by Adele Parks
Kirsten was startled. She’d always thought Jake was hot and sexy, quite a laugh and funny and all that but she hadn’t noticed, until this moment, how beautiful he was. And he looked bothered. Kirsten, a girl who spent a lot of effort trying not to look bothered about anything at all, noticed his intensity straightaway. She was someone who had managed to not look bothered even as she stood in front of the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon and the Sydney Opera House, all of which her parents had shown her and her brother in a relentless – and doomed – attempt to get her to react passionately to something other than the performance of the X Factor contestants. Somehow, a lifetime of studied indifference had alerted her to genuine – what would her mother call it? – genuine concern.
‘What are you insinuating?’ she asked suspiciously. She didn’t trust him, no matter how beautiful or concerned he looked. In fact, she made it a rule to trust beautiful boys less than the ugly ones.
‘Nothing,’ replied Jake. He shrugged. ‘I just thought if he was a particular family friend, then you’d be more upset than most and I wanted you to know . . .’ Jake broke his gaze away from hers now, he rubbed the back of his neck and then glanced at his watch and garbled, ‘I wanted you to know that you can trust me to be your friend too. Got it?’
Before she could reply, he rushed off, leaving Kirsten to wonder what exactly he meant and what exactly he knew.
Was he saying that he thought she got the job because Daddy had put in a good word for her with Jules? Why would Daddy know Jules? Daddy was ancient! He was forty-eight. Forty-eight, which might as well be fifty! At fifty, didn’t they start measuring you up for your coffin suit! Jules was only thirty-nine. Thirty-nine was still young-ish. Or at least it was a distinguished age. How could Jake think Jules might be mates with an oldie like her father? Although, Ellie had once commented that Kirsten’s father was very distinguished-looking, yes, those were the exact words she’d used. Whenever Daddy was in town and had time to take Kirsten for lunch, Ellie always made a thing about coming down into reception to say hi to him. She was always ridiculously flirty but it had never crossed Kirsten’s mind that Ellie might seriously find her father attractive in the same way she found Jules attractive. She’d thought Ellie had been humouring an old man!
The way she’d humoured Alan Edwardson up until last month? The thought came out of nowhere and Kirsten wished it had stayed there. It was an uncomfortable, embarrassing thought. How old was Alan exactly? She wasn’t certain. She knew his kids were still teenagers so she’d always assumed he was a bit younger than her own father but then her parents had married when they were really young. They’d had her and her brother quite quickly. How old was Alan Edwardson? Kirsten turned to her screen and quickly pulled down his details from the company info-net. OMG, Alan Edwardson was fifty-one. A geriatric. He was older than her father! She’d had sex with someone older than her father! Kirsten felt ill. That was gross! Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Just because his kids were younger than she was didn’t necessarily mean he was younger than her father. He’d probably had kids late in life because he couldn’t persuade anyone to marry him! It was such a gross-out, disgusting thought that Kirsten pushed it to the back of her mind. Instead, she concentrated on what Jake had said about him thinking Jules was a family friend.
Maybe he did believe that.
And yet . . .
Kirsten thought back to the way Jake had held her gaze and then the way he hadn’t been able to hold her gaze. He’d seemed really real and then really shifty! What was it he’d said? He’d thought Jules was a family friend or something. Kirsten shuddered as though a hairy spider had just scuttled over her back.
Jake knew!
He knew that she was Jules’s friend, by which, of course, he meant lover. He knew that much, she was sure of it. How did he know? Had he spotted her with Jules? He’d spotted her in the lift with Mark that time but, as far as she knew, he hadn’t ever seen her with Jules. As far as she knew. But it was possible. Maybe at Jeroboam? She hadn’t always been as discreet as she might have been.
And what did he mean when he said that she could trust him to be her friend too? Did he mean he wanted to shag her? He must mean that. What else did any man ever mean when they were being nice to her? They might say something like, ‘You’ll go far in this company,’ or ‘You’re not just a pretty face, are you?’ or even, ‘Can I get you a glass of water from the cooler?’ but they meant they wanted to shag her. They always meant that.
If, last week, anyone had asked Kirsten whether she’d mind shagging Jake Mason, she’d have admitted that no, she wouldn’t mind, not at all. Obviously. He was hot and young and fun. Besides the great eyelashes and huge blue eyes, he had broad shoulders and a slim waist and flat stomach which suggested a six-pack that the guy on the Diet Coke ads might be proud of. She probably would have questioned whether he had the resources to cough up all the stuff she expected a boyfriend to deliver but she might have waived her usual material demands, just for a bit of fun.
Kirsten had always thought that having sex with someone was the goal. Or, to be more accurate, to get them to want to have sex with her was the goal. She found it difficult to explain but she believed that to be linked with a man in that way gave her some sort of power or status or security. It marked her out, it made her different. Her brother said she was wrong. He said all blokes wanted sex all the time, with pretty much anyone, and being the someone who happened to agree to sex was ‘no big shakes’. Kirsten disagreed. Getting married men to have sex with you (aka risk all for you), wasn’t as easy as everyone believed. Some blokes were quite resistant, at least in the beginning, it took a certain skill and charm to convince them to take the plunge. Ones like Jules, for example, had to be convinced that she was worth the effort. She’d really had to work at him in the early days. Some might say that she’d thrown herself at him at every opportunity (they might even say that as though it was a bad thing). What was wrong with turning up the charm to full throttle? She’d put a lot of effort in with Jules, she really had wanted to be connected to him. She’d wanted that shimmering kudos.
That’s what she had thought.
But then, when she started having sex with lots of men, she’d become a little less sure. Just recently, she’d started to have a nagging feeling that maybe they had the power – the men she slept with – and, besides, her mother was always going on that sex should not have anything to do with power and status anyway, she said it was supposed to be about love. Ha, easy for her to say when she was married to Daddy, he was loaded and, anyway, Mummy probably didn’t even have to have sex anymore because they were so old and used to each other.
But, in the last few days, when the men she was sleeping with had started to dump her, she’d been faced with the fact that having sex with someone didn’t provide any security at all. Quite the opposite. That’s why that last night with Jules she’d felt futile, hopeless, weak and bloody idiotic. Even if she couldn’t carefully separate out each of those emotions, she knew she felt humiliated. Horribly, totally, irretrievably humiliated.
So now the idea of shagging Jake was a damn sight less appealing. How could it possibly be fun? Especially since his overture was motivated by the fact that he thought she was the office bike and as one of the cyclists was unavoidably detained in hospital, he was offering himself up as stand-in. It wasn’t flattering.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her phone ringing.
‘Yes?’
‘Jake here.’
‘What?’ she asked irritably.
He coughed and then said, ‘I wondered whether you wanted to go for a drink after work.’
‘With you?’
‘Well, I’m guessing you’d also be interested in having a drink with Robert Pattinson if he asked, but he’s not asking so yes, with me.’ Kirsten looked up and glanced across the open-plan office to where Jake sat. He stared back at her. And smiled.
It was, undeniably, a lovely smile. Kirsten could see that. It was sexy and broad but it was al
so . . . Kirsten looked carefully, it was also something else. His smile caused a slight twinge in her stomach. A sort of happy, contented feeling, a bit like the feeling she got on the rare occasions she allowed herself to drink hot chocolate, but even better than that. A drink with Jake wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Let’s face it, she had nothing better to do. She definitely didn’t want to go home and sit in her gloomy flat all night. Alone. No, no way. She wasn’t good at being on her own at the best of times and this wasn’t the best of times. She needed to get back into the swing of things. Flirting with men – having dinner, having sex, having a laugh (sometimes) – was her thing. The way she saw it was that if she was now known as the office bike there was probably a string of men hoping they might be the next one to take her for a ride and none of them would be as fit as Jake. She’d need to start looking for another job soon anyway. No matter what happened to Jules, she’d need a clean start away from this office. With that in mind, it wouldn’t do her any harm to kill some time with Jake, he’d probably be able to help her write up a decent CV.
‘Where?’ she asked, not yet decided as to whether she’d accept. ‘Jeroboam?’
‘I was thinking the Hare and Hound.’
‘A pub?’ she squawked in disbelief.
The Hare and Hound was an ancient, grungy pub near the tube station, about five minutes’ walk from the office. Kirsten was horrified. They didn’t sell champagne or cocktails of any sort. No one she knew ever went there! When she walked past it, it was always full of scruffy students and, sometimes, even tourists.
‘Jeroboam is really pricey,’ pointed out Jake.
‘You tight-arse! You’re on that graduate scheme thing, aren’t you? You earn a fortune,’ replied Kirsten, not considering whether or not saying the first thing that came into her head was a good idea.
‘Yes, I do. Well, a good amount,’ said Jake. ‘But you don’t and I didn’t want to embarrass you when it came to your round.’
‘My round!’
‘Besides, it’s quieter in there. It will be easier to talk. See you at the Hare and Hound at six.’
Then he rang off. Kirsten was so miffed that he thought she might be buying a round that for a few moments she considered not turning up but the thought of her empty flat spooked her so she downgraded her punishment to not redoing her make-up before the date. Then she reasoned what would she do between five (when she knocked off) and six (when he did)? She certainly wouldn’t want to stay at her desk, so she might as well nip to the loos and reapply, although it was definitely not because he was worth making an effort for. The Hare and Hound! Paying for a round! Who did Jake Mason think he was?
41
Stephanie was finding it harder and harder to stay awake, let alone stay focused. She longed to go home, have a bath, put on a clean pair of pyjamas and then go to bed. She wanted to fall asleep and then wake up and discover this had all been a terrible dream. She wanted for none of this to have happened or, at least, if it had to have happened then not to her. Stephanie knew this was an unreasonable thought. She deserved this as much as the next person. Possibly more. But she didn’t want it to be true, not at all.
The smell of the hospital was beginning to bother her. Disinfectant and industrially laundered sheets offered no comfort. She longed for the smells of her home. Fresh ginger candles, flowers from the garden, food cooking in the oven, the children’s bubble bath on the landing in the evenings. She even missed the awful smells. The boys’ rooms usually smelt of muddy, moist trainers, illegal snacks and not totally clean clothes – despite the fact that Steph was always tackling a laundry pile the size of Mount Everest. She often thought that home life was a series of smells – the boys’ kitbags, clean shirts, ground coffee, burnt toast. She wondered if other people’s family lives could be distilled into a series of sights or sounds or textures.
In the morning, the first thing she always noticed was the smell of Julian’s warm skin. He never smelt badly, not sweaty or anything, he simply smelt of the smell that Stephanie had come to know as Julian. It was familiar and comforting. Steph leant forward and sniffed her husband’s hand. He smelt of the antiseptic they’d swabbed him with before they pushed the needle into him. It was distressing. Harrowing. Some mornings Stephanie would throw back the duvet and she’d smell her own body and occasionally sex too. When? When had that last happened, that the sheets smelt of sex? Weeks ago? Maybe a month? Maybe two? Steph had once loved Julian in a way that meant going just a few days without sex was unthinkable, let alone a few weeks, their lust had been so utterly and completely consuming. She’d loved him as much as her young heart was capable and in the only way it was capable. But after they married and had the children, she lost the habit of loving him that way. Lost the rhythm. Their love, quite naturally, was sometimes tinged with nit-picking and petty essential marital logistics. Steph was forever telling herself that this new manifestation had solidity and a constancy which compensated. But she’d been lying to herself.
So many lies.
Sitting in the hospital had given Stephanie plenty of time to think, she could do little else. She thought about the times – long, long ago – when she and Julian had been little more than children themselves but blithely unaware that was the case. They’d thought they were incredibly sophisticated and mature when, following graduation, they’d taken their first holiday away together, a road trip from San Francisco to Vegas. Steph recalled the trip, for the first time in a long time, and was surprised by how clearly she remembered the cheap motels they stayed in, the duvets they slipped under, the rib meals they ate. She recalled the fat, sleek bodies of the seals that splashed around the pier in San Francisco and she remembered giggling as they’d been thrown around a tram as it hopped over the hills. They’d played pool in shabby, off-the-beaten-track bars, she could almost hear the music playing and the thwack of the balls hitting against one another, before rolling into their designated pockets. She’d cleared the table, surprised everyone. She could smell the dust of the desert, see the glare of Vegas and feel the heat on their young bodies. Feel the heat in their young bodies.
There had been so much loving. They’d fused into one another. They fitted and belonged. Sex, yes, lots of it but besides that – as well as that – there had been hand-holding, caressing and kissing. In those days Julian couldn’t sit next to her without resting his hand on her knee and when he spoke to her he always used to tuck her long hair behind her ear because he said he liked to look at her entire face. Her hair was much shorter now, short hair was so much more practical and the only hand she ever held was Freddie’s sticky one.
Stephanie brought her memories more up to date. She wallowed in warm thoughts of weddings, christenings, birthdays and dinner parties and more simple, everyday occasions. She thought of Julian playing Lego with the boys, the Mother’s Day when they set off the fire alarm while making her pancakes and their bickering about where the Christmas tree should go (Julian preferred the hall, Steph the living room). There had been good times, lots of them. They had enjoyed many fabulous holidays since the road trip and they visited highly acclaimed restaurants to eat sensational meals and drink fine wines, they watched entertaining movies and they’d had deep, thoughtful conversations and shallow, hilarious ones as well.
Steph’s thoughts ebbed and flowed to the rhythm of nurses’ shoes click-clacking up and down the corridors and a murmuring chorus of concerned voices as visitors stopped by and then went on their way. Sometimes, when she was alone with Julian, she talked to him and shared her memories, other times visitors would inhibit her flow.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry about Subhash.’ She paused, hoping against hope for some sort of miracle. She half expected him to suddenly sit up, reach for her hand and say, ‘That’s all right, my love. It’s me who should be apologising.’ But he didn’t move. Not a flicker.
Once again fury jumped up from her stomach and sat, tasting like bile, in her mouth. She leant her head into her hands. God,
this was hard. So bloody hard. She didn’t even know if the fury and bile was due to the fact that he owed her a mammoth, off-the-scale, hard-to-accept apology or the fact that he couldn’t give it.
‘Haven’t I been a good wife?’ she asked him, angrily. It was the question she’d wanted to ask ever since she found the incriminating phone.
She meant, ‘Do I deserve this in some way? Is this my fault?’ She was scrambling about for an explanation. ‘I’m pretty sure I have been a good wife,’ she added, indignantly answering her own question. ‘Even when I didn’t want to be and surely that’s when it counts the most. Isn’t it?’ No response. ‘OK, so maybe I’ve never ever considered wearing suspenders and a peek-a-boo bra and greeting you in the bedroom with handcuffs and a riding crop but seriously, do those wives really exist?’ She paused, but this question also slapped against silence. She sighed and then clarified. ‘And I said wives. Of course there’s always going to be some daft little tart who will provide this service, but I bet you every pound we have that if you ever married the daft little tart she would fling away the peek-a-boo bra before she walked down the aisle.’
Steph gasped at the thought. He mustn’t ever marry this daft little tart, this other woman. He mustn’t even think about it! Nor must she. He was her husband. She was his wife. Panicked, Steph’s thoughts went into free fall. ‘I’ve washed and cleaned and cooked and ironed and given you three wonderful children,’ she pointed out crossly. Then she considered that she sounded a lot like some dowdy Victorian wife and for a fraction of a moment she was relieved Julian was in a coma and hadn’t heard her desperation.
The truth was it hadn’t all been about housework and childcare. There came a point in their marriage where they had enough cash for someone else to do a lot of the domestic dross and so she’d spent her time finding other ways to make Julian’s life as pleasant as possible. She’d booked mini breaks to interesting cities and she’d reserved tickets to important cultural exhibitions and concerts.