Exposure
Page 33
She can. She can to a point.
They have a good holiday. She returns to her new job as political correspondent. Alberto will fly over to join her within a week.
On her second night at home, she makes a decision, one that she knows she will not share with Linda. She rings Peter Philips and asks him round for a drink.
CHAPTER 33
Linda rings Jane’s doorbell. On this Friday night in late spring, it is ten o’clock and the children are away camping for the weekend with Ken. Linda has been on the phone to Susan, who has urged her to stop delaying and to go and see Jane. It is, though, still on impulse that she decides to go round on this particular evening.
Jane answers the call bell.
“Hi.”
“Jane. Hello. It’s me.”
There is a silence and then the lock clicks to release the outer door. By the time Linda emerges from the lift, Jane is at the door to meet her. But they stop, look at each other and do not touch.
“I was passing,” Linda says, limply.
“Come on in. Jacky and Nicola are here. We were just finishing supper. There’s wine on the go.”
She follows Jane into the flat, not brave enough yet to return Jane’s enquiring look with an explanation. It is good to see Nicola and Jacky, even if she is discomforted by their presence. She has not forgotten what nice women they are. Somehow, they symbolise to Linda the stability and long-term nature of women’s relationships. Their partnership says so much to her that dispels those myths of promiscuous and turbulent relationships between women that the Sarah Kings of the world delight in representing to the public. And she is also reassured to see that there is no fourth member - no Hector - present. Looking at the group, she knows what a chance she took in coming here. Hector’s presence would have been disastrous for her and maybe for Jane. She cannot imagine a championing, protective and possessive Hector welcoming a visit from her.
She warms again to Jane’s two friends. They are sophisticated, pleasant and welcoming. They greet her like a long missed friend. She realizes that they must be fully aware of the situation but they say nothing; just ask how she is. They open up the table grouping for her and she joins them as they all have some red wine and cheese. The talk is kept safe - about work mainly and about Jane’s new post. Jane is about to head off on a trip to private country houses on the north coast to look at collections of Victorian watercolours. Jane’s two women guests say nothing of the press coverage but do enquire about Linda’s well being after the car accident. Linda keeps the conversation in like vein and enquires about the jobs of Jane’s guests. Jane says little. She just allows the three to talk. She is probably waiting, Linda hopes. She is no doubt gathering her thoughts and will hopefully find some time to talk quietly with Linda.
Towards eleven o’clock, Jane’s two guests say that they really must go. It is apparently early for them to leave but they make their excuses sound genuine. They have an early start ahead of them tomorrow as they are both free of extra-curricular and medical duties and are taking the opportunity to go hill walking. Linda also knows that she and Jane are being left alone.
Jane sees them out and comes back into the room, quiet and waiting. She pours two more glasses of wine and sits down opposite Linda at the table.
Linda comes straight to the point.
“Ken and I have separated, Jane.”
Jane just looks at her. Linda sees the look of hope in her expression. She fills Jane in.
“I’m not completely free, though. The children will be with me during term times. I’m keeping the house and Tina will be with me when the children are. The children are due to go out to Spain this next weekend, in fact, for their first spell with Ken.
Jane looks at her.
“That will be hard.”
“Very.” But Linda does not dwell on it, not just now. There will be time at the weekend to grieve for the reality of the first separation. She takes the plunge.
“I am more free than I was and if you’ll have me, we could be together, in part at least.” She waits, watching Jane’s face for her reaction.
Jane just looks, then says,
“I want you.”
Linda asks the one question that has to be asked.
“What about Hector?”
Jane looks at her, says nothing except “wait here”, and disappears into her bedroom for what seems to Linda like a very long time. It is in fact only about five minutes.
When Jane comes out, she sits again opposite Linda, looks at her and says,
“I am free now. I have just rung Hector and told him.”
“So you were in a relationship?” Linda feels overwhelmed at the thought.
“Well, we were having sex. Occasionally. I would not call it a relationship – not as far as I was concerned, Linda. Hector wants more, I know, but I just wasn’t interested.”
Then, by way of explanation, she continues, not looking at Linda,
“It started one night when we had a drink. I just needed comfort, really. And I knew that you and Ken were sleeping together so it didn’t seem such a big deal. I’m sorry, Linda. I said that I’d wait and I only did to a point. Sometimes I was just so angry with you.” Tears well in Jane’s eyes as she looks up at Linda.
Linda stares at her, a mixture of pain and jealousy coursing through her. She steadies herself, knowing how Jane felt about her sleeping with Ken. She asks one more question.
“Can you still want me after I’ve been with Ken again?”
Jane answers slowly.
“Yes. I did not always think so over the months. But seeing you here, I know that I can. What about you, Linda, now that there has been Hector?”
“I came here, pretty well knowing what the situation was. So I guess I decided before getting in the car and coming round. It’s hard, Jane, and I can’t pretend otherwise. But yes, I still want to be with you.”
They spend the night together, not making love till somewhere in the small hours, each afraid to reclaim the other from recent sexual intimacy with men. But as they hold each other, lying together naked, they come back into that place that is theirs, laughing, talking and clarifying what each thought over the months of separation.
They know that it will be a future of spending holiday times together and living apart till the children are much older. They will only see each other with the children if the youngsters come to accept Jane both as a person and as Linda’s partner. There is no question of Jane sharing Linda’s house and most of their time together will be in this flat, and in Jane’s bed. That is the way that Jane, in particular, wants things to be.
And they both find that there is a new dimension to this night of lovemaking. It is one of repossession. There is an aggressive edge at some points to their touch, a sort of expiation of the pain of jealousy. They both feel it and experience it in the other. But fundamentally, there is tenderness, the tenderness that only exists between women. They know in the early light of the morning that they have made it. They have made it through the glare of publicity, the exposure and the public mockery that went with it. They have made it through separation and through their respective intimate encounters, one with a husband and the other with a male lover. They will be together from now on, connected. They know it.
They talk about the two children and whether they will come to accept Linda’s love for her partner. Angela might find it easier to make the adjustment than Kenny but Linda thinks the adjustment will come for each of them. The two women will stay in their separate jobs, of course, and use the few years ahead to advance their careers in parallel directions. They talk about much later on. They will look to moving abroad, as soon as that fits with the children’s futures.
Linda and Jane make love again, slowly, intimately, gently in the candle light of Jane’s bedroom. When it is over, Jane cries. She is crying with relief.
They sleep and wake towards nine. Jane brings coffee and they talk again. This time it is more about the circumstances that catapulted the
ir names into the papers and the events that panned out from there. Linda is able to tell Jane that it was Brenda who sold their story to the press on the flimsiest evidence of them holding hands and touching each other on the cheek. Jane laughs, and says that on that evening in the restaurant the pair of them were so deeply in love and happy, that anyone would have seen at a glance how they felt. Linda has to acknowledge the truth in this. She says that she would like some sweet revenge for Brenda’s mischief but Jane just laughs and points out that some good came from it all, even if it was pretty horrific to live through at the time. For one thing, she was with her parents when they were over for Thanksgiving in the late Autumn and instead of taking the easy option, as she might have done in previous days, she did not introduce Hector and confirmed her feelings for Linda. They were not too wild about the fact that Linda was Jane’s boss and their first reaction was that Linda was some sort of predator. But Harry and she dissuaded their parents of that and she had the best affirmation from her parents that she could have hoped for. They would like to meet Linda as and when the time comes. Linda knows that they both have much for which to thank the now married brother Harry. He has played a big part in all this.
Linda has some other news for Jane about Brenda that she thinks really is a form of poetic justice for the woman’s mischief making. The Human Resources Section at the university told her confidentially that Brenda decided to leave the University and to take a promoted post in Administration at a college in London. She apparently talked to her friends in the workplace about starting a new life and about coming into a little money that would set her up. This, Linda reckons, was her divorce settlement. But then two things happened. She found out that she was in fact pregnant. Her lie had become the truth, although Brenda could not have known that at the time. And her father had a stroke. Dave and she would not be getting back together, even for the baby. So she asked for her job back, was given it and she has moved in with her parents to help look after her sick father and to let her mother help with the baby. She has sprung the trap of her unhappy marriage only to end up in an even bigger trap for the foreseeable future. Linda thinks that this is justice indeed for someone who planned to damage her husband’s life, Susan’s life, and, just for the money, their lives. But Jane just says,
“Poor Brenda. What a sad person she is”.
They talk about Susan and about how she helped them to stay together, supporting Linda in her decision to let the marriage end without too great a fight and encouraging Jane to hold on. Linda finds some anger in her feelings towards her friend, as she believes that without Susan’s promiscuous behaviour, the accident would never have happened, Ramsey and his wife would never have impinged on her, and they would never have been scrutinised by the newspapers. But Jane is more philosophical. It is not Susan who acted against them. Other people did. And Susan cannot help being the person she is. Can she? Linda reflects carefully before she answers.
“Probably not”, she muses. “Susan was probably life-scripted, somehow, probably in a way she does not know herself.”
“Aren’t we all?” Jane says, serious now.
“Nonsense,” Linda retorts. “You don’t think we are together because of some perverse scripting, do you?”
“Well, it’s possible, you know. There are plenty of people who would say just that.”
But Linda is not having any of that interpretation. She loves Jane. It is as simple as that. She happens to be a woman. She has loved men and women. Linda lets the subject drop and is about to start making love again when Jane asks,
“What happened to Dave?”
“Ah. That’s a story with quite an amusing twist,” Linda laughs. “Susan told me about that this morning when we were on the phone. He wrote to Susan from Heathrow airport. He decided that he was not going to complete his Divinity studies and that he was going to take his shrink’s advice and stop being one of life’s victims. He left Brenda and the baby to their fate. He waited till the sale of his flat went through and when he wrote to Susan, was just about to get on a plane to India. He wants to travel, he says, and to find God’s love in his way. Who knows, the next time we hear of him, he’ll probably be a Buddhist.”
“Good for him,” Jane murmurs, pulling Linda down on top of her.
Other Books by Avril Osborne
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Casa Di Corsa
Stalker
No Tide Waits
An Authentic Life
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Other Books