Infidelity for Beginners

by Danny King

  What was I doing? What the fuck was I doing?

  My hand hovered as my pre-match jitters suddenly mushroomed into an all-out panic attack.

  I repeat, what the fuck was I doing? I was married. And not just married, I was married to Sally. Oh Jesus, what about Sally? Some might’ve argued this thought had occurred to me rather late in the day and I would’ve had trouble disagreeing, but let’s put a positive spin on it – at least it had occurred to me. Tom’s friend Martin, the one who drank in the Duke of York, who’d notched up more than two hundred confirmed conquests; I bet if you asked him for his thoughts on his wife while he was tucking into Miss Two Hundred and One, he’d look up from his perfectly unrolled condom and ask “who?”

  Was that who I aspired to be?

  Did I really want to be that bastard?

  I was a rabbit stuck in the headlights of an oncoming disaster and I didn’t have a clue what to do.

  If I opened the door, Elenor would come in and I would end up having sex with her. I was sure of that. Oh God, such sweet, intoxicating, fulfilling frantic, insatiable lust – which was everything I desired but probably the worst thing in the world I could do (short of then killing and eating her afterwards).

  If, however, I didn’t open the door, I’d never get this chance again and I would never ever know the heady exhilaration of illicit ravenous sex ever again – which admittedly would be in keeping with that vow I’d made in front of all those people all those years ago, but which would chew my guts up for the rest of my life.

  Just as my Abigail non-adventure did.

  What a dilemma!

  No matter what I did, I suddenly realised I’d be hanging my head in shame and beating myself up about it tomorrow. It was a lose-lose situation. In fact, it was probably the most lose-loseiest situation I’d ever known and, coming from a perennial loser like me, this was really saying something.

  Knock knock knock?

  My eagerness flexed in my trousers and pleaded with me to open the door but when I grabbed the handle, my wedding ring clinked against the steel to fire one last warning shot across my bowels.

  Oh Jesus. Sally…

  “Andrew?”

  Uh?

  “Andrew, are you in there?”

  Hang on a minute, that didn’t sound like Elenor. Elenor had a sweet, sexy, pouting voice. This voice was pompous, idiotic, annoying and the bane of my working life. I twisted the handle and swept open the door to come face to face with a walking bucket of cold water.

  “Ah, you are in. I thought so,” Norman said. “Can I come in for a moment?”

  I stared at him in open-mouthed confusion before stepping aside to let him in, though the moment I did, I suddenly remembered Elenor. She would be knocking on my door any second now too. Norman would see her. She’d see Norman. What would I say? More to the point, what would they say?

  NORMAN: “What’s going on here? Why is she coming up to your room?”

  ELENOR: “What’s he doing here? Is this some sort of set up or something?”

  NORMAN: “Are you two going to have sex?”

  ELENOR: “Did you bring him up here to go twos on me?”

  NORMAN: “Are you asking him or offering it?”

  ELENOR: “Why, are you interested?”

  NORMAN: “Are you alright with that?”

  ELENOR: “Are you?”

  “What?”

  “I said are you all right, Andrew? You look a little peaky,” Norman asked.

  “What? Oh yes, just a little hot and tired from the party. Thought I’d come upstairs for a quick five minute breather,” I replied, staring at my door in dismay as I hyperventilated over the impending shitstorm. “I’m fine now so let’s go back downstairs. Okay?”

  “Actually, there’s something I’m afraid I need to tell you.”

  Norman had a reticence in his voice that pulled my eyes away from the door. He avoided my gaze when I looked at him and frowned as he struggled to find the words.

  Boy, did I not like the look of this. What the hell was he about to tell me?

  “Elenor’s made a complaint and I’m afraid I’m going to have to fire you.”

  “Elenor’s made a complaint and I’ve had to phone Sally.”

  “Elenor’s made a complaint and it turns out she’s actually only twelve.”

  “Elenor’s made a complaint, but more to the point, I’m gay and you have to bang me instead or I’ll tell Sally.”

  “Elenor’s made a complaint but none of this matters now that the world is being attacked by flying saucers. Also, I’m gay and you’re going to have to... etc”

  Or most horrifyingly of all.

  “Elenor’s not made a complaint and she reckons you still haven’t done your report yet.”

  When Norman didn’t speak I realised I was going to have to beat it out of him. “What is it, Norman? Bad news?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he replied, tightening my screws all over. “I’m afraid it’s Tom…”

  “What?” I blinked in total confusion. “Hang on, what?”

  “I don’t know how it happened but the police are here and they say he’s been in an accident. He’s been run over.”

  “Run over?” Before this had a chance to sink in, there was another, gentler knock at the door and I yanked it open without thinking to see Elenor leaning against the door frame seductively.

  “It’s okay, I’ve already told him,” Norman told her, stepping into view and knocking Elenor for six as she went back on her heels. “Oh dear.”

  I rushed to her assistance and whispered in her ear to keep quiet as I put my arms around her slender young waist and picked her up again.

  “Norman’s just told me about it, about Tom being run over,” I told her, for the benefit of the audience. Elenor’s eyes widened but I pinched my face and shook my head until she got the play.

  “Ah, yes, you’ve told him then, have you?” she agreed. “Right. Good.”

  “Yes, well look, the ambulance has taken him to Mayday Hospital so I’d better go along and see that he’s taken care of. I didn’t know whether or not you’d want to come along too, seeing as he was… erm, sorry I mean, is a friend of yours. I’m going up there now. Andrew?”

  I could barely take in what Norman was saying. It was all so unbelievable. Tom had been run over. The ambulance had taken him to hospital. The police were downstairs.

  And Elenor had come to my room.

  She looked at me long and hard and I looked right back at her. Her dress and her hair and make-up and legs still looked as stunning as they’d looked that first moment I’d laid eyes on them. Only now they were standing in my room.

  I soaked her all in but I knew I was just dithering. I had a decision to make and Norman and Elenor were waiting for me to make it.

  Sally’s Diary: January 14th

  Something terrible has happened. Tom was run over last night after the Christmas party and the doctor’s say he might’ve broke his back. He’s already had one operation just to stabilise him but he’s going to need a great many others. They say he might never walk again, which is just awful awful awful. Andrew’s taken it really badly and even seems to be blaming himself, but he won’t say how or why. I’ve tried talking to him about why he thinks he’s responsible but he won’t be drawn on it and we even ended up having a blazing row. I don’t know what happened last night but something was clearly said or done and I think I know what it was. I’ve always been worried that my time with Tom might surface one day and cause problems for us and that seems to have finally happened. I only hope Andrew and Tom can patch things up between them because Tom’s going to need all the friends he can get right now. Poor silly Tom. Whatever else that might’ve gone on between us, I hope and pray he’s going to be okay.

  Chapter 11. Close Calls and Health Warnings

  I did something the night of the party I’m not proud of and that Sally can never find out about.

  I smoked a whole packet of cigarettes in less than six hours
.

  Unbelievable. That’s like a fag every eighteen minutes. Pretty good going but my lungs felt like they’d been in a fight with a cheese grater the next morning. Holy smoke!

  I don’t know what came over me. I guess it was a combination of stresses. Stress at skirting so close to infidelity. Stress at Tom’s suspicions. Stress at the palaver with Rosemary. Stress at broken backs. And stress at having to sit in a hospital waiting room with only Norman and stress for company. I challenge anyone not to chain smoke twenty fags in those circumstances.

  Of course, I couldn’t smoke in the hospital so I had an excuse to get away from Norman and go and wear circles in the car park, and it was out there, in that bitter January darkness that I did some serious thinking.

  My thoughts came in no particular order, they were all jumbled up and piled on top of each other, with no single thought taking centre stage over the rest of the pile but one of the more recurring images was of Elenor standing in my room and urging me with her eyes to stay.

  Unfortunately I couldn’t. Or should that be fortunately? I don’t know.

  Under laboratory conditions, with soft lights and candles, music and privacy and a signed and sealed permission slip from Sally I would’ve undoubtedly sucked Elenor from her dress and written off the hotel bed. But I didn’t. Because my friend in hospital, my boss at the door, a taxi ticking over downstairs and Sally – my wife Sally – was waiting for me at home. And whatever else I chose to do, the next morning I would have to drive back to Camberley, park the car, take a deep breath and try to pick up everything from where I’d left it the previous day.

  And I couldn’t have done that had I spent the night with Elenor.

  I know some people can – Tom’s mate Martin, who drank in the Duke of York, being the obvious case in point – but I simply wouldn’t have been able to. I mean, if you think about it, what a terrible burden to shoulder. And not just for a day or a week or a year, but for the rest of my life, because unless I split from Sally, I could never have told her, not unless I wanted to prompt said split. And even then I still couldn’t because it would’ve devastated her. Married, divorced, estranged or even forgotten; it didn’t matter, because who wanted to know that their loved one had cheated on them while they were together? If we lived to be a hundred and never had another argument again I still wouldn’t be able to tell her. Not because of what I feared the consequences might be (although there was that too) but because it would make her unhappy.

  And all of a sudden, all I could see was Sally’s unhappiness.

  Elenor’s legs, her bum, her provocative lip-chewing and her curls had all but disappeared from my thoughts so that all I could see was Sally huddled over in her hands, bawling with despair and asking me over and over again why I’d done it.

  It sent a shiver done my spine just thinking about it and that shiver started dancing with a shudder when I realised how close I’d come.

  Cue another fag.

  What really amazed me though was just how quickly my mind had snapped shut. Only a few hours earlier I’d been following Elenor around and whispering conspiratorially in her ear. One calamity later and I was suddenly back to DefCon 5 and dumbfounded at how I could’ve let things escalate beyond fantasy so spectacularly. Because it would’ve happened, wouldn’t it? It had moved up to the next level and was no longer a game, or a daydream or a flirtatious little misunderstanding.

  It would’ve been an affair.

  I had almost had an affair.

  Me?

  Unbelievable.

  Tom had been dead right about everything, which made an astonishing change. He’d known and had tried to steer me away from danger even when I’d been determined to blunder into it three sheets to the wind. He’d tried to protect me and had done so by taking on my arch-nemesis – namely, my own stupidity.

  He’d done that for me?

  Incredible. You think you know someone, you think they’re a bit of a dickhead, then out of the blue they go and do something like that for you.

  Wasn’t life a rollercoaster?

  And wasn’t Tom a friend? A true friend.

  Well, I’d not let him down again. I’d see to it that I never did anything to disappoint him again and repay him with the sort of friendship he’d shown me. Starting right now. Because right now was when Tom needed me most and I’d ensure he never had to go looking again.

  “How is he, sister?” I asked the nurse, when me and Norman arrived at the hospital.

  “Who?”

  “Tom Castelli. You brought him in probably half an hour ago. He’d been run over,” we had to explain when she didn’t immediately know off the top of her head who we were talking about.

  “Are you his family?”

  “No, we’re friends and colleagues. We were at the party with him.”

  “I see,” she glared. I didn’t know what it was she thought she saw but I suspect it was me and Norman pouring booze down Tom’s throat and shoving him in front of the traffic.

  We had to wait for another three hours until his brother arrived before we got someone on the inside and thankfully things weren’t anywhere near as bad as we’d first feared.

  “He’s broken his left arm, his left leg and his hip, and he’s cracked a few ribs and lost both of his front teeth.”

  “Thank God for that,” Norman had honestly said. Yeah, what a result!

  Still, that little insurance windfall was a million times better than a broken back, which was what Norman had first reckoned, filling my head with images of quadriplegics, breathing apparatus and life support system being accidentally unplugged by headphone-wearing Costa Rican janitors.

  I don’t even know where Norman had got Tom’s broken back diagnosis from and asked him why he’d told me that. Norman said the police or the hotel porter or a barman had told him “or something like that,” earning himself a matronesque telling off from a nearby nurse for propagating “unnecessary scare stories”.

  “I’m very sorry sister. Sorry Andrew. I’m… just… … sorry.”

  Norman was embarrassed and after my initial anger had subsided I actually felt for him. After all I myself had already phoned Sally and told her the same so I’d been just as irresponsible, hadn’t I?

  Anyway, the relief over the news of Tom’s true condition was tempered by the reality that he’d still done a pretty decent job on himself, broken back or not, and that he was going to need weeks, if not months, of care and rehabilitation.

  “I’ll be there for him,” I promised his brother. “I don’t care what it takes, I’ll see that Tom will walk again, even if I have to convalesce him myself.”

  Fortunately, the hospital said they had nothing else on at the moment so they’d do it if I wanted, letting me off the hook somewhat and setting Tom’s brother’s mind at ease, though I still promised to do my bit.

  “Anything he needs, anything at all and he’s got it,” I reassured him.

  I figured it would be a long, gruelling and doubtlessly painful process getting him back on his feet. A broken leg and a broken hip? Plus a broken arm, so that he couldn’t even support himself on crutches. Tom was going to have to use a wheelchair and there was no getting around that. Mobility would be a problem for him so I’d be Tom’s legs for the next few weeks. If he needed shopping, pushing around the park, taking to the pub, or just a bit of good old-fashioned company, I’d be the thorn in his side.

  “Swimming,” Norman had said. “They say that’s very good for recovery. Gets the muscles working without putting a strain on the bones.”

  Then that was it. I’d take Tom swimming every morning for as long as it took him to walk again. I didn’t care if it meant going around his flat and dragging him out of his malaise, I’d do this for Tom just as he’d done what he’d done for me (mentioning no specifics). I’d be his best friend and most gruelling taskmaster. I’d get his legs stronger than ever and be there for him when he took his first tentative steps. I’d support him every inch of the way and Tom would hate
me for the relentless bastard I’d become, but eventually I’d coax a few steps out of him and once I had those, I’d get some more.

  We’d stand together, walk together and eventually run together again.

  They say it sometimes takes a disaster to unlock your true potential and this would undoubtedly be the case with Tom. And with me, come to that.

  If I could just get him running, who knows what we could achieve together.

  Walks for peace?

  Coast to coast?

  Ben Nevis?

  Or most testing of all, the London Marathon? What an accomplishment that would be! From virtual cripple to marathon runner in a single year. It would be like one of those stories of hope and courage that they featured on the news. Like Michael Watson or half the cancer wards in Britain; they all empty out come Marathon time and every one of those brave, courageous heroes was an inspiration to others. Tom could be an inspiration.

  No, we could be an inspiration.

  From death’s door to marathon winners… all right, maybe that was taking it a bit too far. From death’s door to marathon heroes.

  Tom and Andrew, best friends and icons of hope for a new generation.

  Sally’s Diary: February 7th

  I’m relieved to see there doesn’t seem to be any lasting animosity between Andrew and Tom. I guess they must’ve talked it through when Andrew went up to visit him last week because they seem to be getting on together again now that Tom’s been released, though Andrew can still be a little testy from time to time. Only this evening, Tom phoned for a chat and Andrew refused to speak to him complaining that he was “having his dinner!” Still, he has done lots for him these last few weeks what with all the shopping, visits and errands. Tom was particularly taken by the rails Andrew fitted to the toilet wall in his flat but when his landlord went round and saw them last night he said the cracked tiles would come out of Tom’s deposit. Some people are just rubbish, aren’t they? Anyway, the two of them are getting on well, which is good, though I’m not sure Tom’s particularly keen on running any marathons with Andrew, which is just as well because there’s as much chance of Andrew running in the London Marathon as there is of me fitting into a size 12 dress seven months from now.