His Other Lover (18 page)

T
he following day, I am standing in a very upmarket underwear store in a part of London where most of the shops have doormen, and if not, doorbells.

The colors and textures surrounding me overload my senses. Sweetly innocent sugar-icing pink and yellow balconettes here, rich plum and damson push-ups and thongs over there. Black satin and bordello-green silk bras and French knickers. Antique pale lace baby dolls. I just don’t know what to get. Thankfully, an assistant has clearly seen women like me many times before, and before I know where I am, we are both standing in a changing room admiring a plunging cleavage I never knew I had, she is telling me how much more flattering a high-cut line is, and don’t my legs look longer?

“He’ll love it!” she twinkles at me conspiratorially as she takes the items to wrap in tissue paper. God, I hope she’s right. I can only assume that the tissue paper must be laced with diamond thread and spun by angels, as the total bill for one underwear set (two pairs of knickers) is £370.

That leaves me £30 change from my cash. Dear God.

I feel faint and almost lose my nerve, but then I remember Liz on stage. I have no choice but to do this.

After all, I used to dress a little more like that when I first knew him; it’s just over time that I began to tone things down. We started not going out to clubs as much, so there was no need to buy tiny little sparkly tops. Then because I wasn’t wearing that sort of thing I didn’t need to watch what I ate quite so carefully. Loose jumpers and tops can be very forgiving. But now I can see that was where I started to go wrong. I took my eye off the pan and it boiled over badly.

Next, I go and have my hair washed and styled in an expensive salon that luckily for me has had a last-minute cancelation. When the very camp but very beautiful stylist called Bernardo finishes and with a flourish whips out a mirror, smiling smugly at my exclamations of delight, I could cry, but this time with relief. I look, well—quite pretty! My hair is glossy and bouncy, full of life. Just what I want Pete to associate me with.

I go and have my nails done too. Subtle attention there, though, no long Essex-wife talons; I’m going for effortlessly gorgeous. Tottering past the counter of a makeup brand I have seen in lots of glossy magazines, for once I stop. Normally I have no time for this sort of thing, but today I ask the girl’s advice and she’s not thick or caked in foundation at all. She’s actually very sweet and makes me up artfully.

It pays off for her, though, when I buy a handful of products that cost so much, I almost gasp in shock. She sees my look of alarm, pats my arm reassuringly and tells me it will be worth every penny and that I look amazing. I half smile and say she probably has to say that to everyone. She looks earnestly back at me and says, well yes, she is supposed to, but with me
she really means it.

Finally I take a cab over to a small boutique that I have always walked past before because it looks horribly expensive and places like that scare me. I tend to assume, probably not wrongly, that the shop assistants are going to know, as soon as I walk in, that the bag I am carrying on my shoulder was thirty quid in Monsoon and that my trousers are French Connection, not Prada. This therefore makes me a fake and not of their world. I’ve always imagined a
Pretty Woman
scenario where they won’t serve me. But wrong again! It turns out, once I plunge in through the door before I lose my nerve, that they too are actually lovely. Honestly, there are so many really nice people in the world when you’re spending money.

The sales girl is very chatty as I’m twirling this way and that, looking at myself in the mirror. She tells me that they have some new stock coming in next week and she knows there are a couple of items that would look simply stunning on me. She starts to tell me about them, and I’m being seduced by her descriptions of chocolate and raspberry silks when she suddenly breaks off and lets out an ear-piercing shriek while batting at her head. I can see something fluttering confusedly about and she flaps her arms wildly. It drops to the floor as she hits it, and without pausing for a moment she shoves an immaculately heeled shoe on to it and grinds.

She gingerly peels her foot away, and we both peer at the floor and see a butterfly crushed on the cold glassy tile. Its body is still twitching and pulsing; wings in a pulped tangle.

“Urgh!” She grimaces graphically. “What a disgusting mess. Excuse me, madam.” She clicks off to the desk and curling her lip in distaste uses a tissue to wipe up the remains, throwing the balled-up result in the bin.

“Fancy that this time of year!” she muses, peering at the floor to make sure all traces of wing have gone. “Now, where were we?” She switches back on the smile. “Ahh, that’s right! Beautiful clothes for you!”

The dress I finally settle on fits me so well and looks so lovely I know I have to have it. I will regret it forever if I don’t make it mine. I want to wear it out straight away but I don’t. I’m saving it for later. It is so stupidly expensive, it actually doesn’t feel real as I pass my card over to the girl. But as I walk to the station, swinging glossy bags with expensive names on them, I know they are the genuine article. They just better be worth it. New underwear and getting my hair done to seduce my man. What a cliché…

Sitting on the train home, willing it to move faster with every fiber of my being, I become aware of a few admiring glances. At me!

My phone rings and it’s Clare. She’s wheezing with laughter before she even speaks and the sound of it is so infectious that in spite of everything it makes a huge grin spread across my face.

“Guess what?” she just about manages to say. “I’ve started this new discussion group on Facebook called ‘I don’t need a shag when uni fucks me every day’ and…ha ha ha…oh sorry…” She gulps and tries to get herself back under control. “And me and the girls posted the topic ‘Would you rather have a vagina where your belly button is or…’” she giggles uncontrollably again, “‘a cock on your shoulder?’ And Amy said…he he he…Amy said she’d rather have the cock, because then she could dress it up as a parrot and it would be less weird! HA HA HA!”

I laugh out loud and a man looks up from his paper and
smiles before glancing back down. Clare wheezes again. “Oh God…my tummy hurts so much!” she gasps. “I mean, who…” But then we go through a tunnel and I lose her.

The man looks up again and I glance shyly away as I catch his eye. But then I spot the twinkle of a wedding band on his finger and it tarnishes the moment for me. I think of his wife, probably at the station with their kids in the back of the car, waiting tiredly for his train to get in…So I don’t meet his eye again and he gets the message, turning back to his paper. I am
not
the sort of girl who would do that to another woman, thank you very much.

My phone goes again and it’s a text. Lottie.

I decide not to text her back in case she rings and hears that I’m blatantly on a train. She thinks I’m practically on my deathbed by the sound of it. Instead I count down the stops and almost break into a run when I get off at the station, I’m so desperate to get back, but I don’t. I don’t want to be all hot and sweaty with running makeup. That would defeat the whole object of my plan.

Once the front door shuts behind me and I’m in the stillness of the house, I race upstairs, strip off and put on my new underwear. I touch up my makeup, get the new dress out of the bag and carefully lay it on the bed. Sitting down next to it, I wait for Pete to get back.

I don’t have to wait long. I hear the door slam, which is my cue.

I start to pad around upstairs and hear him bounding up the
stairs two at a time. He comes into the room to find me applying some lipstick in my new underwear, looking like I’m getting ready to go out, and gratifyingly gives a low whistle.

“Bloody hell,” he says. “Is that new?”

I look down at myself and shrug. “Don’t think so, why?”

He raises an eyebrow at my pneumatic chest and says, “I think I’d have noticed, don’t you?”

Well, yes, you would think so.

“How was your day?” I ask, reaching for my earrings.

He grimaces. “Shit. But it’s picking up now.” He smiles at me and I feel my heart flutter. Keep it cool—don’t blow it. Then I notice he’s holding something in his hand: an envelope. “What’s that?” I ask as I walk past him to get the dress.

He stretches out his hand.

On the front in a crappy attempt to copy my fake writing is my name and our address. He has drawn a pretend stamp on it, which has a smiley-faced stick-head wearing a crown.

I open it and see that I’m not the only one who has been shopping. In the envelope is a top half to the card I received yesterday.

It is a new, sanitized top half, which says my name in it instead of hers. How lucky for him that he obviously remembered where he bought it. Although that stings…she’s that special that he can remember where he bought cards for her?

It also says,
This card entitles you to a night at the ballet with me…who loves you very much.
All in pen the same color. He has, I’ll admit, paid attention to detail, but as for the content? Is that really the best he can do? For the man who bumped me out of the way with a massage so he could fuck his lover two floors up in the same hotel, it’s a little disappointing, really.

Instead of saying that, though, I go, “Ahhhh! How sweet!”
and “Ooohhh! You’re so thoughtful!” And then I say that I still don’t understand why he cut it in half and sent it separately…but whatever. I’ve always wanted to go to the ballet, and how clever he is to have chosen a card with a dancer on the front as well!

He has the grace to at least look at the floor. I put the card down and pretend to carry on getting ready. I don’t kiss him or hug him. I just return to what I was doing.

“Are we going somewhere?” he asks as I loop the dress around me. “Nice frock, by the way.”

“Thanks.” I smile. “I am, you’re not.”

He looks surprised. “Oh.”

“I won’t be late, though. I bumped into an old school friend—we’re meeting for a drink.”

“Not Katie?” He looks dismayed.

My heart tightens uncomfortably as I think of her. “No, not Katie.”

I go to walk past him and he catches my wrist. Pulling me toward him, he kisses me lightly on the mouth. I hesitate, then I kiss him back, just as lightly.

He kisses me again—a little more firmly. He presses me up against the bedroom wall and then his hands are moving inside my dress.

“I’ve got to go,” I try protesting. Although this is not true, I’ve not arranged to meet anyone at all. But he doesn’t know that.

“Not yet,” he murmurs.

He opens the front of the dress. Tracing a finger lightly over the lace of my new bra, he pushes it up, stroking and teasing, making me gasp and bite my lip. Then he undoes it and pushes the dress from my shoulders. It and the bra fall silently to the floor. His fingers slide down, then he’s undoing his trousers and
moving my expensive, pretty knickers to one side. We’ve never done it up against the wall before, and as the weight of his chest presses against me, I just feel crushed and squashed rather than turned on. My back hurts and I don’t think my legs are strong enough for this.

But just as I’m thinking that, he picks me up and I wrap my legs round him. It suddenly becomes much, much better. I catch sight of us over his shoulder in the mirror. We’re moving together instinctively now, no clumsiness, no jolting and jarring. We look beautiful. The muscles in his back move as he holds my legs up and I watch as I coil them tighter around him, feeling delighted as he groans in response. We move perfectly together, becoming louder and louder—until we both finally stop.

I feel like I’m shimmering—there must be some kind of ethereal glow around me, I swear to God. I put my legs down. He pulls his trousers up and we just stand there for a moment. He rests his lips on my forehead and whispers in disbelief, “You’re incredible.”

And I feel it. I actually feel it. Just for a minute, as I tip my head up and look searchingly into his eyes, I
feel
incredible…loved, where I’m meant to be and that she does not exist. I can pretend that it is just me and him and he has not betrayed me and that everything I want for us can still happen. It’s possible; it still could be real.

She is no threat to
us
. We are too strong, too much in love. He could ask me anything right now and I’d do it. I’d tell him any secrets I knew, I’d go to the ends of the earth and back again for him. I love him. I really, really love him.

I stroke the side of his face and whisper, “I could never love anyone like I love you, Pete.” And I look at him pleadingly, begging him silently to say it back.

He hesitates and says nothing…just looks desperately into my eyes.

We stand there in silence. Me naked accept for my knickers, shivering slightly as the wind blows violently outside and rattles the window, but afraid to move in case the moment is lost. He is looking at me as if he’s seeing me for the first time again, and just for a second I know he’s my Pete. The man he was when I met him—desperate to tell me what he’s done, wanting to be honest. I’m sure of it.

But he says nothing, just drops his head and pulls me tightly to him, hugging me with a fierceness and intensity that makes it hard for me to breathe. I hear him say, “I love you so much,” somewhere over my left shoulder, but I can’t see his face. I push gently away from his chest and say slowly as I try and force him to meet my eyes, “You could tell me, Pete, if there was something bothering you…There’s nothing so bad that you couldn’t tell me.” Although this is not true, of course; it is already so bad it has made me act in a more deranged way than I ever thought possible. But I will still forgive him.

He lifts his head slowly. I’m holding my breath, waiting…

But his eyes meet mine, and whatever it was I saw a moment ago isn’t there any more. It has flickered away. He looks blankly back at me and says, “There’s nothing to tell. You should get dressed. You’ll be late.”