Sex with the Ex

by Tyne O’Connell

  “Where he belongs,” Josie added, pompously smug married that she is.

  An image of Richard, my Richard, making love to Leggy Blonde took form in my mind then. I felt sick. Elizabeth shook her head. “I can’t believe you. Worst of all I can’t believe I’m starting to feel sorry for Richard.”

  “I feel sorry for his girlfriend,” Clemmie muttered.

  “She’s not his girlfriend,” I snapped, surprised by my own ferocity.

  “Well, she lives with him now, doesn’t she?” Clemmie pointed out.

  I put my hands over my ears. “The point you’re all missing is that he was my husband. We weren’t just a fling, we didn’t just date. He married me, we’re still in love and she’s just in the way.”

  “Can you hear yourself?” Elizabeth asked, removing my hands from my ears. “You can’t keep going back. Richard’s moved on, sure you can dial him up for sex the way I used to dial Mike, but that’s not going to end in happily-ever-after the way you seem to think, Lola.”

  “That never stopped you dialing Mike,” I reminded her nastily.

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes in exasperation.

  “Mike didn’t have a live-in girlfriend,” Josie pointed out.

  “You’re wrong. I know it sounds bad, and I do feel sorry for Sally—” I wasn’t sure I did really “—but if Richard and I are meant to be together it’s better for her in the long run, too.”

  “You’re right, you’re a veritable saint!” Elizabeth agreed sarcastically. “I only hope Sally appreciates your selflessness.”

  “Anyone want more drinks?” Emmanuel asked, obviously keen to remove himself from the booth.

  “Look, darling,” Elizabeth said, stroking my hair, “I know how easy and convenient sex with the ex can be, but that’s all it is, convenient and easy. It’s not love. Love is a celebration of all that’s inconvenient and complicated.”

  I shook my head. Love my friends as I do, I knew they were wrong, so I declared the subject closed and we all had a dance and Clemmie pulled a cute Swedish boy with lovely thick sandy-blond hair.

  By the time I arrived back home to feed Jean, though, I was agitated again. I wanted Richard back and I was sure I could get him back, too, if I played my cards right. So I called him at six in the morning.

  He picked up after the first ring, “I was just thinking about you,” he murmured sleepily. I wondered if she was asleep in the bed beside him, or perhaps pretending to be asleep, listening to him on the phone. I wondered if she was listening to his words and realizing that she wasn’t as safe in his love as she imagined. “Sorry about last night, leaving like that. I was a prick,” he said.

  “I think we’ve said enough sorrys, don’t you?” I told him.

  “Maybe. So what’s new?”

  “Jean was wondering if you wanted to drop by on your way to work and put me to bed.”

  He laughed and told me to tell Jean he was on his way.

  I answered the door naked, he picked me up and took me to bed, made beautiful familiar love to me, and then kissed me all over and told me I was beautiful, and I knew that whatever else happened I would hold on to this moment forever. I was right. Richard and I were made for each other, but even in my rapture I took wicked pleasure in knowing he had chosen me over Sally, certain now that if it was what I wanted he always would. Our bodies were the perfect fit, we were meant to be together, there was an electricity with Richard that I’d never experienced with anyone else before. Even during all our time apart, Richard was always the man in all my sexual fantasies.

  Before he left he made me a green tea with a cube of sugar, just how I like it. Then he kissed me tenderly. “I’m sorry I keep pushing you away, Lola,” he whispered. “This will all work out, though, won’t it?” he asked, as if needing reassurance.

  “Of course it will work out. It has to,” I replied simply.

  “I love your nose,” he told me, running a finger down my cheekbone.

  I wrinkled my nose, embarrassed by the compliment.

  He laughed. “I especially love the way I can make it wrinkle up by saying stuff like that.”

  As he stood in the doorway ready to leave he paused for a moment to tell me he loved me again. Then he left.

  I hugged the pillow to my chest and muffled my squeal of triumph in case he heard me in the corridor. I’d won. I’d won! I’d won. Leggy Blonde had lost. Hoorah! Hoorah! Hoorah!

  The phone rang just as I was drifting off into a deep sleep. It was Kitty.

  “Aunt Camilla died in her sleep last night,” she told me as I was still digging the earplugs out of my ears.

  “Oh no! Oh no, poor Aunt Camilla.”

  “Yes, well, she was excessively elderly and she died peacefully.”

  The thought of Aunt Camilla doing anything that wasn’t peaceful was impossible to conjure. Kitty started telling me about the funeral arrangements and how Aunt Camilla had left specific instructions that required cremation and her ashes being exploded in a large spray of fireworks over Surrey. “I can’t even begin to imagine what the legalities of arranging a funeral such as this are going to be.”

  “Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  “Joanna’s going to be run off her feet with all the preparations,” Kitty sighed, ignoring my offer. “Still, it might be quite fun. Do you know Aunt Camilla has arranged for a funfair to be set with rides, a marquee, Morris dancers and a band. And then at night there will be fire-eaters and magicians and everyone from her local village has been invited. Wasn’t she the dark horse?”

  “Not to me,” I told my mother pointedly. As the sounds of central London going to work started up outside my window, I flicked through the book about Posche House, reading the letters of love Lady Posche had written to her lover, Edward.

  eleven

  Reading Henrietta’s book, Hold Your Glass Like a Poem, one is often left feeling uneasy. For at no time does she hint at her adultery. In fact, she gives every impression that the great love and devotion she speaks of is for her own husband. There is no suggestion in her husband’s private correspondence that he thought differently. Perhaps while resigned to his wife’s adultery he held a vain belief that his beloved wife loved him as he loved her, or at least in her own way.

  Certainly through her correspondence to her sister it might be gleaned that Edward’s dissipation was felt more keenly by Hen as time wore on. Perhaps her feelings for her husband deepened through her awareness of his gentle steadfast patience.

  Secret Passage to the Past:

  A Biography of Lady Henrietta Posche

  By Michael Carpendum

  That afternoon Jean and I went down to stay with Kitty and Richard at Aunt Camilla’s small cottage in Surrey. Although my aunt was a wealthy woman, she had always lived in a small but pretty wisteria-covered cottage in the village of Dumblesham. More recently, she had employed the services of a full-time nurse, a rather dreary middle-aged woman called Ms. Durram. Apart from Ms. Durram, though, my aunt had lived alone for most of her life, and perhaps because of this she had thrown herself enthusiastically into village life.

  Driving into the picture-postcard community, I remembered coming to stay with my aunt just before I married Richard. She wasn’t very well then, but as ever she insisted on looking after me as if I was still in short socks and pigtails.

  She was actually my father’s aunt, a very wealthy, very elegant old-fashioned woman in the best possible sense. Martin called her the last of the Grand Old Edwardians. I remember finding her formal-dining habits exotic, growing up as I had with parents who preferred dining out. When we did eat at home, it was always something from the delicatessen, like quails’ eggs, carpaccio, fois gras, caviar or fresh oysters and lobster.

  Aunt Camilla, on the other hand, always dined at table with napkins and three courses. The most extraordinary thing about her for me, though, was that while I’m sure she was quite fond of Kitty, she wasn’t mesmerized by her the way everyone else was.


  When my mother said her nutty things about spinsters and “the breathtaking tragedy of a life lived without passion,” Aunt Camilla would either smile serenely, secretly wink at me or feign deafness. During divorces when we didn’t “speak to that man’s family,” Aunt Camilla was always the exception. I think Kitty actually admired her ability to not enter the fray.

  Kitty and Martin opened the door at the sound of my cab as if they’d been anxiously awaiting my arrival like parents in movies. I couldn’t help thinking how sweet they looked standing on the doorstep. Kitty, tall and slender in her trademark mouse-pink chiffon and marabou: Martin, in his favorite tatty cardigan, which Kitty had knitted for him. Actually, Kitty had Joanna knit it, but it amounted to the same thing in Kitty’s mind.

  I’d always enjoyed the quiet sanctuary of my aunt’s cottage, especially when my parents were going through some of their more traumatic stages of divorce or reconciliation. I don’t know what was worse, the screaming (sorry, passionate) rows or the public displays of love that followed. During the divorces, I would inevitably be used as a weapon by Kitty to punish Martin, so it always came as a great relief when they’d pack me off to stay with Aunt Camilla. She never mentioned my parents’ relationship and how it was affecting me, which was marvelous because back at home, Kitty and Martin spoke of little else—speaking about me as if I wasn’t in the room.

  I paid the cabdriver, and my parents wrapped me up in a group hug on the front porch. It felt rather odd but strangely nice. I imagined that any passerby might think we looked the picture of the average English family—with the exception of Jean, who had attached herself to Martin’s trouser leg.

  Once inside the cottage, all my childhood visits came to life in my mind, all the memories of memories; of baking sponge cakes and gingerbread men and eating them with glasses of homemade lemonade or freshly squeezed juice.

  I had brought Richard here to visit Aunt Camilla after we married and he’d made a rude joke about the place smelling of camphor and digestive biscuits. Nor did he appreciate the way poor old Aunt Camilla kept referring to him as Oliver. The worst thing, though, was that Aunt Camilla didn’t drink (I don’t think she really approved of it) and so there was no alcohol in her house. Despite the fact we were only there for a Sunday lunch, Richard became quite animated about this lack of alcohol on the drive back.

  “Who doesn’t offer a guest a blasted drink?” he’d railed as we raced round the tight bends of the hedge-lined country lanes in our Ferrari. I was quite relieved by her alcohol-etiquette personally, as he was driving like a maniac anyway. I’d reminded him that she was quite elderly and a little bit potty, but he wasn’t to be mollified.

  “That’s no excuse, bad manners are bad manners. Whoever heard of inviting people to Sunday lunch and not serving wine, let alone offering a restorative? For God’s sake, we’d just driven all the bloody way from London. It’s disgusting!”

  It was the first time I’d ever seen my new husband so angry, and I really didn’t want to fight, but she had offered us tea and homemade biscuits on our arrival, of which I gently reminded him. Hence, the “whole place smells of digestive biscuits” tirade.

  “It smells just the same as it did when I was little,” I told Kitty and Martin as I settled Jean down.

  Kitty squeezed my hand. “I know, lavender water and old books,” she sighed sadly. “We will miss her.”

  “Last of the Grand Old Edwardians,” Martin declared.

  “He’s been saying that since we arrived,” Kitty mocked with an eye roll, but she was smiling as she said it. “I think he’s going through clock withdrawal.”

  We went into the kitchen where a deli feast was already laid out on a platter. Kitty bustled around with plates and napkins while Martin made tea. It seemed strange seeing them in this domestic environment, strange because they seemed so at home, so familiar with the rituals of tea making and food preparation.

  “She never married,” Martin remarked, lathering fois gras on his toast.

  “Poor old Cam-Cam,” Kitty added. “What an empty, soulless, pointless life.”

  “Well, she had her friends,” I added, picking at my food. “She had Ms. What’s-her-name the nurse.”

  “Ms. What’s-her-name who packed up and left the moment she found poor Cam-Cam? Can you imagine the callousness of the woman? You simply can’t get good help these days. The world is full of soulless people with no poetry in their hearts.” Kitty shook her head and sipped her tea daintily. “It wears me out so.”

  After our supper, I washed up with Martin. My aunt didn’t believe in modern contraptions like dishwashers. I washed, he dried, as if we’d done it together a thousand times before.

  “She was very beautiful when she was younger,” he began, placing a plate in the cupboard. “She was still a great beauty when I was a boy. I was quite enraptured by her.”

  I paused and looked at my father, shocked that he could ever have had eyes for anyone other than Kitty, but he was looking off into the middle distance, deep in his own thoughts.

  “Apparently, when I was three I announced I was going to marry her.”

  “Oh bless.”

  He chuckled at the precociousness of his romantic notions as Kitty entered the room. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the story, but I laughed as I always did.

  My father seemed to be in another place and time as he added, “And do you know, I stuck to my guns when they told me I couldn’t marry my aunt. I told them, ‘Well, if I can’t marry her, I shall find someone just like Aunt Cam to marry!’ And I did. Same long thin frame, hair like spun gold, just like a screen goddess,” he continued. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Aunt Camilla or Kitty now.

  Kitty ruffled his hair affectionately. “Oh, Martin, stop. You know it’s a sign of impending madness when you repeat stories of your childhood over and over again.”

  “I expect it is,” my father agreed, putting the last plate away. “I shall still miss the old thing, though.”

  “Last of the Grand Old Edwardians,” Kitty teased, but she seemed pensive too. Later, as she curled up on the living-room sofa with some papers of Aunt Camilla’s, I watched her and thought I’d never seen her so quietly still. Normally when Kitty did “still,” it was in a languid, feline way—you could almost hear her purr. Now she was simply absorbed; her eyes veiled by her flamboyant reading glasses, poring over a file of papers.

  Finally she looked up at me. “You know, her funeral arrangements are madly elaborate. Are you sure you didn’t help arrange all this for her, Lola?” she asked. “It seems every last detail is taken care of, all the insurances, all the bookings. Absolutely fascinating. I’m really impressed.”

  I was stunned by the compliment. I was never really convinced that Kitty knew exactly what it was I did for a living, as she always seemed to go into one of her “despairs” whenever I spoke about my career.

  “Here, take a look at these papers and see what you think, Lola. Even the guest list is drawn up as if for a celebration.”

  I read the hand-written pages with interest. Titled, The Funeral Fete & Ball of Lady Camilla Dawne, every detail was laid out, complete with contingency plans. The funeral itself was to take place on the Friday morning a week after her death, her cremation to take place the same day. The fete was to commence on the Saturday after her funeral, at 11:00 a.m. on the village green. She’d paid a premium so that her booking superseded any other bookings. She’d even set aside a further amount to reimburse any inconvenienced parties. She was such a loved member of the community that I couldn’t imagine anyone minding in the least putting their occasion off.

  Kitty was right, the proposed schedule was professional. I couldn’t have done better myself. She’d covered everything with the attention to detail that I would have; there were plans in place so that anything that could go wrong would immediately be put to rights.

  The fete was to last all day and included rides and festivities for children. In the evening there was to be a ball
in a marquee. A deposit had already been placed with the caterers and the band. The guest list was vast and looked as if it had recently been updated. The finale was to be a fireworks display at midnight, with Aunt Camilla’s ashes being fired off into the sky. Everything right down to the appropriate insurance had been accounted for.

  “Talk about going out in a blaze of light,” I remarked as I passed back the file.

  “I’m just staggered at the vast organization involved with hosting an event like this,” Kitty mused, putting on her glasses and looking through the documents again.

  “Is it called ‘hosting’ when the host is dead?” Martin inquired.

  Kitty ignored him as she looked up at me. “Is your job as complicated as this, Lola?”

  “It depends. Yes, I suppose…”

  “When you think about all the things that can go wrong.” She shook her elegant head and looked at me carefully. “I simply had no idea how elaborate these sorts of events were to organize. You are a clever girl, aren’t you, Lola?”

  I blushed at the compliment, which was repeated about ten minutes later as the sun set over the village green opposite. I tried to imagine my aunt planning this celebration for her friends and family on evenings like this. I could see her now, sitting where Kitty was sitting, going over the details of the fete and the ball in her head, picturing how it would all look. I could imagine her, imagining her guests laughing and partying, while she burst into the sky in a flaming wheel of fireworks. I could imagine her getting quotes from caterers and auditioning bands and trying to imagine all the things that could go wrong and then making B plans to cover them.

  “She was in love once, you know,” Martin remarked, breaking our comfortable family silence.

  Kitty took off her glasses and stared at him as if he was an interloper. “What’s this? You never told me anything about her romantic soul.”

  “No?”