by Adele Parks
The problem was he and Steph hadn’t had that sort of sex for years and years, the adventurous, uninhibited, boundless, released kind. Steph always had one ear on the door expecting to hear a child cry out and one hand on her dressing gown, aware that if that child did call out for her she must modestly cover up and then dash across the landing to tend to their needs. But what about his needs? He had needs. How long was it since Steph had made him feel like he was her priority? Too damn long.
Oh yes, Steph loved him, he knew that, and he loved her too. Of course. But their love was familiar, accepted, expected, freely granted and taken as such. Such a ready surrendering of love shouldn’t mean that it meant less but somehow it did. In life it was always the rare things that were valued, not the stuff that was liberally scattered about. Think truffles, diamonds or oil. Kirsten made him feel unique, particular, valued. He was Kirsten’s priority. He was sure of that.
Well, almost sure.
The thing was it had become harder to ignore the vulgar talk in the washroom and the after-hours gossip in the bar, there were whispers she was making a handful of men feel just as unique. Jules had tried telling himself that he didn’t believe the rumours. Yes, of course she probably stroked a few of the old guys’ egos, that was only sensible in her position, but he couldn’t suspect her of anything more. Admittedly, she had a light and flirty way about her that fanned the flames of scandal but he couldn’t believe that she was screwing them all, like Brian Ford had been saying recently. Ford had said Kirsten was good to go if you picked up the restaurant bill and dangled a few baubles in her direction. Could that be true?
At first Julian was incredibly affronted by the suggestion. Not only on her behalf but mostly because if such a thing were true, or even being seen to be true, it didn’t reflect well on him, did it? He looked like a dick. A prize dick, who had just fallen for a pretty face (an exceptionally pretty face, no one would argue with that, but a dick all the same). A man of his calibre, with a respectable family and important job, didn’t risk everything for some daft tart. So, he’d told himself that no, the rumours could not be true. Kirsten wasn’t playing him, he was sure of it. Almost sure. She wasn’t a good enough actress to make them all feel that they were her priority. She was still young and a bit naive. Her face was an open book. Julian could imagine what had happened. Chances were, Ford had tried his luck and she’d knocked him back, that’s why he was making up these facile rumours. Men weren’t above petty and destructive character assassination, although it was a good trick of theirs to insist that bitching and undermining were exclusively female domains.
Still, he didn’t like the rumours.
Julian sighed to himself.
It was true he was nobody’s dick. He was an intelligent man and therefore he was very well aware that the rumours might be true.
Women who dated men of a certain age and income to supplement their paltry wages did exist and they clustered in the city, like vultures around a rotting carcass. But was Kirsten like that? All his life, Julian had followed a game plan and he’d stuck rigidly to it. A mid-life crisis wasn’t part of the game plan. Not that he was saying he was actually having a mid-life crisis. MLCs were so tacky, so pitiful, messy and stupid. What he had with Kirsten was different to that. It was. What they had was . . . It was . . .
Thinking about it, he didn’t have a fucking clue what it was, frankly.
Not love, he was sure of that. He couldn’t love a woman who didn’t know any three-syllable words unless they were brand names of designer shops. What they had was a bit of fun. A lot of fun, actually. His treat. Steph took pleasure in buying tea sets and curtains and things and he took pleasure in Kirsten. He deserved a treat. He worked hard. Really, bloody hard. In the office, in the gym and at home.
Julian went to the gym regularly. He had to as his metabolism simply wasn’t what it used to be. It was becoming increasingly difficult to stay lithe but it was impossible to say no to business lunches. Many of his big business deals happened over expensive bottles of Burgundy at the Ivy. You had to be in it to win it – fact. So, Julian felt it necessary to go to the gym four or five times a week, but he hated it. It wasn’t just that he silently resented his body for letting him down – for ageing – and the gym was the place where he had to wage a time-consuming war on his own body fat. It wasn’t just because the locker-room chat was aggressive and competitive (he could hold his own). It wasn’t anything to do with the crappy coffee they served. No, he hated the gym machines. Specifically the running machine.
To Julian the running machine represented all that was wrong with his life. With everyone’s life, come to that. He thought the concept of running, ideally outdoors in the fresh air, was a great concept. As a kid and young bloke he’d liked nothing more than to run until his muscles groaned and his chest heaved. Running felt so free. It was full of benefits (like discreetly checking out the hot lady joggers and watching seasons change). Running always seemed full of possibility. It was just a matter of placing one foot in front of another and he could go anywhere, be anything. The whole world was at his feet. He liked going for a run and coming home covered in mud and sweat, it always felt like an achievement.
But then some tosser took the concept of running and ruined it. They sanitised it by inventing the running machine. The ultimate going nowhere machine. Running machines smelt of rubber, not mud or grass. The view was always the same (the fat arse of the puffing bloke on the machine in front). There was no sense of possibility or freedom. Or escape. It ruined running.
Logically, Julian knew that it was well within his power to simply reject the running machine and all its sterility but he knew he would not because the running machine had undeniable, logical advantages. He could come to the gym and complete an entire body workout. It was not possible to lift weights or to row if your exercise of choice was pounding the streets. The very fact that he didn’t get muddy on the running machine was now seen like an advantage, he didn’t have to waste time cleaning his shoes after the run (and time was money for Julian nowadays, never more so). He could monitor his heartbeat, the calories he’d utilised, vary his gradient and accurately time his five-kilometre run. The running machine made sense. It spoke to his head but not his heart and Julian hated himself for becoming the sort of man who put convenience above the feeling of possibility. He resented every last step he took on the running machine and, as he sometimes visited the gym five times a week, that was a lot of steps to resent. Hell, he so did resent the going-nowhere machine. The machine that ruthlessly exposed his life for what it was.
A life of sensible choices and extended periods of monotony.
What was his life about, exactly? Besides the monotony and tyranny of the going-nowhere machine, what was there? Well, Julian spent relentless, stressful hours in the office, where his arse of a boss took all the praise, all the time. Then he came home to the kids. Yes, of course he loved his boys but they did have a tendency to be noisy and demanding and at times sulky, which was the last thing he needed after a twelve-hour day and a cramped commute. When he was a kid his mother ran to find his father’s slippers the moment he walked through the door after work, yes, even in the eighties, and neither he nor his brother dared speak to his father until they were spoken to. Not that Julian was suggesting such draconian ways would work in the modern world but a bit of respect would be nice. Respect, rather than the constant demands and criticism that he was inevitably greeted with.
‘Read to me, Daddy. No, not that one. I finished that one ages ago.’
‘Have you brought me a treat, Daddy? To make up for being so late?’
‘Why did you miss sports day, Daddy? Every other daddy was there.’
There was never any acknowledgement that he was late and tired because he’d spent all day in the office working like a dog to give them the stuff he never had. Private schooling, foreign holidays, video games, music lessons, new bikes, flash trainers. They were just kids, he supposed. Of course they couldn’t understand
everything. But when he’d drawn up his game plan, Julian had not factored in the truth that sometimes being a parent was simply a chore, an expense and a deadening responsibility.
And Steph. Sometimes he thought that Steph was just like the boys, really. She needed taking care of, she was expensive and she was always asking for something. Julian knew she was a ‘good wife’, if being a good wife meant running an expensive home with impeccable taste and efficiency. But when they’d married he’d defined a good wife as his best friend, a woman he could drink a bottle of wine with (while they put the world to rights) and laugh with (until they couldn’t sit upright). Not that sitting upright was their thing in those days. They spent a lot more time being horizontal. Steph’s best friend was Pip, not him. Of course, that made sense. He wasn’t jealous of Pip or anything pathetic like that. Women needed their women friends. Men, not so much. He had lots of mates but not a soulmate. Steph was always describing Pip as a soulmate. It was just that the hours Steph spent talking Pip off the metaphorical ledge were intrusive and unremitting. Men didn’t do that for each other, they were more likely to urge the other fella to jump just to see what he’d look like when he splattered. He and Steph never drank bottles of red wine together in the evenings anymore. They were both far too concerned with hangovers and body fat and teeth staining and other crap that just didn’t matter when they were young. As for laughing until they couldn’t sit up? He couldn’t bring to mind the last occasion when they’d done that. Wallpaper samples, his father’s heart medication and discussions about what to serve to the Joneses for supper on Saturday weren’t laughing matters and that’s all they talked about nowadays.
Julian’s whole life was a thick soup of responsibility. Now that his mother had worked herself into an early grave, his father seemed to expect that he, Julian, should pick up the slack. It was bloody typical of his brother to sod off to Canada just when the oldies needed looking after. His father had been a bad-tempered bugger all his life, obstinate and critical, but Julian had got used to that. He knew where he stood with that. He understood it, it was manly, it was what a father was supposed to be. Now, he was this needy mess that Julian didn’t get. He was always on the phone asking for something or other. Could Julian put up a shelf? Could Julian clear out the garage? Could Julian manage the sale of his house? More demands. Julian knew his father missed his mother. They all did. When she was diagnosed, no one had expected that to be it. Well, at least Julian hadn’t. He’d thought they’d be able to fix it. To do something. But it had all happened so quickly. There hadn’t been enough time. Not everything was said. Julian shoved the thought out of his head.
He didn’t like thinking about his mother. It upset him. No good came from thinking about her death. There was only one lesson to be learnt about death. Life’s short, make the most of it.
In fact, the first time Julian had hooked up with Kirsten was about a month after his mother’s funeral. Some bloody psychologist might make something of that, he supposed, but Julian wasn’t the sort to over-analyse.
It had been a tough day today. The staff in the office were recovering from the ramifications of the memo that Brian Ford had issued yesterday afternoon. Four members of the team had been made redundant, just like that. Asked to empty their desks and go within thirty minutes. Bloody hell. Poor performance was the only explanation required. Results were all. Culls were a hazard of this game and, over the last couple of years, they had become horribly familiar but, nonetheless, it was always upsetting. Julian was safe, at least in the short term. He had an impressive portfolio of clients and he’d ridden out the worst of the economic downturn with notable composure, meeting and breaking through targets as though they were paper streamers at a finish line.
At least, that was the impression he liked to give.
In truth, he was only safe because of the effort, the enormous effort, he persistently put into his work. Besides surpassing his targets, he was everyone’s friend. He was friendly with the bods in HR, he let his boss take the credit for his most spectacular achievements and he generously provided alibis for his clients if their wives were asking questions about where they spent their evenings. He was sleek. He was good but he wasn’t indispensable. No one was. The minute you thought you were was the minute your arse was kicked out the door. It didn’t do to get complacent. What was it that Harry was always saying to him? You had to keep your head in the game. That was it.
Julian wasn’t sure if, recently, he had been keeping his head in the game. He had a busy life – a stressful job, three children, a wife, a commitment to his personal trainer, a social life and now he had Kirsten too. Kirsten was supposed to be his treat. His antidote for all that responsibility and all those demands but he now feared that Kirsten might be the straw that would break the proverbial camel’s back. Yes, she was fun. It was undoubtedly fun to lick champagne out of a young woman’s navel, especially if the young woman in question had a stomach that was harder than an ironing board. When Steph had still been in possession of a hard stomach (many moons ago) they hadn’t been able to afford champagne or room service in country hotels. Kirsten was his indulgence. She was fun. But maybe he’d be better buying himself an Aston Martin instead. It would be safer. Because, frankly, it wasn’t fun when your horny mistress rang on a Sunday and told you she had her finger up herself and asked you to talk dirty over the roast potatoes. He couldn’t allow that sort of risk. His boys had been within earshot. Rather than make him feel hot, she’d put him right off his lunch. There was a time and a place for everything and he couldn’t afford for things to become blurred.
There was no question that when it came down to the wire, of course he’d choose Steph over Kirsten. Stephanie was his wife. They were a team. They were Mr and Mrs Blake. End of. The thing was, he had hoped he’d never have to choose one over the other but that somehow he’d just manage to run the two women in tandem. He wasn’t so sure now. The blurring made him uncomfortable. It was one step away from being revealed. He and Steph had history together and three boys together, he fully intended them to have a long and happy future together. That would be scuppered if Kirsten turned out to be a dangerous, money-digging bitch rather than a lovely, good-time girl. Money-digging bitches tended to cause trouble. It might start with a phone call over the roast and the next thing she’d be turning up on his doorstep telling Stephanie she was pregnant with his triplets or something equally hideous. The thought alone made his balls shrink. If the gossip was true he had to disentangle himself and quickly. As a trader he was very aware of the fact that while he’d had a good run of it, there was always an optimum time to make an exit. He’d had fun but all good things must come to an end.
He knew for certain that he never, ever wanted Steph to find out about Kirsten. She wouldn’t understand that it was just about sex. She’d be hurt. Hurt beyond words. He never wanted to hurt Steph, she was too valuable to him.
So, this lunchtime Julian had decided that he needed to do some culling of his own. Things were getting complicated. Sometimes it was hard to keep track of his lies. Occasionally, he’d forget whether he’d told Steph he’d be out of the country or just working late and staying in the firm’s flat. He’d had so much on his mind lately that his day-to-day organisation was suffering. In the past month he’d lost a rather decent sports jacket, a set of house keys and now his mobile phone had gone missing. It was only a matter of time before he mucked up at work. One slip and it was over.
Those were the words he was going to use. Three little words. ‘Sorry, we’re over.’ Or was that technically four? Julian didn’t know for certain, grammar wasn’t his specialty, numbers were more his thing. But looking at Kirsten right now, he did know something for certain – those words were not the ones she wanted to hear. What was she waiting for? What was she hoping for? This was a bit of fun for her too, wasn’t it? He’d always thought so, but from the way she was gazing at him now, full of lusty adoration, he’d put money on the fact that she probably wanted to hear him say th
ree other little words. ‘I love you.’
That ball and chain.
That exquisite promise.
What to do? What to do? That couldn’t be what she was expecting, could it? He couldn’t have got her all wrong, could he? Julian rubbed his temples. This was just the sort of complication he could do without. Truthfully, he had no idea. He didn’t know much about Kirsten at all, they didn’t do much talking. Which was she? Hard-faced whore, good-time girl or a naive young woman who had fallen in love with him?
‘Look, Kirsten, I think there’s something we need to talk about,’ said Julian.
Kirsten, sensing some hesitation and distance in Julian’s demeanour this evening, gently chewed on her bottom lip and she slowly, deliberately batted her eyelashes. ‘Talking is so boring,’ she said, stretching the word ‘boring’ so far that it lasted a week.
‘No but really, I think we should. The thing is, while what we have is a lot of fun—’
‘Oh yes, so much fun,’ giggled Kirsten. She was practically dancing on the spot. Julian wasn’t sure how to calm her. He glanced nervously around the bar. Time was ticking. Someone they knew might walk in here at any moment. He had better get to the point as quickly as possible. He pulled her to one of the booths and then stood the cocktail menus up in a line so as to hide them from anyone glancing their way.
‘The thing is I think it might be time that we called it—’
‘Don’t look now, you’ll never guess who has just walked in,’ interrupted Kirsten.