Infidelity for Beginners (10 page)

It also had girls, lots and lots of them.

Of course there’d been girls at my Secondary school, but by
and large the really pretty ones had been as thick as two short planks and
interested solely in blokes who dragged their brains around in their fists and
got tattoos when they should’ve been getting GCSEs.

And those guys weren’t here either!

They were all still in that little town I’d left behind,
laying bricks, getting drunk and biting each other’s ears off at closing time.

It was fantastic.

At university, I could suddenly drop my guard and stand out,
and not worry about someone flushing the confident smile off my face as their
mates threw my bag onto the roof of A Block. I was happy.

And things went from good to great in my second year.

A very pretty, funny, smart girl on the student paper
amazingly didn’t throw up all over my shoes when I said hello to her, and soon
I was saying hello to her all over campus.

Her name was Sally, and she left me excited, nervous,
nauseous, humble, horny and ever so slightly disappointed with myself whenever
I thought about her – which was all of the time.

My nausea quickly ballooned into a sickening ball of misery
when I’d heard she’d agreed to go out with my so-called backstabbing Judas
bastard of a best mate Tom, and I thought my whole soul would rip from my chest
and run off down the road in floods of tears when I found out they’d spent the
night together, but curiously something was up.

The student paper newsroom was suddenly a rather
uncomfortable place to be, Sally and Tom turned carbon-based life-form on each
other, and all at once she was available again. As I said earlier, I didn’t
know what went on and didn’t really care. All I knew was Sally was available
again and that was good enough for me.

I spent the next few days agonising over whether to charge
in there like a preposterously eager rhinoceros before anyone else had the
chance to or whether to sit back and play it cool. While I was weighing up my
options, Sally called around and asked me if I wanted to go for a drink.

Yes. Yes I did. The answer to that question was yes.

I could scarcely believe my luck, though I quickly holstered
my enthusiasm on the way down to the student union, reasoning that she was
actually probably only asking me out as a friend, and not as a potential life
partner, taking the pressure off the evening a tad. As it turned out, I was
right, though this took none of the shine off the evening. It was a really
lovely night and we enjoyed quite a few more like it until one morning, about
two months down the line, I woke up with Sally’s head on my shoulder and
everything had changed. We were no longer simply friends. We were boyfriend and
girlfriend, and we ratified this shift in our relationship with three months of
the most fantastic sex I’ve ever known. It was truly wonderful, and I knew at
that moment she was the girl for me and that we were destined to be together
forever, though I kept this to myself as I figured few things startled a girl
quite like an untimely marriage proposal.

No, I bided my time, enjoyed what we had and made the most
of the best girl in the world.

Without wishing to be crude, the sex couldn’t have come a
moment too soon. I was pulling my hair out in lumps, and desiccating myself to
a husk just thinking about Sally up in my room, though again this was something
I kept to myself.

See the previous year I’d had an
on-off-off-off-on-off-off-off relationship with a rather neurotic girl called
Natalie who flitted between knocking on my door at midnight and calling me a
bastard at all other times, but since the start of my second year I hadn’t had
so much as a kiss off the cat.

I was frantic – unbelievably frantic. Consequently
Sally copped the back-end of a famine that had me putting in performances
Casanova could’ve hung his hat on. She still occasionally mentions them with
fondness today, though like Shakespeare and Caveman Ug they’re long gone.

Rather frustratingly, at the time of my drought, about four
weeks before me and Sally finally got together, I had an interesting offer from
a girl called Abigail. Abigail was something else, as trendy students have a
tendency to say. Very sweet. Very sexy. And very vivacious.

She also always used to wear a hat, even indoors, which
confused a lot of people back then.

Still, wacky attention seeking dress-sense aside, she was a
fiery girl who made little secret of her love of life. Several of my friends
shagged her and Tom told me he’d heard she was “filthy as a pig” – in a
complimentary sense you understand. And it didn’t exactly take much either. If
she took a shine to you, she would give you an unmistakeable look and you’d
both be away. A dark corner in the Union, the university toilets, occasionally
even a bed. Anywhere that was handy really.

And I know what this unmistakeable look looked like because
one night I found it looking at me.

It came after an all-day session in the Student Union, which
followed the handing in of a particularly awful assignment. Me, Tom, Abigail,
and half a dozen others decided to bunk off our afternoon lecture and were soon
full of beer and bravado at how rebellious we were being. It was actually a
brilliant afternoon, almost perfect in fact; the sort of afternoon that you can
never repeat, no matter how many times you round up the same faces and force
beer down their throats because it was simply a spontaneous one-off. I myself
was Johnny Personality and had everyone in stitches for hours on end,
particularly the increasingly adorable Abigail. She even shifted around to sit
next to me and we laughed, whispered and play-poked each other under the table
until I suddenly noticed her hand in my lap.

“My, aren’t we a big boy?” she whispered, squeezing me in
the most wonderful way. “I like big boys, the bigger the better.”

She pulled down my zip and slipped her hand inside then
asked if I wanted to come to the toilet to fuck. Those were her exact words, by
the way. “Do you want to come to the toilet to fuck?”

Honestly, that’s what she’d said. No one had ever said
anything that shocking to me before and no one’s ever said anything that
shocking since. Not even Norman.

I couldn’t believe it.

Mind you, if I couldn’t believe that, try and imagine how
she must’ve felt when she heard my reply.

“Er, no. It’s okay. I might laugh and joke about these sorts
of things, but I’m really not like that.”

What?

Seriously, that’s what I’d told her. I must’ve been off my
chump. What was I thinking? I’ll tell you what I was thinking, I was thinking
that I was all loved up with Sally and didn’t want to blow my chance with her
by banging Jack the Hat. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t actually going out with
Sally at the time, or that it had been more than six months since nutty Natalie
had last knocked on my door, I just couldn’t go with any old girl when my heart
belonged to another.

“Go on,” she whispered, increasing her grip in an effort to
wrestle me into submission, but I couldn’t do it, so I eased her out of my
trousers, made my apologies and went and played pool with Tom. I guess Abigail
wasn’t the sort of girl who was used to getting rejected because she left for
another pub shortly afterwards and never spoke to me again.

Where to start?

Did I regret turning down Abigail all those years ago?

I didn’t at the time, especially when me and Sally finally
got it together, but a few years later I remembered the incident and couldn’t
understand why I’d done what I’d done. I mean, what an idiot!

“I’m sorry but I’m not like that?” I’d said. Not like what?
Not like the sort of guy who has exciting guilt-free sex while he’s young and
single with a sexy girl who’s “filthy as a pig”?

I reiterate I must’ve been off my fucking chump.

I also can’t begin to describe to you how many times I’ve
kicked myself for not dragging her into the bog and driving her through several
cubicle walls. I really,
really
have.
And it wouldn’t have affected my burgeoning relationship with Sally because I
doubt she would’ve even heard about it. And if she had, what difference would
it have made? She’d been with several guys and had even gone on a couple of
dates while we were ‘just friends’, so it wouldn’t have made a penny’s worth of
difference.

In fact, the only thing it would’ve done would’ve been to
even up our personal scores. Or at least, got mine to within one of hers, so I
was an idiot and I missed a spectacular opportunity. As the song goes, “what
kind of fool am I?”

Abigail. Abigail. Abigail. I wonder what she’s doing now? I
wonder if she’s still got that hat? And I wonder where she got it from?

I had a little fantasy about her a few years ago where I
tracked Abigail down and told her I was ready to take up her offer. It was only
a fantasy, of course, because I couldn’t see how she’d still be up for it some
fifteen years on. Not the sort of delayed decisiveness that gets a girl hot
under the collar. Still, the fantasy was great. I would be out and about and
I’d bump into her in the shops and we’d pick up from where we left off. My
heart would be pumping with excitement, the way it had done all those years
ago, and after a while, Abigail would lean close, smile and give me that
unmistakeable look.

“Hmm, still a big boy, I see,” she’d whispered, slipping her
hand back inside my trousers. “Very big indeed. Now how about that fuck? Do me
good and hard!”

The fantasy would then head off to the toilet, or a motel,
or a car park, or the woods, or anywhere else I’d decide to take it and we’d
indulge in fantastically frantic sex, the sort of sex in fact I’d not known for
a long long time. And that would be that.

Occasionally I’d grind a little fact into the fantasy.

I’d think about looking her up on friendsreunited.com and
work out in my mind how I’d approach her, what I’d say and where we’d meet and
all the rest of it and that factual foundation would make the fantasy even more
exciting.

Of course, I’d never really do it. Not in a million years.
Abigail was gone, or at least part of a different time line now, and I was here
all on my own still screwing my face up and holding my head in my hands every
time I thought about the incident fifteen years on.

“Sandwiches!” a voice called from around the corner.

Tom leapt up from his seat and bolted in the direction of
the corridor, dodging in front of two secretaries and his designer as he raced
for first pick.

“Do you want anything?” Elenor smiled, standing on her
tiptoes in order to lean across the partition and look down at me.

I hadn’t earlier. But suddenly I wasn’t so sure.

Our hamster died at school today. I
don’t know why, she wasn’t very old, and none of the kids had been using her
for batting practice, so it’s something of a mystery. Her name was Samantha and
she was eight months old. I mention these things purely for posterity as it
makes me sad to think of something that inspired so much love and happiness in
so many children being forgotten about the moment she’s gone. We haven’t
actually told the children yet and there’s some division as to how we should go
about it. Jenny thinks we should do tomorrow’s assembly on hamster heaven and
how fantastic it is up there, while Donald thinks we should tell them
Samantha’s cage is being redecorated while we order another. Peter thinks we
should stick the cage on eBay and split the money but Carol’s got most
experience with this sort of thing. She says we should just tell the children
that Samantha died and let them learn to deal with it. After all, death is a
part of life and it’s our job to prepare them for what lies ahead, so sugar
coating every little upset isn’t going to help them in the long run. She has a
point. That’s the thing about Carol. She always has a point.

Andrew, on the other hand, rarely seems to have one. He’s
convinced Samantha was murdered and thinks we should set up an investigation
into her “hamstercide”. He even offered to come in and head up the inquiry,
promising to leave no stone unturned until he found Samantha’s killer, although
he hardly inspired me with confidence when I mentioned her to him again half an
hour later and he asked me who Samantha was.

My room was on the sixth floor and
afforded me a great view of Croydon – if that can be considered a great
view. Norman had negotiated a discount rate for all of us who wanted to stay
but my single was still costing me £80. A twin or double would’ve cost only £20
more and Tom hassled me all week to share with him but I insisted on having my
own room.

“Why? What d’you need your own room for? It’s not like I
haven’t seen you in your socks before.”

“I’d just rather have my own room, that’s all. We’re not
students any more, I don’t want to doss down any old place.”

“Sharing a room in a four-star hotel and saving us both
thirty quid in the process is hardly dossing down any old place. What are you
up to?”

“I’m not up to anything.”

“Then why won’t you share with me?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“Are you getting your room for free or something? Is that
it?” This conversation went on all week and almost threatened the return of my
tenner but Tom eventually relented when he found himself a B&B half a mile
down the road for only £40.

“Should’ve blagged a few caravans and we could’ve all kipped
in the car park,” Godfrey reckoned.

“I’m sure the Croydon Park Hotel would’ve loved that,” I
replied.

Anyway, back to my room. It was nice and roomy and soft and
plush. It was also only a short lift journey away from our party downstairs
(Joe Bananas having been already booked). I checked in at six, showered, shaved
and changed into my party frock, then cracked open a bottle of Jim Beam I’d
bought from the off-licence around the corner and took a couple of sneaky
knocks. I hoped the hotel wouldn’t mind but I bought it in case I wanted a
nightcap when the party wound down and mini-bars were always so expensive. And
the drinks showed up on your bills too. And bills were sometimes looked at by
others. And that might not be such a good thing. Especially if someone else
wanted to come up to my room for a nightcap.