by Julie Cohen
‘But you’ve got a career,’ says Wendy. ‘So that must be rewarding. How does it feel, though, to be in that men’s club? They’re all men, aren’t they? Except for the secretary. I would go spare.’
‘I don’t mind. I like men.’
Wendy finishes her gin and tonic and looks at it ruefully. ‘I’m going to be sozzled before anyone turns up at this rate. Would you mind putting some veg on these kebab skewers?’
Honor is trying to get a grip on a slippery cherry tomato when the front door opens and she hears feet running towards the kitchen. ‘Mum, can we have an ice cream now?’ yells a tow-headed girl in shorts, crowding up to Wendy. A second equally blonde girl follows, holding a tub of ice cream.
‘Your father is such a pushover,’ says Wendy. ‘Did he remember the sausages as well?’
‘Yeah, he—’
And then Paul is there, in the kitchen, wearing a shirt open at the collar, holding a plastic bag, saying ‘Do you doubt me’
He stops. He looks at Honor, and immediately away. Then back again, with his face prepared. He does not meet her eyes.
‘Oh, hello, Honor, I didn’t know you were here already.’ He kisses her briefly on her cheek and Honor feels his lips, smells the tobacco and coffee and flowers. Remembers the last time they were together alone, in a B&B near Chipping Norton. How they made instant coffee and talked about Heidegger, his hand resting on her naked breast. Two weeks ago. Honor had started to suspect then, but she hadn’t had a test yet.
‘Has Wendy put you to work?’ he asks.
‘Anyone who walks into this kitchen gets put to work.’ Wendy takes the plastic bag and peers into it. ‘Oh Paul, you got the wrong sausages.’
‘There’s such a thing as wrong sausages?’
‘Yes, nobody likes this kind. And I asked for two packets. Honestly, Paul, I’m nervous as a cat already, I don’t need to be worrying about the sausages.’
‘I’ll go back to the shop.’
‘No, people will be here in a minute.’
‘Mum, can I have an ice cream?’
Honor wipes her hands on a tea towel and says, ‘I will just find the loo if you don’t mind.’
‘Upstairs, first door on the landing,’ says Wendy, going to the refrigerator.
This house is full of things. Books, records, flowers, furniture, pictures. A relationship shored up with objects and history. Honor walks through the rooms and thinks, Everything in this room has its story in their marriage, a private story not accessible to outsiders. Wendy gave Paul this; he chose this to please her; this was a wedding gift; their firstborn made this in school.
Honor and Paul have no setting together. They meet in hotels and in his office, and once – only once – in her flat. She can’t picture them with a chintz sofa, a ceramic ashtray, a cot upstairs. A narrative behind things.
She touches a photograph, framed in silver, next to the Spitfire model. It’s a posed photo, taken in this room from the looks of it: Wendy, Paul, the three girls, two blonde, the youngest with dark hair like Paul’s. Wendy wears pink lipstick and a flowered frock. From the length of Paul’s hair and the size of the children, it was taken a few years ago. Perhaps around the time that Honor met Paul. There’s no trace of it in his face in the photograph, though: no sign that he’s met a woman he desires. He’s just smiling. An ordinary father. An ordinary house.
Honor is reflected in the glass. Her face is severe, with its prominent nose and chin, its high cheekbones. Her eyes are dark, her black hair pinned up at the back of her head. She has recently found threads of silver in it.
A sound comes from the corner of the room, and Honor starts. A third child is curled up on the sofa. The smallest girl, with the dark hair. She cuddles her doll and sucks her thumb.
‘Hello,’ Honor says to her. After a pause, the girl removes her thumb from her mouth.
‘My mummy and daddy told me not to talk to strangers.’
‘A very good policy.’
Paul enters the room; she feels it as a shift in the temperature of the air. She is sensitive to his every movement, as she has been since the moment she first saw him.
‘I’ve got to go back to the shop,’ he says, and catches Honor’s wrist in his hand. ‘Listen,’ he begins softly, and Honor tilts her head towards the child. He drops her arm.
‘Are you feeling any better, Alice?’ he says to the child, going to her and sitting beside her. He puts his hand on her forehead, a gesture he has done a thousand times, and in that gesture Honor sees it all. All the minutes and hours and days and years that she has not been part of.
The tenderness that he would give their child in her womb, this same tenderness, would steal from this child on this sofa right now. It would steal from the ordinary house, the ordinary woman in the kitchen giving ice cream to her two girls.
She lays her hand on her stomach, still flat. She closes her eyes and apologizes to her future baby for stealing from him, too.
‘I’ll go to the shop for you,’ she tells Paul. ‘You stay here.’
She walks out of the door and she does not come back.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jo
RICHARD DIDN’T RETURN her calls asking if he could have the children that weekend. Lydia was out in the evenings – she didn’t say where, just that it was something to do with school – and when Jo asked her if she and Avril could stay in one evening at theirs, Lydia just shook her head and turned up her music. Even after the children were asleep, Jo couldn’t leave them in the house with Honor, because she couldn’t get up the stairs if anything happened.
Saturday, Lydia had gone for a run despite the pouring rain, and who knew when she would be back. Her runs seemed to go on for hours, these days; it was a good release from exam pressure. Jo stood at the kitchen sink even though the washing-up was done, looking across the garden. Was he in? Could she slip out later, when Lydia was home?
‘If you want to go out,’ said Honor, ‘I’m capable of looking after the children for an hour or two.’
She turned around, surprised. Honor was sitting at the kitchen table; she hadn’t even noticed her coming in the room.
‘Oh, I couldn’t.’
‘Of course you could. I’ve been in charge of children before, you know. I can’t run after them, but we can do quiet things indoors.’
‘But Lydia says you don’t—’ Jo stopped. There was no need to remind Honor that she didn’t like young children. ‘I don’t have to go out.’
‘You never have a minute to yourself. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. And being a martyr doesn’t make you Mother of the Year. In fact, I’m pretty sure that award has never been handed out to anyone, ever, no matter whether they sacrificed their career and social life for their children or not.’
‘I haven’t sacrificed,’ began Jo, but then why deny it? ‘I’ve never had a career anyway. Working in a café and then for an estate agent isn’t exactly high-powered.’
‘Why don’t you go out for a coffee, or to do some shopping? Meet up with a friend. Take advantage of live-in childcare. I’m not going to be here for ever.’
‘I didn’t invite you here to be live-in childcare!’
‘But I’m right about the social life, aren’t I?’
Jo didn’t think that Honor had looked straight at her like this, since she’d moved in. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t get to have much fun. But it’s not a sacrifice. I don’t mind.’
‘Of course you don’t mind. Go out anyway. We’ll be fine here. Have some fun.’
Jo regarded Honor carefully. She didn’t suspect anything, did she? But Honor seemed unchanged, except for this offer. Her face was still stern, frowning slightly, as if she disapproved of Jo’s life even as she was trying to help with it. Then again, if Honor suddenly started grinning, Jo would know that something was wrong.
It was ten in the morning. She didn’t know what Marcus would be doing; he presumably had a social life of his own.
But she could try.
>
She brought all of Oscar and Iris’s rainy-day toys downstairs to the living room. Jigsaws, board games, blocks, cuddly animals, cars. She put a changing mat and a supply of nappies and wipes on one end of the sofa, so that Honor wouldn’t have to get down on the floor to change Iris. She prepared snacks in the kitchen, made sandwiches to put under cling film, enough for the two children and Honor too.
She ran upstairs and shaved her legs and changed her underwear.
When she got back downstairs, Oscar, Iris and Honor were all on the sofa. Oscar and Iris’s heads were pressed together over the tablet that Richard had bought them. They were swiping and pressing to the tinny sounds of Angry Birds squawks. She kissed the children, but they barely looked up from their screen.
‘Are you sure, Honor?’ she asked, hesitating by the door.
‘Go, already. I’ll ring if there’s a problem.’ Honor didn’t look up either. Jo escaped out into the rain. She wanted to run, but she forced herself to walk. Just a neighbour going to visit another neighbour for a getting-to-know-you neighbourly cup of tea.
Excitement rose in her, so strong she wanted to whoop. She skipped, stopped herself from twirling, quickened her pace. She leaped up the stairs to his front door, number 36, and knocked.
He might be out. He was probably out. In which case, she would have to go back home and get an umbrella and go somewhere else, the library maybe, or for a coffee. Like Honor had suggested. She could ring Sara. Or look for a new pair of shoes. Marcus and she had texted last night, late into the night, but she hadn’t heard from him today, so maybe he’d gone off her. Maybe it had taken too long.
For the first time it occurred to her that though they’d communicated almost constantly for the past few days, they’d never actually rung each other. Why not? Was ringing too serious? Was it too much of a commitment to actually talk to each other? She was being presumptuous, thinking that a few kisses in her kitchen and a few days’ worth of sexting gave her licence to call on him unannounced, assuming that he would want to see her.
The door opened. Marcus wore jeans and a light-blue T,-shirt and his face lit up at the sight of her. She felt her body light up too.
‘Oh wow, hi,’ he said.
‘I’ve only got a little while.’
He let her in and closed the door behind him. She was breathing hard. His feet were bare. There was music playing in the other room, something with guitars. They stood in his hallway smiling at each other. He was the same person who had been on her mind constantly for the past three days, except he was real.
She had absolutely no idea what to say or do. Small talk? Greeting? Grab him and rip his clothes off?
Should she have put on more make-up? Different clothes? High heels?
Suddenly she felt the weight of his entire life that didn’t involve her at all. His job, all his thoughts, his friends and family, his music, what he liked to eat, the way he spent his hours. They had hardly exchanged a hundred real words with each other. All this time she had been burning to see a stranger.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
‘Fine. Great. I’m sorry I couldn’t get over before. What … have you been up to?’
He shrugged. ‘Work. Marking. You?’
‘Kids. Cooking. Cleaning.’
‘Waiting for you,’ he said. He stretched out his hand and touched hers. She curled her fingers with his. His palm was warm, slightly damp.
He couldn’t be as nervous as she was?
She should ask for a cup of tea. They should sit down, at his kitchen table maybe, and talk. She should get to know him better. That was the natural order of things.
But somehow they’d stepped away from the natural order.
‘Where’s your bedroom?’ she asked him.
He drew her to him and kissed her. It wasn’t as frantic as their first kiss in the kitchen, nor as lingering as their last kiss outside the house. It was slower, more thorough. Still hungry.
‘It’s upstairs,’ he murmured against her mouth. She nodded.
She followed him upstairs. She was trembling. Ahead of her, his backside was at eye-level, his soft jeans. She looked at his back, his shoulders in his T-shirt. The way his hair curled on his neck. His feet, bare, with slender toes. He was perfect, all of him. His skin would be smooth and flawless, his body lean and strong. Not a single thread of grey in his hair. Suddenly she knew what men felt when they looked at pictures in a magazine: images translating to desire.
I will look back on this and I will wonder if it really happened, or if it was a dream.
At the top of the stairs he led her into a room. White walls, double bed, blue duvet, white sheets. It was the room she’d looked at from her own bedroom, but she felt no sense of familiarity. There was a faint scent of his shaving lotion. The bed hadn’t been made. She pictured him lying in it and she shivered.
He pulled her close. ‘I’ve been going mad thinking about you,’ he said, and began to kiss her again. He put his palm on the back of her neck, under her hair.
Jo closed her eyes. Then she opened them again. She drew back a little. ‘Are you certain about this?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you?’
‘I’m …’
‘We don’t have to,’ he said quickly. ‘I wouldn’t want you to do anything you’re not comfortable with. I just thought, after everything you said …’
‘I’m maybe braver in texts than I am in real life.’ She stepped back to get a small bit of distance, so he wasn’t touching her.
‘What’s wrong?’
She catalogued all the reasons that it was wrong in her mind, and chose the one that was the most obvious.
‘It’s that I’m forty. I’m forty, Marcus, I’ve had three children. I’ve got stretch marks. I’ve got boobs that look better with a bra on. Cellulite, and wobbly bits. I haven’t done all the pelvic-floor exercises that I should do.’ She winced. ‘Maybe that’s too much information. But I think you should know, I’m far from perfect.’
He put his hands on her shoulders. ‘I don’t need you perfect,’ he said to her. ‘I’m happy that you’re here.’
‘Have you … have you been with older women before?’
‘Aside from kissing you the other day?’ He smiled. ‘Not that I’m aware of. Jo, I’m a grown man.’
‘But I’m ten years older than you.’
He shook his head. ‘Our age doesn’t matter. You’re beautiful.’
‘You haven’t got a fetish? A mother complex?’
‘I told you, you’re nothing like my mother. You’re nothing like any mother I know.’ He unbuttoned the top of her dress. His fingers stroked down her chest, between her breasts. He kissed her lips, lightly, and her chin; the side of her neck. She tilted her head helplessly, her body thrumming.
‘I’m probably braver in texts too,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘But maybe we can be brave together.’
‘How?’
His smile was crooked. ‘Let’s do what you said you wanted to, exactly as you said you wanted to do it.’
‘I don’t know if I—’
‘I remember every word. Why don’t you start with unbuttoning my shirt?’
She laughed, nervously. ‘It hasn’t got buttons on it.’
‘Then take it off.’
He gazed at her, with the touch of a smile still on his lips. His blue eyes sexy, a hint of stubble on his chin. His room was bare, unmarked. Anything could happen in it.
‘I want you to,’ he said. ‘I really want you to.’
Jo swallowed, and then she grasped the hem of his T-shirt with both hands. She had undressed people before. Men before. But not so boldly, not whilst talking about it, in full daylight, her eyes open to see everything and be seen.
She pulled his T-shirt up over his head. He raised his arms to help her and she saw the dark hair under them. She didn’t know what to do with his T-shirt once it was off him, so she handed it to him and he dropped it on the floor.
He wasn’t smiling now. He
looked very serious. ‘Then you said you wanted to touch me,’ he said.
She reached out a hand. Her fingers were unsteady. She touched his bare shoulder, the smooth warm skin with the bones and muscles underneath. Slowly, she slid her palm downwards. He had hardly any hair on his chest. She touched the soft jut of his nipple, the ridges of his ribs. His belly was firm, moving rapidly with his breaths. She slipped the tip of her finger into his navel.
‘Then, I said I wanted to undress you.’
He did, button by button. He slipped her dress off her shoulders and let it fall next to his T-shirt. He did not kiss her, but looked at her. He unfastened her bra and eased it from her. He pushed her knickers down her legs, kneeling as he did so.
Jo could barely breathe. Her cheeks were aflame. She looked down at herself and saw the pale loose skin of her belly, the mark her bra strap had left. She saw Marcus’s curly head next to her hip, felt his breath on her, wondered if he would kiss her or touch her and take what they did into his hands so she wouldn’t have to think about it.
He stood. He looked her up and down and Jo had to fight to keep from apologizing. There was a mirror behind her; she had seen it when she’d come in the room. She would not look into it. She would try to see herself in his eyes.
She saw his throat working as he swallowed. ‘Now,’ he said, his voice hoarse, ‘you wanted to push me down on the bed.’
She did. She straddled him, her palms braced against the hollows of his shoulders. She felt him hard against her, and she looked down into his face. Into his eyes, which never wavered.
Later, much later, she followed him downstairs, wearing his T-shirt and her lacy knickers. Her thighs were sore, her skin rubbed into contentment. She had glimpsed her face in the mirror before she left the bedroom: her flushed cheeks, her rumpled hair.
Marcus went into the kitchen to put on the kettle and she checked her phone in her handbag, which she had dropped on the floor near the front door, and then wandered into his living room. Like all of the rest of the house, it had white walls and a neutral carpet: the default new house blank decor. He had a squashy sofa and a scarred coffee table covered with folders of marking; a television and a stereo with a record deck. The CD he’d been playing when she came in had long since finished. There was a large cardboard box near the sofa, apparently filled with newspaper. She reached for it to see what was inside, but stopped herself.