Never Greener

by Ruth Jones

  Matt remained silent, his breathing accelerated as repulsion and desire simultaneously surged through his body.

  ‘I think you do.’

  Matt knew without even looking round that Adam was smiling his sardonic, triumphant smile, and he wanted to punch him. But not as much as he wanted him to carry on doing what he was doing …

  Matt had never kissed a man before; never experienced the sensation of hot male skin, male lips pressed against his own, more confident and determined than any girl he’d ever kissed, harsher, muscular, powerful. And he couldn’t believe this was happening; couldn’t believe he wasn’t stopping it in its tracks. It was as if he stood a short distance away watching it happen to someone else, voyeuristically observing one man seduce another: the seduced yielding, uncomplaining and wanting more. He knew how ridiculous it would sound, but he felt he had to say it: ‘I’m not gay.’

  Adam was kneeling astride him now and grinning, breathless. ‘Nor am I.’

  When Matt woke up the next morning, Adam had gone. The relief was overwhelming; he didn’t know what he’d have done if he’d had to face him in daylight. He lay still, eyes open, not daring to move for fear of starting the day: the first day after his first-ever sexual encounter with a guy. He couldn’t allow himself to articulate the events that had taken place in this tiny rectangle of a bedroom. He wanted to erase it all – not because he was disgusted at having had sex with a man – though admittedly he was surprised – just disgusted that that man was Adam – someone for whom he felt no respect or affection or warmth.

  He steeled himself and got out of bed, turning on the taps of his utilitarian sink so hard the water bounced out and crashed onto the thin orange carpet tiles. He scooped some from the basin into his hands and soaked his face, over and over, cold, clean freshness erasing the memory, washing away the guilt. He stared back at his reflection in the mirror and was certain of two things: one, what happened last night would never happen again, and two, the sex with Adam was the most erotic he would ever have in his life.

  Both of these convictions would turn out to be untrue.

  29

  ‘I’ve been on a bloody train before, Callum. I know what I’m doing!’

  Belinda laughed and carried on packing three lots of kids’ clothes into a holdall. She was leaving for Wales that afternoon with Ben, Cory and the baby.

  ‘Yeah, but you’ve never done the journey on your own. With three of them, for God’s sake! Look, maybe I should come.’ It was a sly bit of reverse psychology on his part, because he knew Belinda knew how important the upcoming inspection was. Not just for the sake of the school, but for Callum’s career. He was in line for promotion and a trip to Belinda’s parents’ wasn’t about to scupper his chances. At least, that’s what she’d told him, and he had no reason not to believe that’s what she thought.

  ‘Callum, how many times …?’

  ‘OK, so wait till the inspection is over. And then we’ll all go.’ He knew this would fall on deaf ears too.

  She stopped packing and looked at him incredulously. ‘You seriously think I’d do that to my dad? Come on now.’

  Belinda’s father had suffered a stroke a month before Ailsa was born. He was doing OK, but was desperate to meet his new and only granddaughter. There was an unspoken fear within the family that Gareth Lewis wasn’t long for this world, and whether it was an overreaction or not, Belinda had sworn she’d be on that train heading south as soon as she was back on her post-birth feet.

  But this wasn’t the only reason she was going to Wales. Despite her outward smile, inside she felt sick with dread. Because she couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to find out. And this was the only way …

  It was Callum’s younger cousin, Angela, who’d slipped up. Inadvertently, of course. The whole family had gathered to celebrate Grannie MacGregor’s ninetieth birthday. Fergus had cordoned off the restaurant in the pub and the place was buzzing with long-time-no-sees and don’t-you-look-wells. They were a close-knit family, the MacGregors, and genuinely enjoyed each other’s company.

  Having had a few glasses of bubbly, Angela was particularly demonstrative with her familial affection that afternoon. She loved Belinda’s Welsh accent, but more than that, she loved Belinda and saw her as something of a role model. ‘The thing about you, hen,’ she was saying, ‘is how you still keep things, y’know, alive. In the old marriage department. You’re so damn sexy, for one thing!’

  Belinda, who was breastfeeding Ailsa, was feeling far from sexy at the time, Ailsa’s little gums sucking so hard it made Belinda’s nipples scream out at her in agony.

  ‘And like, even after three babies, you’ve still got it goin’ on, haven’t you?’ Angela’s breath, metallic from champagne, was too close for comfort as she leant into Belinda and whispered, ‘But I know your little secret. To a healthy marriage.’

  ‘That’ll be my roast dinners?’

  ‘Ha ha, if that’s what you want to call it … No, you were seen.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yesterday at the cinema out at Fellgate. My friend Gilly was there and she saw you two kissing in the back row. She knows Callum from the gym – said even at a distance she’d recognize him. She was going to shout hello but he looked otherwise … well … occupied. Honestly, you two, ten years married and still as in love as ever, what are you like!’

  Belinda calmly stopped feeding Ailsa, pulled down her top and turned to Angela, smiling. ‘We didn’t go the cinema yesterday.’

  Angela blustered. ‘Oh! Oh, right.’ She struggled for words as she watched Belinda deftly put Ailsa over her shoulder, patting her back to alleviate her post-feed hiccups. ‘Well, it can’t have been Callum then!’

  ‘No. It can’t have been Callum,’ Belinda repeated, still smiling.

  ‘I mean she’s a dizzy mare, is Gilly, and her eyesight is awful. And it was dark.’

  ‘Could you pass me the Moses basket?’ Belinda asked, her voice revealing nothing of the desolation building up inside her. ‘I need to get this one home.’

  And she put the baby in her crib, got up and left the party. It was twenty minutes before Callum realized she’d gone.

  Belinda wouldn’t have thought twice about Angela’s case of mistaken identity, were it not for the fact that her suspicions had already been raised: there’d been a couple of boys’ nights out recently when Callum hadn’t quite accounted for his whereabouts. And then there’d been the regular late-night returns after working his shifts at the pub, where he’d said there’d been a lock-in. But when on one of these occasions Belinda had found the courage to check with Fergus whether this was true – ‘Bit of a late one last night, was it, Ferg?’ – her stomach had churned when her brother-in-law had answered, ‘No, not particularly – pretty quiet, in fact.’ Where she found the ability to shrug it off and smile, she never knew.

  When Callum had returned from the party, she didn’t mention her conversation with Angela. She wasn’t strong enough to find out the truth just yet. She wanted to bide her time, to give him even more benefit of the doubt, until she found concrete evidence one way or another. So much for the woman who claimed zero tolerance when it came to infidelity. The truth was, she’d rather remain in denial than deal with the crippling thought of Callum having an affair.

  He took her to Edinburgh Waverley station, seeing her onto the train and settling his brood in safely for their trip. They’d booked table seats so that Cory and Ben could do their colouring-in and Belinda would have enough space to spread out her collection of treat-filled Tupperware boxes, cold drinks and games to entertain them all for the eight-hour journey ahead.

  Callum stood in the carriage and despaired. ‘How you gonna manage if you need the loo?’

  ‘I’ll ask the train manager to mind them.’

  ‘And what about when Ailsa needs changing?’

  ‘Callum, will you stop fussing? It’s all sorted. Honestly, you’re worse than my mother!’

  ‘Yeah, well I should be coming
with you. I should be driving you there.’

  ‘But you’re not. So.’

  A flicker of sorrow made her catch her breath before she smiled at him and wrapped her arms around him, ignoring the passengers pushing past to their seats and the boys making faces at the guard on the platform.

  ‘Please take care of yourself, Bel,’ Callum whispered, unashamedly displaying public affection.

  ‘You sure I shouldn’t be saying that to you?’

  And he looked at her, confused. ‘What?’

  But before he had time to wonder further why she’d said it, she pulled herself out of the hug and laughed. ‘You’ve gotta do your own cooking for five days, for God’s sake. That lasagne you made last week should’ve carried a government health warning! Now bugger off before the train starts moving.’

  And on cue, the train manager announced in very bored tones that the 14.30 Edinburgh to Bristol was about to depart, and would anyone not intending to travel please leave the train immediately.

  Callum stood on the platform and watched the InterCity 125 snake its way out of the station. He didn’t stop waving, even though he could no longer see his boys or his baby or his wife, until the train had rounded the bend and gone.

  Inside the carriage, Belinda watched as the familiar figure of her husband grew smaller and smaller and finally disappeared from view. She thought back to their courting days – only ten years ago, but it felt so much longer – when she’d make the long journey up to Edinburgh on a Friday night, only to leave again on the Sunday. Shockingly in love, every second they could spend together they would grab and relish. Oh, those precious, beautiful weekends. She nervously turned the eternity ring around on her finger, reassuring herself it was still there, subconsciously questioning the existence of the love it represented.

  Don’t break it, Callum.

  ‘Mummy, are you crying?’ Ben asked her, rousing her from her reverie.

  ‘No, babes.’ She smiled, discreetly wiping away an escaping tear. ‘Now, who’s for a game of Connect Four?’

  30

  Their time together was intricately planned. Callum had gone to school after dropping Belinda and the kids off at the station, before launching himself into final preparations for the inspection the following week.

  Nobody could have faulted him on the work he’d done. His own classroom was immaculate, even his store-room had been spring-cleaned and sorted, shelves labelled and dusted, junk thrown out – the fruits of a few late nights’ cleaning, long after the end-of-day bell had rung. He had all his termly figures and pupil assessment reports up to date, and his extra-curricular activities were a shining example of how after-school clubs should be run.

  He’d like to put his zeal down to enthusiasm for his job, but he knew deep down he was paving the way, getting the work done so that he could maximize his spare time with Kate. They’d arranged that she would come to his house after dark, and stay holed up there for the weekend. He knew that what he was doing was reprehensible, but he also knew he was too far in to turn back.

  Three whole days together. The sex was relentless. Something had shifted within them both. Maybe it was because their time together wasn’t so limited – not just a stolen hour after work or a rare weekend morning. Now they could fall asleep, wake up, have breakfast and lunch together, and to all intents and purposes pretend they were a real couple. For three days, at least. This wasn’t just a game or a summer fling any more; they both knew they were in trouble and this was getting out of control.

  It was the Sunday evening. Callum had school in the morning, so they’d planned that Kate would leave around two a.m., when neighbours’ curtains were unlikely to twitch. Kate had cooked them a meal: mussels in white-wine sauce with freshly baked bread, followed by risotto. She’d wanted to impress – stupid really, but she wanted him to know she was so much more than just good in bed, that she was proper girlfriend material. No – who was she trying to kid? – that she was proper wife material, and, more than that, proper mother-to-his-children material.

  They were sitting at the heavy pine dining table Callum and Belinda had bought just after they’d moved in five years previously. Belinda had been heavily pregnant with Ben, so Callum wouldn’t let her so much as push it an inch. Instead, she was in charge of telling him where the table should go. It had taken four attempts, and by the time they’d finally decided on the right place, they were both in stitches. Callum laughingly accused Belinda of being a control freak, winding him up by continually changing her mind. After years of use, the table bore hallmarks of an established family life: faded felt-tip from the children’s colourings-in, stubborn red-wine stains from numerous Sunday lunches, occasional ink blots from the evenings Callum had sat marking homework. And now he was eating dinner at it. With his lover.

  ‘That was outstanding.’ Callum pushed his plate away, grinning, and held his hand out for Kate to come sit on his lap. She did so, giggling at the thought of herself as some medieval serving wench. ‘Why, thank you, kind sir!’ she drawled, in a bad West Country accent. ‘See! I told you I’m so much more than a good shag.’

  ‘You’re so common,’ he joked and she laughed.

  But her smile faded and she looked at him, brushing aside the hair that had fallen forward over his eyes. ‘I got offered that pantomime, by the way,’ she said unenthusiastically.

  ‘Sweetheart, that’s brilliant! Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘’Cos I’m gonna turn it down. I can’t move away from here, Callum. Away from you.’

  ‘Kate …’

  ‘I hate how much I love you. I feel like I’m in a permanent state of car crash. If someone offered me a single wish, I wouldn’t give a toss about world peace – it would be to never have met you.’

  She put her head against his and neither of them spoke, listening to the November rain lashing angrily against the window, both lost in painful thought. He put his hand up to her face and ran his fingers along the line of her cheek and her jaw. How she adored his hands. The reassurance of them, the weight of them, so much bigger than hers, so confident, so capable those fingers … inside her … touching her in ways no one else had ever done … oh God.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ he said, more to himself than her.

  ‘I know what we should do …’

  ‘Kate, don’t.’

  ‘We should end it, right now, and I should move away, go abroad even, meet someone, marry them, have their babies and ERASE you from my head!’ She got up from his lap, angry at their hopeless situation, unable to contain her frustration. ‘Nobody – nobody! – will ever come close to what you are to me. You know that, don’t you? Meeting you has fucked up the rest of my life.’ The tears came and she tried to swallow them down with more wine, drinking straight from the bottle on the table. ‘I haven’t told anyone, Callum. D’you realize what that’s like?’

  ‘Well, of course I do – I’m in the same boat, aren’t I?’ He was growing uneasy, sensing her rising anger.

  ‘Living with this secret. Lying to my friends, to my parents – never being able to tell them I’m in love. I think my mother thinks I’m gay! And no. No, you are not in the same fucking boat as me, because you’ve got it all. You’ve got your perfect wife and your perfect children – and you’ve still got me, hanging on like the pathetic little bitch that I am, because you know and I know that I can never give you up. What’s it like, Callum?! Having it ALL!?’

  ‘Alright, keep your voice down, will you? These walls are paper thin.’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ She was weeping now. It had come from nowhere, this rage, this fury at their situation, as if only tonight she’d been made aware of the prison in which she was held – a prison of her own making, true, but a prison nonetheless. She was trapped.

  ‘You’re right, we’re not in the same boat, because I’ve got so much more to lose than you. What d’you think it’s like, Kate? Knowing what I’m doing, the guilt that’s with me every waking minute. You don’t have that guilt
, because you don’t have a family, so shut the fuck up with your sob stories and how badly off you are – you can walk away any time you like …’

  This was a pattern between him and Kate – he’d seen it before. He put it down to the passion they shared, the way they could be idyllic and bright one minute and within thirty seconds at each other’s throats. He despised himself for making comparisons, but this never happened with Belinda.

  Overcome by the realization that this might be their last night together for a while, he swallowed his pride, got up and went to her, encircling her with his rugby player’s arms, kissing the top of her head and soothing her. ‘Hey, come on, ssshhh … let’s not fight.’

  They stood like that for a while, in the kitchen that belonged to a different world, a different family, Kate gently sobbing, Callum inhaling the scent of her hair. Until she found the courage to break away and, without looking up at him, said calmly, ‘I promised myself I’d never ask you this …’

  ‘Kate …’ He knew exactly what was coming.

  ‘… but I have to, Callum, because I swear, I cannot go on like this. It’s destroying me.’ And then she looked up at him, daring him to look away as she made the ultimate request. Barely whispering, her voice shook with tears.

  ‘Will you leave her for me?’

  31

  She had no luggage, just her purse and a thin mac, defenceless against the torrents of Scottish rain as she stood waiting in the queue for a taxi. She hadn’t been thinking when she left Wales, hadn’t planned ahead. Hadn’t even brought an umbrella. But getting wet was the least of her worries right now.

  After waiting fifteen minutes, it was eventually her turn. She climbed into the back of the cab. ‘Twenty-four Sutherland Avenue, please. In Portobello.’ It was a horrible night and neither she nor the driver were in the mood for chat. Accompanied by the frantic squeaks of the windscreen wipers as they fought a losing battle, Belinda sat back and looked out at the black, wet night, thinking about when they’d first met.