Any Way You Want Me (10 page)

‘Handy. For your kids, I mean.’

‘Mmmm,’ I said, stirring my cream into the chocolate until it melted away into white streaks. I wasn’t taking any more chances. ‘Except I hope we’ll have moved away by then.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I’m not sure if I want them to go to school round here. I think kids have to grow up really fast in London. I know I did.’

‘I’m sure.’ His blue eyes were so . . . blue. He was leaning over to me holding something. What was that he had? A napkin? What was he going to do with that napkin? ‘Hang on, you’ve got a blob of cream on your nose. Let me . . .’

‘Oh. Oh, thanks.’

AAAARRRGGGHHH. Right. So I had now proved that there
wasn’t
a God – or if there was, she wasn’t interested in helping me through this one.

I looked at Mark’s hands while he wiped my nose. I felt like a grubby little five-year-old. He was actually
wiping my nose
, leaning across the table and wiping my nose. Nice hands though. Not too knuckly. His skin had a tinge of brown and I wondered if it was the last vestiges of a tan. Probably. He and Julia seemed the type who would have winter holidays. A ski chalet somewhere. Or Caribbean sun, maybe.

‘I grew up in Dorset,’ he went on seamlessly. He hadn’t seemed at all bothered by the nose thing, luckily for both of us. ‘This tiny village, not even a shop or a pub, just four houses. As a kid it was wonderful – fields and streams and farms to mess around in.’

‘Wow,’ I said. His words gave me a pang of guilt for my own children. I was denying them this bucolic freedom, us living in London. Oh, no. They would probably grow up asthmatic and pasty-faced and it would be all my fault. Bad mother, Sadie. Evil mother!

‘’Course, by the time I was a teenager, I thought it was bloody awful,’ he laughed. ‘Me and my brothers would walk miles to the next village just to go to the pub. And they all knew we were fourteen or whatever because the landlord knew our parents. I couldn’t wait to get away.’

‘Any plans to move back?’ I asked. ‘Are your family still down there?’

He looked slightly uncomfortable at my question. ‘Ahh. Well,
I
would like to move back sometime. Now, in fact. I’d go like a shot. But . . .’

His voice had trailed away. ‘But Julia wouldn’t?’ I prompted. Aha. Interesting.

He smiled. ‘I think I’ve got this stupid romantic idea of us going back and having a family, dogs, Range Rover, huge garden . . . you know.’

‘Sounds great,’ I told him. ‘What does Julia think?’

‘Well, she likes the bit about the Range Rover,’ he said, then laughed. ‘And she likes the idea of the huge garden and the weekend parties we could have.’

‘Just not the dogs and kids bit, then.’

‘No.’

There was a pause. I gulped down my chocolate, suddenly feeling awkward. This was all getting rather personal, really, seeing as we barely knew each other. ‘I’d better go,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to . . .’ I was about to say ‘put the kids to bed,’ but it seemed insensitive after what he’d just told me. ‘I’ve got to get back,’ I said instead.

He drained his cappuccino and we both stood up. ‘Really nice to see you, Sadie,’ he told me, blue eyes holding mine steadily. ‘Maybe we could do it again?’

‘I’m not sure my heart is up to it,’ I said lightly. ‘The running, I mean. Not the . . .’ Oh, shit. What was I saying? ‘Yes, that would be nice. Yes. I need to get fit again.’

‘You look all right to me,’ he said, eyebrows raised. There was a smile at the corners of his mouth. Was he eyeing me up? He was. I swear his eyes flicked up and down my legs. He was looking at me! What was he doing that for? What was he trying to say?

‘Right. Thanks. Lovely to see you. Love to Julia. Bye,’ I gabbled. We’d reached the cafe door and I just wanted to get away now. I felt as if I was on dangerous ground all of a sudden. ‘Right. I’m going this way. So . . . So I’ll see you around. Bye, Mark!’

I turned and ran. I wondered if he was watching my arse the way I’d watched his. I was glad it was dark. I was glad I was going home.

I went flat-out all the way back to our street. Blood rushed in my ears. I had run away like a lovestruck schoolgirl. No, not lovestruck. Obviously, I wasn’t
lovestruck
. I was just . . .

What was I?

Something odd was happening to me. Jack. Danny. Mark. These men that I was flirting with, lying to, playing games with. I kept stepping out of my real life into this pretend one, where I could do that whole flirting thing again. Only, in my real life, I couldn’t. Wasn’t supposed to.

Nothing has happened.
Nothing has happened
, I told myself as I walked the last few steps to our house, breath groaning out of me. Our house. My and Alex’s house. The house where our two babies had been born.

It was more the fact that something
could
happen, if I let it. If I wanted it. Which, of course, I didn’t. It was ridiculous to even
think
that, yet . . .

I shivered. Now that I’d stopped running, I could feel how freezing the air was. A few stars were already poking through the smoggy sky. Frost again later, no doubt.

I had to stop all this . . . messing about, I chastised myself. I had to knuckle down to my own, proper life instead of trying to rewrite it as a different story all the time. I had Alex and the kids, after all, and even if it
was
hard work and a bit . . . well, boring at times, and even if I was hankering after my old life of freedom right now, and even if this new life of motherhood and responsibility sometimes didn’t feel quite enough, I just had to
make
it enough.

OK. Lecture over.

I panted my way up our front steps, legs heavy. Key in the lock and in. The house was warm and light and I could hear Molly giggling. Home.

It was patronizing of me, I knew, but I was always faintly surprised to come home and find that nothing horrendous had happened in my absence. No one was crying or bleeding. The house hadn’t fallen down, wasn’t on fire. In fact, not only was everyone all right, they looked positively radiant with model-family-type cosiness.

I walked into the front room to see Nathan and Molly in their pyjamas, both snuggled on Alex’s knee as he read them
Five Minutes’ Peace
, Molly’s current favourite story. For a split-second I was looking at them as an outsider. Curtains drawn, lamps glowing, fire belting out heat. My beautiful children with their fair hair and apple cheeks. And Alex, reading about Mrs Large the elephant struggling to get her longed-for five minutes’ peace, making Molly chortle with his silly voices for the elephant children.

Alex looked up and winked. ‘Good run?’ he asked in his elephant girl voice. Molly practically fell off his knee with laughter.

I sat down next to them and Nathan immediately started to make hungry little mews. I pulled him over to me for a feed. ‘Yeah,’ I replied, trying to keep my voice light and casual. I bent over Nathan so Alex couldn’t see my face. ‘Yeah, I think I’ll go more often. I really enjoyed it.’

I paused. Now was the time to tell him about Mark.
Oh, and guess who I saw while I was out there?

Go on, then. Tell him.

I shut my mouth instead. Fussed over Nathan.

‘Nice one,’ Alex said, completely unaware of the uneasy feeling that was spreading through me. ‘I told you it was a good idea, didn’t I?’

I laughed at his cheek. ‘No, you bloody didn’t.’

He was grinning his most infuriating grin. ‘I did, you know I did. Don’t forget, Sade, it’s me, Alex. The one who’s always right about everything.’

I shook my head. ‘You’ve got me there. Don’t think I know him.’

‘Denial is a terrible thing, Sadie,’ he said sorrowfully, then picked up the remote, his fifth limb. ‘Right, Molls. Let’s have a gander at the news. See if Leeds have signed up Ronaldo.’

Tell him. Tell him you saw Mark. Why don’t you just tell him? It’s not like anything happened. Just say it!

‘I not want news, Daddy, I want elephants again.’ She pronounced it ‘effalunts’.

‘All right. One more time, then it’s upstairs to clean those teeth.’

I shut my eyes while Nathan sucked and Alex read and Molly giggled. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t say a word.

Six

Next morning, I woke up full of noble intentions. I was going to have a perfect mum day, devoted to my little angels. None of this . . . this parallel life stuff. Just me and the children. Happy families. We were going over to Lizzie’s for the morning and I was determined to put on a good show. No tantrums, no fighting, no crying – and that went for the kids, too.

Lizzie hadn’t mentioned Jack or Relate or counselling of any description on the phone, so I was pretty sure that Cat hadn’t told her anything awful about me. Mind you, I tried to avoid long phone conversations with Lizzie if possible as they were usually about Boring Steve – or her ‘hubby’ as she called him – and how brilliantly Boring Steve was doing at work and what a massive pay rise Boring Steve had just got, and how Boring Steve was going to take her and Little Felix to Disneyworld next month and . . .

It made me wonder if Steve was in the background listening to all these conversations, sometimes, they were so effusive. Or if he bugged the phone. Surely she didn’t really think I was that interested in her dull, balding, businessman hubby, did she?

It was only when I saw Lizzie in person, just us two, that she sometimes cracked and confessed that she was actually quite looking forward to Boring Steve going off for a golfing weekend with his work mates so she and Little Felix could have the house to themselves. Or I’d comment on their new flashily large TV, sleek, silver and gleaming with a remote that could boil the kettle and do the ironing, if you knew what buttons to press – and she’d kind of grit her teeth, and then tell me that, actually, their old TV was perfectly good and she wished Boring Steve wasn’t so desperate to have the new model five seconds after it hit the shops every time.

Lizzie lived about twenty minutes’ drive away in a terribly nice, terribly middle-class part of Balham with lots of other terribly nice, terribly middle-class families who liked nothing more than to talk about which private school their children would be going to (before they were even born, half the time) and which French classes their three-year-olds attended (
Bonjour, Maman!
was excellent, according to Liz) and how little Matilda and Henry had simply
adored
being down in Whitstable at the weekend, you know, in their little
holiday cottage
down there. Such a sweet place, only three bedrooms (yes, it was
tiny!
) but you know, it was fun roughing it for the weekend, wasn’t it? And lovely neighbours there, too!

Lizzie hadn’t quite bought into all that bollocks but she was heading that way. Boring Steve earned a fortune, and consequently Lizzie had an eye-poppingly fat allowance every month and seemed to feel obliged to spend the whole lot each time it walloped into her bank account with a hefty thud. Whenever I went round, I had to go through the admiring stage before I could even take the kids’ coats off. I would admire the newly plumbed-in bathroom suite or Felix’s freshly painted playhouse in the garden or Lizzie’s new outfit, shoes, coat, expensive haircut . . . Once, I had poked my nose round their bedroom door after taking Molly to the loo and had seen about ten Selfridges carrier bags piled up by the wardrobe, stuffed with new clothes and shoes that she hadn’t even unpacked yet.

As a perfect mum, though, today I simply was not going to envy her for it. After all, I reminded myself, she did have to shag Boring Steve, so she deserved a few treats in her life as compensation.

Molly and Nathan both cried loudly and ceaselessly for the entire car journey. I tried singing ‘Ten Green Bottles’ to jolly them along but by the time I’d got to seven green bottles hanging on the wall, their cries were louder than ever, so I abandoned it mid-song. Then I tried putting on Molly’s tape of Kipper stories. She usually loved Dawn French’s honeyed tones describing Kipper’s doings but not today. She was wailing so loudly that none of us could hear the story, so I switched it off and just jammed up the radio instead, in the hope that it would drown them out.

By the time we got to Lizzie’s road, I was feeling flustered. Oh, shit. Nowhere to put the car either, as usual. People in Balham seemed to have about three cars each, judging by how impossible to park it always was.

‘Right, you two, let Mummy concentrate,’ I pleaded. ‘How about giving Mummy five minutes’ peace like Mrs Large, just while I’m parking the car. OK?’

‘I want effalunts story NOW,’ Molly wailed instantly. ‘I want Mrs Large.’

Ahh. There was a space. A teeny tiny space between a Merc and a Beamer. Oh, good. No pressure to get it right then.

I lined the car up parallel with the Merc. Brand new. Black. Polished to within an inch of its expensive life. Good, good. Even better. If I was going to scrape something, might as well go for the top end of the market.

Clutch. Reverse gear.

‘Effalunts, Mummy. EFFALUNTS!’

I gritted my teeth. Perfect mum, perfect mum. What would perfect mum do in this situation? ‘Hey, I bet Aunty Lizzie has got the elephants story at her house,’ I said in my calm, controlled voice. She’d got just about every other damn kids’ book on the market. I would bet my high-heeled fuck-me boots that she had
Five Minutes’ Peace
. ‘So if you two are really quiet for a minute, just while I park the car, I’ll ask Aunty Lizzie if we can read it. OK?’

‘I want effalunts, Mummy. I want effalunts NOW!’

‘I know you want bloody effa . . . I know you want the elephants story but I don’t have it in the car! Now just shush!’

OK. I gripped the wheel. Revs up, wheel round, back back back we went. The kids were still crying. ‘Look, shut up, both of you, will you?’ I snapped. ‘For fuck’s sake!’

There was a shocked silence. I made the most of it to swing the wheel round and edge right back into the space. Bit more. Bit more. Bit more. Straighten her up. Yes. Result!

Handbrake on, engine off. We were here. And I hadn’t even crashed the car. Well done, Sadie.