by Frances Pye
He still hadn’t called her. He hadn’t forgotten her in the excitement of seeing his kids, but he’d pushed thoughts of her to the back of his mind while he spent the evening with Mark and Ben, overseeing their good-byes, talking to them about their lives, their school, their friends, trying to snatch back just a week or two of the years he had lost. Once they’d gone to bed, he’d had to make arrangements with Isobel for the future, and by the time they were finished, it was getting too late to call anyone. Besides, he hadn’t wanted to have his conversation overheard by either his ex-wife or her lover. Now he had Mark and Ben with him and he couldn’t talk to Terry in front of them. In any case, he had left it so long that he felt he needed to see her and tell her in person. He would get back to London, take the boys to Ray and Babs, get them settled there, and then find her.
Sean swung off the motorway and into a gas station. Leaving the boys in the back to continue fighting the forces of evil, he filled up the car, then went to pay. He didn’t even glance at the racks of newspapers. But then, at the counter, he saw one of the other customers reading a tabloid. With a huge, banner headline: “Sharing Sean.” And a photo that looked very, very familiar.
Giving up his place in the queue, he went back to the papers and grabbed a copy of the Daily News. There it was. “Sharing Sean.” And a picture of him. Quickly, unable to believe what he was reading, he skimmed the story, which occupied five whole pages of the newspaper. There were photos of all of them, of Lily, of Jules, of Mara, of him. Of Terry.
Sean slumped against the wall of the shop. God. He felt as if he’d been raped. They’d manipulated him, controlled him, made decisions about his life with no thought of what he wanted. They’d used him for their own ends. All of them.
Even Terry.
No matter how he tried, he couldn’t find an acceptable explanation for her involvement. She had been in on this. She’d conspired with the others to get him to be a friend to Paul. He thought he’d made the offer to help her in good faith; in fact, he’d been cleverly manipulated into making it, his every action stage-managed by others. Who was to say Terry hadn’t also planned her night with him? Connived to get him into bed with her and lied about her problem just to get him going? The pleasure he’d felt, yes, that had been real, but even so, their night together now didn’t feel all that special. What had seemed perfect had turned out to be deeply and irrevocably flawed.
sixty-seven
Jules was ecstatic.
She had finally turned the tables on Diana.
But it had all been very, very different when she’d woken up that morning with the grandmother of all hangovers. Her head had been pounding, she had found it almost impossible to stand up, let alone move, and even the thought of food turned her stomach.
And she had been alone. Sometime in the night—Jules had a vague, fuzzy memory of being rolled over in bed—Michael must have left.
There was very little to show that he had even been there—a small dent in his pillow, a hint of his musky aftershave on the sheets, a touch of stubble rash on her cheeks—and after a couple of cups of coffee and a hot bath, Jules decided that it would be best if she behaved as if he hadn’t been. It didn’t seem as if it would prove all that difficult. The night had been odd, almost dreamlike; even now, after it had happened, the idea of their ending up in bed together felt unreal.
Making love had been amazing, though. Jules had wiped from her brain any memory of what being in bed with Michael all those years ago had been like; thinking about him had only revived the initial trauma and the massive guilt of jilting him. So the attraction between them had come as a complete and very welcome surprise. For herself, she wouldn’t have been averse to carrying on. Not averse at all. In fact, she would have loved it.
And not just for the sex. She had also enjoyed Michael’s company. She’d drunk a great deal, and there were a few gaps in her memory, but she would never forget how nice he had been about the past. Even with a hangover, remembering his words of forgiveness gave her a nice warm glow. She had always said that he was the only decent, honest man she’d ever been with. And it looked as if she’d been right.
But she wasn’t going to see him again. As she remembered, she had been the one to do the seducing, and though once committed he had entered whole-bodily into the proceedings, he had been reluctant at the start. If he’d wanted more, he’d have stayed the night. Or at least left a note. Clearly, he wasn’t interested in her. And the least she owed him was to leave him in peace. So, after one long, lingering look back, she resolved to put all thought of him out of her mind.
Even so, the solid gloom of misery that had been hanging over her for the last weeks seemed to have lifted. Jules still felt sad, and she would always mourn her lost baby, but that overpowering melancholy was gone. She had no idea why—for all she knew, it was hormonal—but she wasn’t going to complain. For the first time in ages, she could function as normal.
Apart from the hangover, that is. The coffee and the bath made her feel a tiny bit more like a human being but nowhere nearly together enough to get dressed and go to work. She was just about to lie down and see if she could manage a nap when the phone rang. Jules had yet to listen to her messages from last night and so the machine picked up after only one ring. She lunged for the receiver.
“Hold on. Hold on,” she shouted over her outgoing message. “Hi. Sorry about that.”
“Juliet. How could you? I have never been so humiliated in all my life.”
Rats. It was her mother. What on earth could she want? They hadn’t spoken since the night at the club, and it was a little late to be checking up on her daughter’s health. Why, oh why, had she picked up?
“How could you even have thought of such a thing?”
“What thing?” Jules asked, confused. This didn’t seem to be another of her mother’s generalized rants but something more specific. What had she done?
“Davina called me this morning to tell me about it. Davina! She positively gloated.”
“But what about?”
“And in such a newspaper. Disgusting. How am I supposed to go out and about now? It’s mortifying.”
Jules couldn’t think what it could be. It was obvious she had upset her mother very much but she wasn’t sure how. And she needed to know the details so that she could enjoy this to the full. In the past, anything she had done that had provoked this kind of rage and misery from Diana—her jilting of Michael, her divorce—had upset her also and so she hadn’t had a chance to see her mother’s despairing fury as a victory. Some sort of revenge for what Diana had put her through. But now she couldn’t imagine what she had done. And so she was unlikely to be unhappy about it. “Please. I have no idea what you’re talking about. What newspaper?”
“The Daily News.” Lady Dunne’s voice hissed the words. “All over the front page. About you and your friends and a builder.”
This time, Jules was convinced she heard her mother spit out the words. Someone must have found out about them sharing Sean. No wonder she had messages on her machine from last night. The others must have called to warn her. For a moment, she wondered how they were feeling, but then put that to the back of her mind as her mother ranted on and on. Time enough to talk to her friends later. And decide how she herself felt about being found out. For now, she had to enjoy the moment.
“…every detail of your life. Your marriage. Your divorce. This man. Your miscarriage. It’s sickening. Sickening. Never, never did I think to see our family name dirtied like this. All my friends will laugh behind my back for years to come. The idea that I could have a daughter like you.”
Diana paused. Jules said nothing, hoping Diana was going to continue. She was.
“Well, I hope you’re happy. You’ve upset your father. And you’ve destroyed me. I was giving a drinks party in two weeks. How am I supposed to stand there and welcome people who are all laughing at me? How? How? Tell me that.”
“I don’t know. Perhaps you could cancel?”
&
nbsp; “Do you think this is funny?”
“Yes, actually. I do.”
“Funny? You’ve ruined my life. Do you hear that? Ruined it. It’ll be years before this is forgotten. If it ever is. The Daily News! With a builder!” Diana moaned. “Deliberately getting pregnant like that. My daughter, a single mother. How could you? How could you?”
“Very easily.” And though part of Jules wanted to stay on the phone, to revel in the sound of her mother beating her breast over what had happened, another part of her longed to be the one to end things. For the first time in her life, she wanted the last word. “Good-bye, Diana,” she said calmly, and put the receiver down, her face split by a grin as wide as Siberia. She supposed she should worry about the effect this was going to have on Dunne Parties, but for the moment she wanted to revel in her mother’s embarrassment. Besides, wasn’t any publicity supposed to be good publicity?
“Yippee!” she shouted. What a great day.
sixty-eight
Paul didn’t find out until lunchtime. Newspapers weren’t a regular part of his day. If he read one, it was only the back pages.
At about midday, he left the school—he wasn’t supposed to, but no one bothered patroling the grounds anymore and it was simple to slip away unnoticed—and walked to the local café. Terry had been too distracted to make him a packed lunch that morning and had thrust a fiver into his hand instead. He’d thought about skipping the meal and putting the money toward his take-Sally-out-to-dinner fund, but he was starving. And the idea of bacon and fried eggs and sausages—rare in his house—was irresistible.
So he’d walked into the greasy spoon café, ordered his full English breakfast, and sat at one of the chipped Formica tables. On one side, there was a pile of discarded newspapers. Absentmindedly, he pulled one of them toward him and was about to turn to the sports pages when the enormous headline on the front page caught his eye. And the accompanying picture. Worried, his fingers crossed for his friend, he started to read. What on earth could Sean have done to make the Daily News interested in him?
Paul ignored everything else around him as he read the story. His lunch went uneaten, the waitress’s queries unanswered as he read about his mother going looking for a friend for him. About Sean being a dupe of his mother and her mates. About the end of all his hopes for Terry and Sean getting together. At first he was puzzled. Then he was hurt. And finally he was furious. With his mother. He knew that Sean had been in on the plan too but he wasn’t as angry with him. No, he blamed Terry. She’d set the whole thing up, she’d manipulated him and Sean, she’d controlled and used them for her own purposes. All the rage and disappointment and misery he’d felt after Finn’s death, which had dissipated over the past few months, flooded back, and it had only one focus: his mother.
Paul pushed his untouched, congealed lunch aside, gathered up the newspaper, and left the café. The waitress raced after him, wanting to be paid. He thrust the fiver at her and ran away, with no thought of change or tips or apologies. No thoughts at all apart from finding Sally.
sixty-nine
It wasn’t until early afternoon that Terry noticed the odd way people were staring at her. And whispering together when they saw her, as if she were some kind of celebrity figure of fun. Passengers, people on the street, even Sid, her replacement conductor, as it was Fred’s day off, seemed to be unable to stop gawking. And giggling. Normally, she would have been concerned. But she had no room for any more worries.
Every scrap of her brain that wasn’t required to keep her alive and her bus moving from stop to stop was occupied in thinking about Sean. And why he hadn’t called her at home the previous night. The more time that passed, the more she became convinced that she’d been right. He didn’t want her, did he? He’d never wanted her. That night that had meant so much to her had just been a one-night stand, a pity fuck for a poor, frigid, lonely woman who had been begging for it. What was it men always said? Gagging for it.
She tried to tell herself that his not calling meant nothing. He was busy. Something had happened at work. Paul had forgotten to tell her he’d rung. There’d be a message waiting for her at home. Men often didn’t call immediately afterward. They made you wait a few days. It meant nothing.
But it didn’t work. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself that everything was all right, ultimately she couldn’t stop her thoughts piling one on top of another, building an edifice of certainty. She’d made a complete fool of herself. Sean didn’t care.
No wonder, then, that she wasn’t bothered by a few odd looks. All she was interested in was finishing her shift and getting home. Just in case there was a flashing light on her answering machine and a message explaining the silence of the last two days.
She pulled into Victoria Station, slotted her bus into a bay, and turned off the engine. And saw him. Pacing up and down, a newspaper tightly gripped in his hand. Waiting for her. She climbed down from the cab and ran up to him.
“Sean! Sean! I was worried, I hadn’t heard from you….” Her voice petered out when she saw his face. No way was this a boyfriend come to greet her after a day’s work. His expression held no love, no pleasure, no affection. Instead, his mouth was a thin, grim line, his eyes alight with rage, his features hard-set.
“What’s happened?”
“Congratulations.” His voice was a deep growl.
“What for?”
“Making the front page.”
“Sorry?”
“What did you get?”
“Get?”
“You’re a fool if you took less than fifty thousand pounds.”
“What’re you talking about? Fifty thousand pounds? Where would someone like me get that?”
“Tell me, did you all plan this from the start or was the money just a nice added extra?”
“Plan? What plan? Sean, you’re not making sense.” Terry couldn’t imagine what it was had upset him—all that burbling on about plans and money and front pages—but she was sure it had nothing to do with her. And that it didn’t matter. Whatever it was. What was important was that he’d come to see her and that he wasn’t doing any of the things she’d imagined over the last thirty-six hours. He was angry, yes, but she could cope with that. Anger meant he cared, didn’t it? And anger left no room for contempt or scorn or laughter. Ignoring his stiff, shuttered face, she smiled up at him. “Come on, let’s go have a coffee and we can talk and you can tell me what’s the matter, and whatever it is that’s bothering you, we’ll deal with it.”
“Will we?”
“Course. The main thing is that you’re here. With me.” Terry stood on tiptoe to kiss Sean. “Whatever it is, we’ll cope,” she said. “Together.”
“That wasn’t much of a kiss.”
Terry smiled. “More later, I promise.”
“Unless you’d like to give me a better taste now. To put me on?”
Terry looked round at the crowded station, at the passengers thronging the bays, at the group of drivers and conductors who had stopped on their way to or from their vehicles and were staring at her and Sean, wide, leering grins plastering their faces.
“Well, okay.” If that’s what he wanted. Although later she was going to get the piss taken out of her unmercifully. “How’s this?” She leaned into Sean, put her arms around him, and brought her mouth up to his.
They had barely touched lips when he shuddered and jerked himself away from her. “Or perhaps you’d like to get your friends to help?” he snapped.
“Sean?”
“Like I said, congratulations. You managed to fuck up one of the best days of my life.”
“What?”
“You and your posh friends. You used me.” He thrust the newspaper at her.
Terry stared at Sean with horror. It sounded as if he’d found out about Lily and Jules and the sharing, but how? None of them would have told him.
“Open it.” He pointed at the newspaper. She hesitated. “Go on, open it.”
And Terry opened it.
And saw the headline. “Oh, no.”
Sean saw the truth in her face and heard it in her reaction. And lost his last, lingering hope. That she’d been as much a victim as he. No, he’d been twisted and exploited and played for a fool by a group of selfish, hardheaded bitches. “Fuck you.”
“Sean, I…It wasn’t like it looks….”
“No? How was it, then?”
Terry looked at him, unable to think of a single thing to say. He was right. They had used him. There was no excuse.
“I thought I loved you. Spent yesterday planning all of our futures. While you four spilled your guts to some tabloid journalist.”
“I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t know about this. You know I didn’t know.” God. He’d loved her. Had planned a future for them. But now? She looked at his face, still iron-hard, heard the past tense in his words.
“Not know about the article? Maybe. But you knew about the sharing, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But that was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I fell in love with you.”
Sean’s snarl told Terry what he thought of that.
“I’m so sorry. Lils made it all seem so sensible, so natural. It was wrong, not telling you, I know it was. But I never planned…you and me, that had nothing to do with the others. It was just supposed to be you and Paul. Nothing else.”
“That’s an excuse?”
“No. An explanation. There’s no excuse. I know that.”
“You know, I thought I was a complete shit. I reproached myself over and over for fucking Jules and kissing you while I was with Lily, when all the time you planned it that way. Hard to believe, isn’t it? How bloody stupid I was?”
“Sean. Love. I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant like that. We just didn’t think how you’d feel. Please, please don’t turn away from me. We can get through this, can’t we? I need you.”