by Sarah Rayner
Maggie laughed. She loved watching Jamie and Nathan being boys together. As she continued running, her spirits began to lift. She noticed Jamie always allowed Nathan to remain a couple of goals ahead and when Nathan was goal-keeping, Jamie encouraged him to move the jumpers closer together so it was easier for him to save.
Given Jamie’s so competitive, that’s quite a sacrifice, thought Maggie. Nathan is the only person he’ll happily allow to humiliate him.
After six circuits she was ready to return home, but she’d an urge to go back via Georgie’s to see if Alex might have stayed. She ran up to the cottage by the church and a quick scan of the street revealed no sign of his car. So he either made an early morning exit or didn’t stay, she thought.
Georgie was in the garden, bent over pulling up weeds.
“Hiya!” said Maggie, reaching the gate.
“Oh, hi.” Georgie straightened and attempted to scoop her defiant hair back into its clip. “I just phoned you but no one was there.”
“I was out running,” Maggie puffed, “and Jamie and Nathan are playing soccer.”
“Gosh, you are good, going for a run after all that booze! How do you do it?”
“I enjoy it,” explained Maggie truthfully.
“Yes, but being so fit and such a wonderful cook! It’s impressive. Not only are you talented and gorgeous—you’ve a beautiful home and boy too. I’m quite jealous.”
Well I never, thought Maggie. If only Georgie knew how miserable I was earlier.
“Anyway, I was calling to thank you. It was a terrific party.”
“My pleasure. You seemed to get on especially well with Alex.”
“I thought he was lovely,” Georgie gushed. “Nice looking too, in a cheeky sort of way, don’t you think? And, ooh, that voice!”
Perhaps I underestimate his appeal, thought Maggie. “Now you come to mention it, I suppose it is rather nice and deep.”
“I’ll say. In fact, I know I shouldn’t have, but when he dropped me off I asked if I could see him again.”
“Really?” said Maggie, uncharitably pleased that the pass had come from Georgie rather than the other way around. “What did he say?”
“He seemed pretty keen. We’re supposed to be going to see something at the National Film Theatre next week. I said I’d give him a call.”
“That’s great!” Maggie would never have dared to be so bold.
“Yes, isn’t it? He seems a very nice guy.”
“He is. What you see is what you get with Alex. I expect you’ll have a great time. I’d better get back—got to put the lunch on. Let me know all about it.”
“I will.” Georgie grinned. “And thanks again,” she called after her.
When Maggie got home there were three messages on the answering machine, from Georgie, then Fran—apparently she was planning on doing some basic cooking with her class at school and was after some recipes for children—and finally Alex, to thank her for a lovely evening. First Maggie spoke to Fran, then phoned Alex.
“Did you have a nice time, then?” she asked, hoping he would spill the beans.
“Super,” he said, then obviously remembered that maybe she hadn’t. “Did you?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Maggie brushed his concern aside. “I’ve just been for a run. Feel much better.”
“Really?” Alex sounded sceptical. “I must say you looked as delicious as ever”—Maggie couldn’t help laughing—“and as for the food, you surpassed yourself. Fantastic starter, that oyster soup.”
How ironic, she thought. Maybe the aphrodisiac worked on him and Georgie.
After lunch Fran arrived. “Are you okay?” she asked, the moment Maggie opened the front door.
Heavens, thought Maggie, do I look that bad? “Yes. Why?”
“You sounded a bit upset on the phone.”
“Oh, well, I feel better now.”
“Now you do. So you didn’t earlier?”
“It’s probably nothing,” said Maggie, leading her into the kitchen. Jamie and Nathan were in earshot, watching television in the living room. Then the pressure of keeping things to herself got too much. “Jamie doesn’t want another child—he said so at the dinner party last night. In front of everyone—it was awful. Then, when we went to bed, I asked him again, and he said it’s not that he doesn’t want one ever, it’s just he’d rather wait a bit. But, Fran, I’m thirty-nine next month. If we wait much longer—Nathan’s seven in October and, well, I don’t know if I can.”
“Hmm.” Fran filled the kettle as if this were her own home. “It’s the other way around with me and Geoff. He wants one now, I want to wait.”
“Yes, but you’re younger.”
“Not much. Still, isn’t it funny? Even when you’ve got one, it’s not that easy deciding when or if to have a second. All the way through life, it seems everything comes down to timing. And I thought it only affected whether or not you could persuade a chap to settle down. How wrong I was.”
Maggie sighed. “Sometimes I feel as if Jamie and I are a year or two out of sync.”
Fran tried to make light of it. “Perhaps it’s because he’s the same age as me.”
“Maybe.”
“I tell you what you need…”
“What?”
“A little extracurricular. That would take your mind off it.”
“Fran! You can’t be serious.”
“I’m not, entirely. But I think you’re suffering from a severe case of being taken for granted. What you need is attention from another admirer. A bit of flirtation.”
“I couldn’t. Jamie would be so hurt.”
“I’m not suggesting you tell him!” protested Fran. “And I’m not meaning you should even do much, just enjoy being fancied by someone else. Here you are, stuck in this house all day on your own while Jamie’s up in town. He probably gets to flirt with hundreds of girls at the office.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t.” Maggie couldn’t imagine it. Or could she?
“I promise if he does it’s harmless. But I bet he does. Even Geoff admitted it once. Not that he’d do anything either, of course, but he said good old-fashioned sexual chemistry can get clients to spend a little more … you know the kind of thing.” She noticed Maggie’s worried expression. “Anyhow, we’re not talking about our husbands, we’re talking about you. And you need something to distract you. When Jamie sees you’re a bit less focused on him, believe you me, he’ll come running back. Next thing, wham, bang! You’ll be pregnant, he’ll be delighted, and everything will be tickety-boo.”
“Gosh.” Maggie was taken aback her sister should be so matter-of-fact. Even if she was only talking about flirtation, wasn’t mental infidelity just as bad? Nonetheless, she was intrigued. “How am I supposed to meet this man? The village is hardly chock-full of bachelors beating a path to my door.”
Fran paused to consider while Maggie got to her feet and reached up to the top shelf of the dresser for the teapot. “Now there you have a problem. Let me think what I did.”
“What you did?” Maggie was amazed. Her sister was surprising her at every turn.
“Oh, yes, I had an affair. Didn’t you know?”
“Fran! You didn’t!” Maggie nearly overfilled the teapot.
“I thought you knew,” said Fran, knowing full well that Maggie did not. It was her way of having the upper hand in their relationship, keeping a few trump cards close to her chest, ready to be revealed when they’d have the most impact. “It was nothing major, you understand. At least, I realize it wasn’t now, although I didn’t see things that way at the time.”
Maggie carried two mugs to the table and suppressed a smile. Fran even seemed to need to get one up on herself just as she did everyone else. Hence the older, wiser Fran always knew more than the younger, naive Fran.
“So who was he?” she asked, getting the milk jug out of the fridge. “When did it happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You never tell me anything.”
“There’s
nothing much to tell. Anyway, tell me now.”
“Promise not to laugh.”
“I won’t.”
“He was the postman.”
Maggie hooted.
“I knew you’d think it was funny. But he was really attractive. A six-foot-two young Robbie Williams type.”
“Not your average Postman Pat.”
“If you’re going to take the piss, I won’t tell you,” Fran huffed. They were nine and ten years old, once again.
“Aw, go on, I want to know, honest. After all, even Shere has a postman. Maybe you can help me seduce him.” Maggie knew Fran would like being cast as the expert, albeit in adultery.
“He seduced me,” she continued buoyantly. “We first met when I walked Dan to school. Tim, his name was. He was always very friendly, and we were headed the same way, him with his trolley. He’d let Dan push it, then give him letters, and show him where to post them. Dan loved it, loved him. You know what it’s like—someone’s nice to your child, it makes you warm to them.”
“I suppose so.” But surely there’s warming to someone and having the hots, thought Maggie. The two are quite distinct. I hardly succumb to every man who’s nice to Nathan—I’m married, as is Fran. And what about Geoff? Are things stickier than they seem? I guess you never know what goes on behind closed doors.
“I always had the impression you and Geoff got on so well. When was all this?”
“About two years ago.” Fran lowered her voice. She looked uncharacteristically embarrassed. “We’d stopped sleeping together.”
“No! I thought you two…” Golly, thought Maggie, is all Fran’s swanking mere bravado?
“Well, we do now, but for a while, when Dan was younger, it tapered off a bit.”
“Why? There must have been a reason.”
“Do you think there’s a reason that things have slowed down between you and Jamie?”
The idea made Maggie uncomfortable. Might Jamie’s lack of libido relate to some deeper issue? “Our sex life hasn’t died. It’s only not as frequent as it used to be. After so many years together that’s quite common, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is. Though things with Geoff and me had got worse than that. I think it started because he was having a dreadful time at work. It was when his firm merged with that other one—remember?”
Maggie did. Geoff had been nervous that he might be made redundant; she had felt sorry for him.
“After a while he got anxious about sex too. Pretty soon it became a vicious circle. I felt he wasn’t communicating so I wanted affection, he felt I was demanding, emotionally and physically, and he couldn’t answer my demands. So he worried and I got more demanding.”
Maggie could just imagine how Fran’s impatience might make a man—especially one as sensitive as Geoff—insecure. Poor chap. Yet surely the solution was not to sleep with someone else?
“Anyway.” Fran, breezily recalling the excitement of her liaison, was oblivious to her sister’s concern. “In the end Tim the toy boy satisfied my desires, or at least for a while.”
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-four,” said Fran proudly. “Showed me a thing or two, I must say.”
“So you slept with him?” Maggie was horrified.
“Of course. I said I had an affair—it’s hardly an affair if there’s no sex.”
“I suppose not.” Maggie felt distinctly unworldly. Just how did one end up sleeping with a postman? “What happened?”
“I’m not going to tell you everything,” said Fran, relishing withholding the very information she’d promised, “but I will say one day he had to get me to sign for something—a registered letter, I think it was. I’d already taken Dan to school, and he invited himself in, and we knew each other quite well by then and one thing led to another, well, almost before I could stop myself—he was so attractive—we were shagging in the hall. I think he had a bit of a thing for older women,” she added, as if this explained the entire episode.
“Good God!” Fran “shagging” the postman! The phrase that made her squirm—it seemed so mechanical. In fact, it sounded like the kind of thing men said to impress their mates in the pub. Not something her slightly too tall and skinny younger sister would confide in her, seated at her very own kitchen table.
Fran got up and opened the cupboard where she knew her sister kept the biscuits. She rummaged around in the tin and took the last of the Bath Olivers.
“The reason I’m sharing this,” she said with her mouth full, “is because it helped my relationship with Geoff no end.”
“It did?”
“Yup.” She swallowed. “Because I stopped wanting to sleep with him so desperately. I don’t know if it was ’cause he sensed something was wrong, and it made him appreciate me more, or whether the pressure being off meant things got better between us. We started making love again, and gradually I even introduced some more adventurous things into our sex life—positions I’d learned with Tim—a little mild S and M using silk scarves, stuff like that. Then, finally, I didn’t need Tim anymore so I finished with him, and now everything’s just great. That’s why you should have a fling.”
“And Geoff never found out?” Maggie was agog. Fran was attractive, but outlandish positions? Mild S and M? With silk scarves? Her primary-schoolteacher sister!
“Of course not.”
Somehow Maggie couldn’t help sympathizing with the men in this scenario: the Robbie lookalike who’d been dumped the moment Fran’s marriage got back on an even keel, and her brother-in-law, whom she’d known for ten years and was fond of.
Dear Geoff, thought Maggie. He puts up with Fran’s incessant one-upmanship and bossiness. No one deserves to be treated like that, least of all such a kind, if occasionally bumbling, man like my brother-in-law. For what sounds like months he was unaware that my sister was satisfying her lust elsewhere. On the hall carpet … Maybe they even tied each other to the marital headboard! Surely he must have had some idea. I would, I’m certain of it. And what about Dan? Cavorting with the postman is hardly the behavior of a responsible mum. What if my nephew picked up on something while they were supposedly innocently posting letters? I know from Nathan it’s uncanny what small boys understand.
Maggie shuddered. Infidelity—what a horrible, horrible idea. She’d never let things between her and Jamie get that bad.
No, she thought firmly. A flirtation elsewhere is not the solution, not for me. Not ever.
11
By Tuesday morning Chloë had convinced herself she wouldn’t hear from James again, not in that way, at least. Anyway, today she was meeting Vanessa Davenport for lunch, and she had more important things to think about. Or so she’d persuaded herself until she pushed open the rotating doors to UK Magazines’ Covent Garden offices. There he was, in the foyer, waiting with a couple of members of staff for the elevator.
True to form, Chloë went pink immediately. James, on the other hand, with his jacket thrown over his briefcase—it was hot outside—appeared incredibly cool. She was struck again by how effortlessly well-dressed he was. In some ways men have it easy, she thought.
“Hello,” he said, on seeing her.
“Hi.”
“How are you?”
“Oh, I’m okay.” Should she ask how he was? No—far too familiar.
Silence.
A bell signaled the arrival of the elevator. The doors opened and all four of them got in. James took control of pressing the buttons.
“Which floor?” he asked the others.
“Two,” said a man in a pinstripe suit.
“Three,” said a middle-aged woman.
He didn’t bother to ask Chloë, just pressed the button for her floor regardless. Then he stepped back. Did that mean he was getting out with her? Or at the second or third? Chloë’s heart raced. If they were both headed for the fifth, they’d have a few seconds alone. Help!
They all stood pressed against the walls, looking everywhere rather than at each other. What was it abou
t elevators that made chatting with people—even those one normally got on with easily—so impossible?
Ping! At the second floor, the man in pinstripes got out. He probably worked in accounts. More silence. Ping! At the third, the middle-aged lady disappeared.
James and Chloë were alone.
“I’m meeting Vanessa Davenport today,” said Chloë, thankful to have thought of something to say.
“I heard. She told me.”
This threw Chloë again—he’d been talking about her. But before she had time to consider every possible reason why, James said: “I couldn’t stop thinking about you all weekend.”
She looked him in the eye, trying to be stern. But … POW! There it was again. Chemistry so intense Chloë could imagine it causing the elevator to explode out of the top of the building.
“Me neither,” she said.
“I’d like to see you again,” said James. He seemed a little nervous.
Chloë virtually came on the spot. “Er…”
“Thursday night?” asked James, as the elevator arrived at the fifth floor.
The doors opened.
To hell with her diary—she’d cancel anything she had arranged. “Yes,” she said quickly.
He followed her into reception. “I’ve a meeting with your editor,” he explained. “Good luck with Vanessa,” he added, giving her a broad grin.
“Thanks,” said Chloë, wondering what it would be like to kiss him right then. There were several people she didn’t recognize sitting waiting on the sofas and the receptionist’s face was raised in anticipation, ready to greet James politely, so a hushed “see you” was the most Chloë could manage before heading to her desk.
* * *
Three hours later she was sitting across from Vanessa Davenport in the Soho restaurant Petit France. Vanessa looked good in a ghoulish way, with her rather sharp, beaky nose and gaunt cheeks. She was elegantly dressed in black Gucci (UK Magazines must rate her for her to afford that lot, thought Chloë), and they were surrounded by a precarious mêlée of papers, side salads, and glasses. It was a challenge for Chloë to eat pasta and present her documents while maintaining a semblance of decorum.