by Emlyn Rees
‘I’m married. To Jack. Don’t you know what that means?’
‘Yes, but I don’t think you’re in love with Jack. Maybe once, but not any more. Things change, Amy. It’s no one’s fault, but people grow up and they want different things. You let me kiss you, Amy. You let me kiss you, because you wanted me to.’
I shake my head again. Just hearing him say the word ‘kiss’ makes it even more vivid than ever.
‘Please, Tom, don’t say all this.’
He nods. ‘OK, I’m sorry.’
I pull my hand from under his. ‘It’s just . . . I’m not sure why I came. I shouldn’t have.’ I take a deep breath. ‘But I wanted to tell you to your face. We can’t meet again. We can’t have any kind of future. That’s why I’m here.’
There, it’s out. I’ve said it. I’ve told him how it really is. I’ve done what I came here to do. I’ve told him this has to end.
But Tom smiles. He doesn’t seem to have heard me.
‘I’m not going to pressure you, much as I want to, much as I want to take you back home and make love to you right now. As much as we both want to. Because, you do, don’t you, Amy? Haven’t you been thinking about us too?’
I feel a deep blush rising up through me. I feel sick with fright. I stand up. I’m shaking. I think of the underwear I’m wearing. The sexy, new, matching silk underwear that I’m wearing. Of course, I kidded myself when I put it on that good underwear would make me feel better, but maybe Tom knows me better than I know myself. Once again, I feel stunned by his ability to cut to the chase – to speak the truth.
‘I’m going,’ I tell him.
Tom stands up too. He puts his hand on my arms and looks down at me. ‘I don’t mean to scare you, but I understand if I have. Amy, this is big for me, too, you know.’
I pull away from him. ‘Goodbye,’ I say. ‘This is goodbye.’
He blocks my path.
‘Think it over whilst you’re in New York,’ he says, softly. ‘Promise me. Just promise me that before you go.’
A Dose Of Tough Love
I’m in the underground car park of H’s office building, having convened an emergency meeting. I have her undivided attention from London Bridge to Islington, where she’s chucking me out before going on to a friend’s dinner party.
She points her keys at her car and it bleeps unlocked. It echoes around the concrete walls and pillars. I jump and make a yelping sound. My nerves are all shot.
She pulls down her sunglasses and gives me a stern look over the top.
‘Get in,’ she says. Clearly, the scant details I’ve given her so far about why I need to see her haven’t been met with as much sympathy as I’d hoped.
I sit in the low bucket seat, feeling claustrophobic. I put my hands between my knees.
‘I’m afraid the hood’s broken,’ H says, turning the ignition. The chunky charm bracelet she’s wearing jangles as she steers the wheel. ‘Damn thing. It’s being repaired next week.’
I feel like a churning mass of emotions as we drive up to street level and H pulls confidently into the traffic.
‘OK. I want it all,’ she says. ‘From the top. Every detail.’
So I take a deep breath and I tell her everything. I tell her about my argument with Jack and then I tell her how amazing meeting Tom was. I tell her about the dinner, about how I really opened up to him, about how he filled me with confidence. I tell her every detail of our conversations and our romantic moonlit walk. I splurge until there’s only one thing left to say.
As we stop at the traffic lights by the roundabout on London Bridge, I tell her about the kiss.
‘You kissed him!’ she says. She’s staring at me, aghast.
I cover my face and nod.
‘Fucking hell, Amy.’
‘I know, I know. Oh H, I’m so confused. I feel sick with guilt. I’ve never even thought about being unfaithful, until Tom. If Jack ever –’
‘Jack? It’s not about Jack,’ she says, throwing me off track. ‘How about the fact you stole my internet date?’
‘I didn’t steal him, H.’
‘You did. You went on my date.’
‘Only because you didn’t turn up.’
‘Pardon me for having a job.’
The lights turn to green and she wheelspins away.
‘I don’t believe you did that.’ She snorts at me, outraged. The river stretches away in both directions. I can see the blue paint of Tower Bridge sparkling in the last of the evening sun. ‘But I suppose you were always going to steal him,’ she continues, nodding her head with righteous indignation.
‘What? Don’t be ridiculous. I –’
‘You were. You fancied him when you read about him on the site. Don’t deny it.’
‘Oh fuck off!’ I say. She’s being ridiculous.
‘No, you fuck off.’
We might as well be having a catfight on Jerry Springer. Thank God she’s driving.
‘Just you remember,’ she stabs her finger at me. ‘I paid for the subscription to that website, not you. It’s not fair. Tom was my only lead.’
She makes it sound as if she’s a detective on a case, not a girl looking for a potential boyfriend.
‘Calm down, OK? I’m sorry. If I could take it all back, I would.’
‘Well you can’t. And anyway I don’t want him back. Not now. I might be desperate, but I don’t need your sloppy seconds, thank you very much.’
I look at her. Is she completely mad? How did she get to be this self-absorbed? I’m tempted to get out of the car, but I’m in too deep and I’ve told her too much. She might be a mad, jealous, twisted old cow, but she’s all I’ve got.
‘Look, you’ve got to help me out. I’m so confused.’
‘Poor you.’
‘H! Please. Just listen. There’s more.’
So I tell her about the trip to New York and how bad things are between me and Jack. And I tell her about the meeting I just had with Tom in Shepherd Market. How I meant to break it all off with him, but how it all got out of hand, and that now, rather than having finished it, he’s hanging on for me.
‘What did you expect? You’re giving him all the wrong signals,’ she says, rolling her eyes at me. ‘You actually turned up looking like that,’ she nods at my outfit and I feel every inch the hussy in my Wonderbra, ‘to tell him you never want to see him again. Er . . . hello? What’s the guy supposed to think?’
‘I know, but –’
‘If you want to fuck up your marriage with my internet date, so be it – but don’t expect any sympathy from me,’ she says.
‘H!’
‘Well, what do you want me to say? At least you’ve got two men to be torn between.’
‘Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t intend any of this to happen.’
‘So, do you want him, or don’t you? Make your bloody mind up.’
‘I thought I had – but there’s something about Tom . . . I don’t know, H. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I did want him to kiss me. Right from the first moment we met. And when he said he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of me . . . well I’ve been like that too, about him. I feel, I don’t know . . . connected to him.’
‘Connected? My fat arse. It’s just someone giving you attention for the first time in ages. Someone who wants to get into your knickers.’
Man, she’s brutal. I wish I’d never told her. I wish I’d never said anything.
‘Get real, Amy. Do you think you’ll still feel this “connected” to him when you tell Jack about him? Or when he meets your mother? Or for that matter, your son? I mean, what are you proposing? That you run away to some rural backwater in Ireland with him? Aren’t you forgetting that you already have a life?’
‘It’s not like that, it’s . . .’ But all of a sudden, I don’t know what it is like. Apart from a huge bloody mess.
She glances over at me. ‘OK, answer me these questions. Honestly. Did he, or did he not mention sex?’
‘He called it making love –’
�
�Euch! Pass me a barf bag. OK, question two: is he, or is he not, used to getting his own way?’
‘Well he’s a successful businessman, if that’s what you mean, so, yeah, I suppose –’
‘And did he, or did he not tell you that he likes a challenge?’
‘Well . . .’
‘And do you, or do you not think it is out of order for him to prey upon women who are clearly already married? Especially one with a very young child?’
‘He didn’t mean to. It was just fate.’
‘Fate? Do you think he hasn’t used that line before? I mean, come on, that’s about as corny as “to be stood up once is bad enough, but twice is looking careless”. He did say that, didn’t he? That is a direct quote?’
I squirm, blushing. I wish now that I hadn’t been so accurate in my retelling of events.
‘Look, Amy, what we have here, is a man approaching forty, who is still single and clearly terrified of any sort of long-term commitment, demonstrated by the fact that he makes a beeline for totally unsuitable women.’
‘But,’ I say, ‘but he knew about you off the website. What are you saying? That you’re totally unsuitable, too?’
‘Apparently, yes,’ H grunts, ‘but this isn’t about me any more, Man Thief. This is about you.’
I put my head in my hands. I don’t think he’s like she’s describing him. I don’t. But something niggles me. What if H is right? What if Tom’s been feeding me a line, right from the start?
‘Sorry to piss on your bonfire,’ H continues, clearly enjoying being in her stride, ‘but he sounds to me like your typical bastard – and before Jack, you were a renowned bastard magnet. Even Jack was a bastard when you met him. Excuse me, but have you forgotten Nathan?’
I shudder at the memory of how I got suckered in by Nathan. How he was good-looking, charming and a complete shit with it. How he kept me dangling, never committing himself, always unreliable, always unfaithful.
And H is right, he wasn’t the first. I’m shocked that she remembers my past. It shocks me too that she sees me in the context of my relationships, of which Jack is part, and now Tom is the latest. It’s been so long since I’ve considered myself in that way. I thought my relationship history had stopped the moment I did, at the altar.
‘But Tom didn’t seem like that at all,’ I insist. ‘He seemed lovely. Really lovely.’
‘Which is a bastard speciality, of course.’ H looks pleased with herself, as if she’s just solved some sort of puzzle.
I’m still not buying it.
‘So you don’t think he meant anything he said?’
‘I think he’s using sophisticated tactics to get you into bed, because currently, he can’t quite have you. So what he’d like more than anything is for you to crack. For you to sleep with him. Then he’s got himself lined up with a nice married fuck buddy, who won’t intrude on his social life, or move in with him, or anything else apart from shag him on the side.’
‘That wasn’t how he was. The way he was saying it, he wasn’t talking about a tawdry affair. He was telling me to make a decision between him and Jack. And besides, this isn’t about Tom,’ I say, steering the conversation away from the impossibility of such a choice. ‘It’s about me. It’s about the fact I wanted him as well.’
‘You can’t help your hormones, honey, but you can resist them. I’m not denying that sex with a tall dark handsome Irishman might be knee-tremblingly fantastic, but do you really think he’s going to stick around and take on all your baggage, once he’s had his wicked way with you?’
She looks at me and I fall silent. As we head up towards Farringdon, I can feel my head trying to argue back – to come up with a scenario in which Tom is a hero, but the brief intense passion I’ve been feeling is suddenly ungraspable, like a fading vapour trail.
‘So what do I do, then?’
‘You’ve already crossed a line with him,’ she says in a warning tone. ‘You told me once that there’s a very big gulf between not kissing someone and kissing them; and a very small step from kissing them to sleeping with them.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes you did. So you need to think carefully about where all this is going. All this talk of emotions is just that . . . talk. It hasn’t actually gone anywhere yet. You’ve still got time to jam on the brakes.’
She’s right, of course. Having sex with Tom would be like exploding a nuclear bomb in my life. I can’t imagine the fallout.
And, to be very honest, I can’t imagine the sex either. I mean, do I actually want to have sex with him? Sitting here, I’m not actually sure that I do. I just want to be swept up in him, and romanced by him, and that’s not the same thing.
It’s been so long since I’ve had sex with a stranger. Would it really be fantastic? It could equally be embarrassing, or clumsy or just plain awful. What if I just blindly followed on down this path and let fate decide and the sex was rubbish? Then what?
Or what if the sex turned out to be great, but he didn’t? What if he turned out to be another Nathan in disguise? After all, what do I really know about him?
More importantly than all of this, there is the ultimate, six million dollar question: what would having sex with Tom mean for me and Jack?
And there it is. The answer. Looming large.
Like a skyscraper.
Like the Hollywood sign, all lit up.
The D word.
All of a sudden, I feel like I’m going to throw up.
‘Oh God, H,’ I say, groaning. ‘What have I done?’
‘Well, I guess it’s not surprising he slipped in under your radar. You’re out of the loop,’ she says, ‘and it is a jungle out here.’
I feel like I’ve been on drugs and I’ve come crashing back to reality. I open my eyes and look at the traffic and the buses and the adverts. Everything seems very real and harsh and out of my control.
‘But it was all so . . . I don’t know . . . like a fairy tale. Romantic, you know?’
‘Romantic shmantic,’ H says. ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that it’s very easy to be romantic when there’s no reality involved? It’s a fantasy, Amy.’
My heart aches and I’m welling up. ‘I know, but I really wanted it. Needed it.’
‘Everyone needs romance, and everyone likes the feeling of giving in to temptation. That’s why chocolate sales are so high.’
How can she be so clinical? So . . . practical?
‘But how come I was so tempted when Jack –’
‘Jack’s not tempted?’ she interrupts, looking at me. ‘How do you know?’
I’m silent. I feel I don’t know anything about Jack any more. About us.
H’s phone goes off and she answers it. The conversation blares on speakerphone in the car, but I’m not listening. Instead, I think about Jack in that convertible Lexus. With that woman. Is there something going on with him as well? Isn’t it possible that he could equally have become embroiled in a situation with someone else, like I have with Tom?
The thought of it, just the possibility of it, makes me breathless with fear. But no. Jack wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
Could he . . . ?
I look out at the darkening sky and the buildings we’re passing by. All these people, all living their lives. Are theirs as complicated as mine? Why is this happening to me. To us?
H finishes her call and pats me on the knee.
‘Come on, buck up,’ she says. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’
Isn’t it?
‘Just do yourself a favour,’ she continues.
‘What’s that?’
‘Don’t see Tom again.’
‘I won’t.’
‘And for fuck’s sake, promise me that you never, ever tell Jack. What’s done is done. You can’t take that kiss back, but you can pretend it never happened. And don’t feel all guilty and emotional about this, or start banging on about honesty. For once in your life, Amy, just do the pragmatic thing.’
I pull my hair back from my f
ace. ‘I promise.’
‘And it’s a promise you better not break, because I’m telling you, you’ll ruin everything if you tell Jack. You’ll totally fuck up your marriage forever. Men don’t forgive that type of thing. They’re territorial. Like dogs. You tell Jack about Tom and it’ll turn into the biggest pissing contest you could ever imagine. So you’re just going to have to take this on the chin and chalk it up to experience. Think of it as a blip.’
‘A blip?’
‘Well, maybe just more of a warning that you need to start looking closer to home for your answers. You and Jack are great together.’
‘Are we?’
‘Yes you are. Were. Now get your shit together, girlfriend,’ she warns me, ‘and bring that magic back.’
We’ve reached Islington and she pulls to a stop by Angel tube station. She leans over and gives me a hug.
‘Thanks for the talking-to, and the lift,’ I say.
‘All part of the friendly service.’
‘I mean it. Thanks,’ I feel a huge wave of emotion. I guess it’s relief. ‘I think you might have just saved my life.’
‘That will teach you to steal other people’s dates. Now, go home, make up with Jack and have a great time in New York.’
12
Jack
In Love With A Brazilian
I knock on the door to Jessie Kay’s study and she answers, ‘Yes!’
The second I enter, I smell it: eau d’Amsterdam, Portobello Road parfum, skunk, dope, grass, call it what you will.
Jessie’s sitting at an antique writing bureau. She’s on the phone and frantically waves at me to come in, then stabs her finger towards a brown leather armchair next to the double bay window which overlooks the garden. She’s wearing Gucci shades and a pearly translucent shirt, the top two buttons of which, I note, are unbuttoned, revealing a black coral necklace beneath.
The smart clothes make me think of Amy, who’s in the West End today. She’s seeing a show with Ali, then going shopping for some new tops and a bit of costume jewellery. Though quite why she’s going shopping now, when we’re about to head off to New York, I don’t know. Women. There are some things about them I’ll never understand.
