Tess Stimson - The Adultery Club (16 page)

for twenty minutes to get a demonic Metheny into

her snowsuit for the village creche, only to find Nicholas

has disappeared.

Evie lifts her face out of her breakfast bowl and displays

a Cheshire Cat hot-chocolate grin that reaches to her

ears. ‘Daddy said he’d see your pussy in the van show at

lunchtime she announces.

I look to Sophie for translation.

‘He’ll see you at Le Poussin for a vin chaud at lunch

Sophie sighs. ‘Evie, you’re useless. As if Daddy would

ever drive a van.’

In the event, had Nicholas arrived at the piste cafe at

the wheel of a white Ford transit demanding sexual

satisfaction, I would have been less surprised.

‘Snowboarding?’ Kit exclaims, when I called on my

mobile from the cafe lavatory to share the apocalyptic

news. ‘Nicholas?’

‘Snowboarding, Nicholas I confirm. ‘Not two words I

ever expected to use in the same sentence.’

‘Suddenly abduction by aliens is sounding perfectly

reasonable,’ Kit observes, ‘I’m looking at the whole business

of Roswell and Area 51 in a whole new light. By the

way,’ he adds meaningfully, ‘I noticed, when I was feeding

your rabbit, that you have rather a lot of messages on

your answer machine.’

‘Don’t, Kit.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ he says crossly. ‘How can

you not be curious, after all these years?’

Trace always did have the power to tempt, I think, as

his satanic smile fills my mind. But of course it’s out of

the question. I mean, the hours, for a start. The girls would need to keep photos of me by their beds so they didn’t think we were being burgled if they ran into me in

the hallway in the middle of the night.

But my own restaurant-Impossible. No point even thinking about it: so I very

carefully don’t.

No matter what hours Trace offered me, accepting

would be unthinkable; far, far too dangerous on every

level. I love Nicholas more than I thought possible; but

I’m not going to risk it all by putting myself in the line of

fire again.

It turns out he has rather a knack for snowboarding.

After two days in which he acquires a collection of bruises

that has Evie emerald with envy, it suddenly all comes

together for him, and on the third morning, he and his

snowboard join the rest of us ski-bound mortals on the

piste.

He’s even found time to buy a new khaki jacket and

grey cargo pants, I notice in astonishment. Thankful

though I am to see the back of the vile navy all-in-one

he’s had since we first met, this is all taking a bit of getting used to.

I’m also taken aback to see him sporting white earphones

- earphones. And this a man who resolutely

refused to switch from vinyl until 1994 - and listening to

a song by some girl I’ve never even heard of.

‘I wouldn’t complain Liz mumbles through her pain

au chocolat elevenses. ‘As mid-life crises go, buying an

iPod and taking up snowboarding is fairly harmless. And

you have to admit it suits him.’

Liz is right: the changes in Nicholas do suit him.

Watching my husband shooting past on his board, arms

outstretched for balance, knees bent, the wind whipping

back his hair - goodness, it needs cutting - I’m suddenly

punched by the thought: this is the real Nicholas. There

have been glimpses in the past - usually in bed - but in a

dozen years together I have never seen him as clearly as I

do now.

It’s always been the one sly disappointment of my

marriage, that I’ve never managed to breach Nicholas’s

fettered self-control. Edward and Daisy Lyon’s meticulous

British upbringing, it turns out, was more thorough than

I’d realized.

And yet - perhaps not thorough enough.

No. Trace Pitt can build the Taj Mahal in Salisbury

town centre and I’m still not going to return his calls.

‘Sophie, will you hurry up!’ I yell up the stairs, shifting

Metheny to the other hip. ‘I told you, I’ve got things to do

this morning, we’re going to be late!’

Sophie appears on the landing. ‘But Mummy, I can’t

find any clean knickers! They’ve all just vanished! I can’t go

to school without any knickers!’

Oops. ‘Darling, just grab any old pair from the clean

laundry basket. We can sort it all out tomorrow. The first

day back at school is always a bit of a rush, you know

that.’

Minutes later, Sophie thunders down the stairs past

me and piles into the back seat of the Volvo next to Evie.

I move round to the other side to strap Metheny into her

car seat. Scarcely have I secured the holdall-five-points

and-click-together-whilst-your-baby-squirms-resentfully

harness (I swear, it would defeat navy SEALS) than she

sicks up porridge all over herself, the car seat, me and -1

don’t believe it-‘Evie! What on earth is Don Juan doing in the car?’

‘But Mummy! It’s show and tell this morning—’

‘Take him back to his cage in the scullery. Now! Sophie,

help me get Metheny back inside so I can change her. Oh,

Lord, the phone—’

It’s my gynaecologist’s secretary, calling to reschedule

because an elective Caesarean has suddenly ‘come up’ for

which read an invitation to golf and a long lunch at

the nineteenth hole. Can I please come in an hour earlier

- earlier? oh, have pity - this morning for my well-woman

check. The secretary sounds deeply apologetic, but we

both know there is nothing to be done. The gynaecologist

is, after all, a man.

I could cancel my appointment altogether, but then the

gynaecologist will sulk, and make me wait three days to

see him next time I have an excruciating bout of cystitis

(which, if Nicholas stays on present bedroom form, may

not be too far away).

So instead I race to the girls’ school at breakneck

speed - ‘Mummy, did you see that lady’s face at the traffic

lights? She looked really funny, can we nearly hit someone

again?’ - deposit Metheny at Liz’s, and arrive back

home with two minutes to spare before I have to leave

again.

I usually like to make a little extra effort on the hygiene

front when I’m going to the gynaecologist (it’s like brushing

your teeth before having them cleaned, or Hoovering

under the bed before the cleaner comes) but clearly this

time I’m not going to have time for more than a lick and

a promise. I rush upstairs, throw off my kaftan - such a

sartorial lifesaver, I can’t imagine why these ever went

out of fashion - wet the flannel sitting next to the sink,

and give myself a quick wash down below to make sure

all is at least presentable. Flinging the flannel into the

laundry basket, I throw the kaftan back on, hop back into

the car, and race to my appointment.

And this headless-chicken chaos is just an ordinary

morning, I reflect as I spend the next twenty minutes

sitting behind a horsebox and grinding my teeth in

frustration.

I realize that Nicholas, like most husbands whose

wives don’t actually go out to work, secretly believes that

I lie around all day eating chocolate digestives and trying

on shoes. And he is right, to a certain extent, since this is

exactly what I would do - once I have taken the girls to

school, swept the kitchen floor, stacked the dishwasher,

hunted down dirty socks (my last sweep behind the Aga,

under Don Juan’s cage and, revoltingly, in the biscuit

tin, yielded four), put the washing machine on, dropped

off Nicholas’s dry-cleaning, played with Metheny on the

swings at the village green, put a casserole in the Aga,

mopped up the mess from the leaky dishwasher, called a

plumber, done all the washing-up by hand, pegged out

the laundry, put Metheny to bed for her nap, brought

in the laundry when it starts to rain, arranged a service

for the Mercedes, scribbled down a sudden idea for a new

sort of souffle, pegged the laundry back out again when

it stops raining, answered the phone four times to salesmen

trying to sell me double glazing, collected the girls

from school, glued cotton wool on a cardboard snowman,

written five sentences using adverbs ending in -ly, fed

the girls, bathed them, dressed them, read them a story,

put them to bed, discussed arrangements for his parents’

golden wedding anniversary party for forty minutes with

his mother on the phone, checked under Evie’s bed for

monsters with a torch, read them a story again, ironed

Nicholas a shirt for the morning, cooked our dinner,

washed up, tidied up, bathed myself and gone to bed.

Just line those shoes up for me to try on, I’m sure there’ll

be time tomorrow.

Kit says I should stop trying so hard, let Nicholas see

some of the frantic paddling below the surface instead of

just the cool, calm swan above; but I can’t, he thinks I’m

so capable, so organized, so unflappable. I couldn’t bear

his disappointment.

Thanks to the snail’s-pace horsebox, I’m ten minutes

late for the gynaecologist. The secretary whisks me

through to an empty examination room with a ratheryou-than-me

smile, and I whip off my clothes and pop up

onto the table, sliding my ankles into the stirrups and

trying to look suitably contrite. It doesn’t do to antagonize

megalomaniacs armed with cold specula.

I stare up at the ceiling, letting my mind drift. If I

were going to be Trace’s head chef - obviously I’m not, but if I were, there are some fascinating things happening in micro-gastronomy at the moment - oh, that sounds

dreadfully dull and scientific, not at all to do with making

strawberries taste of chocolate and potatoes taste like peas,

which is what it really is-(Relax, relax, he’s seen it all a thousand times.)

—and if anyone was going to take that sort of gastronomic

plunge, it would be Trace, I’m amazed it’s taken

him this long to open his own restaurant-(Oh, cold hands.)

—though obviously I can quite see how sardine icecream

in Salisbury might not-The gynaecologist chuckles between my thighs. ‘My,

my, Mrs Lyon, we have made an extra effort this morning,

haven’t we?’

I peer through my splayed legs at the top of his head.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Always a pleasure when someone goes the extra mile.

All right now, try to relax, this’ll just take a jiffy—’

I puzzle briefly over his remark on the drive home,

squirming damply in my seat - so much lubricant, necessary

of course, unless one is turned on by the cold metal

probing of strangers; not that there’s anything wrong with

that, though it’s all a little Black Lace for me - but then as

I walk in the back door, the phone is ringing, and by the

time I’ve placated Ali, my increasingly tetchy agent, with

reckless promises of a dozen new recipes and a complete

synopsis (a dozen! By mid-February!) the entire incident

has completely slipped my mind.

The penny, however, drops with a resounding echo

when the girls get home.

‘Mummy,’ Sophie calls from the bathroom, ‘where’s

my flannel?’

‘What flannel?’ I yell back, my head still in the Aga

(from which I am extracting a slightly burned casserole,

not contemplating anything Sylvia Plathish).

‘The one that was here by the basin,’ Sophie says with

exaggerated patience. ‘It had all my glitter and sparkles

in it.’

I’m naked and about to step in the shower - oh, the

shame! - when Evie runs into the bathroom, her eyes

wide in her bleached, shocked face. ‘Liz is here and she

didn’t even see the shortbread you left out to cool she just

came running through the kitchen she’s still got her

slippers on and she says you have to come downstairs

and watch the TV now.’

A cold drool of fear slides down my spine as I grab a

towel. Instinctively, I know that something terrible has

brushed my family.

Liz is hunched forward on the sofa in front of the

television, her elbows on her knees. She leaps up and

rushes over as if to throw her arms around me - then, at

the last moment, seems to realize that this is inappropriate: for now, I think in terror, and stands there awkwardly fiddling with the hem of her bobbly old cardigan instead.

‘What, Liz? What is it?’

‘A bomb,’ Liz says helplessly. ‘Actually, five of them.

In London again, it seems they were timed to go off

together in the middle of the rush hour—’

‘Where?’ I say thickly, as if talking through a mouthful

of peanut butter.

‘Trafalgar Square, Marble Arch - it’s terrible there, oh,

God, Mai, the pictures - Victoria Station, Knightsbridge

and—’

She pauses. I can’t bear the pity in her eyes.

‘Holborn - oh, my God, Nicholas.’

How unoriginal, how desperate, the bargains we make

with God. Please keep him safe and I’ll go to church

every Sunday. Please keep him safe and I’ll give a hundred

pounds to charity. Please keep him safe and I’ll

never get cross when he leaves his clothes on the floor,