Tess Stimson - The Adultery Club (38 page)

Sophie deliberately leaves a wet umbrella lying on top of

her new suede jacket with predictably disastrous results,

‘but do they have to make it so freakin’ clear how much

they hate me?’

I put down my newspaper.

‘I’m sure it was an accident—’

‘Of course it damn well wasn’t, Nick, but I’m not just

talking about the jacket. It’s everything. We never have a

moment to ourselves any more. We daren’t be in the same

room together at work in case it looks like favouritism for

God’s sake, Emma’s quit because of me. Joan practically

hisses when I walk past, and Fisher seems to think

he’s now got carte blanche to grope my arse every time

he comes into the office. My fucking reputation is shot to

shit—’

‘You’re not the only one,’ I say grimly.

‘Yeah, well, you’re partner already. No one’s going

to accuse you of sleeping your way to the top. But whenever I pull off a coup, everyone will say it’s because I’m screwing the great Nick Lyon. And then,’ she snaps,

returning to the subject in hand, ‘then, at weekends, we

have the children twentyfourseven. We saw more of

each other when you were still living at home!’

‘It’s family life,’ I say powerlessly. ‘It’s the way it is.’

‘But it’s not my family, is it? Ruining everything.’

I stare at her. ‘They’re my children.’

She stalks to the window and peers between the blinds

in a gesture of frustration I’m starting to recognize.

‘I’m beginning to think your wife has planned it all

this way she says spitefully. ‘Dumping the children on

us every weekend whilst she gets it on with her new

hottie. She’s got it made, hasn’t she? Whilst we’re

crammed in this tiny flat with three out-of-control kids—’

I reel from the sickening punch of jealousy to my

stomach at the thought of my wife with another man.

‘At least she lets them stay here now I manage. ‘That

can’t have been easy for her.’

Sara’s mouth twists into an unattractive smile.

‘Poor cow. Stuck shagging Mr Sex-on-Legs whilst we

get to wipe snotty noses and change fucking nappies all

weekend. My heart bleeds.’

‘You make it sound I say tightly, ‘as if you’d rather be

her.’

A silence falls. Sara drops her head, abashed.

‘I didn’t mean that she says. ‘It’s just—’

‘I know I say.

And I do. Most children are not, if we’re honest,

lovable, except to their own parents, and then not all

the time. Or even much of it. For every heart-warming,

couldn’t-live-without-them moment, when plump childish

arms are wreathed about your neck and sunny smiles

bottled in some corner of your mind, there are many

more bleak, never-admitted, what-was-I-thinking ones.

Children demand and insist and control. They force you

to be unselfish, and since this is not a natural human state,

yielding to their needs breeds resentment and refusing to

do so evokes guilt.

I can’t blame Sara for not wanting my children around

too much. In such intense, concentrated, artificial parcels

of time, frankly, neither do I. Until now, I’d thought

divorce for a man meant not seeing his children enough.

It hadn’t occurred to me that too much was worse.

‘There’s a party next Saturday,’ Sara says, lighting a

cigarette. The smoking, it seems, is no longer just postcoital.

‘A friend of Amy’s. I’d really like to go.’

‘I don’t mind staying here and babysitting the girls—’

‘To go,’ she says firmly, ‘with you.’

I wave my hand in front of my face, to make a point.

‘Give me a break,’ Sara snaps. ‘It’s my flat.’

I don’t want to go to a party at Amy’s friend’s house. I

already know what it will be like: dark, noisy, cramped,

with appalling music and even worse wine. I will feel like

an invigilating parent, and will be regarded as an object

of curiosity and derision. Sara will want to let her hair

down and smoke drugs on the staircase - yes, I was a

student once - and feel she can’t because she has to look

after me.

But she needs this. She needs to float me into her other

life for our relationship to be real. And perhaps without

the children we can have the wild, untrammelled sex we

used to have, instead of the furtive suppose-they-walk-in married sex we’ve been having recently.

I call Mai, and tell her that I can’t have the children this

weekend. She sounds neither surprised nor put out; in

fact, she exclaims cheerfully, that’s perfect, they - she and

Trace, I think sourly - were planning to take the Chunnel

to France for the weekend anyway, another sourcing trip;

the children can come too, it’s not a bother, be lovely to

have them for a change, actually: next week, then?

I picture my daughters, laughing and bouncing up and

down excitedly in the back of his flash car, singing ‘Frere

Jacques’ at the top of their young voices. Thrilled by the

thought of a tunnel that goes all the way under the sea,

by the adventure of travelling to foreign lands, by sleeping

in beds with French bolsters instead of English pillows.

I picture Mai leaning across in the front to kiss his

square-jawed matinee-idol cheek, smiling contentedly at

some erotic memory from last night, ‘dormez vous, dormez

vous’-‘Nick? Are you OK?’

I jump, spilling my wine - execrable; I’m surprised it

doesn’t dissolve the carpet - from its plastic cup. ‘Sorry.

Miles away.’

Sara leans in to be heard over the music. ‘How’s it

going?’

The party is everything I had feared it would be. I am

indeed the paterfamilias of this social gathering, doubling

the average age of the participants at a stroke (literally,

I fear, if the music continues to be played at this bone

jangling level). In the semi-darkness around me, couples

who probably don’t even know each other’s names

exchange saliva, if not pleasantries. A number of pairings

are not the traditional boy-girl. It is impossible to conduct

a conversation anywhere but in the kitchen, whose harsh

fluorescent light illuminates the pallid, vacant faces of

our legal elite in variously mentally altered states. I was

wrong in one particular: the sweet smell of marijuana I

remember from the parties of my student days is absent,

replaced by a dusting of chic, expensive white powder on

the lavatory cistern and arranged in neat Marmite-soldier

lines across the surface of a small square hand-mirror,

quixotically imprinted with a lithograph of the engagement

photograph of Prince Charles and Lady Di, complete

with hideous pussy-cat bow.

Mai and I found ourselves at a party not dissimilar to

this shortly before we got engaged; at Kit’s invitation,

naturally. He vanished as soon as we arrived to pursue

the travel writer to whose column - in every sense of the

word - he had taken a fancy. Mai and I clung to each

other’s fingers like lost children, excusing ourselves in that

peculiarly British fashion every two minutes whenever

someone trod on our feet or jostled us as they barged past.

‘Oh God, I’m too old for this she exclaimed suddenly,

as a louche youth brushed against her, burning her bare

shoulder with his cigarette. ‘Please, Nicholas, please get

me out of here.’

We spent the night in our own safe, dull double bed at

my flat, a little ashamed of our prematurely middle-aged

flight, but thrilled and relieved to have found simpatico company in our retreat, to not have to pretend. And of course, we were still at that stage in a relationship when

one does not need the ameliorating presence of others.

We were each enough for the other.

I woke up that morning, Mai’s tawny limbs tangled in

my Egyptian cotton, her dark hair streaming across the

cream pillow, small brown nipples proudly erect even in

her sleep. She was exquisite; and I knew then, without a

doubt, that I wanted to wake up next to this amazing

woman every day for the rest of my life. The following

weekend, having procured the ring - an opal: its pearlescent

creaminess seemed, to me, to encapsulate the

image of Mai that defining morning -1 asked her to marry

me.

Sara’s hand snakes possessively down my wool trousers

- ‘Are you really wearing a suit?’ she said to me as we

dressed this evening, ‘don’t you have any jeans?’ - and

grasps my erection. ‘Looks like the party’s happening

elsewhereshe purrs in my ear.

I smile faintly. She wraps her body sinuously around

mine, pleased. She isn’t to know that my arousal stems

not from her young, vibrant presence, but from a tenyear-old

memory of another woman in my bed.

‘I’m sorry—’

‘Forget it. It happens. It’s not a big deal.’

We both know she’s lying. Sex is not just an important

part of our relationship: it defines it. When things have

started to go wrong in the bedroom - which has, until

now, been the one place they can be guaranteed to go

right - for us it is not just a little hiccough, one of those

things to be put right with a change of scene or a good

night’s sleep.

I fold my arm beneath my head and stare up at the

ceiling. The bald truth is that the hot, frantic passion I

had for her, the desperate need, has vanished as quickly

and inexplicably as it came. Suddenly, after all these

months of lust, I don’t want her any more. She hasn’t

done anything wrong. She is still just as sexy, as attractive,

as she was the day I first saw her. Just not to me.

Sara gets out of bed and wraps her red kimono about

her voluptuous curves, clutching it to her body as if cold.

‘Just getting a drink of water she says.

I nod, and she goes out into the kitchen.

It’s my fault, of course. I knew this would happen.

Love lasts; passion doesn’t. Without warning, there’s

nothing left. If only it had burned itself out before Mai

discovered us. Why now? When all this can cause is more

pain?

Sara may have been a willing partner: the instigator,

even, of our affair. But she’s so young. So - despite the

worldly facade and bedroom skills - very inexperienced

when it comes to men. I know her feelings for me are not

as transient, or as lightly dismissed, as my more carnal

sentiments towards her. I’m very fond of her; I like and

respect her; the last thing I want to do is hurt her - but

that’s it. She fancies herself in love. Calf love, perhaps, but no less powerful for that.

Above all, I should never have agreed to move in with

her. Permitted her to entertain fantasies of a happyever

after together. It was stupid of me; cruel, actually. When I

am still in love with my wife.

I hear the sound of the shower, and slide out of bed.

It’s three in the morning; Mai will be in France now,

cosying down with her lover at her charming Normandy pension. But, suddenly, this can’t wait.

I stand at the window, looking down into the street,

my mobile pressed tightly against my ear. After four

rings, the answerphone kicks in. I listen to Mai’s voice explaining that we can’t come to the phone right now, imagining it echoing around the darkened kitchen, startling the

poor rabbit in his scullery.

‘Mai,’ I say desperately. ‘I know I’ve been a bloody

fool. What I did was unforgivable. I don’t deserve a

second chance. But please, Mai. Please don’t shut me out.

I love you so much. I know you’ve—’ I hesitate, ‘I know

you’re not alone. It kills me, but I swear, I don’t even care

about that. I just want you back. Nothing else matters

besides being with you.’ My voice cracks. ‘Jesus, Mai, I

wish more than anything I could turn back the clock.

I wish I’d told you before how happy you’ve made me,

how much I love coming home to you every night, waking

up next to you every morning. I know what I did was

wrong. I have no excuse. But please, Mai. Give me a second

chance. I swear I won’t let you down. Please.’

I don’t know what else to say. After a long beat of

silence I click off my phone. Behind me Sara is silhouetted

in the bedroom doorway. I have no idea how long she’s

been standing there, or what she’s heard.

I know, in some deeply instinctual way, what she is

going to say, even before she opens her mouth and

changes things forever.

‘I’m pregnant she says.

u

Sara

No,’ says my mother.

‘But Mum—’

‘I said no.’

Her voice sounds strangled. I picture her at the kitchen

sink, phone crooked between shoulder and chin, peeling

Dad’s bloody potatoes for dinner tonight.

I attempt a conciliatory tone.

‘He’s really nice, Mum. You’d like him. If you just met

him, you’d—’

‘Nice men don’t up and leave their wives for the first

floozie to lift her skirts,’ Mum says sharply. ‘And they

certainly don’t have the brass neck to pitch up at her

parents’ for tea and sandwiches afterwards. I’ll have no

truck with it. He’s not welcome here, and you can tell him