Head Over Heels

by Sara Downing

  Eleven

  Several weeks later Frannie is hovering in her garden as I arrive home from work, obviously waiting to catch me.

  ‘I want you to be the first to know dear, I'm getting married!’ Well, knock me over with a feather, I hadn’t seen that one coming.

  ‘So, who is the lucky man?’ I venture. I know it’s unlikely to be Mr Pearson, unless he has managed to recover from a minor heart attack, and bury or divorce his wife within the space of a few weeks.

  ‘Do you remember those nice young men who came in the ambulance when poor Mr Pearson was taken bad? Well, one of them was a real stunner, I could tell he liked me the moment he set eyes on me. Which is something as I was hardly dressed for courting that day, was I?’ she laughs. She goes on to fill me in on the details. It turns out there was an older member of the recovery team that I hadn't spotted in all the confusion, a sixty-five year old man called Gerald, who was about to retire from the emergency services. He is the dashing ‘young man’. Well, he is a good decade younger than she is so I suppose that makes him young in her eyes. It had been love at first sight, apparently. He had come back to visit her the next day to make sure she was alright in the aftermath of Mr Pearson's heart attack, and it had all gone from there. Amazing really. I’d not seen him coming or going, but then I had been wrapped up in my own busy little world recently.

  ‘Marriage at last, then, Frannie,’ I comment. She has always managed to avoid tying the knot in the past, in the avoidance of being stuck with someone who would become a burden to her later in life.

  ‘Well, I think it’s about time, you know,’ she goes on, ‘and with him being younger than me, I'm more likely to lose my marbles before he does. But he says that's fine, he's utterly devoted to me. At this rate, it'll be me having a heart attack on the job. He's a very sexy man, he says he wants to make love to me every time he sets eyes on me.’

  Too much information again. Frannie cracks me up. She is always so full of the joy of life (and the Joy of Sex, too, by the sound of it).

  ‘I'm so pleased for you Frannie, it's fantastic news.’

  Just as I lean across to plant a congratulatory kiss on Frannie's papery cheek, a small, red car pulls up outside her house, and out springs a rather fit looking man of around retirement age.

  ‘I presume this is your intended?’ I ask Frannie, smiling at Gerald as he approaches the two of us. He is clutching a large bunch of pink roses, which he presents to Frannie with a flourish. I do believe I see her blush, and she comes over as coy as a schoolgirl at her first prom.

  ‘Oh Gerald, you are a darling,’ she drools. ‘Meet my dear neighbour, Grace.’

  He really is charming, and incredibly good looking for his age, too. I can see what Frannie sees in him; she has done very well for herself there, but then so has he. He will be acquiring the wealth she has tucked away over the years; she is from a very well-to-do background after all. And as she is childless it will all go to him eventually, I presume. Although judging by the look in his eyes, that thought has barely crossed his mind; the man is absolutely smitten. She is acquiring a kind and gentle man who will look after her in her dotage, love, honour and worship her, and give her the experience of marriage and sharing a home that she has missed out on until now.

  ‘I am so pleased for you both,’ I smile. ‘May I be the first to congratulate you,’ I add, kissing Gerald on the cheek, as he stands there beaming like a teenager on his first date, and gazing at Frannie with big doey labrador eyes.

  I leave them to it and head into the house. It cheers me to the heart to see two people in the twilight of their years, embarking on a relationship that has more passion and commitment than many younger people would ever experience in their lifetimes. I have always been a great believer in Fate, and this is obviously what the higher powers have mapped out for them. I am so thrilled for them both.

  Twelve

  Spring half term is coming up and Mark and I have booked a week’s holiday. God knows we need it. Things have not been easy at home recently; Mark threw himself back into work in the wake of the crisis a few weeks earlier. He had to work all hours to bring the client back on board, and succeeded too, much to his credit. But that meant our home life suffered, and not only because of his work. Things are far from good between us at the moment. We both recognise the fact but neither of us seems to know how to take things forward, or even what the true cause of our dissatisfaction is.

  Surely a holiday will help us? A bit of time out from the daily grind, spending some quality time together, having proper conversations and rekindling the physical side of our relationship, which has dwindled seriously in the past few weeks. Mark has always had a very high libido, and I am generally more than obliging, even if I do need a little coaxing sometimes. But just lately there has been a clear demarcation between us in bed, with little touching, let alone love-making. It’s like the Berlin Wall has sprung up between us. I am a firm believer that if the physical side of a relationship trails off, then the emotional side does too. How can you achieve the level of closeness there should be between a couple if you are afraid to touch each other? It immediately puts up a barrier, and once it's there it's very hard to demolish. All couples have their lean patches, we can't all be ‘at it like rabbits’ the whole time, à la Frannie, but as long as there is some sort of physical connection, even if it is only hugging or kissing, or doing ‘spoons’ in bed then there is still something holding them together.

  In a way I am relieved that Mark and I aren't having sex; to fall pregnant now, with things as they are, would be disastrous. We are hardly in the right place to become parents at the moment. I haven't dared broach the subject of me going back on the pill and deferring our baby plans, even though it would be the most sensible option, as it seems to be an out-and-out admission that things aren't good and I’m not sure I am quite ready to admit that. Both of us seem to be very adept at burying our heads in the sand right now, both assuming, and hoping, that this will all go away in its own time. I know it’s a very bad thing that we aren't physically close and that it is going to take some effort from both of us to get back to where we were.

  So we leave for our holiday with our suitcases packed not only with clothes, cossies and creams, but with a vast pile of expectations that our time away will be an instant fix for an ailing relationship. The hotel is gorgeous, an old ‘Palazzo’ on the Amalfi coast; you can't really ask for a more romantic location. Reassuringly expensive, it really is first class and worth every penny. The views over the bay are fabulous, the sun shining and the May sky unblemished by cloud; not too hot, but warm enough to lie on a lounger with a good book and get the basis of a reasonable tan. Quite perfect, really. And normally Mark and I would lap up a place like this, enjoying the luxury of being waited on hand and foot, eating gourmet food night after night, planning our days to visit the local attractions, or hiring a car to escape the tourist trail and explore the surrounding countryside.

  This time, though, it takes us a while to settle in. Largely I think due to the fact that we aren't entirely comfortable in each other's company. We haven't spent much time recently being properly together. At home we manage to live our own lives, and the house is big enough for us to do that, our paths only converging at meal times and bed time. Somehow we have been living fairly solitary existences under the same roof. Now suddenly, here we are, sharing one room, with nowhere to escape to. Usually we would spend the first couple of days of a holiday doing practically nothing, glued to our loungers whilst we caught up with sleep and chat, learning to relax, away from our hectic lives. This time, within an hour or two of our arrival, Mark has read all the guide books in our room from cover to cover and has already planned out a long list of places he wants to visit. Not an ounce of consultation with me; he has chosen what he wants to do and his decision is final.

  ‘It sounds great, Mark, but I'd just like to chill out here today really,’ I comment as he explains his itinerary for the day over our first breakfast on our
private terrace. We only arrived yesterday afternoon, and I am still at the unwinding stage, not ready to be whisked off to see all the sights. It looks to me like the hotel has plenty to offer for at least the first twenty four hours of our break; a beautiful terrace with amazing views and waiter service, luxury pool-side loungers with enticingly squishy cream cushions. The pool itself is huge, heated too, which is unusual for Italy, but means that we can swim this early in the season. I don't feel the need to move too far from that, and I feel a huge pang of disappointment that Mark doesn't want to as well. We usually have similar ideas about how we want to spend our time on holiday, and high levels of activity this early on don't normally feature.

  ‘OK then Grace, you stay here and ‘chill out’ as you put it,’ he says pointedly. ‘I'll go and see what Positano has to offer. I'll see you at dinner, if I'm not back before.’ His tone is cool and detached. He doesn't seem to appreciate how it cuts me to the quick.

  ‘I thought the whole idea was for us to spend some time together on this holiday, Mark?’ I try not to sound needy, but at the same time hope to appeal to his conscience. ‘We're not going to fix ‘us’ if we don't talk to each other, are we?’

  ‘Yes, but you could come with me, and you don't want to, so we can't talk, can we, if you're holed up here alone?’ He isn't going to compromise. But then I am sticking to my guns too, so maybe I’m just as bad as he is.

  ‘We wouldn't get much chance to talk amongst the heaving crowds, would we?’ I say. ‘This place is perfect for us to have a relaxing time together and catch up a bit. We could go for a walk later, if you want to?’

  ‘We can talk at dinner. I need to get ready for my trip. The shuttle bus goes at ten thirty.’ So that’s that. No room for manoeuvre, he’s off.

  And the next couple of days of the holiday continue in much the same vein. We seem to have transposed our way of life at home to our holiday location; he goes off exploring, sometimes meeting me for lunch if he runs out of churches, monuments or other interesting historical relics to visit, otherwise staying out all day and coming back to the hotel for dinner. Mostly I dine alone at lunchtime, and I find myself enjoying the solitude, rather than resenting Mark's absence. I usually take a book to the outdoor restaurant with me, order a large glass of Pinot Grigio and a bowl of the pasta of the day, and read until my meal arrives, sometimes barely looking up to register what is going on around me.

  Mark and I do talk at dinner in the evenings, but it’s not easy going. There is no hand-holding across the table, no playing footsie under the crisp white table cloth which would be long enough to hide our antics from other diners. It is as though a light has gone out in our relationship and neither of us can find the switch to turn it back on again. We talk about what he has visited that day; he recounts amusing anecdotes about places and people he has seen, and I tell him about the latest book I’m reading, or hotel gossip from around the pool. He is pleasant enough company, but we are more like just good friends than lovers.

  On the third evening I decide to bite the bullet with the physical side of our relationship. I will seduce Mark, force him to make love to me, and make him realise what he has been missing over the past few weeks. After all, it isn't really that long ago that we last made love, weeks rather than months, surely we must be able to rekindle some passion, it just needs a spark to ignite it. We finish our meal with a glass of the local Limoncello, a gorgeously crisp citrus liqueur which slips down all too easily. So we order another, and then another. I reach for Mark's hand across the table and begin to stroke it. He gives me a strange look which I interpret as surprise. He doesn't pull away, but neither does he reciprocate. I am left there, stroking his hand which lays motionless on the table, and feeling a bit of a fool. I don't know how to interpret him.

  ‘Shall we call it a night before we drink them out of Limoncello? They’ll think we are a right pair of old sots,’ I make an attempt at a joke to lighten things up a bit. Mark duly follows and within minutes we are back in our room, ripping the clothes off each other. Not much seduction required after all, then, so why the cold fish act downstairs? There is a focussed look in Mark's eye that I haven't seen since that night after the meal at Alex's house. I hope to goodness we’re not in for a repeat performance of that. There is nowhere here I can go to get away from him, short of locking myself in the bathroom, and that isn't something I've ever envisaged myself doing. I’m not some down-trodden abused woman. But in the end his lovemaking is surprisingly tender; no strange behaviour, just gentle, normal, unreconstructed sex. I have missed his touch so much, and lying naked next to him is more arousing than anything else he has done to me all evening.

  ‘That was lovely, I’ve missed you,’ I venture afterwards, as we lay sated and still entwined.

  ‘I didn't think you were interested any more,’ he replies. ‘You’re always busy when we're at home, you always seem so distant. Sometimes I'm afraid to touch you in case you push me away.’ Funny, that’s the way I’ve been feeling about him as well. Why hadn't we just talked about this so much earlier? It would have saved an awful lot of heartache.

  ‘In any case, I thought Tom was the one you fancied now, not me,’ he goes on. I sit up in shock, pulling a sheet around me and suddenly feeling uncomfortable in my nakedness. That’s a bolt out of the blue. ‘You talk about him all the time, sometimes I feel like a bit of a spare part.’

  I’m not aware that I do talk about Tom as much as Mark says. I try to play it down.

  ‘He's my boss. Of course he's going to come up in conversation.’

  ‘Yes, but it's not so much in conversation as you coming over all dreamy-eyed and telling me what a great bloke he is, even if it's not in those words.’

  I gulp, feeling sick. This isn't the post-coital relaxed talk I had planned. So far I hadn't considered my friendship with Tom, and that is all it is, to be a threat to my relationship with Mark. But it appears he views it as more of a threat than I do. Nor had I realised that I speak about Tom quite as much. Or that I look dreamy-eyed when I do. Maybe Mark is just being a jealous partner and over-reacting at the mention of another man's name? I don't talk about him that much, do I? I try to think back over our conversations of the past few weeks; to be honest I didn't think we'd had that many discussions about work, we'd been skirting around each other most of the time. And I wouldn't talk about him for any other reason, would I? I begin to doubt myself.

  ‘And he texts you too, doesn't he? I hear you giggling at your messages. They're from him, aren't they?’ Mark knows I spend a lot of time texting my friends, and I get the feeling he is trying to trick me into an admission, that he wants to find something concrete to put on me. The texts could have been from anyone and he would have no way of knowing.

  ‘And at weekends too? That's hardly work related, is it?’ Now he really is trying to put me on the spot. By now there is a gap as big as the Berlin Wall between us again. He is as far away from me on the bed as he could possibly get, running his hands through his hair in exasperation.

  ‘You know what it's like, Mark. The girls text me all the time, that's how we sort out our social life, you know that.’ I sound like I’m pleading, desperately. Actually Tom has been texting me more and more, but I’m not going to admit that to Mark. But his aren’t always the messages that make me giggle; usually the amusing ones are from the girls, having a moan about their other halves or forwarding on something funny or rude. I feel cornered, like a rabbit in the headlights, but despite all that, I still feel I have a relationship worth saving, and I’m not admitting to anything. Besides which, I don't feel I have done anything wrong, but the evidence for the prosecution seems stronger, whichever way Mark looks at it.

  Weeks have passed since that night at Alex's when Tom and I had sat side by side, and really nothing has changed. I still find him dangerously attractive, but now that I’ve noticed just how gorgeous he is, I’m not going to suddenly find him unattractive, am I? Unless he turns into a psychopathic axe-murderer or somethin
g, and that doesn’t seem too likely. Our friendship has moved on a certain degree, I suppose, in that we are now firm friends, in and out of school (although our paths don't cross that often outside school, despite his close friendship with James. Am I sorry about that? – Yes, I suppose I am). We spend a lot of time chatting in the staffroom and in his office, and I feel a good deal more comfortable in his presence than I did in the early weeks after the ‘Big Flirt’, as I call that night at Alex’s. We have to work closely together; we are a small, tight knit unit at the school, we have no choice.

  Tom has texted me on holiday, but I don't admit that to Mark either. I haven't done anything wrong, but I can see that if I do confess to receiving (and sending) messages (every day in fact), then he will blow the whole thing out of the water and I am immediately ‘having an affair’. I don't need to give him any more ammunition.

  Actually Tom's texts have been quite ordinary, but then they usually are. They tend to be along the lines of a friendly checking-up; finding out where I am, what I’m doing, what have I got planned for the day, that sort of thing. Two friends keeping in touch, nothing more than that. No flirtatious messages full of innuendo and sexual connotation. Far from it. In fact we haven't moved on from adding the few ‘x's’ I had been so paranoid about only a few weeks earlier. We are in quite constant contact, I suppose, with at least four or five messages winging in each direction on most days, so I suppose Mark could misinterpret that as something going on, but they are all so innocuous I wouldn't have any hesitation about letting Mark see them, and I tell him so. Perhaps I secretly know he wouldn’t dream of looking at them, and I am proved right.