‘Rachel, I have to go now,’ he said at last, his voice pleading and weak. ‘I have to go and . . . and . . . I have to get Jono.’
My head is in my hands. My head is bursting with the rage I feel towards Andrew, a rage that buzzes and presses against my skull till I can’t think, feel, can’t see anything else.
Vaguely I am aware of Simon’s arm around my shoulders, holding me, stroking me. ‘Rachel?’ he is saying. ‘Rachel, are you okay?’ But I can’t answer and I can’t open my eyes. My head is a boiling, churning, fizzing mass.
‘We won’t forget her,’ Simon is saying. ‘I won’t forget her, and you won’t forget her.’
These are the very words that Andrew should have said to me, but he didn’t, he just didn’t.
Simon holds me close and my face is buried in the warmth of his chest. He strokes my back, he strokes my hair. Over and over he whispers, ‘You and I, we’ll never forget her, Rachel, never.’
I don’t know who starts it, but we are kissing, then; small kisses at first, small, searching kisses, on the cheeks, on the mouth. But then the kisses grow deeper and I haven’t kissed like that for years. You don’t kiss when you’ve been married too long. The kissing just dries up. Like too many other things, it just stops. The very thought of it becomes almost distasteful, but here I am now, kissing like I’m sixteen again, kissing Simon, kissing him till the pressure in my head starts to melt and run.
For a second he pulls away, just a fraction. I open my eyes and look into his. I see them deep and blue and charged. My heart is a balloon inside my chest, swelling up and up. And then he’s kissing me again, with both arms around me now, one hand holding my head and the other on my back. Then he moves that hand on my back, he moves it just slightly so that he’s touching my side, and my body jolts like it’s been shocked. He moves it again and I’m practically quivering under his fingers. And still he kisses me, gradually pushing me backwards till we’re lying down on that sofa and my arms are up around him, pulling him down to me, holding his warm, hard body as tight as I possibly can against mine; and all thoughts of Andrew, all miserable, guilt-ridden, suffocating thoughts of Andrew, are punched right out of my head like a fist through glass.
I think of when we were young, back at those parties. I think of everyone getting off with everyone else. It didn’t matter who you were with; you just went with it. You went with the moment, with the pure bliss of the feeling; with the bliss of being young, and so eternally alive. Sometimes I think the girls slept with the boys just because they didn’t know what else to do with them; they were like kids in a sweet shop, working their way through the pack. It never got that far for me. I was too uptight, too watchful. But here I am now, just like them at last. Just like one of them.
Simon props himself up on an elbow, and starts yanking off his tie and shrugging off his jacket. Impatiently I wait, I tug at his shirt. He bends and kisses me as he gets first one arm free, then the other, then he pulls away again. He’s about to speak. I know what he’s going to say, he’s going to suggest that we go through to the bedroom, but I can’t do that. I won’t be able to do that. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to do anything when we got there; I’d wake up from this. I’d chicken out. And I don’t want to chicken out. I want to just do it – fast, here and now. So I grab at his head: I pull him back down. I manage to kick off my shoes and slide my legs up around his, letting my dress scrunch up around my thighs. He groans into my mouth. He pushes my dress up further. I am shaking, literally shaking now, my teeth chattering against his as he kisses me. I reach between us and start undoing his belt; like a whore I start pushing down his trousers. I cannot think. I will not think.
He twists sideways, stretching a hand down to try and grapple with his shoelaces. ‘Shit!’ he mutters. ‘Sorry.’ I let him sit up. And while he’s dealing with his shoes, I wriggle out of my tights and pull my dress up off over my head. And before he can really look at me I pull him back down to me again, clutching him to me as he gets rid of the last of our clothes. I arch my body under his, and loop my legs up around his back. And down he comes, thrusting into me. I watch his eyes; I watch how they flicker. I see the moment. I see it, I feel it, and inside my head all else is blown away. There is just this. Me and him. Now.
I used to say, if the opportunity arose, that one man was much like another.
On girls’ nights, for instance, after a few drinks, when inevitably the conversation would get around to
what if?
What if you got the chance?
What if you met someone?
What if you could be sure you’d never be found out?
Or in idle, rambling speculations with a friend, or with Janice even, I’d say, ‘But in the end, when it comes down to it, it’s just another man humping on top of you. It would be fine, until you got to that point, but then it would be just the same.’
But it isn’t the same.
‘He’ll end up like your husband, wanting his socks washed and his dinner cooked. And surely one husband is enough in any woman’s life.’
But now I know, it really isn’t the same.
I lie there, on that sofa, with all of London spread out there below me, and Surbiton seems so very many miles away. I half-cover myself with a cushion, and curl up my legs. I want to believe I am sixteen again, but sadly I am not, however much Simon tells me I am beautiful, however much he kisses me, kisses my tummy, my breasts, my thighs. He tells me I am beautiful, and I feel that I am beautiful, as I have not done so, for a very long time.
He leans up on one elbow, half beside me, half on top of me. He trails his hand over my skin, and kisses me, again and again.
‘Rachel,’ he says. ‘Rachel, Rachel. You were worth the wait.’
And then we talk. We talk as we will go on talking, every time we meet now, at every opportunity. We talk about Vanessa, and the old days; about the things we all did. And about the things that
they
all did, without me; the parties at other people’s houses to which I wasn’t invited, the trips into town, the gatherings after school. I was on the edge of their group, don’t forget, just a hanger-on, a friend by association. But Simon talks as if he
has
forgotten, as if he thinks I was always there, right in the middle of things.
Remember the time we stayed at Annabel’s dad’s house, and Tristram got completely pissed and fell in the swimming pool unconscious and we had to fish him out?
he says. And,
You know, it was the quiet evenings I liked most, when there were just a few of us, all curled up on the sofa in the den, watching videos.
And of course I was never there for those things. I listen, and I feel the old envy, creeping in.
But he talks as if I
was
there. And so I feel as if I could have been. I listen to him talking, and I see myself, just slotting in. I see myself laughing at Tristram as he falls back, drunk, into the water. I see myself squeezing in on the sofa between Vanessa and Simon, grabbing a handful of popcorn and saying,
Ssh! I can’t hear!
And I see myself missing the last train back from London after seeing some band in Camden, even though I was jealous as hell at the time that it didn’t even occur to Leanne to get me a ticket. But I imagine myself now, lolling on the cold concrete floor at Waterloo station along with the rest of them, waiting for the 5 a.m. milk train back to Oakley, with the sound of whatever music it was that they’d just listened to, still pounding in my ears.
And then I’m back at Simon’s house again, after yet another party; I’m with him when he walks into his bedroom and catches Leanne and Tristram going for it in his bed. I’m right there alongside him, slamming a hand up in front of my face in embarrassment. I’m with him; I’m there. I’m laughing.
I’m there too at all those backstage parties that Annabel’s dad was always getting them in to, the ones I heard so much about from Leanne; and at the Christmas Eve party that they had in Oakley the year that it snowed really hard, when they all went out onto the green for a massive snowball fight – there I am, tumbling on the ground, shoving a snowball down Vanessa’s neck. And how much better it is to think that I was there with them, rather than stuck at home with my parents, my sister and maybe a grandparent or two, missing out on all the fun. And then we’re on the green again, in summer this time; Simon talks and talks, and so clearly that I picture myself with them all, lying back on the grass and doing nothing, just counting the stars in the clear night sky.
I’m there as he talks. I’m there in my head. I’m back in that beautiful world.
The train chugs me back to Surbiton.
I sit there in a carriage half-filled with the tired-faced late-workers, and the after-work drinkers breathing out their sour, petrol breath, and the small groups of tin-eared teenagers chattering over the rattle of their iPods, their voices rising at the end of each sentence so that everything they say is a question, to be answered by another question, and I am hot from running, hot from Simon. I am
wet
from Simon. I sit there, looking like a housewife and feeling like a whore, with the wet of him still taking its time to seep out of me, and soak into my clothes.
There was no time to shower. There was barely time to dress. The trains to Surbiton are frequent, but the last one leaves Waterloo at 11.20 or so, and if I missed that I’d really be in trouble; but Simon and I, we lay there on that sofa and the time just ticked on by, till suddenly I
had
to leave and it was such a rush, then, such a panic. Simon threw on his trousers, his shirt and his shoes, but no underwear and no socks, and dashed downstairs to hail a taxi out in the road behind his block, while I scrambled a little slower to get into my clothes and then followed him. He got into the taxi with me; for some reason I hadn’t expected that.
‘Waterloo,’ he barked at the driver, ‘fast.’ And he threw himself back against the leather of the seat beside me, flushed, and breathing hard.
‘You haven’t got a jacket,’ I said. ‘You’ll be cold.’ But he just shrugged dismissively, and I thought what a stupid, motherish thing that was to say. And I felt self-conscious suddenly under his gaze, aware that my hair must be a mess and my make-up mostly gone. And I was too tense, too anxious about catching the train, to be able to think of anything to say. What
could
I say? Andrew was creeping into my head now, and Jono, and the enormity of what I had done.
I sat forward in the seat. I watched the street lights, the buildings, the cars race by.
‘You’ll be okay,’ Simon said and I looked at him. ‘The train,’ he said. ‘You’ll make it.’
‘Oh.’
And then we sat there, staring at each other. He took my hand and he squeezed it, and I still couldn’t think what to say.
The taxi leant as it hurled around the bend at the back entrance to the station, flinging me sideways against Simon. For seconds he caught and held me, for sweet, fast seconds, and then the taxi jerked to a stop. Before I could get out my purse, Simon dug some money from his pocket and shoved it at the driver, and then we were out and running across the concourse at Waterloo, slowing only to check for the platform number. I had a minute, less than a minute. Clumsy and awkward and frantic now, I ran on and slammed my way through the barrier.
‘Call me,’ Simon shouted after me, his voice caught and harsh from running. ‘Call me when you’re on the train.’
And when I did call him at least five minutes later, after I’d found a seat and got my breath and tried to calm my pounding heart, he was still there, at Waterloo.
‘I’m sorry you had to leave like that,’ he said, and I pictured him there without his jacket, without his socks, watching as the train disappeared. ‘I’m sorry you had to leave at all.’
Now, I look at my reflection in the black of the window beside me and see myself distorted and wild. I take out my little mirror from my handbag and peer into it. I inspect myself; I see the flushed redness around my mouth, and on my chin and my cheeks. And I see the burn in my eyes. You can
see
what I’ve been doing. Anyone could see it.
Andrew
will see it. I don’t have any make-up with me except for my lipstick, which I take out now and apply, but my lips still appear smudged around the edges, and swollen. And who am I, covering up what I have done with a bit of lipstick, when I have another man’s scent – another man’s
bodily fluids
, for heaven’s sake – still warm upon my skin? From nowhere a shot of hysteria bursts up inside me and breaks out on a cracked laugh, which I try to hold back. The man sitting opposite me glances up at me from his newspaper, and then quickly glances away. And really, there is nothing funny in all this, nothing funny at all. But I feel like I am a player; here are my movements, here are my lines, my cues to speak and respond. Nothing seems real. Not my home and my life within it, or this thing that I have just done.
It’s late and dark, and I ought to get a taxi to take me the short distance from the station to my house, but I cannot bear to be hurrying home now. And so I walk, and I walk slowly, conscious of the sound of my shoes on the pavement. Our street is long and straight and we live about halfway down; I find my eyes pinned to the distance, waiting for my house to come into view, and when it does, irritation and dread rise and mingle within me: the lights are on. Andrew is still up.
I put my key in the door and my heart is thumping.