Other People's Husbands (15 page)

‘OK then – out with it, Marie.' Sara relented, filling the kettle and then looking through the cupboard for a couple of mugs that were the least cracked and stained. ‘You've been smirking in that “dying to tell you” way ever since we got here. You'd better tell me . . . though how much detail I can cope with, I'm not sure! I take it things went all right with the flying Scotsman?'

‘
All right?
That would be the understatement of the century!' Marie sighed, dropping heavily on to the sofa. Sara heard one of its last few springs give way. Poor sofa – could it take the strain of Marie's overexuberance?

‘So how was the lunch?' Sara teased. ‘Was Le Caprice as good as ever?'

‘Lunch was fine. Lunch was lovely, what bit of it I could eat. Lust is wonderful stuff – such a brilliant appetite suppressant.'

‘You should suggest it to WeightWatchers for their list of sure-fire diet tips,' Sara told her. ‘Did he mention his wife, or was home life definitely off the menu? I always wondered if you just pretend they don't exist, those in-convenient real-life people.'

‘We talked about books and films and things, but absolutely
not
about our families and children and all that stuff that would make it
ordinary
. If you do that, it takes the romance out of it.'

‘I'll bear it in mind in the unlikely event that I'll ever need the info! I'll know where to come for expert advice.' Sara poured boiling water on to the two tea bags, watching the sepia tones bleed darker and darker from the tea, enjoying the smoky swirl of colour. ‘So – did the basque go down well?' she asked Marie.

‘Oh
yes
! And so did Angus!' Marie closed her eyes, smiling ecstatically, remembering.

‘Eeeuw! Stop right there – too much detail! I only meant . . . actually, I don't know what I meant. Did he appreciate the effort you'd made, is all, I suppose? Was he surprised when he found you were sort of
gift-wrapped
?'

‘Surprised? Well not very, actually. We'd discussed it all in lots of detail by email. The airwaves or ether or what-ever must have been sizzling! The nipple-rouging thing backfired slightly, though.'

‘
What?
' Sara poured milk into the mugs. She suspected she should have sniffed at it first, checked it wasn't off. Too late now. She handed tea over to Marie and perched on the arm of the sofa, carefully in case it gave way, in a position where she could see if anyone came in to interrupt their conversation. It was hardly typical staffroom chat, after all. A bit of grumbling about various partners' thoughtlessness over birthday-present choices was usually about as personal as it got in here. Only the week before, there'd been a long discussion about why any man would imagine his partner would be thrilled to unwrap oven gloves.

‘Angus had told me he likes really pink nipples,' Marie said, peering down her own low-cut top.

‘It's OK, you don't need to show me . . . I'll imagine Bengal Rose from the gouache colour chart,' Sara laughed.

‘Oh, I wasn't going to get them out, not in here!' Marie giggled. ‘I was just thinking about what I did. Mine are a bit pale so I thought, well, I'd enhance them for the occasion, as it seemed to be a special request. So after you'd gone home when we'd been in Selfridges that day, I went into Space NK to have a look for something suitable. There I was, just browsing and trying a few shades of glossy blusher on the back of my hand, and this nice girl, about your Cassandra's age, started talking to me about skin tones and saying maybe I'd need this shade or that one. I didn't like to stop her and say, oh it's not for my face, I want to make my nipples pinker for my lover. I mean, you don't, do you? I wonder what she'd have thought if I
had
said it, though. Young people have no idea, do they? Like that sweet girl I bought the basque from. If they only knew . . .'

‘So did it work? The blusher?'

‘Oh no – you see that's the thing. I ended up with some lip gloss that was
exactly
the right shade for my mouth. Not at all right for my tits. He said it tasted funny too, like cheap sweets . . .'

‘OK – enough again!' Sara held her hand up. ‘So you'll be seeing him some more?'

‘Oh yes!' Marie smiled. ‘But I think possibly we'd better forget the handcuffs next time . . . they've made marks. Mike was asking what I'd done. I told him it was a bracelet. Which it was really, wasn't it? It wasn't exactly a lie.'

‘No, Marie, it wasn't really a lie,' Sara reassured her. She felt a bit sad. Here she was, stuck between Marie's delight in her part-time lover and the deep, uncertain misery of Mike's reluctant suspicion. What to do? The sensible answer, of course, was
nothing
. And yet . . .

‘Look, Marie . . . I saw Mike in the park yesterday and he asked me things about you. I probably should have phoned you immediately to warn you but . . . well, if I had, and he was around, he'd have twigged that it was because he'd spoken to me, and thought there was something in what he'd said.'

‘
What?
What did he say?' Marie looked stricken, wide-eyed and scared. ‘He can't possibly know about Angus! Did you.. . ?'

‘Marie, of course I didn't say anything! I wouldn't! It's just he's noticed you're looking good and to be honest you are rather going round with a secretive smirk on your face! Look, I know you think he wouldn't notice you unless you were dressed in nothing but a B&Q tool belt, accessorized with chisels, but he's not entirely stupid, you know. Just . . . please, take care, won't you?'

‘I will, I will, I promise. I don't want to hurt him, that would be the
very
worst thing. I absolutely don't want to lose him – the Angus thing isn't about
not
being with Mike,' Marie wailed. ‘God, what have I done? Oh, I wish . . . !'

‘Wish what? That you'd never got involved with Angus?'

‘Oh Lord no! I just wish I didn't have the kind of stupid face that gave all my secrets away! How is an honest woman supposed to get away with a harmless spot of extra-marital?'

Sara laughed. ‘Well forgive me for being boring here, but is an honest woman supposed to have extra-marital? And is it ever harmless?'

‘Oh Sara, you just wait! If you really think it couldn't ever happen to you then you're tragically lacking in imagination!'

Jasper was a very quiet boy, Cassandra thought, but he was comfortable in his silence and easy enough to be with. She could see him now, lying on the lawn under the willow tree way down the garden. His toe was twitching in time to something on his iPod and he didn't look as if he planned to move from this spot for some time to come. Cass needed to read some more of the Hardy, and had things to look up on the Internet. Charlie was awake and wanting to be entertained. He would only take so long of batting around the dangling duck that hung from his play centre. Pandora had gone out to try to find a local part-time job in a bar, and wouldn't be back for ages, especially if she started looking round the shops.

Lizzie had gone to visit some old friends in Chelsea and hinted that if things worked out, she might not even be back at all that night. Old people who'd been hippies seemed to have no second thoughts about sleeping with all and sundry, Cass reflected. Lizzie made no secret of what she called her running total. If anything, she boasted about it. Even at her age, she seemed to expect to add a few more victims to the list. Over supper the night before, she'd congratulated Cass on leaving Paul, but said she hoped it wasn't just because he slept around a bit. ‘Young people should put it about. When else can they? You should do the same, darling,' was her advice. ‘Get it out of your system while you're young, otherwise you'll be for-ever wondering what it was you missed out on.'

‘You're still checking up on that, are you? Making sure
you
aren't missing out? God, it's sure taking a while!' Conrad had teased her. Poor Jasper, Cassandra thought now, as she looked at the long skinny boy-figure stretched out on the grass, no wonder he was silent. How many times must he have heard his own mum airily dismissing sexual fidelity as bourgeois, heard her declaring that the world was so much the brighter for a little light sexual adventure. No pressure then, Jas. The only way he could possibly rebel would be to stay stubbornly celibate.

‘Jasper?' she called down the garden. No response. She picked up Charlie from his rug on the grass, where he was doing his best to learn how to crawl, and carried him down to the oblivious teenager.

‘Jas?' She prodded his shoulder gently with her toe. Jasper jumped as if she'd clouted him with a hammer.

‘Wha'? Ouch!' he grumbled, shading his eyes from the sun as he looked up at her.

‘Sorry. I surprised you, OK, but I didn't hurt you. Don't overreact! I just need a small favour, Jas.'

He sat up and took the earplugs out. This, she thought, looked promising.

‘What is it?' he asked, suspicious.

‘Nothing too tricky. Just, would you mind taking care of Charlie for me for an hour? I've got uni work to do and I really need a bit of space to concentrate. Charlie likes going to the park . . . and there's swings and stuff. I know he's too young for them . . .'

‘But you think I'm not?' Jasper grinned suddenly. Cass wondered if he looked like his father – she couldn't remember Lizzie's current husband, Jack, very well. He didn't much like leaving Cornwall. Lizzie said he considered the rest of England to be enemy territory. Then another thought crossed her mind: that's if Jack
was
Jasper's father. Old people –
soo
like
irresponsible
. She cuddled Charlie tighter to her.

‘No! Charlie loves to look at other children and there'll be plenty of them there. They do this thing, babies, they give each other the evil eye when they pass in their prams. Checking each other out, you know?'

‘Cool. Early infant warfare!' Jasper stood up and brushed grass off his jeans. ‘Yeah OK. I'll take him out for you. Will he get, like,
hungry
or . . . ugh I don't have to do the nappy-change thing, do I?'

Cassandra laughed. ‘No he's just been fed, changed, all that. He'll be no problem as long as he's got stuff to look at. No worries. Come on, I'll load him into the buggy for you.'

Ben must have forgotten. Or maybe saying he'd come in today and check out Sara's class had been just a casual, polite remark. It didn't matter, really it didn't. She wasn't really looking at the door every two minutes, she wasn't really uncomfortably conscious that her blood pressure was nowhere near its normal low level. He'd said he'd come and see how the students interacted for this piece he was writing, ask them what they got out of their time here. He hadn't had time last week when she'd seen him in the staffroom, said he had someone to meet at the station but would come back. Today. This afternoon. She'd been waiting for him and the class was well under way. Not that it mattered, really, though hadn't she chosen what she was going to wear with a lot more than the usual casual hurry? She had decided on a silky pink Toast dress with a deeper pink soft tulle lining, and a mink-coloured wrap top, loosely tied at the front. She was also wearing a delicate necklace of purple and tawny glass that Conrad had given her. She'd washed her hair that morning which meant it was a bit all-over-the-place, but it felt soft and silky against her neck. But otherwise, no extra effort. Definitely not.

She must, she thought, have a face far more discreet than Marie's, otherwise Marie, in the staffroom, would have seen something in her that would have given her plenty of cause for comment. I'm two-faced today, she thought to herself, completely two people. She thought fondly of Conrad, picturing him now seeking refuge from Lizzie and her endless reminiscing about her glory days in the late sixties. He'd be out on Petersham Meadows with Floss, listening to birdsong and trying not to let hay fever spoil the moment. Years ago, he'd predicted this time would come.'One day you'll meet someone your own age, and you'll fall for him so thoroughly, so catastrophically, you'll wonder why you were ever with me,' he'd said. They'd been at the top of the Empire State Building at the time. She'd kissed him and laughed, dismissing his statement as mere attention-seeking, fishing for reassurance. It must have been ten years ago, when he was approaching sixty. Perhaps there was a ten-year age-wobbler thing that he got. That time it was the dread of another man, this time a flirtation with the notion of death.

‘You see, I don't think fruit
can
be fire. Fruit has a chill to it. You don't get
hot fruit
. Fruit's mostly water. Or you could say air. And it grows out of the earth. Whatever it is, it's definitely not
fire
.' Pedantic Pete was finding fault with Melissa's still life. The class were working on the theme of Elements – any interpretation of this that they chose. Today's element was Fire, and several had brought a selection of items they wanted to paint; others were taking a more abstract approach. Cherry, who had her own determined agenda in this group, was ignoring the topic – as usual – and was steadily working on a large acrylic painting of her cousin's wedding from photos she'd pinned up all over her easel. The rest of them were keeping clear of her – too close an approach and she'd start on the story of how the pregnant chief bridesmaid had had to run outside halfway through the service for a wee in the graveyard.

Pamela Mottram was flamboyantly painting something in shades of vibrant pink while humming a tune that sounded vaguely operatic, and Melissa had assembled a still life of fruit but had spent most of the class time rearranging it on a plate, unable to make a decision about composition. She had eaten several of the strawberries and the rest were becoming squashy, juice flowing off the plate and on to the floor. She'd piled slices of peach on top, with blueberries over those, interspersed with mint leaves.