Pamela sighed and perched on the end of his desk. ‘Would it help if I talked to her?’
‘Only through a medium.’ Tom’s eyes twinkled mischievously.
‘This is serious!’
Tom shook his head. ‘I’ve tried everything. I’ve explained the situation over and over again, but she just won’t listen.’
‘I thought you said she was understanding.’
‘She was. Until she met someone else.’ Tom rubbed his eyes. They were reddened and swollen, either from lack of sleep or from crying, she couldn’t tell which. ‘She’s got a lover. What a joke! Can you believe it? After all this time. When I’d finally gone straight.’
‘Don’t push the point too far, Tom.’ They exchanged rueful glances.
‘Well, you know what I mean. You were a challenge. I had to give it a go. Don’t blame me for that.’
Pamela crossed her legs. ‘Jamie thought you’d succeeded.’ She turned to look out of the window with Tom. ‘He thinks you and I are having an affair.’
Tom looked thoughtful. ‘I take that as a compliment.’
‘I shouldn’t if I were you,’ Pamela warned. She crossed her arms as well as her legs. ‘I did what you suggested. I dressed up like something out of Chicago, legs akimbo, breasts heaving. We had a wonderful evening. We weren’t exactly conservative in the conservatory. It was a re-enactment of The Postman Always Rings Twice in Fraughton-next-the-Green. It worked a treat. I wish you could have seen it.’
‘So do I,’ Tom said earnestly.
‘Then afterwards he announced that he’s going on a course this weekend. Saturday and Sunday.’ Pamela humphed. ‘A course! I couldn’t believe it—not after what we’d just done.’
‘Bastard,’ Tom agreed.
‘Then you know what really surprised me? Really took my breath away? He said he thought it was what I wanted, and how could I accuse him when I was having an affair myself? I was stunned, Tom, honestly I was.’
Tom smiled sadly. ‘Is it so hard to imagine having an affair with me?’
Pamela flushed. ‘It’s not that.’ She waved her hand dismissively. ‘You are an attractive man.’ She felt herself flush deeper as she said it. ‘I thought he’d know it was just a charade, a pantomime, done purely to get him back. Deep down, I thought he knew that. He must know that. I was astonished that he actually thought I was capable of having an affair. Doesn’t he know me at all, Tom?’
Her boss slid back into his ostentatious leather chair. ‘I could ask the same about Shirley. For the first time in my life she’s actually accused me of having an affair when I haven’t laid so much as a finger on you. And, to top it all, she’s now playing away from home. My Shirley. What is the world coming to?’
‘It feels terrible to be unjustly accused, doesn’t it?’ Pamela commiserated.
‘Disgusting.’ Tom crossed his feet on the desk and chewed on the end of his pen.
‘Wait there,’ she suddenly instructed him—although Tom didn’t look as if he was about to go anywhere. ‘There’s only one way to put this right. I’ll be right back.’
Pamela flicked open the address book on her desk and ran her finger down the pages. She put the receiver to her ear and tapped a number into the phone. After speaking, she put the phone down again thoughtfully and went slowly back through to Tom’s office. His lower lip was pouting, and his face bore an expression of utter misery.
She leaned on the doorframe and took a deep breath. ‘Do you still want to make love to me badly?’
‘Yes,’ he said uncertainly.
‘Let’s go and have a therapeutic tumble then.’
His feet crashed to the floor. ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’
‘I’ve booked a double room at The Happy Lodge.’
He closed his eyes and opened them again. ‘I had to check I wasn’t dreaming.’
‘If we’re being accused of it, we might as well do it. Surely it’s better to be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.’
‘I still can’t believe you’re suggesting this.’
‘Neither can I.’ She picked up her handbag. ‘Come on, let’s get going quick, before I change my mind.’
They drove across Milton Keynes to The Happy Lodge in stunned silence. Tom kept both eyes fixed firmly on the road, both hands fixed firmly on the steering wheel. The cassette player was strangely silent too, its usual diet of raucous country and western music trapped mutely inside its security coded system.
The reception staff at The Happy Lodge weren’t. They were as miserable as sin—or at least as miserable as Tom had been. A blonde-haired girl, chewing gum like a languorous cow chews grass, handed them the key card to their room and looked disdainfully at them for their lack of luggage. It made Pamela feel all the more determined.
‘Room 405.’ She was Irish. ‘It’s on the second floor.’
As instructed, they took the elevator up to the second floor. The elevator was carpeted halfway up the walls, the rest was mirrored, and Pamela thought how pale they both looked. Shania Twain warbled unevenly in the background from a tape that was either badly stretched or was heedlessly being chewed by the distant tape machine.
Pamela followed Tom along the corridor until he found their room, which was bland and innocuous—it would impress no one and offend no one. It was painted in pale blue and beige with a dark blue carpet that would show no stains. The walls displayed two similar paintings of blurred landscapes in blues and beiges that she suspected were also present in every other room. It was a no-smoking room, and the air was thick with the artificial sickly-sweet smell of lavender air-freshener.
Not knowing what else to do, they undressed each other briskly, and she hid a smile as Tom broke away from their passion to fold his trousers into the trouser press.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ was the only thing he said to her.
‘No,’ she answered, before they guided each other to the blue-and-beige bed.
He didn’t make love to her badly, as he had insisted he wanted to. He made love to her gently, confidently and professionally. Proving he was an expert lover, as somehow she expected he would be.
Afterwards, wrapped in a thin white towel with The Happy Lodge embossed on it, she made coffee from the little packets provided in the room along with fiddly cartons of long-life milk. They sat up in bed and nursed their cups until it was cold enough to drink and ate the two packs of McVitie’s digestive biscuits that were also provided, containing two biscuits each. Pamela admired the swirling pattern of the Artex which hung in tiny stalactites from the ceiling.
They slept for an hour curled together like spoons. Tom showered and dressed alone and then sat and watched cricket on the television while she had the bathroom to herself. She luxuriated in the bath, using all the miniature bottles of foaming bath gel that had been provided and twisting her hair into the thin plastic shower cap that was also part of The Happy Lodge’s complimentary toiletries.
After drying herself, Pamela sat and looked in the mirror. She was surprised that she looked no different. She didn’t feel any different either. No older, no wiser, no more wanton. No less in love with Jamie.
Her mouth was full, slightly bruised from the insistence of Tom’s kisses, and she ran the tip of her finger over her lips to make sure that it was her mouth that was reflected. There was a flush on her throat that usually rose there as she orgasmed, increased by the heat of the bath. But it could have been someone else’s throat that she was looking at. It didn’t feel as if it belonged to her.
Was this how Jamie felt after making love with his mistress? There was a vague detachment from reality. She felt no guilt, no pain, no love. There was pleasure, satisfaction, even release. It had been pleasant rather than earth-shattering. But although the earth hadn’t exactly moved, it had wobbled a bit. And while they were making love, Jamie hadn’t existed. She hadn’t thought it was possible to make love to one person without falling out of love with the other. But it was. Responsibilities were forgotten;
children, cooking, cleaning, committees—all receded to nothing. No one was hurt. No one was any the wiser.
Except perhaps she was, after all. Was it always so easy to slip effortlessly into adultery? That was the only thing that shocked her. One minute you weren’t an adulterer and the next you were. It was quicker than going round the supermarket.
Shania Twain hadn’t changed either. She still warbled unevenly in the lift. Tom squeezed her hand as they descended to Reception.
‘Do you feel any better?’ she asked him.
He bit his lip before he answered. ‘No,’ he said truthfully. ‘Do you?’
‘No. But I don’t feel any worse.’
The elevator doors opened, and they strode across the criss-cross carpet in Reception to pay their bill to the disinterested girl who was still chewing gum. The cost of an afternoon’s adultery was £86.50 plus Value Added Tax. Tom insisted on paying and folded the receipt into his wallet. Tax deductible too. Pamela smiled and said thank you.
They drove back to the office in silence too. She needed to pick up her car to go and collect Jack from nursery school. Tom twisted towards her as he stopped the car.
‘You know it can’t happen again,’ she said.
‘I know,’ he answered. ‘But thanks anyway.’
‘Friends?’ she asked.
‘Friends,’ he agreed. He picked her hand up and lightly kissed her palm.
She sighed. ‘You know what you should do now?’
‘What?’ He looked less tired and drawn than he had before.
‘Go and buy the biggest bunch of roses you can find and take them home to Shirley.’
He smiled. ‘I think I might just do that.’
‘Tell her how much you love her.’
He placed Pamela’s hand back in her lap. ‘I do love her, you know,’ he said quietly.
‘I understand that now.’ She understood Jamie’s situation too. She understood it, but she still didn’t like it.
She got out of the car and stood leaning into the open door. ‘There’s one other thing that you ought to do too, Tom.’
He raised an eyebrow in query.
‘This time make an appointment with a relationship counsellor.’ She blew him a kiss and closed the door.
Chapter 20
Jamie felt like a complete heel as he drove away from the house to Leighton Buzzard on Saturday morning. Francesca and Barbie were waving wildly. Pamela stood holding Jack on her hip, looking suitably forlorn and abandoned.
He hadn’t seen Teri since he had promised to spend the weekend with her. She hadn’t been on the train for two days or waiting at the End-of-the-Line Buffet with his usual polystyrene cup of warm battery-acid coffee. And she hadn’t been into work.
At night he had sneaked out with MacTavish to the public phone at the end of the road, but the line had been constantly engaged. MacTavish, who wasn’t known for his enduring patience, whined incessantly despite all manner of hideous threats, and Jamie had been forced to return home without being able to find out if the weekend was still on.
He had wanted to cancel. Heaven knows, this had gone far enough. Charlie had given him another pep talk about the ethical and moral responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood, and this time he had listened. Truly listened. It was just so much more difficult to end than it had been to start.
He parked outside Teri’s house feeling more like a prisoner on his way to execution than a lover on his way to a secret tryst. He pulled his holdall from the boot of the car. Pamela had remained tight-lipped in the kitchen as he had packed the few paltry things that he needed.
He rang the doorbell and leaned against the wall surveying the row of identical houses, individualised only by the differing colour of their front doors. Even then, white seemed to be the most popular choice.
An elderly woman opened the door, which took Jamie by surprise. She was small and tubby, and had wiry grey hair curled in the same style as the Queen, which made her look older than she probably was—just like the Queen. Someone should get them both a new hairdresser, Jamie thought absently.
‘You must be the television repairman,’ she said affably, glancing at his holdall. ‘Therese said she was expecting you. Come in, dear.’ She turned and went inside.
‘No, I’m…’ Jamie looked round to check that she wasn’t talking to anyone else and then followed her, perplexed.
Teri was lying on the sofa, covered by a duvet and looking suitably pale. ‘Hi,’ she said feebly. ‘You’ve come to fix the television.’
Jamie’s eyes widened in disbelief.
‘Would you like a nice cup of tea, dear?’ the Queen’s sister said.
He nodded and he wasn’t sure why.
‘I’ll go and put the kettle on then.’ She went out into the kitchen and left the door open behind her.
‘Be careful what you say,’ Teri advised in a whisper. ‘She misses nothing. She’s blessed with ESP.’
Jamie looked impressed. ‘Extrasensory perception?’
‘Extra Sticky-beak Power.’
‘Oh.’ Jamie lowered his voice. ‘TV repairman?’
Teri gave a resigned look. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed. ‘It was the first thing that came into my head.’
He eyed the duvet suspiciously. ‘What is the matter?’
‘My mother,’ she mouthed silently.
‘I can see that, but what the hell’s she doing here?’ he whispered.’ Now? This weekend?’
Teri sank into her pillow. ‘It’s a long story.’
He tapped his foot impatiently and watched the kitchen door, from where a badly hummed rendition of The Archers theme tune was wafting. ‘Well?’ he urged, when she seemed reluctant to say any more.
She rolled her eyes and propped herself up on her elbows. ‘I came home and ate all the food I bought the other night.’
‘All of it?’
‘And drank the whole bottle of champagne,’ she added regretfully.
‘What, you mean all the smoked salmon?’ he whispered incredulously.
Teri nodded.
‘And the tiger prawns?’
She nodded again.
‘The rainbow-trout mousse too?’
‘And the caviar and all of the caramel-meringue thingies.’ Teri had gone green.
‘I’m surprised you weren’t sick!’
‘I was sick,’ Teri snapped, ‘just as my mother happened to phone. I thought it was you and made the fatal mistake of answering it, and it was her!’
On cue, Mrs Carter popped her head round the door. She waved a J Cloth like a lace hanky. ‘Don’t let me keep you from your work, dear. The tea can be brewing while you fix the set. I don’t want to miss the omnibus episode of my favourite soap, Coronation Street, do I?’
Teri collapsed back onto her pillow.
‘What am I supposed to do now?’ Jamie hissed.
‘Turn the telly on. Look like you’re fixing it.’
‘I wasn’t talking about the television, I was talking about us,’ he said, as he obediently turned the television on and it blazed into life. ‘Hey—there’s nothing wrong with this.’
‘I thought you knew nothing about televisions?’
He shot her a withering glare. ‘I know a bloody healthy one when I see it. How am I supposed to look as if I’m fixing it?’
‘Turn it to the satellite channels and keep flicking through them—they’re all ghosting like mad at the moment. There must be a storm brewing.’
He treated her to another glare, which she ignored.
‘Tell her that it’s due to atmospheric pressure and that normal viewing of Coronation Street will be totally unaffected. That should do the trick. It’s mainly MTV that’s squiffy anyway, and I don’t think she’ll want to watch that. Unless Tom Jones is on it,’ she added thoughtfully.
‘I’ve been trying to phone you, but it’s been permanently engaged,’ Jamie said, trying to keep one eye on the door and the other eye on scanning the channels.
‘As I was saying, she phon
ed just as I was being sick. She was on the first train down from Liverpool the next morning and has been phoning all my relatives the length and breadth of the country ever since to tell them how desperately ill I am. She thinks it’s food poisoning. She’s convinced that you can only get salmonella from smoked salmon. How can I tell her all I had was a ruddy great hangover brought on by my married lover abandoning me with nothing for comfort but a surfeit of fine food and cheap champagne?’
Jamie looked at her reprovingly.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she said through her teeth. ‘I normally watch my diet very carefully, except when I’m bingeing.’
‘You could have phoned.’
‘Oh, yes—how? What could I say? “Sorry to disturb you, Pamela, but my interfering mother has turned up, so could you possibly tell Jamie our weekend love-in is cancelled.”’ Teri twitched her head towards the door. ‘Old Miss Marple in there doesn’t miss a trick.’
‘Milk or sugar?’ her mother called.
They stared at each other blankly. ‘Just milk, please,’ Jamie replied.
‘She’ll be here for days,’ Teri said tersely. ‘She’s harder to get rid of than curry breath.’
Her mother appeared with a tray of tea. ‘Haven’t you fixed it yet, dear?’ she asked Jamie. ‘It is taking you a long time.’
‘Nearly finished,’ he said tightly.
‘Can’t we offer Jamie a biscuit, Mum?’
‘Jamie, is it? My, we’re Little Miss Friendly.’
Teri closed her eyes momentarily. ‘Jamie is a friend—an old friend. I told you. He fixes televisions for a lot of people I know.’
Jamie scowled blackly at her.
‘Do you like Jaffa Cakes?’ Mrs Carter asked, nose wrinkled. ‘All she ever has is Jaffa Cakes.’
Jamie smiled sweetly. ‘They’re my favourites.’
‘I can’t stand them myself,’ her mother said, and disappeared into the kitchen.
Jamie waited until she had gone. He turned to Teri and asked his original question again. ‘And what am I supposed to do now?’
‘I don’t know.’ Teri sounded exasperated. ‘Go home.’
‘I can’t do that. I’m on a course.’
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