by Jane Lark
But shit, if she knew how I lived my married life I’d bet her nose would screw up in disgust. She wouldn’t be into this me. I’d bet Victoria was a ‘normal’ person.
When the evening wound up I walked upstairs to my room alone. A little drunk but not high on anything. I stripped off, then lay on the bed staring at the ceiling.
I needed drugs or sex to sleep. I had neither thing to bring my constant adrenaline rush down.
I got up and opened the window on to the street. The shop windows were still lit up across the road. It was past midnight but the sky seemed light. It wasn’t much past the longest day and to me this was the best part of the year. I liked being up in Cumbria when it was like this, maybe I would go up next weekend. Maybe getting away from London and the people and the life there would put my head straight again.
Sharon hated the place I’d bought in the Lake District. It wasn’t her scene. There was no one else to have sex with when we went up there. It was quiet, peaceful and idyllic. To me it was better than the best trip I’d ever had on drugs, and it went on forever when you were up there. Nature was addictive. Life was addictive when I was there.
I dropped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, which was grey because the night was so bright.
Things churned around in my mind. The work I had to organise for clients next week. What Sharon would be up to in our bed back at the apartment. What I had got up to in that bed all week, and in the Jacuzzi, and the pool.
I took a breath, longing for some weed to smoke at least, so my mind could come down from its height of activity enough to sleep.
I couldn’t sleep. I never could. I’d been a raving insomniac for years.
Victoria came into my mind and I wondered how different things would have been if I’d stayed with her. But that was stupid, because I hadn’t loved her, just liked her a lot, so we’d have split at some point between then and now, either in year thirteen or when we’d gone on to university.
I slept for about an hour, maybe, I think, or maybe I’d lain there thinking all night, wishing I’d done what Sharon had thought I’d done and found an old school friend to fuck. One of the girls would have been up for it. I’d seen a few of them who’d used to sleep with me in year thirteen, looking.
There was something about a woman’s eyes that gave the game away when they were up for it. Sharon had taught me that. She was good at spotting the people in bars who were cool for a night of naughty sex. She said it was because their pupils flared. The easier measure was who stared back at you when you stared at them.
After breakfast everyone walked down towards the school. I walked beside Edward and his fiancée. None of the guys I’d kept in contact with had asked me why I hadn’t brought my wife. Every one of them who had a partner had brought them. I suppose they were used to me not taking her whenever I saw them. I guess they all thought I was just a bad husband. I think that was what everyone outside of the bubble I lived in with Sharon believed.
What would happen if the bubble burst?
The shit would fly.
My hands were in the pockets of my trousers, pinning my suit jacket open as I walked. I had skinny- cut trousers on and a pale-blue shirt. My suit was a dark blue. We were probably meant to wear black, everyone else was in black, but I’d always liked to be different.
I mentally heard one of the masters shout at me, ‘take your hands out of your pockets Mr Rendell!’ as we walked through the doors of the Harry Potter-ish school.
It was an amazing place. The building made you respect it. It had always gripped at my soul but today it seemed to look inside me and prod my conscience. It didn’t like what it saw either. It didn’t approve of what I’d become. It was ashamed of me.
We listened to speeches from the school heads about the achievements of our year’s alumni group and the achievements of the school since we’d left, as we sat in rows like we had as kids – only this time on chairs not the floor or a bench.
My theory was we’d been brought back because we were of average child-bearing age and they hoped we’d send our kids here.
Kids. That was one mistake I’d not made with Sharon and I had a very firm condom rule in our sex games. A child wouldn’t want the sentence of a life with me as their parent, or Sharon acting as mother.
After the speeches, we were given time to wander about the ancient halls and rooms, re-familiarising ourselves with the place. It was weird. I could see myself at desks, talking to people in halls, kissing Victoria and some of the other girls after Victoria had left, up against the walls.
Victoria had been three rows in front of me in the hall, but if she’d sensed me behind her, she hadn’t looked back.
As I wandered around the halls alone, wondering how my pathway from here had ended up where it had, I saw her walk out of a room with a friend. When she saw me, she walked back in.
I carried on, walking past the room she was in, as she clearly didn’t want to speak to me. I ended up outside on the lawn on my own, walking about the rugby pitch, wishing for a joint again. I hadn’t ever smoked cigarettes. I only smoked when the tobacco contained something with more punch.
Hands in pockets, I walked along the recently re-marked white lines, viewing me then and me now in my mind’s eye. I suppose the two of us were not that different. I’d been a self-obsessed shit then too, only then I’d valued it as self-belief. But it had helped me create a successful business. It was not to be knocked too heavily.
It was that cocky attitude that had made me tell everyone else they were wrong about Sharon when I’d met her. My parents and Em had warned me I was taking a wrong path. I’d told them to fuck off out of my personal business. But it was the wrongness and forbidden nature of the life I led that had made me get involved in it. It held a sense of risk and that made my blood pump with adrenaline. And, of course, anything that had pissed my parents off, and got my adrenalin raging, I’d been into it when I was younger. My self-focused attitude had made me rebellious and I wouldn’t have let my parents set boundaries around me when I’d just made a million. In my eyes, then, I’d been a genius and they’d been beneath me.
I’d been a big-headed dick, and now—
‘Jack.’ I turned around to see Victoria walking towards me, in a pair of pale-pink stiletto heels that were sinking into the grass of the pitch. She had a light flowery summer dress on, one that covered her breasts entirely and fell down to her knees. One that showed the outline of her body as the sunlight shone through the cotton and made me want to guess what everything looked like beneath.
I was more used to women who wore tops that shoved their breasts up in your face, or showed you the first curved edge in a dress secured by tape. While their skirts were so high you had no leg left to imagine, and if they opened their legs, which they frequently did deliberately, you had nothing at all left to imagine.
Imagination was nice and Victoria’s simplicity and prim dress had me hornier than any of the half-naked women Sharon liked us to play with.
I was glad Victoria had come looking for me. Maybe she’d been waiting for a moment to speak quietly. Just the two of us. Maybe I would do what Sharon expected me to do tonight and share a bed with Victoria, for old times’ sake.
‘Hi,’ I said, as she came closer. ‘I got the vibe you didn’t want to talk to me, otherwise I’d have come over and said, hello, last night. How are you? Is life treating you alright?’
She gave me a faint smile and looked me in the eyes. The look wasn’t there. Her pupils didn’t flare. She just looked awkward. It didn’t look like she even fancied me.
I had another sleepless night to look forward to… My internal voice, which never fucking shut up, laughed.
‘Hi,’ she answered. ‘I do want to speak to you, but I’ve been building up courage.’ She swallowed as if she had a dry throat.
I held her arm and turned her away from the school towards the edge of the narrow river where there was a path her heels wouldn’t sink into. She didn’t try
to shake my hand off.
Was she thinking about the times we’d lain out here and used the grass as a bed? I remembered. I could remember every element of what it had felt like because she’d been my first.
I let go of her when we reached the river path, but we kept walking, following the path further away from the school. My hands slipped back into my pockets. I looked ahead, not at her.
‘You’re married,’ she said. ‘I heard Edward tell one of the others when she was asking about you.’
A sound of amusement slipped out of the back of my throat. So Edward had been guarding me from propositions. He definitely would not agree with mine and Sharon’s open way of life. ‘Yes, I’m married. What about you?’
‘But you didn’t bring her.’
‘No, this type of do isn’t her thing. She’s high-maintenance.’ It was the only way I could describe Sharon to people. She was, though – I had to invest eighty per cent of my mind and money on her to keep her happy, or to make sure she was not up to something that would make me unhappy. It had got to the point that I only really took part in the orgies because the argument if I didn’t take part took too much energy, Sharon never backed down.
I’d rather be with someone quiet like Victoria. It would be like going away to Cumbria. The solitude and solidity of having sex with one woman was currently the best fantasy I had. ‘And you? You didn’t answer. Are you married, settled down, single… What?’
‘Married.’ She looked at me with the smile I remembered from our school days and lifted her left hand to show me the ring. On top of it was a beautiful white-gold engagement ring too, with a sapphire and a diamond entwined.
‘Is he here?’
‘No. I have a daughter…’ Her breath caught for a second, but then she carried on. ‘She’s at home with him.’
‘Are you happy?’
She smiled. ‘Yes. Very.’
It was weird, because if I took Sharon out of the equation, the two women who’d counted in my life were the complete opposite of me. The sensible part of me was drawn to level-headed women like Victoria and Em. The wild me…
Here was Victoria settled into a quiet life with a husband and a kid, in her below-the-knee length print dress that covered all of her breasts, and I’d bet she only went out to a restaurant for special occasions because her world was all wrapped up at home. It was nice. I was glad for her.
Then there was Em, with her accountant’s brain, and her black-and-white way of looking at life. She had everything in our business and her personal life sewn up tight; she never let anything slip. I liked to be all over every project at work, but I didn’t need to be, with Em, because she was always there before me. But even she did not know how I lived my life with Sharon, and I saw Em every day. What did that tell me?
Sharon loved trying to rock that relationship; she hated me being close to Em. She even sent girls into work to try and get Em riled up with me, so that Em and me would fall out. My wild side laughed it off, and in the early days I’d indulged with one or two of the really pretty ones, because my attitude then had been ‘why not?’.
Now it was – why?
‘Are you happy?’
I should have known I’d get the same question back.
‘Yes.’ No. The white lie was easier.
‘There’s something I need to tell you, Jack. It’s the only reason I really came here. But I was a coward last night. Can we sit down and talk?’
‘Sure, shall we sit here and watch the river.’ The grass was dry. We’d sat down out here on the grass a thousand times before.
She let her handbag fall off her shoulder and dropped it on the ground, then swept her skirt beneath her and sat. I hoped the pale cloth wouldn’t be stained by the grass.
I slipped my jacket off, but I couldn’t offer it to her – it was too expensive to sit on. I folded it and dropped it on the ground, then sat down beside her with my legs bent up and my arms resting on my knees.
She twisted sideways, her legs bending so she could face me. One of her hands settled on the grass to balance her.
I smiled at her. ‘What do you have to say? That you’re really sorry you ran out on me at school. Don’t worry, I received the message, even though it was silent I got used to you not being here. And you were allowed to make choices that didn’t include me.’
‘It wasn’t a choice.’ She looked down, her gaze falling as if she found it hard to look at me. She hadn’t used to find it hard when we were at school. Her free hand picked a daisy out of the grass and then she spun it between her fingers, looking past me at the river. The sound of the water played on the air around us.
She was still being cowardly because whatever she’d come out here to say to me wasn’t erupting from her lips. ‘Did something happen, then?’ Maybe she’d left school to avoid me? Perhaps she was holding some blame against me because life hadn’t gone in the direction she’d wanted and she’d pinned it all down to not staying at school? But she’d just said she was happy. And I hadn’t done anything bad to her.
She took a breath and looked at me again, as if she’d spent the last couple of minutes trying to slot words into place. ‘My daughter is really beautiful. She’s made my life what it is. I love her – like you cannot imagine. She says funny things all the time and every new thing she does and learns… It’s beautiful… I have a picture on my phone.’ The daisy fell from her fingers and she turned to her bag.
That was nice for her, but I didn’t want to look at her photo.
When she found her phone she tapped in the code to unlock it and I saw her hand shake as she brought up her pictures. Then she held it out to me. ‘She’s seven years old, Jack.’
I looked at the image of a little girl, not really looking.
‘She’s yours,’ Victoria said.
The words hit me. Shit. ‘What?’ She’d punched me in the stomach and followed it with a slap around the face. ‘What?’ I rocked back, as though she’d really hit me.
‘I fell pregnant when we were here.’
‘We used a condom every time.’
‘Most times – not every time, when we were just messing around, and they aren’t one hundred per cent safe. You managed to get me pregnant, anyway. I did not sleep with anyone else, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
I looked back at the phone and took it from her. My free hand shook. Like hers had done. My fingers brushed back my hair.
No. This was insane.
The words, you’re fucking with me, spun around though my head in a sharp growl. But why would she?
The girl had black hair like mine and blue eyes like mine, and her face shape was mine. I stared at it. ‘Why are you telling me now? If she’s seven, why tell me now?’ I was looking at a picture of a child that was meant to be mine.
‘Because you should know. You should have known then, but my parents are old-fashioned, they didn’t want anyone told. I pretended it wasn’t happening, because I didn’t know what to do. They found out about Daisy when I had her a month early on the floor in my room. Mum found us there and they rushed us both to hospital. I was lucky I didn’t kill Daisy.
‘Afterwards Mum and Dad told everyone the child was a maid’s and they were going to adopt her and look after her. It took three years for me to stand up to them and tell them I was going to let people know Daisy was mine.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’ I stared at the image on her phone. My child. I had a child. Those words kept spinning through my brain. ‘What do I say?’
‘I met David after that, and he’s a great dad. He didn’t want me to tell you. That’s why he isn’t here. But when I got the letter from the school, it was like it was telling me I had to come here and let you know. You should know her, and she should know you.’
I stared at the picture. My daughter. I’d never choose to have a child. Never. My life was too fucked up. But I had a child. I’d had a child for all the years I’d been acting like a selfish bastard with Sharon. This little human being was m
ade up of part of me. ‘You should have told me.’ I was a father. Me.
‘I should have. I know. I’m sorry. But at the point I felt capable of speaking to you about it, she was already four and I didn’t know how to begin.’
When she’d been five I’d married Sharon. Would I have made the same decision to lead a hedonistic life if I’d known about this child? Shit. I’d come here feeling introspective and nostalgic—questioning my life. This spun everything on its head. It was like someone had put my life in a box, picked it up and shaken it.
A child. I looked at Victoria, a frown probably making a line down the middle of my forehead. ‘Am I allowed to see her, then?’
‘Yes. David’s agreed.’
‘I doubt I need David’s agreement.’
‘Don’t be like that, please. If we’re doing this, if you want to see her and get to know her, then you have to do it sensitively. She’s a child. It will be a massive thing for her. You’ll need to take it slowly.’
‘This is a massive thing for me. I just discovered I have a seven-year-old daughter.’ When I’m not fit to be a father.
‘You’ll have to see her in my company, at least to begin with. I can’t let her visit someone who’s a stranger. You’d scare her.’
Scare her, my own child. But I had a legal right to her. I looked back at the picture. ‘Does she know about me?’
‘Yes, since she was four I’ve shown her your pictures from school, and said you’re her daddy.’
I looked at Victoria again. ‘So I’m not a complete stranger to her, but she is to me.’ I shut my eyes as a wave of pain washed through my soul. ‘You should’ve answered my messages that summer and told me. I would have helped you.’
‘Jack you liked me but you didn’t love me. You’d have felt guilty and made choices that changed your life, we’d have been stuck—’
‘It changed your life. If the two of us made her, shouldn’t the two of us have had equal impact? I would have loved her. I’m capable of love…’
Did I even know that? God, I hadn’t experienced it. I loved my parents and they were probably the only people, and look at what I’d done to them; we’d only spoken on birthdays and at Christmas since I’d been with Sharon.