by Jane Corry
I find myself standing up.
‘Are you going?’ asks Matthew, alarmed.
‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘And I don’t need the Ladies either.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he says slowly.
‘The old Matthew would have done,’ I find myself replying. ‘Shall we go upstairs?’
Then I hold out my hand to him and we walk towards the lift. It’s as though another woman has taken over my mind. I know this is wrong. More than that. It’s crazy. But I simply can’t stop. And now Matthew realizes my intentions, he is walking as fast as I am.
Ironically, my room is on the fourth floor again. Is this meant to be? It’s almost like the last time we were in a hotel together – could that just have been last Friday? – except that now it is different. Now we know what we are doing and where we are going. I’m me. A braver, more honest me than I’ve been for years.
We walk along the soft-carpeted corridor to Room 404, his arm now firmly around me. I take the key card out from my handbag. I drop it. We both bend to pick it up at the same time. Our hands brush. My skin is on fire. I put it in the wrong way. He takes it and places the magnetic strip the other way round so the door finally clicks open. There is a king-size bed in front of us.
I stop for a minute, remembering. ‘They only had a double left by the time I rang,’ I say, embarrassed.
‘Perfect,’ he murmurs.
Suddenly his hands are on me. Tracing my curves on the outside of my cashmere jumper. His face is drawing closer. His lips are on mine. His kiss is meaningful. Loving. Familiar, as if this is twenty-three years ago, when he was mine and not Sandra’s. I feel a flash of guilt for the poor woman in a wheelchair. But I am also overcome by something else – grief for what I lost all those years before; for what had been taken from me so unnecessarily.
Tears begin to roll down my face. All the hurt and pain from that time comes roaring back.
‘It’s all right,’ he soothes, kissing them away. ‘I’m here now.’
I think of Stuart and almost instinctively I feel myself pull back slightly. I am a married woman. We have children together, for pity’s sake. I should stop this now.
But my body won’t let me break away. I am under a spell.
Now his tongue is in my mouth, probing. His hands are gently easing my jumper off over my head. He undoes my bra and nuzzles my breasts, kissing each nipple in turn. Then he kneels down and unzips my trousers. ‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he breathes.
And I know I’ve missed him too. Missed the longing for another willing body. Missed the feeling of being wanted.
I’m undressing him now. Urgently. Hungrily. There is no point in pretending otherwise. I am on top of him. Then the other way round. The relief when he enters me makes us both gasp out loud.
How could I ever have told myself that life would go on after Matthew? My body hasn’t felt this alive since the last time he touched me. He is doing things I had forgotten were even possible.
‘I love you, Pops,’ he breathes. ‘I always have. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of you.’
And even though what he’s saying is absurd. Even though I have a husband I love, and children I adore, I find myself agreeing.
‘I love you too.’
‘Good morning.’
I can feel warm breath in my ear and a finger softly tracing the contours of my face.
‘You’re so beautiful when you’re asleep.’
That doesn’t sound like Stuart. I sit bolt upright.
‘Almost as beautiful as you are when you’re awake.’ Matthew props himself up next to me.
It all comes screaming back to me. The hotel, Matthew, the wine. The sex.
I’ve been unfaithful. No. NO! How did this happen? How have I become a completely different person? A wave of nausea hits me, so strong that for one horrible moment I think I might be sick there and then. I groan.
‘Feeling a bit the worse for wear? Me too.’ Matthew laughs and puts an arm around me.
But I’d only had one drink, albeit a large one. Besides, I’d been the one who’d led him on. I had suggested going upstairs, hadn’t I? I have only myself to blame. I stagger towards the bathroom, stunned by what I’ve done. ‘You’ll feel better after some breakfast,’ he calls after me.
Shutting the door, I close the lid of the loo and sit down, trying to think through the thickening fog of panic. This can’t be real. I lean across to the sink and splash my face with cold water. I can hear Matthew calling to me from the bedroom.
‘I was saying we should talk about what to do,’ he repeats when I emerge.
I survey the rumpled sheets and his naked body. I can still smell our sex. We didn’t, I suddenly realize with a ghastly flash, even use a condom.
‘What to do about what?’
He looks at me, surprised.
‘About us.’
Us? I stare at him.
‘What do you mean? There’s no “us”, Matthew. You have Sandra. She needs you. And I’m married, I have a family.’ I can feel I’m about to cry and I’m suddenly very aware that I’m naked. Gathering up my clothes that are heaped on the floor, I hold them against my body as if he hasn’t already seen me in the flesh.
‘Shhhh, don’t cry.’ Matthew is out of bed in a flash and crossing the room to where I’m standing. He pulls me towards his chest. He’s stroking my hair. I’d forgotten how he used to do that.
I’m weeping copiously now. ‘How could we both have behaved so badly?’
Matthew doesn’t say anything for a moment. I can hear the rise and fall of his breath. ‘I know, I feel awful too. But if we love each other …’
‘Love?’ I repeat. Love is a word for my children. For Stuart, despite everything. For the life that we all live together.
‘Yes.’ There’s a tightness to Matthew’s voice now. ‘That’s what you said last night. I told you that I loved you and then you said – quite clearly – “I love you too.”’
I did. I know I did. And I had meant it then. But now, in the cold daylight, I don’t.
Suddenly Betty flashes into my head. My wonderful, kind, supportive mother-in-law. What is she going to think of me? I can see it now. Stuart will divorce me. Melissa and Daisy will despise me. I will be estranged from my beautiful daughters. And what about my father? What will he say? I have done exactly what my mother did. I have inherited her bad blood.
The woman who so willingly took her lover up to Room 404 last night seems like a stranger to me now. I am not her. Nor, I tell myself fiercely, am I the type to be the ‘other woman’; the sort who has an affair with someone else’s husband. I have to leave. I have to fix this.
I free myself from Matthew’s grasp and put on my underwear.
‘What are you doing?’
‘This was a mistake, Matthew.’ I can barely look at him. ‘A terrible mistake. I love my husband.’
As I say it, I realize with a horrible pang of certainty that it’s true. I don’t want to be with anyone but Stuart. It’s almost as if I had to cross that line and have sex with someone else in order to see that, amazing as it was, the only thing that really counts is the solidity of the family life that my husband and I have built around us.
‘And you love Sandra,’ I add.
When he says nothing I force myself to look at him. He is staring at the floor.
‘I don’t,’ he says quietly. ‘There’s been nothing between us for years. She has never forgiven me since she worked it out. Realized that I’ve never been able to get over you.’
What? I vaguely remember Matthew saying something like ‘Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of you’ last night. But this revelation about Sandra is something else. I wonder if he’s gone mad. But he seems deadly serious.
Shock is now followed by anger, which fires out of me. ‘Then why did you leave me in the first place? Why has it taken you more than twenty years to get in touch?’
When he replies, it sounds like he’s choking. ‘B
ecause I heard you’d got married and didn’t want to mess up the life you’d created. I thought you wouldn’t want anything to do with me anyway. But meeting you again, Pops … well it’s made me reassess my life. Last night was amazing! I just can’t lose what we found. I thought about leaving Sandra years ago. I almost did, but then she got MS and it wouldn’t have been right.’
‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘And it wouldn’t be right now.’ I reach for my bag from the chair and make for the door.
‘Don’t,’ he says, grabbing my arm. ‘We can work this out, Poppy. It’ll be hard, but we can’t let this go. It’s too precious.’
‘Stop it!’ I say, trying to pull away. ‘You’re hurting me.’
But he doesn’t seem to hear. ‘I can’t go on like this. I’m so unhappy.’ He is sobbing like a child.
‘Matthew …’ I finally manage to free myself from his grip. ‘I will not leave my husband. I will not destroy my family for this.’
He lets me go then. I’m already out of the door. Running towards the lift. Pausing briefly at reception to pay my bill only to find out from the young girl at the desk that it ‘has already been covered by the gentleman’.
I rush out of the doors. A voice shouts my name, but I don’t look back. See a passing taxi. Hail it and then fall into the back seat. My arm is throbbing from where Matthew had grabbed me. Then my phone shows I’ve got a voicemail message. From Melissa, half an hour ago. ‘Where are you, Mum?’ her voice pleads. ‘You’re not picking up? Daisy can’t find her French file and Gran says I should have told you that I’ve got detention tonight. Don’t be mad.’
Mad? How can I ever be angry with them again after what I’ve done?
I cover my face with my hands as if I can erase the events of last night this way. What will they do if they find out?
A small, dangerous voice answers me.
‘You’ll just have to make sure that they never do.’
12
Betty
For weeks after our dinner at Jane and Gary’s, Jock barely spoke to me. When he did, there was so much anger and disdain in his voice that I came to prefer the stony silences and the long empty evenings when he was out drinking at the pub. By accepting the invitation, I’d made him look stupid as well as inferior. And that, in my husband’s book, was unforgivable. It had, I suddenly thought, been months since he’d called me his ‘wee hen’. He’d stopped for a time before when he hadn’t liked me working in the department store. I was slowly beginning to realize that the real Jock wasn’t the charmer I’d thought I’d married, but a bullying, moody man who was only happy if everything was going his way.
‘What’s up with your Jock?’ Mum demanded when I went round one day. ‘Dad says he’s been storming through the factory, throwing his weight about and giving the men a right talking to for the smallest thing.’
I sat down heavily on the sofa. The new colour TV Mum had just had delivered – after years of saving up her Green Shield stamps – was blaring out but she showed no signs of turning it down and I didn’t like to ask.
‘A friend of mine from antenatal class invited us to dinner,’ I said. ‘They live in one of those new semis on Mill Street and Jock got it into his head that they were up themselves.’
Mum sniffed. ‘Maybe he was right. You need to stick with your own kind.’
Exactly Jock’s words.
‘If you ask me,’ she continued, ‘all that hat modelling stuff turned your head a bit. Still, when that baby of yours is born, you won’t be going out anywhere.’ She gave me a warning look. ‘You won’t know what’s hit you. Kids take all your sleep and all your time. Life will never be the same again.’
She sat down next to me on the sofa, one eye on the telly and the other on me. ‘I’ll give you one piece of advice for nothing. Your dad says that Jock of yours is very popular in the factory with the girls. So make sure you keep him satisfied. If you ask me, he’s the sort who’ll look around if you don’t.’
You see, Poppy, in those days, the only thing worse than not getting married, or having a baby before marriage, was having a husband who went to prison or walked out on you. You didn’t get the state handouts that you get now. I’d probably have had to move in with my parents – that’s if they were prepared to have me.
So I couldn’t afford to upset Jock. But without Jane, I was desperately lonely. And with my due date drawing ever closer, I turned over my mum’s words about the baby again and again until I felt sick with fear.
A week or so later there was a knock on my door. To my amazement, it was Jane, looking, as usual, immaculate, with her make-up in place and her baby bump neatly centred.
I have to tell you, Poppy, that Jane was really lovely. Not just in looks but in spirit too. I have a picture of her and little Alice from one of our picnics in the park. Jane actually had a camera and gave me the print. It’s one of my most precious possessions. I’m afraid I had a bit of an argument with Daisy when she found it in my bedroom not long before the accident. She asked me who the woman in the photograph was, but she caught me so off guard that I pretended I’d forgotten. Then I grabbed it back from her before it got creased.
‘Jane!’ I said when I opened the door. ‘What are you doing here?’
I didn’t mean to be rude but Jane had never been to our place before. Like I told you earlier, I hadn’t asked her over because I’d been too ashamed.
‘I haven’t seen you in the park and I wanted to make sure you were all right,’ she said. ‘Our antenatal midwife gave me your address. I hope you don’t mind.’
Alice was standing by her, tugging at her mother’s navy-blue maternity dress. I recognized it from the window of a pricey boutique in town.
‘I’m OK,’ I said, almost pulling her in before someone could see her on the doorstep and tell Jock I’d had a visitor. People were like that round here.
I watched Jane’s eyes widen as she took in the dark lounge with my husband’s cheap polyester shirts in a pile on the shabby brown velour sofa, waiting for me to iron them. I took a deep breath. ‘It’s just that, well, Jock says I can’t see you any more. He says that –’
She interrupted me gently. ‘I know I only met him once, but I get the feeling that your husband is rather insecure.’
I flush. ‘He has a bit of a chip on his shoulder,’ I admitted.
Jane gave my hand an understanding squeeze. ‘I’m sorry.’ Then she glanced at the stained carpet, which we couldn’t afford to replace. ‘It can’t be easy.’
‘It’s not,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘This place is a tip compared with yours.’
She flushed. ‘I wasn’t talking about your home. I meant that it can’t be easy having a husband you have to tiptoe round all the time.’
I could feel that I was close to tears.
‘But look,’ she said suddenly. ‘It’s you and I who are friends. We don’t need to involve the men. In fact, I’d say it’s none of their business. Let’s just meet up in the park like we used to. Jock doesn’t need to know.’
I shook my head. ‘Someone might mention to him that they’d seen us.’
It was almost like arranging an affair, I thought. How ridiculous that I couldn’t even see my friend.
‘OK,’ said Jane thoughtfully. ‘Then let’s go out of town.’
‘But I can’t drive!’
I’d expressed interest in lessons but, as Jock said, where were we going to afford the money for that? When I suggested he taught me like his mate had taught him, he said he didn’t have time. I got the feeling he liked being the only driver in the family.
‘I’ve got a car,’ said Jane. ‘I’ll take you. We can go on some little trips, can’t we, Alice? Your favourite is the zoo, isn’t it, poppet?’
Her lovely daughter nodded solemnly. There was something almost doll-like about her, and yet also adult, as if she had witnessed things that other children hadn’t. I don’t know why I thought that. I just did. Sometimes I get these strange thoughts. My mum’s mum used to be what the
y call ‘fey’ and see things. I don’t do that. But I have found that I can sense things in other people that others might not see. That’s why I knew Jane was a good woman. If only I’d had the same intuition about my husband before we got married. But it doesn’t work with everyone.
That reminded me. I glanced at the clock. Jock wasn’t due to get back for ages but Mum could well pop round and then she might mention Jane’s visit to my husband.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you ought to go,’ I said.
‘Do we have to walk down all those stairs, Mummy?’ asked Alice. ‘They smell of wee-wee.’
I felt even more embarrassed than before. ‘I’m afraid the lift is out of order again.’
‘That’s fine, darling,’ said Jane brightly to her daughter. ‘It’s good exercise.’ Then she reached out and touched my hand once more. ‘I’ll ring you to arrange our trip.’
But after that dinner with Jane and her husband, Jock had had the phone disconnected. (Of course, we didn’t have mobiles then.) He said we needed to ‘cut down on costs’. He also told me I had to wait until next month until I bought myself another pair of shoes. I didn’t understand. After all, he was earning decent money now. When I told him this, he pointed out that we needed to save ‘every penny’ for when I gave up work to have the baby. But I couldn’t help thinking he wanted to be in control of the purse strings and I didn’t dare argue about it.
‘Actually, there’s a problem with our line at the moment,’ I said, not wanting to tell her the truth. ‘And you can’t just call round because Jock might be here. It’s a good thing he’s not around now.’
‘You really are scared of him, aren’t you?’ My friend looked at me worriedly. ‘He doesn’t …’
But I wasn’t listening to her. A trickle of water was running down my legs.
I reddened with shame. I’d wet my knickers a couple of times in the last few weeks – something we’d been assured in antenatal classes was normal because of the pressure of the baby on the bladder. ‘Oh dear. I think I’ve had a bit of an accident.’
