by Hilary Boyd
‘I definitely can’t see him and not bonk him, or want to bonk him.’
‘OK, that leaves bonking, or not seeing him at all.’
‘I can’t have sex like that . . . just once . . . just because he’s here. It would be sort of . . . disturbing. I don’t want to miss him again when he goes.’
Donna looked pleased. ‘Right, this is going better than I hoped. We seem to have narrowed it down to Option 3: Not communicating with him at all.’
Jo gave a stricken look and her friend laughed. ‘Clearly not a popular option.’
‘No . . . but you’re probably right. If I’m serious about Lawrence.’
‘Hmm . . . maybe this is telling you something, darling. If you’re truly as pessimistic as you sound about your dear ex, then you wouldn’t be asking me about Travis. You’d just leap into bed the first opportunity you get.’
Jo thought about this. ‘It would feel like a bit of a betrayal.’
‘So there’s your answer. Drop your phone down the loo till Travis is safely in Budapest.’
‘Bucharest.’
‘Wherever.’
‘I hope he doesn’t call when I’m away with Lawrence.’
‘If you’re not answering, it won’t matter,’ Donna pointed out, eyebrows raised.
‘It would be great to talk to him again, though.’
‘JO!’
‘OK, OK . . . I hear you.’
*
In the end, she couldn’t resist trying his number again.
‘Where are you?’ she asked, after they’d said hello.
‘San Francisco International, waiting for the New York flight, deciding on nuts with raisins, or nuts without . . . for the plane.’
She laughed. ‘No contest. Always without.’
‘Yeah? No, I love raisins, me. But this packet has coconut bits and dried cranberries as well. May be a step too far.’ He paused. ‘Will I see you next week?’
‘Umm . . . I think . . . no, probably not.’ She hadn’t known exactly what she would say if he asked, until she said it. And although the words seemed to have been dragged out of her, it felt like the right thing.
She heard him give a soft chuckle. ‘I guess that means there’s stuff going on your end? Good, that’s good, Jo. Although I can’t pretend I’m not gutted.’
‘I’m gutted too,’ she said, meaning it and just a hair’s breadth from changing her mind. But she knew deep down that it wouldn’t work for her, seeing him again, even if Lawrence had been nowhere in sight. Nothing had changed, and a casual night of sex whenever Travis was passing through would never work for her.
‘I left you alone too long,’ he was saying. ‘Beautiful woman like you.’
‘Teach you a lesson.’
‘Not even a coffee?’ he asked, wheedling. ‘Just one itty bitty latte?’
She laughed. ‘Better not.’
He gave a melodramatic sigh. ‘Yeah . . . OK. Well, I sure hope he’s worth it, whoever he is. Worth you.’
‘I hope so too.’
‘Listen, take care of yourself, Jo. Give my best to Nicky and Cassie.’
‘I will. Bye Travis.’
There was a pause.
‘Bye . . . bye now . . .’
She sat on the sofa, clutching her phone, her palm sweaty from tension. But she knew she was relieved, imagining the turmoil she would have been going through if she had made a plan to see him. A plan that would have ended in tears, probably hers. Shame, though, she thought, a faraway look in her eye.
*
The weather held. Friday was still very warm and Jo was thankful. She packed linen trousers, a grey-and-white jersey dress with a crossover front, black pedal-pushers, a pile of T-shirts, trainers, sandals and some smarter pumps. Then there was the hair dryer, shampoo, moisturizer, sun tan lotion, make-up, a thin cardigan just in case, swimming costume . . . did they have a pool?
‘Blimey.’ Lawrence, who had driven over to pick her up, eyed her large holdall with amusement. ‘We’re only going for two nights, aren’t we?’
‘Very funny. You can’t tell with peoples’ homes . . . if they’ll have shampoo and a hair dryer and stuff. You should stop mocking and be glad you aren’t a woman.’
The Friday traffic took forever, but finally they turned into the long drive which led to Jonathan Lacy’s Suffolk house. The ancient red brick glowed a soft pink in the evening sun, two rows of long, white-painted sash windows – four on either side of the carved stone front door-case – sat elegantly below a smaller row of dormer windows peeping out from the pitched roof. Sandstone quoins lined the corners of the house, rising to a phalanx of tall brick chimneys. The house was graceful and stylish; dignified rather than grandiose.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Lawrence said softly, staring up at the façade.
‘Wow. Stunning. You were right.’
Jo had been quiet on the journey down, unable to stop thinking of Travis. Since Thursday she’d been wired, knowing he was in London, somewhere round the corner, so close. But Lawrence hadn’t noticed. He also seemed preoccupied.
No one was about, but the heavy wooden front door stood wide open. Lawrence shouted Jonathan’s name, but there was no response, so they walked in. A teenage girl – long blonde hair flying behind her, barefoot, in denim shorts and a skimpy T-shirt – rushed down the sweeping stone staircase which faced them in the large hallway. She totally ignored them, didn’t even hesitate, just kept on running towards the back of the house as if they were invisible.
Lawrence raised his eyebrows. ‘Was that Beth?’
Jo frowned. ‘More likely Connie. Beth must be closer to nineteen by now.’
They put their bags by the wall and wandered after the girl. The French windows in the drawing room were open on to the terrace and the sound of laughter. A small group of people were sitting around – some on garden loungers, some perched on the low stone balustrade which bordered the terrace – all with glasses of what looked like Pimm’s in their hands. The lawn stretched for miles in the waning light, bordered by ranks of azalea and rhododendron bushes, oaks and mature shrubs, and bisected by a flagged stone path lined with rose bushes (sporting pink and gold blooms) leading from the terrace to a circular stone fountain. A group of six languorous teenagers – two girls, four boys – lay entangled on the grass near the terrace. Jo took a deep breath as she eyed the peaceful landscape. What am I doing here, she thought, pretending to be Lawrence’s wife, pretending that everything is as it was, pretending Arkadius never happened.
Jono – dressed in a faded pink polo shirt, collar up, baggy navy shorts and deck shoes – leapt to his feet when he saw them. ‘At last!’ He wrapped Jo in a bear hug. ‘Welcome! So good to see you . . . it’s been far too long.’ He clapped Lawrence on the shoulder and shook his hand, drawing back when Lawrence winced, noticing the wrist support for the first time.
‘Hey, sorry, Meadows. Whacked someone, did you?’ Jonathan was Lawrence’s height, but about twice his width, with broad shoulders, a bull neck, ruddy cheeks and tight dark curls now tinged with grey.
‘Nothing so dramatic. Came off my bike.’
Jonathan pulled a sympathetic face, then introduced them to the other house guests – two couples Jo hadn’t met before. Nervous as she always was in social situations, she decided at once they were horrible, although all four smiled and shook her hand with warmth.
‘Is Alana here?’
Jonathan laughed. ‘Good question. Last saw her at lunch. She’s probably . . .’ He didn’t bother to finish the sentence, as if it were too tedious even to contemplate where his wife might have gone. ‘Now. A drink. Pimm’s on the table, or there’s anything you like indoors.’ He turned to Jo. ‘What’ll it be?’
‘Pimm’s would be great, thanks.’
*
Their room was large, high-ceilinged and chilly, despite the warmth outside, the dusty floorboards partially covered in a threadbare Persian rug, the bedstead a heavy, polished mahogany with barley twist posts, the bathr
oom a mile down the corridor and shared, obviously, with unknown others.
‘I forgot my pyjamas,’ Jo wailed, as they began to change for dinner. ‘How am I going to get to the loo in the night? And I bet all the floorboards creak. This is a nightmare. I hate staying with people. I don’t know why I let you persuade me into it.’
Lawrence laughed. ‘Whoa, steady on. You’re conflating about five problems in one. How am I to know which to address first?’
‘Don’t be clever,’ she said, realizing with alarm that they would be sharing a bed that night for the first time in a year.
Both of them sat down. She on a wobbly Louis IV-style chair with tattered maroon upholstery, Lawrence on the bed, which creaked and sagged alarmingly under his weight.
‘What’s the matter?’ Jo asked, after a few moments of silence. He seemed distant, detached and hadn’t been his usual robust self when countering Jono’s teasing.
He gave her a steady look. ‘Nothing really.’
‘Come on . . . tell me.’
A pause, then, ‘OK . . . well . . . if you must know, it’s us.’
She didn’t reply, just watched his face go tense, his mouth working as he fashioned his next sentence.
‘It’s over, isn’t it? The love . . . no longer there.’
Jo was taken aback by the bleakness in his voice. Her instinct was to gush that everything was fine, that they should immediately sail off into the sunset together. But she knew that wasn’t the truth.
‘I do love you, Lawrence.’
He gazed at her, his expression sardonic. ‘Yeah.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well . . . I don’t know . . . every time we meet, it’s as if you’re holding back. Tolerating me, no more.’ Another pause. ‘I think you’re still in love with that American.’
‘I’m not,’ she said quickly, knowing she looked guilty, that her eyes still contained some vestige of her phone call to ‘that American’.
But Lawrence was warming to his theme without listening to her.
‘The other night, when we were making love, you asked me what’d happened, what was wrong? Well, the truth is, you were what was wrong, Jo. You.’ He shook his head as if he were bewildered. ‘I mean, why did you let me do it if you weren’t ready, if you didn’t want me? I wasn’t exactly begging.’
‘If you weren’t “exactly begging”, then why did you do it?’ Jo retorted, suddenly furious.
‘Because I thought it was vital to get over the hump. I didn’t see how we could move past what’s happened without finding each other sexy again.’ His eyes were narrow and hurt. ‘But you made me feel totally rejected, like I was old and useless and undesirable. It was quite horrible.’
‘I wasn’t making you feel like that. You were feeling that all by yourself.’
‘Really?’
She sighed. ‘Look, I’ll admit I wasn’t as engaged as I should have been. I really tried; I wanted to make it work as much as you did. But it didn’t feel right. We didn’t seem able to connect with each other properly.’
‘That’s exactly what I was trying to do. Connect.’ There was a note of exasperation in his voice.
‘OK, OK. I’m sorry. But don’t come the wounded lover with me, Lawrence. You’re the one who ran off, remember. And now you expect me to open my arms at the first opportunity? As if nothing’s happened? Now that it suits you. Trust you again? You had passionate sex with a man, behind my back, for nearly a year before you even told me. And now I’m supposed to just roll over and forget?’
‘Keep your voice down for God’s sake.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. Because Jono doesn’t know anything about it, does he. You forgot to mention Arkadius in your reply to his “What’s been happening to you, Meadows?” question. No, it’s over for you, so it has to be over for everyone else too. Instantly. Never happened. Airbrushed out of all our lives.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘I’m actually beginning to feel sorry for Arkadius.’
Lawrence didn’t reply.
‘You asked if I was still angry with you the other night,’ she said, lowering her voice and trying to sound reasonable. ‘Well, there’s your answer. Of course I’m still angry. I’m fucking furious.’
His look, surprisingly, seemed composed, almost as if he welcomed her anger.
‘I let you go without a bloody murmur,’ she said, in a softer tone. ‘You must have been amazed I didn’t make more of a fuss. Cassie and Donna both said I should have fought for you. And maybe I should. But you can only do what you do in the moment. I didn’t see the point of fighting for someone who was in love with someone else. Would it have made any difference? If I’d made it hard for you to leave?’
Lawrence shrugged. ‘No . . . probably not. I wasn’t thinking straight at the time.’
‘Do you regret it?’ She didn’t know why she asked. It was the dumbest question on earth. ‘Don’t answer that,’ she added quickly. She watched his face go quiet, knowing that no one ever regrets falling in love. Only the fallout afterwards.
He glanced at his watch. ‘We should get ready for dinner . . . it’s nearly eight o’clock.’
Jo groaned. ‘Wish we could just leave.’
‘Me too.’
He got up off the bed and came over to her. ‘Jo . . . can I hug you?’
For a while they stood there together in the dusty summer light. She felt his arms close around her body, and as she leaned against his shoulder, she knew she wanted so much to love him again, in the way she always had, simply and with all her heart.
*
Alana was standing by the impressive sandstone fireplace in the drawing room, whispering with one of the other women who had been on the terrace earlier, when Lawrence and Jo came down. As soon as she saw them, she seemed to stiffen, don her hostess persona.
‘Joanna, Lawrence, how wonderful to see you.’ She offered Jo a mwah, mwah on each cheek. ‘You’ve met Caro?’
They said that they had, but Alana wasn’t listening as she bustled over to the butler’s table by the window, laid out with whisky, gin and vodka in a polished wood and silver tantalus, bottles of white and red wine, various mixes, bitters, a lidded stainless steel ice bucket and tongs, slices of lemon and tidy ranks of cut-glass tumblers and wine glasses. She was restless, always on the move, Alana, never stopping to listen or think.
‘What can I get you, Jo?’
‘Vodka and tonic, please.’
Her hostess set to, her slim figure elegant in a white sheath dress with black panels on the shoulders which showed off her tanned, shapely legs. With one hand she patted her dark hair, held back by a tortoiseshell clip at the nape of her neck, with the other she handed Jo her glass.
Lawrence asked for the same, both of them subdued, tired from their row. Jo’s drink was gratifyingly strong.
Dinner was hours late – apparently due to the vagaries of the ancient oven. Even Maria, the Portuguese housekeeper and cook, couldn’t seem to control it.
‘This place is worse than Fawlty Towers,’ Jono complained good-naturedly as they waited for the meal, everyone now drunk from the relentless flow of alcohol. ‘Da hadn’t replaced so much as a brick in thirty years, and wouldn’t let me touch the place while he was alive. Worried I might do something “modern” – for which read “nasty”. But now I don’t know where to start.’
Jo was sitting on Jonathan’s right, opposite Caro and next to her husband, Edward – a property millionaire whom Jo found virtually impossible to talk to. Four more couples – all local – had arrived, so the long table was full, despite the teenagers having been dispatched to a pizza restaurant in town.
‘This is all very jolly.’ Jono raised his glass to her in the gap between the guinea fowl and the cheese. It was nearly eleven by now, and Jo was wilting with the effort. ‘Glad you and old Meadows have sorted things out. Always thought you two were solid.’ He cast his eye down the table at his wife. ‘Unlike some I could mention.’
Jo raised her eyebrows at him in que
stion.
‘The Russian?’ Jono went on, drunk enough to be oblivious to her discomfort. ‘These things happen, not a thing you can do about it. But you want to avoid being silly. No point in spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar.’
‘Lawrence said he hadn’t told you.’
‘Oh, he didn’t. Don’t blame him either. Bit of a dark secret, eh? No, Alana has a chum who’s married to a Russian. They all know each other, of course.’
‘Of course . . .’ she wanted to just get up and walk out, drive away as she imagined most of the faces currently around the table wide-eyed and gripped by the salacious gossip about her husband. It made her feel like one of those sad wives photographed at the garden gate for a media moment, holding hands and smiling through gritted teeth at their perfidious spouse. But in the wake of this feeling was a sudden fierce desire to defend Lawrence against all those gossiping mouths.
‘Been a bit tricky, has it?’ Jono, for all his bluster, was actually a kind man. He reached over and gave her hand a quick squeeze.
‘Could say that.’ She smiled at him and they both began to laugh.
*
By the time they got to bed it was nearly two. The weather had changed, a fierce wind blowing up that rattled the sash windows and blew cold air through the cracks. Jo flopped, exhausted, on to the bed.
‘Thank God that’s over.’
‘At least you had Jono. I had some tedious woman who banged on for hours about a drugs scandal at her child’s boarding school. And chilly Alana on the other side, who obviously loathes the house and can’t wait for Jono to sell it.’
Jo sat up. ‘He won’t do that.’ Her head was spinning and she felt slightly sick, which brought worry about the distant bathroom into focus again.
‘Not sure I can take a whole weekend of this,’ Lawrence said. ‘I was mad to agree to it in the first place.’
‘Can we do a runner?’
‘They might think it a bit odd.’
‘Shouldn’t worry about that. They think we’re super-odd anyway. They know all about Arkadius – the Russian connection, apparently.’
Lawrence looked stricken. ‘God.’
‘It was never going to stay a secret, Lawrence. You may not have told anyone, but why wouldn’t Arkadius?’ She closed her eyes, suddenly sick and tired of the subject. ‘But don’t worry, Jono referred to it as a “ha’porth of tar”, so maybe it’s not considered so unusual in their circle.’
