“Elliott! Shut up!”
But he only screeches louder. I tug at Harry’s bandages, trying to loosen them, which makes him howl too, like the Hound of the Baskervilles. If the Beresfords hear him, he’ll never be allowed in here for Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers ever again.
At this juncture, Ed walks in.
Elliott runs to him and clings to his legs. “Mummy’s hitting me!”
Ed’s face blackens. “What?”
“Look what he’s done to this poor dog!”
“I was only being a doctor,” Elliott snivelled.
Ed curled his son into him. “He was only being a doctor.”
“Doctors don’t drag healthy dogs off the street and try to mummify them!” I untangle Harry’s legs, and he yelps gratefully as he staggers to his feet.
“There’s no harm done,” Ed snarls helpfully.
“And where have you been?” I ask coldly. “Why was Elliott left alone? You know what he’s like.”
“I’ve been at Jemma’s.” Ed stares directly at me. “Looking for you.”
I’m breathing heavily already, and it goes up a gear. I snatch the biscuit tin. “Elliott, give that poor dog a Wagon Wheel and take him home.”
My son does as he’s told amid dramatic sniffles and leads Harry, who of course is none the worse for his amateur animal husbandry, out of the door.
Elliott is so angelic, even though I’m sure he has 666 tattooed in his hair somewhere, that it’s impossible to stay mad at him. At this point Ed and I would normally break down into fits of giggles. Today it doesn’t happen. We stay, horns locked, staring angrily at each other.
“You weren’t at Jemma’s,” Ed says.
“I went there and knocked for ages. She was out,” I state.
“Jemma says she was in all night. You never went there.”
“That isn’t true.”
“What is, these days, Alicia?” Ed laughs, but it’s clear he finds nothing amusing and there’s a bitter edge to his tone. “So, where did you go?”
What can I say? Whatever I am charged with now, I’m guilty. Yesterday, I could justify being filled with righteous indignation at being so unfairly accused. But now? Images of my wanton watery romp swim by and, viewed from this distance, it isn’t a very pretty sight. I’ve slept with another man and my innocence has gone.
“Did you go to his house?”
“Yes.”
Ed folds his arms across his chest and lets out a steady stream of breath. “And are you still insisting that there’s nothing going on?”
How can I? I have been making love with Christian with no thought of my husband or my children or anyone but myself and…what does that make Christian now? My lover? What does it make me? A pretty crap wife, for one thing.
But I don’t know that having gone this far, I can never see him again, never want him again, never hold him again. What on earth has happened? Why do I feel like this? Has my brain been scrambled because I’m thirty-eight and enormously grateful that someone so young and so beautiful could fall in love with me?
I love Ed. I always have. But suddenly we are the strangers. I look at him, and the connection between us has somehow been broken and I don’t know what I can do to put it right. There are miles stretching out between us across a dozen dusty kitchen floor tiles. This has happened so quickly. One minute I’d told a teeny-weeny fib, and now I’m flailing about in the Grand Canyon of lies with no idea how to find my way out.
I try to move toward Ed, but I can’t, the chasm is too big for me to cross. I catch sight of myself in one of the glass-fronted kitchen cabinets which I hate, because, hey, who wants to show off their tins of baked beans. And I don’t recognize myself at all. I have no idea who I am. I swallow hard. “I’m sorry.”
Ed doesn’t move either. “So am I,” is all he says.
CHAPTER 32
Robbie and Rebecca were waiting in the kitchen. Christian closed the door and leaned against it. “She’s unpacking her case.”
Rebecca tucked her knees in tighter to her on the Chesterfield. “Great.”
“I said she could stay if she needed to.” Christian looked at them both apologetically. “I just didn’t expect her to be back so soon. I hope that’s okay.”
Robbie shrugged. “Suits me, mate.”
“She looked like she was here for the duration.” Rebecca sucked her finger petulantly. “Exactly how long is she going to be our houseguest?”
“I don’t know,” Christian admitted. “Until she gets sorted, I guess.”
“Why here?” Rebecca whined. “I thought we’d got enough problems.”
“She had nowhere else to go, Becs. The situation is difficult. Complicated.” Robbie and Christian exchanged a glance.
“I’m missing something, aren’t I?” Rebecca insisted.
“You’d better tell her,” Robbie said.
Christian sighed. He left the door and came and sat down next to her on the sofa.
Rebecca frowned. “Why don’t I like the sound of this?”
Christian picked up a cushion and fiddled with it, unpicking the tassel from the corner. “Ali’s married,” he said. “Or was. She’s left her husband. And I’m sort of involved.”
“Oh, this is a classic, Christian. Even for you.”
“I love her, Becs.”
“You don’t know the meaning of the word,” Rebecca replied. “This woman has turned her life upside down for you, and your idea of commitment would be baby-sitting a goldfish for a week while its owner was on holiday.”
“That’s not true.”
“You forget that I know from bitter, personal experience.”
Christian laid his head back on the sofa and hugged the cushion to his chest. “How can I forget? You’d never let me.”
Rebecca stood up. “Well, good luck to you. And good luck to her. My God, she’s going to need it.”
And then she flounced out the door, slamming it behind her.
Christian put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.
“Dotty totty,” Robbie declared. “She’s probably premenstrual.”
“It would be nice if it were that simple.”
Robbie twisted round in his chair. “Look, mate. It can’t be that easy for Becs. She’s still got it bad for you, and yet since you broke up, you’ve paraded a different bird through here every week. And now this?”
“I know.”
“She would seem perfectly entitled to one small tantrum.”
“I don’t want her making things difficult for Ali.”
“You know Becs. It’s not going to be easy for her.”
“She could move out,” Christian pointed out.
“To where? Where is she going to find a gaff like this at the price we do, or don’t, pay?” Robbie looked at the crystal chandelier that hung incongruously from the kitchen ceiling. It was covered in dust and cobwebs but still managed to retain its splendor. “And let’s face it, Chris, if it were a young bit of fluff—as per usual—she might not feel so bad. But a bird that’s twice your age with three kids? That’s a bit like being slapped about the face with a wet kipper.”
“You’re right,” Christian said. “I’ll try to be more sensitive.”
“Yeah, and Sylvester Stallone’s going to take up embroidery.”
Christian threw the cushion at him and Robbie ducked, laughing. Christian chuckled too.
Robbie folded his arms on the table and looked earnestly at his friend. “I take it Ali doesn’t know about your wild night of passion with the lovely Sharon?”
Christian groaned and ran his hands through his hair. “It was a close thing. Very close.” He looked up at Robbie, appealing. “I don’t want anything to spoil this, mate. It’s too important.”
“Better keep certain parts of your anatomy under control then.”
“It was you who persuaded me!” Christian protested.
“As if you’ve ever needed any encouragement.” Robbie swung his legs round and put the
m on the table.
Christian grinned. “I told her you’d spent the night with Sharon.”
“Oh, thanks a bunch! That’s a bit rich. I was flying solo listening to you two through the wall due to the fact that, Uncle Robert, despite his best attempts, didn’t get so much as a whiff of willing knickers.”
“That’s because whatever her name was passed out in the taxi.”
“I am fully aware of that.”
Christian walked over to the table and clapped Robbie on the back. “I owe you one, mate.”
“You owe me several,” Robbie reminded him. “I’m counting.”
“I’d do the same for you.”
“Yeah, right,” Robbie moaned. “Chance would be a fine thing.”
“Beer?”
Robbie brightened. “Why not?”
Christian went to the fridge and pulled out two beers and opened them.
“Tell me,” Robbie said, “as I was supposed to be there, was she any good?”
Christian put the beers on the table. He twitched his eyebrows at his friend and lowered his voice. “She was sen-fucking-sational!”
“Oh God! I knew she would be. I should have gone for her instead of whatshername.” Robbie slumped forward on the table. “You’re such a bastard, Winter!”
Christian smiled and kissed his friend on the top of his head. “That’s why you love me,” he said.
CHAPTER 33
We are sitting in a trendy bar called Black and Blue. And that’s pretty much how I feel—bruised and sad. I am on my third glass of Chardonnay, and it has made not the slightest impression on me yet. The doors are pulled back so that we are almost on the pavement and exposed to the full hurly-burly of Kensington Church Street. Intermittently, red double-decker buses rumble past and shake the glass.
Christian is eating some sort of goat’s cheese concoction that sounded revolting but looks okay. He is quiet and probably as shocked as I am—if not more so. I won’t bore you with the details, but I am back at Christian’s house with a larger suitcase than before and a feeling of impending permanency about it. Ed and I parted dry-eyed and angry. This is a trial separation—whatever that is when it’s at home. I thought only pop stars and sports personalities announced that they were having trial separations, which always seemed to me to be publicity-speak for, “I’ve run off with someone else younger and sexier.” Actually, I don’t think I’ll dwell on that too much….
Ed and I are supposed to be having time to think. At the moment I would rather not think, but I can’t help it. I have so many different emotions swirling around inside of me and yet feel utterly, utterly numb. Maybe we just can’t face saying to each other that it’s over and this “trial separation” is a less brutal way of letting go. I don’t know.
Christian has been marvelous. He’s been clucking round me like a mother hen and has even promised to change the sheets on his bed later—which I have to say do look like they’ve seen a bit of action. Robbie seems very nice even though he’s a little more pierced than I normally find appealing in a man. Rebecca banged out of the front door not long after I arrived, so I think you can probably ascertain from that what her view is on the subject.
“Okay?” Christian asks from the depths of his lettuce.
I nod, but I’m not. Of course I’m not. Ed took the boys out while I left, and Tanya will come home from a great day out in Brighton with Hannah Cooper and find her mother gone. That is just so tragic, I can only bear it on the fringes of my consciousness. How will they manage without me? I slog back some more wine before I become so maudlin that I want to leap in front of the next double-decker.
I’ve phoned Jemma and given her a brief rundown of the situation. The conversation swung giddily between relief that I’d been found and anger at what she saw as running away again. She’s coming down here after work, when she’s sold her last silk smoking jacket to a soap starlet or whatever. She shouldn’t be long now.
I couldn’t stay with my sister. Partly because she lives in a shoe box—albeit a shoe box that’s been decorated by Heal’s. And partly because we’d kill each other within twenty-four hours. I adore Jemma—she is my baby sister and I would lay down my life for her. I would not, however, willingly share a bathroom with her. I wouldn’t call her maniacally tidy, but she’d fall in a dead faint if there was even a millimeter of toothpaste left sticking out of the tube when she came to use it. I consider myself supremely lucky if any of my family actually manage to get it in their mouths, as their aim invariably seems to involve going via the bathroom mirror. God help you if you actually used any of Jemma’s Egyptian cotton towels for wiping dirty hands! If she saw a pubic hair on the soap, she’d probably slit her wrists—if it wasn’t for the mess. I couldn’t cope with that now. I need to be loved and mollycoddled, not gasped at every time I put a teacup in the wrong place. Christian’s sheets might be crumpled, but that’s easier to deal with right now. And at least I helped to get them that way.
“Do you want me to leave when your sister comes?” Christian says.
“I think so,” I sigh. “She’ll probably want to bollock me, and I wouldn’t want her to feel inhibited.” Not that Jemma ever does when it comes to voicing her opinion. I would just rather Christian’s first encounter with my family be on slightly more convivial terms than this.
“I love you, Ali,” he says, and his young, beautiful eyes are earnest. Christian clearly thinks that love is enough, and I don’t want to quench that inside him. Have you noticed that I haven’t said I love him? I can’t. It seems too huge a thing to voice. I feel an overwhelming rush when I see him, and perhaps I’m besotted to the point of insanity or at least major irrationality. But is that the same as love? Perhaps if I were twenty years younger and didn’t remember having a crush on both Starsky and Hutch, then I’d be less analytical. What do you think? Is there such a thing as love at first sight? Doesn’t love start when lust is spent and you’ve got a joint mortgage, equitable pension funds and other knee-high, helpless people who rely on you to make it work?
I never wanted “a Sewage Worker marriage.” One of Jemma’s phrases. Day after day of going through the motions. Staying together because it’s expected of you, the done thing. Apparently, most of my sister’s menfriends have them, and I wonder if this is what Ed says to other people when he is talking about me. I wanted us to have a strong, deep, abiding love that would grow more secure through all of life’s inevitable adversities. Sounds like the start of a hymn, doesn’t it? Did Ed and I stay together, muddling along, purely for the sake of the kids? I wouldn’t have said so. A few weeks ago I would have said that I adored him and that I’d never look at another man. But here I am, holding hands across the table with one, having parted from my husband. If you ask me, there must have been a lot of undetected, smelly effluence floating about just below the surface for us to have come to this point so quickly.
“I’ll get a job,” Christian says. “A proper job.”
I smile at his sincerity and squeeze his fingers, but before I can answer, I see my sister swing round the corner at the top of the road. She looks fabulous. Her hair shines in the sun as if it’s been buffed by a ton of beeswax. “Here’s Jemma,” I say, and I notice Christian sit up a little straighter. And so do I.
As she approaches us, she’s staring at Christian in a faintly mesmerized way. She kisses me on both cheeks and sits down with us.
“Jemma, this is Christian,” I say. “Christian, Jemma.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Christian turns on his best smile. Jemma nods speechlessly. “Can I get you a drink before I leave?”
“Wine. White. Dry,” Jemma manages.
Christian disappears self-consciously into the back of Black and Blue.
“Shit, Ali,” Jemma hisses. “He’s gorgeous!”
“Is he?” I say. “I hadn’t noticed.”
She glares at me. “There are, however, copies of Country Life in my doctor’s waiting room that are older than him!”
“Me
aning?”
“Exactly how old is he?”
“Twenty-three.”
Jemma snorts. “He looks a lot younger!” My sister leans toward me. “He wasn’t even born when ‘Dancing Queen’ was in the charts, Ali. How scary is that?”
Quite scary, I’ll admit.
Christian returns and puts a glass of wine in front of both Jemma and me. “Thanks.” I look up, and his face is the picture of worry and I don’t think it’s because Abba at the height of their fame passed him by.
“I’ll go back to the house,” he says. “And wait for you there.”
It’s clear in his eyes that he thinks Jemma will persuade me to do otherwise. I nod and Christian kisses the top of my head, threading his fingers through the back of my hair out of the range of Jemma’s stare. We both watch him walk away, and several other heads turn as he passes.
“Well,” Jemma says as we switch our attention back to each other. “I wish I’d got to him first.”
“So do I,” I comment. “Then perhaps I wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“It is a mess, Alicia,” she says, like I need reminding. “Why didn’t you tell me about this? I’m your sister and yet you’ve said nothing.”
“I didn’t think there was anything to say.”
“What about Ed? What about the children? How can you risk breaking up your home? All you’ve strived for?”
How can I answer her? This is the kick side of what Jemma does. But clearly it doesn’t register on her conscience that all the men she’s loved have wives, children, lives they too have strived to build. I decide it isn’t a good time to bring it up. She is here to save me from my fate for once, not the other way round.
Jemma snatches sips of her wine. “Do you really know what you’re doing?”
“Of course I don’t. I have no idea how we came to this point.”