Playing Away

by Adele Parks

  That's it. I nod my agreement.

  "Yes, but it's unlikely with Luke being so busy. I don't quite understand why hot weather makes people want to build houses. I suppose we might get away in late autumn or perhaps go skiing in the winter."

  The solution isn't immediate enough for me.

  "What are you talking about?" asks Lucy, as she walks over to refill her and Peter's glasses.

  "Connie is bored," says Sam.

  "Not bored," I correct. Bored seems too harsh, "More I don't know ..."

  "Spoilt?" offers Lucy.

  "Restless," I finish.

  "You need to take up a sport," says Sam. I look at her, horrified.

  "You need to shop," says Daisy. This is a thought.

  "You need to procreate," says Rose. This is ridiculous.

  "You could have an affair," says Lucy. We all laugh. Her

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  suggestion is horrifying and ridiculous. We laugh for a very long time. I mean it really is funny. Me, have an affair? Me? I have Luke and I'm so glad to be off the merry-go-round of the dating game. Lucy really makes me laugh.

  "I know what you have to look forward to," offers Sam. She sounds as excited as a five-year-old at a pantomime. I can't help but be infected.

  "What?"

  "We are going to Paris in September for the management conference. The official launching of Peterson Windlooper. It's only three weeks." I vaguely remember reading some e-mail about this. Sam continues, "Paris in autumn. It will be so romantic." Her search for romance gives her a sense of purpose.

  "There," comforts Daisy, "a conference, that's like a holiday." Daisy is a teacher and has no idea about corporate life. Even so, it's a fairly accurate summation. "Paris is a great place to shop."

  "And have an affair," laughs Lucy as she sidles back to Peter to continue their debate on the introduction of the Euro.

  Rose watches them. She's very quiet. I wonder if she ever misses the corporate life that she led before the twins were born. She had been really into her job. Which I find inexplicable, especially as she was an accountant. I watch her as she kisses Sebastian's head; she radiates pure love. Yes, she probably does miss it occasionally, but on balance she's made the right choice. For her.

  "Peter is also working ridiculous hours at the moment," she sighs.

  I pick up Henry and cuddle him. Purring and humming in that stupid way that everyone does when they pick up babies. None of us quite know how to act in the face of a miracle.

  "Still, you've got Sebastian and Henry to keep you company." I nuzzle his stomach and smell his lovely skin. I look at

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  Rose; she looks tired. She glances in Peter's direction to check that he can't hear her. He can't, he's arguing with Lucy, some point about the share index no doubt. He's making his point in an incredibly animated way.

  "I'm not sure if that's the problem." She circles the issue, trying to find a way to say what is on her mind without being disloyal to Peter. I understand. Once you're married it isn't as easy to share everything with your friends. Early on in my marriage I once made the mistake of whining to Daisy and Lucy that Luke was being selfish about something or other. I can't even remember what now. I really regretted it. Not that they tackled Luke and told him that he was a cruel barbarian undeserving of their friend. It was just that the next week, when Luke and I were all lovey-dovey again and I'd forgotten that he was a rotten bastard who could wash his own bloody socks, Daisy asked me if everything was all right.

  And it was the tone.

  That sympathetic, probing tone that I'd always loved suddenly seemed impertinent. Was she hoping that I didn't have a perfect marriage? Was she feeling sorry for me? Horror of horrors. Was she in some way suggesting that I'd picked the wrong man? Of course I know she wasn't. Daisy isn't like that but I wasn't comfortable. Since then I've always been really careful never, ever to moan about Luke. I prefer the girls to think everything is just brilliant, which largely it is. So I understand Rose's reticence in criticizing Peter.

  "Go on," says Sam. She's just so amiable, soothing and clement that it is almost impossible not to respond.

  "Well, since the boys were born," Rose hesitates, "he seems to prefer to be at work than at home. At work, or fishing, or at the gym. Anywhere other than with them . . . with us." No one answers her because we've noticed this too. When Rose isn't with us we discuss at length what a selfish bastard he is, and the fact that he doesn't do his share with the boys, and that

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  Rose is looking tired. We just hadn't realized that Rose felt the same.

  "He's working hard for you and the boys," argues Sam.

  Sam doesn't think Peter is wrong to work long hours. She thinks they should be out hunting dinosaurs. But then Sam isn't married. In fact her longest relationship is a couple of months. She's never got to the tedious stage of eating alone and putting their dinner in the fridge, channel-hopping in the knowledge that nothing will interest, watching the hands of the clock drag round to after eleven and thinking that there must be something wrong with the clock battery. She doesn't understand the frustration of your husband arriving home too frazzled to string a sentence together, ignoring his reheated dinner and collapsing into bed without even so much as a peck on the cheek. I do, however, understand.

  "He works very hard."

  "I know. I know," replies Rose, instantly guilty, and then quietly she adds, "but I work hard, too. Sometimes I wish he'd help out a bit more."

  We fall silent. Although usually we have a macabre interest in each other's misery (in the nicest possible way) it is too sunny for a serious debate on the deconstruction of Utopia—married bliss. Henry begins to cry. We're grateful for the diversion.

  "His nappy needs changing," says Rose, already standing up to take care of him.

  Following on from the conversation with her sister, Daisy obviously wants to be reassured about the "Happily Ever After" so demands, "Tell us about Luke proposing."

  "You've heard it all before," I say with a laugh.

  "I know, I know, but we like hearing it," Sam and Daisy chorus, "pleeeeeeease."

  "You are insatiable romantics," I tease, but I'm delighted and tell them anyway.

  "Well, we are walking in the West Highlands."

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  "What are you wearing?" asks Sam.

  "Err, hiking boots, naturally."

  "Oh yeah, of course." She looks embarrassed.

  "And, surprisingly, we'd been really lucky with the weather. Perfect walking weather. Bright, dry, fresh days. Aqua sky, sun warm enough to wear shorts." Luke has great legs, big and covered in blond hairs, quite Australian looking. "Our plan was to walk from Loch Lomond to Fort William—"

  "Well, when you say 'our plan,'" interrupts Daisy.

  "Good point. It was Luke's plan and I was really doubtful that I'd be able to do it."

  "But of course you couldn't say as much," says Sam excitedly. They know this story as well as I do. Like children they need to hear their fairy tales being told the same way every time they hear it. I magnanimously concede to their enjoyment. Their grisly interest is because they use my story to perfect the details of their own proposals. It is a game that we all play; or at least, I used to play it but obviously can't anymore. Every time there is a new bloke we imagine how he will propose, what the wedding will be like, which qualities our children will inherit from him. This game is more common than Monopoly and if it could be boxed up a games manufacturer would make a fortune. The details of the dress, the ring, the wedding speech vary, but the nub of the plans stay the same, i.e., loved-to-death bride takes center stage.

  "My ankle was really playing up. Huge, blue." I'm laying this on pretty thick. "But I couldn't complain. I wanted to be perfect for him." They nod. They understand it's elementary.

  "You are in agony," Sam says. The word agony is said as though I'd just endured a six-week session on the rack in the Tower of London. The essential el
ement of this game is that the heroine (me) really suffers, so that in the end when she gets what she deserves (in this case Luke) we can feel good for her. This isn't because the girls are the milk of human kindness,

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  they are imagining their own sufferings. When they imagine my success, they are really imagining their own. I love being the center of their adoration and interest. Luke interrupts the scene and gives us each a Cornetto. He grins knowingly as he hears what we are talking about and disappears back to Simon. Possibly to warn him.

  "Go on. So eventually you have to take off your boot," urges Sam.

  "And Luke sees your foot. He is extremely worried, so worried that he had tears in his eyes."

  "Shhhbkhb, Daisy." I'm nervous that Luke will hear her. Not because I have embellished this part of the story, I haven't, there had been tears of concern in his eyes when he'd seen my big, blue, swollen ankle. But if he finds out that I've told the girls he'll be mortified.

  "And he said?"

  So I tell.

  I tell them how he'd asked me if I thought he was capable of looking after me and I'd laughed, confirming that no one was better qualified. And although I pretended that I didn't know what was coming, I did. But at the same time I didn't. I didn't dare assume. Because it was the most scary, exciting, wonderful, horrifying moment of my life. I was hoping against hope that he was going to ask me. And my hope was combined with reason, to the extent that I was nudging toward knowing, but it was still the most scary, exciting, wonderful, horrifying moment of my life.

  "So then he said that he would be honored if I'd let him love me and cherish me for the rest of my life." The girls smile at each other, like you do when you are six and your mum tells you that Cinderella's shoe fits. All gooey and marshmal-lowy.

  "And then he produced the ring." We all admire my ring again, as though this is the first time, not the millionth time,

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  we've admired it. It has three diamonds in a row, all the same size.

  "And tell us about how he chose the ring."

  "He told me that he had looked at hundreds of stones, marquises, squares, ovals, triplets. Then the assistant pointed out these stones which are called 'round brilliant.' He'd instantly known that this was the ring."

  "What is it that he said?" asks Sam. But I don't need to be embarrassed, they know the routine. Daisy rushes to fill in the details.

  "He thinks that she is absolutely brilliant, sparkling, clever, exuberant, shiny, bright, all rushed together."

  "Like a diamond."

  They sigh.

  I meet Sam at Waterloo. My only concern is negotiating the crowds in W. H. Smith and the channel tunnel. The station is heaving with people who, I assume, spend their days performing heroic acts; cures for deadly diseases; feeding starving children—as their rude pushing and jostling can't be motivated by a desire to get to the office to transport parchment. I am trying to balance three glossy magazines, a family-size of Galaxy, an overnight case and my laptop, when Sam says, "That John Harding will be there, you know."

  It takes me some seconds to place him. As soon as I acknowledge him in my mind, I acknowledge him in my knickers too. A small dizzy sensation. It reminds me of swimming in the Indian Ocean, my feet being nibbled by fish, at once tingling, exciting and uncomfortable. John Harding is a horn. An utter tart. Irresistibly so. I'd met him, briefly, at a conference last April.

  "He fancies you."

  "No, he doesn't. Not especially. He fancies everyone."

  "He really fancies you. You lucky bitch. Why you? You are happily married, you don't need another man." Sam sighs. "It seems it's only ever married women who are inundated with new and intriguing offers."

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  "Men cannot quell the innate competitive instinct, it's something to do with hunter-gatherer times. A wedding ring is the biggest universal turn-on since stockings."

  Sam laughs. "Maybe. But you have blossomed, marriage suits you. You have that glow that I am so sick of seeing on other happily paired-off women."

  "In that case Luke got a bargain."

  We giggle at my vanity. Sam forgives me as she is aware that it is often counterbalanced by a really healthy dose of insecurity. To take me down a peg or two, she adds, "It is odd that so many men come forward trying, with more or less vigor, to knock you out of your ivory tower."

  "Not that odd," I defend, "anyway, I always just laugh at them."

  "You didn't laugh at John Harding from Peterson Wind." His name causes a sensation in my M&S briefs again, a six-week puppy on acid.

  "They bore me. They are so faulty."

  "John didn't bore you. You seemed fascinated."

  "It was a bit of harmless flirting." I try to steer Sam toward the escalator and away from the subject.

  "Didn't he send you an e-mail to follow up after you first met him?"

  "Did he? I can't remember."

  "Yes. He did. I'm sure."

  "I deleted it."

  "So he did send you one?"

  "Shut up, Sam." I nearly drop my Vogue as I bluster, "I doubt I'll see him, there are a thousand delegates attending this conference."

  He is the first person I see.

  I stumble upon him accidentally, as I am dashing through the crowds—huge, boisterous, stylish crowds, comparable to those at the Harrods sale. Having spotted Sue at a distance I

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  am excitedly pushing my way through the pounding press. My childish glee at seeing my friend is blighted as I bump into his blue eyes. He blinks and I shudder as his eyelashes brush and lick my entire body. Earth calling Connie. Come in, Connie. Are you responding? Too damn right I am. Standing there in front of his stunning, neat, slim, defined body. The long, pale eyelashes gently resting on his high and graceful cheekbones, it all comes rushing back to me. I remember that he has freckles, which I adore. Odd. I wouldn't have freckles up there on my list of "must have on perfect male specimen."

  He is nervous and confident all at once.

  The ball is in my court. Hadn't I left him at the bar in Blackpool? Hadn't I ignored his e-mail? On the other hand he is tremendously vain. Twenty-nine years of being adored and roughly fifteen being totally irresistible do encourage a certain confidence. He has a chiseled intensity that epitomizes a certain type of northern man; working class and noble all at once. I cannot imagine his skin in hot weather. He looks as though he will only be at home in a chilly, bitter environment, gamely running around a football field, or enthusiastically jumping up and down on the spot waiting for a pub to open; occupying his hands by clapping them together, rubbing forcefully or lighting a cigarette. He is raw and rough. He is the man that D. H. Lawrence had in mind every time he penned a hero. Imagine the filthiest, sexiest man you've ever seen. The man in the lift who undressed you with his eyes. The stranger in the street who held your gaze and left you feeling creamy. That deeply unsuitable and unscrupulous stranger is John Harding.

  John blushes.

  "I'd never have come if I'd known you were here." Certainly not the coolest opening gambit I've ever used. In fact it's right up there with "you're not as ugly as I expected you to be," once used on meeting one of Sam's boyfriends (her fault

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  for describing him as having an outstanding personality). John blushes again. I am delighted that I disturb him enough to make him blush but I am confused by my illegal exhilaration. I immediately turn on my heel and violently speed my way back through the throng to my seat.

  The conference room is like the dozens of other conference rooms I've endured in the past. It is a shame that such a beautiful room, designed for dancing and chatting, has been sold into conference-venue whoredom. Lattice chandeliers and white tablecloths look incongruous with the high-tech spotlights and speakers. Luxurious chairs and plush carpets fight ferociously with the suits, laptops and business vocab. The air-conditioning hums incessantly, interrupted by the odd cough or clink of glassware as delegates p
our glass after glass of water. A couple of delegates sleep, heads on the desk, generating small pools of dribble from the corner of their mouths, one wakes up oblivious to the plastic Bic pen stuck to his head. Meaningless words float in and out of my consciousness: "creating greater momentum," "consulting firm of the future," "integrated market offerings for optimal servicing." What are they on about? My entire body, mind, being, concentrates on the fact that he is there in the same room as me. I scan the faces that wave and wash in front of me. They sit suited and booted, one indistinguishable mass. Management consultancies have quite a strict sense of what their employees should look like. Although it is not stated in any policy book, the style is so distinctive and the desire to belong so dire that a natural uniform develops. All the guys wear their hair short—no beards or mustaches—with white shirts and dark suits. On the surface he is just the same but somehow he radiates difference. I gaze from row to row, scanning, dismissing, until my eyes relax on where he sits. He shines, he glows. Dizzy with illusion. This time I fear not my ability but my desire to run away from him again.

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  with a horribly demanding timetable. The conference finally comes to a close at 7:15 P.M., fifteen minutes before the beginning of the evening reception. I hurriedly throw my pencils and leather Filofax back into my bag and rush back to my hotel room. Personal hygiene or personal style? Fifteen minutes is hardly enough time to get showered, choose something to wear and reapply makeup. I opt for a shower as I am particularly and rather unnaturally sticky. In fact I'm Tigger at a rave. My head is spinning, I can't think! I won't be able to eat! I am sure of that already. I can barely breathe! I am thinking in exclamation marks. I'm in trouble.

  Hurriedly, I let down my hair, a rarity at work. I take care to twist the two front strands into what I hope will be memory-jolting dreads. I pull on a clean white T-shirt and then put back on my business suit that I've worn all day. The suit makes me look leggy and more importantly, by wearing what I've worn that day, I achieve the casual, not having tried too hard look. I'm hoping to impress him. Which makes me shiver. Of course this is dangerous, of course I can't resist.