All That Mullarkey

by Sue Moorcroft

  Rhianne’s hand on her arm meant she had to stop or risk shooting five cups of coffee across the room. Rhianne’s lipsticked mouth had stopped smiling and her artistically made-up eyes were apologetic. ‘I just couldn’t admit it to you, Mrs Perfectmarriage, that my relationship was in the shit. Sorry, but that’s how it was.’

  Cleo managed a frosted smile. ‘OK. Your call.’ She made herself a place at the railing, cheering Gav on, joining in every burst of applause or groan, glued to the match, agonising when full time saw the score at 2-2, the same at the end of extra time. And then the match must be decided by penalties.

  ‘How bloody for Gav,’ Ian groaned, ‘I can’t watch.’

  But if Cleo didn’t watch, she’d have to face Rhianne’s apologetic eyes once more. The ATC began lining up behind the ball as Gav crouched grimly in front of his net. And she’d have to pretend that she didn’t mind that she’d been excluded. When she did.

  There were photos and a proper prize ceremony. A trophy that looked ridiculously small in the hands of the team captain; Gav bouncing with joy to be the ’keeper who let in only two penalties and saved the match. The rubber ATC players accepted their even tinier trophy and joked that at least they didn’t have to buy the drinks.

  Gav rushed up and, in front of everyone, took a deep, jubilant kiss from Cleo before plunging into an animated ball-by-ball analysis with Keith and Ian. Dora and Rhianne were in a huddle over by the crèche, casting uneasy glances at Cleo.

  ‘Suppose that means it’s my round.’ But Cleo smiled as she went to join the queue. Their group had never been one to keep score. Well, all right, there was a tiny bias – and it was in favour of Rhianne and Ian, which was OK because Cleo and Gav had two incomes and no kids and Keith and Dora had Keith’s mega-salary. She ordered red wine for the women and pints of lager for the men. Their crowd had been together for ages; it’d be a pity to spoil that over inconsequential matters like whose round it was. Or who’d been kept in the dark.

  So she smiled reassuringly at Rhianne and Dora when she proffered red wine that looked like cough mixture and forgave them their secrets. ‘I’ll just take the men their drinks, OK?’

  The tray was heavy. Because of her route via Rhianne and Dora, she approached the backs of Gav, Ian and Keith. She’d actually begun to say, ‘Beer’s here!’ But her words were drowned out by the post-match hubbub.

  And coincided with Keith turning to Gav and asking, ‘So where did you go? GP or GUM?’

  Cleo’s words stuck to her lips. GP or GUM? For a moment the only amplifications she could think of for those abbreviations were General Practitioner and Genito-urinary Medicine.

  She opened her mouth to ask what Keith meant, but Gav’s undervoice reply halted her. ‘GP. I put off going for too long, but there was a chance I’d passed something on to Cleo. Bad enough having to get the todger out to show my own doctor but it’d be worse at the clinic. All those strangers and sad bastards with false names, suppurating with VD and …’

  GP and GUM stood for precisely what they’d always stood for.

  She felt the strength wash from her arms and the three glasses fell to the floor to explode in a shock of glass and foam and interrupted voices.

  The edge had turned out to be an overheard snatch of conversation. And she’d stepped off so unexpectedly.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In brittle silence, they drove home, sleepwalking through the routines of parking, unlocking the house, stepping into their own sitting room. Then they faced each other.

  Gav had never experienced panic attacks but surely he must be having one now? Blood pounded in his ears and his palms sweated whilst his thoughts fled in all directions, his justification and explanation refusing to be marshalled. And Cleo was perfectly silent, perfectly still, her face perfectly white.

  He wished she’d cry! Then he’d feel it was OK to slide his arms around her. It was a jolt to realise that he dare not touch his own wife.

  He forced himself to meet the shock in her eyes. ‘Aren’t you taking your jacket off?’

  A headshake.

  ‘Do you want to sit down?’

  Another headshake.

  He sank to the sofa and took a steadying breath. ‘Everything’s been so shitty and just when I thought I’d got it sorted, this happens.’ He flicked his eyes to Cleo’s. ‘You’ve obviously twigged – I thought I had something. The clap.’ He wished she’d speak. Her still eyes seemed as black and expressionless as a shark’s. ‘But the good news is’ – what an excruciatingly stupid thing to say – ‘that it’s only psoriasis. Psoriasis! The doctor’s given me some cream.’

  He gripped his hands together. This was not going well. All those weeks on tenterhooks since the red, scaly, itchy patch appeared, searching silently for information on the Internet. The swing between pessimism and optimism – the patch looked exactly like an illustration in one of the booklets. He must have a venereal disease. But – yesssss, pain-free peeing, it couldn’t be! And no discharge, there you are, see.

  So what was the red, scaly, itchy patch …?

  Finally screwing up his courage and seeing his GP. ‘No discharge, no pain on urination, it looks exactly like psoriasis,’ Dr Tancred had said, wonderful, educated man that he was. ‘Could be stress.’

  ‘So …’ Cleo’s voice was no more than a croak. ‘How did you think you’d caught it?’

  Gav found himself spewing all the clichés of the unfaithful. ‘It was just once, it’s so unfair! It didn’t mean anything. She came on to me, you know how she is! We were at the sales conference and we’d drunk too much, I swear it meant nothing. But she did the most amazing thing. We were listening to all the boring speeches and laughing in the right places and she took my hand under the table and put it on her …! And she had on this non-existent skirt, you know the sort of cock-tease stuff she wears. Cleo, I’m sorry.’

  Cleo’s lips opened just enough to allow out one word, filled with disbelief. ‘Lillian?’

  His head drooped. ‘Afterwards, I was dead with shame, disgusted with myself. Our marriage was, is, everything to me – but I got drunk and she turned me on.’

  Offended comprehension had replaced Cleo’s blank expression. He found his hand extending to her, entreating, begging her to reach back. But she withheld her touch.

  He finished his explanation in an irritable rush. ‘So when I got this red patch, I thought it might be the clap – well, I don’t know, do I? I haven’t had it before. Which is why I came up with this pyjama game shit to try and hide it from you, and why, once I’d got the all-clear from the doctor today, I suggested the romantic weekend away.’ It didn’t seem the time to explain how he was desperate for a shag, tortured during his self-imposed celibacy, watching, wanting. Knowing he was getting nasty, snapping like a hungry dog chained out of reach of a delicious steak.

  He slumped back on the sofa, tilted his head and shut his eyes. ‘It’s why I’ve been in such a bad temper. Originally, I just felt like a shit for sleeping with Lillian and then I got the rash and was scared to death that I had the clap. I thought I might have given it to you when we had make-up sex after that first big row. I was in agony. I knew that the rows were hurting you but they gave me the excuse to avoid sex. I could have kissed the doctor, today, when he told me that there wasn’t anything for me to give. And that’s about it, really. The whole sordid, sorry, shitty mess.’

  When her knees were on the point of buckling she moved to the armchair furthest from him. ‘Maybe alcohol ought to be registered as a date-rape drug. It seems to remove all resistance.’ Her temples throbbed as she mulled over his confession.

  Gav’s erratic behaviour, the pyjama game, all explained, all perfectly obvious. She blew out a sigh. ‘What a relief.’

  Gav’s eyes brightened. ‘I really am relieved that I can’t have given you anything –’

  ‘Not that! I’m just relieved that we can finally deal with what’s happening. It’s extraordinary that this marriage, which we and everyone else
thought such a roaring success, should be brought down so easily. Despite all our boasts over the years about the depth of our commitment, isn’t it frightening how little we actually committed, with our rented house and lack of children? Realistically, we could divide everything and be out of here in an hour. Don’t you think we’ve made ourselves look stupid?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Blinking in shock, Gav hitched forward until he was balanced on the edge of the sofa. ‘We can get over this. Everyone hits bad patches, don’t talk about dividing up our things … We can get over this!’ Stumbling to his feet he stepped clumsily over the coffee table, barking his shins, before blundering to his knees in front of her, his breath coming hard.

  Cleo gazed into his face and wondered whether she would have forgiven him if his infidelity had been the only issue. ‘So far we’ve only talked about you.’ She forced herself to look into the eyes of the man she’d thought would wake up beside her forever. ‘We’ve both done it.’

  Emotions flickered across his face as he tried to compute her words, came up with the obvious conclusion, denied it, came back to it. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re not the only one to get drunk and … be unfaithful.’

  Slowly, slowly, Gav pushed himself away until he could use the table for a seat, making it teeter. ‘No! You? No. No! Cleo, you’re just … you’re hurt and you’re trying to hurt me back. You haven’t had an affair. When? Who with? You haven’t, you haven’t, you haven’t. Have you?’

  Her heart gave a great squeeze of compassion. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Gav.’ Even as she confessed, part of her mind worked independently. And it produced a staggering thought.

  She was free.

  Gav’s fist crashed down on the table, making her jump. ‘But who? Who is he?’ The pain in his eyes was awful.

  Cleo had to swallow sudden wretched tears to reply. She wanted everything to be out in the open but she hated seeing his pain. ‘Justin.’

  ‘Justin?’ He shook his head in incomprehension.

  ‘The guy with the broken-down car at The Three Fishes.’

  His features hung in the slack lines of denial. ‘That Justin? He’s not gay?’

  ‘Of course he’s not.’ She jerked to her feet. ‘I’m going to spend the weekend at Liza’s. I want to think.’

  Gav’s breath seemed to come in chunks, a tearless sobbing. ‘You’ve got to stay! We’ve got to talk. We have to get over this. Cleo, for God’s sake.’ He lunged to his feet, grabbing for her, scratching her arm, digging his fingers into her wrist. ‘You can’t just pretend it isn’t happening, we’ve got to find ways to forgive each other.’

  Suddenly sorry, suddenly frightened at the hugeness of what was facing them, tears spilled from Cleo’s eyes even as, instinctively, she twisted her wrist from his grasp. And stepped back. ‘Don’t you see? It’s over! We each wanted someone else and had them. We’re a sham.’

  The sound of the door clicking hung in the air behind her. If he could only instil the strength in his legs, he could walk to the window and look down, watch her sliding a case into her car. And leaving him.

  For months he’d balanced perilously on a tightrope of lies, inching his way along. Any time, he’d thought, he’d wobble and fall. But he’d made it as far as the final step and even had the remembered feel of firm ground beneath one foot, when the rope had snapped in spectacular fashion.

  Cleo had gone.

  And where he wanted to shut himself away with her, repossess her, try and overlay what had just happened with what would happen next, she wanted to get away from him.

  But, surely – she’d come back?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gav waited in Bob Chester’s office on Monday morning and wished he could ring Cleo. Wished he knew where she was. That she’d come home tonight.

  As shitty days at work went, this one was a real public toilet – and he would handle it better with a little of her good sense to calm the churning anxiety in his guts. But Cleo hadn’t come home and her phone had been off all weekend.

  On a chair as far across the room as possible, Lillian held an ice pack to her visibly swelling eye.

  Bitch. Bet she’d find some way to make everything sound worse than it was. He realised he was tapping his right foot in a staccato beat. Stopped.

  ‘Right.’ Bob’s grave voice cut into a silence that had been perfect since he’d ushered them into his office. ‘Obviously an incident has occurred between you today, which has to be investigated. As your department head I will be the investigating officer.’ He stroked his hair back, the bit at the front that was greasiest and slithered forward all the time. ‘I’m sending you both home for the rest of today to cool down. Tomorrow I’ll need you here to make statements. If you’re in a union you may be accompanied by your rep, if not you can choose a third party from within the company – if it would make you feel more comfortable.’

  He harrumphed awkwardly. ‘As for now, you’ll be escorted separately from the premises.’

  ‘Holy shit,’ breathed Gav.

  Even Lillian looked shocked. Her good eye flickered for a moment towards Gav.

  The human resources manager walked Gav out, across an unnaturally silent set of sections, into the lift, out through the foyer and right to his car, standing there, watching as Gav strapped himself into his Focus and tried to get himself together. Tomorrow he’d have to tell his story. As evenly and unemotionally as possible, lay it out about the sales conference and the one-night stand with Lillian. The love-hate stuff, the fancying her rotten – plenty of men in the company probably fancied her rotten. A beauty queen who dressed like a whore. He’d have to lay his cards on the table.

  His limbs trembled as he drove slowly towards a home that would be empty and silent, to wait out the hours until tomorrow’s meeting. To try and still his trembling he visualised himself at tomorrow’s investigation, suited and brushed, quiet and thoughtful, saying gravely, ‘Although my wife expressed no animosity towards Lillian, I felt it was only fair to warn her that our past relationship had been discovered.’ He’d explain how he’d stopped by Lillian’s desk on some pretext, pushing the tickly fronds of her fern aside to bend close and murmur, ‘Can we have a few words in private?’

  She’d followed him to the photocopying room, smirking like a cat. She was dazzling. Smart and sexy and cool, skirt too short and eyes just daring anyone to look. And he’d … He battered down the small, inappropriate surge of triumph. She halted just inside the door. ‘Can you remember what you want to say this time? Or is the old memory playing tricks again?’

  Last time, of course, he’d been going to complain that he’d contracted a sexually transmitted disease from her. Good job he’d bottled out, in view of the eventual diagnosis.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I’m, er, sorry, Lillian. I just thought I ought to warn … well, there’s a possibility that Cleo might ring you. She knows.’

  ‘She knows?’ Lillian exploded, not quite so gorgeous as her complexion drained in panic. ‘You moronic bastard. Couldn’t you keep my name out of it? I hope you don’t expect me to pull your nuts out of the fire and tell her it was all my idea, do you? That I tempted you, and you were merely weak?’

  Merely weak. He blinked. ‘No, I hadn’t thought that, but … it’s true, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t be such a jellyfish.’ Lillian swung her back to him, tapping her thumbnail rapidly against her teeth as she huddled in thought. Then, ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘Nobody. Unless Cleo –’

  ‘I suppose she’s running round bleating to everyone that some bitch in her husband’s office gave him one.’

  Gav’s temper whizzed around the dial and straight into the red zone. ‘You did give me one and you are a bitch, a calculating bitch who doesn’t mind borrowing someone else’s husband but doesn’t want to know when he’s caught out!’

  That’s when he’d flung the door open, he’d explain to Bob, and stormed into the corridor. And Lillian had flown a
fter him, discarding discretion in her fury. ‘I am not a bitch!’ From behind she’d grabbed at his shoulder, long nails scraping on the fabric of his suit, attempting to force him around to face her.

  But he’d flung up his arm to shake her off –

  ‘So,’ he would conclude sombrely, contrite and aiming to look shocked. ‘That’s how I hurt her. I threw my arm up to get her off and I suppose she must’ve still been coming forward. My elbow hit her in the face. Hard, I suppose. I’m sorry – but it was an accident.’ And he’d clear his throat, ask, ‘How is she?’ Hopefully Bob wouldn’t realise that Gav didn’t care if he’d knocked her head off.

  The benefits of visualisation techniques were something Cleo put a lot of faith in; and he did acknowledge that, although he wasn’t completely confident that his subconscious would help him to control the situation as he’d visualised, he did feel less scared.

  Bloody, bloody, bitching Lillian. Over the past few days realisation had slammed into him, in many degrees of pain, that – because of Lillian – Cleo seemed to be considering opting out of their marriage. His Cleo! Bright, larky Cleo, who he had thought he’d have for always. Exchanged for Lillian Trent, worthless, shallow cock tease. And only one night with her, at that.

  Bad bargain.

  As he pulled up in Port Road, Gavin’s heart gave a great bounce. Cleo’s car was parked outside. A fumble for the front-door key and he burst into the house and into the sitting room, praying. Was she home to stay? Or at least to talk? Surely they could talk? And he could persuade her, he was sure. His Cleo, she would surely listen.

  ‘Cleo!’ She was standing at the far end of the room by the kitchen door, looking white and shocked, dark hair shining. He sidled nearer and she didn’t back off. So he slid his arms around her, her emerald green jacket, and she didn’t flinch. His heart settled into a hopeful waltz.