‘If you want, but...’ He came over and took my hand, pulled me up. ‘Come here...’ he said, putting his arms around me. I rested my head on his shoulder, his hand stroking the back of my head. This is okay, I was thinking – fatherly, something between affectionate friends. Even if we do only have two thin bits of material between our naked bodies.
‘Ten years since I last had you in my arms,’ he said into my hair. ‘What have we been doing?’
‘Eleven. But actually... five days really, isn’t it?’
‘No, no, I mean properly, so I can feel your heart beating. And... why?’
‘Why what?’ I said, trying to pull back a little.
He released me, but only to hold my shoulders. ‘Why have I been hiding from you... It hasn’t helped at all.’
‘Oh. Has someone –’
‘Why d’you think I rarely come to the meeting? And when I do, I stay in Las Olas?’
‘Er... because you don’t want everyone to think... Well, they wouldn’t understand.’
‘What?’
‘Our pretend affair.’
He let go of me suddenly, put his hand to his face. Out of his arms I felt shaky and awkward, and wondered if he was cross with me – perhaps I’d said something wrong to someone at the hospital. I watched him kneel down next to the minibar, found myself staring at the blue-black shine in his wet hair.
‘Still like this Cranapple stuff that tastes like soap?’ he asked, turning round to me. I nodded, grinning; it looked like I’d been forgiven. ‘And... ooh – Pringles. But no, they give you migraine.’ He tossed a couple of muesli bars onto the bed.
‘You’ve got a good memory! But look, we should have lunch – you’ll love it, they’ve got tables on the dock.’ I picked up the menu folder from the pillows, but he took it from me and put it on the bedside table.
‘Later.’
I opened the door to our shared balcony and let in a shard of hot sunlight. ‘We could sit out here.’ Two work chums having a drink together.
‘No... I’d like to have you to myself a little longer, if that’s okay.’ Then he closed the door and started to take of his bathrobe.
‘No!’
But he had swimming shorts on. He laughed. ‘You thought I had nothing on underneath?’
‘Yes,’ I said, with a nervous giggle, trying not to look at his olive-skinned chest. A little heavier these days, but still well toned.
‘You want me to put a t-shirt on?’
‘Yes... No, it’s okay, we’ll be in the pool soon, won’t we.’
He didn’t answer, just got up onto the high bed, leaning back against the bed head. He patted the space beside him. ‘Come on,’ he said, and turned to pour my Cranapple into a glass on the table beside him.
‘Er...’
‘Rosie, it’s just somewhere to sit. It’s great up here, you can see the Intracoastal.’
So I climbed up, careful to keep to my side. Took the drink, had a few sips. But I could feel his eyes on me. I finished it and put the glass on the bedside table my side, opened the muesli bar and took a bite, looked through the blinds at the yellow water buses crossing each other on the river. Then I looked over at him. ‘What?’
He didn’t have an answer, just looked down into his glass.
‘Now we can say we’ve been to bed together,’ I said, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Can’t have a pretend affair without that, can we.’
‘No.’ He put down his drink and moved closer to me, his arm over my chest as he put his hand on my cheek. ‘So that’s what you want?’
‘Of course,’ I said brightly. But my breast felt the warmth of his arm through my dress. And from there the warmth was spreading down my body.
He breathed out heavily. ‘Look... I’m going to have to tell you... it’s... never really been pretend for me.’ He moved closer until his body was pressing against my side. My heart thudded. ‘I can’t help it, you’re so lovely... in every way. I’ve really tried but... oh God...’ I felt his hand move to my breast.
‘No... No I’m sorry...’ I said, lifting it away. I started to move my legs off the bed but his arm was over me again, holding my shoulder.
‘Why?’ he asked, his eyes searching mine.
‘You know why.’ Did I have to say their names?
‘But Rosie... doesn’t it feel right to you? And... they’ve betrayed us for so, so much less.’
‘I don’t think –’
‘I know he’s lied to you again. You don’t say, but I can tell.’ He cupped my face in his hand and lowered his voice. ‘What’s wrong with letting me give you a bit of loving?’
He started kissing me, tentatively at first, as if he feared I might reject him. As I meant to. But my body seemed to entwine so naturally with his, as if we were dancing something we’d rehearsed separately for many years, as if this was always going to happen. Just a loving cuddle and some kissing, I thought, that’s all; he knows it can’t go any further. But I felt too safe and comfortable in his arms. And of course there were elements of him – something about the way he spoke, the olive skin, the strength of his dark-haired arms – that were nurturing another fantasy. And feeling guilty about clouding the connection between us with my idiotic obsession, I let him undo the buttons of my sundress, let his hand discover my breasts, my tummy. Tenderly, as if he’d never touched a woman before. But then he sat up and started pulling at my knickers.
‘No,’ I said, putting my hand there to keep them on. He lay down again, his face over mine.
‘Rosie... please... Let me love you and...’ He started to kiss me all over, and suddenly it was too much, we’d gone too far, and I was floating, dazed, stroking his back, running my fingers through his hair... And then there was an urgency, but at the last moment he was very gentle, taking his time and stroking my face, the inside of my legs, until I relaxed and gave in to an ecstasy that I didn’t think would happen. He made sounds almost as if he was crying and it was over.
He put my head on his shoulder. ‘It’ll be okay, Rosie, I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said.
‘How can you know that?’
‘I just do... come on, don’t cry – it’ll be fine, I promise.’
We had lunch on the dock – as we should have done earlier – and he held my hand, told me again that we weren’t going to regret this. But I looked at my watch and was suddenly struck with fear and sadness.
‘I promised I’d phone home by four,’ I said, and watched him nod his head slowly: he had to do the same. So we made our calls, but mine took a lot longer than his – especially as I had to sort out my self-hating tears afterwards – and there was a moment when I came out and saw him morosely looking out from our shared balcony before seeing me and reaching out with a smile.
Then he reminded me of all the things we had planned and how much more fun they would be now we were together. Together? I wanted to ask what he meant, but gradually I was swept along, as if in a dream.
You’d think that, given the eleven year delay in consummation, we’d spend much of each day, when we weren’t at the conference, in bed. But he also wanted to have fun: he came alive in the Florida climate, regressing into a Rio teenager – or the one he would have been if he’d not spent his entire youth studying to please his father. We took water taxis, snorkelled from a glass-bottom boat, took out some jet-skis. We sat on the wicker sofa on the hotel’s dock and I absent-mindedly touched the dolphins round my neck as we talked about Brazil and London; books we’d read; stories of the varied fortunes of friends; our boys; even, rather negatively, his wife – from whom he’d felt distanced since her affair with her personal trainer a year ago. About anything, in fact, other than Jez. I only had to mention his name and his face darkened; I thought he felt guilty.
Then the conversations started to turn to the future. Or, as I saw it, our future having no future, and how this should be handled. I wondered for a moment if we’d be like that couple in the film Same Time Next Year, having a love affair over decades confine
d to an annual weekend reunion. At least ours would be seven days, possibly eight or nine. I asked if he’d seen the film.
His face turned to stone. ‘That’s what you want?’ I smiled, shrugged. ‘Then... why not take a different guy each year?’
I felt punched in the stomach. ‘What?’
‘Have a different guy each year. It’s more fun for you.’
‘What d’you think I am? I’ve never... How can you say that!’ I was about to get up and slap him.
‘Then why don’t you want to see me in London?’
‘I do, we will... but it’s going to be difficult isn’t it? We won’t be able to –’
‘Why not? I’ll make time for you... I can’t just let you go – unless that’s what you want.’
His face became blurry with my tears. What was he saying? I squeezed his hand. ‘Of course not,’ I said, even though I really didn’t know what I wanted. There was a muddle over the bill that neither of us cared about, and then trouble finding our way driving back to the hotel. I wanted to sleep on my own so that I could ponder what he’d said, but I stayed with him, making love instead of talking any further, increasing our closeness and the pain it would cause.
And then there was a call from Brazil: his father had died, his mother was distraught, and he was needed. He was worried about her, but his feelings about his father’s death seemed to be tempered by a sense of liberation and the irritation that he was being pulled away from me – his father’s final act of interference.
I tried to focus on the rest of the conference, but I just wanted to go home. I started to think that once we were back with our families, away from the sensuality of the climate and the unrealistic simplicity of uncluttered hotel rooms, Ricardo would come to his senses. I mean, what could it lead to? A place in London together, within ten miles of the hospital as decreed for consultants? Far from ideal for Kenny, a sheep-obsessed boy who flounders with changes to his routine, and Seb, who would probably refuse to visit at all unless heavily bribed. And then there was Jez: I wasn’t ready to give up on him. Not yet.
14.
I was nervous at the airport, waiting for the moment I’d see Jez and Kenny – and perhaps even Seb if he’d nothing better to do – behind the barrier. Every year it amazed me how, after only a week, they could all look so different to me, as if I was looking at them from the ceiling or as characters in a film. They would be enhanced: Jez would look younger, more relaxed and sexy; and the boys would look taller, more responsive, and irresistibly huggable.
This year, however, it was my own enhancement that I was concerned about. I was not returning the same person that went out: I’d been lavishly caressed – physically and emotionally – and I couldn’t believe that it wouldn’t show. I’ve never been good at lies; I’ll make an effort but if something comes at me obliquely I’m done for. I thought of Jez’s friend John recently explaining that infidelity abroad didn’t count – or was easy to live with, or hide – I couldn’t remember which. I hoped he was right on all counts, but then he was talking about girlfriends of two or three months, not marriages of sixteen years.
When I saw them I just wanted to cry, but the next thing I knew we were chatting about what the boys had been doing over half term and how sweet Jez’s Dad was with his lady friend Jan when they came for lunch. I felt strangely normal. What had happened seemed so far away that it was as if I’d somehow packaged it into a little box in the back of my head. I was doing quite well, clearing up after lunch and asking Jez what he’d like me to do in the garden, when Kenny came out with my phone.
‘It was going buzz-buzz. Will it do it again?’ he asked, sliding it open.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, taking it off him a little too abruptly.
‘See you at lunch on Monday xx,’ I read, then instantly deleted the message, my heart racing. Innocent, except for the two kisses perhaps, but hadn’t we agreed to only text each other at work?
‘Harry’s mum?’ Jez asked. We were waiting to hear back from her about whether he could come over to play with Kenny.
‘Emma.’ My first lie. I wondered if this was how it was going to be: an unpredictable need for blocking shots.
‘Aha. Further patronage of the Royal Ballet. How are your credit cards doing, currently?’ he asked with a grin.
‘You don’t wanna know,’ I said as usual, but pondering for a moment the entries on my next statement. Despite Ricardo’s generosity the card had taken quite a bashing and it would make an interesting read in the wrong hands. I had a sinking feeling that there might be a number of things I hadn’t thought of.
And there were. The past, for instance. I wasn’t expecting to be flung backwards, like some modern-day summertime Ebenezer, to look at my former self. Our former selves. But when I was alone later, sitting on the bench in the wood, there they were.
A sweaty young Rosie and Jez after a smoky but rousing gig at the Jolly Boatman, packing up our gear. Me, in the band’s denim-and-black, wearing a short layered skirt that, almost overnight, was feeling too tight. Calling out to the barman for my fifth tomato juice. Snapping my keyboard case shut and wishing Jez and I could just close our eyes and be magically transported into our cosy bed. Jez, lithe and slim as a greyhound, quickly winding up the leads; firmly but charmingly fending off the inevitable bunch of giggling girls; consoling Babs about the pearls-before-swine non-appreciation of the one song in the set that was our own material; and giving Dave and John directions for the wedding gig on Saturday. Then coming over, guitar on his back, and picking up my keyboard case, because probably he’d learnt somewhere that even though it was smaller than a pea it could be upset by the slight pull in my tummy muscles if I lifted it. And putting it down again, because I suppose he must have thought that, really, then was as good a time as any.
‘I’ve been thinking about it, and... I think we should... I want to... get married.’
And even further back to the previous summer, in a borrowed tiny cottage in Somerset, celebrating the success of Jez’s exhibition at uni. Laughing our heads off when we got lost driving in the country lanes. Making love on every horizontal surface available and a few vertical ones too. Talking late into the night in our apple orchard garden and realising that, whatever we’d decided, we were living together, it had just happened, so we might just as well do so in one flat.
And the summer before that, I’m in the middle of giving a piano lesson to my friend Mel, getting her to go over the left hand of The Entertainer while I played the other, and she suddenly stops dead.
‘Ooh I must tell you – my brother’s band’s looking for a new keyboard player.’ I laugh and tell her I don’t know anything about synthesisers. ‘Oh come on, they’re just pianos with wires, and the money’s good – just what you need to bolster your feeble grant. And wait till you see the guitar player – he’s an art student – very cute.’
So there we are a few days later, in a pub on the Thames in Hampton, arriving in the middle of the band’s set – late due to a clothing choice dilemma on my part. He was singing the backing vocals to a black girl’s soul-influenced rendition of Time After Time. “If you fall I will catch you – I’ll be waiting – Time after time.” Mel was nudging me and, hand cupped to my ear, asking ‘Well?’ I can’t remember if he even looked at me while he was singing. But I had a premonition that life was never going to be the same again, and it had everything to do with this beautiful soft-eyed man. Jez.
Then I was flung back to the present with all its untidiness and uncertainty, its compromises and mediocrity. The lies. And I wept for those confident young lovers that we’d so badly let down.
‘Come on, it’s not the end of the world,’ he said, putting his arm around me as I sobbed. He thought I was crying about yet another exam-revision row I’d had with Seb.
‘I know, it’s the jet lag – I just haven’t got the energy for this. But they’re tomorrow, you’d think he’d... Oh, it’s just so frustrating.’
‘Anyway it’s too late
now. He’ll just have to take the consequences.’
‘Well it’s all very well saying that, but... hang on, what’s Kenny doing?’ I could see him carrying a worryingly large pile of cups and plates out on to the garden table.
‘You’ve spoilt the surprise!’ he whined as he saw me approaching. I noticed some copiously buttered burnt toast on a tray, and dashed indoors to switch off a protesting over-filled kettle.
‘This is very sweet of you, but... you know, you could have hurt yourself.’
‘I can do it. I’ve done it. You never think I can do anything,’ he said, stomping off.
I took the tray outside, where Kenny was sharing his grievances with beaming and appreciative Daddy.
‘Inviting his own friends round, making tea... he’ll be driving himself to school next,’ I said, when Kenny had gone back inside to find jam.
‘He likes to feel independent.’
‘He might like to feel it, but independent is what he’ll never be,’ I said, feeling the sadness of it.
‘Yes he will. We just have to put extra time into Kenny.’
‘You always have done. Loads of extra time.’
He put down his toast and looked at me. ‘You can’t possibly resent that.’
‘No, of course not,’ I said, ‘but Seb might.’
‘Seb’s fine. He’s had every possible advantage: talent, support, a good education, all that performing experience, and now, if we can afford it, this psychologist bloke to pump motivation into him. He’s not exactly a neglected child.’
‘No. But he’d... I think it would be good if you talked to him a bit more.’
‘Maybe, but you’re so much better with him than I am. Always have been.’
‘I’m not good with him. Look what happened two weeks ago... I’m not coping at all. I’m struggling, and I really need your help.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay, I’ll try.’
Kenny forgave me when he saw my empty plate.
‘Has Kens really made tea?’ Seb asked, coming outside at last, ruffling his brother’s hair. But as the weekend drew on and we praised not only Kenny’s piano playing but his two lines for class assembly and his tireless distribution of bark on the shrub borders, Seb became irritable and withdrew to his room again. Jez tried to persuade him to do his revision outside, offered to test him on the history, but he said he was fine. I knew it wasn’t going to be fine, but I couldn’t cope with any more negativity. I needed this reassuringly content time with Jez and Kenny, needed to keep busy and positive.
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