After the Party (47 page)

Something red and hot and painful floods through her at this thought. It is as bitter as bile. It is deep, raging jealousy.

Who is this irresistible woman who has lured Ralph away from her children? And away from her? Until yesterday Jem had thought that Ralph had a girlfriend called Sarah. From what little she'd heard about Sarah it didn't seem that she was a threat. She sounded dull and pious and unlikely to bring Ralph into a state of paroxysmal love. But Sarah was not his girlfriend. Rosey was. And now this Rosey had appeared from nowhere and airlifted Ralph right out of his life.

Jem remembers that Sarah mentioned having an email relationship with this Rosey person. “Excuse me,” she says to Gil, “I just have to make a quick call.”

She brings up Sarah's number and calls it with shaking hands.

“Sarah,” she says, “it's Jem. I'm at Gil's. It sounds like Ralph is with this Rosey girl. I don't know where. No idea, no. I just wondered if you could give me her email address. I mean, she might have a BlackBerry with her or something, she might be able to pick it up.”

“I can do better than that,” says Sarah, the tap-tapping of her computer keyboard audible in the background. “I have her cell. Here. Take it down.”

Jem taps it in, thanks Sarah and then presses call. Under
other circumstances she would feel nervous calling this steely blonde who has possibly taken away her last chance to get back together with Ralph, but she does not feel nervous, she just wants to hear that Ralph is okay and she wants to hear it now.

A female voice answers almost immediately. “Yes.”

“Hello—is this Rosey?” she begins impatiently.

“Yes, who's this?”

Jem can hear that Rosey is at an airport, or a train station. She can hear the public address system, the echo of a high-ceilinged building. “This is Jem,” she says. “Ralph's ex-partner, Jem.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. He's gone missing and I'm trying to track him down. I'm with Ralph's friend, Gil, and he seems to think that there's a chance he might be with you?” Please God, she thinks, please, let him be with you.

There is silence on the line, then the ding-dong of another PA announcement in the background. Until, finally: “What?”

“Ralph,” says Jem, with a hint of impatience, “is he with you?”

“No,” says the Australian woman bluntly. “No. He isn't. I thought . . .” She pauses for a moment. “I thought he was with you.”

Ralph pulled up on Maygrove Road and switched off the engine. It was just after six fifteen and he was running a bit late. The sun had just set and the early evening sky was streaked violet and navy and full of fat, charcoal clouds. As Ralph got out of the car he heard footsteps approaching. He tensed himself as he always did on this street after dark. It was a different place at night, the kind of place where people got mugged.

The footsteps got closer and he turned to face the road. He was about to cross over when a voice, very close to his ear, said, “Hello, Ralph.”

It was him.

That man.

Joel.

“Oh,” said Ralph, “hi.”

“On your way to a meeting?” he asked.

“No,” said Ralph, “no. I'm collecting my kids. And I'm running a bit late.”

“Yes, I heard what happened. I heard that you and Jem had split up.”

“You did?” Ralph replied with raised eyebrows.

“Yes. Seems like I was right.”

Ralph stopped and threw Joel a quizzical look. “I beg your pardon?”

“Last time we met, I told you, she was looking for something, she was scenting the air. Well, she found it.”

Ralph closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. “I'm sorry,” he said.

“Don't be sorry,” said Joel, his voice rich with gratification.

“I mean,” said Ralph, “what exactly are you talking about?”

“What,” said Joel, “you don't know?”

“Don't know what?”

“About Jem and Lucas?”

“Who the hell is Lucas?”

“Lucas is my son.”

“Yes. And?”

“And, well, Jem and Lucas, they had a thing.”

Ralph shook his head from side to side, trying to dislodge the wrongness of what Joel had just said. “A thing?”

“Yes, Jem had an affair with my son. That is correct.”

“But your son is a . . . child?”

“Well . . .” Joel laughed infuriatingly. “He
was
a child, yes, a long time ago, but he is now a grown man of twenty-five. Who has been sleeping with your ex.”

Ralph almost stumbled as the words hit his consciousness. “But, I . . .”

“You didn't know?”

“Well, no, it's bloody obvious I didn't know, isn't it?” Ralph gazed at Joel for a moment. Joel's face was flat and unsmiling, but Ralph could see something gleeful behind his eyes. He had for some reason decided that he hated Ralph and he was now taking pleasure in imparting this development to Ralph, in being the person from whom he heard it first. “How long did they . . . ?” he whispered.

Joel shrugged. “No idea,” he said.

Ralph forced a smile. He was not going to give this strange man the reward of seeing him gutted. “Well,” he said, “she's a free agent. She can do what she likes.” He dragged the words from between his lips. The thought of Jem “doing what she liked” with another man made him want to be violently sick.

“Anyway just thought you'd like to know,” said Joel. “I'll see you around no doubt.”

“Yes,” said Ralph, keeping his tone light and unfazed. “No doubt.”

He crossed the street toward Lulu's house and he heard Joel's footsteps retreating toward the Maygrove Centre. Ralph let his breath come now as he approached the front door. It came quick and fast and heavy. It came so heavy that he felt his head begin to lose oxygen, his vision begin to blur. He sat down heavily upon the front step and he tried to control his breathing and as his heart rate came down he felt tears coming and he buried his eyes in the heels of his hands to stop them.

Jem had slept with another man.

A twenty-five-year-old man.

His Jem. His little Jem. The sweet, funny, ballsy wisp of a girl he'd fallen in love with in a flat in Battersea. Little Jem, whom he'd eaten curry with and made babies with and thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with. He'd let her go. And instead of bouncing back to him, she'd bounced into the arms of a man of twenty-five. Christ, hardly a man at all. Just a kid. A boy.

The thought of it was appalling to Ralph, in every way.

He appraised Lulu's house behind him. He thought of his children behind those doors. And he knew then that he couldn't face them. He was too crazy to see his children. If he saw them now he would scare them.

He got into his car and he drove. He drove past the Maygrove Centre and he drove through the Maygrove Estate until he reached Sunbury Terrace. He banged on Gil's door with his fist until Gil's face appeared in the crack left by his security chain.

“Come for a drive with me,” he said, “I need to get away.”

He took Gil to his car and they drove, in silence. He needed
to think and Gil let him do just that. Half an hour out of London the phone rang. It was Lulu. He told her that he was going away for the weekend. He was very apologetic.

“What shall I tell Jem?” she asked.

“Tell her I'll be back for the children next week. Tell her I'm sorry.”

Half an hour later the phone rang again. This time it was Jem. He almost didn't answer it. He didn't know what to say to her. What do you say to the love of your life when you've just found out that she'd had an affair with a man who's almost half your age? What do you say when your head is spinning and all the words you've ever spoken to each other have been pulverized into a gray goo somewhere between your ears? He told her he was sorry. He told her he'd be back for the children next week. And then he hung up before he said something he'd regret.

He took Gil to a bed-and-breakfast in Yorkshire. He'd been there before, brought the children up for the occasional weekend (if there was something he felt he could give the children out of the mess of his broken relationship with their mother, it was happy weekends in the countryside, some wholesome fodder for their childhood memories), and the owners were happy to see him midweek. For three days he and Gil walked and prayed and talked and contemplated the landscape. They drank cloudy beer in warm pubs and then, on Saturday night, Ralph received an email from Rosey.

Dear R,

Guess what? I'm in London. Where are you?

He phoned her on the number she had embedded into the signature of her emails and after three days of virtual silence
Ralph found himself talking, too much. He told her all about his conversation with Joel on Wednesday night and she soothed him and she said, it's okay, I'm here. I'm here now. Come home. Come back to London. It's okay. I'm here. And all Ralph wanted then was to be back in his own bed and to feel someone's warmth against him, hold something in his arms, be with someone who understood. So he hustled his old friend back into his car and they took to the motorway and within four hours Gil was back in his little house on his estate and Ralph was letting Rosey in through the front door of his flat.

Ralph didn't ask Rosey what she was doing in London. He didn't ask her much at all. He gave her a cold beer from his fridge and apologized for the mess and then he put his hand against her face and stared into her remarkable green eyes. She clasped his hand against her cheek with her hand and then she brushed the side of his hand with her lips and Ralph's sleeping lust burst into life.

“I'm so glad you're here,” he said.

“I'm so glad I'm here,” she said. “I knew,” she said, “I just knew—”

But Ralph stopped her words with his lips.

It was fast and it was furious. Very little clothing got removed. It was the first time that Ralph had had sex with someone who wasn't Jem since 1996. He barely had a chance to absorb the nuances of Rosey's body, the differences, the feel of her. He was consumed with a desire to get lost in her, he pushed his face into her fine silky hair and he breathed in his own hot, sour breath. He kissed her hard. He sought oblivion inside her. And he found it.

For the seventeen minutes that it took Ralph and Rosey to consummate their passion, Ralph was nowhere; sweet, numb, hot nowhere.

“You know,” said Rosey, falling away from him afterward, letting her knees fall together again, “I've wanted to do that with you since the very first moment I set eyes on you.”

Ralph fell onto his back and blinked at the ceiling. He thought back to the first moment he'd set eyes on her, the lightning bolt of her beauty, the shock of his attraction.

He smiled at her. “Yeah,” he said, “so have I.” It wasn't strictly true. He'd wanted to do that to her the first time he'd met her and he'd wanted to do it to her just now, but really, he hadn't thought about doing it to her at any other point in between. He'd had other things on his mind. He'd been too busy finding himself to think much about sex with beautiful strangers. And all the while he'd been finding himself, Jem had been too busy thinking about sex with beautiful strangers to find herself. And so they'd passed each other, like night trains, at speed and in opposite directions, blurred and indistinct. He turned to look at Rosey again. Her skin, he could see, now that he was no longer consumed with the business of having her, was smooth and toned and tanned. Her breasts, which he'd barely glanced at, were small and full with nipples like jelly tots. She was firm and young, her body as yet unused by life. She was young. It was good to look upon something so young.

Is this what it was like for Jem? he wondered. Had she too looked upon the half-naked body of her young lover and marveled at its newness? Had she felt a thrill of gratitude for once more being allowed to have something she thought she'd never again be granted access to?

He turned from Rosey's body then and closed his eyes.

Rosey turned onto her side and let her arm fall across his torso. He was still wearing his T-shirt. She pulled the fabric up so that her arm lay against his bare skin. He tensed slightly.

“You know,” she began, tracing a fingertip across the skin around his belly button, round and round, in a slow circle, “you know you're the reason why I ditched Smith? You know I've . . .” she paused. “Well, I've been thinking about you a lot. Since then. Since that very first moment. I knew there was something special about you. Something, I don't know, something magic. And then that night, after the gig, Jesus, when I kissed you, I thought you were going to kiss me back. And I wanted you to, so very, very badly,” she laughed. “But you didn't. Because you're a good man. And you said you'd paint me. Do you remember?”

He nodded.

“Do you still think you'd like to do that?”

Ralph felt a vein under his eye start to twitch. He kissed her shoulder. He couldn't tell her about the painting in his cupboard, a painting he could never sell, but could never hang on a wall either, a painting that would spend forever in a cupboard. It would make her think too much about everything. “Maybe,” he said eventually, “maybe.”

What would Smith think, he mused as they lay together in silence, what would he think if he could see me here with Rosey? Taking his disillusioned girl away from him,
again
. Being the preferred option. And if this remarkable woman found him preferable to Smith—hell, had
finished
with Smith because of him—then what did that say about Jem? Did it make her remarkable also? Did it mean that she was in fact everything he'd always thought she was? Special? Magical? Enchanted? And that he too was something special? He hadn't felt special for so long.

He stroked Rosey's hair and he smiled down at her. He felt the calmest he'd felt for days, ever since he'd spoken to Joel
on the pavement outside Lulu's house. Everything suddenly seemed so simple. Everything was suddenly utterly clear They'd made a mess between them, he and Jem, but now, blindingly, he knew how to clear it up. It would mean taking himself out of the real world, it would mean weeks away from Jem and his children, but it would also be the start of a new beginning.