The Secrets of Married Women (11 page)

‘A what? Of course not!’

‘Well like you’ve said, he’s always working late. He’s gone off sex. Aren’t those the two major signs? I mean, I wouldn’t think he would be either, because he always seems so besotted with you. But that’s the point isn’t it? People aren’t always what they seem. And men, even the happiest of them, if they get an opportunity elsewhere…’

‘Not Rob!’ I hammer a finger into my chest. ‘I know Rob. And you have to understand, since he’s taken on corporate clients the whole nature of his business has changed. He’s so much busier these days. He doesn’t just make furniture any more. Now he spends more time managing sub-contractors, doing paperwork, hunting for new business, and I know he doesn’t like it as much.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she says, unconvinced. ‘And having no sperm is a big deal for a bloke. I’m sure he feels less than a man. So that’s probably why he’s gone into a shell.’

‘Well it’s not like he’s the only man on the face of the earth with that problem!’ Less than a man. This offends me. I won’t have anybody think that about Rob!

She stares blankly ahead, looking sad. ‘No but you know how men are about their penises. It affects them badly, doesn’t it? They aren’t less masculine because of it, but they feel they are.’

I am shocked now to see her eyes have filled with tears. ‘I feel for you both, you know, I really do. I mean, if he’s not having an affair and this really is all about his masculinity, then that’s a big cross he’s got to bear. And he doesn’t deserve it. And neither do you—especially you. None of this is your fault.’ Her pity touches me. I feel bad for snapping at her now. But she has hit on something: this is not my fault. Then she tells me Lawrence once sold his sperm to a sperm bank when he was in art college. There could be a million little Lawrences with dreadlocks out there, obsessively trying to find themselves and sending daily letters to Father Christmas. We have a good laugh.

‘But aren’t you the sly one,’ she says. ‘You said that note was a flyer!’

‘I know, but you were in a pissy mood and I didn’t know how you’d react.’ I can say this now because she’s in a good mood and she won’t take it the wrong way.

She shakes her head contemplatively. ‘That’s unbelievable you know. A coincidence like that. I mean, you’d see it in a movie and say it was too far fetched.’

‘I know.’ It certainly is different. The idea of seeing him again slips through me like quicksilver.

‘He remembered your dress! That’s so romantic Jill.’

I get a swift memory of him. I wonder if I saw him now, if I’d still be as impressed. We order coffee and start hatching daft little plots about how we’re going to commit scarlet infidelity with Nick and the Russian.

‘Have you told Wendy any of this? About the Russian?’ she asks.

‘Good heavens, no! It’s not like I’ve been obsessively thinking about him. Plus she’d never approve. I haven’t even told her that Rob and I can’t have children. It’s not like I’ve lied. I suppose if she asked me, I’d tell her. It’s just, you know what she’s like, she doesn’t delve into personal stuff. She’s so brilliant at minding her own business.’

‘Well don’t tell her about me either. Promise? Even if you do have to lie for me. I don’t want her to know a word of this. She’d judge me something rotten. She’d never understand… I just can’t adore like she does. My daughter, yes. But not men. It requires a suspension of disbelief that I’m not capable of.’ Then she pulls a glee little smile. ‘Besides, I wouldn’t want her thinking I was back to my old slapper ways.’ We pay up and leave.

~ * * * ~

‘He’s there!’ I shriek-whisper. We’re just emerging around a picturesque marigold-bordered bend, with a white picket fence that drops off like a shelf to the sea, and I see him, not a hundred feet away from us, sitting at his lookout post on the sand. I drag her across the grass, because I swear he has just turned and seen me, and I am dying a thousand deaths. I crucify myself to the side of the bus shelter.

‘What’re you doing?’ Leigh pins herself there along side me. A young lad and his grandmother give us very peculiar looks.

‘I think he saw me,’ I hiss.

‘No he didn’t! Where is he?’ She peers around the wall.

‘Don’t look.’ I pull her back. ‘Up on that white step ladder thing.’

‘The what…? Oh….’ She dangles around the corner by one leg. ‘O-hh-o! In the yellow? That’s him? Come on,’ she yanks my arm. ‘I need a better look.’ She steps one way, and I step the other, and we knock noses and trip over each other’s feet. ‘Oh God!’ I clutch my face. ‘Married women don’t behave like this!’ She links me and hauls me, with zero subtlety, toward the promenade.

‘Sure they do. And if they don’t, well good for them.’ And then she starts humming Lara’s theme, and I dig her in the ribs.

‘He was attractive mind, wasn’t he? Omar Sharif?’

She curls her lip. ‘I think I’d rather do Julie Christie.’

We pass a line of pubs and fish 'n chip shops and are almost parallel with him now. And as luck would have it he turns, giving us a bird’s eye of him. Leigh stops dead in her tracks. ‘Look at him,’ she gushes.

‘Honey, I’m looking.’ He’s like some blazing God sat up there on high, with the sun kissing him and the sea twinkling like the backdrop of a billion diamonds. He’s even darker and more rugged and fitter than I remembered, and I feel a big clearing sensation between my hips. ‘But he’s a lifeguard Leigh. A forty-something lifeguard.’

‘So what? He’s a complete babe. But I can’t believe we were in a bar with him and we didn’t even notice!’ She nudges me. ‘Faithful old soul that I am, I’d spread my tiny wings for him in a minute. And I bet he considers shagging part of his life-saving training so he’s probably very good in bed. And he’s poor and he’s got a crap job so he’s no threat to your marriage. Jill, he’s the ideal candidate for a fling.’

Leigh has always said I’d cheat, eventually. She thinks there’s no such thing as a one-man woman (and we’ve sung many a drunken duet over that, let me tell you.) Sometimes I think I wouldn’t, if for no other reason than to prove her wrong. ‘Let’s go for a cuppa, Leigh.’

‘Aren’t you going to go say Hello?’

‘No. Fun is fun, but any more than this would be a bad idea.’

‘Well what was the point of coming here then?’

‘So you can see him. And I can gaze at him from afar. Besides, it’s been a few weeks, he’ll probably not even remember me.’ And Rob would die if he knew I was doing this. And I’d throttle him if he were out spying on some woman like this, with his male friend. Then I try to picture a couple of married men doing this and it would just never happen, would it? Somehow this makes me feel even more juvenile than I already feel.

‘My arse,’ she says. ‘The point of us coming her was NOT just so I could see him!’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve seen him. He’s gorgeous. I’m married. Come on, you bad influence.’ I drag her up the grassy bank onto the path of the main road opposite Morrison’s. ‘Stop drooling. I saw him first.’

She gets to the top, stops, pants. ‘It’s alright. I’m nearly forty. These days I think I can only do one at a time. Although it could be fun finding out….’

I look at her and shake my head.

‘Actually,’ she fans her face. ‘I think it could be utterly brilliant.’

‘What could?’

She looks at me, roguishly. ‘Simultaneous affairs.’

I’m looking through Leanne’s Cosmo in my lunch break. One Hundred Ways to Turn Your Man On. I think I read the same article twenty years ago. Apparently I still haven’t learned. ‘Have you tried any of these?’ I ask her.

She squints from her desk across the room. There’s a cheese-plant behind her chair that looks like it’s growing out of her head. ‘You wha’?’

I wag the page.

‘Turn ‘im on? Got no problems in that department Jill my dear.’

‘Want this pile of rubbish back then?’ I’m just about to boomerang it when, as luck would have it, Swinburn walks in and catches me. ‘Jill’s a great reader,’ he says, sending me those huge, planet-like eyeballs that Neil Armstrong would be sorry he missed. ‘Sieg Heil,’ I salute him when he’s gone into his office, and the girls chortle.

I’m just putting my jacket on to go home via the supermarket as we’ve been rationing the last loo roll for days, when my phone rings. It’s Leigh, summoning me to Au Bar. ‘It’s critically urgent,’ she tells me.

‘Oh,’ says Rob, when I ring him and tell him that I’m in Au Bar and I’ve just ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio and a plate of yam shoestring fries with dip, because I’m famished. ‘So you’re not coming home yet? I was thinking maybe we’d go out to dinner.’ It’s been ten days since our big fight. It’s felt more like ten months.

‘Well I’m here now aren’t I! I wish you’d told me earlier.’ It did cross my mind this afternoon to go home and make him do something insanely forgiving and fun with me. But it just felt like too much work with no guarantee of me not being left standing there with egg on my face. ‘Look, I’d come home, but Leigh needs to talk. Something important. I can’t get out of it now.’
I didn’t think to check with you first.
I’m about to add.
To be honest, given the way you’ve been acting lately, I didn’t think you’d be bothered
. But I don’t. Because that’ll only hurt us not heal us. Having the last word is overrated.

‘Well, you’ve made your plans. You can’t go back on them,’ he says, like the ever-understanding person he is, but I can tell he’s disappointed. ‘I’ll just see you later then.’

I want him to say
Leave. Right now. Come home. I need to see you, I need to kiss you and tell you we going to change…
When he doesn’t, I reply with a meagre, ‘All right then.’

There’s an awkward pause and then he says, ‘I love you. And…’ A bit more awkwardness… ‘I’m sorry Jill.’

‘Oh!’ This takes me by surprise. ‘Rob, I know you are. Me too. Let’s not be sorry anymore. It’s forgotten about. Everything’s forgotten about.’ A sigh comes out of me, and I think please let this be our fresh start. When I hang up my heart starts a quick ticking. I should just tell Leigh that I had to go home. Surely making up with Rob is more important than listening to Leigh’s affair drama? But it’s too late. She whips in the door. I experience an ominous feeling that I’ll regret misplacing my priorities. She looks beautiful. Different. Elegant. In a loosely-pleated, knee-length little black skirt with an Audrey Hepburn cowl neck top. The skirt flirts with her legs as she walks, in towering sandals, with that
Does she, or doesn’t she?
catch in her step. ‘My God, you look fabulous!’

‘We’re fucking,’ she says, and flops into an armchair.

I’ve clearly misheard.

She peeps from around the hand she has clapped to her face. ‘Oh, stop looking at me like that!’ I see the edges of a smile. Her neck is blotchy, like you get when you drink too much, or you have to make a speech, or….

‘Leigh! How? I mean, when? And who?’

She fans her face. ‘Who? Who d’you think? We’ve been emailing. I sent him one saying, Nice chatting with you last week etc. He wrote back, said we must do lunch some time –’

‘
Do
lunch? Is that how he talks?’ I don’t like him already.

‘He emailed me at eleven o’clock this morning, picked me up at twelve, drove me straight to his house.’

‘His house!’

‘We didn’t exchange a word in the car.’ She runs her hand down her face and throat. ‘I was barely in his front door when he got me up against the wall and his face was under my skirt.’

My eyes drop to her skirt hem. ‘Good God.’ She clutches her bottom lip with her top teeth, and I don’t know if she’s going to laugh or cry; she is just this strange unreadable concoction of emotion. Then she starts giddying her feet and doing the Benny Hill thing again, complete with construction-worker noises. We’re attracting attention.

‘Where’s his wife in all this?’

She shrugs. ‘She works.’

‘And his kids?’

‘Oh, they’re… I don’t know. They’re always at their nana’s. Apparently they don’t have much sex.’

‘His kids?’

‘He and his wife!’ She goes off somewhere, smiling. Her tongue slides out. She looks slightly touched. But her face has splashes of life all over it. She is sparkly as a disco ball at her own coming-of-age. She plants her saucy eyes on mine. ‘I tell you Jill, he’s wild in bed.’