The Day Of Second Chances (25 page)

She ran upstairs and shaved her legs and changed her underwear.

When she got back downstairs, Oscar, Iris and Honor were all on the sofa. Oscar and Iris's heads were pressed together over the tablet that Richard had bought them. They were swiping and pressing to the tinny sounds of Angry Birds squawks. She kissed the children, but they barely looked up from their screen.

‘Are you sure, Honor?' she asked, hesitating by the door.

‘Go, already. I'll ring if there's a problem.' Honor didn't look up either. Jo escaped out into the rain. She wanted to run, but she forced herself to walk. Just a neighbour going to visit another neighbour for a getting-to-know-you neighbourly cup of tea.

Excitement rose in her, so strong she wanted to whoop. She skipped, stopped herself from twirling, quickened her pace. She leaped up the stairs to his front door, number 36, and knocked.

He might be out. He was probably out. In which case, she would have to go back home and get an umbrella and go somewhere else, the library maybe, or for a coffee. Like Honor had suggested. She could ring Sara. Or look for a new pair of shoes. Marcus and she had texted last night, late into the night, but she hadn't heard from him today, so maybe he'd gone off her. Maybe it had taken too long.

For the first time it occurred to her that though they'd communicated almost constantly for the past few days, they'd never actually rung each other. Why not? Was ringing too serious? Was it too much of a commitment to actually talk to each other? She was being presumptuous, thinking that a few kisses in her kitchen and a few days' worth of sexting gave her licence to call on him unannounced, assuming that he would want to see her.

The door opened. Marcus wore jeans and a light-blue T,-shirt and his face lit up at the sight of her. She felt her body light up too.

‘Oh wow, hi,' he said.

‘I've only got a little while.'

He let her in and closed the door behind him. She was breathing hard. His feet were bare. There was music playing in the other room, something with guitars. They stood in his hallway smiling at each other. He was the same person who had been on her mind constantly for the past three days, except he was real.

She had absolutely no idea what to say or do. Small talk? Greeting? Grab him and rip his clothes off?

Should she have put on more make-up? Different clothes? High heels?

Suddenly she felt the weight of his entire life that didn't involve her at all. His job, all his thoughts, his friends and family, his music, what he liked to eat, the way he spent his hours. They had hardly exchanged a hundred real words with each other. All this time she had been burning to see a stranger.

‘How are you?' he asked.

‘Fine. Great. I'm sorry I couldn't get over before. What … have you been up to?'

He shrugged. ‘Work. Marking. You?'

‘Kids. Cooking. Cleaning.'

‘Waiting for you,' he said. He stretched out his hand and touched hers. She curled her fingers with his. His palm was warm, slightly damp.

He couldn't be as nervous as she was?

She should ask for a cup of tea. They should sit down, at his kitchen table maybe, and talk. She should get to know him better. That was the natural order of things.

But somehow they'd stepped away from the natural order.

‘Where's your bedroom?' she asked him.

He drew her to him and kissed her. It wasn't as frantic as their first kiss in the kitchen, nor as lingering as their last kiss outside the house. It was slower, more thorough. Still hungry.

‘It's upstairs,' he murmured against her mouth. She nodded.

She followed him upstairs. She was trembling. Ahead of her, his backside was at eye-level, his soft jeans. She looked at his back, his shoulders in his T-shirt. The way his hair curled on his neck. His feet, bare, with slender toes. He was perfect, all of him. His skin would be smooth and flawless, his body lean and strong. Not a single thread of grey in his hair. Suddenly she knew what men felt when they looked at pictures in a magazine: images translating to desire.

I will look back on this and I will wonder if it really happened, or if it was a dream.

At the top of the stairs he led her into a room. White walls, double bed, blue duvet, white sheets. It was the room she'd looked at from her own bedroom, but she felt no sense of familiarity. There was a faint scent of his shaving lotion. The bed hadn't been made. She pictured him lying in it and she shivered.

He pulled her close. ‘I've been going mad thinking about you,' he said, and began to kiss her again. He put his palm on the back of her neck, under her hair.

Jo closed her eyes. Then she opened them again. She drew back a little. ‘Are you certain about this?'

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you?'

‘I'm …'

‘We don't have to,' he said quickly. ‘I wouldn't want you to do anything you're not comfortable with. I just thought, after everything you said …'

‘I'm maybe braver in texts than I am in real life.' She stepped back to get a small bit of distance, so he wasn't touching her.

‘What's wrong?'

She catalogued all the reasons that it was wrong in her mind, and chose the one that was the most obvious.

‘It's that I'm forty. I'm forty, Marcus, I've had three children. I've got stretch marks. I've got boobs that look better with a bra on. Cellulite, and wobbly bits. I haven't done all the pelvic-floor exercises that I should do.' She winced. ‘Maybe that's too much information. But I think you should know, I'm far from perfect.'

He put his hands on her shoulders. ‘I don't need you perfect,' he said to her. ‘I'm happy that you're here.'

‘Have you … have you been with older women before?'

‘Aside from kissing you the other day?' He smiled. ‘Not that I'm aware of. Jo, I'm a grown man.'

‘But I'm ten years older than you.'

He shook his head. ‘Our age doesn't matter. You're beautiful.'

‘You haven't got a fetish? A mother complex?'

‘I told you, you're nothing like my mother. You're nothing like any mother I know.' He unbuttoned the top of her dress. His fingers stroked down her chest, between her breasts. He kissed her lips, lightly, and her chin; the side of her neck. She tilted her head helplessly, her body thrumming.

‘I'm probably braver in texts too,' he murmured into her ear. ‘But maybe we can be brave together.'

‘How?'

His smile was crooked. ‘Let's do what you said you wanted to, exactly as you said you wanted to do it.'

‘I don't know if I—'

‘I remember every word. Why don't you start with unbuttoning my shirt?'

She laughed, nervously. ‘It hasn't got buttons on it.'

‘Then take it off.'

He gazed at her, with the touch of a smile still on his lips. His blue eyes sexy, a hint of stubble on his chin. His room was bare, unmarked. Anything could happen in it.

‘I want you to,' he said. ‘I really want you to.'

Jo swallowed, and then she grasped the hem of his T-shirt with both hands. She had undressed people before. Men before. But not so boldly, not whilst talking about it, in full daylight, her eyes open to see everything and be seen.

She pulled his T-shirt up over his head. He raised his arms to help her and she saw the dark hair under them. She didn't know what to do with his T-shirt once it was off him, so she handed it to him and he dropped it on the floor.

He wasn't smiling now. He looked very serious. ‘Then you said you wanted to touch me,' he said.

She reached out a hand. Her fingers were unsteady. She touched his bare shoulder, the smooth warm skin with the bones and muscles underneath. Slowly, she slid her palm downwards. He had hardly any hair on his chest. She touched the soft jut of his nipple, the ridges of his ribs. His belly was firm, moving rapidly with his breaths. She slipped the tip of her finger into his navel.

‘Then, I said I wanted to undress you.'

He did, button by button. He slipped her dress off her shoulders and let it fall next to his T-shirt. He did not kiss her, but looked at her. He unfastened her bra and eased it from her. He pushed her knickers down her legs, kneeling as he did so.

Jo could barely breathe. Her cheeks were aflame. She looked down at herself and saw the pale loose skin of her belly, the mark her bra strap had left. She saw Marcus's curly head next to her hip, felt his breath on her, wondered if he would kiss her or touch her and take what they did into his hands so she wouldn't have to think about it.

He stood. He looked her up and down and Jo had to fight to keep from apologizing. There was a mirror behind her; she had seen it when she'd come in the room. She would not look into it. She would try to see herself in his eyes.

She saw his throat working as he swallowed. ‘Now,' he said, his voice hoarse, ‘you wanted to push me down on the bed.'

She did. She straddled him, her palms braced against the hollows of his shoulders. She felt him hard against her, and she looked down into his face. Into his eyes, which never wavered.

Later, much later, she followed him downstairs, wearing his T-shirt and her lacy knickers. Her thighs were sore, her skin rubbed into contentment. She had glimpsed her face in the mirror before she left the bedroom: her flushed cheeks, her rumpled hair.

Marcus went into the kitchen to put on the kettle and she checked her phone in her handbag, which she had dropped on the floor near the front door, and then wandered into his living room. Like all of the rest of the house, it had white walls and a neutral carpet: the default new house blank decor. He had a squashy sofa and a scarred coffee table covered with folders of marking; a television and a stereo with a record deck. The CD he'd been playing when she came in had long since finished. There was a large cardboard box near the sofa, apparently filled with newspaper. She reached for it to see what was inside, but stopped herself.

‘They're photographs,' he said, coming into the room. ‘I haven't had the chance to put them up yet.' He gave her one of the mugs he held. ‘Your cup of tea. Finally.'

‘I think I liked what we were doing even more than a cup of tea.' She curled up on the sofa and he nudged beside her, his arm around her shoulders. He was only wearing his boxer shorts. She couldn't resist running her hand up his thigh, watching how the hairs, stroked against the grain, stood up and clung to her palm.

‘Where are the kids?' he asked. ‘With their father? I was too distracted to ask.'

‘With Honor. My mother-in-law. She hasn't rung, so I assume they're fine.' She hoped they were fine; guilt threaded into her gut. She could run back and check.

But actually, Honor was right. She did deserve some time for herself. ‘What are the photographs of?'

‘You're welcome to have a look.'

She knelt by the box and lifted the framed photos out, one by one, dreading the photographs of old girlfriends. But they were landscapes: bleak and rocky, ice and water. Some black and white, some colour. A blue interior of ice, a red and black lava field, a scooped-out green valley.

‘You took these?'

‘I've spent quite a few holidays in Iceland. I love the geology. This one.' He reached past her and took out a photo: it was white and blue curves, like the spiral of a snail shell. The scale was impossible to determine. ‘I have a thing about glaciers.'

‘So the teaching is a hobby?'

‘The teaching is a job. The glaciers are a hobby. The mass, and how slowly they move, and how they change the environment. Mountains literally moved by water. It puts everything in perspective.' He laughed. ‘All the rest of my family like to go somewhere warm on holiday. My mum calls me a penguin.'

‘Penguins aren't in Iceland.'

‘Well, my mum isn't always scientifically accurate.' He put the photo down. ‘Anyway, there. You've discovered my dark secret.'

‘That's it? Glaciers?'

‘You're right, glaciers aren't a secret. My Year Sevens are sick of me banging on about them.' He grinned at her. ‘You're my only secret.'

‘I think you're mine, too.'

‘That means we have a lot in common.'

No
, she thought.
We have each other in common, and that is all.
She picked up the photo he'd lain down. ‘You should put these up. They're beautiful.'

He gestured at the clean walls. ‘It's my fear of damaging the house. Also, I haven't got a great eye. I've had them framed, but I wouldn't know where they'd look best.'

‘I'll help you do it,' she said, and then blushed. Here she was, at his house for the first time, having made love with him once and exchanged some texts, and she was pushing herself forward into his life. Offering to help decorate his house, to help him become domesticated. As if she were his mother.

‘Like you need more jobs to do, right?' he said. ‘Come here.' She went willingly onto his lap. He slipped his hand underneath his T-shirt that she wore.

‘You want to again?' she asked.

‘And again, if we have time.' He nuzzled her ear. ‘Tell me a secret. Something about you I don't know yet.'

‘I'm only a mum,' she said, kissing his shoulder, the hollow of his collarbone. ‘I'm not the kind of person who sneaks out on a Saturday to meet her lover.'

‘I'm not either,' he said. ‘But now we both are.' He laid her back against the cushions.

When she let herself into her house, even later than that, her body weary and singing, Oscar and Iris were in the same position, bent over the tablet.

‘You're back,' said Honor. ‘Did you have a good time?'

Marcus's hands on her breasts, his mouth on the curve of her hip. Suddenly she was conscious of her chin and neck. They must be red from the stubble on Marcus's face.

‘Yes, very nice,' she said, putting her hand over her chin in a pose she hoped looked thoughtful rather than embarrassed. ‘Have you had lunch?'