Virtual Strangers (20 page)

‘I can hardly deny what’s on a list in black and white on your hard drive, can I?’

Which sounded, I thought, impressively technical. For me, at least.

‘All deleted,’ he said. ‘And quite beside the point.’

Ah.

‘How d’you mean?’ I asked, hoping to deflect the conversation down a more hypothetical avenue.

‘What I mean is that I can hardly deny that if I had a shag list then Gwyneth Paltrow would probably be on it, and that up till a few months back, she’d have been higher up it than you. Which is why your shag list is beside the point, and what’s

been -’ he made a circling motion with his hand - he seemed big on visual euphemisms. ‘What’s been
going on
since then is very much more to the point. And what I’m asking is... well,
have
I misread where we’ve been going since then?’

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Can I have a half hour to deconstruct that, please?’

‘You don’t
need
to deconstruct it, Charlie. You know very well what I’m saying.’

I put my mug down on the carpet beside me, then regretted it. Without something to hold on to my hands seemed to have developed a life of their own. I shoved them underneath my knees, where they busied themselves with picking at the stitching on the piping cord.

‘You know I know,’ I said finally. ‘Of course you know I know. We both know the other one knows. And we know it’s the same for both of us, don’t we? All those ‘obviously’s -’

He looked confused.

‘You
know
,’ I said. ‘All that business about Rhys.
God
,’ I groaned. ‘And that drunken email. ’

‘So I’m not wrong.’ The corners of his mouth twitched. ‘I’m not
entirely
sure what you’re on about, but I think I’ve understood that much correctly.’

I sighed. ‘You have to understand I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, a particularly fraught evening and, well, basically, this is all a bit difficult. You
know
?’

‘I
know
,’ he repeated gravely. Then laughed. A big laugh. A laugh that meant business. A laugh that in different circumstances could be endorsed by one of my own. A laugh that was full of warmth and affection. The same laugh I’d imagined he laughed when he read some of the rubbish I put in my emails. And then he stopped laughing. Abruptly. Which, in these particular circumstances, I supposed, was all he could properly do.

‘And my fault,’ he said.

I picked up my mug and shook my head.

‘It’s not a question of fault,’ I said.

He stood up again, and walked across to the tree. Beyond it the snowflakes outside continued to spin and dance. I wondered how he was going to manage the rest of his calls. Assuming more came, that was.

‘Oh, but it is. And it’s mine. Christ!’ He peered out into the night. ‘What was I thinking of? I’m a married man, for God’s sake!. What possessed me?’

I couldn’t answer that, so I didn’t. ‘It’s not really important now, is it?’ I tried instead.

‘It was that shag list of yours,’ he said, still on the track of his own internal dialogue. ‘It just cracked me up. I didn’t realise women
did
that kind of thing.
Do
women do that kind of thing? Or is it just you?’

He seemed to really want to know. He turned round and raised his eyebrows at me.

‘Haven’t a clue,’ I said honestly. ‘I’ve never really thought about it. Some women, I guess. But not in the way I think
you
think we do. It’s just something we talk about over a few glasses of wine sometimes. We don’t write it out and distribute it like a local newsletter or something. You only saw it because of Rose moving away and the whole email business. But it’s just a bit of fun. I imagine, in time, we would have become bored with it. It’s not the same when you’re not together. Anyway, it’s so unimportant. It means nothing really.’

‘But it doesn’t. It
hasn’t
. It’s meant all this! When I first read it and saw my name, yes, it amused me. Nothing more. And I thought it would be
amusing
, I suppose, to email you back . But then - well, you can imagine, can’t you? It played on my mind. I - well, you know -’ he gestured. At what? My hair? The shape of my eyebrows? Then shook his head. ‘Heck -
fancied
you. But I don’t think,’ he went on, ‘that it had ever really occurred to me that
you
might fancy
me
. You’ve never flirted with me. Never even danced with me at a party, as far as I can remember. Have you?’ He raised a hand. ‘You don’t even have to answer. I know
unequivocally
that you haven’t. I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time just trying to recall an encounter when the fact of you fancying me has ever even registered. And it hasn’t. Which is why it was all so intriguing. I mean, yes, sure, lots of people flirt. Most people, in fact. It’s what men and women do. All enjoyable, harmless stuff. But
you
haven’t. Not with
me
, at any rate. I’ve known you for how long? Four years? Five?’

I nodded. Gulped. ‘About that, I suppose.’ Four years, seven months. Exactly.
Exactly
. Three weeks after starting at Willie Jones Jackson. Since a Stableford barbecue party, in fact.

‘And you
never
flirted with me. Not once. So how come -’

‘Because you don’t. Not when you’re on your own. Not unless you -’ now it was my turn to circle my hand euphemistically. I regrouped. ‘Not unless you hope to develop a relationship with someone. Not that I was in a hurry to get involved with anyone after Felix - I’d just ended a marriage, after all, but can you imagine how popular I’d be if I started chatting up all my friends’ husbands? So you tend not to. Well,
I
tend not to. Not with men who are married. Not with men who are involved.’

He gazed for a moment into the twinkling depths of the tree, then freed the string from a bauble that had caught in some needles.

‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘I suppose that makes sense. In any event, it felt a little like I’d been told, oh, I don’t know, that oh, Madonna or someone had told a mutual friend she fancied me -’

‘Madonna!’

‘Yes, well. Okay, maybe not Madonna. Though - Well, you know what I mean. That someone I thought barely registered my existence was all the time registering it a very great deal. You can’t help but think about it.’

I found myself smiling now. ‘I don’t know about the “very great deal” bit. Registering it
amongst
others,’ I pointed out. ‘It wasn’t as if I had a little shrine to you in my bathroom cabinet -’

He looked bashful. ‘Fair enough, yes, yes. And I know I probably went up and down the charts a fair bit, but the point is I couldn’t
help
but have it on my mind after that. Any time I saw you, I was seeing you differently. Quite apart from the fact that you were upset and everything, I couldn’t help wondering what you were thinking about me. And you were with Phil still then, of course, which made it all the more -’ He stopped and looked out of the patio doors again.

‘All the more what?’

He came back and sat down on the sofa beside me, the empty mug swinging from the crook of his thumb.

‘All the more erotic, basically.’

‘Oh.’

Oh!

‘All the more exciting. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve -’

He stopped his sentence there. I wondered how he’d been going to finish it. With ‘wondered what it would be like to have sex with you’ maybe? Or ‘imagined bundling you into a cupboard? Or onto an earthquake simulator even?’ It didn’t matter. I knew exactly what he meant.

So I nodded. ‘It all became rather compulsive, didn’t it?’

‘Has be
come
,’ he said, rolling the mug between his palms. It was distracting and I wanted to reach out and take it from him, but was frightened to touch him in case my fingers got spot-welded to his. It really felt as if they might.

‘
Is
,’ he went on. ‘The compulsion is still very much there.’

‘Well,’ I said, digesting this. ‘I’ve actually been horrified. Since I worked out it was you, I’ve been horrified more or less constantly. Horrified about all the things I said to you when I thought I was talking to Rose. Horrified about all the things I said when I thought you were simply a stranger. But most of all, horrified since the moment when I found out who you were, that the day would almost certainly come when we’d be having a conversation exactly like this. Which is bad news all round.’

‘We had to talk about it sometime.’

‘No, we didn’t. If we had any kind of sense, we wouldn’t talk about it again, ever. And you’re right. It is your fault. I can’t be doing with going around feeling horrified all the time. And even though I won’t be going around feeling horrified any more after this, I’m now going to have to go around now feeling oh, I don’t know, stressed, unsettled,
disappointed
, instead. Knowing how you feel about me and knowing how I feel about you and knowing it’s all completely pointless and probably just down to a cocktail of lust and intrigue and guilty excitement anyway - and well, I just hope George Clooney shows up in the Dog and Trouserleg sometime soon and then we can forget all about it .

‘George Clooney? You fancy George Clooney?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘You fancy Madonna.’ Now I did, impulsively, reach out my hand for the mug. But he refused to let go of it, and then put his free hand on top of mine.

He leaned closer to me. ‘Horrified?’ he said. ‘Is that
really
how all this makes you feel? Horrified?’

His hand stayed in place and I knew as readily as I knew that it wasn’t going to stop snowing any time soon, that he was about to kiss me.

‘Wouldn’t it be funny if your bleep went off now?’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t it be timely?’

He smiled. He didn’t seem in the least bit tense all of a sudden. His hand was a still, warm presence on mine. ‘That sort of thing only happens in films,’ he said. ‘So they can crank up the sexual tension a bit. In real life bleeps don’t go off, telephones don’t ring, door knockers don’t knock and windows don’t get blown in by unexpected explosions. In real life you just have to hang in there and accept the inevitable.’

I wished he wouldn’t use words like “sexual tension”. I said, ‘Which means I get kissed, right?’

His smile became a grin. ‘As kissee, you do have input. You can always say no.’

‘Exactly. Which is why I feel horrified now.’

His face inched towards mine, and I felt my lips part.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Fine,’ he said.

And then I kissed him.

[email protected]

God, Rose! I did it! I kissed Adam Jones! I have to be the stupidest, most impulsive, most self destructive woman on the entire planet. But I did it. I can’t undo it. It is now, as they say, etched in my memory forever. Oh, God!
Why
did I do it? Help!

By the time you log on and read this I will doubtless have gotten myself together enough to put it (that one, beautiful, lovely, sexy beyond delirium type kiss, that is) into some sort of sensible perspective. I will probably be able to convince myself that it was nothing more than an expression of new year high spirits and so on, though I have to tell you at the moment it feels like we just had sex on the living room carpet. That’s how much that one kiss has done to me. I am a woman possessed. I am drowning in it all.

Bloody, bloody hell. Promise me it’ll all be okay in the morning.

Ring or whatever and I’ll tell you all.

Charliexx

First day of a new year. First day of the rest of my life. First day of my new incarnation as someone who has kissed someone else’s husband and invoked passions in myself that I have not felt in years. First day of a sad, unfulfilling period in my life, for sure.

Having fallen asleep eventually, still dressed and above the covers, I awake cold and with a creased face and tramlines down the insides of my legs, where the seams of my jeans have spent two friction filled hours. Friction, to boot, borne out of thrashing about mournfully. Not in any sense friction one could feel smug about.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

New Year’s Day is fairy-tale beautiful. Silent, pink-tinged, and with a backdrop of misty-smudged hills. Snow is still falling in an intermittent, sluggish shower, and has entirely obliterated Adam’s car tracks on the drive. I look down upon the sparkling, everything-just-as-it-was type scenario and feel like crying. Feel like crying mainly because despite my small hours certainty that everything being just-as-it-was would be the most appropriate and manageable way to deal with this new situation, I find I am unable to consider the future without the addition of a hole where my heart should be and a sense that I will never, ever be happy again.

Rats. I get up, strip off, and pull on my comforter dressing gown. Then consider moving to Kent. Then consider moving to Nepal. Then consider setting up an estate agency business in Kathmandu and/or devoting my life to the children of Himalayas generally. Consider myself as a tragic heroine and am instantly reminded of our cyber-debate about the Brontë family, plus the fact that I am now in the same situation as Jane Eyre (except Davina is not mad or in an attic as far as I know) and that the best course of action would be to indeed hit Nepal and do improving works for a while. Except without the addition of a worthy male mentor, for which job, Rhys Hazelton would, in all probability, champ at the bit, brandishing his thoughtfully warmed speculum. Recall griffith-word “
is
”. Feel even more like crying.

But I am arrested from my damp and introspective chasm by the sound of paternal movements downstairs.

‘Helloeeee!’ calls Dad. His tone suggests the return from a happy, uncomplicated, sexually fulfilling encounter. With Hester. Who is with him. And has possibly come back for more. Bless them. Bless them, but yuk. Really, I do not wish to know. Would not wish to know under any circumstance. But particularly do not wish to know today.

Best to get out then.

‘I’m going out,’ I tell my father bluntly.

‘Out?’ they both chirrup.

‘Yes, out,’ I confirm, racking my brains for some plausible reason. The village store’s closed, and they already know there’s a community walk later. But what?