Petite Anglaise

by Catherine Sanderson

  The sound of my mobile phone pealing in my bag caused me to flinch as though I’d been electrocuted. Maryline? I leaped off the bed and crouched naked on the floor, upending my handbag in my haste and tipping its contents on to the carpet. But the name on the display was Mr Frog’s: his ears must have been burning. I would have to take his call with another man’s sweat drying on my skin. I could hardly ignore it. It could be some sort of emergency. ‘Hey, is there a problem?’ I said as evenly as I could manage. My cheeks were on fire, my hands shaking. Please don’t let Tadpole be ill, I prayed. Please don’t make me have to leave now. Mr Frog’s voice was crystal clear, as though he were right beside me in the hotel room. It felt as though by rights he should be able to sense that I was naked; he must know instinctively what I was up to.

  ‘No. Maryline just left, and I was wondering how long you’d be, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh. Right,’ I said, my voice filled with relief. ‘I’m not sure. A couple of hours at least.’

  ‘Where are you?’ Mr Frog said, his voice suddenly sharp. ‘It sounds a bit quiet for a party…’

  I faltered, my knuckles white around the telephone. ‘Oh, it’s more like a group of friends eating and drinking, really,’ I replied, hoping my lie wasn’t detectable. ‘But I moved into the bedroom when I picked up the phone.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. Was it my imagination, or did he sound unconvinced? ‘Well, I suppose I’ll see you later…’

  ‘No need to wait up, though,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I might be quite late. Bye for now.’ Dropping the phone on to the carpet, I sat still for a moment, my head buried in my hands.

  ‘Was that who I think it was?’ James asked cautiously. I raised my head and nodded silently. ‘What rotten timing!’ He gestured for me to join him on the bed. ‘Are you okay?’ I crawled into his arms, my shoulders quivering.

  ‘I hate doing this lying thing,’ I sobbed. ‘I’m not cut out for this at all.’

  ‘I wish you didn’t have to,’ James murmured. ‘You need time and space to get your head around all of this. Take as long as you need. If you decide this isn’t what you want, I’ll disappear, and you’ll never have to hear from me again if you don’t want to. I really, really hope you don’t feel that way. But I’ll respect whatever decision you make.’

  In the early hours of the morning I tore myself out of James’s arms, showered, ran out into the night and flagged down a taxi. As I slid into bed by Mr Frog’s side, saying a silent prayer of thanks when I realized that he was sleeping deeply, I was conscious of the fact that my skin was still tingling, my breaths still fast and shallow. Wide-eyed, my body rigid, I relived the past twelve hours over and over again. When the alarm sounded, I felt sure I had only slipped in and out of sleep for a matter of minutes.

  ‘Good party last night?’ murmured Mr Frog sleepily as he heaved himself reluctantly into a sitting position.

  ‘It was cool.’ I stifled a yawn and shifted my position so that he couldn’t see my face. For once I was glad of his morning routine: the longer he languished in his bath, the less I would have to face him. Tadpole woke in unusually high spirits, and our morning preparations went relatively smoothly. As soon as Mr Frog left for work, I called the office to speak to my boss. ‘I’ll be in at lunch-time,’ I said, picturing his irritated expression, and struggling to keep the smile out of my voice. ‘I’m waiting for an agency babysitter to arrive, but she wasn’t free until midday.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s better than nothing,’ he said with an exaggerated sigh.

  ‘If you need to speak to me, best use the mobile number,’ I added, amazed at my own foresight. ‘I’ll probably pop to the park in the meantime.’

  Once I’d dropped Tadpole off at the childminder’s, only a couple of hours remained before James had to check out of the Hôtel Saint Louis. When midday came, not wanting to part, not yet, I suggested we grab some lunch together near by. With me clinging to his hand like a love-struck teenager, my caution now cast aside, we meandered aimlessly for a while, unable to focus on the mundane task of choosing a restaurant. Eventually we stepped inside an unassuming café on boulevard Beaumarchais and ordered two croques madames. It was early, and there were few customers. As we waited for the toasted sandwiches to arrive, I gripped James’s hand tightly across the Formica tabletop with its garish paper place-mats, reluctant to let go.

  Eating in front of James for the first time almost felt more intimate than removing my clothes. My mouth was dry, and I found it difficult to swallow. Cutting my food into tiny pieces, I pushed them self-consciously into my mouth, which felt bruised and swollen from all his kisses. We said little, and I concentrated hard on fighting back the waves of despair which had begun to well up. Soon I would be alone, with only my guilt for company. I pushed my plate away, half-full. ‘I don’t think I can prolong the agony any longer,’ I said. ‘I ought to go.’

  At the top of the concrete steps leading down into the métro, James cupped my face in his hands and I let him kiss me, in full view of anyone passing by. ‘I know this is much harder for you than it is for me,’ he said, brushing my hair from my eyes, ‘but be strong. I’ll call you when I get home, if the coast’s clear.’ I nodded, and gave him a long, hungry look before I turned and walked down the steps, clutching the hand-rail tightly. Some superstitious notion prevented me from looking back, as though one backward glance from me would turn him to stone.

  In the métro carriage, I withdrew my iPod from my bag and selected a song big enough to contain my emotions: ‘Gorecki’, by Lamb. The words suddenly seemed to resonate with more meaning than ever before, and tears – happy tears – began to slide down my cheeks. I stared at my reflection in the glass doors as the train rattled along, wishing I could run back along the dark tunnels to where he stood. Words thrashed around in my head and I ached to turn them loose.

  As I stepped into the brightly lit, mirrored lift which would deliver me to the office, my phone stirred in my pocket.

  ‘Can see every detail of your face in my mind. Makes opening eyes pointless.’

  I tapped my reply as the lift bore me upwards, hitting ‘send’ just as the doors slid silently open. ‘Drive carefully, preferably with eyes wide open.’

  12. Confidences

  Amy found me in the kitchen a few minutes later. My boss wasn’t yet back from lunch, and I was too agitated to sit still at my desk, regardless of the vertiginous pile of documents waiting in my in-tray. Shunning the coffee machine – because caffeine would only make me even twitchier – I had set the kettle to boil and was digging through the contents of the cupboard searching for herbal tea.

  ‘Catherine!’ she exclaimed. ‘I didn’t see you arrive – I take it your nanny’s better now if you’re back here again?’ I withdrew my head from the cupboard, my cheeks reddening. Now was probably time to come clean and face the music. If I kept all this to myself a moment longer I was afraid I would burst.

  ‘It wasn’t the nanny,’ I confessed. ‘I’ve met a man, and I’m really, really into him. He was visiting Paris and I had to make up the nanny story to give me a chance to spend time with him…’

  ‘Met a man? How? Where?’ Amy looked astonished, and clearly what perplexed her most was how I’d found the time. Whenever she’d seen me outside work, it had invariably been at my place, while Tadpole slept. She knew nothing of my blog, nothing of my budding parallel social life. A lengthy explanation would now be required.

  ‘Gosh, I don’t know where to begin,’ I replied, unable to meet her eyes at first. ‘It’s a really long story…’ A familiar voice floated up the stairwell, and I knew the rest of my confession would have to wait: any minute now my boss would materialize in the kitchen to fetch coffee. ‘Damn, I’d better go,’ I said, gesturing towards the doorway. ‘He’s been saving up all my work while I’ve been out. You’d think I was the only secretary in this office capable of typing a letter.’

  ‘Okay, well, why don’t we go out for lunch together tomorrow, just the two of
us?’ Amy suggested. ‘You can tell me everything then. And in the meantime, get a good night’s sleep. You look like you could really do with some rest.’

  Back at my desk I grabbed my headset and got started on a dictation tape, glad of a mechanical task which allowed me to daydream and shut the world out while I worked on autopilot. My boss made no reference to my absence, nor did he make any allowances for all the catching up I had to do, but at four o’clock, when he disappeared into a meeting room for a video-conference, I was finally able to come up for air. I sat, half in a trance, eyes not really seeing the building opposite through my window, and traced the outline of my collarbone with my fingertips. My skin felt softer, smoother, more sensitive; no longer an envelope I barely noticed. Since James first touched me, I’d become aware of this body of mine pulsing with life under my clothes, every nerve ending reawakened. I felt like an instrument which had been tuned after long months of disuse.

  Re-reading the letters I’d hammered out after lunch, I found them peppered with typos and transposition errors which I hastily corrected before printing them on to company headed paper for my boss to sign. The most glaring mistake – in a letter to a client – was also the most revealing. ‘Please sign and date the documents and return them to me in the usual way,’ my boss’s voice must have said on the tape, a pretty standard closing paragraph for a letter to accompany a client’s tax return. But with my mind elsewhere, my fingers moving across the keyboard as if of their own volition had typed ‘in the sensual way’.

  ‘So, let me get this straight. You know James through this internet site of yours, but you only actually met him last week?’ Amy’s eyes were wide with disbelief.

  Amy had made a reservation in an Italian restaurant called Barlotti, one of the many which lined Place du Marché Saint Honoré, catering primarily for the suits from the transparent office building in the centre of the cobbled square. As we’d walked past, I’d marvelled, as I always did, at the way the glass structure reflected the older buildings around it and complemented them: it was good to see old and new Paris peacefully coexisting. ‘Oh my goodness, there’s a salad bar called Cuisine et Confidences,’ I’d cried out as we’d passed it by. ‘I never noticed that place before! How apt it would have been if we were eating there…’

  I’d never set foot in Barlotti either, and when the waiter led us through to our table and the space suddenly opened up to reveal a huge, high-ceilinged room bathed in natural light, I was pleasantly surprised. But once we’d taken our seats, I no longer paid much heed to my surroundings. A plate of tomato and mozzarella salad before me, I began to recount the events of the past few months.

  ‘I know it sounds odd,’ I explained, ‘but I’ve made a lot of friends through this internet diary of mine since I started writing it. Girls mostly, other expats who write about what it’s like to live in Paris.’ I picked up a piece of bread and raised it to my lips, then changed my mind and set it down again. ‘I never intended to make anything other than virtual friends, never imagined for a second that I would meet any men, but there was something about James all along. He left these really articulate comments for months… Then he emailed. When we met the other night it was supposed to be as friends – although maybe we were kidding ourselves about that – but there was this undeniably powerful chemistry between us. It was one of those rare coup de foudre moments, you know…’ I blushed and paused for a few seconds, images from the previous day in the hotel crowding into my mind.

  ‘It’s weird,’ Amy said slowly. ‘I don’t know you all that well – although I’ve got to know you a lot better over the past few months – and I barely know your boyfriend, but I always got the impression, from things you said, that you were quite lonely. Especially when you came back to work after your maternity leave. And that evening when you both came to my flat for drinks – the one and only time I ever even laid eyes on him – I remember thinking you two just didn’t seem like a couple…’

  ‘It doesn’t really feel like we are a couple any more.’ I shook my head sadly. ‘For a long time we’ve been more like flatmates, or good friends. I think I’d convinced myself that every long-term relationship ends up that way; I really thought I had no right to expect more. And, to be honest, the warning bells had been ringing for ages, since before we decided to have a baby. I could never regret that decision – I wanted to have his baby, I always thought he’d make a great father, and our daughter is so perfect, she means everything to me – but often I think she’s the only cement binding us together. We don’t ever, well, you know…’

  ‘Never?’ Amy looked as shocked as James had. I shook my head again.

  ‘And that’s exactly why I’m scared I’m letting this new thing get out of hand. I’ve been so starved physically; it’s left me feeling so needy. It’s wonderful to feel special and wanted and desired after all this time, but it must be clouding my judgement. How can I know if it’s James I want, and not just to be wanted like this by someone?’

  Amy’s eyes glazed over for a moment. I suspected I had said something that triggered a memory of her ex-boyfriend; the speeches he had made when he tried to explain his reasons for leaving after six years of living together. I suddenly felt very selfish for making her, of all people, my confidante. None of this could be easy for her to hear.

  ‘It is risky,’ she agreed, ‘if you’re going to jump in with both feet when you’re so vulnerable, when it’s so long since you’ve had someone being attentive to you… What if the whole thing turns out to have been a terrible mistake? Can you bear the idea of actually moving out, and separating your girl from her daddy?’

  ‘I don’t think I can bear the idea of staying with him solely for our daughter’s sake,’ I said, surprising myself by how sure I sounded, how final. ‘I know it sounds horribly selfish of me but, in the long run, I don’t believe that staying can be for the best, for any of us. I can’t know yet whether James and I have some sort of future, but I’m almost sure that I can’t carry on this farce. I’ll have to come clean. I won’t sneak around any more. Once was hard enough.’

  I let the waiter, who had appeared silently at my elbow, clear my untouched plate away. There was no point pretending I was going to eat anything: lunch had just been a pretext for our talk. I’d existed on mint tea and adrenalin for the past week and I hadn’t keeled over yet.

  ‘Well, if that’s what you decide, it might be an idea to leave James out of the equation, at least for the time being,’ suggested Amy. ‘Maybe you could say you’d like a trial separation?’

  ‘Without mentioning the fact that there’s someone else, you mean?’ I twisted my napkin in my hands, almost wishing I smoked, so that my nervous fingers would have something to do. ‘God. I can’t believe I’m saying this. How am I going to tell him? I love him, but just not in that way any more.’

  ‘Well, maybe he feels the same way, deep down. Maybe it won’t be as hard as you think…’

  I hadn’t the faintest idea how Mr Frog would react. He could be amazingly inscrutable when it came to emotions. Whereas I’d been quietly letting off steam on my blog for months, Mr Frog was a man of few words, more of a listener than a talker. Might he actually be relieved? My gut instinct was telling me he’d be sideswiped, but maybe Amy would be proved right, after all? Obviously, there was only one way to find out.

  ‘I’m going to do it tonight,’ I said, suddenly resolute, catching the waiter’s eye and gesturing for the bill. ‘It’s Friday night, I’ll have the weekend to deal with the fall-out. I can’t put this off any longer, however horrible it is.’

  ‘Think on it some more this afternoon,’ cautioned Amy, as she pushed back her chair and gathered up her handbag. ‘I still can’t believe that this has all come about because of a website. I’m itching to get back to the office and take a look at this blog of yours…’

  ‘You won’t find anything about what’s going on right now,’ I said hastily. ‘I’ve written very little this past week. The last post was about seeing so
meone in the métro kissing his girlfriend’s hand as she gripped the pole near the doors, and then realizing he’d singled out the wrong hand… I made it sound like it happened only this week, but actually it was something I saw years ago.’ As we made our way back to the office, I wondered whether there wasn’t a deeper significance to my unearthing that particular anecdote.

  I seemed to be asking myself a lot of uncomfortable questions about my motivations just now – as a blogger, navel-gazing was becoming second nature to me – but seldom did I find any satisfactory answers.

  13. Shellshock

  I was sitting on Tadpole’s bed, pulling her Miffy pyjama top over her head, when I heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. Tadpole heard it too and, wriggling out of my grasp, she ran towards the front door to intercept Mr Frog, shrieking, ‘Daddydaddydaddy!’ My ears ringing, the blood draining out of my face, I gripped the chest of drawers and pulled myself to my feet.

  ‘Just in time for bedtime stories!’ I said, forcing my lips into a smile as I stepped into the hallway. ‘How come you’re home so early?’

  ‘I had a meeting outside the office and, when it finished, I couldn’t face going back,’ Mr Frog explained, as he swung Tadpole up into his arms. ‘Mind you,’ he added, ‘I might have to do a bit of work later, if you don’t need the computer…’

  Mr Frog’s early appearance was a mixed blessing. I would be spared the agony of waiting, which would surely have got steadily more unbearable as the hours ticked by. But I was also desperate to call James. I’d resisted the urge to phone while I walked home with Tadpole, while I prepared her dinner, while she splashed in the bathtub, but I’d been planning to speak to him as soon as she was in bed. I needed to hear his voice telling me that I was strong, that I could do this, that I was doing the right thing. Now I’d left it too late; I was on my own.