What Women Want

by Fanny Blake

  ‘Nothing yet. Don’t worry about him. Let’s just assume his silence is a sign that he’s too busy having a good time or has a problem getting to the Internet.’ He tried to pour her more wine but she put her hand over her glass.

  ‘I’ve had enough. You finish it.’

  ‘Actually, I’m knackered. I think I’m going to have to go to bed.’ He put the bottle down.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ Kate suddenly had a strange feeling that he was keeping something from her.

  ‘Nothing. Should there be?’ He looked up at her, questioning, before starting to gather their plates.

  ‘Don’t be silly. You seemed so far away, that’s all. I know I drone on about the practice, but if something’s worrying you, I’d like to know. If something’s not going to plan. Or if there’s anything I can help with.’

  ‘There’s nothing. Really.’ But he sounded far from convincing. ‘We’re just very busy and we’re taking a hammering at the moment so it’s all hands on deck. I’m just tired.’

  He looked it. Shadows ringed his wide-set eyes and the crow’s feet seemed etched more deeply than she had noticed before. She reached across the table for his hand to reassure him of her support. After a second, looking apologetic, he took it away. ‘I think I’ll just clear up.’

  He took the plates over to the dishwasher, loading them far more noisily than necessary, then piling up the things that needed washing up.

  ‘What is it, Paul?’ Kate persisted. ‘I know there’s something you’re not telling me.’

  ‘Kate, please. You’re not the only one who’s had a bad day. Leave it alone.’ He banged the soufflé dish onto the draining board, closing the subject. ‘I’m going up.’

  Kate flinched as if he’d struck her. No ‘Goodnight’. No kiss. This was a Paul she hadn’t seen for years, not since those awful months when their marriage had almost come to grief long ago – the children had been tiny. She remembered feeling this same distance from him then, as if they were standing on opposite riverbanks, unable to get across. Each was in the other’s sight but was unable to hear what the other said above the sound of the rushing water, unable to understand the signals the other was making. When Paul finally admitted to having an affair with a member of his team at work, Kate was surprised by the relief she felt. At least she knew what she was dealing with. He said he wanted to leave her and start a new life with this woman, but Kate refused to accept his decision. In giving her this unwanted knowledge, he had also given her power.

  Whatever Paul might believe he felt, she had not been prepared to give up on her family so easily. She had worked so hard in order to show him how loved and wanted he was, not just by their children but by her. She had shown him that despite lavishing so much love on Megan, Sam and Jack she still had enough left for him. She had just got out of the habit of letting him know. She was the one whose attention and support he needed, whose reassurance he wanted, whose love he treasured. When Paul had realised he still had all those things, and more, he gave up his affair, promising never, ever to have another, and Kate came to accept that, in many ways, having a husband was like having another child. Her feminist hackles rose as she tussled with the idea but, in the end, she decided to accept their unspoken pact because the rewards were greater than the cost. Paul made her life so much more than it was without him but, to keep him, she had to make sure all his needs were met. She accepted he was that sort of man and trusted him to keep his side of the bargain in return.

  Following him upstairs, she thought about their marriage now and what would happen when Jack eventually left home. Times had moved on, circumstances had changed, and so had Paul and Kate. They’d weathered the journey so far but were they going to make it together to the end? She recognised the dangers of taking one another for granted, having seen the same thing happen with so many of her patients who had been to, or were heading for, the divorce courts. But with so many things going on in their lives, it was all too easy to let things slip. Were Paul’s recent silences nothing more than that or did they have a deeper significance? She didn’t like the doubts that were running through her mind. She willed them away, deciding that what sometimes happened to her patients was not going to happen to her.

  Paul was still reading what looked like a company report when she came out of the shower. As she climbed into bed, he put it down and turned to her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Katie. Put it down to exhaustion. I’ll be OK tomorrow.’ He stretched out his arm and she curled into him, inhaling his familiar scent.

  ‘Forget it. Probably my fault.’ She ran her hand across his chest and down towards his stomach as she raised herself to kiss him. Sex was the one thing that had always brought them back together after the slightest disagreement. But she sensed him tense and he pulled back from her.

  ‘Not tonight,’ he murmured, turning his head and gently pushing her away. ‘I’ve got an early start. Sorry.’ He rolled onto his side and reached out to switch off his light.

  Within minutes, his breathing had deepened and slowed until he was sound asleep. Kate propped herself against the pillows, unable to concentrate on her book, unable to switch off her thoughts. She looked at Paul, timing her breathing with his. This was the third time he’d pushed her away in as many weeks, each time citing tiredness or stress as his excuse. She couldn’t remember a time in their life together when this had happened, not even in those short-lived dark days when they had only wanted to hurt each other. Something between them had changed recently, but what? However often she had heard patients talk about lack of affection or intimacy in their marriages, however often she had listed the possible causes and counselled patience and understanding, she found it almost impossible to apply the theories to her own marriage and follow her own advice. There were any number of possible reasons for Paul’s behaviour, and his rejection not only made her question her own worth but, much, much worse than that, it hurt. It hurt deeply. She inched down under the duvet, switched off her own light and turned to lie with her back to Paul’s, waiting for sleep to claim her.

  Chapter 4

  ‘’Bye, darling. I’ll be here when you get back. I’ll rustle up something for supper so you needn’t worry.’ Oliver put both hands on her shoulders and kissed Ellen’s forehead.

  ‘That would be lovely.’ She leaned into him, relishing his warmth, his solidity, the reassurance she felt when close to him. The long-forgotten feeling of being loved was pushing against the barrier of self-sufficiency and self-control that had protected her for so many years. She remembered Emma, when she was still a little girl, insisting that Sleeping Beauty was read to her every night. So, every night Ellen had picked up the illustrated Grimms’ Fairy Tales with a sigh, turned to the same page and begun reading aloud as her daughter snuggled up to her and drifted off to sleep. For the first time Ellen could almost empathise with Briar Rose, the sleeping princess who was woken with a kiss.

  ‘I love you,’ he murmured, as he raised his right hand to the back of her head and, somewhat to her amazement, stroked her wiry grey hair as if she was a woman twenty years younger. ‘Come home soon.’ He kissed her again, this time lingering on her lips. That’s more like it, she thought.

  She pulled away, knowing that if she didn’t the temptation to go back inside and shut the door on the world for the rest of the weekend would be irresistible. ‘I’ve got to go. The gallery won’t open without me and Saturday’s my busiest day.’

  ‘I know. I’ll be thinking of you as I have another cup of tea, do a bit of weeding for you, read the paper.’

  ‘That’s right. Rub it in.’ Ellen laughed. As she turned down the front steps, she noticed her next-door neighbour staring at her curiously. ‘Morning, Mary. Isn’t it a lovely day?’

  ‘For some obviously more so than for others,’ growled Mary, as she hurled a bulging black bag into a bin and slammed down the lid before scuttling off down the street. Mary’s cage was easily rattled but today Ellen wasn’t in the mood to find out why. As
her neighbour rounded the corner, Ellen walked down the steps and out of the gate, turning to wave, but Oliver was already inside. She imagined him walking along the corridor, straightening the pictures so they all hung exactly level. Already she knew that he liked things to be just so. Perhaps he would take himself down to the basement, tidy up their breakfast things before he went out to the patio with the paper. If only she could shut the gallery on Saturday mornings and be with him.

  Their affair had been so sudden and unexpected. Only four weeks earlier, Ellen had been sitting behind her desk in the front room of the gallery, sorting through the accounts. The light had slanted through the small window behind her, reminding her that yet another summer was going by without her having bought the right blind. The back of her neck felt hot to the touch. Her headache was getting worse. She rustled in the desk drawer for the packet of ibuprofen she kept there. She stood up to get a glass of water from the small kitchenette behind her and felt a familiar prick of pleasure at the pictures that hung around the white walls.

  This was the place where Ellen felt most comfortable. The hours she had spent alone here had been hours in which she had time for herself and for the quiet grieving and reflection that she needed to do after Simon’s death. Somehow the atmosphere of the gallery gave her an inner calm that she could never find at home with the children. Since her uncle Sidney had willed it to her three years earlier, she had worked hard at building up the business, extending the premises through into the large back room, knocking out one of the cupboards and the dividing wall behind it so a short passage led from the front to the back. Her uncle had taken her on at a moment in her life when she was directionless, kept going only by the need to support her kids. He had the mistaken belief that her art-college training would be qualification enough, but working there with him had taught her everything she needed to know. She had taken on the legacy and turned it into an increasingly vibrant business for him.

  At the sound of the bell, she glanced up as the glass door opened and a customer came in. Him again! The same man had been at the latest exhibition opening, had been in twice during the previous week and once already this. Idle speculation had inevitably become Ellen’s way of passing the day as people wandered in and out of the gallery. The lean, angular planes of this man’s face and his dapper pin-stripe suit said ‘City’ although his unkempt, boyish, almost black hair suggested something more relaxed, perhaps in the media. He exuded a youthful self-confidence appropriate for someone in what she guessed must be his late thirties. When he’d put his hand on her desk yesterday, as he asked her a question, she had surprised herself slightly by glancing up to notice a pair of cornflower blue eyes edged with long dark lashes – eyes a girl would kill for. For a moment, he held her gaze, then turned to leave.

  As she had expected, he walked past her desk, smiling as he wished her good morning. She returned the greeting. He went into the back room where, on the small black-and-white security monitor, she could see him standing in front of the same picture as he had before. Over the last couple of weeks, she had often stood there herself, transported by the richness and power of the colours. Rough semi-circles of neon pink, mustard yellow, Lenten purple and brilliant carmine were juxtaposed with others in shades of apple green, red and aquamarine, all roughly outlined and set against a background of cerulean blue edged by a darker, more mysterious night sky: Starship by Caroline Fowler. Caroline was one of the newer artists that Ellen had brought to the gallery, impressed by her use of colour and the bold statements made by her canvases. She had a strong following already and this, her second exhibition with Ellen, had cemented her success. Unusually, the man didn’t stand in front of the painting for long. As he walked through to the front of the gallery, Ellen hoped she might at last have a sale on her hands.

  ‘I love that painting, Starship,’ he said. ‘Every time I come in here, I’m drawn to it. I’d like to buy it but I don’t have anywhere to hang it at the moment.’

  ‘I could keep it here for you for a while, if you’d like.’ She opened the drawer where she kept her red stickers and receipt pads.

  ‘No. I don’t think that would work. It might not suit whatever place I buy.’

  ‘Are you moving to London?’ Ellen’s curiosity got the better of her.

  That was how their conversation had begun. Within five minutes of him introducing himself, Ellen was offering him a coffee as he described where he’d been living in rural France. He’d run a small arts and crafts gallery there but felt after two years that it was time to come home, so had sold the business and was looking to start again in London. As they’d talked, they’d discovered that their shared interest in art and the business of running a gallery extended into the books they’d read, films they’d seen and even the stretch of Dorset coast she knew from her childhood holidays. As the time passed, Ellen had hardly noticed the bell signalling other customers, until one had interrupted to buy another of Caroline’s pictures.

  Oliver had waited, flicking through the prints folder, as she took the customer’s details, then stuck a red spot on the label beside the picture. As she returned to her desk, he looked at his Rolex and asked if, at five to six, she was closing. Thrilled to have made the sale, she had had to phone Caroline first to tell her the good news, then happily agreed to go for a very quick drink before she had to rush home to cook the children’s supper.

  She smiled as she got on the bus, remembering those magical days of snatched encounters: coffee in the gallery, a walk round the local park, lunch, a drink in the pub. Oliver was funny, concerned and, most importantly, interested in her life. Despite her half-hearted attempts at resistance, she had felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, unable to stop herself, simultaneously curious and alarmed about what might happen next. At last, three weeks after they’d first met, the moment had come when she had turned to him as they stepped out of Bistro Pepe and he had taken both her hands and leaned towards her. She had pulled back, aware of and unable to believe what was coming, but he had pretended not to notice. It didn’t matter to him that they were in a public place and that people might look askance at a younger man kissing a definitely middle-aged woman. As his lips touched hers, she felt as if she’d come home at last.

  That night he’d accompanied her home and she’d invited him in for coffee. The day before, she had put the children on the train for Cornwall where, as always, they were spending the last five weeks of their long summer holiday with Simon’s family just outside St Mawes. Without them, the emptiness of the house bore down on her.

  One kiss had been all that was needed to puncture the ten years of overwhelming numbness she’d felt since Simon’s death. Left on her own with two small children, then aged only five and three, she’d had no alternative but to batten down her emotions and concentrate on helping them cope with the lack of their father. What was important was that she kept Simon alive in their minds, making sure above all that they knew he’d loved them. To do that, she couldn’t include another man in their lives, however frequently her friends and family said that was exactly what the children, and indeed she, needed. Until now. At first the sex was awkward, unfamiliar, embarrassing, but Oliver’s confidence and consideration drew her out of herself until she relaxed and moved with him. Since that first night together, Oliver hadn’t left except to go to pick up a few clothes and check out of wherever he’d been staying. And she had never wanted him to.

  Ellen couldn’t remember when she had felt so indifferent to what her neighbours thought of her. The net curtains of Oakham Road might be twitching as she and Oliver came and left together – let them! The only people, apart from her family, whose opinion she particularly cared about were Kate and Bea. She could imagine their faces when she told them about Oliver. After so many years of knowing her as a devoted widow and committed single mother, they would be completely taken by surprise. But keeping Oliver to herself made their relationship all the more precious, all the more intense. She didn’t want that t
o end by going public, even though she knew that, once the kids came home, she would have to. If not sooner.

  When she did, Kate would listen to her without interrupting but Bea would probe, making Ellen give away details before she was ready. Up until now, Ellen had treated Bea’s own endeavours to hook a man with some scepticism, but suddenly she understood something of what her friend must be looking for. The discovery of Oliver had thrown a switch inside her that she had forgotten existed. That was all Bea wanted to experience. Ellen saw that now. With the menopause beckoning, they might have only a last few throws of the hormonal dice.

  Musing on that unpleasant truth, she unlocked the door to the gallery, pushed up the security shutters and sorted her papers, ready for the usual steady flow of Saturday customers. She was in the back, looking at Starship, considering whether to buy the picture for Oliver as a memento of their meeting (so what if he didn’t have anywhere to hang it?), when the bell rang. Perhaps it was too soon to make such a big gesture, but she had the rest of the morning to think about it. In the meantime she would put her back into some work and go through the programme for her next exhibition, making sure everything was on track.

  She went through to see her first customer of the day, and was surprised to find Kate standing there, the only woman she knew who was over fifty and could get away with a skimpy pale pink T-shirt and white linen trousers. Suddenly she felt self-conscious about the old cotton dress she’d yanked off its hanger that morning. What they said about a moment on the lips was true. All those consolatory biscuits that she’d packed away over the years had made their home very comfortably on her hips.