by Jo Kessel
She stands up and puts her arms around me.
“Just tell me,” I say quietly, freezing in her embrace, “why I won’t be smiling.”
“You won’t be smiling,” she cuddles playfully, “because Max has ordered a three-line whip on the Summer Ball and no partners are allowed.”
“Oh,” I relax. “Thank God for that.”
“What do you mean thank God for that?” She releases me from her arms. “You hate the Summer Ball.”
True enough, I’ve never been much of a Ball person. First off, I can’t bear the whole looking for a dress shebang (you can’t possibly wear the same outfit twice). Secondly, it’s a bit like dining in Hall sans gowns. It’s just not my thing. It’s a hugely raucous, decadent affair, with sub-standard food and music so loud you can’t believe you’ve parted with two hundred quid to be there.
“Don’t worry. I’m a big girl,” I reassure Neeta. “I can hack it.”
***
I can’t hack everything. I didn’t bother bringing up the name Charlotte Buchanan with Adam, or the fact that I’d seen her name and address on that piece of paper stuffed in the back of his jeans. Instead, I waited for the day and time of their rendezvous to come around, to see what Adam would do.
“You don’t mind if I go to the golfing range tonight?” he’d asked.
Adam’s got his own set of clubs, but he never actually plays golf. The closest he gets is going to the range, where they allocate you a square meter of Astroturf and a tee to swing some balls from.
“Not at all,” I’d said.
I had a plan.
“Is Kayla coming round or anything this evening?” he pried.
“No, I’m just going to stay at home. Watch some TV. Why?”
“I just want you to have a nice time.”
I know it’s the pot calling the kettle black, but still, I couldn’t believe Adam was playing around and had to find out for certain. I gave away nothing though. I’d waited for him to leave, golf clubs in tow and given him a couple of minutes head start before picking up my car keys and heading off. Not to the golfing range, but to Charlotte Buchanan’s house. His dated white BMW 3-series was parked outside, clubs abandoned on the back seat. I sat in my car, stalking, like a private eye, a discreet distance away, watching for telltale signs, curtains being drawn, silhouettes of naked bodies behind nets, but nothing. Forty-five minutes later, just as I was thinking of heading off, presuming that otherwise, I could be in for a long wait, the front door opened and I saw her.
Charlotte Buchanan, she with the pretty name, also had a pretty face. She was tall, bohemian, with a to die for mop of waist-length brown ringlets. She was probably a bit older, late thirties at a guess. Adam stepped over the threshold as I, super sleuth, sat slumped in the driver’s seat, goggle eyes straining to peer over the base of the window.
They shook hands, a bit formal for lovers I’d felt, but then she drew him in, for a kiss, not quite on the lips, but not far off, an accidental miss. Adam had a spring in his step as he skipped down the garden path and got into his car. I’d given him a couple of minutes’ head start, before turning the key in my ignition. I spent the entire journey back confused. On the one hand it was a comfort Adam was as much a sinner as I was. On the other hand, I felt a mighty kick to the stomach, leaving me quite winded. I’d strayed out of weakness, but perhaps Adam had a stronger reason. Perhaps he’d looked elsewhere because I wasn’t enough of a woman. Charlotte Buchanan looked positively fecund in comparison, all the better to give him the child he so desired. I had no right to feel so wronged considering I too was a guilty party, but you see, I’d decided to end things with Anthony. I’d regretted my actions, knew they were reprehensible and wanted to wipe the slate clean. Adam was where my future lay. I still loved him. It hadn’t crossed my mind that perhaps he might not still love me.
Chapter 18
“Want to risk another?” asks Anthony.
It’s both good and bad that Maxwell had sat Anthony to my right at the Ball. Good to be sat next to somebody I liked and bad because I was concerned that after a drink or two others would start noticing our attraction. The food, as usual, was sub-standard. The only nice course was desert, summer pudding with cream. Starter was a stale tartlet of sun-dried tomatoes with goats’ cheese. Mains, predictably, was chicken. Tonight though, just the smell of the food repulsed me. I couldn’t stomach a morsel and the plates couldn’t be cleared soon enough.
The best bit about the evening is the twenty-piece Big Band. The dance floor’s sweating with a tightly knit crowd of legal movers and shakers, boogying to all the old favourite Frank Sinatra, Bo Diddley type numbers. Anthony and I have just finished swaying to Irving Berlin’s ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’. One of his hands linked with mine, the other behind my waist, pulling me close, I was in retro heaven.
Anthony does the DJ thing very well. He was made for a tux and wears it stylishly, quite wipes the dance floor clean. I’d like to think that I haven’t let him down, in my Diane von Furstenberg. It’s a slinky, black wrap dress that I picked up in the sale at this designer boutique in Crouch End. Adam had been genuinely wowed when I’d modelled it for him, said I was sure to be hit on looking like that. I’d bit my tongue and swallowed the name Charlotte Buchanan.
“You know what,” I reply to Anthony, as we linger on the dance floor, “I’m baking and you’ve exhausted me. Do you mind if we get some air?”
“Sure.”
We leave the building, taking a seat, side by side on the stone mount round the fountain outside. A few other people, too, are milling around.
“That’s better,” I say, fanning my face with my hand. “I can breathe.”
It usually rains on cue for this event, so it’s a pleasant change to have a beautifully balmy midsummer’s night.
“Nice dress,” he nudges my arm with his. “Very sexy.”
“You don’t scrub up bad yourself,” I nudge him back.
“Are you having a nice time?” he asks.
“Not until now.”
“Do you want to stay?”
“Not really.”
“Shall we move on?”
“I don’t know. Shall we?”
“It’s up to you.”
My watch says 10.45 p.m.
“Isn’t it a bit early?”
“I doubt anyone will notice.”
It’s quarter to eleven. Adam’s not expecting me back till the early hours anyway. I get up, made brave by the 40% volume tawny port that ended the meal. “Come on then. Let’s scoot.” I hold out my hand for his, pull him to standing. Just as we’re about to leave Maxwell Hood QC walks out of Hall. “You two slipping off already?” He winks, then dashes off in the other direction, without waiting for an answer.
***
“This is becoming a bit of a habit,” I say, post-coital, in Anthony’s bed. The sex, as ever, was this curious cocktail of lust and sensitivity. At one point I’d been so overwhelmed emotionally that I’d been on the verge of saying I love you. I don’t love him. At least I don’t think so, but sometimes, somehow, at the height of exquisite intimacy, those are the only words that will do.
We hadn’t gone straight back to his place. We’d walked the buzzing, pub spilling pavements of central London for the best part of an hour, stopping only for a brief moment, in a side street off Leicester Square, hiding behind a rubbish cart, kissing romantically, oblivious to the fragrant decaying garbage. I wondered after that, out loud, whether now Maxwell as well as Scott Richardson had cottoned on to our affair. Anthony thought that I really oughtn’t to be so paranoid, that I should distance myself more from my clients and my work. My gut instinct disagreed. Nothing passes Maxwell Hood QC by. Then we’d got a cab to Anthony’s place where I got out with him, under the pretext of a nightcap.
“Habits are addictive,” he replies, winding a thick strand of my hair tightly round his finger, like a bobbin of wool, before releasing it, to see if it curls. It never does. My hair is stubbornly
straight.
“Habits are hard to break,” I say.
“Especially the addictive ones.”
“It can be better for your health to give up an addiction.”
“Would giving this one up make you feel better?”
“I don’t know.”
There’s a hand-painted canvass on the wall opposite Anthony’s bed, which draws me in every time I’m here. It’s of a beautiful, African woman wearing a full-length gold and black sarong, balancing a weighty basket of bananas on her head as she bends down to pick up a young child.
“Have you been to Africa?” I ask, captivated by the image, which speaks to me on so many levels, as a woman, as a westerner and as somebody wanting to become a Mother.
“I’ve been to Mozambique, which is where my Mother’s from.”
“What’s it like?”
He tilts his head back on the pillow.
“Mad, chaotic, very poor and very beautiful, with the most amazing untouched coastline.”
“So if you’re going to go, go now, before it becomes Costa del Sol del Africa?”
“Something like that.”
“Have you taken your daughter there?”
“Not yet. I don’t think her mother would let me. Maybe when she’s older.”
Anthony and I haven’t really spoken much about his daughter, nor his ex-wife, apart from him mentioning that she ended up being a psychotic, suffocating nightmare which he just couldn’t take any more. Hence the divorce.
“How often do you see her? Your daughter that is.”
“I have her here, most weekends.”
I’ve sneaked a peek at her no expense spared pink, fairytale, fit for a princess room, totally out of context with the rest of Anthony’s pad.
“Perhaps you’ll meet her one day,” he says.
It would be nice to meet his daughter, but progeny entering the equation complicates things. I can’t imagine it happening, so I just tell him that she looks beautiful.
“Talking about beautiful,” he gets back to the matter in hand, floating his fingers sensually across my chest. “Have you borrowed somebody else’s breasts? I swear they’ve got bigger.”
They were fuller, a week ago, when I got my period, yet again, but that finished a few days back.
He starts caressing them so lightly, so teasingly, so temptingly, that it takes a major surge of willpower to prevent myself from surrendering to his touch. It’s two in the morning. Whilst Adam might not have expected me to come back till late, he is expecting me back.
“I’ve got to go,” I say.
“Stay,” he says. “It’ll be nice.”
“I’m sorry,” I get up. “I can’t.”
***
I get back to find a scrawled note on the kitchen table, from Adam, to say that my Mum called. It’s a strange evolution, your parents living in another country, on the other side of the world. It’s supposed to be us leaving them, not the other way round. I get annoyed when they interfere or pass judgment on my life, thinking well you were the ones who went to Canada, you can’t have it every which way. They still love me, want the best for me, and the best for them, even from across the Atlantic.
They don’t live my life day to day the way that they used to, in the way, I guess, I wish they still would. Sure, they discuss work and Adam with me, from time to time, but it’s on a more superficial level. They usually forget half the stuff I say anyway. A couple of years ago I had this mole removed from the inside of my left eye. I was warned, before the biopsy, that it could be malignant. I’d been apoplectic with worry, exhausted from sleepless nights, driving Adam and Kayla crazy, but my parents didn’t get it. They didn’t feel what I felt, worry like I worried. The distance had made them less connected to me, which made me sad. Sometimes I just want to be mothered, only it doesn’t work like that anymore. I’ve been forced into self-reliance and, of course, there’s Adam.
The impact of them not being around has only really hit me in the last couple of years. They left when I was eighteen and at that age all I wanted to do was flee the nest, find my independence anyway. But more recently, I’ve wanted my mother round more. Whilst I can, of course, always pick up the phone, it’s not the same. There’s always the time difference to think about. You can’t just call on impulse, as you would if they lived round the corner. We tend to speak about once a week now, more at the moment, because we’re building up to the big one. They’re coming for their annual pilgrimage to London in a few days, staying with us for a week. It all gets a bit claustrophobic, a bit full on, having everyone under my roof, 24 hours a day, but the good thing about my parents coming is that I’ll have another focus, something else to think about, worry about, other than my personal life.
I sigh, my buzz, my high, swiped by the word ‘Mum’ and replaced with guilt. Guilt that I’d promised to take time out from the Ball to call her from my mobile at about 11 p.m., 7 p.m. her time. Guilt about why I’d forgotten. I’d been with Anthony. There’s so much to lose, so much at stake, why oh why do I keep doing this? Why oh why can I just not help myself? This man brings out the very best and the very worst in me. It’s like I’m on a helter-skelter slide to self-destruction, dragging Adam behind me. What would my Mum make of it all? Would she be there to catch my fall? I pick up the piece of paper with Adam’s message on, screw it into a tight ball and bin it. It’s coming up to three in the morning, but I’m not tired. I pick up the phone and dial. When my Mother answers, her calm, reassuring hello for no apparent reason makes me burst into tears.
Chapter 19
She’d given me a look, piercing right through to my inner soul, a reminder that she could see through me.“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU HAVEN’T DONE IT YET,” Kayla shouted.
Adam was at the off-license stocking up on lager for Dad. Kayla and I were alone in my house, waiting for our folks to arrive. They never let us pick them up from the airport, preferring to get a taxi. I’ve always felt uncomfortable about this and one year went to Heathrow to pick them up anyway, as a surprise, but they’d made such a speedy exit with their hand luggage only policy that I missed them. I’ve not tried that since. Anyway, Kayla had asked me how the Anthony conversation had gone and she’d read the truth from my expression.
“But you haven’t, you know, been with him again have you?” she asked.
I thought about lying, but remembered who I was talking to.
“Well, there was the Midsummer Ball,” I admitted.
“For the first time in your life you’re being an idiot, do you know that?”
Isn’t family meant to think you’re wonderful, whatever you do?
“Why,” I said, “tell me why I’m being such an idiot? I mean, if Adam so wanted to be with me, don’t you think he’d have asked me to marry him by now?”
Until making that comment I realised I hadn’t actually contemplated life without Adam, despite my behaviour. A bizarre look had crossed Kayla’s face, a momentary flash that I couldn’t quite read.
“What?” I said.
She cast her eyes down, pretending to flick something out of a fingernail.
“Well, err, you know how, err, Adam feels about marriage,” she said.
This was a most opportune moment to tell her that I now knew EXACTLY how he felt about marriage in light of his current shenanigans, but I decided to keep this one up my sleeve. Kayla already considered my conduct with Anthony reprehensible. I didn’t need her condemning my hypocrisy vis-à-vis Adam’s affair too. Besides, Adam should be the first person to confront about his dirty laundry.
“Yes,” I said, fiddling with the diamond studs he bought for my 30th. “I know how he feels.”
That strange look crossed her face again. She started to say something, then stopped and started on a different track.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “You can’t be serious about this Anthony bloke. You’ve only known him all of five minutes. Or are you planning to string him along indefinitely?”
I hadn’t re
ally thought about it. I was living for the moment, like Anthony had suggested, taking each day as it came. It would unravel itself in its own good time.
“He’s a nice guy,” I told her. “You’d like him.”
“Adam’s a nice guy.”
We stared at one another. I couldn’t argue with her rationale. What I wanted more than anything was to share with Kayla the connection I had with Anthony, make her see that it wasn’t ‘nothing’. It might not be right, but it wasn’t evil. It was at this juncture that we’d heard a car door slam in the road outside, noisy chatter winding up the garden path, and my father beat his customary ‘bum, buddy, bum, bum’ (pause) ‘bum bum’ rat-a-rat with our front door knocker.