by Freya North
Pip couldn’t decide whether to continue cuddling Cosima or to flop to the carpet and play with her. It was 5.30, just a precious hour and a half to fit in games, baths, bottles and bedtime cuddles. Fen was certainly indulging in a long shower. ‘Hope she doesn’t take all the hot water,’ Pip said to Cosima, ‘because I’m going to make you a great big bubbly bath.’ She had to admit Cosima didn’t seem remotely bothered and smelt good enough to eat anyway.
When Fen reappeared, Pip was quite taken aback. She hadn’t seen her sister look like this for a long time. And she looked great. Her hair was glossy, having been blow-dried to perfection, and she’d eschewed her customary pony-tail to wear her hair loose and lovely. Her make-up was subtle but meticulous. She was in a dress Pip was sure she hadn’t seen before though quite when Fen had taken herself shopping she didn’t know. And wasn’t it just a week or so ago that she’d endured that unsuccessful trip to Whistles?
‘You look amazing,’ Pip said. She frowned. Odd to make so much effort for someone who was hardly a bosom buddy. ‘Is that dress new?’
Fen nodded guiltily. ‘You can borrow it if you like.’
‘Well, you look particularly gorgeous –’ Pip said and though she’d intended to finish the sentence there, the niggle at the back of her mind made itself heard, ‘– for a quick drink with someone you only see once in a while.’ Just then, Pip couldn’t work out if her sister feigned not to hear or did not deign to comment but she did note that Fen did not want Cosima’s dribbly kisses or sticky fingers anywhere near her frock. ‘Doesn’t your mummy look pretty!’ Pip cooed to Cosima, trying to hand the baby over, but Fen busied herself with a glass of water. ‘Where are you meeting?’ Pip asked, because it was a reasonable question. She set Cosima down at Fen’s feet.
‘Some bar in Camden,’ Fen replied, stooping awkwardly to stroke her baby’s head whilst tucking the fabric beyond her touch.
‘Why Camden?’
‘Oh, Al suggested it,’ said Fen casually, ‘it’s his stamping ground.’
‘Well, that sounds like your cab,’ Pip said airily though she was awash with the information confirming Al as male. ‘Have a great time – and don’t worry about Cosima.’
‘Thanks,’ said Fen, gazing reflectively, momentarily guiltily, at the baby in her sister’s arms. ‘Thanks. Nighty-night gorgeous girl.’
Pip marvelled that Cosima waved to her mummy all by herself. It seemed just the other day that her chubby little arm had to be held aloft on her behalf. It felt so nice to have the weight of the baby hitched on her hip. Once she closed the door, she went to the mirror, delighted that the sight looked as natural as it felt.
‘So,’ said Pip, taking the baby upstairs, ‘so Al’s a “he”. If your mummy tried to hide the fact from me, what can she have told your daddy?’
Pip trusted the veracity of her vibes in the same way that Fen trusted the palms of her hands, and just then Pip’s vibe was one of warning. Her instinct to protect kicked in, but she wasn’t sure who warranted it first or the most. Cosima? Matt? Or in fact Fen? If she was to protect Cosima from a misbehaving mother, if she were to protect Matt from abandonment, and both Cosima and Matt from potential heartache, she should reach out to Fen first. But Fen was being evasive, Fen was being deceitful, Fen wouldn’t look her in the eye and give her a straight answer. Fen had everything to hide and thus nothing to confide. Though Pip felt very angry with her sister she felt impotent too; if her sister felt beyond reproach it was because she’d carefully taken herself out of sight and far from earshot, down to Camden for a secret rendezvous with some bloke called Al.
‘She’s made me an accessory to her crime – roping me in to babysit,’ Pip said in a sing-song voice. She mounded bubbles on Cosima’s head. ‘Poor Cosi. Am I facilitating this – unwittingly or not – whatever it may be?’ She sponged the baby gently. ‘It’s bad enough your mummy is using me – it’s worse that she’s consciously deceiving me too. But would I feel differently if she had asked outright, if she’d said, Cover for me, Pip? Would I have covered for her then?’
Pip smiled at the baby. One of a clown’s skills is to multi-task, to juggle whilst singing, to converse solemnly whilst limbs veer off on an energetic mime of their own, to talk to the audience earnestly whilst concentrating on sleight of hand, to tell jokes with a straight face, to appear to be doing one thing yet enabling something else to be happening. So while Pip bathed the baby and sang about the AllyAllyOh, she thought about Fen. And Al. As much as she wanted to denounce her, she had to consider how lovely Fen had looked. It was so much more than the sum of a gorgeous frock, clean hair and careful make-up. She glowed on account of her demeanour. Pip had to concede that Fen appeared hearteningly, refreshingly ebullient.
‘I remember that Fen,’ Pip said nostalgically, ‘but I’m worried about this one.’
Fen was right on time and momentarily she wondered whether to tell the cab-driver to go on a little, so she could walk back and not risk arriving before Al for a second time. But then she reasoned that if Al was there already she’d be denying herself his company. So she went in. And of course Al wasn’t there yet.
She bought herself a tonic water because she wanted to pace herself and anyway, she could always say it was vodka and tonic. The bar was painted purple and, with the dark red plush booths and tea lights everywhere, the interior seemed far more convivial to a winter setting than the gorgeous June evening. Fen told herself that perhaps she’d simply brazenly suggest they have a quick one here and go on somewhere else.
I only want a little bit of fun; I hope to take home something I can call upon and remember when I’m feeling frumpy or weighed down by the drudge of the day – something to raise a private smile when it’s most needed. Isn’t everyone entitled to a small, risk-free escapade? Don’t little secrets go a long way? I can feed my soul without hurting a soul.
She checked her phone. No messages. Al was now ten minutes late. And her tonic water was nearly finished.
Here he is.
‘Shit – Fen, I’m so sorry,’ Al flustered. ‘I just completely – well, anyway, I’m sorry. How are you? Can I get you a drink? What’s that?’
‘Don’t worry!’ Fen implored him, dismissing his apologies as unnecessary. ‘No problem! I was late myself! I’d love a drink – vodka and tonic, please.’
She snuck a glance at him while he ordered. He looked different to last week. Shorter, younger, plainer. That ghastly, cheap, tinny jewellery. Momentarily, Fen felt disappointed, as if all her efforts were somewhat unwarranted. But when he brought her drink over, set it down, kissed her cheek as he sat and commented on how nice she smelt, she called herself a daft cow and told herself to have fun because she was in control.
And she did have fun. She had fun because she could not afford for the evening to be anything but. She contrived to come across as lively and feisty and before long, she believed that she was. She ignored it when Al said things that were slightly puerile or rather dull and she tried not to waste time feeling irritated by him drumming along to music she didn’t know, his index fingers chopping the table edge, his top teeth biting down on his bottom lip as if he were in torment. Her job was not to judge Al, but to present herself. So she tossed her hair and dipped her head coyly and licked her lips lasciviously and fluttered her eyelashes becomingly. It didn’t really matter what she thought of him, just as long as she could weave some kind of spell that had him craving her. She knew to flatter him, to pout a little while he spoke, to laugh in excess. And to touch him. Every now and then she laid her hand on his arm, his wrist, nudged his knee. When he teased her about her not knowing some new band or other, she flicked his chin with her finger. And he caught her hand and while he held it for a suspended moment, she had the presence of mind to raise her eyebrow cockily and belie the welling adrenalin causing her stomach to flip.
‘Shall we go on somewhere?’ Fen asked because a football match was now being shown on the plasma screen and Al’s eyes were drawn to it. He looked at
her. ‘Silly game,’ she said.
‘Go back to mine?’ Al suggested, a little drunk by now. ‘My place is just around the corner.’ Fen stood up as her answer, smoothed her dress and jutted her bust just within the ambivalent side of perceptibly.
After the gloom of the purple interior, the bright evening was dazzling. A small voice told her to suggest a walk along the canal, a snack at an outside table, an ice cream from Marine Ices, but Al’s hand around her waist led her away from such thoughts.
I won’t stay if there are batik bedspreads as wall hangings.
There aren’t.
I won’t stay if there are lads lolling about.
There are lads lolling about, watching the football, but they appear not to notice Al come in. Or you.
I’ll go if the kitchen is grimy.
It is surprisingly spruce.
I’ll say I’m fine if he offers me a drink.
He’s handing you a glass of wine whether you’ve asked for it or not.
Well, I won’t drink it.
Al is rolling a joint.
And I won’t be smoking that.
‘Come on, let’s go upstairs.’
Not if it’s to your bedroom.
Well, you never know, Fen, perhaps the house has a delightful roof garden and that’s where he’s taking you.
But he isn’t because it hasn’t.
And remember, no batik bedspreads – I’ll leave directly if he has one on his bed, let alone on the wall. Same goes for joss sticks. And Jim Morrison posters. Or Che Guevara. Or that Andy Warhol banana.
Where do you stand on mattresses-on-the-floor?
I hate those.
Al has one. But it is covered with a Conran bedspread.
That’s different, then.
Be careful Fen.
She tinkers with his things, peers at photos of strangers she’ll never meet but who grin alongside this man in whose bedroom she’s mooching. Al is sitting on a pine trunk, having problems lighting the joint. She’s planning to take a drag without inhaling. She never liked weed, it always made her feel discombobulated and queasy. She’s intending to say something funny, like, I only do Class A drugs. But then she worries this might run the risk of him or his friends brandishing wraps of cocaine or handfuls of E.
‘Fen?’
Al was looking at her in a dopey haze, offering the spliff. She saunters over but soon realizes that to puff without inhaling is harder than it seems. Oh well, one drag won’t hurt. One drag and that’s it. God it is strong.
She smiles and goes away to look at an abstract print. This is the wrong thing to do as the trompe l’oeil of prismatic colour exacerbates her headrush. She’s pretending to look at old concert tickets, Blu-tacked to the wall, but actually she’s staring at the white paint in between. She feels a little nauseous. Silently, she vows not to touch spliff from this day on if only the nausea would please just abate.
Al is behind her. He has slipped his hands either side of her waist. The surprise of him there, his lips at the back of her neck, have straightened her head and she finds she can close her eyes and concentrate on his touch without feeling dizzy. He’s travelling his hands, down her hips, around the front of her thighs, inner thighs, oh God even inner more. He’s missed out her stomach and gone straight for her breasts. He’s now sucking and kissing at her neck and he’s turning her to face him. Fen is suddenly terrified. Does she really want to kiss him? She hasn’t time to figure it out because his tongue is in her mouth and she keeps her eyes closed and momentarily envisages Brad Pitt because she’s not sure she wants the reality of kissing a bloke called Al whom she hardly knows. Luckily, the weed has fired Fen’s naturally vivid imagination and she finds Brad is an excellent kisser. It’s thrilling to feel his hands caressing, groping, being led by his excitement for her. With her eyes closed, she sucks Brad’s ear lobe and grazes his neck with her mouth while he undoes the zip of her dress. The dress falls away and Fen keeps her eyes shut because she’s conjured an airbrushed and idealized image of her figure in her mind’s eye and she daren’t open her eyes and find her physique causing anything other than awe and delight. But Brad is gorging on her breasts and searching for a way underneath her panties, so she needn’t worry. Fen is wet and suddenly she wants to be fingered and sucked and fucked and she’s so hot and turned on and slightly woozy that she no longer cares if it’s Brad Pitt or Al.
And then a mobile phone rings and she knows that it’s hers. She’ll let it ring out. It does. They’ll leave a message. No, they won’t – they’re ringing again. Sod off. They ring again.
‘Shit, sorry, I’d better just see,’ says Fen, opening her eyes, locating her bag, catching sight of Al’s reflection in the mirror and feeling immediately shy. She goes over to retrieve her phone, holding her crumpled dress against her body.
‘Hullo?’
‘Fen – hi sorry, it’s me.’
It’s Pip.
And here’s Al, slipping his hand down the front of her knickers and tugging cheekily at her pubic hair. Fen glowers at him in the mirror but he closes his eyes, bites her shoulder and works a finger through the lips of her sex.
‘Can you hear me OK, Fen?’ ‘Yes.’
Fen is turned on by the sight of her body being ravished by this person. It doesn’t matter that he’s not Brad Pitt any more. What matters is that he’s not Matt. He’s secret. She spreads her legs, permits him easier access.
‘Is everything OK, Pip?’
‘Well,’ Pip says, ‘I wouldn’t have phoned – but I can’t seem to settle Cosima.’
Fen tries to still Al’s hand, grabs at his wrist. She’s doesn’t want to be fingered in the same breath as talking about her daughter. She steps aside and is vaguely aware that he’s now unbuttoning his trousers.
‘What do you mean?’ she asks Pip.
‘Well she just seems restless, a little fretful.’
‘Is she hot?’
‘A little.’
‘Shit. OK. I’m on my way.’
Fen shrugs apologetically to Al who is standing there with an impressive hard-on which she considers probably looks bigger because his body is so thin and hairless. Nothing like Brad Pitt. Or Matt Holden.
‘My kid,’ Fen shrugs and instantly detests herself for referring to Cosima as such, for all but blaming her baby for coital interruption. Al is absent-mindedly caressing his cock and Fen wonders, a little pathetically, whether he’ll wank in her honour once she’s left. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I’m really going to have to go.’
She dresses and as she does, she looks at a framed photo of a young woman.
‘That’s Kay,’ he tells her. Al is still naked, his cock now at half mast. It seems disrespectful, really.
Fen looks at the photo. She was pretty, his sister. And as she sees herself out, she thinks how death distorts. She knows she was enamoured with the idea of Al because he was this brave boy who’d faced tragedy head-on. She loved the sight of him placing his flowers around the tree-trunk; his story. But she knows now he is rather immature, a bit boring actually, and a little too puny for her taste.
She heads out into the street, flags down a cab mercifully easily and phones Pip to tell her fifteen minutes. Fen gazes out, her head rests lightly against the window, being juddered; as if she needed physical discomfort to bring her to her senses. Yes, she feels guilty for the pleasure she’s just had, the illicitness of it, the excitement and attention. She feels badly for Matt and she fears Cosima’s unsettled state is directly attributable to her bad behaviour. But Fen’s anxiety runs deeper too and it occurs to her that it is rooted in something far more ominous.
Is history repeating itself? Is this what my mother went through? Did her cowboy come riding by just when she was becoming stifled by the drudge of it all?
But did he lure her away or did she seek him out?
Pip tapped the phone against her lip. It was difficult to know what to do.
Should I wake Cosima in ten minutes or so? Or is that too cruel
?
Because, in reality, Cosima had actually been sound asleep since Pip laid her in her cot after her bottle two hours ago.
Matt came in half an hour after Fen. He’d left the bus early and taken a long walk to settle his nerves and ensure he was word perfect. He was dreading being the harbinger and he was dreading seeing Fen distressed, yet he hoped it might engender an opportunity to put his arms around her and hold her close. That she might feel safe. Protected. If she’d let him.
‘You’re back early,’ he said.
Fen nodded. ‘Pip couldn’t settle Cosima.’
‘Is she OK?’
‘She’s fine – she was fine by the time I arrived back. Probably tummy troubles or something.’
‘Did you have fun with your friend?’
Fen looked at Matt and wondered if fun can only be fun if it’s still fun in retrospect, in the aftermath. She nodded because she didn’t want to say yes out loud. Because if she did she’d be saying to her partner’s face, Yes it was fun to have some bloke I’ve met three times finger my vagina and fondle my boobs.
Matt looked at his watch, as if Fen’s answer was a long time coming. ‘Ten to ten,’ he said. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Please,’ said Fen, ‘thank you. I’ll just pop upstairs and take off all this stupid make-up.’
‘You look nice,’ said Matt. ‘I like your dress.’ Shit – how long does make-up take to remove? More than ten minutes? Matt had no idea. ‘Leave it on!’ he exclaimed. ‘You look nice.’
Fen found this touching. But she was desperate to remove the knickers tacky with the juice of infidelity. ‘I’m just going to the loo,’ she told him.
‘You feeling OK?’ Matt asked. Timing was everything but he really didn’t want to ask her outright, Number One or Number Two.
‘Just a bit tired,’ said Fen.
When she came back downstairs, a cup of tea and a biscuit were waiting. And so was Matt.