His Other Lover (19 page)

He walks out of the room, and I sink to the floor.

I
want to cry, I really do, but there’s just nothing there. No tears, no fight, no spark. Just me in a crumpled heap on the floor, in knickers that I’ve spent more than a week’s food shop on, next to a dress that doesn’t feel special any more.

I don’t sit there for long; it’s cold apart from anything else. Once I’ve realized that Pete has gone downstairs and isn’t coming back up, there is nothing for me to do but get to my feet, go to the bathroom, clean myself up and get dressed again. My makeup has smudged, so I touch it up.

I take a deep breath, lift my head and walk back into our room. I’m not done yet.

Reaching my hand into my underwear drawer, I fish Liz’s earrings out. They twinkle merrily and I hold them out in front of me with distaste, as if they are diseased. They are beyond tacky; glass and paste gems. Clearly she is not refined enough to be allergic to cheap metals.

“Pete!” I yell at the top of my voice.

I hear him amble upstairs, and as he appears in the doorway, I rush over and throw my arms round him, exclaiming, “They’re
beautiful!” He smiles, all pleased and surprised, hugs me back and says, “What are?”

“The earrings.”

He looks a little confused—as well he might—and I say, “I found them on the top of the chest of drawers. That’s such a lovely surprise. Thank you!” Then I slide one of Liz’s earrings in my ear. I hate doing it. I hate putting something in my flesh that has belonged to her. It’s like sticking myself with a contaminated needle.

I let the earring drop and turn my head so he can see it. He goes as white as a sheet. He really is the crappest person at hiding things, I’ve come to realize, but then I guess if you think your bit on the side has somehow got into your house and left her earrings for your live-in girlfriend to deliberately find…well, it would be a tad worrying.

They are very distinctive earrings, to put it mildly. Not the sort of things a modest wallflower would wear. They’re theatrical, over-the-top vintage-esque chandelier jobs, deep-green glass, cut to look like fat emeralds. It is clearly very obvious to him who they belong to.

I shake my head and the jewels glisten and gleam, casting shadows on my cheekbones. “I’ll wear them when we go to the ballet.” I smile at him. “All these presents. I’m a lucky girl. What have I done to deserve this?” I pretend to look back in the mirror, but sneak a glance at him instead.

He looks very worried. “Nothing,” he says quietly. “You haven’t done anything to deserve this.” He says it under his breath, but I hear him. I look at him inquiringly and he smooths a smile over his face and comes over to me. “On second thoughts,” he says, easing the hooks out of the lobes gently, “I don’t really like them. They look a bit cheap. You’re more of a
diamond girl. I’ll take these back, swap them for something else.” He slips the earrings into his pocket.

“You know what?” I say lightly. “I’m going to call my friend, tell her we’ll meet up another night. I’d rather stay in with you instead. Give me five and I’ll be right down.”

He nods and clatters off downstairs.

Through a chink in the bedroom curtain, I watch him stride into the garden, illuminated by the kitchen light. He has his phone clamped to his ear. I would kill to hear what he’s saying. I get the picture, though, because whoever he is speaking to…and God I hope it’s her…he is very, very angry with. At first he shrugs his shoulders in a melodramatic way. I imagine him saying something along the lines of “Well,
you
tell
me
how they got there.”

He starts to frown and the finger-pointing begins. He listens for a bit, rolling his eyes, then closes them, running a tired hand over his forehead. Suddenly he snaps them open again, and says something very short and final as he clicks the phone off and pulls it sharply away from his ear. I watch him just stand there, looking exhausted. Then his phone lights up merrily again. She’s calling him back. Without pausing, he switches it off and shoves it in his pocket.

I let the curtain drop, smiling in the darkness.

O
n Saturday morning, Pete’s cousin’s wedding, I wake up in our bed alone. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a note on his pillow, which terrifies me at first because I think it’s the “I don’t know how to say this, but I’ve met someone…” letter, but actually it just says he’s gone to the gym.

Sitting up makes my head swim. Catching a glance in the mirror at the end of the bed, I see a panda-eyed, gray-faced old woman, with skin like tired dough and hair that looks like two squirrels had a punch-up in it, staring back at me.

I look like shit. Shuffling through to the bathroom, I try to ignore Gloria howling downstairs, although the noise pierces through my delicate wine-soaked brain like hot knitting needles sliding into suet. The second bottle of wine Pete and I opened in front of the TV last night, both of us drinking silently while staring at the screen, has come back to haunt me. I feel foul.

My mood is not improved by discovering it looks cold and damp outside as opposed to the fresh crisp day I’m sure the bride prayed for. I wish we didn’t have to go.

As I’m applying some makeup in our bedroom—which
curiously is not actually improving things, as it should be, but making me look like a transvestite—my phone goes next to me.

“Hello,” says Clare solemnly. “How are you?”

I think about that for a second. “On balance I think I’m hanging on in there,” I say lightly. “How are you?”

“Well,” says Clare, sounding like she’s settling in for a long one, “I have an actual true story to tell you.”

“Okay,” I say, glancing at my watch. “Just keep it snappy. I’ve got a wedding to go to.”

She sighs huffily. “Fine. Here’s the short version. Patrick came up last night and told me he’s falling in love with me, and I think I love him too. Bye.”

“What? Oh fuck it!” I drop my mascara wand into my lap in shock. Dammit! I’ve got the reflexes of a turd today and now I’ve got a black stripe down my dress. “What are you talking about?” I say crossly, rubbing furiously at the stripe and watching in dismay as it spreads like an oil slick. “You’ve known each other less than a week! Don’t be so ridiculous!”

There is a pause, and then she says dryly, “Not
quite
the reaction I was hoping for, but better than ‘He’s
my
friend,’ I suppose.”

“You’re not serious! Clare, you’re at uni, you’re a student. You’re supposed to be getting pissed and spending your loan in Topshop.”

“Yeah? And?”

“But Patrick works, and he’s not a student, and—”

“Shit, you’re right!” she says, mock afraid, “and he
doesn’t
shop at Topshop. What was I thinking…it’ll
never
work.” She tuts in disgust. “Why is it that everyone thinks that just because you’re a student, you’re some kind of sub-species that just shuffles around trying to get a shag and the rest of the time watches
Neighbors?
For
your information, I work bloody hard, I spend what little money I have on rent and food and I am capable of genuine feeling. Wasn’t it you who told me I’d know when I met the right one?”

“Well, yes,” I begin. “But…Clare, it’s been one week and—”

“Doesn’t matter—I just know,” she cuts in bluntly.

“And it’s Patrick, and—”

“I still just know,” she says, a little more softly. “And I
know
he does too, Mi. It feels just amazing.”

I hold the phone to my ear for a moment and just listen.

“And I’m so, so glad I listened to you and never settled for second best. Before, with Jack and other boys, I’d be like constantly looking over my shoulder thinking that this felt good—but what if there was something better out there? Someone who could give me more? But I know I couldn’t better what I have with Patrick.”

Oh, please. “Clare—you’re so young,” I plead. “You’ve got so much time!”

“To do what?” she says in surprise. “I can still do it all—only with him too. How much fun will that be?”

“And he said he’s falling in love with you?” I say doubtfully.

She laughs. “Yes, and I didn’t imagine it and I know he meant it. I just know. I don’t know how to describe it, Mia—and it’s not just lust.”

Please, no details, I think to myself. Spare me that at least. “You can’t possibly know you love each other!”

“Why?” she insists. “Why can’t I know I love him?”

I don’t have an answer for that.

“I’m so happy, I can’t tell you. Can you just be happy for me too?”

I soften. “Of course I can.”

“Well, yay!” she says, and then she shouts, “I’m in love! Hurrah!”

In the church a couple of hours later, in a second-choice dress, I am pondering the unsettling possibility that now maybe even my little sister is going to make it up the aisle faster than me, and I’m starting to feel like it’s never going to happen to me. Ever.

However, I’m sure that none of the other congregation can tell, just by looking at me, that I’m dying slowly from the inside out because my boyfriend has another woman on the side. Sitting in the cold, dusty church, waiting for the bride to arrive, with Pete irritably pulling at his tie and saying that he’s sure we’ll get a parking ticket where we’ve left the car and me hissing at him to stop fidgeting, we look like any other normal couple.

I look around the pews, and variations on the theme are happening everywhere. The women are craning their necks to see who is wearing what and then ducking down excitedly to bitch to their bored-looking husbands. Some of the men are doing the jolly handshake and booming laugh bit…and next to them sit nervous wives, like little birds. Not all of them look miserable, of course—it’s a happy occasion, for goodness’ sake—but now, with the benefit of the last two weeks behind me, I can see that not everything is how it seems at first glance.

When the march begins, we all clamber to our feet and turn to watch the bride start her walk down the aisle. She’s this slender, wobbling, nervous girl whose dress is already slightly too loose around her shoulders, trying to keep in time with the music and busily hauling back her dad, who is intent on getting this first nerve-racking bit over as quickly as possible. She glances shyly around the church and bites her bottom lip nervously…but as soon as she sees the back of her fiancé’s head, she lets out
a visible sigh of relief and a very sweet, gentle smile starts to creep across her face. Her whole body releases and she transforms from this uneasy slip of thing into a serene, calm, elegant, willowy girl as she glides toward him.

Clutching my bag and the order of service, I watch her. Pete is standing with his hands behind his back. There is a gap of a good foot between us. Very suddenly I am reminded of a wedding we went to together, early on in our relationship. As the bride and groom were exchanging their vows, stumbling over the words in their sincerity, Pete and I clasped one another’s hands tightly, leaned against each other and shared a shy, meaningful look that said that one day, that might be us, saying we wanted to be always together until death parted us.

So I listen to this couple being married, making promises I hope they can keep and vowing to be true and kind to each other. I feel the space between me and Pete, and I find myself suddenly wondering sadly if I could, now, actually marry him, knowing what has happened. Closing my eyes briefly, I suddenly see in my head me standing next to him in a wedding dress. Our backs are to the congregation as the doors to the church are flung open in slow motion, and Liz—framed in an ethereal light—is poised, ready to hurl herself down the aisle screaming, “Nooooooo!” wildly—like a scene from a bad film.

I sway slightly and Pete, frowning, puts out a hand to steady me. He gives me a funny look and mouths, “Are you okay?” I nod and bow my head down.

The rest of the wedding is actually very lovely, although the vicar nearly gives the bride’s mother a heart attack as he delivers a sermon that requires a pair of garden shears and a nearby flower arrangement to illustrate the point that two halves pulling together make a formidable whole. This is said as an innocent
and probably very expensive severed dahlia head drops to the floor. Thankfully, just as the bride’s mother looks like she’s about to throw up, he stops and puts the shears away. He then cracks a joke that isn’t that funny, but gets a big fat relieved laugh all the same.

After the service is over, the newly married couple walk up the aisle, him grinning broadly and her with her arm looped through his, one self-conscious hand already twisting her wedding band. I watch them, thinking wistfully how lucky they are.

Then Pete leans in and says can we bloody get going to the reception because he’s not fannying around with car parking there too.

On arrival, we squidge through the mud of the country hotel gardens with the other guests. It’s way too cold to stand outside, so everyone dutifully makes small talk in the foyer while the photographs are done. We watch the bride’s mother stoutly puff after two tiny bridesmaids who would rather chase each other round the muddy lawn squealing like piglets, trailing their flower headdresses behind them, than pose for the camera.

Then it’s on to the reception line, and finally we are all seated at our tables so the painful business of introducing ourselves to other people and asking how they know the bride and groom can begin. I am sitting next to a man who inexplicably introduces himself to me as Fish. Pete is next to Fish’s other half, a stacked blonde in an outfit that barely contains yards of rather crêpey mahogany-tanned bosom. She nudges Pete and says, “I can tell you and I are gonna get on like a house on fire.” Pete smiles politely but sends me a pained look, a silent plea across the table that makes me giggle into my glass of warm champagne. I feel my doubts and tension from the church lift as he smiles back at me, and suddenly the afternoon seems like it might be fun after all.

Unfortunately, as the meal gets under way, it turns out that the booze is the only thing that is warm. We all pick at our tepid beef and clammy potatoes as the flustered waitresses dispense with formalities and just dump the veg on our plates. At the other end of the room, some tables are already on their puddings—so we, as the last one on the circuit, are playing catch-up.

Fish, however, is determined to get utterly hammered and take us all with him. “Come on, girl,” he blusters as he tops up my glass. “Get some more of this down your neck. Well, it’s free, innit? You might as well.” His cheeks are beginning to glow; he’s getting a little friskier and sitting just a bit closer to me than he needs to. Mrs. Fish is likewise shrieking with laughter at something Pete has said, and he’s looking a little alarmed at her OTT reaction.

Despite Fish, his cackling and his totally inappropriate story about what he did to a bloke who owed him £250 for a telly, I am tentatively enjoying myself. People are starting to get up and wander about in the lull between coffee and the speeches, and an aunt of Pete’s who I have never met before comes waddling over to the table and envelops Pete in a lilac-silk hug. She’s very jolly and powdery, asking Pete with a nudge and a twinkle when he’s going to make an honest woman of me; surely wedding bells ought to be chiming for us soon? I am more than a little disconcerted to find both me and Pete hurriedly clearing our throats and saying, “Oh, plenty of time for that yet!”

All the fun fizzes out of me like someone letting go of a balloon, and quietly I shrink back into my seat, barely noticing as the aunt whitters on about what a shame it is that Pete’s mum and dad weren’t able to make it, and when are they back from their safari holiday?

A glass is tapped and the speeches start. They are painfully
long, the bride’s father having drunk a little too much wine and thus adding anecdotes he hasn’t practiced, which consequently are about as funny as discovering someone has shat in both your shoes. Just as we’re all drifting off to sleep, a mobile rings and everyone jolts awake. It’s Pete’s. He scrabbles to turn it off, but in his haste can’t find the button, so grabs it and holds it to his ear and makes his way out of the room to jeers, holding up an apologetic hand as someone, wittily, shouts, “I’M AT A WEDDING—NO, IT’S SHIT!” making the bride’s mother purse her lips crossly like a cat’s bum.

I can’t concentrate on the rest of the speeches, as all I can think is, who is he talking to?
Who’s he talking to?
Is it her? They must have made it up…Feeling sick, I peer anxiously out of the window into the garden, but I can’t see him. I take a big slug of wine and it makes me cough and splutter. Fish helpfully whacks me on the back and a bit of red wine spit flies out of my mouth, which is nice.

Pete sidles back in as we are all on our feet for the final toast. The best man announces that the tables will now be cleared for dancing and we all sit down heavily, silently thanking our stars that we survived the speeches. Fish spies that Pete has returned and says, “Look who’s back! Your other bird all right, then?” He winks at Pete and chortles. Pete freezes for a second, forces a laugh and then jokes, “Oh, she’s good, thanks for asking.” Fish retorts quickly with, “Steady on, mate! I don’t want to know what she’s like in the sack—not with Princess here.” He elbows me, then he leans in and, tapping his nose, murmurs, “Tell me later!” before letting rip with another cackle.

I can’t take any more of this, so I get up and weave my way unsteadily through the tables. Pete doesn’t come after me; probably thinks I’ve had too much to drink and need the loo. Outside
in the chill air, the sun is dipping low and the sky has gone a magnificent red. It’s by far the best weather of the day, but the photographer has long since packed up and gone home.

The cold air rushes into my lungs and I can smell wood smoke from nearby houses and a mushroom-like dampness from the surrounding trees. Two skinny young waiters, all spiky hair and hunched shoulders, are having a crafty fag by some French windows, shuffling from foot to foot to keep warm in their thin white shirts. The smell of their cigarettes carries over to me, making my head swim a bit. I feel giddy and light-headed, and my pulse starts to quicken slightly. I’m a woman on a mission again, I think, as I totter off toward the car park in my high heels.