Out Late with Friends and Regrets (23 page)

“It doesn’t cause friction, then?” asked Fin.

“God, no. We’re not
in love
or anything. We just understand each other, and like each other a hell of a lot. And every now and again we have a sort of red-hot physical affair within the friendship. We don’t own each other.”

Fin was uncomfortable. June’s perfume was beginning to deliver subtle messages which could be persuasive if she allowed it to. But she didn’t want to get up and leave, yet.

“What do you do, June? Are you a tutor?”

“Oh, no, I’m a senior partner in my husband’s business.”

“You’re some lady, aren’t you?
 
Does he .”

“Of course he does. He has a lovely mistress called Oriole, and two little girls, who call me Auntie June.”

“Oh, how unusual,” said Fin, feeling flummoxed. She excused herself, thinking that she could do with some psychological space in which to acclimatise her mind to June’s hothouse lifestyle, and by extension that of the professor and maybe half of the university.

She had been revelling in her new experiences, hugging her new sexuality to her, feeling exotic and daring. But somehow June had almost spoiled it, and she couldn’t think how or why.

She bought herself a double, and went outside into the cool air to sip it. The evening was actually starting to feel like studying for a difficult practical exam. Half an hour before, she had been full of excitement, loving the fascination of everything, and her own gradual assimilation, as she thought, into this new setting.

Now she was beginning to wonder whether she could ever belong, here or anywhere. Especially here. She was throwing everything familiar to the winds, and for what? She walked along the path hugging the walls of the sports facility, until she had left behind the talkers, the laughers and the smokers in their couples and huddles, and was alone.

She leant her back against the wall and gulped her drink, fixing her eyes on the chains of golden beads marking the roads and streets of the city, and suspending thought for a while.

A quiet and unhurried clack of heels, just the one pair, became audible from the direction she had come. Damn. Well, she wasn’t moving. The intruder could just pass on and find her own patch of wall.

A figure rounded the corner, and Fin knew from the unmistakeable presence of her perfume that it was June. She had a deeply fringed shawl around her shoulders, and in the gloom didn’t seem quite as tall as Fin had thought her.

“Cigarette?” asked June, clicking open the clasp of a small chainmail bag.

“I don’t,” replied Fin, wishing just at this moment that she did.

June leaned against the wall beside her, and smoked her cigarette. Not in a holder, then, Fin noticed with part of her mind. She could feel June’s warmth through the shawl; they were close enough to be touching at arm and hip, but unmoving.

They were silent, until Fin said, “I love your perfume.”

“Mitsouko.”

“Ah.”

June finished the cigarette, blowing out the last fine plume of smoke to dissolve into the night air, and said, “I think you were shocked at what I told you, weren’t you.”

Fin smiled ruefully in the darkness.

“Convent girl, I’m afraid. Not really shocked, just taken aback a bit. Outside my experience. Obviously, the concept of free love and civilised arrangements have been around for ever; I mean, I’m pretty broadminded.”

“You were shocked.”

Fin felt, rather than heard, the laughter in June’s voice.

“Actually, I’m shocked at myself that I
could
be shocked!” she said.

“Well, obviously our situation is outside the norm. It just suits the people involved, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh.”

June leant her head on Fin’s shoulder, and put a hand on her chest, just under her breasts. Fin covered the hand with her own, initially with some idea of gently removing it, but leaving hers in place once it was there.

“It’s OK if you want to kiss me, Fin.”

“I don’t.”

“Don’t add lying to your list of new vices, convent girl.”

Fin dropped, rather than threw, her plastic cup beside the path, feeling almost as sinful over this act as her next. She took June in her arms and kissed her, long and sensuously, breathing in every last faintness of that disturbing perfume. June’s hands, small and smooth and cool, travelled over Fin’s body under her T-shirt, causing her to tremble. She felt the button, then the zip of her jeans being undone; and one of those small, cool hands inside her minimalist underwear, pushing the middle finger delicately but devastatingly against her.

Fin pulled away.

“God, June-”

“Don’t stop.”

“Sorry, I have to.” Something had happened to Fin’s voice; it was a strange, unrecognisable croak.

“Why is that, then, Fin?”

“Uh. Well. Well, we’ve only just been introduced.”

Ridiculous, but it was the only thing she could think of. But it broke the mood, and June laughed as Fin did up her zip, hoping it was too dark for it to be evident how violently her knees were knocking.

“Perhaps I’ll have the pleasure once we’re better acquainted, then,” said June, placing a brief kiss on Fin’s mouth.

Well, maybe, and maybe not. Fin had been overwhelmed by the moment, had almost succumbed to a seduction against the back wall of a college gym. That was not how she visualised her future sex life. Not even someone as powerfully attractive as June would do that to her. She would make her own choices, thanks.

“Coming back inside?”

“Yes. I’ll dance with you, if you have any spaces left on your card, that is.”

“I’ll make a space for you, convent girl.”

Fin picked up her discarded cup, and followed June along the path.

CLOTHES – WINTER

COATS/JAX

That made sixteen boxes. Only a few more, now. Considering most of the furniture had been earmarked for auction, there was really quite a lot of
stuff.
 
Awful how much one collected over the years.

The prospective move had forced her to take an overview of her life, in terms of things stored in suitcases and carrier bags in the loft, things she had felt she had to protect.
 
She shed tears over her children’s pictures of Mummy and Daddy in earnest crayon, and other craft items made with enthusiastic and unconditional love. She pored over school reports, and the annual photographs from Primary days showing cheerful little faces grinning at the school photographer. She noticed how, with the years, her children’s images showed their faces looking more serious, guarded. This would be when they started to become aware of the necessity of modifying their behaviour as a matter of habit, turning in on themselves as she herself did.

She brought everything downstairs, and spent four hours sifting the evidence. God, what a terrible mother she had been. No wonder both Patrick and Anna had left home at the first opportunity. Because of her compulsive focus on Paul she had neglected so many of their emotional needs, and saw at last her pride in their independence for what it was.

Then there were the love-letters.

She unfolded one.

Darling, darling Fiona,

When I looked at your sleeping face this morning, I was so full of love and wonderment that you are actually mine. You and the miracle of our baby inside you. You are so utterly beautiful, I can’t think how a man could be so lucky in this world. Our love is so special, it will last for ever and win through any difficulty that life throws at us, it is so deep that not even death will destroy it. At work I think about you all the time, and can’t wait to get home to my gorgeous sexy wife, the love of my life and the only person I want to be with for ever and ever. You’ll always be my only one, my angel. Soon our wonderful baby will be born, and you’ll have that beautiful slim body back that I love so much. And I’ll tell our little boy or girl what a gorgeous mummy he has, every single day. We’ll love him or her so much, but even that won’t be nearly as much as the oceans of love that we have for each other, which nothing and nobody can touch.

I love you my own lovely Fiona. Thank you for putting up with me when I get angry and frustrated – you know it’s only that I love you so much, and I want to be with you and only you all the time.

See you soon (but not soon enough for me!),

Love Paul
                        
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

She read it through twice, remembering how special she had felt on reading it, after finding it on her bedside table. She also recalled the hissing, spitting tirade of filth he had hurled at her on the previous evening, drunk, telling her she should have aborted the baby, which he claimed to doubt was even his.

How could she, how on earth
could
she have been so blind, so unaware? Not to mention plain stupid. It was very hard to come to terms with that thought.

She poured herself a drink, and picked over the entrails of her marriage. She, who hated waste, had wasted all those years when she might have been creative and happy; and worse, had also squandered her natural right to close bonds with her children. How could it be otherwise, when their perception must have been that they mattered less to their mother than their father did, a father who spoiled and terrorised them by turns. She thought she had protected them by drawing his attention away from them when she saw the telltale signs, the snipey little remarks, the tics, the deliberate ratcheting up of minor irritations. A bit like one of those ground-nesting birds trying to confuse a predator. And sometimes she had watched, paralysed, as he had screamed vicious things at them, believing that intervention would increase the sheer nastiness of the attack, since their distress was actually
her
punishment, contrived, aimed and executed with consummate skill.

And yet, if anyone had asked her during those years, she would have said that she was happy; she loved the romantic and temperamental husband who adored her totally. She had trusted him, too, though now she saw that trust as probably having been misplaced. He had had plenty of opportunities to betray her, and probably did on numerous occasions; things which hadn’t quite added up at the time seemed easily explained in the light of objective retrospect. God, she had been
so
naive!
 
Her young self would almost burst with joy when he told her, “I’m so proud of you, my darling.”
 
Like a child.
 
Like a dog.
 
The approval, capricious and always hard won, was all that mattered.
 

She shook her head with incredulous shame.

She leafed through the letters, the cards, the notes. There was that photo she had taken of him, wind in his wavy hair, and laughter on his lips, when she was still at school and had played truant to be with him. They had taken cans of beer down to the river and spent hot, muzzy afternoons talking and playing the fool, and discussing when she might make him the ultimate gift of her virginity. Only it hadn’t been the ultimate gift, she reflected; she had also surrendered her free will and over twenty years of her life to her first and only boyfriend, when they married. Why? She hadn’t had any interest in boys until she had started to feel left behind and out of things. Her classmates had long since begun to workshop their romantic triumphs and disasters in excited whispers around the tables in the library, and giggling knots of girls would trade their deepest secrets during break. So when she had spotted Paul, smiley and handsome, in a cafe one lunchtime, she had boldly chatted him up. He had just broken up with his girlfriend, he said, and she invited him out to the pictures. But being like the others wasn’t enough; she had to go one or more better. All her own fault, then, architect of her own downfall.