“I’d marry him tomorrow if he asked me,” I replied.
Mal inhaled deeply. Nodded. He exhaled just as deeply as he ran his hand through his hair, still nodding. “OK,” he said eventually. Smiling grimly but still nodding his head. “OK, that’s good enough for me.” His cloak of disgruntlement seemed to fall away and his face became the sunshine that I’d seen earlier in the Arrivals area. “You have my blessing, little one,” he said.
“Well, that’s a relief,” I said, sarcastically. Although it was. It’d be difficult to date someone who Mal didn’t approve of. I’d do it, but it would feel as if I was cheating myself, lying to myself about whether I was truly in love with that person. “Just wait, I’m going to make sure that whoever you end up with thinks Hercules’ labors were nothing compared with the challenges I set her before she can get my approval. You watch, I’m going to make her go on a quest to find the Golden Fleece.”
I leave my clothes in a pile on the floor by the bed and don’t bother to wrap my hair or even put on my pajamas. It’s far too much effort to reach under my pillow for my nightclothes or my scarf.
Maybe I haven’t been thinking about Mal because I still miss him. After all, I’ve done that every day for the past eight years or so. Maybe it’s because Leo is missing him. Leo doesn’t know his dad, but that doesn’t mean he can’t miss him. Want to know what he’s like, who he is, how he fits into the huge jigsaw puzzle that is Leo’s life. Maybe, when Leo wakes up, I can talk to him about Mal. Maybe I can let him know without having to say the words that, if he could, his dad would love him very much. How could he not, when Leo is the best thing he’s ever done?
CHAPTER 7
O pen your eyes, Steph,” he says.
I do not want to open my eyes. I have only just fallen asleep, it seems, and I do not want to return to the place where I have recently left.
Angry Mal is there and I do not want to face him. It’s too much for a weekend, for the day after my tenth wedding anniversary. I want to stay here, half asleep, half awake, completely nowhere all at once.
Here, I don’t dream like I do when I’m asleep, and I don’t fret like I do when I’m completely awake.
Last night, surprisingly, he’d come to bed at the same time as me. But unlike usual, when we’d chat about what we’d do the next day, he’d stripped off his clothes in silence with his back to me, standing on his side of the bed, dropping each item on the floor as he exposed his strong body. Each muscle long and toned, smooth and sleek under his pale-cream skin.
I’d watched him strip down to nothing and then slide under the covers as though I wasn’t there. “Goodnight,” he’d mumbled, before turning to face the window.
I’d undressed in the silence, placing my dress and bra and knickers into the laundry basket straightaway. I’d tried, I’d really tried, I’d even pulled aside the sheets on my side of the bed—but I couldn’t. I had to go over to Mal’s side of the bed and pick up his clothes. There was no way I could leave his pile of things lying on the floor. It made the room look untidy. And if the room was untidy, it made everything feel untidy. It didn’t take much to make things tidy, it took a lot less to let things slide. If you controlled your surroundings, made sure everything was perfect, bad things were less likely to happen to you. If you didn’t let things slide, things didn’t fall apart. And if things did start to crumble, they would soon be fixed because chaos wouldn’t last long in the presence of perfect order.
I picked up Mal’s clothes, but he really did know better—dropping them on the floor was obviously a way of getting at me. Yes, maybe he hadn’t consciously done it to needle me, maybe he just couldn’t be bothered walking to the laundry basket, which was on the other side of the room, but we’d been together long enough for him to know it would be like an elbow in the ribs to me.
As I crossed the carpet, I stopped, brought his bundle of clothes to my nose, inhaled. Mal, the essence of him, filled my senses. He was one of my favorite smells. Clean like rosemary, soothing like thyme, spicy like cinnamon, undercut with a sharp tanginess like oranges. Without really thinking, I dropped the jacket and trousers into the basket, then buttoned on his dark cream shirt over my naked body. It was one of his more expensive shirts, its cotton was thick and the fabric tightly woven, the stitching durable, and it smelled of him. I wanted—needed—to go to sleep with the smell of him on me, pretending he was there with me. Pretending that he had been inside me and was now lying curled up beside me. Pretending we hadn’t both forgotten our wedding anniversary, pretending I hadn’t seen this played out many, many times before—that this wasn’t the first step on the road to divorce.
It was the thought of that word that had conjured up the night terrors. Huge, sweeping tides of panic moved through me every time I wondered if this was it, whether he would leave. When he would leave.
Then a similar tide would crash through me as I wondered what would become of us if he didn’t leave. If we would have to keep on living with huge unspoken truths between us. Then, I had begun to wonder if he still loved me. He stayed with me, but is he here because he loves me, or because he feels duty-bound, obligated?
At some point, when the terrors had snaked their icy tentacles over every inch of my mind, and in some places twisted back in on themselves, I fell asleep. And then I woke up again, but not fully. Which is how I like it. Floating in nothingness, too asleep to think, too awake to dream. Just floating here.
And now he’s trying to bring me round. Why he thinks I would want to come back here, I have no idea.
“Come on, babe, I know you’re not asleep, please open your eyes.”
Well, when he’s called me babe and asked me so nicely … Slowly I prize my eyes apart. It is still dark, still the middle of the night, because the sun hasn’t started to rise and the birds haven’t begun their dawn chorus.
He is on his side, leaning over me, a smile on his face, sparkles in his eyes, a completely different person to the one I went to bed with. What has happened to transform him in the past few hours?
He strokes his thumb over my cheek and I bite my lower lip, wondering why he is behaving as though he loves me again. “I was thinking,” he says, his eyes never leaving my face. “If we get going in the next couple of hours, at the crack of dawn, we could go to Paris.”
“Paris?”
“Yeah. And if we take an overnight bag, we’ll see if we can find somewhere nice to stay last minute. If not, we’ll come back, try to find somewhere to stay up in central London.”
I frown at him. “Why?” I ask.
“To celebrate our anniversary.”
“I thought you were working today.”
“Nope, I’ll call them from the train. I’ll even leave my laptop and BlackBerry at home.”
“Why?” I ask again.
“To celebrate our anniversary,” he repeats. “Do you fancy it?”
Of course I do. “Hmmm …” I say. “Maybe.”
“Oh, maybe, huh?” He climbs on top of me, straddling me, his knees gently resting on either side of my thighs. “Well, maybe I can’t help but notice that you’re wearing one of my shirts.” He reaches for the first button. “And maybe I need a way for you to make it up to me.”
“Nope, don’t think so,” I say, as he continues unbuttoning me. Pleasure pulses through me as he dramatically rips open the shirt. His soft fingers move over my skin, as if trying to read me, and my body comes alive with excitement.
He suddenly buries his nose in my belly button and starts to tickle me. I yelp, squirming, trying to get away from him. He holds me firmly between his legs, and soon we are both laughing as we dig at every available bit of flesh, kicking and screaming.
Mal’s large hands close around my wrists, pinning them on either side of my head. “Do you concede?” he asks, his face an inch away from mine, his chest moving rapidly.
“Yes,” I gasp. “Yes.”
“OK,” Mal says, and his hands slip away as he sits back.
I launch m
yself at him, catching him off guard and in the ribs, knocking him off center onto the bed. “You wench!” he cries at me as he lands and I climb on top of him, pinning his wrists to the bed.
“I can’t believe you fell for that,” I laugh, staring down at him. His hair, the color of burnt butter, has grown recently, it lies in thick curls all over his scalp. His russet eyes and his mouth are all alight with mirth, his skin flushed.
“Neither can I,” he replies.
“OK, now I can do some questioning: do you really want to go to Paris?”
“Yes. I’m sorry to tell you, babe, I know the sex is fantastic between us and everything, but I am married. And I love my wife. And we’ve never been to Paris together, so I want to go there with her.”
“Why, oh why, are the best ones taken?” Excitement and happiness flutter around my stomach like a bird in a cage. This is how it felt between us when we first met. How I haven’t felt for more than a few seconds in so long.
Mal uses my distraction, the slight loosening of my grip on his wrists, as a chance to flip me onto my back. Before I can react, he opens my legs and is making love to me. My body becomes boneless underneath him, like a fluid that moves with him, molding myself to the curves and lines of his body. As I sigh, he buries his face in the pillow. I remember when he used to cover my mouth with his, swallowing any sigh, moan or groan—any sound I made—into himself, as though he wanted everything he could get of me while we made love. But it’s only a little thing. I don’t even remember when he stopped doing it. And it really is only a little thing, and it doesn’t matter. We are together again. Properly. As man and wife. As woman and husband. As Steph and Mal.
And there is nothing … uhhhhhhhh … nothing as delicious as this.
In Mum’s shoebox in the bottom drawer at the bottom of her wardrobe, he found the pictures. Lots of them, when everyone wore funny clothes. And then there was one of him, but it wasn’t him.
The boy had hair the color of the pebbles on the beach, and he was white like Nana Mer, and his school tie was a different color to his. He ran to Mum in the kitchen and showed it to her.
“Who is this, Mum?” He held the photo in front of her.
Mum wiped her hands on her apron and took the photo from him and stared at it for the longest time. For ages and ages and ages. Then she looked up at him and her eyes were wet. His tummy went funny because he knew Mum was going to start crying.
“He’s a boy I grew up with,” she said. “But he turned into a man I don’t know.”
Mum handed the photo back to him.
“Why does he look like me?”
She did that thing where she rubbed her fingers on the side of his head, then stroked them down his face. “Because God likes to play jokes on me sometimes,” she said. “Not always funny ones.”
Leo nodded at Mum, but he knew that wasn’t the reason. He knew it was because this man was his dad. Dad wasn’t his real dad and he didn’t look like him. But Mum looked like Grandma. And David looked like his dad. And Richard looked like his dad. He knew, just knew, that this boy looked like him because he grew up and became his dad.
“OK, Mum,” he said and smiled at her. He didn’t say he knew that this man was his dad because he knew that it would make Mum cry.
He ran upstairs to his bedroom and hid the photo at the bottom of the book box under his bed. He liked to know it was there.
Leo, age 5 years
PART THREE
CHAPTER 8
S o far, these past four days, I have managed to avoid those two women who were gossiping about me.
It had all been pretty tame compared to the half-truths and stories people used to tell about me, but it’s such a shock to have it happen as an adult. When I’ve all but convinced myself there is nothing wrong with me.
I program an hour on the running machine on a steep incline and hit the “go” button. I need to run. I hadn’t been able to come early today, before work—my way of avoiding my two critics—because Mal, for some reason, had wanted me this morning.
Being so desperately wanted by him is such a rare occurrence that I hadn’t resisted. We didn’t make it to Paris on Saturday, we spent the day in bed, watching DVDs and eating junk food. After that first time, first thing, we didn’t make love again; we snuggled but that was as far as it went. But this morning, he had pounced on me the second the alarm went off and I opened my eyes. It wasn’t once, either—he’d been like a man in heat. Twice in the bedroom, then in the shower, then, as I was leaning over the kitchen counter reading the paper and waiting for my toast to pop up, he had popped up instead. He’d actually ripped the seam of my favorite pair of (very expensive) panties in his haste. Then in the shower again. Five times in one morning is unheard-of. He’d only left because his BlackBerry had bleeped, reminding him about a meeting with the board members he absolutely could not miss.
Each time had been fast, frantic and unexpectedly hard, a vague sense of detachment lingering afterwards. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was having an affair or thinking of having an affair, and this was his guilt sex.
But he wouldn’t. I know that now. Now, when it’s too late, I know he wouldn’t ever do that.
The terrain starts to rise beneath my feet, and I feel it coming, my lungs pushing harder, my heart thudding faster, the blood starting to race in my veins. I love this. The buildup. The rush toward ecstasy.
I shouldn’t really complain about Mal being all over me. Sometimes for months he doesn’t seem to know I’m female, let alone someone who’s meant to turn him on. And those times never coincide with the times I don’t feel up to it, and I have to either close my eyes and let him get on with it, or find excuses to get out of it.
Not that he’d mind if I said, “Mal, I’m not feeling a hundred percent right now, can I just go to bed on my own?” He’d probably appreciate it. It would mean I was being honest. He wouldn’t spend his time wondering if it was a symptom, because it would be. I suppose I don’t confide in him because I can’t stand the way he changes. Subtly, but definitely, if I do tell the absolute truth.
The way he starts checking the medicine cabinet, and looking for evidence, and “disappearing” the razors and painkillers, and turning up at work to pick me up, and talking to my doctor behind my back. Honestly, you have one little slip every now and again and your husband acts as though you’re some sort of nut job. When really, like every other woman out there, you’re just moody. I’m just moody.
I was a moody child.
I was a moody teenager.
I am a moody adult.
No big deal if you ask me. HUGE deal if you ask my husband.
As I near the peak of my hill, I feel the sweat pouring off me, just how I like it. I feel cleansed after a run, tamed and cleansed. Anything bad sweated away with a good, old-fashioned workout.
I start to speed up for the last few hundred meters.
Maybe he is feeling guilty after Friday night. For telling on me—on us—in front of all our friends. I’ve had to avoid all their phone calls and emails since. I’m bracing myself for Carole or Ruth to show up at my work. Or maybe, like my steep-incline running, sex has become Mal’s displacement activity because—like me—all he can do is think about her and him.
I’ve been on the Internet for hours searching and searching. I’d found out a few scraps of information. She hadn’t used her doctorate to become a practicing clinical psychologist as planned; she had opened a so-called psychic café—get your aura cleansed or something with your coffee—near Brighton. But there were no pictures of her. And most importantly, no pictures of him.
When I come out of the showers, bundled up in a towel, my hair in clumpy tangles around my face, those women are in the locker room.
Automatically my heart skips a beat, and I hesitate in the doorway for a moment, wondering if I should turn around and go away before they see me.
The brunette looks up from lacing a pink and white sneaker and catches my eye—she turn
s red, like last Friday. If I walk away now, I’ll seem cowardly, and as if I have done something wrong. And where would I go? Back to the showers and lurk around, making other women think I’m spying on them? Essentially giving more people more reasons to talk about me?
Focusing on the wall opposite, I walk in and head for my locker. I type in the code and pull open the door, and keeping it ajar to afford myself a little privacy, I pull out my panties. Hooking the towel over my shoulders, I pull them on, then fasten on my bra.
I know they’re still in here, that they’re probably watching me, trying to find more things to add to the list of inaccuracies they’ve made up about me. I can hear them whispering, I can feel them nudging each other. In about three seconds, I’m going to spin round and tell them to say whatever it is they’ve got to say to my face.
“We’re really sorry,” one of them says. “About last Friday, we’re really sorry.”
I pull on my hipster denim skirt and button it up, pretending not to have heard.
“We didn’t mean for you to overhear,” the other says as I tug on my top. Usually I would at least towel-dry my hair, but I have to get out of here as soon as possible.
“It’s just ’cause we’re jealous,” the first one says.
“Yeah, you’ve done amazingly well and we’re still stuck here with our goal weights nothing more than pie-in-the-sky numbers,” the other adds.
“We’re truly sorry.”
I slip on my jacket, pull my bag from my locker and drop my sneakers on the ground, shoving each foot into them without socks. I don’t even bother to pull out the backs, so I have to wear them like heavy flip-flops on my feet.
I have anger, pure unadulterated rage, fizzing in my veins. What am I supposed to do, tell them it’s OK? Agree with them? Try to make them feel better by telling them it doesn’t matter? That I completely understand?
How did their bad behavior become my problem? At least the people who used to write that I was a “slut whore” and a “crazy slag” on toilet walls never expected me to forgive them for it.