Tom folded his arms. ‘Look, I’ll be honest with you. I have to admit that over the years I haven’t exactly been a role model for morality. There have been times when, as a brash and callow youth, I’ve deviated from the straight and narrow course of marital constraints. But you know that Shirley and I have been married now for coming up thirty years. Only twenty of them happy, mind you.’
Pamela twisted her mouth in a reluctant smile.
‘I mean that seriously,’ he continued, wagging his fork. ‘There have been a few distinctly unhappy years among them too. Most of them my fault.’ He took another drink of his beer. ‘I don’t know what it is with men, but we can’t control what lurks in our underwear. One bit of glad eye from a pretty girl and we’re off like a dog after a rabbit. It’s pathetic really. I’ve had four affairs during my marriage.’ Tom sucked at his lips. ‘Four. You’d think I’d have learned before then.’ He shook his head. ‘Shirley knew about them all. I didn’t let on that I knew she knew, and she didn’t let on she knew either. She just waited patiently until I came home, tail between my legs. There were no accusations, no recriminations, and life went on as normal, me vowing never to stray again—until the next time.’
‘So that’s what you think I should do? Just ignore it and hope that like a nasty little itch it will go away?’
‘It worked for me and Shirl.’
‘But it took four times before you came to your senses.’
Tom looked wounded. ‘I didn’t say it was a perfect solution.’
Pamela shook her head. ‘I don’t think it’s what a relationship counsellor would advise.’
‘What do those interfering buggers know? A load of psychobabble and claptrap that blames everything on your parents.’
‘But they encourage you to talk things through. Didn’t you and Shirley ever talk about what had happened?’
‘We didn’t need to. I’ve spent the last ten years making it up to her. I treat her like a duchess now. Shirley only has to ask and she can have whatever she wants.’
Pamela looked uncertain. ‘I don’t know, Tom. I feel I ought to do something. I can’t just sit there and wait to see if he comes back. I’ve got the children to think about.’
‘Can I be really honest with you?’ Tom drained his glass. ‘Do you know what you should do?’ He tilted his chin. ‘You should loosen up a bit. You might be a brilliant secretary, Pamela, or assistant or whatever the hell the politically correct term is these days, but sometimes you look like you’re chewing a toffee up your arse.’ His brown eyes creased at the corners and were twinkling mischievously. ‘And do you know what I want to do?’
Pamela gulped and shook her head.
He fixed her with his eyes and continued in a lowered voice that sounded distinctly threatening. ‘I want to sweep you in my arms, push all the bloody paperwork on the floor and make love to you on my desk. I want to smear your flawless lipstick all over your face with kisses, tousle your immaculate hair and crease your perfect suit to hell.’
‘Oh,’ she said quietly, but it came out as a squeak. Her mouth had suddenly gone dry, and her teeth were sticking to her lips. It had become very hot in the pub, and her hand trembled as she sipped her mineral water. ‘And you were just telling me you were a reformed character. ‘Her voice sounded considerably higher than it should have been.
‘I am a reformed character.’ He laughed easily, and she could see why four women other than his wife had found him attractive enough to risk an affair with him. ‘Fortunately, these days I not only have Shirley to consider, but also my back.’
‘So you’re a reformed character out of incapacity rather than inclination?’ Her own vocal incapacity had, thankfully, been temporary.
‘No. It’s just that now I know which side my bread is buttered on. I still have the inclination, but I’ve also developed a bit of sense too.’ He tapped the side of his head, showing that he did, indeed, know where sense was kept. ‘Shirley comes first, before everything else. It’s about time she did.’
Pamela chewed her top lip. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to cry again.
‘Besides,’ Tom continued, unabashed, ‘if I put my back out now, I wouldn’t be able to play in the medal on Saturday at the golf club. And although my urges are still governed by my balls, it’s the small white variety rather than the other kind.’
‘Your wife is a very long-suffering woman, Tom Pearson,’ Pamela stated flatly.
‘I know, I couldn’t imagine life without her.’ He was starting to get maudlin. ‘But that’s how it happens, Pamela. Men and women can’t be just friends. Two minutes ago we were talking just like friends, and the next minute I’d stepped over the boundary and we were discussing things that friends shouldn’t. It’s only another small step for mankind for us to be doing things that friends shouldn’t either. And by tomorrow I’ll have forgotten what I said and we’ll be back to boss and secretary again. Yet you’ll think of it every time you see my desk piled high with paperwork. That’s the difference between men and women.’
‘Well, let’s hope that Jamie gets some sense into his head long before you did.’
‘Don’t be too harsh on him. If you’re standoffish, you’ll drive him away. Make him want to come home to you.’
‘Haven’t you ever heard of feminism, Tom?’
‘It’s bullshit. Why do women want to behave like blokes when we already make a bad-enough job of it ourselves?’
‘Put like that, it’s hard to explain.’
‘Act like a woman, not a wife—and least of all like a mother.’
‘If you ever get fed up of fitting burglar alarms, you could always go into counselling.’
‘Now you’re taking the piss—you must be feeling better.’ He looked at his watch.
‘Thanks.’ She nodded and smiled gratefully. ‘I am.’
He passed her coat to her. ‘It’s time for you to go and collect those angelic-looking brats of yours. Go home first and take that lovely suit off before Jack throws up on it.’
Pamela slipped her coat on. ‘He’s past that stage now.’ Tom smiled. ‘They’re never past that stage. My youngest son’s just turned eighteen—he’s tall, strapping and would make two of me. And he’s still testing his limits with a bottle—only at his age it’s with more interesting contents than milk. Shirley lies awake half the night until he deigns to come home, and then after half an hour’s kip she lies awake again for the rest of the night listening to him throw up in the bathroom.’
Pamela wrinkled her nose. ‘What do you do?’
‘I lie awake with her. The only difference is, in the morning I shout at him and she gives him Alka-Seltzer.’
‘That’s another difference between men and women,’ she said wryly.
‘There are lots of them—not all of them good.’
‘So you think I should take the Tom Pearson Route to Deeply Wedded Bliss and just sit at home like a good little wife, nurture Jamie’s children and wait for him to realise that he’s a complete bastard.’
‘What’s the other option? Confronting him while he may still be in the throes of passion, blasting off ultimatums like bullets? You might get him to wave a white flag, but he might wave it at you from the other trenches. It could frighten him into thinking that he’s actually in love with her.’
He took her arm and they headed towards the door. She could feel the heat of his hand even through her coat.
‘You’ve said yourself you’ve got no evidence, that it’s only a hunch—and look where that got Quasimodo.’ Deep lines appeared at the corners of his eyes as he crinkled them.
Pamela looked at him sideways. ‘You are silly.’
She ignored Tom’s advice about going home and changing, and instead went straight to collect Jack from nursery school. Would she ignore the rest of Tom’s advice just as easily? He might be a nice-enough man—and well-meaning—but he was hopelessly out of date with the way things were done these days.
People liked to talk, to discuss t
hings openly, to air any problems and analyse them. But if they’d done that successfully, why were they in this situation now? Why was her husband doing strange and interesting things with another woman if talking had done any good?
Perhaps Tom was right. She was too uptight, too motherly and not womanly enough. She knew she had been neglecting Jamie recently, but then he was a grown man and perfectly capable of looking after himself. The children were small, vulnerable and totally dependent on her—it was only natural to put them first. Jamie should know that. He should appreciate how hard it was for her.
Then again, perhaps she should appreciate how hard it was for him, too. Was she the sort of woman who could stand at the door in a teddy and stockings with the smell of coq au vin wafting from the kitchen? Was it the sort of thing that Jamie would want? She hadn’t a clue. It seemed highly unlikely on both counts, but maybe she should give it a try. Perhaps it was asking too much for a man to live by char-grilled pork sausages and Alphabetti Spaghetti alone.
Chapter 8
It was like Wuthering Heights meets Brief Encounter. Heathcliff and Cathy meet thingy and whatsit. She couldn’t remember the exact details of Brief Encounter—except that it was black-and-white and her mother cried a lot at the end. But it was all about the train causing the strain rather than taking it. That much she knew. Something she could certainly empathise with. She was pretty sure that Trevor Howard was in it. After all, he seemed to be in most black-and-white films. Except she didn’t think he was in Wuthering Heights. That was definitely Laurence Olivier—but Trevor might well have had a bit part.
The tension was twisting her stomach so much that it was almost like waiting to do her first bungee jump. In fact, it was very much the same situation—she was about to dive over the precipice into a deep and dangerous abyss, with no idea what would be waiting for her when eventually she hit the bottom. If it all went horribly wrong, would she be able to bounce back—or would she simply splat in a broken heap and need a bigger budget than the Bionic Man to have any hope of ever being rebuilt?
At least with a bungee jump you had an elastic band for safety and the backup of a gung-ho, spotty youth called Tarquin to tell you that everything would be all right, he had checked all the gear and they’d never had a fatality yet. She was going into this without the benefit of safety equipment. This could warrant a slot on How Do They Do That?—a programme featuring deeds of infinite danger enacted by death-defying daredevils, and a tribute to man’s enduring stupidity. She always felt it should be more appropriately retitled Why Do They Do That?
As the train pulled in, she was sure she was going to be sick. Was the mere thought of seeing Jamie again making her nauseous—or was it simply because she hadn’t eaten any breakfast again? She had managed to stay away for two whole weeks. Every morning she’d got up early enough to catch the 6.37, and every morning she’d paced the lounge floor, like an addict talking herself out of her next fix, until it was too late—even if she had really rushed—to catch Jamie’s train. Every morning she’d pushed her bowl of Weetabix and warm milk away from her untouched. And every morning she’d gone to work feeling unloved, unhappy and undernourished.
Sometimes she’d seen him in the evenings lingering by the End-of-the-Line Buffet where they’d shared their putrid coffee each morning. She had waited outside the concourse, peering furtively through the grimy windows from behind a pillar until he finally got bored and headed for the train. It made her stomach ache watching him there alone with only his briefcase and a polystyrene cup for company, but she had resisted him.
Clare had helped too—not that she knew. There was no way that Teri could tell her in her present predicament that the new love of her life was actually a married man. It was listening to her on the phone with David—the tears, the begging, the pleading, the trying to fit together again the shreds of her life—that made Teri feel incredibly guilty. Could she really even consider doing this to another woman? Another woman with children.
In other ways, Clare had been no help at all. To deflect attention from her own misery, she had pumped Teri constantly for updated information about this new mystery man. Teri had been reluctant to tell her anything, let alone the thing. Perhaps because she had this awful sense of foreboding that if she told Clare, she wouldn’t be able to last out. It was a shame they didn’t make patches that could break your addiction to men like they could to cigarettes. But then, men were considerably more hazardous to your health than any carcinogenic substance was ever likely to be. And why was it when you finally met the man of your dreams, you invariably found yourself in the middle of your worst nightmare?
Jamie always chose a seat in the front car—nearest the ticket barrier on arrival at Euston. It was a favourite habit of lazy commuters. She had waited on the platform at the exact spot. As soon as she got on the train, she saw him. Her heart lurched at the same time as the train did. He was sitting in the middle section of the compartment, foot up on his knee—black lace-up brogue and fine-knit black sock—his newspaper strewn casually across his balanced leg. There was no one sitting in the seats around him—one of the few benefits of travelling so early.
‘Hi, how are you?’ she said, as the train pulled out of Leighton Buzzard.
He looked up, startled. ‘Teri! It’s you!’
‘Still at our sparkling best first thing in the morning then?’ She sat down opposite him.
He cast his newspaper aside. ‘Have you been okay? I’ve been worried. I haven’t seen you for weeks.’
The fact that he had worried about her was touching. She didn’t think she’d been worried about before. Except by her mother, who worried about her, and everything else, constantly. ‘I’ve been trying to avoid you.’
His face clouded over. ‘Why?’
She looked round to see if they had an audience, but the few other people close to them in the car were either buried in their newspapers or asleep. ‘You know perfectly well why.’
‘I waited at the End-of-the-Line nearly every night.’
‘I know, I hung around outside until you’d gone. You made me miss two weeks’ worth of calligraphy classes.’ Teri put her briefcase on the seat next to her. ‘I’ll never be able to write jam-jar labels for the Women’s Institute now.’
Jamie smiled ruefully. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise my actions would have such far-reaching consequences. I only wanted to talk to you.’
‘Why didn’t you wait outside my office?’ It had struck her over the last two weeks that he hadn’t really tried very hard to see her at all. A bit of loitering round Euston Station hardly seemed the height of inventiveness. ‘I seem to remember you engineered that quite successfully before.’
‘I did wait one night, but it smacked of desperation. At least at the End-of-the-Line, I could pretend I just wanted a cup of coffee.’
‘You could have phoned.’
He fixed her with one of his deadly smiles. ‘You’d have hung up on me.’
‘True,’ she said. ‘But you could have tried.’
He had tried. Not to ring her, but to not ring her. How many times had he dialled the City Television number only to hang up when the switchboard answered? He had tried not to think about her, not to doodle her name on his telephone pad, not to see her face in his computer screen, not to loiter outside her office like a lovesick schoolboy. He had tried not to pursue her. If he had bumped into her accidentally, then that would have been a different matter. He was a married man—it was too cruel, too calculating, too bloody unfair of him to pursue her in cold blood.
‘You’re here and that’s all that matters.’ He looked round to see that they weren’t being listened to. ‘I don’t know why, but I need to touch you.’
He did know why. He wanted to make sure that she was real and that this wasn’t just a dream and he wasn’t still in bed with the alarm clock about to go crazy in his left ear. His dreams had consisted of nothing but this situation. It had played over and over in his head like a record stuck on a jukebo
x, and no one around with any loose change to put a different one on.
He had rehearsed this moment while he was awake, too. Waiting for his coffee to drop out of the vending machine at the office, he had thought up clever and witty things to say to impress her and to make her realise what a good guy he was, and to show her that he had taken her absence in his stride.
However, instead of taking it in his stride, he had stumbled around like a man lost in the empty wilderness without a convenient map to hand. And the clever, witty things? Of course, he had forgotten them all now that she was actually sitting here in front of him.
‘I’ve missed you so much.’ His eyes were sincere and searching. ‘Come and sit next to me.’
‘Do you think this is a good idea?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
She slid onto the seat next to him, and he took her hand. ‘This is ridiculous. I feel like a naughty sixteen-year-old,’ she said.
‘I don’t think it’s wise to try anything else on the train, the ticket collector might have us thrown off.’
‘You mean the revenue protection operative,’ she corrected. ‘Anyway—’ she lowered her voice to a hiss ‘—you’re a married man.’
‘I could have told you that,’ he hissed back.
‘But you didn’t, did you—and now what are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know!’ they said together.
In the event, it was decided for them. At Watford Junction the door swung open and several people shuffled reluctantly onto the train. They had that haunted, grey look reserved for prisoners awaiting execution on Death Row and Monday-morning commuters. Among them was Jamie’s best friend Charles Perry.
Charles was thirty-one going on forty with a mental age fast approaching nineteen. He was robust, roundish and cheekily attractive, and had a more unkempt style of dress than Colombo. Despite these social setbacks, he always managed to sport a pretty blonde, of distinctly uncertain age, on his arm when it came to company parties. It could have been the fact that there was old money lurking in the background, which Charles was unfortunately condemned to see only in dribs and drabs until the unhappy day his parents departed from this mortal coil and he landed the entire wedge.
Let's Meet on Platform 8 Page 7