by Lucy Dawson
‘Now it’s my turn to be sorry,’ he said immediately. ‘Please don’t think I was going for the sympathy vote.’
‘I don’t.’
He shifted in his seat. ‘I just wanted to be upfront about the fact that I have some… baggage… in that I’m still technically married.’
‘I appreciate your honesty.’
‘That said, I certainly don’t want to go on about it – it’s all in the past, and everything is in a much better place now.’
‘Well, that’s great,’ I said slowly.
He closed his eyes, cringed and laughed. ‘Now I’m going on about it, aren’t I? God, I am so out of practice at this. This is why my friends have been trying to set me up on blind dates. Here’ – he reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile – ‘use this to emergency call whoever you’ve got on standby.’
I looked at him steadily for a moment, then grinned. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ although I had my best friend, Lou, primed and ready to leap into action with a fake disaster I needed to attend, just in case.
It was Lou who had virtually insisted I have dinner with Marc, having chaperoned me at coffee with him.
‘Oh my God.’ She’d turned to me the second Marc had apologetically excused himself to take a client call. ‘If you don’t go to dinner with him, I will.’
‘You’re married.’
‘So?’ She’d looked through the window at Marc talking animatedly. ‘I’ll leave Rich for him. And the kids too – I don’t care. He can hold an interesting conversation, he’s clearly solvent, has a proper job – and he obviously works out. A full package.’ I’d sniggered and she rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be gross. I think you should definitely go for it, Soph.’
I’d hesitated and glanced at him through the window of the coffee shop, still talking on his mobile. ‘He seems a nice bloke, but…’
‘Oh, Lord!’ Lou groaned, pretended to thump her head down on the table, then gestured heavenward. ‘God’s up there right now shouting, “What more do I have to do, woman? I’ve sent him to your ACTUAL HOUSE.”’
‘Yes. Let’s pause for a moment and remember exactly that. He is a complete stranger, who turned up on my doorstep two nights ago, flyering because he wants to buy my house,’ I said pointedly.
‘That’s not why he asked you out,’ she scoffed. ‘Direct flyering is a very sensible tactic – lots of people bypass estate agents and contact potential sellers directly these days. Anyway, he pretty quickly forgot about the house when you opened the front door, didn’t he? What was it he said, when he asked you to have dinner with him?’
‘“This could be one of those life-defining moments that if we don’t take, we’ll always wonder about,”’ I repeated doubtfully.
‘Very nice indeed.’ Lou nodded approvingly, as if mentally entering another positive tick on one of her spreadsheets.
‘You don’t think that’s actually just a bit cheesy?’ I picked up my mug. ‘Anyway, I’m perfectly happy at the moment – I don’t need any complications.’
‘It’s been four years since Josh.’
‘Oh, stop it! I’ve dated since then,’ I said. ‘You know I have.’ I took a mouthful of coffee. ‘You make it sound like Josh’s dead.’
She snorted. ‘I wish. It’s only dinner. Live a little. There’s a huge difference between being pragmatic and risk-adverse. No, come on. You know you are.’
‘Do you not read the news? He could be a raving nutter. You see it all the time – men stalking women online, pretending to be something they’re not…’
‘Or he could just be a normal bloke trying to ask someone out. I feel really sorry for men these days. They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. The poor guy tries to say something vaguely romantic to you and you instantly write him off as a serial killer. You can’t live your whole life in fear, Sophie.’
I’d looked at him again. ‘It’s not that he’s not attractive… but what’s the catch?’
Lou gave an exaggerated, patient sigh. ‘That’s completely my point. There doesn’t always have to be one, Soph. Lots of men are perfectly nice – you’ve just unfortunately not met many of them up until now.’ Her phone bleeped, she looked at it and tutted. ‘Rich can’t remember what I said to give the kids for lunch. He’s so bloody useless. I mean it, if you don’t go to dinner with Marc, I will.’
There’s no doubt my life would have been so much easier if I had walked away after that first date. And if I’d known he had a lunatic ex-wife, I would have done. I never expected her to go this far, though.
Pulling up at some traffic lights on red, I sit there at the deserted crossroads, trying to stay calm as I drum my fingers on the wheel with fear, looking nervously in the mirror. ‘C’mon, c’mon!’ I whisper aloud, willing the lights to change, looking for a car slowly turning out of a junction, starting to follow me.
He said he’ll be watching me.
The lights finally go to green and I shoot across the road. It’s actually a relief to pass a gang of boys in their late teens hanging around outside a kebab shop, hoods pulled up, trying to ignore a drunken pack of men in their forties, singing and shouting. I don’t want to be out here on my own.
I knew Claudine had been becoming more and more desperate, but this?
The weird thing is, I was probably the one who was mildly obsessed with her at first.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ Marc had said on our second date, ‘but it’s so nice that you actually enjoy food.’
I paused, fork halfway to my mouth, and looked at him.
‘I said don’t take it the wrong way!’ He’d laughed. ‘It’s good to see a woman tuck in, rather than pick at it, that’s all I’m saying.’
I’d been horrified. Grown women who played hockey and netball as a hobby – rather than being forced to by gender-questionable PE teachers – were the kind of women who tucked in. Even worse, after he’d taken me home, he had merely kissed me lightly on the lips: no more than he had done on our first date.
I’d sat down on my sofa, confused and a little disappointed. Didn’t he find me attractive after all? Maybe it really was just the house he was interested in. I reached for my phone and found him on Facebook. I had, of course, already looked at his – surprisingly for a lawyer – semi-open profile, but nothing had leapt out at me. Had I missed something obvious? Messages from lots of different women, of whom I was merely one? I scrolled again through his list of friends, finding, to my astonishment, his eight-year-old daughter. I hadn’t noticed that before. What were they thinking? That was far too young to be on Facebook! Frowning, I had looked through her friends too – and immediately, there was her mother. Claudine Dubois. Marc’s ex-wife.
Instantly curious, I clicked onto her profile but, frustratingly, it was completely locked. There was just one, very glamorous – my heart sank – photo of her. She was all smooth skin, red lips and vast, expensive sunglasses. She did not look like the kind of woman who would dream of ‘tucking in’.
I became a little gloomily carried away after that. I checked her LinkedIn profile and found that she worked for the luxury division of some huge French parent company that owned several upmarket jewellers and shoe designers. Of course she did. She was beautiful, French and polished. Why wouldn’t she also work in fashion? I felt positively embarrassed at the memory of Marc’s polite goodnight kiss. I even Googled her, and discovered she had a Tumblr page. I didn’t really understand what Tumblr was, bar a collection of photos. It just seemed to be lots of shots backstage at a catwalk show and more in someone’s design studio. There was one of her reading the two children a bedtime story, but then under that was a postcard that said, in English, ‘Before you judge me, please understand I don’t give a fuck what you think.’
I’d raised my eyebrows. How charming. A career woman, and a mother of two. Really? I reread it. Did she actually believe that, anyway? I remembered Marc saying she was ‘intense’ and shifted uncomfortably. I found people like her – those
who really didn’t give a rat’s arse what anyone else thought – slightly intimidating. Beneath the image of her reading to her children was a really beautiful picture of her on some beach in a bikini – she was probably an expert surfer in her spare time too. I had stared at it, fascinated. Her hair was all sea-salt-tousled, she had good boobs, a totally flat stomach and no visible cellulite. She was also looking at whoever had taken the photo like she wanted to take them straight to bed. I bet Marc had kissed her properly on their second date. Yeah… I’d sighed and quietly closed my phone. He wasn’t going to be calling me again.
But to my surprise, he did. We went to the Oxo Tower for dinner and sat overlooking the early summer, rosy city skyline, drinking cocktails. It felt decadent. I drank a little too fast and quickly became very chatty, but it was fun, and afterwards we walked along the South Bank holding hands. I felt an odd surge of triumph later, when he took me home and I asked him to come in – and he did. The following morning when I woke up alongside him, I realized I’d been a little drunker the night before than I ought to have been, but I didn’t regret any of it. It was the start of a very happy time.
But only about two weeks after that had come the first phone call. It was Friday evening, we were just sitting down to dinner at mine, and I was looking forward to a second, long weekend of him not going home until Sunday night. We’d been discussing careers, and I’d just confessed to Marc why I’d left teaching: ‘I had a complete crisis of confidence. I’d been with Josh for nine years, and when we split, I sort of lost myself for a bit. You can’t be like that and teach. It’s not fair on the kids – and anyway, they smell fear. I’d have been done for.’
He smiled. ‘Will you go back to it?’
‘Maybe one day. I’ve always quite fancied being an MP, actually.’ I’d said it before I’d realized I was going to, and laughed, embarrassed.
He looked at me seriously. ‘What’s stopping you?’
‘Well, let’s see,’ I said. ‘My geography is appalling, I know very little about economics, I’d make hideous gaffes, I doubt I’d be able to hold my own on things like Question Time, and I also cry at the drop of a hat, which would be beyond unprofessional.’
‘OK.’ He had grinned. ‘So what do you think you have to offer public office?’
I shrugged, still a bit shy. ‘Well, there seems to be a widening gap between the haves and have-nots. The have-nots don’t seem to have many people sticking up for them.’
‘As good a reason as any.’
‘You say that’ – I reached for my wine – ‘but then I also get pretty nervous when I imagine being under all that scrutiny… weirdos sending you death threats on Twitter just because you’re a female MP, that sort of thing. People can reach you so easily these days – it makes me realize I’m probably not cut out for it, after all. There are probably other ways I could—’
His phone started ringing. ‘Shit, I forgot to turn that off, sorry.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled it out, but as he caught sight of the screen he frowned, worriedly. ‘It’s my ex. Do you mind if I get it? It must be something to do with the kids.’
‘Of course,’ I said, expecting him to stand up and take it in the other room, but he didn’t.
‘Hello, Claudine,’ he answered in English. ‘Is everything all right?’ He listened, then frowned in confusion and glanced at me. ‘I can’t do that,’ he said, then cleared his throat. ‘You should know I’m seeing someone now.’
I got up to leave the room, but he shook his head and motioned for me to sit back down. Which I did, rather uncomfortably.
‘Yes, I’m serious,’ Marc mumbled awkwardly, and I blushed. We’d not even had that discussion between ourselves yet. ‘I’m with her at the moment. No, Claudine, I’m not prepared to do that. Anything I have to say to you, I’d rather Sophie heard for herself…’ He trailed off and then sighed. ‘Yes, that’s her— What? No, she doesn’t… She isn’t, actually.’
I crossed my arms awkwardly, trying hard not to listen – and failing.
‘That’s insane!’ He blanched. ‘You can’t possibly have expected me to say yes, just like that?’ I heard a female voice starting to shout. ‘Look, I have to go now, OK? No, please – just stop!’ He closed his eyes. ‘I’m going to hang up now, Claudine.’ He put his phone back down on the table and sat there in silence, looking stunned. Just as I was about to ask him if he wanted to talk about it, he spoke. ‘Julien has gone back to his wife. She’s made a terrible mistake, apparently, and she wants me to come home.’
The air sucked out of the room. I went very still and just looked at him.
‘It’s funny,’ he said eventually. ‘Well, it’s not – but you know what I mean… Even though she cheated on me, I was desperate for her to say what she just did for such a long time, and now she has – I don’t feel a thing.’ He looked up and gave me a slightly shaky smile, then he reached for my hand. ‘I just really hope she didn’t say all of that in front of the kids.’
I watched as he entwined my fingers with his, and I hesitated. ‘But given you do have children with her, Marc, perhaps this is a—’
Before I could finish my sentence, his phone started to ring again. He picked it up and looked at the screen. ‘I’m not going to answer. She was already hysterical, shouting and crying…’ He put his elbows on the table, then his head in his hands and muttered, ‘Shit.’
I looked at the man I knew I was starting to fall in love with and managed to say, far more calmly than I felt: ‘Here’s the thing. You know I told you my parents divorced when we were all pretty young? Well, although they’re both happily remarried to very nice people, it was really hard for my sisters and me for a long time and, even now, it’s obvious to everyone who knows them that, twenty years later, they’re still the love of each other’s lives. They’ve both told me separately that, at various points, they each asked if they could try again, but for whatever reason the other one didn’t think they should. It’s so sad, really, and I couldn’t bear to be the person who causes that to happen to someone else’s family. It’s still very early for us – you and me, I mean. I’ve had a really great time with you, but…’
‘Oh.’ Marc stared at me unflinchingly, before looking down at his drink in confusion. After a moment more, he said, ‘Wow. I have to say I absolutely didn’t see the evening going this way.’
‘Um, me neither.’ I tried to smile, as I heard the echo in my head of my own excited voice saying on the phone to several friends: I really like him. Ha ha! I know! I wasn’t looking for anything and just like that he walks right into my life! ‘What Claudine has said to you is probably something that you need to absorb on your own, though. Let’s rain check tonight. Maybe you could call me in the morning or something?’
‘But—’
‘Really, Marc. It’s OK. We both know I’m right.’
He gave me a long, steady look, reached for his phone and got to his feet. ‘Don’t get up. I can see myself out.’ He put a gentle hand on my arm. ‘I’m so sorry, Sophie.’
‘Hey,’ I said, my eyes suddenly shining with tears that I was embarrassed beyond belief not to be able to hide. ‘Don’t be. And see?’ I joked, motioning at myself. ‘Told you!’
It would have been easier if he’d just left but, instead, he leant across the table and I automatically closed my eyes as his lips brushed my cheek. I was transported back to my kissing him hard on the mouth, as I had done only two nights earlier in bed, his hands starting to move down my body. I felt like I was as good as sitting at the table in nothing but the new, matching and stupidly expensive underwear I’d so pathetically put on earlier.
After the front door closed quietly behind him, I stared at the half-eaten dinner, sat back in my chair and picked up my wine. I had no doubt I’d done the right thing – for everyone, not just me – and I had no intention of getting involved with a man who had unfinished business elsewhere.
Leaving the plates but taking my wine, I got up and moved over to the sofa, putting on th
e TV as I curled my legs up underneath me. Flicking unseeingly through the channels, my eyes filled with more tears as the newly hollowed-out feeling inside suddenly became too much. Cross and frustrated with myself for having become so involved already, I set down my glass, dropped the remote, and properly cried.
Except, of course, he didn’t go back to her.
He turned up on my doorstep first thing the following morning, after Claudine’s ‘I want you back’ bombshell.
Completely thrown, I just stood there in my PJs and stared at him – partly because I was also mute with horror that he was seeing me make-up-free for the first time.
‘I’ve been up all night thinking about everything, and I don’t want to lose you, Sophie.’ He didn’t even bother with hello. ‘You’re right, it’s not been long, but it’s long enough for me to know that I like you. I really like you.’ He looked up at the sky and gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘For God’s sake, I sound like I’m fifteen or something… Look, I love my children so much, I really do, and I’m a good dad to them’ – his voice broke a little bit – ‘but that’s because I’ve worked really hard to get to a place where I’ve stopped being bitter about what my wife did to our family, and I’ve stopped obsessing about what I – we – could have done differently. I can’t go back, because I have to protect Isabelle and Olivier, give them stability and the best of me, and the way for me to do that is by not being with Claudine. It’s too late.’ He looked at me desperately. ‘I don’t want to be with her; I want to be with you.’
Perhaps because my frame of reference was still the nine years I’d spent with Josh – who had told me he loved me once, when drunk; referred to me as ‘pal’ in public; and was, as Lou memorably once described him, ‘the most emotionally constipated man’ she’d ever met – such frank honesty pushed my buttons.
I didn’t even think about it. I simply stood to one side and smiled shakily at Marc. ‘You’d better come in.’