Precocious (10 page)

‘I suppose so.’

‘But most people don’t have the courage to ask, so they go around wondering.’

‘Sister Agnes says courage should be rewarded.’

You laughed. ‘She means in heaven, probably.’

‘I can’t wait that long.’

I heard you take a gulp of something. Coffee? Wine? The physical sound of you swallowing made me shiver.

‘I think you’re … different. Extraordinary, in fact.’

My heart fluttered in my chest.

‘So can we be friends?’

‘You’re also very persistent.’

‘Only when something matters to me.’

‘Okay, sunshine. Friends. Just friends.’

‘Just friends.’
For now
, I thought, and I climbed the stairs to bed and fell asleep with a smile still on my lips.

My two best friends are as different as the two sides of me.

Laura has always found me fascinating in my ‘worldliness’, especially when we were teenagers, but it was really only ever a coat I borrowed from Mari – I presented a toned-down version. If Laura had ever actually met Mari, or any of her crowd, I think her head would have exploded. For example one guy, Cole, used to flip out his own eye with a dessert spoon, then pop it right back in again. He hardly ever had to go to hospital as a result of this party trick.

These were not the kinds of circles Laura moved in.

In return, I was desperately jealous of Laura and her ‘normal’ life. Her mum actually baked. Their house always smelled of biscuits, and flowers.

When we were younger, she loved that I lived on an ‘estate’; I think she associated it with a country estate, which was about as far as it could get from the reality.

One thing that living on an estate implied that was actually true was a sense of community. Wives shared fags over garden walls; husbands were members of darts or cards teams at the local pub. Everyone knew everyone’s name, and people were usually referred to in conversation by both names: Doreen O’Farrell, Sharon Keene, Angela Horrocks. I wondered when all the introductions had happened; I couldn’t imagine my mum, having just moved in, taking a freshly baked pie or a bunch of flowers to the neighbours and brightly offering a potted biography of her family. And yet everyone knew us; it just seemed to have happened by osmosis. People in the street knew me, if not by name, then as ‘Charlie and Tina Palmer’s girl’ or sometimes ‘you know, the clever one’.

While there was camaraderie, as with any community there was also always gossip and mistrust. Anyone who got anything new, for example, was regarded with open envy, sometimes suspicion: from a car (‘how can
they
afford
that
?’) to a privet hedge (‘what have
they
got to hide?’).

No one ever moved away, and no one was allowed to move up. It would have been seen as a sort of betrayal.

As far as my mum was concerned, there was ‘common’ (us) and there was ‘posh’, and there was ‘nowt in between’. She thought Laura was ‘posh’, with all the associated mistrust that that brought. Of course when we were really little, still at primary school, we had no real understanding of class, but I was vaguely aware that the area Laura lived in was more well-to-do, and that their house was bigger than ours, even though Laura was an only child.

She had two rooms: a bedroom, and what had been a playroom and was now a dressing room, with rows of jewel-coloured clothes lined up like sweet jars. Necklaces and bracelets hung from hooks on the wall as though from invisible throats and wrists.

‘If
I
had two rooms,’ I would tell her, ‘I would have two bedrooms.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I shrugged, ‘it would just be cool to be in your own house, but pretend you were sleeping over somewhere else.’

Of course, the other big difference was that Laura’s family owned their home – ours was owned by ‘the corporation’, who seemed to me to be a shadowy organisation whose purpose was to demand money and give nothing in return. Some families on the estate had bought their houses, but it was beyond the reach of most, us included.

‘What would I want with a mortgage?’ my dad would mutter, as though the very fact of it being possible were an insult.

‘It’s about time the corporation gave us a new kitchen,’ Mum would complain every time the cooker went on the blink. ‘The corporation haven’t done the grass for a while,’ she would say, looking out of the window at the small green that faced our house.

Kahlil Gibran said, ‘your friend is your needs answered’. Right now I feel I need both of them, to balance me out. They are light and shade; if one is the angel on my shoulder and one the devil, first of all I need the devil.

‘I need to talk to you,’ I tell Mari when I turn up at her door, bottle of wine in hand. ‘About Dave. And about Morgan.’

She knows, of course. She can see it in the tilt of my head, the way I walk, the tell-tale shine in my eyes that you have put there.

‘It’s happened, then?’

‘Yes. God.’ I sink into the sofa.

It happened, like the first time, because I led it. You resisted me, this time even said it was ‘wrong’, and I repeated ‘how can it be, how can it be’, kissing your neck, stroking your back, until you gave in.

I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but not telling Mari almost feels like a bigger betrayal than the thing itself.

‘So how was it?’

I pull a face, groan. ‘Come off it,’ I say. From the kitchen I hear the heavy ‘pop’ of a cork being removed, followed by the comforting sloshing of wine against the sides of a glass.

‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To talk? So, talk.’

There’s something new and unrecognisable in her voice. I look up.

‘Mari, what’s up? You sound … are you being funny with me?’ She says nothing. ‘Are you
mad
at me?’

There’s a pause briefer than a heartbeat before the familiar grin spreads across her face.

‘Course not, doll.’ She ruffles my hair as though petting an errant puppy. ‘Rough day, that’s all. So tell me – what happened? What was it like?’ She looks at me meaningfully over the rim of her glass. ‘Better than Dave?’

‘No.’ I shake my head firmly. ‘No, not at all. It’s just – different.’

How can I explain it? With Dave, I know what to expect. In bed, we move like well-rehearsed dancers, perfectly in time. I know the landscape of his body; I know the meaning in every sigh.

I always imagined sex would be the first thing to go once a relationship, a marriage, starts to turn stale. But it isn’t the sex; it’s the kissing.

Kissing requires effort, patience, sensuality. Sex can be performed mechanically; kissing can’t. It’s an imprecise art, whereas I had come to view sex as cold biology.

You spent a long time kissing me.

You were familiar and unfamiliar all at once. There is more hair on you, than him and than before, and now it is grey in places; I traced its line from your collarbone down to your stomach, fascinated.

Dave and I undress quickly, automatically. There’s no sensuousness in it anymore; it is a practical act. We fold our clothes before folding ourselves under the duvet and into each other.

You undressed me as though unwrapping a gift, layer by layer. I felt exposed, as though you might finally unpeel my skin, take my bones, leave only soft, beating organs.

You made me lie still.

‘Control freak,’ I tried to say, but you put your hand over my mouth. I bit your fingers, but you seemed to feel nothing, your free hand holding me down at the hip, your eyes turned away as you moved in me and I let myself be taken over.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ I tell Mari, ‘Dave presses all the right buttons. Every time. But with Morgan it’s … exciting. Dave satisfies me, but …’

‘He doesn’t surprise you.’

‘Exactly.’

Slightly drunk, she says, ‘So what you’re saying is this. Morgan is like lobster. Dave is like a McDonald’s.’

‘Ha! Here we go.’

I love Mari’s McDonald’s analogies – my favourite was a lengthy exposition on how McDonald’s is the one-night stand of food: you crave it, it feels great while you’re doing it, but immediately afterwards you’re filled with remorse. Or wait, was it the other way around, that a one-night stand is the McDonald’s of sex? Anyway, she’s warming to this familiar theme.

‘I mean, with a McDonald’s you know what you’re getting, it’s the same every time. And it satisfies your appetite—’

‘For half an hour or so!’

‘Half an hour, right, you always feel hungry again half an hour after a Maccy Dees, I’ll give you that. But the good thing is, it’s the same every time.’

‘But the trouble is,’ I say, ‘it’s the same every time.’

‘Good value though,’ and she starts to laugh. Suddenly I feel sorry.

‘You’re supposed to like Dave,’ I say. I can’t believe I’m telling her off for doing exactly what I hoped she’d do; for making light of it.
Defend him
, I’m thinking.
Don’t make fun of him. Someone has to protect Dave in this.

‘Yeah, well,’ she drains her glass, ‘
you’re
supposed to be married to him.’

‘Lobsters mate for life,’ I say.

‘In that case,’ she says, ‘Dave’s the lobster.’

Something in me sinks, because I know she’s right.

‘I just wasn’t prepared,’ I say slowly, ‘for how happy this would make me. How good I would feel.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Mari takes a long drag of her cigarette and breathes out a dramatic plume, ‘that’s the big secret no one tells you about adultery.’ (I wince at the word.) ‘What? You’d rather I called it screwing around? The secret no one tells you, and the reason people do it. When people say, “God, how could he or she do that – they had so much going for them – how could they risk it, blah blah blah” – it’s obvious, isn’t it? Because it feels bloody good.’

‘Morgan once told me a story. I think it was
called
“Happiness”. It was French. “
La Bonheur
”. Something like that. A man has an affair.’

‘It’s always the man in the stories.’

‘Don’t interrupt. You see, he loves his wife but he also meets this woman, he has an affair with her, and she’s wonderful, and she makes him feel so …
happy
. The thing is, he can’t bear to keep it from his wife. He decides to tell her, not out of guilt but just because he has to share how happy he is.’

‘Nice! Doesn’t sound like a great plan.’

‘Right. Anyway he tells the wife everything. They are in a park, by a lake, on a bench, and as I remember it after he tells her, she says she’ll forgive him, they make love, and they get back all the passion and intensity they ever had. He’s so incredibly happy, and drifts into a blissful sleep.’

‘He might well. Smug pig.’

‘The thing is, he wakes up later to a huge commotion, people all gathered around the lake. His wife has thrown herself in: she drowned.’

‘Shit. Sad story, babe. Is there supposed to be a moral in there, or something?’

‘Yeah. Never confess, I suppose. Give me one of those.’ I lean forward and slide a long menthol cigarette out of Mari’s packet and into my mouth.

‘What, you smoke now as well? Dave wouldn’t approve.’

‘Ha! I know. It’s the least of his worries though, don’t you think?’

It’s a strange thing. Once you take one big risk – with your life, your happiness – other risks seem meaningless. You feel more alive, sort of invincible, but at the same time you know it could all blow up at any moment so you feel permanently on edge. Vulnerable. It’s an addictive sort of tightrope.

It’s the beginning again that does it. It’s the talking, and inventing yourself, getting to know yourself as much as the other person. Everybody likes the first weeks of a relationship the best; no one admits it. Everyone says: love changes, yes, but it grows. It gets even better. And everyone agrees, but knows they are lying.

‘This shit’ll kill you.’ Mari lights another. ‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I need to be with him. That’s all I know.’

‘And two years from now? What then? Ten years? Twenty?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Who’s to say you’d be better together than you and Dave are? I’m telling you, two years on, same shit, different pair of shoes under the bed. When you eat lobster every day, eventually it’ll taste like a Big Mac.’ She pauses then says again, ‘I’m telling you.’

Laura and Matt’s house is like the houses you see in magazines. It’s like ours, really, but without that underlying sense that it might be teetering on the edge of chaos. In our house, if you open a cupboard, it might be uneventful, or you might suddenly be rained on by shoeboxes; a badly placed ironing board; old videos; the plastic bags we keep meaning to recycle.

In Laura and Matt’s house, there are always lilies, and candles that are never burnt down. It feels like being at a spa. Even Dave, who likes things to be tidy, never feels quite comfortable there and always gently insists we eat out whenever they ask us for dinner.

I still get a warm feeling when I think of the four of us together, especially the first night I took Dave to meet them. I remember watching him laughing with Matt in that easy, relaxed way he has, and feeling the glow of relief that my friends liked this new boyfriend. It was the moment I knew that not only were we safe, the two of us, but that that safety now extended to a network, a support crew, a circle. That was probably when I knew I would marry him, if he asked.

Laura is on a health kick, as usual, so we sit on her perfect cream sofa drinking pomegranate juice. I hold my glass nervously with both hands.

Even though we’ve known each other for so long, there’s always a preamble when we get together. A few minutes of feeling our way into the conversation, getting the polite chit-chat out of the way, sizing up the other’s mood. An outsider might think we barely knew each other, but actually the opposite is true. It’s as though when we talk about the mundane, we can see each other’s deepest secrets. I’m here to show her mine, but I sense something brittle in her voice almost immediately. I don’t say ‘what’s wrong?’; I say, ‘Tell me.’

She takes a deep breath and in the same tone she just used to talk about the gardening, says, ‘It’s Matt. He’s cheating.’