‘Mon petit canard,’ she said tenderly as I changed her nappy, reaching up and pinching my right cheek until my eyes watered, in what was supposed to be an affectionate gesture, and would have been, if only her fingernails hadn’t been in such desperate need of a good clipping. ‘Allez, mange!’ she urged as I listlessly pushed breakfast cereal around my bowl, unable to work up any enthusiasm for eating. The bran flakes felt like cardboard in my mouth, but I forced myself to eat a mouthful, mindful of the importance of leading by example.
One morning, about to leave for work, I bent low to fasten the buckles on Tadpole’s scuffed T-bar shoes. Mr Frog was on his knees in the hallway, busy cramming papers into his bulging briefcase. When I’d finished buckling, Tadpole grabbed me by the arm, and tugged me closer to Mr Frog. ‘Donne bisou à Daddy!’ she commanded, looking at me with wide, serious eyes. I stared helplessly at Mr Frog for a moment, wondering what to do. We’d had no physical contact at all since I’d asked him to leave. When I’d brushed against him in the kitchen that morning with the sleeve of my dressing gown, I’d gone so far as to apologize. But now, under Tadpole’s watchful gaze, I obediently grazed his cheek with my lips. Thankfully, Mr Frog did not flinch.
Tadpole’s timing couldn’t have been more ironic, her attempts at reconciliation more futile. I’d booked Maryline that evening and, although I hadn’t spelled it out to Mr Frog, I knew he suspected I was going out to meet the mysterious new man in my life, whoever he might be. ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t look as though I’m going to be coming home tonight,’ I said as we parted ways in front of our apartment building. I’d left my announcement until the last possible second: an act of pure cowardice.
‘I see,’ said Mr Frog evenly. ‘Well, I don’t suppose I have any choice in the matter.’ I’d deliberated long and hard over which was worse: staying out all night, or snatching a few stolen hours with James before slipping into bed by Mr Frog’s side, the invisible imprint of another man’s kisses on my skin. If I’d come clean, it was precisely so I could put an end to the skulking around behind Mr Frog’s back, wasn’t it? And yet I didn’t want to flaunt my new relationship either.
‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I know this is horrible for you.’ But Mr Frog had already turned on his heel.
This time I had insisted on taking charge of booking the hotel. Our plans had been hatched at short notice, in the midst of the Roland Garros tennis tournament, so we were forced to settle for a downmarket hotel near Strasbourg Saint Denis, close enough to the Indian restaurants of the Passage Brady for a faint whiff of curry to permeate the air. The shabby room with its cheap grey carpet didn’t have a great deal to recommend it aside from a sixth-floor rooftop view, but James and I couldn’t have cared less. When he answered the door, wrapped in a towel, his torso glistening with droplets of water, I could find no compelling arguments for him to bother getting dressed.
‘Oh God, I missed you so much,’ he groaned, as I burrowed deep into his arms, inhaling the scent of soap and deodorant on his skin.
I put a finger to my lips. Words were not what I craved. I wanted to be taken outside of myself. To silence the turmoil inside my head and concentrate on just feeling instead. Standing back, I unbuttoned my dress, and let it fall to the floor.
Later we whispered in the semi-darkness while James traced the contours of my face as though he were memorizing my appearance with his fingertips. I told him intimate things about myself I’d never shared before. Something about being in his presence made me want to shed every last inhibition, to hold nothing back. I desperately wanted to give him insights that went far beyond what petite anglaise revealed on the blog; to step deliberately into unknown, unwritten territory.
‘I’ve never felt like this about anyone before,’ he murmured, drawing circles around my nipple with his index finger. ‘I want to build you a house with my bare hands and carry you over the threshold. I want to cook for you every evening and bring you tea in bed in the mornings. I want to read with you in front of an open fire, sipping a glass of wine. I want to drive you to the beach and lie next to you in the sun. I may not be a man of means, but I want to take care of you as best I can…’
If I were a cat, I would have purred. There was something so seductive about the combination of our explosive sexual connection and this desire to take care of me, pamper me. James seemed to embody everything I craved. He was everything Mr Frog was not.
‘You do realize,’ said Mr Frog as he ate his usual evening meal of charcuterie, cheese and bread, the contents of the fridge laid out on a tray on the coffee table, ‘that there’s nothing easier for this new boyfriend of yours – this guy who has been reading about everything you reckon is wrong with your life for however many months – than to say everything he knows you want to hear.’ He fished a cornichon out of the jar and stabbed the pickle on to his fork, with excessive violence. ‘He can exploit every weakness, every faille in our relationship and turn it to his advantage…’
‘I don’t think that’s what’s happening here,’ I said defensively, standing over him with a mug of tea in my hand, on my way to the bedroom. ‘He is who he is, and just happens to be very different from you…’
At first Mr Frog hadn’t wanted to know a single detail, but then slowly, surely, the questions had welled up, and now he was beginning to slot the pieces of the jigsaw together. He knew James was a few years my senior, English, divorced, with children of his own. He knew we had met through petite anglaise. He knew he lived in Brittany, and had no desire to move to Paris. I’d taken pains to reassure Mr Frog that there was no question of Tadpole and me leaving Paris in the near future, and to impress upon him that James would never try to usurp Mr Frog’s rightful role as Tadpole’s father. After all, James had watched another man move into his home to live with his wife and children, looking on, helplessly, from a distance. No one else could possibly understand the implications of our situation better than he. James couldn’t fail to be sensitive to what Mr Frog was going through.
‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Mr Frog retorted. He scooped the soft centre from his baguette and discarded it on the tray before popping the crust into his mouth. His jaw creaked as he chewed, a sound which set my teeth on edge. ‘And once the honeymoon period is over,’ he added, ‘who’s to say that things are going to be so much better than they were between you and me?’
I turned to leave, but not before I’d grabbed the abandoned tufts of bread and popped them into my mouth, through sheer force of habit. Mr Frog was trying to sow the seeds of doubt, to blight my happiness. I understood his reasons for doing so, but he was the last person I should be talking to about my new relationship, and I wasn’t about to allow myself to get drawn further into the discussion.
Closing the bedroom door pointedly behind me, I positioned myself in front of the computer and took a look at the latest comments on my last post. I’d begun to hint at the sequence of events leading to the break-up, revealing that I had met the new man in my life via my blog, without divulging his identity.
‘Hmm, you dump Mr Frog,’ wrote Dan, ‘deprive your daughter of her father and vice versa, and you expect not only sympathy from him, but from all your blog readers as well… who duly give it to you, amazingly enough. No doubt you are getting lots of attention from the new man in your life too. Well, give my deepest sympathies to Mr Frog. He might be feeling a tad(pole) lonely.’
‘My god, Petite you cheated on Mr Frog?’ exclaimed Fleur in disgust. ‘I’ve enjoyed your blog, but right now my esteem of you has dipped to an all-time low.’
I felt tears prickling my eyes as I read those words. However vehemently I disagreed with Dan or Fleur’s point of view, I couldn’t help feeling that there was a germ of truth in what they wrote. And as vulnerable as I felt right now, such words passed through the skin barrier and penetrated deep inside. I fought the urge to defend myself, however, seeing that other commenters had already hastened to my rescue.
‘Infidelity becomes an option,’
wrote Susan, in the most measured comment, ‘when your current relationship no longer meets your needs, whether you acknowledge it or not, and you therefore become open to a kind of contact with potential replacement partners that is instinctively avoided by the happily paired.’
Reading on, I was heartened to see another kind message from Anna Red Boat, who had also met her partner through her blog.
‘All sounds a bit familiar,’ she wrote. ‘The internet is quite far and away the most civilized place to meet a suitor these days, I think. I wish you half my happiness, which should be enough in itself to make you explode, when combined with your quite palpable own.’
Other friends in blogging did their best to inject some humour, lessening the sting of the negative comments, something for which I was profoundly grateful. ‘I just think it’s shocking,’ wrote Tim, his tongue firmly in his cheek, ‘that you could even contemplate moving into a new phase of your life without so much as consulting us first. I know my rights.’
That was only the tip of the iceberg. Emails – from the supportive to the damning to the unambiguously insulting – clogged up my inbox. Everyone who read about my situation seemed to view it through the prism of their own experiences. Those who had never been tempted to be unfaithful were self-righteous and quick to criticize; those who had been cuckolded themselves saw me as evil through and through. Those who had been through something similar urged me to follow my heart.
It wasn’t only online that I witnessed such mixed reactions. A male work colleague squirmed visibly in his seat as I poured my heart out to him over lunch one day. Was he casting an anxious eye over his own situation, wondering whether his own relationship was entirely sound? Perhaps he thought my behaviour might be contagious in some way, I surmised, as though one relationship collapsing could have some sort of domino effect.
‘My, those commenters of yours are getting het up, aren’t they?’ my mother said incredulously on the phone later that evening. I’d taken the handset out on to the balcony, although I was pretty sure Mr Frog was listening to music with his headphones on.
My parents’ reaction had surprised me. I’d always confided in my mother, and she knew better than anyone that I’d been unhappy for some time, but I’d still been worried that she would think I should have worked harder at fixing things with Mr Frog rather than bailing out. But when push came to shove, she hadn’t questioned the wisdom of my actions at all. Her only fear was that I was diving in at the deep end with James; that things were moving too fast. She fretted that I might be setting myself up for a crushing disappointment further down the line.
‘He sounds lovely,’ she kept repeating, as I enthused about James down the telephone, ‘and I can’t wait to meet him. But do be careful. He seems almost too good to be true, the way you tell it, but his wife must have divorced him for a reason, nobody’s perfect…’
‘Not for her, he wasn’t,’ I snapped, ‘but that doesn’t mean he can’t be right for me.’ Her pessimism infuriated me, as it always did, even if I knew full well that she was just being a mother, wishing she could protect me from harm.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said hurriedly, ‘I’m happy for you, really I am, but it won’t be easy, him living in Brittany, you in Paris, both with children of your own. And I doubt he’ll be able to support you. You’ve said yourself that translating doesn’t exactly allow him to live comfortably…’
‘I know, Mum, I know. Being self-employed in France is really hard, there are so many taxes to pay, it’s hard to stay afloat. And he has child support to pay to his ex-wife, too. But money isn’t everything, is it? I want to give us a try. And after living with a workaholic who was never home, I think I’d rather manage with less money and more of my partner’s time.’
Returning to the bedroom, I could hear my phone vibrating in my handbag. No doubt my goodnight message from James. I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed ‘read’.
‘I think I’m in love with you.’
My breath caught in my throat. James and I had known each other for barely three weeks. We’d written hundreds of emails, talked for hours on the phone, but spent less than twenty-four hours in one another’s company. The words didn’t surprise me – his eyes had told their own story the last time we were together, in the second hotel – but although my embryonic feelings were growing and ripening with every passing day, deepening into something beyond infatuation and physical desire, I couldn’t respond in kind, not yet.
‘Love’ was a word I had cheapened with overuse over the years, bleeding it dry of meaning by saying it purely from force of habit, or to convince myself of something of which I was far from sure. I wanted to wait until the words started to feel meaningful again. And when I said them, I would say them to his face.
Wide awake hours later, Mr Frog fast asleep beside me, an unwelcome thought flickered across my mind, not for the first time. I’d seen with my own eyes that in James’s phone, my number was programmed as that of petite anglaise. Was it really me James had fallen for, or was it my blog persona?
I wasn’t even sure I knew any longer where one ended and the other began, so what chance did he have?
15. Parenthesis
Three whole weeks crawled by before I saw James again.
In the meantime, although we bounced emails and text messages back and forth all day long and spent hours on the phone in the evenings whenever Mr Frog stayed late in the office, or went out, it simply wasn’t enough for me. I needed time in James’s presence; I needed to be sure it was me he wanted.
‘Listen, I’m a bit strapped for cash just now, but if you need me to come to Paris, if we have to do the hotel thing again, I will,’ he said on the phone one evening.
‘It’s tempting,’ I replied, shivering involuntarily at the memory of the last night we’d spent together. Undeniably, there was something about meeting in a hotel – a whiff of something illicit, forbidden – that was thrilling in itself. ‘But what I really want is to do normal things. Take a walk in the park. Cook a meal together. Snuggle up on the sofa in front of the television. Fall asleep with your arms around me. I want to see where you live, so that when we’re apart I can picture you there…’
‘I want those things too,’ James said earnestly. ‘And we’ll do them all when you come to visit. We just have to be patient. Enjoy your weekend in England with your parents. Make the most of your time with your daughter. When the time comes, I know you’ll be worth the wait.’
But now that I’d met James, life in Paris seemed even more sterile and barren; my métro–boulot–dodo routine unbearably suffocating. Work was a tiresome obligation; the apartment I still shared with Mr Frog a prison with a view. His face was the first thing I saw every morning, a tangible reminder of the pain I had inflicted when I made my decision. My pause button jammed down, I waited, my feelings of guilt and frustration mounting, until I thought I would explode.
‘You know, when I first told you about all this, I was convinced you were going to try to dissuade me from taking things any further,’ I said to Amy as we set down our brown-paper lunch bags in the office kitchen and pulled out two stools at a table by the window. ‘Given, well, your history and everything.’
‘I suppose,’ said Amy thoughtfully, ‘that I did disapprove a bit at first. And I was worried about you.’ I smiled, liking the ‘at first’ and sensing an imminent ‘but’. I wasn’t wrong. ‘But you’ve got such a glow about you these days,’ she continued, ‘you look so different. It’s impossible to feel anything other than happy for you. And I know you’re not taking any of it lightly, it’s clear from what you say – and what you write – that you feel guilty about all the upheaval, that you’re trying to make the transition as painless as possible. But I will say one thing.’ She gestured at the cake I was unwrapping, which was all I’d bought for lunch. ‘You’ve really got to start looking after yourself properly…’
‘I wish my body would just calm down,’ I said, watching as she transferred her carton of sa
lad on to a porcelain plate. ‘Honestly, you’d think I’d had amphetamines for breakfast, the way I’ve been grinding my teeth all morning. Hopefully things will improve when I’ve got all this waiting out the way.’
‘I think it’s good that you’re waiting.’ Amy crossed the room to the dishwasher and took out a clean fork, wiping it on a tea-towel. ‘It’s healthier this way. Maybe it’s a good thing James doesn’t actually live in Paris.’
‘So the two men in my life never meet, you mean?’ I bit into my lemon tart. It was tangy but sweet, and the pastry melted on my tongue. But however delicious it was, my dry, nervous throat had trouble swallowing it, and I had to force myself to take another bite. This was how I’d come to lose over a stone in the past few weeks.
‘Well, yes, there’s that, but I was thinking more of the fact that distance stops us from getting in too deep, too soon. Which can be a good thing…’ Amy slid on to the stool beside me. It was then that I noticed she was blushing.
‘Hang on,’ I said, looking at her intently. ‘Have I missed something here? Have you met someone new? You have, haven’t you? Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’
‘Oh, well, it’s all very recent.’ Amy looked coy. ‘But I have high hopes. There must be something in the air at the moment. I met someone this weekend. A friend of a friend. He lives in London, though.’
‘That’s fantastic!’ Now that she’d told me, I wondered how on earth I’d missed the signs. The colour in her cheeks. Her unusually buoyant mood. ‘I want details! Who is he? What does he do? When are you seeing him next?’
‘Actually,’ she said, clearly pausing for more dramatic effect, ‘I’m seeing him the very same weekend you go to visit James.’
‘No way! This calls for a celebration.’ I looked at my watch. ‘How about we nip out to the shops when we’ve finished eating? You, my friend, are going to need some new underwear.’
Petite Anglaise Page 14