The One Before the One (13 page)

I smile, feebly.

‘So come on, what brought it on?’ she says.

‘I don’t know. It just happened one night when nobody else turned up to the book club and before I knew it, the book club had become …’

‘A fuck club?’

‘Yes. I guess so. A fuck club.’

She’s looking at me as if there’s more. She
knows
there’s more.

‘I guess after Martin and that whole hideous experience and feeling like I’d broken this man’s heart and ruined his life …’

‘Gosh, you really flatter yourself, don’t you?’ She laughs. ‘Just waiting for the suicide call, were you? The Martin Squire found hanged in his wardrobe?’

‘No!’ I roll my eyes. ‘It wasn’t
like
that. It’s just after Martin and then Garf – remember sweet Garf? Well, I decided I couldn’t do this any more, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t get involved with anyone because hearts always got messed up …’

‘Which is generally what happens in relationships,’ says Shona.

‘Maybe.’ I sigh. ‘But I didn’t want it, couldn’t deal with all the upset.’

‘But that’s the fun bit,’ she says, taking my hand in hers. ‘That’s what makes you feel alive and like there’s a point to it all.’

‘I know but …’ I can see that Shona doesn’t really get where I’m coming from. ‘I felt wretched about Martin, never wanted to do that to anyone ever again. I guess I thought a bit of harmless sex with a married man would be perfect, in a way, at least I couldn’t get involved.’

‘Mmm.’ Shona folds her arms ‘But things aren’t that cut and dry, though, are they?’ she says.

‘Look, it’s all under control. I’m not in love with him or anything.’

‘So it’s just a sex thing?’

‘Oh
yeah
.’

Liar, Liar, Liar …

‘Well, that makes me feel a bit better.’

‘Look, Toby’s not very happy at the moment,’ I carry on. ‘Rachel works day and night. He feels lonely and neglected, plus you know …’ (I know by the way Shona’s frowning at me that this isn’t going to wash but I’m going with it anyway.) ‘Rachel’s with HunterHewitt now, and she’s selling Ice-Maiden breath freshener and …’

‘No!’ says Shona, strictly.

‘Oh.’

‘You can’t justify sleeping with a married man by the fact that their wife works for a competitor, sells a competitor’s product and therefore in someway deserves it.’

‘Oh,’ I say again. (Damn it. Why was Shona so bloody mature and reasonable sometimes?) ‘Look it’s all going to end soon, anyway,’ I say, squirming, thinking I just want to get out of here now. ‘It’ll run its course and that will be that.’

‘Good,’ says Shona

‘It will be,’ I say. ‘But will you do me a favour?’

‘Go on.’

‘Don’t tell anybody about this please? Especially Lexi, okay?’

I’m staring out of the kitchen window, idly going through the To Do list. I usually carry a copy in my handbag, adding to it when things come to me, but lately, what with everything going on, I’ve let it slide. Maybe Wayne was right. Maybe lists
are
just a distraction from what’s really important. And what’s really important, right now, is Toby and I.

Outside, the sky is that fierce blue you only get in high-summer, the grass parched, the scent of my yellow roses filtering in through the open window.

What a difference a year makes. It’s 10 July today. Martin’s birthday. On this day last year, a soggy July day to match the other thirty-one soggy days of July where the only sound inside the house was the drip, drip of relentless rain, I decided to call off the wedding. I decided I had to leave him. It took me another two months to finally get round to it, but I remember that day so clearly, the feeling of not being able to breathe.

It’s funny how you remember the smallest details about such momentous times in your life, as if your conscience is trying to block out the worst of it. I’d booked for us to go to the Ritz for afternoon tea. We sat on the Number 19 bus in the rain, Martin with his hand on my knee, tapping in
time with his singing: ‘We’re going to the Ritz. So put on some glitz.’

I remember the way the rain ran in rivers down the window, the screech of the windscreen wipers like nails running down glass. I thought I’d hate July for ever because of that day, having to endure a birthday tea with Martin – something that should have been fun – knowing the dreadful thing I was going to have to do to this man that I loved, but just wasn’t in love with.

And now, look. A year on. And I am in love with someone else and summer feels full of possibility.

A bird lands on the windowsill, breaking my reverie. I get back to the list, asterisking items.

I hover over the last one with my pen, before scribbling it out so absolutely that the pen mark is raised from the paper like scar tissue. I can’t commit it to paper like that, it’s way too risky.

Going to Brighton to a hotel together was entirely Toby’s idea. Absolutely no hinting or nagging from me. After the awful day where Shona caught us kissing in the meeting room, we went for a de-brief after work.

‘We should stop this,’ I said. ‘Now. Before it gets out of hand.’

‘But I don’t want to stop this,’ said Toby. ‘It’s
already
out of hand.’

He actually looked serious – very disconcerting. There was no cheekiness, or sarcasm, or flirtatiousness, just sincerity.

I tried to appear calm, whilst inside a fanfare was going off, fireworks were erupting, an entire brass band had taken up residence. For crying out loud, was he saying he loved me? Was that what ‘out of hand’ meant?

I was staring at him, grinning inanely.

‘I want to take you away. I want to treat you, Steeley, really spoil you. For us to have some time together.’

‘Okay.’ I beamed. ‘When?’

So much for ‘stopping this before it gets out of hand’.

It’s a bloody good job I scrubbed out the bit about Toby leaving his wife on my To Do list because later that day, when I’m hoovering the lounge, Lexi shouts from the kitchen.

‘Hey, Caroline, what’s this? I thought you were already
in
a book club?’

My heart stops. The list. I fucking left out the list!

‘What’s that, Lex?’ I shout, the blood draining from my face.

‘I said, I thought you were already in a book club. This To Do list up here says, “must join book club”.’

‘It’s old, that list!’ I shout back, frantically searching the corners of my mind for an explanation.

‘So, why you’ve only just stuck it up on the fridge?’

Luckily then, the phone goes.

‘Hi. Caro my love, it’s Martin.’

I feel irritated. Then I feel guilty for feeling irritated. Is it the fact he just called me ‘my love’ like he’s my dad? Or that I secretly wished it was Toby on the phone. Either way, it’s not a pleasant feeling.

‘How are you? Happy Birthday!’ I say.

‘Yeah, thanks,’ he says. ‘Another birfday, another year older!’ ‘Birfday’ was always a Martin-ism, along with ‘mind stew’ for ‘mind you’ and ‘ickle’ for little. ‘Look, I’m not doing much this morning and so I thought I’d come and fix your drippy tap?’ he says, cheerfully.

‘Drippy tap?’

‘Yes. You said you had a drippy tap.

‘Oh. Did I?’

I vaguely remember some drunken conversation last week at the Duke about the To Do list that keeps growing, needing a man in the house. God, I can’t believe I said that.

It’s been ten months since Martin moved out of this house (the house that I bought because Martin didn’t earn enough in his job at the Electricity Board when we first moved down to London and he paid me rent for, but which was to be our marital home all the same) and he still loves to do odd jobs for me. He’ll still come over with his Woolworths toolkit to fix a fuse here, put up some blinds here. I’m very grateful of course, justifying it in my head with the fact that he enjoys it. Spending half an hour fixing a drippy tap, to Martin, is like half an hour having a relaxing cappuccino to most people. But this time I feel uncomfortable him doing things for me, and not just because it’s his birthday and why on earth does he want to fix a tap on his birthday? I have a deep, queasy feeling in my stomach, like I’m doing something wrong by accepting.

‘Oh no, Martin, it’s okay,’ I say. ‘It’s your birfday! Surely you’re doing something far more exciting. Aren’t you meeting friends for lunch or anything?’

His silence tells me no, and anyway, if he were, I’d know about it as I’d be invited. Then he says:

‘Look, I’m in the area, so it’s no skin off my nose. Only take me a jiffy.’

‘Jiffy?’ I think. Who says ‘jiffy’?

But I need my drippy tap mending, he likes mending drippy taps, so I say:

‘Um, well, if you don’t mind.’

‘No. Course I don’t mind.’

Fifteen minutes later he turns up with his toolkit, wearing
the Gap jacket and his Paul Smith T-shirt with the monkey on the front. Not that I can talk in my enormous fluffy bear slippers and dressing gown. This is what’s great about mine and Martin’s relationship; there’s no shame in large bear slippers and a dressing gown at 11 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

Martin is holding a pint of milk (why he doesn’t just let me provide the milk, I don’t know) and gives me a kiss on the cheek.

‘Ah. I see you’ve got your cute slippers on again?’ he says, hands on hips. ‘Now, which is bear left and which is bear right?’

I laugh, admittedly slightly less enthusiastically than the last five hundred times Martin’s delivered this joke.

There’s an awkward few moments, like there always is whenever Martin comes over where we stand, in what was once our hallway where his trainers sat on the shoe rack and his coat up on the peg, and hover around each other not quite knowing what to say.

This time it seems even more loaded, though, and Martin’s smiling at me like I’m supposed to be saying or doing something. It occurs to me, did I say too much at the Duke the other week? Get drunk and over-sentimental? You’re a bugger for that, Caroline, I think to myself. You really must rein yourself in. Saying all that stuff about how I still wonder if it could have worked, when I know it couldn’t have worked, I was just pissed and getting nostalgic. Still, Martin knows me. He knows what I’m like after a few drinks. He comes to expect the whole ‘oh it’s such a shame we didn’t work out talk!’ so I’m probably just being paranoid.

Martin wanders through to the lounge where Lexi is sitting, munching on a slice of toast. I watch as her eyes follow him. Not him again, you can see her thinking.

‘Hi, Lexi. Not seeing two of me this time?’ says Martin.

Lexi gives him her best surly look. ‘Never was, Martin, never was.’

‘Hormones?’ says Martin, as we go into the kitchen.

‘Probably PMT,’ I say, feeling awful. I’d forgotten,
again!
I’d forgotten to tell her.

Martin’s been lying on his side under my kitchen sink now for three quarters of an hour, and you can see about an inch of builder’s bum.

Lexi wanders in and puts her toast plate on the side.

‘Nice bumcrack,’ she says.

‘Ta very much,’ says Martin. ‘I like to think I’m pretty buff myself.’ I cringe. Don’t try to be all down-with-the-kids, Martin, you really don’t have to. ‘Anyway,’ he says, clattering around with some sort of tool or other. ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Lexi.’

Lexi arches her eyebrow at me. I shrug as if to say, nothing to do with me.

‘What’s this about you liking a bad boy?’

‘Dunno,’ says Lexi. ‘What is this about me liking a bad boy?’

‘Your sister says you’ve been on the blower to Clark Elder.’

Lexi shoots me a look. ‘No, I haven’t been on the phone to Clark Elder,’ she says, defensively. ‘That’s the point. I don’t want to talk to him.’

‘Well, good, that’s good then,’ says Martin. ‘Because you should steer well clear of him. He’s bad news, is Elder, very bad news.’

‘Why’ve you got such an opinion on the matter?’ she says, sulkily.

‘Coz I know him. I’m of his era, remember? He’s about thirty-five like me, isn’t he?’

‘Thirty-five? You didn’t tell me he was thirty-five, Lexi!’

She bites her lip sheepishly.

‘He’s not, he’s thirty-two.’

Martin continues, ‘Well, anyway, he lived around where I lived, when you were only a whippersnapper.’ Lexi shifts from foot to foot.

‘So, what’s he done that’s so bad?’ You can tell she’s quite interested now, or was that scared?

‘Oh just stuff that’s not good, I mean
really
not good, so just steer clear of him. That’s all I’m saying.’

Lexi looks at me, blinks as if this is all news to her.

‘Yeah, well, he’s changed now,’ she says. ‘He works for my dad on the Healing Horizons courses doing motivational speaking, so he must be okay. Dad vets all the speakers. He’s always banging on about achievements and personal goals and people with drive.’

I say, ‘You’re not speaking to him, so this is all irrelevant, anyway, right?’

She nods.

‘Good, just checking.’

Martin seems to hang around for ages, fixing this and that, having endless cups of tea. He picks up a photo. It’s of me, sitting outside the Duke of Cambridge about eight years ago.

‘Ah, I remember that day,’ he says. ‘That’s the day you got the job at SCD and I ordered champagne at the Duke.’

‘Mmm,’ I say, ‘so it is.’

He carries on, looks through my CD rack. ‘Do you still listen to this?’ he asks, picking out David Gray’s
White Ladder
album and I cringe, slightly. ‘Fond memories I have of that, summer evenings in the garden, too much rioja, eh, Caro?’

I’m starting to feel a bit uncomfortable. He smiles at me – that same smile he had in the Duke. The one I’m not sure I like.

‘So,’ I say, brightly. ‘Seen Polly again lately? Fixed up a date?’

‘Why?’ he asks, a teasing, rising inflection in his tone.

‘Just because.’ I shrug. ‘Because she looked nice.’

‘Right,’ he says, with a blank expression. ‘No, I haven’t set up a date with her, I’ve been really busy.’

There’s a slightly awkward silence then he touches my arm and peers at me, smiling.

‘Was that the right answer?’

‘Martin, there is no right answer.’

He finally leaves and I wander back into the kitchen where Lexi is defacing my kitchen walls by making a smoothie with my hand blender.

‘He so still loves you,’ she says, over the noise.

‘He so does not!’

‘He so does. Any idiot can see that. Why else would be give up his Saturday to come and sit under your sink?’

Deep down, I know she’s right. I just don’t want to accept it. I’ll tell her now, I think, I’ll tell her when she’s finished the smoothie.