prearranged dinner date. And end their relationship. However, though he wanted to atone for his own disloyalty, he wasn’t sure it was fair to make his penance Lily’s also. To make her pay—presuming she would miss seeing him—for his sin. Nor was he sure what his leaving Lily would do to her friendship with Jules. Because if he ended things right after he’d been a “donor” for Jules, Lily would be bound to ask some difficult, probing questions about what had happened between him and her friend. And he didn’t know Jules well enough to know whether she would be able to lie as easily by commission as omission.
Hoping to clear his mind, he had spent a day in Putney, using a sledgehammer to break up the old concrete floor in one part of his building. But it hadn’t helped. His thoughts continued to go around and around as he veered from one course of action to another. Until, finally, it was too late to do anything other than meet Lily and see what would happen.
He walked across the dimly lit room toward her, curled in opposite, and pecked her on the cheek.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
“Sorry I’m late.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve only been here a few minutes. Bad day at work?”
“No.”
“Traffic?”
“No.”
Lily realized that this was going to be harder than she had imagined. “The menu looks amazing. Stuff I’ve never even heard of, and I took the twins to Morocco on holiday a year ago.”
“Oh.” God, this was difficult. She was being so matter-of-fact.
Lily reminded herself not to push too hard. Naturally, he was feeling guilty about Jules. Give him time and things would be fine. “Let’s order. I want those aubergines and the salad and definitely the lamb and apricots. What do you think?”
“Fine.”
“And you?”
Sean pushed the menu away unread. “I’ll have what you’re having.”
“No, come on, have something different. Don’t you want to taste stuff?”
“Sorry. Of course.” Sean quickly chose, at random, hummus and a strange sweet chicken pie.
The food was ordered and the starters came, but Sean still couldn’t decide what he ought to do. Should he keep quiet and in essence reward himself with Lily’s continuing presence in his life? Or tell her the truth and in so doing hurt her badly?
Lily wiped her plate with her bread and finished off the last of the spiced aubergine. “That was absolutely delicious. No question, Jonathan Meades was right about this place.” She would have to work extra hard in the gym the next day to pay for this evening’s indulgences, but right now she felt in need of the comfort food could bring. Her failure to drag more than a few monosyllables out of Sean had shaken her confidence and she’d been horrified to find herself longing to ask him for reassurance. She wanted to hear him say that he preferred her, that he wasn’t still thinking of Jules, that he wouldn’t choose her kind of sex over Lily’s. Instead, gritting her teeth, she carried on pretending that everything was just as it had been.
Then a waiter decked out in fez and tunic brought them Sean’s choice, an eat-with-your-fingers sort of pie called a bistilla, made out of chicken and phyllo pastry and covered with confectioners’ sugar, and left it with them uncut. Lily had seen the people at the table next to them pulling theirs apart with their hands and reached out to do the same. She ripped off a section and put it in her mouth. “Come on, this is great.”
Sean took a minuscule piece.
“Pathetic.”
“Sorry. I’m not all that hungry.”
“All the more for me, then.”
She reached out again, this time taking more. But the phyllo pastry separated and the chunk fell apart, spilling confectioners’ sugar and bits of chicken all down her chin and over her new jacket. Lily looked startled, then burst out laughing.
At the sight of her covered in food, giggling, Sean started to laugh also. He leaned over to try and help her wipe away the mess but succeeded only in spreading the sugar farther over the black, velvety suede.
Which made Lily laugh all the more. “I must look like I’ve been snowed on,” she gasped.
“Frosted. Like some cereals. And very attractive it is too.”
Lily grinned. Attractive, eh? That was more like it. “We could take the remains home and try it out in bed.”
“Good idea. Lily pie. Sounds delicious. And there’d be a snack handy in case we got hungry.” The two laughed again. And with the laughter, all the tension between them evaporated and everything was as it had been.
A couple of hours later, in the middle of making love to Lily just the way he knew she liked it, Sean looked down at her lying naked beneath him and murmured, “I’ve missed you.” Because he had. And because it felt as close as he would get to apologizing for what had happened with Jules.
Lily moved against him, eager for more, all her remaining doubts about him and her friend wiped away. She had the reassurance she wanted. And without having to suffer the humiliation of asking for it.
By the time she left the house to go to work the following morning, feeling tired and very pleasantly stiff, she had convinced herself that now that she was sure Sean preferred her, she would be fine about lending him out to Jules again.
Although she would be happier if her friend were pregnant at the first try.
“CAN WE ring her?”
“Hell, Sean, what time is it?”
“I don’t know. Six, maybe?”
Lily groaned. “Six?”
“So can we call her?”
“Are you mad? It’s the middle of the night.”
“It’s not. It’s morning.”
Lily squinted at the gray light outlining one of the bedroom’s large, curtained windows. “Only just. And no, we can’t.”
“But today’s the day.”
“I know today’s the day, you know today’s the day, if Jules has been as bad with everyone else as she has with us, the whole of SW3 knows today’s the day. She’ll call when she has something to tell us. Sean, it’s only six o’clock. Every sensible person is unconscious right now.” Lily turned over to face away from him, hoping to catch another hour of sleep. But it was too late. Maybe if she were alone, she might be able to drop off again, but Sean was here and she was awake. She might as well get up.
“All right, all right, I’ll make us some tea.” Lily climbed out of bed, grabbed her robe, and set off downstairs. Normally, Sean would have offered to make the tea himself, or at least to help, but today he was far too preoccupied even to notice Lily leaving the room.
Downstairs in her stainless-steel kitchen, she puttered about, putting together a breakfast tray for the two of them. Earl Grey tea, warmed croissants, French butter, her favorite imported quince jelly. If she had to be up this early, she was going to indulge herself. After all, she deserved it. The last couple of weeks had been hard work. First there had been her initial, edgy meeting with Sean after his nights with Jules. Then there had been the need to talk to Jules an ever-increasing number of times each day in an attempt to calm her down, to smooth away her mounting anxiety as the moment she could take a pregnancy test and trust its results approached. And finally, there had been Sean’s own growing excitement over the possible baby, which she had begun to find a tad annoying. Touching, in a way, she supposed, but irritating nonetheless. The sooner Jules was pregnant and this was all over, the better.
UPSTAIRS, SEAN lay on his side, his eye on the red-light numbers of the clock radio. It was still only 6:20. How was he going to wait until seven or even seven-thirty, when Lily would agree that he could call Jules? The last weeks had crept by increasingly slowly as the day of reckoning approached. He wasn’t sure that he could manage to wait the eons that forty minutes now seemed to represent.
Lily, he knew, thought he was so on tenterhooks because he wanted to find out if he had
been successful or not. A sort of male need to prove his potency. And he let her believe that. But it wasn’t true. Oh, once Jules was pregnant, he’d be able to think of the child and be delighted about it, but right now what he wanted, what he longed for, was to be free of the obligation to return to her for another try. Because he knew that he was weak. Whatever he intended beforehand, he would succumb the next time, just as he had the first. He would end up back in bed with Jules. And he would be faced with the same dilemma again. And again. Unless the result was positive now.
He heard Lily’s slow, tray-laden steps as she started the climb to the bedroom. The clock read 6:40. God, another twenty minutes.
ON THE other side of London, Jules looked across her canopied bed at the brass carriage clock. It was 6:40 on the first day her period could be due. And so the first day she could take a pregnancy test. And yet here she was, still lying in bed, her ClearBlue kit still sitting beside the toilet, waiting for her to pee on it and discover the answer.
Yesterday, she’d been desperate to find out whether she was pregnant or not. Today, she’d been awake for a good two hours but had held back, too afraid of failure to take the test. For the last few days, she’d been able to hope and it had been wonderful. But now it was reality time.
The alarm would go off any minute. Then she’d have to get up. No more huddling in bed like a hibernating bear. No, that was too generous. She wasn’t hibernating, she was hiding. Annoyed by her own feeble cowardice, Jules jumped up and turned off the bell. Time to find out the truth. After all, there was always next month. And the consolation of another marathon session with Sean…
In the bathroom, Jules shimmied out of her dark blue silk pajama bottoms, opened the foil wrapper, removed the test stick, and took off the cap. She held the stick over the toilet and peed on it. After five seconds, she pulled it away, replaced the cap, and prepared to wait the minute to see if the blue line appeared in the tiny square window.
