Virtual Strangers (25 page)

‘But that’s
not
the reason, is it? That’s my whole point. You’re desperate to see him. In fact you make desperation look like a
laissez-faire
option, quite honestly. You just needed something like this to happen so you wouldn’t feel so bad about yourself.’

‘So why
do
I feel bad, then?’

‘Because you’ve convinced yourself otherwise. You’ve convinced yourself that you have to like Davina; that, as she’s the wronged woman - though she isn’t, not so far, remember - you have to feel some sort of benevolence towards her. Do the right thing by her. Make some sort of grand gesture of denial. Which is rubbish! You’re not a saint. So you don’t have to set yourself up as a martyr. And you never got on with her before, so why should you get on with her now? Plus she’s made it pretty clear where her loyalties are, work wise. You have every right to dislike her.
And
that Hugh. He sounds like a real piece of work.’

‘I wish I could fathom what’s going on there. Things are happening, but I just can’t figure out what. Hey! You don’t think Hugh and Davina -’

‘No I don’t think, quite frankly.
Far
too convenient. Just more wishful thinking on your part, Charlie girl.’

‘No, you’re right about that. But then again, there
is
Austin Metro -’

‘Oh, come
on
, Charlie. Who
cares
? Who gives a stuff about any of them? You phoned Adam. You
did
it.
That’s
what’s important. That you’re going to go and
meet
him.’

‘Christ,’ I say. ‘My stomach’s churning like you wouldn’t believe.’

Rose grins broadly. ‘Ha. Tell me about it,’ she says.

Like most momentous, life changing comments, this one, at first, goes straight over my head. Until much later, that is. It’s a little before eleven and I am packed, plucked, waxed and polished. I feel like a little girl who’s due to leave for holiday in the small hours. The excitement is palpable, but tinged with anxiety. Rose sips her wine and looks on benignly as I paint my nails purple.

‘Chose the dress then,’ she observes, noting the shade. ‘Expecting an unseasonal heatwave?’

‘It was either that or my hairy green trousers,’ I tell her. Even talking about it sends my gut into freefall. And suddenly, another thought comes crashing down to join it. ‘Tell me,’ I ask, ‘you know earlier, when I said about my stomach churning?’

She nods.

‘Well, you said “tell me about it!”. In a very pointed way. Not as in ‘tell me what it feels like’. As in ‘I
know
what it feels like.’ It just came back to me. What did you mean exactly?’

Rose gazes into her wine for a full thirty seconds. Then narrows her eyes.
Ah
.

‘Nothing,’ she says.

‘Liar.’

She smiles. ‘I knew it.’

‘Knew what?’

‘That you’d notice.’

‘So I’m right, then!’

Her expression changes. ‘This must
never
-’’

I tut. ‘Oh, for God’s sake! As if!’

‘I know. I’m sorry. But you know what it’s like. I’ve never told a soul. Anyway. Yes. You’re right. Been there, done that. Etcetera.’

Been where? Done what?
Wow
.

‘Wow!’ I say, wide eyed. ‘You
what
?’

‘Have been there and done that.’ She drains her glass.

‘When?’

‘Oh, a long time ago now. Ellen must have been two when it started.’

This is too much to take in. ‘For how long? What happened? God, I would never have thought! I thought you and Matt - well, you know. Wow. This
never
occurred to me.’

I finish my wine too and reach for the bottle. Rose holds her glass out and says,

‘Oh, it went on for over two and a half years. A lifetime at the time. Now I look back and it seems such a short chunk of my life. But it was very intense. I think I lived more life in that time that I ever did before or since.’

‘But what happened? Who was he? How did it all start - did you end it or did he? Do you still -’

I take hold of my last sentence and retrieve its tail end. ‘Do you really want to talk about this? Honestly, Rose? I mean, if you don’t -’

She smiles. ‘Funny. I never envisaged actually talking about it with anyone. Ever. Particularly you, the way you’ve been prattling on about morality all week.’ She grins at me. ‘Mrs holier than thou. Mrs righteousness-personified. But, yes. I do. Though there isn’t actually that much to tell. I fell in love, had an affair, fell out of love - well, not out of love exactly, but out of the idea of that
sort
of love. Mainly out of love with myself, I suppose. The pull of everything else; Matt, the children, the awful,
awful
consequences of what I was contemplating - it did the trick, I can tell you.’

‘But how did it happen in the first place? I thought you and Matt were like that.’ I hold my thumb and forefinger together. She nods.

‘We are. We are
now
. We weren’t always. After Ellie was born we went through a really bad patch. Actually, I’m exaggerating. It wasn’t so much a bad patch as just a dreary patch. Sex was hopeless - well, boring, infrequent. Matt was stressed about work, I hated being at home. I was climbing the walls. We didn’t row much - we just couldn’t be bothered with each other. Looking back, I guess if either one of us had been more motivated to do something about it, our marital doldrums wouldn’t have lasted nearly so long. But the truth was that it was simply easier not to communicate. We didn’t have the energy. And then I met
him
, and what energy I did have was well and truly channelled elsewhere.’

I wonder how many calories are melting away for me. ‘And I suppose you suddenly found plenty. But how did it start?’

‘With a blazing row on a windy day outside Tesco. I’d put Ellie into her car seat and thought I’d shut the door, but she kicked it and it flew open and made a three inch dent in his Volvo.’ She laughs. ‘He started banging on about people with kids having some consideration and being more careful, and I just blew my top and told him he could shove his Volvo up his arse. I was also very specific about where he could shove his crappy side impact protection system as I recall.’

‘Very romantic.’

‘Exactly. Which is why, I suppose, it caught us both off guard. One minute I was screaming at him and the next I was in floods of tears and railing against life, the universe and everything. And of course he was completely mortified. When I went round to his place to give him some money for the repairs, he wouldn’t hear of it. And he asked me in for a coffee and said he’d been worried about me, and, well, wham! Bingo! I simply couldn’t stop thinking about him. And then we seemed to find ourselves meeting almost every day. He worked nights then, of course, which made it all the more likely. If I went to the shops he was there. Walked into the bank, he was there. Went to put petrol in the car, he was there. It took a couple of months - no more - before we took things that step further. I can’t even remember now, how it happened exactly. But it did. We had sex. Just like that. In the Volvo. Fully clothed, as I recall. We were like animals. I tell you, Charlie, I never had sex like it. Haven’t since, for that matter.’

I raise my eyebrows.

‘Oh, don’t fret,’ she says, flapping a dismissive hand. ‘Everything’s just fine,
really
. You can’t hope to maintain that level of excitement for a lifetime. Not even for a year. Not with
anyone
, can you? If I’d left Matt and the kids, it would have been no different. Worse, probably - guilt has a way of sapping your lifeblood.’

‘You seem very sure.’

‘I’ve had plenty of time to think about it.’

‘So what happened?’

She reaches out her hand to put her wine glass on the coffee table and as she does so the stone in her engagement ring sparkles. She follows my eyes and smiles reassuringly.

‘Oh, it was quite something, Charlie. We managed to spend the best part of three years living in cloud cuckoo land; God knows how I kept things going at home. But you can, you know. Once you lose that connection as a couple, it’s all too easy. You just exist on another level. It happens all the time. And I was completely obsessed. I didn’t think about the future. It was like getting my next fix. Looking back, I can hardly believe myself, really. One minute dropping Ellen off at playgroup and chatting with the other mums about shopping and clothes, and next minute we’d be off in the car somewhere, and going at it like rutting stags. God, sometimes I’d go down to pick her up at twelve with my bra and knickers shoved in my handbag!’

‘Cripes!’ I cradle my wine in my hand and try to imagine jolly, down-to-earth, sensible Rose in the grip of an unbridled passion. And can’t. ‘Cripes!’ I say again. ‘But how did you
feel
about him? I mean with Adam, it isn’t really about sex - No, that’s stupid. It is partly. Of course it is. But it’s not just about sex. It’s much more about having that sense that we could be so - oh, listen to me. Now I’m beginning to sound like a Jane Austen heroine.’

‘Which is exactly how I felt, so don’t worry. I loved him, Charlie. I really loved him. But there was never a moment when I didn’t love Matt, too. Except that at the time, it felt more like compassion than love. Just a deep seated belief that there was always something there that we could rekindle. And that he couldn’t really be the father of my children and me
not
love him. Which is silly, isn’t it? But made me realise there must still be something in our marriage worth hanging on to.’

‘So how did it end?’

‘He left his wife.’

‘
He
was married?’

‘Oh, yes. Very much so. But no children, which made his situation way different to mine. And he wanted me to leave Matt. So everything changed.’

‘He put you under pressure.’

‘No. Not a bit of it. He was a quiet, gentle man. But him doing so made me realise things couldn’t go on. If I wasn’t about to leave Matt, then there was no way I could stomach the thought of him putting his life on permanent hold.’

‘So you called it a day.’

‘Sounds very prosaic, but, yes.’

‘And he went back to his wife?’

‘Nope. She wouldn’t have him. Can’t say I blame her. Can you?’

‘I guess not. And Matt? Did he never find out? Never even have an inkling?’

Rose shakes her head. ‘I think not. I hope not. Anyway, lets just say if he did he never gave me that impression. Sometimes I wonder, but,’ she shrugs. ‘No. I don’t think so. Like I said, I hope not.’

‘So how did you get the marriage back on track? All the years I’ve known you it never occurred to me that you were anything less than happy together. And we met when? Only a year or so after?

She nods. ‘I made the effort. I told him I thought we needed to take a long hard look at ourselves. I decided to go back to work full time - Ellen was in school by this time, of course - and I generally took myself in hand. The rest, in time, followed quite naturally. Thank God.’

‘And what about him? Do you ever see him these days?’

Rose now gives me a long hard look.

‘Not these days.’

‘But you have?’

‘Not specifically. I used to see him around a fair bit.’

‘So he was local? From Cardiff?’

She nods. ‘Oh, yes.’

There is something in her tone that makes me realise she’s uncertain whether to tell me who he is, which in turn makes me realise it’s someone I know. For an instant, a horrible thought enters my mind. It must show on my face because she then snorts and says,

‘Good God! It wasn’t Adam, you numbskull!’

I release my held breath. ‘But
who
?’

She considers for a few long moments more.

‘Oh, well,’ she says finally. ‘What the hell? I suppose you’ve been tortured enough by mystery men lately. Yes. It
was
someone you know. And quite well, as it happens.’ She looks me in the eye and, straight faced, she says, ‘Phil.’

I was stunned. And was speechless for sufficient seconds that Rose said ‘well, don’t look so surprised -
you
went out with him, didn’t you?’ etc., which I then had to concede was actually true. But I was stunned nevertheless. Phil. An affair? Phil
and Rose
- an
affair
? I could not get my head round the enormity of it all. Could not get my head round the fact of Rose having had an affair period, let alone bringing Phil into the equation. And Karen!
Karen!
So much was now clear. So much previous ‘don’t want to talk about that if you don’t mind, Charlie’ stuff was now explained. Phil’s marriage was not a quiet fizzle-out like my own, but a bang crash wallop major league bad business all round. And Karen was clearly not, I now realised, the person I had previously acknowledged her to be. Karen was a scarred, hurt person. Karen was a female cuckold. Karen was a person for whom the whole relationship arena was a bad scary place with lions etc.

Strenuously do not wish to be thrown to any lions.

On Friday morning I took the children to school and said my goodbyes to them, then hot-footed it back for more coffee and confessions. Rose, at last freed from her enforced isolation, was in bouncy, revelatory, talkative mood.

‘But what about now?’ I asked. ‘What about the here and now? The last five years of seeing him around all the time? What about when
I
started seeing him?’

She poured the coffee and smiled.

‘Really, Charlie, it hasn’t been half as difficult as you’d imagine. Think back to old boyfriends of yours, for instance. Any old boyfriend. That one you told me you were passionate about before Felix, maybe. If you met him today do you think it would all still be there?’ She shakes her head. ‘Those feelings fade. Get superceded by new feelings. You just move into a different gear. It’s like with you and Adam.’

Arrgghh! We are an
item
, I thought.

‘There were years,’ she went on, ‘when you barely registered his existence. Oh, he may have been on our shag lists and so on, but you thought no more of having a relationship with him than you would about George Clooney. It was no more real than that. And with Phil, it was just like that in reverse.
Is
like that. We have an amazing capacity to consign feelings to boxes, don’t we? I seem to, at any rate.’