by Emlyn Rees
I’ve chosen to seek salvation by putting the integrity of my relationship above all else. I’m holding it before me, like a torch to light my way. I’m going to do what I know Amy would do in my place: I’m going to tell the truth.
Then my fear kicks in. What if I’m wrong? What if Amy’s wrong? What if the truth isn’t a great healer, as she’s always claimed? What if it’s an executioner instead? What if my confession, rather than proving to be a revitalising tonic that resurrects our relationship from its current bipolar state – whereby we veer between happiness and hatred at the drop of a pin – instead proves to be an horrendous act of self-destruction, akin to ramming a hand grenade into my own mouth and pulling the pin?
Amy stares at me. Behind her, pool balls clack across the table.
I wish I still smoked. Now would be the perfect time to nip out and buy a pack of Marlboro . . . and never come back . . .
All of a sudden, I feel incredibly weak.
‘You and Jessie?’ Amy says.
‘Yeah.’
‘Jessie Kay?’ she checks.
I nod, as my throat dries out, like I’ve just swallowed a handful of dust.
‘Oh, Jack,’ she groans, instinctively grabbing my hand. ‘She hasn’t fired you, has she?’
Amy’s groan is one of sympathy, not anger. She’s groaning for me, not for herself – not because I might have forfeited her fledgling radio career, but because I might have lost my one and only client and source of recommendations.
She’s groaning, because she thinks that Branching Out has just been felled.
This is an example of Amy’s generosity of spirit that, quite frankly, I could do without right now. Why can’t she be bitchy instead? Or damning? Or have spinach in her teeth? Or a big zit on the end of her nose? Why does she have to be so caring? And look so beautiful? Why does my heart choose this exact moment to start aching with love?
‘I didn’t get fired.’
‘Then what is it?’
My voice thickens, as misery swamps me. I look into her eyes and tell her, ‘I’m so sorry . . .’
Amy and I are both old enough to know that any story that starts with a sorry is almost certain to end in tears.
Unsurprisingly, then, her voice is loaded with suspicion, as she demands, ‘What have you got to be sorry about?’
One of the pool players behind her glances up from his sniper’s position over his cue. His gold front tooth glistens in the gloom. I feel my chest tighten, like I’ve been bound with barbed wire. Sweat breaks out across my brow.
‘I never meant for it to happen,’ I say. ‘Between Jessie and me.’ My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It sounds like a child’s.
Amy’s face locks into a frown. The sparkle dies in her eyes, like a pissed-on fire.
‘What do you mean, Between Jessie and me?’ she asks.
‘I promise you. None of it was planned. You’ve got to believe me, Amy. Please . . .’
She snatches her hand from mine. ‘What do you fucking mean?’
She spits the words at me like curare darts and, for a second, I think she’s going to take a swing at me, Rocky Balboa-style.
A barman pops up out of nowhere and glares at me suspiciously. ‘Are you OK?’ he asks Amy.
Which comes across as a bit like the captain of the Titanic saying, ‘Did anyone else feel a bump?’
Amy tells him, ‘Yes,’ and, as she watches him walk away, her whole face seems to sag.
‘But I don’t understand . . .’ She says it like she’s talking in her sleep. ‘I never even thought . . . no, not for a second . . .’ She peers at me in confusion, like I’m a stranger who’s just sat down. ‘You told me she was lumpy . . . on the turn . . .’
‘I lied.’
‘What have you done?’
My chest heaves at the sound of pain in her voice. I can’t bear to look at her any more. I wish I could dash outside, and come back as someone else, someone better. I wish I could duck into a phone booth, and turn into SuperJack, and then fly so fast around the world that I was able to reverse its spin and turn back time.
I wish I could undo the things I’ve done.
‘Tell me, Jack,’ she demands. ‘Everything.’ Again I hear that panic in her voice. ‘Tell me,’ she says, ‘right bloody now.’
So I do.
Because this conversation was my idea. Because our relationship’s been so messed up recently, and entangled and confused, that I know that keeping on telling lies is only going to make it worse.
Because I’ve got no choice.
Because, like the bra of a Page Three model at a photo shoot, this is something I’ve just got to get off my chest.
Confessions: No. 5. Attic Attack
‘No one ever leaves their past fully behind, Jack,’ she told me, kneeling down, ‘and especially not someone like you, someone who used to be such a naughty boy . . .’
She pushed me back on the sofa bed and reached out for my belt.
‘It’s all right,’ she said with a wink. ‘I promise I won’t bite.’
If there was one thing I knew for certain right then, it was that this sentence could only have been less convincing if it had been spoken by a lion.
Jessie wasn’t just planning on biting me.
She was going to eat me alive.
I stared down at her pampered skin, toned muscles, coiffed hair, manicured nails, trimmed pubes, perfectly rounded, surgically sculpted breasts, and watched as her lewd and lascivious tongue flickered lightly across her bow-shaped lips.
Her fingers began to unbuckle my belt, displaying the same astonishing dexterity as when she’d taken off my bloodstained shirt the first time we’d met.
I felt Phalius twitching like a ferret in a sack, straining against my jeans, like he wanted to rip them in two.
Any second now, and the sexual Rubicon would be crossed. There’d be no turning back. My seminal legionaries were ready for battle, and it was only a matter of time before they’d be flowing in triumph through the Gates of Rome.
Jessie popped the top button of my jeans.
I heard myself groan.
I’d thought about this, about her. I’d pictured this moment in my mind a dozen times, and now here it was – my fantasy fuck – only seconds away from becoming real. And I wanted it. I wanted her. I wanted to do it right now.
My Seven Year Itch was screaming like a mosquito bite to be scratched.
What kind of a man could possibly resist?
My next decision took only an instant to make, but I immediately knew that it would affect me for the rest of my life.
‘Don’t,’ I told her, grabbing her wrist.
She looked up at me, startled. ‘What?’ she asked, but then she smiled mischievously. ‘Oh, I see . . . so you want to whip it out yourself, eh?’ She sat back, grinning expectantly, watching my crotch. ‘Go on, then, big boy. Let’s see what kind of weapon it is you’re packing down there . . .’
‘You don’t get it,’ I told her, shuffling quickly sideways. ‘I don’t want to whip it out at all.’
I’d love to be able to claim that the reason for my unexpected reticence was because I’d suddenly remembered where my true loyalties lay. Say, because I’d been stung by a mental image of Ben waiting for me at home. Or because my wedding ring had unexpectedly flashed in the evening sun. Or any other such honourable and noble qualm.
But I can’t.
Similarly I wish I could say that my guilty conscience had stepped in at the last moment and tripped my erotic fuse, thereby cutting off the supply of hormones and endorphins to my loins, and sending Phalius scuttling back into the darkness from whence he’d come.
But that’s not true either.
I did still want to have sex with Jessie. Not only did I want to jump her bones, but I wanted to tickle her tonsils too. And twiddle with her bits. And brush up on my Brazilian linguistic skills. Not to mention have her up against the mirror. And draped across the desk. As well as out on the balcony, cheekily fr
om behind.
No, the reason for my sudden reticence was neither a surfeit of scruples, nor a lack of desire.
It was the dope.
It was the fact that I was fuddled. And muddled. And horrified at the thought of making any decision, let alone an emotional one, or one that required a rational weighing up of pros and cons, or a choice between right and wrong.
What happened was this: I panicked. I fell back on the one thing I had left: my instinct. And my instinct told me to keep my todger in my pants, and get the heck out of Dodge.
Which would have been fine, except that Jessie’s agenda was radically different to mine.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ she demanded.
‘Away.’
‘Away where?’
‘Anywhere. Home. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.’
I’d have apologised a thousand times, if that was what it took to get me out of there. All of a sudden, I felt like I was trapped in a bad dream. Let me out, let me out! a voice inside me screamed.
But the further I shuffled sideways along the sofa bed, the further Jessie shuffled sideways as well across the floor. Until we were eyeballing each other above my unbuckled belt, like two crabs locked in a stand-off over a piece of meat.
‘It’s too late for second thoughts now, Jack,’ she warned me.
‘Look. I’ve said I’m sorry, and I should have said something before, but I’ve really got to go.’
‘Before when?’ Jessie asked, half-smiling now. ‘Before I walked in here naked?’
I looked to the ceiling, suddenly wishing she was dressed. ‘Yes.’
‘Or do you mean before you lay down here on the bed with me and told me all about your sex life?’
I looked to the door. ‘That too.’
‘Or what about before you decided to get stoned with me downstairs and started flirting with me?’
I looked to the window. ‘Yes, before that as well.’
‘So you do admit you were flirting with me?’
I looked to the floor. ‘Yes, but –’
‘Good, because I’d hate to have somehow misunderstood what you meant when you told me that you thought I was attractive. Or to have misread your intentions when you pressed yourself up against me on the way up the stairs . . .’
I finally looked back at her. ‘Now hang on a minute. You were the one who –’
‘But most of all, Jack,’ she cut in, ‘I’d really hate to have misinterpreted the significance of that swelling in your jeans just now, when I was trying to unbutton your flies . . .’
Her eyes glinted, like someone who knew she’d just won an argument. Like someone who knew she was about to get her way.
But she was wrong. Because this wasn’t about debating prowess. Or logic of any kind. This was still about what my instinct was telling me. And my instinct was still telling me to run.
I tried to stand up. She pushed me back down.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘We’re going to finish what we’ve started, and you’re going to thank me for it too, because I know it’s what you really want . . .’
Even though I wasn’t moving, my heart had started pounding like I was running for a bus.
Then I did move. And fast.
I rolled back across the sofa bed and bolted for the door.
‘Come back!’ Jessie yelled.
No way, José. I was running for my life.
I stumbled through the doorway and half-fell, half-sprinted down the first flight of stairs. As I landed in a heap at the bottom, I yelped out in pain, and clutched at my right ankle, which I’d twisted on the way down.
Jessie appeared at the top of the stairs, like a villain in a slasher movie. She glared down at me as I squirmed.
‘Look at you. You’re pathetic. And you call yourself a man?’
With all the swagger of a gladiator closing in on a wounded opponent to deliver the coup de grâce, she strode down the stairs. A flash memory hit me of the ease with which she’d dealt with Roland. This woman was a tae kwon do queen. She could probably snap me in two.
‘How dare you not want to screw me!’ She planted her hands on her hips.
‘You got me stoned,’ I groaned, as I tentatively tried putting my weight on my right foot, and winced. ‘It’s not my fault, and I’ve already apologised. What more do you want?’
But she wasn’t listening. ‘And don’t you dare tell me that you’d rather be with your stupid frump of a wife, with her stupid frumpy, suburban life . . .’ Jessie glowered at me with all the arrogance and contempt of a catwalk model. ‘Because I won’t believe a word . . .’
The one advantage of the pain in my ankle was that my head had suddenly cleared.
Which in turn had led to the realisation that Jessie was behaving in a not dissimilar fashion to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.
She was also dissing my wife.
‘Don’t talk about Amy like that.’
‘Fuck Amy,’ she snapped, ‘and fuck you. And you know what?’ she sneered. ‘She’s welcome to you. Because looking at you now, I’ve no idea what I saw in you to begin with. You’re not even that good-looking! And your hairline’s receding. And you’ve got BO.’
Anger raced through me, flushing out whatever remaining intentions I’d had of extricating myself from this situation with politeness, dignity and calm. So she wanted to make this personal? Well, fine. Two could play that game. Tae kwon do, or no tae kwon do, I was going to say my piece.
‘Oh, yeah?’ I snapped back, struggling to my feet, before firing back the most sophisticated insult my mind could conjure up at such short notice. ‘Well, your minge looks like a burnt fishfinger.’
Her face turned puce. Oh yeah, baby, I thought to myself. Welcome to my world . . . Now you see what happens when you tangle with the Jack-meister . . .
She pointed down the corridor and bellowed, ‘Get out of my fucking house!’
‘Oh, I’m gone,’ I answered, hobbling away as fast as I could. ‘And you’re right,’ I yelled back. ‘I do think your show’s shit.’
She caught up with me at the bottom of the next flight.
‘You’ve got bad breath and teeth like Austin Powers’,’ she hissed.
I spun round to face her. ‘Yeah, well you should fire your plastic surgeon, because your tits don’t match.’
‘You’re a fucking liar.’
‘No, I’m fucking not. Look for yourself. The left one’s bigger than the right, and you can see the scars.’
This was complete crap, of course, but boy, did it hit the mark. Old Boss-eyed Boobs let out a bestial scream.
‘Wanker,’ she shouted after me, as I hurried to the top of the marble staircase.
‘Cow.’
She ran after me, then stopped.
‘You’re fucking fired,’ she said.
‘No, I’m fucking not, because I fucking quit.’
As we glared at each other, panting, it occurred to me that, not since Aaron Wilson had bitten the head off my Darth Vader figurine in the playground in 1979 and told me that my shoes smelt of wee, had I engaged in such a vitriolic slanging match.
But there was something else about this situation that was appallingly familiar too, and what Jessie said next revealed exactly what it was.
‘Mouse-cocked mummy’s boy,’ she spat at me, as her eyes narrowed to slits.
So here it was, the exact same phrase she’d used to describe Roland on that fatal day when first we met.
A phrase designed to emasculate. A phrase designed to bring a man to his knees.
That’s when it hit me with absolute clarity. This wasn’t about me. This was about her. If it wasn’t me standing here, it would be someone else. This was Jessie’s modus operandi. This is what she did.
Jessie Kay was a Manipulator of Men.
She was a puppeteer and I was just her latest toy.
Now, because I’d refused to do exactly what she wanted, she was throwing me out of her cot.
; All of which meant that Roland was no longer my sworn mortal enemy, but my Brother-in-Arms.
I quickly considered redeploying some of the abusive phrases he’d tossed her way (‘psychotic slut’, for example, struck me as a particularly apt initial volley).
Then I clamped my mouth shut.
What did any of this actually matter? I wasn’t Roland. I was Jack Rossiter. Jessie wasn’t my girlfriend. She was my boss. And even though I’d come close – damned close – I hadn’t actually done anything with her. Which meant I didn’t have to deal with her now, or put up with any more of her shit.
There was nothing, in other words, to stop me from turning my back on her and limping away.
So that’s exactly what I did.
I kept my mouth shut and closed my ears to the machine-gun rattle of insults that chased me across the hallway and out of the front door and down the drive.
I kept walking, and I didn’t stop until I reached the Skip, which was parked on the other side of the street.
It was only then that I froze in my tracks, and my brow furrowed, as somewhere in the back of my mind, a red alert bulb began to flash.
I stared down. And that’s when I saw it: I had nothing on my feet. Neither shoes nor socks. Jesus style.
I’d left my flip-flops in the house.
I had become the Shoeless Man.
I stared back up the driveway at the front door of Jessie’s house, which even from here, I could see was still ajar.
I took a step towards it.
Then stopped.
I’d been about to make the same howling schoolboy error as Roland. I’d been about to walk back in. After I’d walked out.
And if there were two things my short-lived relationship with Jessie Kay had taught me, they were these:
There are some things in life that aren’t worth going back for.
There are some things in life that are worth leaving behind for good.
As I drove away, I remembered once more what my estate-agent friend had always liked to claim: that if Notting Hill really did have a beating heart, then St Thomas’s Gardens could be said to be its pacemaker.
Well, during my time here, I now realised, I’d been nothing but a clot.
