I met Miles and Lucy at the top of her road at 4 p.m. “How was lunch?” asked Lucy.
“Better than expected,” I said. “For once Dad tried and so did I.”
As we walked up the pavement we saw a pretty blonde woman with a floaty floral top sitting on the front doorstep. Lucy froze. “Oh my God. It’s her. I just know it is. She looks exactly like she sounds.”
“Who?” asked Miles.
“Edward’s mistress,” hissed Lucy, adding loudly, “The bitch who’s been banging my husband.”
Suddenly Miles dropped his bag and ran up the steps of Lucy’s house. “Susie, what on earth are you doing here?”
“Susie?” I asked, incredulous. “Oh, so you’ve slept with her too?”
“Hardly,” he said. “You remember Susie, don’t you, Daise? She’s my stepsister.”
6
Married Singles
Lucy swept past Susie with aplomb. I marveled at her discipline: she did not howl out her anger, hurl obscenities in her rival’s face, grab Susie’s beautiful, soft, curly hair and yank hard as I undoubtedly would have done, nor did she succumb to any behavior that might undermine her public facade of control. She simply closed the front door behind her, neatly underlining her territorial rights and leaving her husband’s mistress, Miles, and me standing awkwardly outside. Susie slumped down, hugged her knees, and wept. Miles kneeled down beside her. Torn, I sat a few steps beneath them and listened as Susie told her stepbrother that she’d had no idea that Edward’s marriage was intact. He told her when they met that he was separated and that his marriage was over in all but name. Oh, and that he and Lucy never had sex. He’d also said that it was Lucy who wouldn’t give him a divorce out of spite. I listened in stunned silence as Susie said that Edward had promised to leave Lucy and move in with her the day she rang Lucy. She only rang as a desperate last resort because she thought that the marriage was finished anyway, and this might be reason enough for Lucy to agree to a divorce. But once Edward knew that Lucy knew, he went nuclear and stopped taking Susie’s calls. Now he wanted her to leave the flat where she’d been living because he was going to sell it.
I put my head in my hands. It was a depressingly familiar echo of my own experience with Troy Powers. Okay, so Troy wasn’t married, but he went all out to spin me around and make me dizzy with delight and then he never called, and when I fell pregnant, it felt like he hurled a bucket of icy water in my face. Edward had promised Susie the world and then reneged when she called him on it. Why did men always start unraveling like this? It was as if most of the males of the species exist with two opposing forces at play that are magnetically repelled. One minute they are the respectable husband and dosh-earner, lovingly making eggy bread for their kids, tenderly wiping an eyelash off their tired wife’s cheek, and chastely kissing her good-bye; the next they have loosened their tie and are banging some hot mama against the boot of their car as they whisper their dirtiest desires in her willing ear. They can look at you like you are the only woman in the world to light their fire in the morning, but give them unwelcome news that afternoon and they blank you as if they’ve never seen you before in their life. Why is it that most married men develop emotional autism once the rot of domesticity sets in? It seems however successful they feel professionally, personally they go to pieces if there isn’t some sex kitten boosting their ego, which is flagging from the demands of family life. How does a wife and mother keep her man if she does the unthinkable and puts her children first?
As much as my loyalties lay with Lucy—imploding with the thrust of Edward’s betrayal—I felt for Susie. It wasn’t just that she was Miles’s stepsibling; I could see that she was one of us. She was pretty in that easy, uncomplicated way with a fresh complexion and an effortlessly slim figure. There was nothing contrived about her. She wasn’t overly made up or trying too hard. She hadn’t set out to destroy a family, she wasn’t some scheming bitch; she had merely tried to bag herself a decent bloke, just like the rest of us. That’s what got me about the duplicity of a married man like Edward. He didn’t stop to think that he wasn’t merely cheating on his wife, he was also destroying some single girl’s chances of getting love right the first time. Susie must have pinned so many romantic hopes on Edward when he started pursuing her, and now she was left as humiliated as Lucy. She must have told her friends, and her family even, that she was seeing this great guy; no doubt they all secretly prayed that he was The One. Maybe she had even tried writing her potential married name, Susie Primfold, on the back of an envelope for size, or rolled possible children’s names around her tongue. She might have planned a cozy Christmas with him or fantasized about the holidays they would have or the home they would make together. Who knows what dreams we weave when love looms on the horizon, but now, thanks to Edward, the future for Lucy and Susie looked equally bleak.
I got up and rang the doorbell. Lucy answered cautiously via the intercom. “It’s me. Daise. Are you okay? Can I come in?”
“I just need to be by myself right now,” she said, unable to conceal that she had been crying.
Just as my bile was rising further toward Edward, he walked toward us. I couldn’t believe he actually had the gall to be sauntering down the street. Suave in a custom-tailored suit, his shoes impossibly shiny, he moved up the pavement with the cool assurance of a man apparently untroubled by life.
Miles lurched forward and ploughed his fist into Edward’s face. I let out a yelp of delight and clapped my hands. Edward seemed to stagger backwards in slow motion, and the spray of blood across the pavement was impressive. Susie started shouting, “No, Miles, no!” while Edward eyed her with unconcealed dislike. Secretly I’d always considered Edward a tosser, but in that moment I actively loathed him.
As Edward held his handkerchief to his nose in a bid to regain his composure, a couple walking down the opposite pavement stopped to stare. Miles was right up in Edward’s face, shouting, “She’s not some slapper, you fuck-and-chuck. Susie is my sister.”
“Isn’t every woman some man’s daughter or sister?” said Edward with disdain. “Your sister is a fully consenting adult. I didn’t have to drag her into bed.”
“No, but you could have told her the truth,” I screamed. “She wouldn’t have been so hot to trot if she’d known you were actually married, would she?” I grabbed his hand. “Easier to spin when you don’t wear a ring, isn’t it?”
Edward pushed me aside and tried to get up his front steps, but Miles pulled him back. “You’ve got responsibilities, mate,” he said. “Be a man for once.” I was vaguely aware that the couple across the road was coming toward us and that they seemed familiar. Hadn’t I seen that sickeningly skinny blonde somewhere before?
Suddenly, I wanted to rewind the last ten minutes and let life play any other scenario in the world than this. The man crossing the road was Julius. I watched as Alice trotted to keep up. Time seemed to stall as Julius called out, “Daisy, is everything all right?”
Fate could not have contrived a worse situation for me to run into Julius. All those hours I had wasted fantasizing about bumping into him in some smart restaurant, beautified and blow-dried, a head-turning boy toy in tow, were shot to pieces. Instead of being overly worried that Miles was about to kick Edward to mulch, all I could obsess about was my hair. Too lazy to wash it that morning, I had scraped it on top of my head in what could hardly be considered an elegant chignon—more like a straggly, greasy bun.
Alice, standing proprietorially close to Julius, was clearly a three-blow-dry-a-week babe. Not only did her expensive blonde hair tumble to her tiny shoulders, her breasts were impossibly perky through her flimsy white kaftan-style top. Her physical perfection made me feel stocky and ungainly—ugly even—and I hated myself for my rampant self-doubt. Not even my impassioned and overblown “character,” which usually gave me the edge over brain-dead, emotionally botoxed women, could save me now. It was woefully obvious why Julius had chosen Alice over me. She was younger, richer, prettier, thinn
er, better bred, more malleable, and less mouthy, so what guy in his right mind would plump for a bullish bright spark when he could have non-questioning, adoring calm? When Alice tilted her chin and gave Julius a smile as if to say, “Can we go now?” I had a strong feeling that he would always be unfaithful to her and that she would let him roam free. His marital pledge bought her silence and a long leash; that was their unspoken deal. For the first time, I could see that maybe it would never work between Julius and me because there would always be too much I would want to say.
Julius’s mobile phone rang. As he answered the phone, I turned to Miles and whispered, “Pretend you are my boyfriend.” I knew it was immature but I just couldn’t help myself. His brow furrowed, so I hissed, “Don’t ask, just do it.”
While Julius turned aside to have a business conversation, words like “undercut,” “immediate acquisition,” and “sweat equity” floating through the air, Miles introduced himself to Alice.
Julius snapped his phone shut as Miles put his arm around me and said, “I’m putting my sister into a cab and then I’m taking you, gorgeous girl, out to dinner.”
He kissed me briefly on the lips and I caught Susie’s shell-shocked expression as if to say, “What the hell’s going on now?”
As Miles frogmarched poor bewildered Susie down the road, Julius looked at me and asked, “Who is he?”
“Miles Kingly,” I said.
“I mean,” Julius said sharply, “who is he to you?”
I looked at Alice, standing by patiently, her face as devoid of feeling as if we were waging the merits of organic versus farmed smoked salmon. Didn’t she think it odd that her husband was this rattled by some girl in the street? Did she even care?
“Miles is someone who believes in me,” I said.
“Out of blind stupidity or is that an informed opinion?” Julius raised an eyebrow.
I hated to admit it but he was good. Julius never missed a beat and always made me laugh. Our eyes locked in combative delight and I could have sworn that as we stared at each other, we were sending the same psychic e-mail: Why are you doing this to me?
I felt an arm creeping around my waist and almost jumped like a jack-in-the-box before I twigged that it was Miles in full-on boyfriend mode. He nuzzled my neck and I let the weight of my body sink against him. I hadn’t realized how much I was still plagued by the side effects of divorce: being single, I was ravenous for physical affection. Although, with him standing there, I had never been more keenly aware that Julius was the only man with whom I would ever have this indelible soul factor connection, perhaps a sizzling no-strings siesta with macho Miles would boost my prana, wouldn’t it? And if I energized my sexual chakras, might I feel more complete and better able to cope? Finally firing on all cylinders again?
I said good-bye to Julius and as Miles took my hand, I squeezed it. “Okay, the charade’s over,” he said, pulling away when we were out of sight and earshot.
I turned and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Actually, this is for real.”
Miles didn’t relent to a full snog but we both felt the pluck of desire. When we pulled away, we stood staring quizzically at each other as if to say: “Are you sure you’re up for this?” Before I could respond, he stuck his arm out and waved down a passing cab.
In the taxi I was fizzing like a lit sparkler. Unnervingly, Miles kept his distance in the corner of the cab, his long sinewy legs thrust forward. He kept flicking back his fringe and throwing me searching looks. It felt as if there was an electric fence between us and that any physical contact could spell disaster. Passion had never seemed more terrifying because it would inevitably destroy certain boundaries in our friendship, and while part of me was up for that, I feared it just as much.
I knew that Miles’s reputation as a serial shagger meant that I was signing up for a purely physical partnering. Even with a fuck buddy like Miles, an orgasm with a one-night stand was somewhere between a sneeze and a snooze, so why would I settle for a quickie when I craved endless galaxies exploding? The body has its limits, the brain has none, and as most of good sex is in the head, I needed to be in love for seismic connection. I loved Miles as one of my oldest friends and had always found him hunky but curiously I had never imagined going to bed with him myself. Perhaps I was secretly scared that he would find me lacking or that he would be unable to bypass the history of our friendship in order to lose his inhibitions with me. Then I realized that this was a typically girlie reaction—men can bypass anything for full-on shagging. It’s only women who let redundant thoughts get in the way.
“Do you think this is a mistake?” I asked, cutting through the radioactive silence that permeated the taxi.
“How can you ask me that?” he said. “Don’t you know that men pretty much evaluate everything that happens in the world, from stock market fluctuations to shifts in continental drift, according to whether or not it will lead to us having sexual intercourse?”
“So when they say that men do most of their thinking by their ‘little brain’ instead of their ‘big brain,’ it’s ridiculous because men don’t have a ‘big brain,’ do they?” I said.
Miles laughed. “You got it. Just as women crave flirtation, we would rather fast-forward to the main event.”
“So how does a woman ever seduce a man without offering herself up on a plate?”
“Plate offerings are good,” said Miles, stroking his thigh, “but even better is that crucial word . . . maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Yes, you let him know that you are interested but not easy. ‘Maybe we should have a drink tomorrow, maybe we should see your place?’ There is enough ‘yes’ in ‘maybe’ to keep a guy from feeling rejected but enough ‘no’ to keep him on his toes.”
I knocked on the glass partition of the cab and called out: “Can you pull over, please.” Miles’s face fell. “Maybe,” I said as I got out of the taxi, “we should do this another time.” I raised an eyebrow as I shut the door behind me.
Miles mouthed “prick tease!” as the taxi moved off. Standing on the pavement, I felt an instant kick of regret. Typical of my overblown analysis, I had just talked myself out of a night I was bound never to forget. Why did I always do this? It was as if the feral part of me hankered for a thrill but my mind automatically overrode spontaneous fun. Unlike men, I was ruled by my bloody boring “big brain.” Was I always going to go through life with my fingers curled around the banister, fighting the instinct to break free?
Later that night at Jess’s flat, Lucy, Jess, and I sat on the sofa nursing a bottle of wine. Earlier Lucy had put the girls to bed, got a babystitter, and legged it over to Jess’s for a thorough postmortem. “Can you believe it, Edward has an affair and he tells me that I should see a therapist?” Lucy said indignantly.
“If anyone needs help, it’s him.” Jess snorted.
“Exactly.” Lucy drained her glass. “Edward once told me he’d rather be impotent than bald. Imagine a man who would rather go without sex than hair!”
“Hair is a badge of masculinity,” Jess explained. “It’s all about image to them. Men are far more wound up about their sexual identity than we are.”
“I don’t know,” I said, pouring myself some wine. “I’m pretty screwed up about mine.” They looked at me, surprised. “I just turned down hot sex with Miles.”
My mobile bleeped. I had a text. “It must be Miles,” I said, secretly chuffed.
“Well go on,” urged Lucy. “What does it say?”
I opened the text message and let out a shriek. “Yes! It worked!”
“What did?”
“Making Julius jealous. This text isn’t from Miles. It’s from Julius. He wants to see me.” Lucy and Jess rolled their eyes but I didn’t care. I couldn’t get him out of my mind and maybe I could allow myself to think he felt the same way.
Spending the weekend with my mother before meeting up with Julius was a mistake because there are times in life when you don’t want to be intimately obs
erved. It was obvious that Mum would catch me out because she was always on to me before I had time to check in with myself. She knew my fragile places and although it was not intentional, she wasn’t always tender with them.
We were driving home from a dog show with Donald and Dougie and her new puppy, Dandelion, in the back. Mum kept turning around to stare at Dandy, as she’d already nicknamed him, asleep on the back seat. “Look at that little angel!” she urged. “Oh, Daisy, do look. Isn’t he adorable?”
Nodding was easier than admitting that while I thought he was sweet, he didn’t turn me to treacle. Mum, sensing my ambivalence, got quite cross. “Look, I know you had that little, urm, mistake . . .” she said awkwardly.
“Abortion?” I cut in.
“Well, yes, that, well yes. You know. But you were simply a victim of circumstance then, so that aside, don’t you want children?”
“Yes. Of course I do,” I said.
“I sometimes wonder,” she continued. “I mean, it’s not as if you ever show any maternal instinct.”
“Firstly, I said I wanted a baby, not a puking, pooping puppy, and secondly, just because I don’t do backflips over your stunted little logs of fur, it doesn’t mean that I don’t want a real family of my own.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” asked Mum, exasperated. “I would have loved to have had another child but after you, well, you know we tried, but it obviously wasn’t meant to be. But most women approaching forty are frantic for a partner, or failing that, some decent seed.” She paused, then continued, “At your age, do you think you can afford to be picky?”
“Thanks for reminding me, Mum,” I said flatly. I hadn’t allowed my raw yearning to surface since I left Jamie but suddenly I found I was free-falling with despair. Hot tears trickled down my cheeks. I was one of the many women of my generation who had never considered the possibility of not having a baby and yet here I was, hot-footing it to my fifth decade, partnerless, childless, homeless, careerless, and pensionless and with pretty much less of everything that I had anticipated I would have by now.
Daisy Dooley Does Divorce Page 13
