Don't You Want Me? (26 page)

Frank is facing me, sucking in his cheeks and looking flintier than ever. I meet his eyes for a second, and then look down again, because – sorry to be crude – the look in them practically makes me come. Frank drains his glass and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Go on, then,’ he says.

‘Go on, what?’

‘Let’s go.’

‘Where?’

‘Upstairs,’ he says, getting up. ‘To fuck.’

‘No thanks,’ I say, with extraordinary restraint. ‘I don’t want a pity-fuck.’

‘It’s not a pity-fuck. Come on.’

‘Well, if it’s not a pity-fuck, then judging by the look on your face, it’s a hate-fuck. So thanks, but, you know, no thanks.’

‘What the fuck’s a hate-fuck?’

‘When you hate the person so much you have to sleep with them. It’s fucked up. I used to do it quite often at university.’

‘Oh, yeah, I’ve had those,’ says Frank. ‘Terrible. But often quite good at the time. The sex, I mean.’

‘Exactly. Awkward to share one’s house with the hate-fuckee, though, so as I was saying, no thanks.’

‘I’ve always fancied you,’ says Frank. ‘Since the day I met you. Since Paris. It wouldn’t be a hate-fuck. Come on.’

‘No.’

‘I don’t fucking
believe
you,’ says Frank. ‘What are you, some fucking schizo?’

‘What about Lou?’

Frank sighs. ‘What about her, Stell?’

‘She wouldn’t like it.’

‘No, I don’t expect she would. Will you tell her, or shall I?’

‘You, Frank, are a pig bastard.’

‘I am
not
a pig bastard,’ he says. ‘I am offering you the shag you claim you want.’

‘Poor Louisa. She’s going out with a pig bastard.’ I really like saying ‘pig bastard’ to Frank.

‘We’re not “going out”. She threw herself at me. And you stood there and pushed her into my bed, more or less. What did you expect me to do?’

‘Fuck her,’ I shrug.

‘Exactly. Which is what I did. And then she bugged me to take her out to lunch, so I did that too. Because she’s your mate. So don’t take the moral high ground with me. I’m not the one that flirted with me all last night to annoy her friend.’

He has a point, even though annoying my friend was only the half of it. There’s only one thing left to say, really.

‘OK,’ I say, draining my glass. ‘You win. Let’s go.’

We get up in silence and go up the stairs in a mini-Indian file, with no physical contact whatsoever.

‘Condoms?’ I say.

‘By the bed.’ He opens the door to his bedroom, which he keeps very nice, I must say: all white and clean and stripped back, with – natch – a giant, outsize oak bed with cream linen sheets. One of the walls is pinned haphazardly with sketches of wild flowers.

‘Are these sheets clean?’ I ask conversationally, standing by the bed fully clothed.

‘No.’

‘I’m just going to brush my teeth,’ I say. ‘And take my clothes off.’

Frank holds his bedroom door open for me. He isn’t smiling.

‘Missing you already,’ he drawls, which makes me laugh on the inside.

I brush, strip, put on an only vaguely sexy old kimono, and go back to Frank’s bedroom. He is lying on the bed, stark naked. Very nice body, but I knew that already. Ginger hair: no problem. Hasn’t been for some time, actually. He has a massive erection.

I stand by the edge of the bed, looking at him. He looks back.

‘I feel this situation lacks romance,’ I say.

‘Come here,’ says Frank, pulling me down.

Frank is very good at sex. Well, obviously: practice is supposed to make perfect. And his has. It
is
perfect, in a very hard, dirty, sweaty, explosive kind of way: we have the kind of sex that people usually describe as ‘animal’ but which I always think of to myself as more mammalian. We are mammals. He whispers a torrent of absolute filth in my ear: of what he would like to do to me, how he’s going to do it, how long he’s wanted to do it for, and so on. Unusually, this is incredibly horny-making. And all the while, he’s doing it. Bang, bang, bang. This way, that way. I don’t know about me, but he is certainly the dirtiest ride I’ve ever encountered.

I come twice; I see white dots of light; I shout, I think, at one point. He calls out my name – clever of him to remember – and presses his face into my hair as he comes.

And then we’re lying there, panting, with all the lights on, at about nine o’clock on a Saturday night, in silence.

‘Marry me,’ says Frank. He sits up and reaches for a cigarette.

‘Can you imagine? But we’d have a very happy sex life.’

‘Yeah, we would.’

‘You’re very talented.’

‘Cheers. You’re not bad yourself.’

I brace myself. I roll on to my stomach and put my head on his stomach.

‘Was I,’ I ask, ‘a dirty ride?’

Frank laughs. ‘Not this again.’

‘Come on, Frank. Was I? I was, wasn’t I? I thought I might be. A filthy ride, probably. That’s right, isn’t it?’

‘Here, do you want a drag?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, Stella, you weren’t a dirty ride.’

I sit upright. I am outraged.
Outraged
.

‘What are you, some kind of sicko? What more could I possibly have done to make myself dirtier? Bloody hell, Frank, you cunt. Give me that fag.’

Frank strokes my hair and laughs.

‘I obviously didn’t explain it properly that time. A dirty ride’s a one-off. You know, a girl that’s gagging for it and loves doing it. But you don’t want to see her again. You don’t want to dwell on her, really. She’s just a dirty ride.’

‘What am I, then? What does that make me?’

‘You,’ says Frank, taking the cigarette from my mouth, ‘are a ride.’

‘Is that a compliment?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh, good.’ That’s that settled. ‘What shall we do now?’

‘Don’t tell me: I can guess. You’re starving,’ he laughs.

‘How did you know? I am, actually. Famished. And don’t say, “Do you like chicken? Suck this, it’s fowl.” ’

Frank rolls his eyes. ‘Let’s go downstairs. I’ll feed you.’

And he leans over and kisses me, very sweetly, on the forehead.

We ate cheese omelettes and drank more wine and then went to bed again. And then I fell asleep and woke up in Frank’s arms, much to Honey’s astonished delight the next morning. And then we got up on Sunday, wheeled the pushchair up to Primrose Hill, and had a brisk, red-nosed walk, the three of us, giggling at everything and nothing. I roasted a leg of lamb, and after lunch we lay on the sofa watching a video of
South Pacific
. And after Honey’d gone to bed on Sunday night, we did it again.

So that’s all really romantic and charming, isn’t it? Ad-o-rable. Like teddies and clouds and robins. We are those round-faced, round-bodied teddies you get on greeting cards. Boing boing, we go, bumping tummies, rosy-cheeked. I am wearing a little pink ribbon, and he a pale blue one. The robins are our friends. Come, robins, we cry. Perch on our teddy arms.

Except that things look dramatically different on a cold, rainy Monday morning when you wake up in your own bed (by mutual agreement: we were both really tired). There are problems, frankly. There are issues.

One, poor old Louisa has left three messages for Frank and one for me, and none of these have been returned.

Two, it’s all very well to sit here musing about teddyhood and love’s young dream, but one needs to be realistic: I had a fabulous time in bed with Frank, but that’s just what Frank
does
– when he’s not painting cows, he’s giving people
fabulous times in bed. And then he buggers off. Louisa’s unanswered phone messages are merely the most recent in a long, tiresome line of plaintive voices wailing out of the answering machine. And so am I, the latest in a long line, though I am not wailing yet. That’s because I am not deluded, or rather, because I am trying my hardest not to be deluded. I am the latest willing notch on the bedpost, I keep telling myself. I am a notch. A girl can dream, though …

No, she can’t. And besides, I’m not a girl. I am a thirty-eight-year-old woman and I need to be realistic. I
am
a notch. All women are notches to Frankie. I need to think of him as a notch too – a notch on
my
bedpost. A lovely, wonderful, funny, clever, best-sex-ever notch who made cheese omelettes as though he were French and licked the toast crumbs off my lips, laughing, and then stopped laughing and …

But imagine, I tell myself, ignoring the stomach-ache of longing that the toast memory introduces. Imagine the gradual reintroduction of strange girls at breakfast. The awkwardnesses. The pretending not to mind.

I am a notch. I shall remain a notch. I need to make contingency notch plans, sharpish. And I wonder whether it would be really bad to do it one more time with Frank before, as they say, closure.

Frank’s at the studio when the phone rings. I know it’s Louisa. I pick it up, feeling a sort of terror.

‘Stella! Where have you
been
?’

‘Sorry I didn’t ring you back. We, I, we, er, I had a busy kind of weekend.’

‘Are you fully recovered?’

‘From Friday night? Oh, yes.’

‘Well, what are you up to?’

‘Oh, this and that, you know.’

‘I’m on my way to a client, but we could have a coffee, if you liked? Do you know the cottagey place in England’s Lane?’

‘The place that looks like it should be called Mrs Tiggy-winkle’s?’

‘Yes. See you there noon-ish?’

‘OK. Bye, then.’

‘Stella?’ says Lou. ‘How’s Frank?’

This is a nightmare. What am I going to tell her?

‘Fine, I think.’

‘It’s just, he hasn’t phoned me.’

‘No. Um. I haven’t seen him today.’

‘Oh, shit – I’m about to go into a tunnel. I have to go. We can talk about it later. See you at twelve.’

She hangs up, and I hang my head.

Louisa bounds into the coffee shop like a Labrador, shakes her blonde mane, boings herself down, beams, and asks me how it’s going.
Oh, you know, fine, but (wince) bit sore when I sit down. Because I’ve spent the weekend in bed with the man you’ve set your sights on
.

‘Fine.’ I smile. I’m aware of the smile being strange, as though someone had betted me that I could show all my teeth. ‘How about you?’

‘A shop in South Molton Street is taking my hats, so I couldn’t be better.’

‘Where’s Alex?’

‘With his dad all week. Which means,’ she beams, ‘that the mouse is away. And that the cat will play.’

‘Oh, right,’ I say, taking a sip of my latte. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘You know,’ she giggles. ‘Your resident dish. I haven’t stopped thinking about him. Fwoaar,’ she says, poking me with her arm. ‘I can’t tell you what it was like …’

I know what I’m going to do now. I’ve worked out my plan.

‘Spare me the details, Lou.’ I try and laugh. It comes out like a strange, yelpy little bark. ‘You said he hadn’t called. I did warn you.’

‘No, but with men like that you need to do a bit of chivvying,’ she says, not looking too troubled by the idea. ‘It’s not like he was exactly begging to take me out to lunch, either. I just sort of … bent his arm.’

‘What, and you’ll bend it again?’

‘You’d better believe it,’ she grins. ‘All the way up the aisle.’

‘Lou, there’s something I have to tell you.’

‘I didn’t
literally
mean all the way up the aisle,’ she says. ‘Not that I don’t think it’d be a good idea. The sex, Stella. The sex was amazing.’

I quite want to know what she means. Her sex can’t have been as amazing as mine. It just can’t. Her sex can have been good, or very good, or hot, but it can’t have been – what’s the word –
revolutionary
, like mine. Or perhaps it can.

Do I really want to know? No. I’m not brave enough.

‘Anyway,’ says Lou, ‘sorry to witter on. You were saying you had something to tell me?’

‘It can wait. Carry on.’

‘I really think we’re made for each other,’ sighs Louisa. ‘It wasn’t just one of those meaningless shags. It was fantastic.’

‘You should bear in mind,’ I remind her gently, ‘that pretty much any shag was going to be fantastic after two years.’

‘Yes, but not fantastic like that. I really felt – and this is going to sound so corny – that we were, you know, as one. Perfectly in tune. And then when we went to lunch the next day, he was looking at me in that dazed sort of way that men have when they’re beginning to fall for you despite themselves. Has he said anything about me?’

‘I haven’t really spoken to him about it. He’s a big boy now.’

‘He most certainly is,’ says Louisa, blushing slightly. ‘But it wasn’t just the sex. I like the way he doesn’t talk much – he’s more of an action man. He doesn’t really chat or do jokes – he’s more the strong, silent type, and sexy as hell with it.’

The waitress arrives. ‘Anything else?’

‘Two more coffees, please,’ says Lou. ‘Do you want anything to eat, Stella?’

‘No, just coffee. Shall I say my thing now?’

‘Do,’ says Lou. And then I can tell you my masterplan.’

‘What masterplan?’

‘My gentle, arm-bending masterplan.’

‘Resulting in?’

‘Matrimony,’ she laughs, in the way that people laugh when they actually mean the embarrassing thing they’ve just said. ‘Cohabitation, at the very least.’

‘He cohabits with me.’

‘You wouldn’t miss him. You’re not very nice about him.’

‘Look. What I was going to say was this. Frank is a sack artist. It’s what he does, in the same way as you and I do,
I don’t know, eating, or coffee drinking, or tooth brushing. I don’t think you really understand about men like Frank, Lou. It’s just how they are. There’s no point in thinking they’re going to reform, because they’re not. They do it because they can and because it gives them pleasure.’

‘They’re not the only ones. To get pleasure, I mean.’

‘No,’ I sigh. ‘They’re not. Which is why men like Frank are a great idea if that’s all you’re after – pleasure. If you’re really on the same wavelength, and you really want absolutely the same thing: fabulous sex, no strings. But that’s not what
you
want, Lou. You’ve got it into your head that if you chivvy him enough, he’ll fall down on one knee and propose to you. It doesn’t work like that. It just doesn’t.’