Tess Stimson - The Adultery Club (30 page)

piece from the Duke’s Head. She’s a bit upset about it,

they’ve been together since New Year’s Eve.’

‘She should be bloody grateful,’ I mutter.

‘The thing is, Libby, love, you’ve got to play a bit hard

to get,’ Dad says, resuming his role as Dr Phil with

disturbing ease. ‘Chap’s not going to pay for the cow if

he’s getting the milk for free, is he?’

I’m not sure I can deal with this fresh insight into the

dynamic of my parents’ marriage this early in the morning.

Early for a Saturday, I mean.

I slouch back out of the kitchen with my tea, once Dad

remembers his manners and gets up to make it for me.

And thus passes the rest of the weekend. I skulk,

mooch and saunter, occasionally interspersing this frenzied

activity with a bout of ambling, meandering, roaming

or rambling, as the mood takes me. There are even

moments of slumping and drooping, just for variety.

I check for text messages so often I’m surprised my

phone doesn’t howl, ‘Gerroff Me!’ and leap out of sight

behind the sofa when I walk in the room.

On Sunday I call Amy. ‘What?’ she says sharply.

‘Way to go, Ames. I love you too.’

‘I’m waiting for a call she snaps.

‘Who from?’

She hesitates. ‘Terry, if you must know.’

‘You’re at your parents’ again, aren’t you?’ I speculate.

‘How did you know?’

I sigh. ‘Lucky guess. So, did Terry say he’d ring you?’

‘No. But he might.’

‘Does he usually call you at weekends?’

‘Does Nick usually call you?’

There’s a silence as we contemplate our respective

adulterers. Not for the first time, I am struck by our self

deluding masochism. There are plenty of men out there

h.iving affairs with married women, but I bet they’re not

benched at their parents’ houses chewing their fingernails

back to the elbows waiting for her to ring. I bet they’re

having a good ole time, hanging with their mates down

the pub, sinking a few whilst they wait till it’s late enough

to go clubbing, where they’ll undoubtedly end up pulling

a fit teenager and getting laid just to keep their hand in.

Sure as shit they’re not riding the pine in suburbia.

‘Are you going to the Law Society dinner next month?’

Amy asks suddenly.

‘Hadn’t thought about it. Probably. Why?’

‘Well. It’s plus spouses,’ she says meaningfully.

So Nick will bring the ditz. ‘Maybe we can take turns

with him I suggest.

‘You won’t be so flippant after four years Amy

reproves. ‘Look, I have to go. Terry might be trying to get

through. I’ll talk to you on Monday.’

I wander disconsolately into the kitchen, where my

mother is peeling potatoes for Sunday lunch. There’s no

way I’ll still be doing this in four years. Jesus, I don’t

intend to still be doing it in four months. I’m not going

to end up like Amy, wasting my life waiting for a man

who’s never going to make the break. It should never

have got this intense in the first place. It was supposed to

be a bit of fun, good conversation and some way-fantastic

sex. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with the bastard.

‘Don’t hover, Sara, it’s distracting says my mother.

‘Sorry.’

She hands me a knife and points to the vegetable rack.

‘Might as well make yourself useful with the sprouts now

you’re here.’

For ten minutes or so, we peel and chop in silence.

I can’t say it’s companionable; my relationship with my

mother is, at best, a wary truce. At worst, it puts the

Middle East conflict to shame.

‘Man trouble, is it?’ my mother sniffs.

‘Is what?’

She reaches past me to put another potato in a saucepan

of cold water. ‘You’ve been mooching round the

house all weekend with a face like a wet Sunday. That

phone is practically attached to your hip. You were like

this over young Martin, as I recall.’

‘I was notY

‘Have it your own way.’

I slice sprout stalks with unnecessary vigour.

‘Not interested, is he?’ my mother says after a moment. Scrape, peel.

‘Who?’

She plops another spud in the pan. ‘The man you’re

eating your heart out over.’

‘Yes, he’s interested, thank you,’ I say, stung.

‘Married, then?’

‘Dammit, Mum! Now look what you made me do!’

‘Don’t bleed on the sprouts, dear.’ She hands me a

piece of kitchen towel; I ignore it and suck my finger.

‘Girls your age don’t choose to spend the weekend with

their parents unless he’s either not interested or married.’

I’m shocked: both by the unexpected perspicacity of

what she’s said and the fact that she’s said it at all. My

mother and I don’t go for soul-baring and girlie intimacy.

She tells me she loves me with Hermes scarves and Prada

backpacks. I show her I love her by wearing them.

I’ve always envied Amy’s warm, close relationship

with her mother. She told me once that when she goes

home at the weekend, her mother sits on the loo seat and

chats to her whilst she’s in the bath. The image of cosy

familiarity it conjured up made me so jealous I couldn’t

speak to her for a week.

My mother never asks me about my love life; presumably

because she has a pretty good idea of its nature. And

in fairness, I’ve always returned the compliment.

‘Married men aren’t fair game, young lady she says

sharply.

‘Mum, I know—’

‘Wanting someone is no grounds for trampling all

over another woman’s marriage. And falling in love is no

excuse either. Pass the salt cellar, please.’ She grinds with

swift, angry movements. ‘We all have choices. Men are

fools. It doesn’t take much to tempt them. It’s up to us not

to let each other down.’

I don’t know why she sounds like she’s talking from

experience. My dad would never cheat on her. He said so.

‘And they never leave their wives,’ she adds coldly.

‘Whatever sweet words they tell you to get you into bed.

Remember that.’

‘I’ve no idea what you mean,’ I say. ‘Is there any wine

open?’

She nods, purse-lipped, towards the fridge. I pour

myself a heftier glass than I want just to annoy her, and

go out into the back garden. It’s surprisingly mild for

March; I sit on the stone bench near the greenhouse,

sipping my wine - passable, given that it came from a box

not a bottle - and enjoy the play of watery sunshine across

my face. Dad has already turned the earth for his broad

beans; the air smells rich and peaty. Maybe I’ll offer to

help him plant them this year. I haven’t done that since

I was about twelve. I used to love crouching beside him

in my red wellies, pushing the big beans into the freshly

tilled soil with my thumb. I remember when I was six,

I couldn’t wait for them to grow, and snuck out of my

room every night with a torch to check on them until I

trod on a slug in my bare feet and screamed so loudly

I woke the neighbours. My mother hates that Dad grows

his own vegetables, of course; she calls it his ‘allotment

fetish’. She thinks the neighbours will assume we can’t

afford to buy them shrink-wrapped and genetically modified

at the supermarket. Poor old Dad. I don’t know how

he puts up with her.

I drain the wine glass and set it down on the bench.

My mobile is burning a hole in my pocket. The trip to

Rock might have been a last-minute thing. Maybe Nick

didn’t even know about it; maybe it was all her idea. Like

Valentine’s Day. It’s not as if he actually said he was going

to be in Wiltshire as usual this weekend. I just assumed.

In the beginning, I never used to really think about

Nick and his wife together. Now I can’t stop.

It was seeing them both at Yuzo’s. What I should have

done after I bugged out of the sushi bar was take a cab

home, eat a full tub of Cherry Garcia, and finish the bottle

of vodka in front of The Way We Were. What I actually did was skulk around Yuzo’s for two hours in the freezing cold feeling sorry for myself and dreaming up ways to

castrate the bastard with piano wire. I saw them come

out, his arm wrapped protectively around her teeny-tiny

shoulders. They stopped for a moment in the street and

kissed. Brief, but affectionate: you could tell. He stroked

her cheek afterwards. Not the actions of a man who’s

sleeping with his junior partner on the side. Not the

actions of a man who isn’t sleeping with his wife.

Watching them, I felt as if I’d been punched in the

stomach. My head hurt. How could he lead me on like

this; how could he lie to me like this? Make me think-Think what, exactly?

He never said he’d leave his wife. What did you expect, you love-struck cow? That he was going to fall in love with you too and suddenly it’d all be different?

I finger my phone through my fleece pocket. He could

it least ring. That couldn’t be too hard, could it? To make

one simple phone call now and again?

I should never have let it all start up again. I’d been

doing fine up to that afternoon in the conference room,

even if I’d nearly passed out from the pain of not peeing

so he couldn’t catch me by the toilets. Well, not fine; but I’d managed to avoid being alone with him, anyway.

1 hadn’t slit my wrists.

And then he touches me, and every sensible, lookboth-ways,

self-preserving thought flies out of my head.

Some men never listen to you in bed; in the end you

give up asking for what you want. It’s like when you

mishear someone’s name, and you ask them to repeat

themselves: do it more than twice and it starts to get

embarrassing. Why do some men always think they

know what you want better than you do? You can be getting

it on, moments away from orgasm, and you moan,

‘Right there, don’t stop!’ and they think, oh, she likes that,

then she’ll really like this; and they stop and do something

different. I want to take out a full-page newspaper

ad’: when I say, ‘Right there, don’t stop!’, I mean, ‘RIGHT

THERE, DON’T STOP!’

With Nick, sex just gets better every time. I’ve never

felt so connected to another person in my life; it’s like he’s

inside my head. But now scary, grownup feelings have

got all jumbled up with that mind-blowing sex. I don’t

want to give him back any more. I don’t want to share

him. Everything’s changed. And I don’t know what to do

about it.

Suddenly I desperately need to hear his voice. I just

want to know he’s missing me, too. I break my cardinal

rule: I drink and dial.

It rings twentyfour times before he answers. And

then-‘Sara, what the hell are you doing calling me at home?’

Talk about reality check. He sounds really annoyed.

Dammit, this was a fucking, fucking stupid thing to do.

What was I thinking?

‘Oh, God, Nick, I’m so sorry,’ I say quickly. ‘I didn’t

mean to call you; I must’ve hit redial by mistake. Jesus,

I hope I didn’t cause a problem - I’m really sorry.’

To my intense relief, he actually buys it. ‘Never mind,

I’ve done that enough times myself. Is everything OK?’

‘I suppose. I’m at my parents. Dullsville, you have no

idea. They want me to come down on Easter Sunday for

some village egg race or something; as if I pause, steeling myself to ask the question. Don’t lie to me, please don’t lie. ‘How’s it going in Wiltshire?’

‘What? Oh, yes, Wiltshire. Fine, fine. Look, I’ve got to

go. I’ll see you on Tuesday—’

‘Can you come round after work?’

I slam my fist against the stone bench. I hate how weak

and desperate that sounds. What’s happening to me? I

should be tearing him a new one right now, not going

back and begging for more.

‘Maybe. Look, I have to go.’

Bastard. Bastard, bastard, bastard.

Staying with a man who lies to someone else is dumb

enough. Staying with a man who lies to you is just plain

retarded.

Maybe he was telling the truth about Valentine’s Day;

perhaps she did just turn up at his office. Which is a little

out there in itself. Either she’s a suspicious bitch or their

relationship isn’t quite the Cold War standoff he likes to

make out. But he sure as shit lied to me about spending a

long weekend alone with her in Cornwall.

And I’m not going to call him on it.

Without even noticing it happen, I’ve crossed the line.

I can’t give him up now; it’s as simple as that. I want him

for myself. I want him to leave his wife, walk out on his

kids, move in with me and for us to live happily ever

after. I want his ring, his name, the whole shebang. Even

though I know it’s selfish and wicked and will break the

heart of not just his wife, but the three innocent little girls whose picture he touches, like a talisman, every time he

opens his wallet.

It’s not that I don’t care. I used to think I was a decent

person; before I met Nick, the worst thing I’d ever done

was to back into a white van in the multi-storey car park

and not leave a note. (Which, if you think about it, is