His Other Lover (2 page)

“I hate this bit,” he said. “I should warn you that I’ll probably blurt something out to try and start a conversation that will end up making me look a total idiot and you’ll be sitting there wondering where the loos are and how big the windows might be.”

That relaxed me a little. I assured him that he’d be okay. After all he had his first-date lines, didn’t he? He looked a bit sheepish and said no, he didn’t actually, they mostly consisted of “You look very nice” and “So tell me a bit more about yourself.”

We both agreed that while these weren’t wildly original, they were safe. Then we spent a fun twenty minutes composing a list of things that should
never
be said on a first date, which included “Well, I hope you like the food. My ex and I used to come here all the time,” and “This is really embarrassing but I can’t remember your name,” as well as “You’re a bit overdressed for the dogs.”

We were getting on famously and then he said, just as the waiter arrived, “Or what about: ‘I’m warning you now. It’s not very big!’”

There was a silence that seemed to go on forever before the
waiter coughed in a crap attempt to cover a laugh, looked pityingly at me, took our order and then legged it back to the kitchen to tell everyone that the man at table ten had just told his date he had a small penis.

One of us had to speak and break the horribly uncomfortable social nightmare that had suddenly become our night out, so once I’d recovered myself I agreed that yes, he was right, that probably wouldn’t be
such
a great thing to say. Not least because it assumed the evening was going to end a certain way. Which it wasn’t.

He looked horrified. “Oh God, no,” he flustered, utterly appalled at himself and flushing deep red. “I didn’t mean I was expecting you to…although if you wanted to it would be…anyway. It’s not true,” he said quickly. “About me, I mean. It’s okay…just in case you were wondering if it was…sufficient. Oh Jesus, I’m still talking…I can’t believe I just said that.” He stopped and exhaled deeply, and then tried to take a deep, calming breath. “I can’t
believe
I just said that. You’d think that by now my brain would have stopped this, this verbal car crash happening, but no…words are still coming out…”

He took another deep breath. “Could we pretend I didn’t just say all of that to you and could I ask you to tell me a little bit more about yourself instead?”

After I’d got over the initial shock and resisted the urge to do a mad sprint to the door (maybe it was just curiosity at how he was going to recover the evening after such a dreadful outburst of social Tourette’s), we ended up having a surprisingly lovely time. He asked if he could see me again and I said yes without even hesitating.

Then it began. An evening here and there, a walk on a hot summer’s afternoon in some quiet fields, just us, where we shyly
began to talk about what we each wanted for the rest of our lives. When he said nervously that he had always imagined getting married and having children at a young age, I said
I’d
always wanted to have children too, with the right man…There was a silence where we both looked at each other, smiled gently and my heart felt so light and happy I just wanted to cry. It was as if we made an unspoken promise to each other there and then. I felt I was his from that moment onward and he hadn’t even kissed me.

As time went on we became closer and closer…we talked several times a day and never ran out of things to say to each other. He made me laugh and laugh, and when he did first kiss me, it was the sweetest, gentlest kiss in the world. I wanted to be with him as much as I could. My heart would flip over when I heard his car pull up outside my flat…it was perfect and I fell very much in love with him.

We spent a first blissful summer together driving around country lanes and having pub lunches and after one, late in the afternoon as the sun was starting to sink, we stopped at the beach on the way back and he wrote “I love you” in the sand. Then he shouted it as loud as he could, to the alarm of the squawking seagulls circling overhead. I laughed like a loon and hugged him so hard we both fell over. I felt like I was in a film—cocooned in happiness.

That was what Clare just hadn’t found yet
—that being sure. That certain knowledge that it just didn’t get any better. Knowing that the search could stop, you were a done deal.

Clare wandered back in carrying another bottle of wine and found me grinning to myself.

“God, you’re thinking about him now, aren’t you? Mr. Totally Wonderful.”

I’d laughed. “He drives me totally nuts in lots of ways. You know he does.”

“But you see, this is what I don’t understand!” She’d started to wrestle with the cork. “If someone pisses me off, I’m out of there.”

“Pete doesn’t piss me off. Well, he does, but I don’t spend all day wandering around thinking I’ve got to do something about it. If he does something twatty, sometimes I ignore it because it’s not worth arguing about, sometimes I don’t and we have words, then one of us says, ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ and it’s forgotten. That’s what a real relationship is all about.”

Clare wrinkled her nose. “Sounds really exciting. I’ll have to check my diary and see if I can fit it in between rebellious university years and death…Oh, turns out I’m busy. What a shame.”

That annoyed me a little and I started to get a bit more animated as I tipped Gloria off my lap and reached for the bottle myself. “Look, real love—
true
love—is about an awful lot more than roses, candlelight and remembering Valentine’s Day.”

Clare took a big gulp from her glass and put it unsteadily back down on the table. “What, it’s about picking up his pants for the hundredth time and
still
loving him? Balls to that…I want passion, excitement, spontaneity. That can’t be too much to expect.” She’d started to look feisty and determined.

“It isn’t.” I’d gently leaned over to remove the bottle that she’d just picked up again from her hands, firmly putting the cork back in it. “It’s just that all that stuff gives way to something much deeper, much more lasting. No one is perfect, every relationship takes a lot of work and once you meet the person that you really, truly love, it won’t matter if he doesn’t understand why you want to do something, it’ll be enough that he’s
willing to support your choice
even though
he doesn’t really understand why.”

I listen to Pete breathing next to me, steady and untroubled, and I think about what I said to Clare and I know it to be true. I love him so much.

But I can’t tell him what I did earlier.

Twelve hours ago, after he’d left for a meeting, I slammed from room to room in our house like a human sledgehammer, clutching one of his golf clubs with a grip so tight my fingers went white. It was hard to hear the shattering of glass and the crash of cascading CDs over my shrieking as photo frames, ornaments, Bert, all flew off shelves and tables, splintering into pieces. I threw things at walls, ripped apart anything I could get my hands on, pushed chairs over, kicked piles of DVDs. I was totally shattered when I finished and sank to the floor in a crumpled heap, breathing heavily.

Pete can’t ever know that when I told him we’d been burgled I was lying. Tomorrow I will make everything okay. I know how to fix this mess. It
will
be all right. It has to be.

And with that thought I finally start to drift away, my body unable to fight sleep any longer.

A
mere hour and a half later, I am wide awake again. I have literally jolted out of sleep back into my body, with an audible gasp. Pete doesn’t stir next to me. My muscles are rigid as I breathe shallow, small breaths and then eventually they start to soften—my body has decided neither fight nor flight is required.

The only thing that can’t ease is my mind. Despite it being 2:17 a.m., my mind is immediately alert and returning to the matter in question. Within seconds I am staring at the ceiling and sifting for clues through the sieve of my memory—I am trying to pinpoint the moment when it all began to go wrong, while I wait for the morning. Where was the bit when the winds started to pick up outside and swirl the leaves around lightly, those little troublesome gusts that lift skirts and whip hats off heads? The bit where, in a movie, wind chimes begin to ring eerily, shop signs creak and sway, dogs whine uneasily and the older, wiser townsfolk look suspiciously up at the sky? Because the immensely frustrating thing is, I can’t remember anything out of the ordinary. There have been no giveaways, no warning signs. In fact
I specifically remember talking to Lottie at work about how comfortable Pete and I had become with each other. That was only three weeks ago! That’s all!

It had been a very typical day in a very typical week. I was saying how annoyed I’d been at the weekend, as I’d had to go to a friend’s wedding on my own because Pete had been working overtime.

“It was so crap,” I’d said to Lottie. “Everyone had their boyfriends or husbands with them and I’m there playing with the stem of my champagne glass wishing Pete was too. I’d asked him specially to keep that weekend free as well. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, it was a Celtic wedding with traditional dancing in a circle to a bloody fiddle and whistle.”

Lottie made a face.

“Everyone got up with their other halves and my friend Amanda’s bloke suddenly booms, ‘Oh hang on, everyone! Look who isn’t dancing!’ and they all look over at me, minding my own business at a table trying to look inconspicuous, and he goes, ‘Come on, Mia! Don’t be a wallflower, come and dance!’”

Lottie groaned sympathetically, “Oh you’re joking!”

“Nope,” I retorted, “I’m not. So now everyone is looking at me, the whole band is waiting to start and I realize I’m going to have to go up there, I’ve got no choice. So I drag myself on to the dance floor feeling like a prat but thinking the sooner I get it over with etc., etc….”

Lottie nodded in agreement.

“But then,
then
he makes it worse by bellowing, ‘Oh hang on, she hasn’t got a partner! Come on, chaps! Step up!’”

Lottie gasped and put her hands over her mouth. “I can’t bear it. I really can’t. Why didn’t Amanda shut him up?”

“I know! Wives are nudging their husbands and muttering
‘Go on, poor girl…she’s all on her own,’ babies are being passed from boyfriends to girlfriends, much chair scraping ensues as the men start to reluctantly shuffle to their feet and then Tim, my mate Louise’s husband, shoves the rest of his sausage roll in his mouth, wipes his hands down his waistcoat and cheerily shouts, ‘Come on, old girl! I’ll swing you round the floor!’ to
cheers
from the rest of the wedding party, like he’s a war hero or something. It was so embarrassing. I wanted to die.”

Lottie held up a hand. “Stop, please. I can’t listen to any more.”

“I told Pete when I got home and he thought it was funny! Oh, hilarious. And not only that—he actually finished work earlier than he thought and had
time to go to the gym.
”

Lottie looked gratifyingly horrified and whispered, “Then what happened?”

But at that point I had to stop because Spank Me, our boss, got back from his meeting and we needed to pretend we were working.

It was Lottie who came up with the nickname Spank Me after we discovered he’d been surfing some very unsavory Web sites after office hours. Why on earth he’d want to cruise gay porn at work and not do it in the privacy of his own home is beyond me, but to be honest we both try not to think about it too much. After all, as Lottie has pointed out, she has to sit in his chair sometimes and use that computer and it turns her stomach if she lets her mind dwell on what he might have been doing on it the evening before.

After what felt like forever, Spank Me announced he was going off to another meeting and would be back in an hour or two. Once his briefcase had whipped round the corner of the door,
we waited for a moment to make sure he’d definitely gone and then turned back to each other.

“I can’t believe Pete had been to the gym!” Lottie exclaimed.

“He’s always at the gym at the moment. Apparently it helps him ‘de-stress’ while work is so full on.” I shrugged. “I think what he actually means is he wants to up his beer consumption without getting fat, because he doesn’t look any different to me, that’s for sure.”

Talking of drinking then made us decide we needed a cup of tea. Lottie and I spend quite a lot of time making tea. It’s only the two of us in the office. Spank Me runs an operation that he calls a marketing consultancy, which means he does small-time promotional stuff for companies that they could do perfectly well themselves. I (in theory) follow up the meetings, book local advertising and update their databases and Lottie manages the Web sites. The only positive thing to be said for it is it just about pays the bills, while Lottie and I manage to keep each other sane. We get a lot of talking done.

“I can’t even say I mind Jake’s trainers being in the bedroom any more. I think I’ve acclimatized to the smell,” Lottie mused later that afternoon. “But when I shook the sofa cushions the other day, a chopstick, a twenty-pence piece and a load of toenails fell out. He’s so disgusting. Why can’t he use a bin like anyone else?”

“I’ve seen Pete
eat
his toenails in front of the TV,” I said idly.

“How charming.” Lottie grimaced, standing up. “Do you want another?”

“Go on then. Can I have a bit more milk this time? It’s weird, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. I mean, why cows? Were they just right place, right time?”

“No,” I said contemplatively. “Weird how Pete can, on the one hand, do gross things like eat bits of himself in front of me and yet be the same bloke who used to whisper things that literally used to make me shiver they were so lovely.”

Lottie snorted and adjusted her skirt, which had swiveled round. “That’s not weird. The key word there is
used
to. They all do that at the beginning. Jake used to say things to me in bed like ‘You’re beyond beautiful.’ Now it’s ‘What do you want me to do? Stick my arse out of the window? Well, don’t lift the duvet up then.’” She groaned, gathered up our cups and walked to the kitchen.

That made me think about one night in Pete’s room, in the flat that he lived in when I first met him. We hadn’t been together very long. It was so close and muggy outside, even having the window fully open and the curtains pulled back made no difference, the air was utterly still. We’d had very quiet, slow sex, as I was paranoid about his flatmate and half the neighbors hearing us. Lit up by the moon and tangled in the sheets, with shallow moves that had increased the urgency and intensity, it was all barely audible gasps, tightly clasping hands, a shuddering groan that he couldn’t help, lightly sweating skin…and I really did feel beautiful. Afterward he pulled me to him, wrapping his arms round my naked body and we just lay there in the silence.

“Did you know that heartbeats synchronize when they’re this close?” he had said eventually and then kissed me lightly on the back of my neck.

I wanted to tell him I loved him right then and there, but I didn’t—it still felt a little too soon—even though I knew, I just
knew
I did.

Lottie had carried our very full mugs back to the desk, swearing as she spilled a bit. She then sat herself down in her chair, but unfortunately slopped more tea down her front. “Bugger!” she muttered, reaching for a tissue. “What
is
the matter with me?” She rubbed at her top, but the tissue started to disintegrate and white bits began to shed all over her black jumper.

I got up, went to the kitchen, grabbed a damp cloth and threw it to her.

“Thanks. So what you up to tonight then?” she said. “Busy evening of dinner, TV and then bed?”

“Pretty much. Pete’s going to the gym, I think, usual kind of crap.”

“Familiarity holds hands with predictability…” Lottie said, absently sponging herself off.

I laughed. “Did you just make that up?”

Lottie looked up and grinned. “Probably. Maybe I meant better the devil you know…or a lazy-arse git at home is worth two in the bush? Can’t live with ’em, so why won’t they fuck off? I don’t know.”

I thought of Pete and smiled. “I’ll settle for my devil. Anyway, I don’t have the strength to break another one in. Pete’ll do.”

With a clarity that only comes in the dead of night when your brain is not cluttered with everyday work crap, bank statements and picking up something for tea, I am suddenly struck with the absolute knowledge that that was it. That was when I made my first huge mistake.

With all the complacency of familiarity, I had assumed that as a couple we had no surprises ahead. But as I have learned in the last twenty-seven hours, you
never
know all there is to know.

Equally, twenty-seven hours ago I would have said Pete and
I were invincible—utterly watertight—but now I can see that until you are actually tested, you have no idea what will happen when trouble approaches. Until then, you are in fact at your most vulnerable.

When your boat starts to rock slightly, you can either pull as a team and row away from the approaching huge black cloud together, or you can pretend it’s not happening and it’s your imagination—the wind isn’t really getting up and there’s nothing to worry about.

Or one of you can randomly decide to jump out of the boat. They think they’ve spied another, bigger ship that looks a better bet. And you’re so busy sorting the sails, battening down the hatches and tightening the ropes, you don’t hear the silent splash as they inexplicably throw themselves into the deep, dangerous, swirling sea.