Virtual Strangers

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘So how did it end?’

  ‘He left his wife.’

  ‘He was married?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Very much so. But no children, which made his situation way different to mine. And he wanted me to leave Matt. So everything changed.’

  ‘He put you under pressure.’

  ‘No. Not a bit of it. He was a quiet, gentle man. But him doing so made me realise things couldn’t go on. If I wasn’t about to leave Matt, then there was no way I could stomach the thought of him putting his life on permanent hold.’

  ‘So you called it a day.’

  ‘Sounds very prosaic, but, yes.’

  ‘And he went back to his wife?’

  ‘Nope. She wouldn’t have him. Can’t say I blame her. Can you?’

  ‘I guess not. And Matt? Did he never find out? Never even have an inkling?’

  Rose shakes her head. ‘I think not. I hope not. Anyway, lets just say if he did he never gave me that impression. Sometimes I wonder, but,’ she shrugs. ‘No. I don’t think so. Like I said, I hope not.’

  ‘So how did you get the marriage back on track? All the years I’ve known you it never occurred to me that you were anything less than happy together. And we met when? Only a year or so after?

  She nods. ‘I made the effort. I told him I thought we needed to take a long hard look at ourselves. I decided to go back to work full time - Ellen was in school by this time, of course - and I generally took myself in hand. The rest, in time, followed quite naturally. Thank God.’

  ‘And what about him? Do you ever see him these days?’

  Rose now gives me a long hard look.

  ‘Not these days.’

  ‘But you have?’

  ‘Not specifically. I used to see him around a fair bit.’

  ‘So he was local? From Cardiff?’

  She nods. ‘Oh, yes.’

  There is something in her tone that makes me realise she’s uncertain whether to tell me who he is, which in turn makes me realise it’s someone I know. For an instant, a horrible thought enters my mind. It must show on my face because she then snorts and says,

  ‘Good God! It wasn’t Adam, you numbskull!’

  I release my held breath. ‘But who?’

  She considers for a few long moments more.

  ‘Oh, well,’ she says finally. ‘What the hell? I suppose you’ve been tortured enough by mystery men lately. Yes. It was someone you know. And quite well, as it happens.’ She looks me in the eye and, straight faced, she says, ‘Phil.’

  Chapter 20

  I was stunned. And was speechless for sufficient seconds that Rose said ‘well, don’t look so surprised - you went out with him, didn’t you?’ etc., which I then had to concede was actually true. But I was stunned nevertheless. Phil. An affair? Phil and Rose - an affair? I could not get my head round the enormity of it all. Could not get my head round the fact of Rose having had an affair period, let alone bringing Phil into the equation. And Karen! Karen! So much was now clear. So much previous ‘don’t want to talk about that if you don’t mind, Charlie’ stuff was now explained. Phil’s marriage was not a quiet fizzle-out like my own, but a bang crash wallop major league bad business all round. And Karen was clearly not, I now realised, the person I had previously acknowledged her to be. Karen was a scarred, hurt person. Karen was a female cuckold. Karen was a person for whom the whole relationship arena was a bad scary place with lions etc.

  Strenuously do not wish to be thrown to any lions.

  On Friday morning I took the children to school and said my goodbyes to them, then hot-footed it back for more coffee and confessions. Rose, at last freed from her enforced isolation, was in bouncy, revelatory, talkative mood.

  ‘But what about now?’ I asked. ‘What about the here and now? The last five years of seeing him around all the time? What about when I started seeing him?’

  She poured the coffee and smiled.

  ‘Really, Charlie, it hasn’t been half as difficult as you’d imagine. Think back to old boyfriends of yours, for instance. Any old boyfriend. That one you told me you were passionate about before Felix, maybe. If you met him today do you think it would all still be there?’ She shakes her head. ‘Those feelings fade. Get superceded by new feelings. You just move into a different gear. It’s like with you and Adam.’

  Arrgghh! We are an item, I thought.

  ‘There were years,’ she went on, ‘when you barely registered his existence. Oh, he may have been on our shag lists and so on, but you thought no more of having a relationship with him than you would about George Clooney. It was no more real than that. And with Phil, it was just like that in reverse. Is like that. We have an amazing capacity to consign feelings to boxes, don’t we? I seem to, at any rate.’

  ‘I suppose. But even so, there must be times when you think about him. There must have been times when I was with him and you, you know - had feelings about it.’

  Rose shook her head.

  ‘One thing I’m particularly good at,’ she reminded me, ‘is deciding to do something and sticking right to it. No. Thankfully, all that is way, way behind me. Mind you, I don’t say I’m not glad you split with him. Quite apart from him being not remotely your type, I certainly wouldn’t want to push my luck. No. I’m glad Karen’s back with him. Order restored, as they say.’

  She gathered toast crumbs into an orderly peak on the table and we sat for some minutes digesting our thoughts. Mine drifted and span then careered into something, like feathers caught and trapped against a newly tarred fence. Order restored, it said. Phil back with Karen. Order restored, it said. Rose still with Matt. What of Adam and Davina? How long before they ironed out all their wrinkles and furrows? Restored order. Got happy. And then what about me?

  Rose must have sensed the way my thoughts were going, because she seemed suddenly anxious to divert them down a more positive route.

  ‘You go for it, Charlie,’ she urged. ‘Guilt-trip all you like, but you can’t escape fact. And the fact is that their marriage is dead in the water. I’d stake my life on it. He cares about you and, boy, do you care about him! You both have one life, remember, and you’ve already lived half of it. And what have either of you to lose that you haven’t lost already?’

  ‘Christ, Rose! Did you rehearse that chunk of philosophy?’

  ‘Read it somewhere.’ She waggled her finger. ‘But listen, Charlie girl, it’s no less pertinent for that.’

  Before I left Rose’s, I telephoned my father to check all was well at home. He told me he’d be going over to Hester’s for dinner.

  ‘What about Ben?’ I asked.

  ‘Coming with me, of course.’

  ‘Bet that really made his week, Dad.’

  ‘Oh, it most certainly did,’ he corrected me. ‘Francesca’s coming too, and, between you and me, I think young Ben’s got a bit of a thing going on there.’

  Lovely, lovely, lovely. I don’t think.

  Everyone in their rightful place. Dad and Hester. Dan and Jack. Ben and Francesca. (Ben and someone, at any rate. Early days.) And me. Furtively meeting another woman’s husband on a London street, to do goodness knows what. I scribbled Hester’s number down and promised to let everyone know what time (or if) I intended getting home.

  ‘What’s the occasion, then?’ Dad asked before I could hang up.

  ‘Occasion?’

  ‘I mean what’s the shopping spree in aid of?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I told him. ‘Just thought I deserved one.’

  ‘And you do, my lovely,’ he said warmly. ‘You certainly do.’

  When I finally swung in to the front of the five star black marble car park portico, the sight of Adam leapt out at me, as if he was the subject of a magic eye painting and I’d spent the last two weeks squinting to see him. He was standing in a smoke coloured suit, chatting to a man in some overalls who had a bucket and wiper thing and must valet the cars. They were laughing together as if the worlds ills did not touch them. They were chortling. I fancied I co
uld hear their guffaws through the glass.

  Which did nothing to quell my increasing conviction that what we were doing was horribly wrong.

  I turned the car onto the ramp and then down, curling my way round the dark concrete spiral, my heart pumping wildly against my chest. By the time I had parked and walked back up to the entrance, the wash-man had gone and Adam was alone. ‘Oh, God,’ I said as he saw me. ‘What am I doing here? This is all your fault, you know.’ My legs were trembling from climbing the stairs and I could feel my face beginning to burn.

  He shrugged and said ‘fair comment.’ Then smiled a little and started moving towards me.

  I put my hands to my face. ‘This is such a bad, stupid, senseless thing for us to be doing. I can’t believe I came. This is all going to end in tears, you know. It is.’

  He was standing in front of me by now, examining my face. ‘I’m inclining to the opinion that it already has,’ he said. Then, ‘Look, if you want to forget this, then just say the word.’

  He shut his mouth and I opened mine, but couldn’t find a suitable response to project into the gap. Other than what eventually came out, which was,

  ‘God, you know I don’t. I can’t. Oh, God. If only.’

  Which was not what I thought I’d intended to assert at all. So I shut it again quickly, before it could betray me some more.

  ‘Me neither,’ he agreed gravely. ‘Shall we, er....’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, following his lead to the exit. Like a dust mote caught up in a draught and swirled skywards. Or a polarized rock. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Lets.’

  He pulled open the heavy glass door and ushered me through it. Then nodded in the direction of a junction up the road. This was it, then. We were off on our little journey of discovery. We were going somewhere. Together. On our own. In secret. Strangely, I now felt a kind of relief. I’d stepped over the most significant moral threshold of my life to date, and now I was on the inside and looking back out, the bit I’d left now seemed cruelly judgemental and cold. Or was I now outside and looking back in? Whatever. A different place. Somewhere new and compelling.

  ‘So,’ he said, as we began walking. ‘What would you like to do?’

  He said the words in the same, smooth, measured voice he’d used when attending to Ben over Christmas. Mouth dry, I put my car park ticket into the side pocket of my handbag and then shrugged my shoulders emphatically. What did one do? I had only the one infidelity scenario sorted. You met. You went to places to have sex. You had sex. You lay in bed smoking and eating stylish snack items. You didn’t discuss the future. You didn’t discuss the wronged partner. You didn’t profess to higher feelings. You parted breathlessly, fumbling urgently with one another (as if your denial made you somehow less guilty). You said goodbye. You burned a memory of your naked selves onto one another’s retinas. You recognised and acknowledged your mutual inability to break free from the slavery of your primeval drives. You arranged the next assignation. You counted the seconds until its time came around. You met. You did it all again.

  Yet here we were in a Mayfair street, like a couple of office workers sharing the sandwich run, and self-consciously trying to have a workaday conversation with one another. No falling into each other’s arms. No urgent kissing. No sexual imperative driving our actions. Another unsatisfactory encounter?

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, trying to still the inexorable surge of another hysterical outburst. ‘I thought we were going to “do lunch” or something.’

  He turned. ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘Did you not?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not specifically. But, yes. It’s lunchtime. We could have lunch if you like.’

  Did I like? In actual fact, I didn’t think so. My stomach convulsed at the prospect. Instead I said, ‘What time do you have to be back in your conference?’

  ‘Oh, whenever,’ he offered, with an attempt at breeziness. ‘Not today, even. There’s a lecture I can happily miss and a dinner wild horses wouldn’t drag me to. My time’s my own. So. Lunch, then?’

  I had stalled on the first bit. Not today even? Oh, God. Sex after all. What else could he be implying? And what was I thinking! Sex not a feature here? I should cocoa, it wasn’t. And clearly we couldn’t do lunch. Not with all that legs under the table stuff and suggestive food consumption and smouldering looks and so on. But he was probably starving. Men generally were. Perhaps we could get a bun somewhere.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I asked.

  He paused on the pavement while he considered. He looked especially lovely against the pale Mayfair buildings; especially vunerable yet especially strong. And much as I was aware that this was nothing more cerebral than simple sexual attraction, I couldn’t help but feel sure the very loveliness of him was not about sex, but most definitely about love. Pathetic. And corny. But nevertheless real.

  He patted his flat stomach and puffed out his chiselled cheeks. ‘Big breakfast. Plus - well, you know. No. Not at the moment, to be honest. What did you say?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  He began walking again. ‘To Rose. To your family. Where did you say you were going?’

  We had reached the junction by now, and a car was approaching. Adam stopped on the pavement and turned to face me. A biscuit coloured Rolls swept around the corner and away, but he made no move forwards. His hand moved lightly against my back, as a teacher’s would in helping a small child cross the road.

  ‘I told my father I was going to treat myself to a day’s West End shopping.’ He nodded. ‘And Rose knows the truth, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, what there is of it, anyway.’

  ‘Hmm. And what does she have to say on the subject?’

  ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘She seems very relaxed about it. She has quite a strong conviction that I should do whatever is most likely to make me happy.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable.’

  ‘Yes, doesn’t it? Except that doing whatever makes you happy now isn’t always in accord with what is going to make you happy in the long term.’

  ‘Fair comment.’

  ‘You said that once.’

  ‘When you said this was all my fault.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘It wasn’t anything personal. Just an observation.’

  ‘About me.’

  ‘About the situation you’ve put me in.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Which doesn’t help any.’

  ‘I know that.’

  Silence. A long one. A forty week pause.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Justify yourself. Give me something gritty and earnest about how we must, oh, I don’t know, answer the call of our instincts and so forth. About being powerless to -’

  ‘I don’t subscribe to that view.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So I’d be lying, wouldn’t I?’

  Which admission rather thrilled me, for some reason. Gave substance to the quality of the feelings he had.

  ‘So,’ I said, even so. ‘The fact is, you knew exactly what you were doing when you answered my email. You thought “I fancy her. Lets have a bit of a laugh here.” That sort of thing.’

  ‘Laugh?’ he said. ‘I don’t know about laughs coming into it.’ He paused. ‘No, that’s not true. Of course I thought it would be fun. But the attraction was part of it from the very first instant.’

  ‘Hrrmmph.’ I said. ‘Even though you were married.’

  ‘Even though I was married.’

  ‘Even knowing it might lead to -’

  ‘Even hoping it might lead to - once I found out you’d found out who I was.’

  ‘Which doesn’t paint you in a very good light.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. It doesn’t, does it?’

  ‘I’ll have to learn to live with it. Can you?’

  By the time I’d decided how to respond (bloody hell, what do you mean by that?, etc.) we’d reached the end of the
road. It had opened out onto a large square, in the centre of which was a tree ringed garden. Flanked by cars, tethered like horses, to a necklace of meters.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Well. Hanover square. What shall we do? We could sit in the square for a while, if you like. Or we could get ourselves a coffee somewhere. Or, well - what?’

  He turned, his hand dropping back down to his side.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, wanting suddenly to scoop him up and console him in his quiet disappointment with himself. ‘I hadn’t actually thought much beyond seeing you.’

  He lifted his arms a little and smiled a self-conscious smile. ‘Well, here I am. In the flesh. All fully visible.’

  I nodded. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘That’s the problem. Now I’ve seen you, well, I don’t seem to be able to - well.’ I shrugged.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Here I am blushing again.’

  ‘You don’t need to.’

  ‘Tell my face that.’

  He stepped closer. ‘You don’t need to.’

  Oh, God. ‘Aha!’ I said. ‘A coffee bar! Coffee!’

  When we got into the coffee house, which was bright and cheery and functional and looked like a room setting from an Ikea catalogue, he said, ‘My hotel’s not far. We could stroll up there later, if you like.’

  ‘We what?’ I squeaked.

  ‘Stroll up there. For a sandwich or something. And -’

  God.

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you could run the “or something” by me again.’

  He took possession of a café latté and stirred it thoughtfully.

  ‘Charlie,’ he said quietly (the waitress was wiping and humming nearby) ‘You know very well that what I would most like to do now is to take you back there and spend the afternoon making love to you. I’m a man and that’s the sort of thought that tends to occupy a fair sized chunk of the average man’s mind. Larger than average in this case, of course, as I have spent a considerably larger than average chunk of time lately imagining what it would be like to do exactly that. Particularly in tandem with the whole stravinsky/seismic activity/mountaineering dimension you’ve sketched so alluringly for me. You know? But - and it’s a serious but - I’m not about to make a big deal of it. If you want to go back there and do that then I will be a very, very happy man this afternoon. If you don’t, then I will accept it with good grace and remain hopeful. I’m good at that. But you can’t blame me for trying, can you? Sugar?’