11:59

by David Williams

  The quiet afterwards was almost eerie by contrast. I don’t mean the peaceful afterglow quiet, the satiation. I mean the getting-it-back-together quiet – wiping down mess, buttoning up clothes, concentrating on the functional to excuse not talking, avoiding eye contact. When Dave reappeared, with apparently expert timing, the three of us drove without speaking to the taxi rank at the railway station. I asked Dave to wait for me while I climbed out of the cabin with Anji.

  “Look, I don’t know how far away you live, but will this cover your taxi fare? It’ll be dearer than usual, being New Year.” I handed her two twenties which she took a little shame-faced – embarrassed, I’d say, about accepting money from me – but she held onto my hand as I offered it. We stood a little awkwardly like this, not looking at each other, then she kissed my hand, her eyes, soft and liquid, searching for mine like a close-up from some Jane Austen drama.

  “Are you sorry you did it?” she asks, unexpectedly.

  “No. No, why should I be? It was… amazing.”

  “Thanks, Marc. Have a nice New Year.”

  “All the best.” I sounded as if I was passing her in the corridor at work.

  She stepped across to the only taxi waiting at the rank and, after a brief conversation with the driver through the window, opened a back door and slipped in, holding her dress down modestly. I lifted a hand as she rode away, then climbed back into the van beside Dave. “Would you mind dropping me at Welbeck Grange?” I asked him.

  The party was in full swing at Sam’s sister’s and it took three rings for them to hear me at the door. Nothing wild, you understand, just the music was pretty loud and there were plenty of guests, including some of the neighbours who had wandered in, all competing to share their tales of house prices, holidays and appalling customer service. Sam was in the kitchen warming some corned beef pie in the microwave (for me, as it happens) so our New Year kiss was a bit perfunctory, but enough for her to jerk her head back to look at me strangely and say, “What have you been doing? You smell of baby wipes.”

  “Oh, I found them in Dave’s van. I was sweating like the proverbial from the gig, and having to load up after.”

  “You’re not supposed to use them on your face.”

  “Just to cool down, was all. Do you think Chrissie would mind if I went up and used her shower?”

  “What, now? I’ve just put this on a plate for you. Anyway, you can’t wander round having showers in the middle of a do, not with all these people here.”

  “I’m honking, though,” I said through a mouthful of corned beef, trying to act normal but at the same time taking my plate of pie to the far kitchen bench so Sam wouldn’t catch the whiff of Anji on me.

  “Our toilet bag’s up in the spare room. Go and splash some stuff on, you’ll be fine. And don’t be long – I’m sick of people asking where you are.”

  I had to wait for someone using the bathroom loo, exchanging a brief ‘All the best’ as we passed on the landing, but when I finally got the bathroom door locked behind me I went into overdrive, tearing all my clothes off as if I’d had a last-minute invitation to an orgy. I felt permeated with the smell of Anji and illicit sex, even more so with my genitals released to the air. I washed them thoroughly, using Chrissie’s soap, and lathered all parts of the body that Anji could have touched, which was just about everywhere. Then I dried off, talced and sprayed man perfume all over myself from the toilet bag before I put my clothes back on. I wished I dared make a complete change into tomorrow’s stuff, but I knew that would just make Sam suspicious.

  I felt I’d done enough to get through the rest of the party without somebody exposing me as a rabid adulterer, but when we were on our way to bed around four o’ clock in the morning I went through the same process in the bathroom as well as cleaning my teeth thoroughly, gargling mouthwash and dipping under the tap, pouring cold water over my lips for an obsessive amount of time, so that Sam asked, “Have you been making your will in there?” when I eventually joined her in the spare bed. I knew exactly how Lady Macbeth felt, trying to wash away that damn’d spot.

  I lay apart from Sam in the bed, not turning my back because we would only do that if we were in the huff with each other, but avoiding physical contact, still feeling contaminated. She snuggled up to me though, giving me little nibbles on my mouth and neck, then my shoulder, rubbing the inside of her ankle against my leg. When I didn’t respond she stroked her fingers over my nipples, then down my front, as Anji had done, and felt for my cock, cradling it in her hand. I could feel it lying there, damp and limp.

  “Mmm, call that a New Year present?” she said quietly in the dark. “Wham bam, thank you Sam. Not.”

  “I’m tired, that’s all. Been a long night.”

  She wanked my sorry cock rhythmically three or four times then gave up and let it go, dropping her hand to the space between us. I kept my eyes closed, but I could sense hers on me, watching my face. After a minute she turned her back on me and lay silently on her side and I lay watching her until I was sure she was asleep.

  The strange thing is, it’s not as if I hadn’t been there before, with Linda. Only that time the lover was Sam. Why did I not feel that overwhelming sense of guilt then - I mean about Sam - the many times we did it in her bed-sit while I was still in my relationship with… that is, still living with, Linda? If anything, it was the opposite. Towards the end I felt guilty when I’d had sex with my wife, and seen Sam later, as if I was letting her down, as if I wasn’t taking our relationship seriously, as if I was being unfaithful to Sam way back then. I suppose in a sense I was. Maybe because with Sam it was a slow-burning affair. I didn’t just take her right there and then, as I’d done with Anji because she was easy and available. With us, it grew into something. Slowly. Naturally. Inevitably. I guess the difference, when you come down to it, was love.

  Our coolness with each other lasted all the next day, and I was waiting for it to build up to a row, but it didn’t, even after we’d said our goodbyes to Chrissie and the clan, and gone back to the flat. We sat and watched TV most of the evening with a bottle of red between us, picking at some leftovers from the party that Chrissie had insisted on us taking when we left. We hardly talked at all. That night, even though Sam came to bed with her nightie on, I showed willing, tried to give her what she’d wanted at her sister’s, but Sam was having none of it, told me to stop pestering, lay facing away from me, with her nightie pulled firmly down over her bum.

  I suppose she was giving me the signal for the row to start, but I wasn’t going to be drawn into it, not knowing where it was going to end, so I avoided doing what I would normally do, asking her what’s up to release the valve, knowing that after the blow-up and the tears we’d generally be all right again. Because this one wasn’t over some trivial annoyance, and I didn’t know how to negotiate my way round it, so I pretended not to notice her mood. Did that for the rest of the holiday, actually, and by the end of it we were more or less talking to each other normally, getting on with things without ever getting close, just kind of existing side by side in an indifferent sort of way. It wasn’t unlike living with Linda again. Part of me was aching to get back to work, just to break the cycle, except of course Sam would be with me there as well.

  We arrived at the radio station an hour or so earlier than normal, knowing there would be a backlog of stuff to wade through before we could prepare properly for the programme, plus I had a boxful of CDs and tracks I’d borrowed for the two Arena shows that I had to book back in to the music library. While Sam sorted out coffee I logged onto the computer so she could get on with checking through the emails. A sudden thought occurred, one that sent alarm bells ringing. What if Anji had sent me an email, using my contact details from the station website? She wasn’t to know that anybody but me read my messages, much less my partner. She might be saying anything about the other night. I sat at Sam’s chair and started to work through the clutter in the inbox. Sam pushed through the ops room door with the coffees.

&nbs
p; “I’m on a roll with these,” I said, my eyes on the screen. “Why don’t you take that lot upstairs, book ‘em back in? I’ll have everything cleared by the time you’ve done.”

  “Fair enough,” Sam said. She set down one coffee mug next to me and did a balancing act with the other on top of the DJ box as she negotiated her way out again. I know I should have held the door open for her, but I didn’t - I was too desperate to track down any incriminating evidence and get rid of it while she was gone.

  I needn’t have been so paranoid. There wasn’t a squeak from Anji among the emails – a huge relief, as I’d been having nightmares about her wanting to carry on the relationship in some way. Thank god, it looked as if she was happy to treat what we’d done together as a one-night fling. That was it for me. I’d had my scare and I was never going to put myself into that position again. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Sam. I’d make it up to her somehow, put the smile back on her face. If I needed reminding how much I loved her, this little escapade, in an odd way, had done it.

  When Sam came back to prepare for the show I was deliberately upbeat, chatting to her about getting into the groove again, full of ideas about things we could do with the programme for the new year, but I have to admit it was hard work. She still hadn’t got over my huff with me, and I knew I’d made a basic error letting her struggle with that box in the doorway when all I had to do was stand up to lend a hand – little things like that can sometimes just turn it for Sam. Still, by the time I was on-air and we really were into the swing of things I could see her through the glass chatting cheerfully with the callers, smiling down the phone, seemingly back to normal.

  Which lasted precisely until two in the morning when we handed over to Alex Ray and were on our way home. We were back to square one. She said nothing to me in the car, went straight to bed without our usual nightcap, and carried on with the cold shoulder treatment. Next morning she was up earlier than usual, got dressed, and said, “I’m going out for a while. There’s bacon in the fridge,” and was down the stairs and away before I even had my head off the pillow.

  It must have been nearly six hours later when the key turned in the door and she marched in with what I guessed was clothes shopping from the New Year sales in one hand, and something in an oversize carrier bag in the other. I’d just been idling the afternoon away really, playing a computer game when she got back.

  “Retail therapy?” I said, looking at the bags. She ignored the comment, just placed the smaller bags down on the bed, and shook out the contents of the larger bag onto the floor. It was one of those massive sports holdalls, the kind of bag you could put cricket pads and stumps in as well as kit for a whole team. Only Sam wasn’t intending to use it for sports. She laid it out on the bed, unzipped the flap all the way round, transferred all her shopping into the holdall, then started packing it with her stuff from our drawers and cupboards.

  “What are you doing?” I said, leaving my desk to come and stand behind her. The question was redundant - what I really meant was why, except by now that was obviously a no-brainer as well, so I guess the real questions were what do you know and how did you find out? But I couldn’t ask those questions at this stage. Didn’t need to. Sam was about to answer them anyway.

  She straightened her back, half-turned to glare at me coldly, and reached into the pocket of her leather coat. She handed over what looked like a note – I thought it must be her Dear John letter to me – but when I opened it out I found myself gazing at my own grinning face, creased across the nose where the picture had been folded and put in Sam’s pocket. It was one of my publicity shots. I stared at it blankly until Sam lost patience.

  “Other side,” she said. I turned the photo over, and there on the bottom half of the white card, written probably with the same black permanent marker I always used for autographs, was a mobile telephone number and a short message. Call me! Anji xx

  “Where did you get this?” I said, my eyes still on the card. I have to admit that, even with the blood chilling in me, my brain was already at work on innocent explanations.

  “If you hadn’t been too lazy to do your own library filing, I wouldn’t have found it at all,” said Sam. “Not that it was any big surprise.”

  Shit! My mind leapt back to the Arena, Anji tidying up my stuff while I helped Dave with the get-out. But it’s circumstantial evidence.

  “I’ve no idea who this is. You know what it’s like at the gigs, there’s loads of people come round looking for photos and freebies. Some girl must have written this while she was in the queue or whatever. Having a laugh with her mates, probably. Or maybe she fancies me, I can’t help that, can I? I don’t even know what she looks like.”

  “She wouldn’t be a brunette with a shimmery little red and black dress, then? Showing her knickers up on stage with you half the night.”

  “Doesn’t ring…”

  “Don’t, Marc. Don’t even go there, cos I’m there already. If you’re going to carry on behind my back you shouldn’t start the first round in full view of fifteen hundred people. Including some that know me as well as you.”

  I was floundering. Outright denial now out of the question, I had to go for damage limitation. “Look, it was just a New Year kiss…”

  “I’ve said, don’t start with the excuses. I know about her staying behind at the end of the gig. In fact I probably know more about this girl than you do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sam paused, making sure she had my full attention. “Because I rang the number on that card this morning.”

  I was tipping over the edge. “Right. And… what did she have to say?”

  “She didn’t answer it. Her mother did.”

  “Her mother?”

  “It was ringing in her bedroom, and her mam picked it up. You see, as her mother told me when I said I was a friend trying to get in touch with Anji, they’re not allowed to take their mobiles into school.”

  “School?” The image of Anji and me at it furiously in the van came, stark and lurid, into my mind. I hadn’t even worn a condom. How old is she? What if she’s pregnant? What if she accuses me of rape? Are you sorry you did it? she’d said.

  “She looked at least…”

  “Whatever.” Sam turned her back on me and continued her packing. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, just stood stupidly watching her. As she reached out to take another top from the drawer, head bent, I saw a tear splash onto her wrist. Instinctively I put a hand onto her shoulder, comforting, and she twisted away violently.

  “Don’t touch me! Get out, get out!”

  I really had no choice, backed away to the door and opened it to leave, then realised I didn’t have any shoes on. I came back to fish them out from under the bed, took my coat as well, while Sam was still sobbing at the drawer. I thought about trying again to go to her, but her rejection, her repulsion, had been too strong to be anything but final. I closed the door quietly behind me as I went, levering into my shoes at the top of the stairs before I walked out, head bowed, as if I was escaping through a crowd that had witnessed everything and was standing ready to spit at me.

  I don’t know what it is about the pull of water in situations like this, but I ended up down at the riverside, staring across at the far bank without really seeing it, letting my hands go cold on the top of the safety rail. By the time I came away there were lights reflecting on the surface of the water, and it was fully dark before I finished the long walk back to the flat. Sam was gone, of course, with her stuff. No note. When I caught myself thinking about her struggling with that heavy holdall I swore aloud and punched a door-post in frustration, deliberately hurting myself for having the gall to worry about her too fucking late.

  Naturally Sam didn’t come in to work, and when Debbie turned up instead, giving me the evil eye, I knew exactly where Sam had got the gen on what Anji looked like and what we got up to on stage. I’d forgotten about Debbie bumming the comps that the organiser had sent in case I wanted to
bring a friend. I tried to find out from Debbie where Sam had gone off to, but she claimed not to know. That was the start of the Marc Niven freeze-out as far as the whereabouts of Sam was concerned. Everybody in the station closed ranks. All I got to find out was that Sam had first taken some sick leave, then handed in her notice with immediate effect. And I was stuck with Debbie until Marni came along.

  Marni. Oh, I can’t get away with this, can I? Here’s me on the one hand talking about how guilty I feel and how I’d never hurt Sam again after the Anji affair, how I’m so in love with her… and barely a month after she’d gone I was trying to hit on her replacement. Not to mention the girl in the pub when I was drunk. And who was it exactly who got involved in kerb-crawling behind the railway station? Turned up at a brothel? And other offences to be taken into consideration, in the mind’s eye at least.

  Well, your honour, I’d like to bring in a key witness for the defence. Name of Edona. I am a changed man, and it’s not being caught out over Anji that’s done it. It’s meeting Edona and hearing her sad, sad story. Yes, I confess I was tempted by Edona as well, ached to enter her as she lay there so sweet and vulnerable. But surely that’s a count on my side, a tick in the plus column, that I was so tempted and resisted anyway, not once but twice. And helped her escape. You know what? I’ll be honest. The real reason I risked my neck to get Edona away… It wasn’t just a Good Samaritan act, helping somebody in dire need; it wasn’t even entirely driven by guilt, though that was a factor. No, the real reason was that I thought somewhere along the line I might get some recognition for it, get in the papers maybe like the time I talked the suicide down from the bridge, and maybe Sam would see it, and realise I wasn’t such a bastard after all. Maybe even come back to me.