“It would mean something,” he said, reaching out to touch me.
“Okay, so it would mean something but it wouldn’t mean enough.”
It was his turn to sit up. “For fuck’s sake, Daisy,” he said crossly, “how could you possibly know what it might or might not mean to me? You think you’re so clever, talking your way around everything, but some things just happen. You are so controlled and prescriptive that you have to analyze everything. Nothing is left to chance.”
“I know,” I said sadly. If only Miles knew how much I longed to give into my longing and let twenty years of sexual tension between us explode on that stockroom floor. But I didn’t trust him or myself to let go. Obviously he’d treat me better than a one-night stand—he’d stay for the all-crucial breakfast and would stomach the postcoital chat—but I couldn’t bear to think of him pretending not to be anxious to get away, then avoiding me in the bookshop. “Miles, we work together,” I said.
“Obviously you’d get the sack for sleeping with the boss.” He smiled. “But then you could sue me for sexual harassment and unfair dismissal, so we’d make up your salary in no time.”
He took me in his arms and held me. “Daisy,” he whispered, “you do mean something to me. Please, let’s give it a go.”
11
Karmic Debt
I left Miles in an alcoholic fug because I wasn’t sure that in the flat, sober light of morning he would feel the same about me. Somehow everything in my warped little world was going mad and I realized that even my plan to have a child with Julius was absurd. I needed to walk away from him and all the complications of my twisted past. To set myself free, I had to believe in myself and hold out for someone new and special. So the next day I e-mailed Julius and told him that I was ready to meet him. He replied that he had a meeting near Henley and he would arrive at four o’clock the following day to collect me. After the meeting, he’d take me out to dinner by the river. When I saw his car draw up outside Jess’s flat and his driver emerged to ring the bell, my stomach tightened. This was going to be a tough call because when your knight shows up on his expensive charger, it takes willpower of steel not to become the damsel in distress. Mind you, there was nothing dainty and fainty about me and never would be. But to stand firm and send him galloping off in the other direction at the end of the evening would surely absolve me of past relationship weakness and leave my dating account in the black, wouldn’t it?
Julius was on his mobile when I slid into the backseat beside him. The smell of power, of soft buttery leather, and of his Blenheim Bouquet aftershave and the general charge between us was intoxicating. I kissed him on his cheek as he carried on discussing some seismic takeover and his smiling eyes melted something brittle and controlling in me. When he finished his call, he discreetly took my hand. Knowing that the driver, Paul, was all eyes and ears, probably primed to report to Alice, added to the intensity. “You look great, Daisy,” he said, giving my hand a squeeze. “You look like you.”
All the old feelings came rushing to the fore. Compared to Miles, Julius was a grown-up. While a fumble on the stockroom floor with Miles had been frisky and fun, this was quite different. This, for me, was real. Who had I been trying to kid in thinking I wanted anyone new? Not Andy or Max—after all, I’d tried being with someone who wasn’t Julius when I married Jamie. What I wanted, who I always wanted, was right here. His mobile rang constantly as we sped down the motorway and while I listened to his calm authority as he talked, I realized that being with him only reminded me of my loneliness. That was where the heartbreak lay. Suddenly it hit me with a wodge of panic. Forget having a baby with Julius. I still wanted much more. I wanted a life with him.
Watching the way he pored over the menu in a seventies-style Italian restaurant filled with spider plants, packets of breadsticks, and giant pepper mills, eager to source the perfect sea bass or an unusual salad that would bring me pleasure, I realized that after twenty years of loving him, I didn’t know how to give him up. How would I learn to be without the promise of the great big happy ending with Julius Vantonakis feeding my dreams? My greatest fear was that I would never feel this way about another man and that all that stretched before me was the familiar grind of joyless intimacy with some nice enough, poor unsuspecting sod, a Jamie part two.
Julius looked at me tenderly. “You were right all along,” he said.
“What about?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “About my marrying Alice. She isn’t a match for me and it’s glaringly apparent. There are days when I almost loathe her for her emptiness.”
“She knew what she was getting into marrying you.”
“Yes and she’s not the one who’s disappointed.” He paused. “She’s not lonely.” The inference was “unlike me.”
For a second I saw a glimpse of the interior of this man and it was as if a silent flare went off. “I always knew that I lacked a quality of connectedness with her that I feel with you,” he continued, “but I thought that having a child would override that. But a baby doesn’t fill the gulf between parents, however far apart as people they are. Having a child magnifies hairline cracks into canyons.” He leaned across the table and rested his palm on my arm. “Daisy, I still want to have a child with you.”
“Will you leave Alice?” I asked, fear backing up in every vein. My question hung in the air like smog.
Suddenly he stood up. He threw a couple of fifty-pound notes on the table—we hadn’t even had our first course. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. I followed him toward the door when he turned. “No, let’s go out of the back door. I don’t want Paul to see us leave or he’ll follow us.”
We walked into the small garden of the restaurant and stood by the fence that separated a field to the Thames. It was getting dark and difficult to see. “Shall we?” Julius jumped over the fence and I crawled through a middle section, snagging my top. The grass, heavy with dew, soaked my shoes. He took my hand and we ran down to the river, stumbling and giggling with childish pleasure at having escaped. I can’t remember the last time I felt this spontaneous and free.
When we reached the water’s edge, Julius took off his custom-tailored jacket and threw it onto the muddy grass. The extravagance thrilled me. We sat down on it and he said, “I always wanted the sort of girl who would run for the bus or who would get up at six and rush down to the beach without putting makeup on and I never had her.”
“Trophy chicks dare not risk natural and windswept,” I said, thinking, “but you could have had me.”
We watched the mist rise above the river. It was a perfect moment, laden with romance, tension, and promise. I could barely feel the cold settling in my bones. “I feel like I’m eighteen again,” he said. “We had so much hope then, didn’t we? The potential of youth.”
“For all the mess I’ve made of the last twenty years, I’d rather be me, here, today. At least I know who I am.”
Julius turned to me. “I know what you want and you deserve it.”
My request that he leave Alice lay between us like a shared bruise; we were both scared to touch it. “I’m hungry,” he said.
“Forget the fancy dinner,” I suggested. “Let’s eat takeaway fish and chips in the car.”
“I love that.” He smiled. “And you.”
I know, I thought, delighted and frightened in equal measure. But for Julius, was love a good enough excuse? As we walked back to the car he put his arm around me and squeezed me tightly. In the way he held me, I knew that whatever the outcome, no man would ever touch the core of me like Julius could.
Lucy was helping me in the bookshop because Miles had sent a text the day before saying: “Man the fort. Disaster on the domestic front.”
It had been a week since Miles and I had our ill-advised snogging and our relations were surprisingly normal. I was hugely relieved not to have slept with him—it allowed us to write the whole event off as a drunken escapade, and now I could easily joke about his domestic disaster.
&nbs
p; “Probably some trophy chick has broken a nail or discovered a split end,” Lucy said.
“Yeah, maybe Miles pulled her hair in the name of rough sex and now she’s demanding he replace her extensions.”
“The cost of that would kill him. I never had Miles down for the generous type.”
“Few men remain generous when they’ve got what they want,” I said.
“So how can you contemplate giving in to Julius?”
“Isn’t that below the belt?” She shook her head. “But I haven’t slept with Julius for over ten years and certainly not since he married Alice.”
“That’s what makes this situation more explosive. His marriage could survive the odd affair—Alice probably expects that—but it can’t sustain real love beyond its tight little boundary. No marriage defined by a deathly sense of duty can weather pure passion.”
“It’s awful waiting for Julius to decide between Alice and me.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt by that man—again,” sighed Lucy.
I put my head in my hands. “I know, which is why he has to leave her for me or I have to walk away. I’ve seriously considered the short-term fix of the heady affair but I know it would end in tears and they’d all be mine. I know where my love for Julius begins but I don’t know yet where it ends. There are so many normal things I want to do with him. Affairs are unrealistic because you get intense shots of the best of someone in hotels and snatched places, while loving someone means knowing all of them, every day, at home. I’ve decided that love is a language beyond words; a knowing that whatever fluff collects on the surface, there is something deeper for keeps. I want to watch Julius grow old, I want to see him get cross and be with him when he’s tired and grumpy, and I want us to have nights when we laugh ourselves silly. I want to lie next to him on holiday and watch him read. I want to walk into a room with him and feel the comfort of his palm in the small of my back, knowing it spells reassurance and pride in us. I want to ignite that spark in him that went out long ago, but more than anything I want his friendship and I want it to last.”
“This really does sound like love,” Lucy said, eyeing me closely. “Then you’re right to wait and see what he decides because anything less from him will be an insult to you.”
Suddenly the door swung open and Miles stood there looking weird. I couldn’t tell if his body was contorted with temper or he was massively hungover. I guided him to a chair. He sat down, let his head hang back, and closed his eyes. “This is my worst nightmare,” he groaned.
“You’ve gotten some girl pregnant?” I whispered.
“Got it in one. Every man prays that this day will never come but mine has and it’s worse than I could ever have dreamed of.”
I put the closed sign on the door of the bookshop and dimmed the lights to deter any potential customers. Although it was only early afternoon, the pewter rain-sodden skies made it feel like evening. Lucy, Miles, and I sat on the floor behind the counter and the conspiratorial air, shot through with the static of Miles’s confession, made us feel like we were bunking off school. Lucy handed us mugs of strong tea and we threw in whisky from a bottle Miles had hidden in the stockroom.
Miles emitted an empty laugh. “Do you know what my first thought was when she told me? At least I haven’t been firing blanks all these years. Most of my mates have the war wounds of abortion from their early twenties and alimony from their late thirties, and I could never believe my luck that I had escaped that fate.”
“Who is she?” said Lucy.
“You don’t know her,” said Miles. “She’s just some chick.”
“They always are,” I replied.
“So,” asked Lucy tentatively, “is she having . . . an . . . abortion?”
“Too late for that. She’s already had the kid.”
“Bloody hell,” I shrieked. “So you’re a father?”
God knows how Miles felt because I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. It was as if my insides came tumbling out. This couldn’t be happening, could it? That even Miles had already had a baby with someone else? Why did I always feel that as soon as I got near to the top of the life queue, somebody barged ahead of me and I was always left behind? “I feel sick,” I said. “I just can’t believe this.”
“Daisy, this isn’t about you,” whispered Lucy.
“Typical Daisy.” Miles smiled. “I’m cold, so you put on a jumper.”
“Are you going to marry her?”
“She’s already married,” said Miles. Lucy looked pained and I could tell that she was shocked, while I soared with strange relief that Miles wasn’t about to be claimed after all.
“You slept with a married woman and got her pregnant?” repeated Lucy crisply. “How could you have been so stupid not to use protection?”
“I fell for the bullshit that she was infertile. She’d been married for five years and nothing.”
“What does her husband think?”
“He thinks Clara is his daughter.”
“That is absolutely appalling,” shouted Lucy. “What kind of woman is this? Has she no moral code at all?”
“So the husband never knew that he was infertile?”
“He isn’t. He has slow sperm, apparently.”
“Too much information,” said Lucy, getting up and pacing. “How old is she?”
“Early forties.”
“Your little girl, I mean.”
“Six months,” said Miles slowly.
“Why did she contact you now?” I asked.
“I don’t know. That’s the confusing thing.” Miles grabbed the whisky bottle and took a slug. “She rang and asked me over. I thought it was for old time’s sake and suddenly, we were kissing and I heard this baby crying. She brought it in and told me it was mine but I couldn’t tell anybody because of her husband.”
“What a nightmare,” said Lucy. “Had you ever loved her?”
“She always seemed fragile and lonely. I felt sorry for her. I always thought it was safe to sleep with married women because they don’t want commitment.” He paused, briefly broken. “Sometimes I’m so damn tired of being a single man.”
The discovery of his love child brought out a reflective, sober side of Miles that I hadn’t seen before. He didn’t have the energy to deflect his pain with wry comments and witty asides but wore his disappointment openly. It was as if the shock of suddenly understanding, post-forty, that we have little or no control over much of life forced him to grow in a way I never imagined.
We retreated to Mum’s in the Cotswolds for the usual weekend panacea of dachshunds to stroke, stodgy nosh, long walks, and vistas to clear our heads. Miles’s vulnerability was palpable. He had always been a good-time guy living for today, so to witness him this upset made him seem lonely and bereft. Typical of his rampant appeal though, even his Little Boy Lost air was sexy.
We were lying on the sitting room floor in front of the fire. “The thing is, Daise, I always thought I was an expert on women,” he sighed. “I could tell the needy ones who’d be grateful and the haughty ones who looked like they were frozen solid yet the minute you touched them, would morph into back-scratching firecrackers. Everything has become so complicated emotionally. Women today are always three feet away from their hearts because they don’t know what to do with the rules. The feminists tore up the manual and left them stranded.”
“I totally agree. Women of my generation are completely confused. We want to be high-earning alpha females kicking arse in the boardroom but we want men to nurture us at home. We want to rock up from work buzzing with our own brilliance and self-importance but we want you to choose the wine, pay for the dinner, and open the door for us. We want to be able to dominate sexually in the bedroom if that does it for us, yet after being on top we want you to hold us, stroke us, and promise to protect us.”
“And where is love in this mess?” asked Miles. “You always berate me for not believing in true love but I’m not sure that women today have any faith either.�
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“I think we’re all afraid. Men and women,” I said. “No one wants to get hurt. I honestly believe that if it hurts when you’re together, it’s not love and that only the fear of not being loved hurts.”
Mum came in with a tray of tea and shortbread and sat on the sofa beside us. Miles turned to her. “For the first time in decades of listening to your daughter’s claptrap, I think she’s got a point.” We laughed. Miles continued. “The knowledge that I am a father has made me react differently. I could go in all guns blazing, claim my daughter, and destroy a family, but how would that help this little girl who is entirely innocent? I’ve thought of nothing else lately and in this case, loving means letting her go. I’ve got to wait knowing that one day, this situation will explode. Her identity won’t stay secret forever. But I’ll be waiting and when she’s ready, I’ll be there for her. I can’t say I love her because I don’t know her, but I feel this overwhelming sense of responsibility.”
“That’s because you’re a natural father,” said Mum gently. “Already you’re putting your child’s needs before your own feelings and that’s the first rule of mature and loving parenting.” Miles seemed touched.
“Daisy,” said Mum, “please think very carefully about getting entangled with Julius. As Miles will tell you, when children are involved the playing field is no longer level and Julius already has a child.”
She looked at me and then Miles. “My prayer has always been that you two would get together.”
A couple of days later, when I saw Julius’s car pull up outside the bookshop, I did a mad, jerky dance of terror. Miles came over and put his arms out to steady me. “Remember, Dooley, whatever you do, don’t be tempted to bang his brains out. That’ll just confuse you both.”
“I’m not like you, Miles.” I smiled. “I don’t use sex to stifle pain.”
“Nor do I,” he said soberly. “Well, not anymore.”
I kissed him on the cheek. He looked at me with surprising tenderness. “Don’t forget, this isn’t a movie. Julius isn’t Jerry Maguire. He doesn’t complete you. He completely messes you up.”
Daisy Dooley Does Divorce Page 24