Precocious (7 page)

‘It would seem so.’ You pause. ‘What’s up, sunshine?’

‘Why didn’t you kiss me again?’ I blurt it out, squeeze my eyes shut and wait for your answer. Seconds feel like minutes.

‘You’re married,’ you say simply.

‘So – what? You’re a good guy now?’

‘Like you said, kid. People change.’

I hear footsteps on the drive. He’s early.

‘Can I call you again?’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’re married,’ you say again. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. Take care, sunshine.’

Dave’s key in the door, the click of you hanging up in my ear.

The same as every day, he calls out, ‘Fill many pages today, babe?’

The same as every day, I say, ‘Hundreds.’ I take a deep breath then trot out my line, ‘Sell many shoes today?’

‘Oh, thousands.’ He slips his arm around my waist from behind and kisses the top of my head. Just as I slide my phone into my pocket, it beeps, vibrating against me. My stomach lurches.

‘What’s for dinner?’ he asks into my hair.

‘Chicken casserole,’ I murmur. ‘Could you take Bella out while I warm it up?’

At the sound of her name and the word ‘out’, Bella bounds into the room and starts nudging her head into Dave’s hand.

‘I have to now, don’t I?’ he laughs, bending to stroke her. ‘Come on, girl. No rest for the wicked.’ He kisses me again before grabbing the lead from the sideboard.

I smile but all I can think is,
Go, go, go
, feeling the phone in my pocket like heat.

As soon as he leaves I pull it out and stare at the little envelope icon. I click it and there it is, your number, no name attributed to it but memorised by me already.

You’re not the kind of person to have an affair
, the message reads. I move my thumb rapidly over the keys.

What kind of person am I?

Don’t ask me that, don’t make me say it. It’s not fair.

So of course I fill in the blanks for you, and wonder what your words would have been, and this makes my heart feel light, and dark, all at once.

So this is how the lies begin, and how they spread, like bacteria. They need only themselves, and air, to breed and multiply.

They begin as lies of omission. That black-haired boy who almost broke my heart (I can’t even say his name, so I suppose he must have been close, very close) was adept at this technique; I now know I must’ve gone through all that pain with him so I could learn his cheating skills.

‘How can I have lied to you when I haven’t said anything?’ he used to say. ‘Not telling you something is not the same as lying.’ It’s an irresistible argument, and one I now keep in my armoury in case I am found out.

Of course, I know from experience that I will only be able to ‘not tell’ for a limited time. Sooner or later I will create entire stories, I will fashion them in my head while driving away from you and back towards him, and I’ll recite them with an unblinking eye and busy hands.

So this is where my creative skills will come in useful.

It is two weeks since our supermarket collision, our dinner. Two weeks of phone calls, of texts, of brief daytime meetings. Nothing more than that, not yet.

Dave is becoming an irritant. The wet munching sound of him eating breakfast. The way he leaves the tap running while he brushes his teeth. Who would do that, waste water like that?

Criticising him, I hear your words coming from my mouth.

Example: you have accused me of caring more about things than about people. ‘Face it – you got married for the gift list,’ you said.

On an innocent Sunday, Dave asks me if I think we need a new dishwasher. Every time the door closes the power switches itself off and his incessant tinkering has done nothing to improve the situation, in fact we now appear to have a leak. A creeping puddle is forming on the kitchen floor.

‘Your problem,’ I sniff, ‘is you care more about things than about people.’

He blinks, looks confused, continues struggling with the door and mopping up the spills with tea towels.

I don’t care about damned dishwashers, and new tiles and carpets, and whether this picture or that one looks better hanging over the sideboard. Everything is unbearably neat, and clean, and feels stifling.

I want to be outside, in a field or on a beach, carefree as a child. I want to be drunk, or better yet, high, laughing uncontrollably.

I want extremes.

I don’t want a twenty-minute debate about whether we should have sofa cushions in mocha or cappuccino. None of that matters. What matters is living.

The ‘beep, beep’ of a text gives me a getaway.

‘It’s Mari,’ I announce, ‘some crisis or other. I don’t know how long I’ll be.’

And I’m gone.

It’s a strange and intoxicating thing, seeing someone again from the past. You can step across years as though crossing the street, oblivious to the detritus at your feet. You summarise thousands of minutes into pithy sentences. It’s an editing job. It makes everything look simpler, and prettier, than it really was.

I drive to your house, my quickening heart thudding out the risks one by one. Risk One (da-dum): you have someone there. Someone else. A woman. Risk Two: you just won’t want to see me. Risk Three: you
will
(which is worse?) want to see me, and we’ll be alone for the first time, without the safety of streets and public places to cover us.

I swing the car into a petrol station and do something I haven’t done for years: I buy cigarettes. I drive ten yards off the forecourt, make a U-turn and go back in to buy a lighter, and mints for later, to disguise the smell of the cigarettes.

I pull over, two or three streets away from your house, musing on the fact that the last time I was here I didn’t know how to drive.

(‘When you’re old enough,’ you used to say, while my hand idled on the handbrake, ‘I’ll teach you.’)

Company cars are funny things. Even the phrase summons images that aren’t entirely positive and don’t match up with the way I thought my life would be. Mine is a ‘pool car’; there are a fleet of them, all lined up, all the same, outside the offices. They let me choose the colour. I didn’t care, but I knew that Karen, who started at around the same time as me, wanted the silver one, which of course made me want it just for devilment. We’d stood in the car park, looking at the identical grilles, headlights, bonnets. There were three we could choose from: silver, red, black. Karen’s eyes were hungry. She wore fake fingernails and a pout, except when smiling too widely, maniacally, at the boss.

He was playing fair; I started at the firm two days earlier (only because, as she repeatedly pointed out, Karen had had a holiday in Marbella which she couldn’t possibly cancel) so I could choose first.

‘Or we could draw straws,’ he was saying.

I shrugged.

‘I’ll take the black one,’ I said. Karen looked as though she would hug me, if it didn’t entail the risk of smudging her make-up. She took the keys triumphantly, like a prize.

But all I could see was a car in a row with a dozen others. I wasn’t being ungrateful; it was clean, and functional. But it wouldn’t feel like mine.

I love those corny magazine articles: ‘What does your car say about you?’ Mine says I’m a cog in a machine.

I always look enviously at people in old bangers that they’ve lovingly brought back to life. I love seeing things hanging from rear-view mirrors, even though Dave thinks it’s ‘tacky’. I notice these things. Air fresheners, often; fluffy dice (which is probably what Karen has in her silver Mondeo, now); once, a rosary. Once a photograph. People just want to personalise their space, I tell Dave. I love that.

I turn off the radio, light a cigarette, hang my arm out of the window. I look at the ‘No Smoking’ sticker on the dashboard; all pool cars have them. It gives the impression of being in a taxi: being in transitory, borrowed space, governed by someone else’s rules. Dog walkers pass by. A man helps a much older woman (his mother? Grandmother, even?) down the steps of the church opposite. A lilac tree overhanging the pavement sends a rush of scent into my car; I feel decadent, polluting it with nicotine. I eye passersby boldly, as though anticipating a challenge, but none of them look at me. There is nothing extraordinary, to them, about a thirty-year-old woman pulled over on a suburban street, smoking.

You answer the door with a glass in your hand and a tea towel thrown over your shoulder. You’re wearing shorts and a linen shirt.

‘His name was Peter,’ I say. ‘The one who broke my heart. Or nearly did. If you must know.’

You raise an eyebrow.

‘You didn’t say you were coming. I might not be alone.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes.’

I brush by you, holding out the cigarettes like a backstage pass. You laugh and I feel heat from your smile.

Lying on your sofa, leaning into you, your hands resting on my shoulders, I tell the story.

Peter was what they call a ladies’ man. Or a man’s man – they amount to the same thing. He was smooth. The first thing I said to him was, ‘If you ever call me a lady again, I’ll give you a black eye.’

He came from a different world to the one I knew. At the weekends he would go sailing, or to watch polo matches. His friends all had the straight teeth and shiny hair of the wealthy. Not many of them worked, but he did, and that was how we met. He was destined for success, even though he used to wind up our boss by calling her ‘babe’ all the time.

He stood out. People wanted to be near him – he was magnetic. This is a definite advantage when you work in sales.

On a team night out, tired of the trail of low-lit, overpriced bars where everyone watched everyone else and no one seemed to ever smile, I sneaked him off to a place I knew with dirty carpets and music so loud it hammered in your chest like a heartbeat. He loved it, and in a taxi kissed me for seven whole miles while the blinking red light ticked over the cost.

It was a classic and predictable trap. He was a rogue and I thought I could change him. It all happened faster than it should have. We lived together and, for a while, it was intense and fun and curious.

‘Isn’t Peter supposed to mean rock?’ I asked him once.

He laughed.

‘I’m the opposite,’ he warned me. ‘Don’t try to hold onto me. I’m more like,’ trailing his hand over the side of the boat, ‘water.’

Or air
, I thought.
Always there, surrounding me, but impossible to fix myself to
.

Then what happened? What everyone said would happen: he got bored, I got jealous. Before long, he was kissing other girls in taxis.

‘I was never enough for him,’ I tell you now, ‘nor him for me.’

I couldn’t give him enough attention – no one person ever could – and he couldn’t give me enough security. We both came out of it a little worse off, but I don’t tell you that part, because I want you to believe I am wiser, better, now.

‘Where is he now?’ you murmur. Your breath in my hair.

‘Married. She isn’t enough for him either.’

‘Oh? How do you know?’

I twist around from the waist, look into your eyes.

‘How do I know? How do you think?’

‘Ah,’ you say slowly, ‘I see. Revenge. When was this?’

‘A while ago. After we split up, but before I met Dave. It was only … it only happened once.’ This part a lie; it was a messy affair that went on for weeks.

‘And did it make you feel better? Or not?’

‘It did,’ I shrug, ‘for about five minutes. I mean, at least I knew it wasn’t me … I wasn’t the only one he cheated on. It wasn’t anything I did wrong. I certainly didn’t feel bad about it.’

‘And now?’

‘Now I don’t feel anything.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ Your hands squeeze, hard, too close to my throat. Another inch and I would be choking. I hold my breath. ‘I wish I did, though,’ you say, your voice like metal.

The reality of your touch hits me like cold air after a fire.

I jump up, smooth out imaginary wrinkles from my clothes.

‘I have to go.’

‘Okay.’

You don’t care if I leave or stay. I can be there, or not. I could disappear for another fifteen years. It wouldn’t upset you, or please you; it would be irrelevant. I am dizzy, overwhelmed by a need to affect you.

What is the best way? With stories, and words? With indifference? (But this was always your forte, not mine.) I lean forward and kiss you, uninvited. I want to stake my claim, leave a print on you.

Your lips are still, and soft. You taste of smoke. I touch your hair, run a fingernail down the back of your neck. You don’t move, and pulling away wordlessly, the threat of tears stinging my throat, I leave but know I’ll be back.

I’m not surprised to find the drive home gets to me. Cars can be lonely places. I try to distract myself from where I’ve been, and from where I’m going.

I follow a young guy in a blue Clio for a while. Funny, I always thought a Clio was more of a girl’s car. Those ‘Nicole’ adverts. Still. Perhaps he thinks the same, because he has tried to beef it up a bit, with big tyres and something resembling an egg-box stuck to the back.

People flip their lights on. Some as soon as the cloud starts to drop, cautious souls, not to be confused with the Volvo drivers whose sidelights are on permanently due to the car’s country of origin, country of no light. Some take much longer, maybe enjoying the gamble, having little bored bets with themselves, how near to home can they get before they have to switch on, every day they get a bit nearer, that means spring is coming. Maybe some are enjoying that fast, anonymous feeling of driving in the dark, like flying.

Metal boxes buzzing up and down tarmac, everyone in their little worlds. That slice of time you don’t have to account for, In The Car. People driving home from Sunday lunches with families. People talking on mobiles, reps like me in Mondeos and Vectras with handsfree, heartsfree. The Wife thinks you get up, go to work, come home, but when you’re In The Car, she doesn’t know where you are.

No one knows where I am.

But although a car covers you, it can also betray you.

I watch the trip counter wheels click forward, forward, forward, with the unsettling feeling that I’m being clocked.