by Rosie Fiore
Sam
I am a terrible, terrible man. She’s a nice woman, a lovely woman, gorgeous (dear God, she is gorgeous, all long legs and slender, flat muscles – a dancer’s body still). And I am using her and fucking her as if she’s a. . . I don’t know what. I don’t love Lara. I’m not sure I ever will, or that I will ever love anyone again. I’m using her for physical release, and to fetch and carry my daughters. And she’s allowing me to do it.
I remember the night we found out Helen wasn’t coming back, that extraordinarily weird night when Tim and I went out drinking and ended up in the pub where Lara works. Tim eyed her up and flirted and she shut him down and I thought then that she disliked flirtatious bad boys and had seen through Tim’s charming shtick. It made me like her – clearly a woman who wasn’t easily fooled. And yet she’s letting me behave appallingly. We’ve spent several evenings where we’ve got together for movies or pizza, and then let the kids all fall asleep in front of the TV. We’ve gone upstairs to her bedroom for quick, dirty sex, and before there’s a chance for conversation, I say I have to go, load the sleeping girls into the car and get out of there. Why is she letting me do it? Is it because I’m a ‘nice guy’? Or is it because I am so damned tragic – once widowed, once abandoned – that she can’t ask anything of me? I think that’s probably closer to the truth.
All this was playing on my mind when we met one Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago to take the kids for a walk along the brook by the golf course near her house. The girls and I had walked down, or Marguerite and I had walked, while Miranda rode round us in circles on her bicycle. She’d already declared that going for a family walk was ‘lame’, and had only agreed to it at all because we were meeting Frances. If she and Frances were on their bikes and could stay far enough ahead or behind the rest of us, they might be spared the near certain death-by-embarrassment that would occur if we bumped into anyone from school.
As we turned the corner at the top of Lara’s road, I could see all the way to the bottom where the stream crossed under the footpath and the walk began. Lara, Frances and Jonah were already waiting on the bridge. It looked as though they were playing Pooh Sticks – Lara was helping Jonah hunt for a suitable twig, while Frances stood by impatiently, her own collection of sticks held loosely in her hand.
Miranda freewheeled down the pavement ahead of us, tinging her bicycle bell, and Frances looked up. She immediately peeled off from the game and she and Miranda went into one of their huddles, sharing some vital piece of news. Lara and Jonah were too intent on the game to notice our approach and were leaning over the rail, looking for their sticks. I watched Lara, her, thick red hair hanging down and shining in the winter sunshine, her legs long and slim in jeans.
‘Hi there,’ I called, and she straightened up, brushed off her jacket and gave me a wide, warm and unaffected smile. I found myself grinning back, and when I got to her, totally on impulse, I gathered her in my arms and gave her a big smacking kiss on the lips and a long hug. Marguerite and Jonah ignored us – they were hunting for sticks to continue the game – but over Lara’s shoulder I saw Frances and Miranda look at us, startled and slightly horrified.
To my surprise, Lara pushed me away firmly, frowning and shaking her head. I raised an eyebrow at her, questioningly.
‘Let’s walk, it’s freezing,’ she said, and wrapped her arms tightly around herself, warding me off.
Frances and Miranda were still watching us warily.
‘Get your bike, Frances,’ said Lara, her voice high and brittle.
Frances ran and collected it from the far side of the bridge. She put on her helmet and with a last backward glance she and Miranda set off on the path ahead of us.
Jonah and Marguerite pottered along in front of us. Marguerite was telling Jonah a long story involving some flower fairies and a unicorn. He was barely listening. He’d found an enormous stick, taller than him, and was manfully dragging it along. I expected Lara to tell him to drop it, but she didn’t seem to be paying attention. She still had her arms tightly crossed over her chest, and her face, bright and rosy-cheeked before, looked pale and pinched when I glanced sideways at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly.
‘You should be.’
‘You looked so lovely, and I was happy to see you.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and I checked to see if she was smiling. She wasn’t, but she didn’t look quite so angry. She was so pretty, and so desirable, with her fine, fragile bones and wild russet hair. I found my mouth beginning to speak, without my brain having engaged at all.
‘Anyway, I thought maybe it was time we. . .’
‘We what?’
‘Brought things out into the open?’
‘What things?’
‘Things. . .’ I said awkwardly, beginning to feel silly, ‘between us.’
‘And it didn’t occur to you that maybe we should have a conversation about this? That you might like to canvass my opinion on what those “things” might be? Maybe discuss when and if I might like to tell my own children?’
‘I’m sorry.’
There was a long silence.
‘We are in a weird situation here, Sam.’
‘I know.’
‘I mean, I know thirty-something relationships can get complicated, what with children and baggage and whatnot, but you and me. . . it’s very complicated.’
‘I know.’
We came out into an open bit of parkland, and I could see that Miranda and Frances had stopped on the path ahead of us. They were leaning on their bikes, looking back at us and talking together. They didn’t look happy.
‘It’s just. . .’ Lara said haltingly. ‘If we start something and it all goes horribly wrong, well. . . what happens then?’
‘We kind of have started something.’
‘We’ve started having sex. But that’s just you and me. If we involve the kids, if people find out. . . there’s a whole weight on the relationship. A pressure. It suddenly gets very serious.’
I glanced over at her. This wasn’t at all what I had expected. It hadn’t occurred to me that she too might be ambivalent. She looked up at me. Her eyes were spectacularly green in the grey January light. It was terribly important, right at that moment, that I persuade her.
‘Why don’t we give it a go and see what happens?’ I said. It sounded lame, but it was the best I could come up with.
‘It’s like sky-diving,’ she said. ‘Right now, we’re still in the plane. But if we give it a go, we jump. And we can’t change our minds and get back in.’
‘There’s an analogy in there somewhere about being chopped up by the propellers.’
‘I’m a restaurant manager.’ She managed a weak smile. ‘That’s about as much metaphor as I can manage.’ She walked on a few steps and then stopped to look at me.
‘This is scary, Sam. And the hardest part is, of all the people involved, you and I probably have the least to lose.’
We looked out over the frozen park. All four kids had gathered under a tree and were looking up at its stark, leafless branches. Miranda was pointing something out to Jonah, holding his hand.
‘So what do we do?’ I asked. ‘Do we stop hanging out? Stop having sex? Go back to being school-gate acquaintances? Or do we jump?’
She was quiet for the longest time. Then she turned and stood facing me squarely. She made herself uncross her arms, and took a deep breath.
‘Jump,’ she said.
That evening, after the kids had fallen asleep, we talked late into the night. We decided that the parameters had to be firmly agreed. We’d tell the kids that we were ‘dating’, and we’d tell Lara’s mum. No one else for now. We’d see each other three times a week. No sleepovers. Yet. No big, long-term plans.
So that was it. We were in a relationship, albeit one with some serious rules and regulations. Except all the rules and regulations went out of the window pretty much on day one. The next weekend after our Big Talk, we ended up back at Lara’s an
d the kids dragged mattresses in front of the TV to watch a movie. Predictably, they fell asleep one by one. Lara’s mum was out for the evening with friends, and Lara and I sat in the kitchen splitting a bottle of wine, holding hands and talking quietly. It felt good to be affectionate with her. It felt comfortable and natural.
I looked at my watch at about eleven and said, ‘I should get the girls home.’
Lara glanced out of the window. ‘Yuck,’ she said. ‘Look at that.’
Sleet was falling steadily outside, and the tops of the trees bent and swayed in a strong, icy wind.
‘That looks rough,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’ll have died down in half an hour or so.’
But it didn’t. The wet stuff kept falling and the wind kept howling. I must say, I didn’t fancy carrying the girls, heavy with sleep, out to the car one by one and then making poor Miranda wake up and walk through the wet to get into the house.
‘Maybe. . .’ I said hesitantly, looking out of the window.
‘You should stay,’ said Lara firmly.
‘Are you sure?’
‘You can’t take the girls outside in this. Let’s take the little ones for a wee and cover them up warmly. We’ll get up before they do and tell them you slept in the study.’
It was warm and quiet in Lara’s big, brass-framed bed. We had sex (or was it making love?) and were both completely naked together for the first time. Afterwards, she fell asleep quickly, and I watched her eyes move restlessly behind the fine, thin eyelids. In repose, her face was young and almost plain – fine-boned and freckled, but pale, with narrow, neatly formed lips and light brows and lashes. She looked like a sleeping angel drawn by Edward Burne-Jones.
I was wide awake and aware that if any of the children woke before we did and came into the bedroom, my being naked in Lara’s bed was far from ideal. I got up and pulled on a T-shirt and underwear, and then tiptoed to the bathroom for a drink of water. The sleet had stopped and I stood on the landing, looking out of the window on to Lara’s overgrown garden. I remembered the first time I had come to the house – the day Helen disappeared. And even though this wasn’t the first time I’d had sex with Lara, I felt a deep, painful pang of guilt. This was different from the one-night stands I’d had. For the first time, I felt I had been unfaithful to my wife.
Since that first night, there’s been little point in sticking to ‘rules’. It’s easy for Lara to pick up all four kids after school, so she’s been doing that, and while the girls and I stay at home during the week, we tend to stay over at Lara’s house on Friday and Saturday nights now.
I didn’t say anything to anyone at school, and neither did Lara, but the word soon spread. Ella approached me before school one morning, clutching a sheaf of tickets for the International Quiz Evening.
‘You’re always such a star at the quiz, Sam,’ she said, resting a hand on my arm. ‘I hope you and Lara will come.’
I looked at her, and her gaze was deliberately innocent.
‘Sure, why not?’ I said, and handed over a twenty for two tickets.
Lara suspected the news had passed through the kids. I imagined there had been a little espionage on the part of the nosier mothers – they’d have noticed Lara collecting Miranda and Marguerite regularly and would have pressed their children to ask ours what was going on. Helen always used to joke about the intelligence-gathering abilities of the school-gate mums. ‘It took the US years to find Bin Laden,’ she said. ‘If they’d asked the mums at our school, they’d have had him by afternoon playtime. Someone would have known someone who knew his mum and what she once said to his Auntie Fatima.’
So Lara and I are in a relationship. And because of the way our families are put together, we’re in a six-person relationship, which is by its nature not a very romantic one. Yes, occasionally Lara’s mum keeps an eye on all the kids so we can go out for a meal or catch a movie, but Lara works most nights and wants to spend her weekend evenings with her children if she can. Even when we do go out, we talk a lot about the children, and about domestic arrangements, and end up coming home early to check on them all. Then we make love and fall asleep. In a funny way, it feels as if we’ve gone from friendship to being a middle-aged, long-term couple in a matter of weeks, without any of the romance and drama that usually comes between.
I have no complaints of course. Lara’s a lovely woman. She’s kind and steady, and having her in my life makes everything easier and less painful. I’m drinking less and sleeping more. I’m on to a good thing, obviously.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sam
This time, it was definitely Helen. Not a shadow of a doubt. It was the way the chestnut ponytail swung as she walked, almost skipping, in that brisk, efficient way Helen had. She was moving swiftly away, half a block ahead of me on Oxford Street, disappearing through the thick throngs of people – busy business people on their phones, oblivious to those around them, and impassable wedges of tourists dawdling three abreast. I was going to lose her, so in a desperate, possibly suicidal move, I stepped into the road and ran up the bus lane, shouting, ‘Helen! Helen!’ A black cab headed straight for me and hooted wildly, so I leapt back on to the pavement, shouldering a woman in high heels who lurched sideways with a cry. I heard the roar of her angry boyfriend, but only faintly, because I was off and sprinting again.
Helen, now only twenty yards or so ahead of me, suddenly turned right into a side road, and I barged through the crowds on the pavement to follow her. She could move faster now she was out of the throng, and by the time I had rounded the corner, she was already half a block away. I was out of breath – I’d got overweight and out of shape. ‘Helen!’ I called helplessly, but she didn’t turn and I started to run again. I didn’t mean for my hand to fall quite so heavily on her shoulder, but I was off balance and tired. ‘Helen!’ I said, and she stumbled, then spun round to look at me.
‘Fuck off!’ she said sharply, wrenching herself free from my grip. And even through the haze of my tiredness, I could hear that her accent was Eastern European and see that, of course, once again she wasn’t Helen. Her thin, sharply pencilled eyebrows were raised, and when she snarled another insult at me, I could see her teeth were yellowed and crooked.
‘Sorry. Sorry,’ I said, stepping backwards and colliding with someone who was walking behind me. ‘I thought you were someone else.’ I held my hands up to show her I meant no harm, apologized to the frumpy, aggrieved woman whose foot I had stepped on and fled back in the direction of Oxford Street and the anonymity of the crowds.
I walked around for an hour or so after that, stopping every now and then in a bar or pub. I didn’t drink beer. I didn’t want to go back to Lara’s smelling like a brewery, so I drank shots of tequila.
It wasn’t just the sighting of another not-Helen, it was the call I’d had from the bank before that. I’d missed a credit-card instalment. It wasn’t carelessness. I hadn’t had the cash to make even a minimum payment. It was one thing after another: a leak in the bathroom, I’d needed a new suit, a grocery bill which was extortionate (but then I have been buying a lot of ready meals and booze), and then the car went in for its MOT and failed. In the old days, my salary and commission bonuses would easily have covered those costs, but these days, I’m barely scraping my basic. It’s about enough for the mortgage payment, but not much else. I’m going to have to do something radical, I thought. And soon.
Lara
Sam was preoccupied. That’s not unusual – he’s often lost in his thoughts and the girls will shout at him shrilly to ‘Listen, Daddy!’, and I’ll have to repeat a question three times before he pays attention. But today was different. He arrived late for dinner and smelling slightly of booze – for the first time in a long time he’d obviously stopped for a drink on the way home from work. He looked rumpled and stressed, like the Sam of the bad old days before we started seeing each other. It wasn’t till I saw him looking like that that I realized how much better he’s got in the past few months. He came in and sat slumped
in an armchair in the living room while the girls cavorted around him talking over one another to share news of their day. He couldn’t even manage to grunt or nod to pretend he was listening. Marguerite particularly began to show off and whine and be bratty, desperate for any attention, even the negative kind. So I bundled them all off upstairs to read Jonah a bedtime story and get him ready for bed. The two older girls love any opportunity to ‘mother’ Jonah (translation, boss him to within an inch of his life), and Marguerite will go along with it as long as the others are all doing it.
I went into the kitchen to get Sam his dinner, which I was keeping warm in the oven. He followed me into the kitchen. ‘Do you have any beer?’ he asked.
‘No, sorry,’ I said.
‘What about wine?’
‘Nope. I can offer you juice or fizzy water, that’s about it.’
I might pop out and get some,’ he said vaguely, but he didn’t move towards the door.
I handed him his plate. He didn’t thank me, just stood holding it absent-mindedly, at a slight angle. I was worried he might drop it, or tip the food on to the floor.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ I asked, taking the plate back from him and setting it down on the table. ‘You look terrible.’
His attention flashed back to me. ‘Why, thank you,’ he said, giving me his sweet, crooked smile. ‘You say the nicest things.’
‘I don’t mean that. You look distracted. Upset. Did something bad happen at work?’
‘No, nothing like that.’ I could see he was weighing up whether to explain. Eventually, he said, ‘I. . . I thought I saw Helen today.’
‘Wait. . . what? Where?’
‘It wasn’t her,’ he said hastily. ‘Just a woman who looked like her, who told me to fuck off after I chased her up Oxford Street.’
‘Wow,’ I said.
‘It isn’t the first time,’ he continued. ‘It keeps happening. I catch a glimpse of someone and I’m convinced it’s Helen. It never is though. Just a ghost in my mind.’
