I threw my hands in the air like I was a true ditz. “I had no idea it was this late. I must get to the station.” I mouthed a strange fish-like kiss and left.
Miles found me sitting pensively in the stockroom the following morning.
“Why all the doom and gloom? What’s happened?” he asked.
“I had lunch with Max Knightly yesterday,” I sighed. “It was our second date.”
“Surely no man is that tragic a kisser?”
“That was just it,” I said, sinking into a chair. “He didn’t kiss me. He didn’t even try.”
“Are you sure he isn’t gay?”
“Miles, he lived with his last girlfriend.”
“Enough to turn any man to the other side.”
“No, I’m sure he’s hetero.”
“Then the man’s a moron if he has a penis and a pulse and didn’t try and pull you.”
I looked him straight in the eye. “What, like you, you mean?”
He shifted. “Daisy, we have history. It complicates things. With a young guy like Max, a snog means nothing. It’s like a handshake these days—it would be rude not to. Where were his manners?”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “He was too polite to try because I didn’t let him.”
“So he did try?” I shook my head.
“Oh crikey,” said Miles, sitting on the floor, “I’m confused.”
“Max cooked this amazing lunch and afterwards we were drinking coffee on the sofa and sharing secrets and it was all too perfect, so I freaked out.”
“Still confused,” barked Miles.
“Not half as confused as poor Max was when I suddenly jumped up and said I had a train to catch. I bolted and it wasn’t until I was sitting on the train back to London that I realized my problem.”
“You’d left your door keys in his flat?” Miles gave me a friendly prod in the ribs. “Oh come on, Daisy, nothing’s that bad. So you did a runner? Big deal. You’ll get over it and he’ll get his leg over some other chick faster than soon.”
“Don’t you see?” I said. “I’m too scared to let a man near me now.”
“Well, I’m sitting pretty close,” he said, inching nearer.
“Male intimacy, Miles. I just can’t do it. After everything that’s happened, I’m completely shut off.”
Miles stood up. “I need a coffee for this.” He arched his back. “Cappuccino or espresso?”
“Cap with extra froth, please.”
When Miles returned with two large cups brimming with foam, I tried to explain. “It’s weird, as you get older, you develop an inverse relationship to pain. My tolerance to physical pain has gone up. Just grin, grit your teeth, and bear it . . .”
“I thought you said you’d never had a Brazilian,” interrupted Miles.
“No, it’s emotional pain I can’t stomach anymore. I’ve totally regressed. I’m like a child who can’t bear the thought of getting hurt.”
Miles kneeled down beside me. “You’re the opposite of me, Daisy. I lay a lot of girls so I don’t have to get emotionally involved. All you want is emotional involvement, so you don’t lay anyone. We’re both commitment-phobes, in our own way.”
“Unlike you, I want to commit,” I said. “I want to be brave enough to get close to a man but I’m petrified of being disappointed.”
“Yeah, disappointment sucks.” Miles stood up and shuddered. “Well, that’s enough touchy-feely for me. Get back to work, bitch! Go and write your clap-trap meaningful message of the day. That’ll cheer you up.”
I decided to write something that would goad Miles and make me laugh. “Whereas a promiscuous man is dysfunctional, a promiscuous woman is merely browsing.”
I stood back to admire my handiwork in purple chalk when the door opened. I swiveled round and as he walked toward me, my heart thumped. Max Knightly smiled and said, “I’ve got three questions to ask you, Daisy Dooley. One, do you want to go to the cinema on Saturday night? Two, if not, why not? Three, if you can’t do Saturday, will you have dinner with me on Friday?”
“Yes to numbers one and three,” I said.
When you’ve spent months alone, the thought of great sex is a positive charge but the reality of sharing a bed afterwards is a downer. While I had lain alone at night, fantasizing about Max running his artistic fingers across my body, the practicality of revealing my naked flesh made me dither.
Even getting ready for our dinner generated fresh anxiety. With youth on your side, there is nothing more thrilling than enjoying a prolonged pre-date pamper. The long oily bath, the careful application of makeup, the slow sideshow as you put on your sexiest underwear, admiring your reflection in the mirror. Then, casually throwing on a waft of next to nothing—a silk dress perhaps? When your overall goal shifts from looking sexy to the serious business of looking younger without trying to be something you are not—i.e., a flighty babe able to wear a sheer top and skinny jeans and look effortless, not poured in—the whole event becomes more of a trial than a triumph. In the end (after an expensive blow-dry and some fancy skin serum that was supposed to give me an instant face-lift but made me look shiny as opposed to “glowing”) I passed muster, according to Jess. She popped her head around my bedroom door as I was preparing to leave. “Hey! Not bad, girl!” She was already in her dressing gown. For a moment I was seriously tempted to strip off my well-cut black trousers, painful high heels, and a low-cut floral top and put on my toweling robe for one of our nights spent watching reality TV on the sofa. “No way,” said Jess when I suggested it. “I’ve got company myself later.”
When Max walked into the restaurant, I felt a burst of pride that he was there for me. I hadn’t seen him in a suit before and he looked sleek and urbane. Tie-less but sporting good Italian loafers (twenty years on, the latent Sloane Ranger in me still has a thing for a man in loafers), he definitely cut it. After a cocktail or two, I couldn’t help asking the obvious: “Why are you here with me when you could dangle any pretty young thing off your arm?”
He leaned back. “There are lots of advantages in dating an older woman.”
“Give me a break.”
“No, you are actually much sexier,” he said.
I frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous. There are masses of younger, prettier girls out there.”
“Twenty-something women have incredible agendas these days.” Max drained his glass. “They either want casual sex the minute you meet or they want the job, the man, the house, the baby. They’re too hard-nosed for me. What I like about you is that you are completely secure in who you are.”
If only he knew. “At your age you’re more realistic about life,” he said.
“What, you mean we’re just grateful for whatever we can get? Do you see an older woman as an easy lay?”
“Hardly, you’re more discerning. You know what you want and you’re not afraid to ask for it.”
“Well, that sounds just as hard-nosed to me.”
“No, it’s different. It’s sexy because you’ve weathered more, so you’re softer.”
“No, just bruised.” I smiled. “It means you have to tread gently because of past pain.”
Max leaned forward and kissed me carefully on the lips. “Now that didn’t hurt, did it?” he said.
“Thank goodness you had a snog at last.” Jess punched the air. “It’s bound to loosen you up.”
“Unlike you, I don’t want to be loose,” I said. “I don’t want to rush anything this time.”
“So was Max worth the three-date wait? Is he a good kisser?”
“Yes. Very.” Jess and I were spending the weekend at Mum’s, who was away at a dog show with Archibald, and I was manning the fort. Walking across the muddy fields, the autumnal wind high, I felt a surge of glee following my date. “It was fantastic. We made out like teenagers for hours. I just wanted to press the pause button on life and stay like that forever.”
“I bet he wanted to fast-forward to some serious action,” giggled Jess.
“Actually,” I said, “we both agreed it was a perfect evening.”
“Oh my God, alert! Alert!” shouted Jess. “Premature we-jaculation. Fatal. You say you’re trying not to rush things, but mentally, you’ve got him up the aisle before he’s got you in the sack.”
“What?” I looked at her lamely.
“Oh Daisy,” she said, “it’s the oldest dating dysfunction in the book—where one member of the couple starts using ‘we’ before the other is ready.”
I sighed. “You’re probably right. My fantasy life has been in overdrive lately. All I could think about when we were snogging was, Hallelujah, now I’ve got a boyfriend, I won’t have to spend New Year’s Eve alone.”
“What about Christmas?” laughed Jess. “I can’t believe you didn’t factor that in?”
“Well,” I said sheepishly, “I did have a heavenly vision of us alone in his flat in Bath, opening our stockings in bed, then drinking champagne as he gave me a beautifully wrapped present, and us being all cozy, postcoital, and coupley.”
“Dream on,” she scoffed. “Who has ever spent a Christmas as perfect and family-free as that?”
We laughed. “Actually, I’m quite scared of sleeping with Max,” I admitted. “At the moment it is safe and sweet, but the minute you become sexual you can never reclaim that innocence again. It’s ironic, you spend your teenage years desperate to lose that innocence but later on, all you want is to preserve it.”
“But how long is a stud like Max going to wait before you deliver?” Jess lit a cigarette and took a pensive drag.
“We’ll soon find out, I guess,” I said. “Anyway, you can vet him because he’s coming to dinner tonight and I’ve asked Miles as well.”
Max proved the hero of the evening as he volunteered to cook. (None of my friends ever let me loose in the kitchen because they knew what a domestic cripple I was.) He made fantastic roast pheasant with parsnip crisps while I twittered about around him, his silly, flirtatious sous chef. Miles sat in the old dog-eared armchair by the Aga, one leg flung across the arm, and gently quizzed Max, whose openness was becoming. He was one of those modern men who didn’t feel he had anything to hide. Even though he was more than a decade younger than Miles, he held his own and I admired him. They teased and joshed—and Max wisely deferred to Miles, letting him come across as the general expert on everything, even me.
“I’ll give you one bit of advice about Daisy,” said Miles, cracking open another beer. “When you think you’re most sure of her, that’s the time to doubt. She’s the most unpredictable woman I’ve ever known.”
“And you’ve known some,” I teased.
Max put his hands on my shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “How does any man get a handle on you?”
I simply smiled enigmatically.
After dinner the four of us drank copious bottles of red wine by the fire and roasted chestnuts. Max was funny and sexy and charming. At one point he theatrically quoted the poet Neruda, “ ‘I’m tired of being a man,’ ” before adding, “especially if it means always paying and never crying.”
Miles fell about laughing. He seemed to genuinely like Max and they had that easygoing male banter where they called each other “mate” a lot and kept refilling each other’s glass. Jess seemed in particularly buoyant form and I was sad that Lucy wasn’t with us. But when I’d told Luce that Jess was coming, she said she couldn’t face her after their scene and that she felt too unhappy and burdened to join us anyway. I remembered feeling that after I left Jamie, that awful isolation as if everybody else was leading their life on a lighter plane and you didn’t feel that you would ever succumb to fluff and fun, let alone raucous laughter, again.
I watched Max expertly bank up the fire and I couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to disappear upstairs with him and fold myself into his arms. What was holding me back? What was wrong with me? Why now? Why him? Watching Miles roll a joint with Jess as they laughed in that easygoing, good-time girl/good-time guy way—as if they might as well enjoy the opportunity of being thrown together—their faces glowing in the firelight, I realized I was jealous.
When we finally made it up the stairs to bed, I was grateful that I was sleeping in the single bed of my childhood. Although Max had gamely elected to share it with me, grappling for space killed any erotic edge. Fortunately he was drunk enough to sleep in spite of the discomfort, while I lay awake crushed beside him.
Jess found me early Sunday morning sitting in the lotus position in the dog’s basket by the Aga, holding a torch toward my heart. Donald and Dougie were snuggled in my lap, resting against the worn flannel of my pajamas.
“Meditative self-flagellation is one thing but to involve innocent canines is quite another,” she said.
“They help anchor my knees and force me to sit up straight.”
“What’s with the self-interrogation?” she asked, grabbing the torch and shining it in my face.
“Ouch!” I blinked. “The process of becoming conscious is like shining a torch on our soul. As we fill ourselves with insight and self-discovery, we move toward those hidden places deep within ourselves that are usually left dark and unlit.”
“Spare me the spiritual psychobabble and tell me what’s going on,” said Jess, filling the kettle. “You’ve got a gorgeous boyfriend upstairs but you prefer the dog-hair- coated kitchen floor? Do I take it that the lack of a lie-in means you didn’t get laid last night?”
I gently eased the dogs off and struggled to stand, just as one leg was hit by a spasm of cramp. I hopped over to Jess and sat beside her at the kitchen table, trying to kick the pins and needles out of my calf. “I’m totally deranged,” I said.
Jess raised a knowing eyebrow. “At last, some real self-awareness.”
“No, I’ve realized that I don’t have commitmentphobia; I just have a phobia about committing to the wrong man.”
“Same difference,” she said crisply, pouring coffee. “How do you know if a guy is wrong until you’ve tried him for size? Anyway Max Knightly seems pretty right to me. You couldn’t ask for a sexier, funnier guy, could you?”
“That’s just it,” I said, slumping forward. “He’s pretty perfect—which is what freaks me out. All night, I’ve lain awake wondering what’s wrong with me. Here’s this great guy who likes me and seems to want a relationship with me and all I could do was obsess about another man.”
“Oh, not Julius again.” Jess frowned. “Honestly, Daisy, this pattern is getting so destructive: meet sexy bloke who offers chance of real future but derail everything and drag in first love who will never be more than Mr. Futile Fantasy.”
“No, not Julius. Miles.”
“Miles?” Jess spewed coffee across the table. “Miles?” she shouted. “My God, you are deranged.”
“Shush,” I whispered. “He’ll hear you.”
“Miles? Miles!” she repeated with disbelief. “After twenty years you’ve suddenly decided that Miles—a man who would be incapable of fidelity on his honeymoon—is the man for you?”
“Yes, because what I’ve realized is that I don’t want someone to love me, like Max could. I need someone to understand me, like Miles does.”
“It’s precisely because Miles does understand you that he could never fall in love with you,” said Jess, laughing. “Sure, Miles loves you like we all do, because you’re a batty old broad, but he also knew you as an insecure, lanky-haired twenty-year-old student. Why would he suddenly fall in love with an insecure, full-head-of-highlights divorcée?”
“Actually they’re only lowlights and I’m not insecure; I’ve got emotional integrity.”
“Then use it and go back to bed with Max,” said Jess.
I leaned back in my chair. “Don’t you ever hunger for a permanent relationship?”
“No. I’m like Miles,” she said. “In my book there’s only one thing worse than being on your own: wishing you were on your own.”
“But you must get lonely.”
“Yes, but when I wa
ke up in the night worrying, I often think, would it be better to have someone by my side or would it be irritating? Mostly, I plump for irritating.”
The door opened and Miles walked in, all tousled hair, crumpled shirt, and boxers. With a pang of guilt, I remembered Max lying in my straitjacket of a single bed upstairs, equally virile and leggy. Miles smiled. “I can’t believe it. Finally, I think it’s happened.”
“What?” we chorused.
My heart plummeted. Was he into Jess?
“After two decades of living vicariously through your dating and marrying hell, Daisy, I finally like your boyfriend. Max is a top bloke.”
“And what about you two?” I asked edgily. “Did you spend the night together?”
“Now”—Miles winked at Jess—“that would be telling her, wouldn’t it?”
Jess shook her head at me. “You never learn do you? Miles may be gorgeous and a tempting shag but he is single and might fall for me. I prefer to sleep with happily married men because they don’t want to leave their wives.”
“Exactly. My rule is to never sleep with unhappily married wives as they might want to leave their husbands.”
“You old romantics,” I teased.
Though curiously relieved, I looked at Miles playfully ruffling Jess’s hair and wondered if maybe it would be better to be loved than understood after all.
Although I didn’t let on to Jess at the weekend, the friction between Lucy and Jess disturbed me. They were in such different places in their lives, both emotionally and morally, and I was tired of trying to keep my footing as well as their peace as I stood in between them on most things. That, combined with my indecision over Max, had me emotionally exhausted, so I decided to take a breather from the strain of London flat-sharing life and visit my old friend Natasha—the one who had introduced me to Julius.
Natasha was now married to Perry and they lived in Norfolk. It was refreshing that Natasha and I had kept up our friendship when we’d made such different choices in life. She had plumped for the security of the known; a life in which outwardly little would change. She and Perry still attended the same house parties and went on holiday as they had done twenty years ago, it’s just that these days they were accompanied by their dogs and well-educated kids. Yet even back then, during the languid summer of 1988 when we saw much more of each other, I always knew that I’d never settle down to a comparatively easy life like hers. In those days it was heady Brideshead Revisited stuff, and for her and her set it still was. The clothes may have changed—jeans, sparkly tops, and stilettos might now be acceptable for drinks before dinner—but on the whole the house parties, the black-tie dances, and the concrete formality yet utter frivolity of the social whirl were exactly the same.
Daisy Dooley Does Divorce Page 18
