by Carmen Reid
'But you haven't seen any of my good moves yet,' he'd added, smiling. 'My style was totally cramped in there. I know stuff that women can't resist.' When he'd said this in his sort of jokey, aren't I so ironic? way, it was funny and cute. Killer combination. Lady-slayer. Could he really be as nice and interested as he seemed? Or was this all a big seduction act?
He'd leaned over the handbrake to kiss her.
'We could have a lot of fun and I bet I love your kids.'
When she'd drawn back from his lips at this, he'd added quickly; 'When I'm allowed to meet them ... when you want me to.'
'You know what's really worrying me,' she'd told him, 'is that you seem too nice. These are the things men say when they're trying. I just can't believe you're really this genuinely nice.'
'Too good to be true.' He'd folded his hands under his chin, leaned against the steering wheel and smiled. 'Well, that's a new complaint, I have to admit and I'm not sure my last girlfriend would agree. I'm a bit asthmatic, I wheeze at night – does that make me less perfect?'
She'd laughed at this.
'But don't you think we behave differently with different people? Some people bring out the worst in each other and some people bring out the best.'
He'd left it there. No need to spell out the implication that maybe they could bring out the best because it was there, obvious as the dimply little grin tucked up under his left cheek.
So they'd gone for breakfast in some kitsch little cafe where even the growling, pissed-off waiter hadn't been able to burst their bubble. Then he'd dropped her at her door – she wouldn't let him in – swapped telephone numbers and he'd already made arrangements to see her again.
In fact, he'd called constantly, had begged to be allowed to come round much more often than she let him and had already met the boys within days of their first date. Eve soon found Joseph was an irrepressible force. He would have camped outside her door if she hadn't let him in.
He was smitten and gradually, very gradually, she allowed herself to be too. It turned out to be the perfect time for Eve to fall in love again. Her first marriage was six years behind her and her boys, Denny, then 12, and Tom 10, didn't need her as much. They had football practice, friends to visit, places to go ... so there was Joseph all ready and waiting to take up her time and let her reclaim some of herself for fun, romance and life beyond the kids.
He made her laugh so much. There was a lightness to her which had rarely been there before.
Eve and Joseph's first whole weekend alone together had been unforgettable. For weeks they had sneaked sly sex in the bathroom with bathwater running or on her fold-down bed in the sitting room in the very small hours of the morning, with the boys' bedroom door barricaded shut – and even then it had to be in silence, total darkness and completely under the covers, all of which turned them on to the point of hysteria.
Finally, she'd agreed to Jen's nagging offers to have the boys for the weekend and Joseph had come to stay on Friday night and hadn't had to leave until Sunday late afternoon. Just like a proper couple.
He had arrived at the door weighed down with carrier bags full of stuff and she'd let him into the flat where their long, excited hello of a kiss had become the first breathless up against the wall session of the evening.
Then he'd been allowed to unpack his goodies and they'd made dinner together before going to bed very early, with the lights on and the covers off to drink in every little tiny physical detail. Afterwards, she'd touched every single one of his moles and he'd combed out her pubic hair in between taking little licks down there, telling her – to her mock screams of horror – that the area was in need of some serious attention. 'You've got a mummy muff and it really has to go. I don't know what I'm doing.'
'Joseph!!!! You're a rude, rude boy!'
'Oh yes, very rude.' And he moved his mouth down again and got to work for longer than she'd ever imagined she could want him to. Until she'd come all over again and felt picked clean of every last remaining shred of desire.
The next morning – or well, afternoon, by the time they'd had breakfast in bed, more sex, a bath, more sex, lunch – they'd gone out for supplies. Food, wine . .. and Joseph loading up a basket at the chemist's but refusing to let her see what was in it until much later that evening when she was giggly drunk, had smoked her first joint and was sprawled over the messed-up bed beside him.
Then he'd brought out the hairdressing scissors and begun to trim the hair between her legs, making silly hairdressery comments all the time: 'Ooooh darling, I think we could transform this with just a little wisp of gel... now be honest with me ... how often do you shampoo? It's too much darling, you'll strip off all the natural oils.' She was just about hysterical with laughter and lust. He kept snipping, then touching, then groping. With care and dedication he coated the edges with Immac and when he was finally finished, she had a small, shorn, heart-shaped muff which they both wanted to take to bed straight away.
On Sunday morning, he persuaded her to bleach a great chunk of her fringe white and dye the rest of her hair pale copper. Then, he gave her the mini PVC nurse's outfit and stetson, hoping she would see the funny side ... and put them on.
'Really, if it's too much... I'm OK with that... this is a 1990s, ironic, post-feminist, we're-all-consenting-adults, PVC outfit, honest.'
'Oh really?' she'd said, coaxing down the cheap, jamming zip. 'I'm not sure if I really want to know just how fearless you are in bed.'
'Oh yes you do, nurse, you do.'
'Now you can truly say you've had a dirty weekend,' he'd told her when they were having sex again for what they knew must be the last time on Sunday afternoon as the sun was setting, just an hour before the boys were due back.
She was chafed from her chin to her ankles and so was he. On top of him on the sofa, she moved slowly, neither of them sure if they could possibly come again.
1 want to live with you,' he'd said, all of a sudden. 'Please say yes. I think you should buy a bigger flat with two bedrooms. One for the boys and one soundproofed room for us... aaah' – slight change of position – 'and I'll be your lodger so you'll easily afford the mortgage and we'll get somewhere with a garden, so me and the boys can play football. And I'll put my desk in the bedroom so I can study all the time I'm not making love to you ... or making you deliriously happy ... please say yes, Eve. I think we could be really good for each other.'
He'd waited a long time for her reply. He'd slowed down until she just felt the pulse of him throbbing inside.
'I haven't met your parents,' she'd said finally with a little bit of a smile.
'That's very old fashioned of you!'
'I mean I'd like to meet your parents.'
'OK... but you're avoiding my question here. Can we move in together?'
'Well...'
'Please?'
'I need to think about it and sound out the boys. Buy a flat?' These were all huge steps, but Joseph made it sound easy, wanted it to be easy for them.
'Think about it, Eve. Oh fuck, I want to come but there isn't any sperm left inside me.'
Kids today, she thought, stroking the head moving between her breasts. They were so liberated, it was scary.
'You're going to love my mother,' he added.
'Stop ... you're really scaring me now!'
Chapter Six
She'd finally found a dingy two-bedroomed basement flat with a charmless stretch of garden at the back, but she knew she could make this home, and when she and her sons moved in, Joseph came too.
They'd bought a bed together, but that was the only joint purchase she'd allowed. Eve had been on her own with her sons for too long to be able to let someone move easily into her life. He'd paid rent and she'd paid for all the other furniture, curtains, paints, plants, kitchen pots and pans – the stuff she gradually accumulated to make a real home. To make the home she'd always wanted for her sons.
But Joseph wouldn't let her keep him at arm's length. He loved her generously, unselfishly and w
anted to be the love and the lover of her life. Until gradually, she'd let him in. No sooner had she started to return his 'I love yous', than he was wanting to rush on into commitment, marriage ... babies!
'Slow down,' she seemed to be warning him all the time.
'Why??!' was his response to this.
It maybe shouldn't have been such a surprise to her that she became pregnant within months of moving in with him. Had it been realistic to expect a diaphragm to hold this amount of determination at bay?
The first few months of the pregnancy were fraught for Eve: not only was she frightened that they weren't ready for this – but she had miscarried at the end of her first marriage and it was terrifying to be pregnant again. She was tearful, tired, sick and anxious. She would lie awake in bed at night certain that the slightest tummy twinge was the first sign of another miscarriage. But finally, finally, their fat, feisty little baby girl had arrived and although Joseph and Anna had fallen in love at first sight, Eve's first reaction to the baby had been an emotional mess of love, relief and fresh anxiety. For a long time after the birth, she'd had to cry almost every day because this so wanted baby was here at last and perfect. It took months to rid herself of all the fears and Eve found it hard to let the baby out of her sight or even put her down until she was a robust three-month-old.
* * *
Throughout Anna's baby and toddlerhood, Joseph was studying at home most of the time so he slipped quite naturally into the main carer role and loved it. He was absorbed by his tiny girl, would pace the flat with her when she fretted, coax her to sip at her bottles of breast milk and make up tuneless lullabies to soothe her to sleep. For Eve it was a revelation to have a man who was so interested in her and so interested in both Anna and her big boys. Her first husband, Dennis, wouldn't have had the slightest idea how to look after his sons and hadn't cared enough to learn.
'Look, look,' Joseph would point out, besotted: 'my eyes, your hair, your nose. I think she's got your top lip and my bottom one. Isn't that amazing?! She's the most perfect girl in the whole world.'
'Even better than me?' Eve would joke.
'Even better, because she's you and me.'
Now, three whole years had passed without him and she was still getting used to it. She felt contented most of the time, happy even, but it would be a lie to say she didn't miss him. She'd had to throw out their bed and buy a smaller one because the emptiness where he had once been would creep over and chill her. Small things could still lurch her back into how much she missed him, or rather, missed the way things once were.
She would catch a trace smell of him on Anna's jumper when her daughter came back from a weekend away. She would see something he would have laughed at, or worst of all she would be reminded of the sex.
How effortlessly good it had become between them. They would roll up together in bed at night with kisses which were so wanted and well timed that sliding into one another was easy and unspoken. Sex was an easy rhythm, moving into different positions was mutual and coming together was almost always possible or just out by a few beats. They would fall apart and into sleep almost straight away, because there was never any need to say anything. It was totally good, totally satisfying. When she and Joseph had become live-in lovers she had finally understood what it was to 'know' someone, to 'move as one'.
She found it hard to sum up what had gone wrong between them over the years. Maybe she'd always felt too pressed by him for a commitment she didn't want to make; maybe she didn't like the person he was growing into. She'd fallen in love with a dreamy, home-based, idealistic student, but Joseph had graduated, landed a job, found out he loved it, wanted to be ambitious and make money. Eve, who had once been the wife of a wealthy workaholic, had panicked that her new, carefully reconstructed life was about to veer off in the direction she'd wanted to avoid.
* * *
'I've made the biggest ever mistake. I shacked up with a complete prat,' she'd told Jen when she'd finally flung Joseph out of the flat close to midnight after a stand up and scream row. Jen had arrived within the hour, bearing a large bottle of cheap Polish gin and a carton of apple juice, which was all she'd been able to rustle up in the rush.
They had drunk tall glasses of this odd apple gin concoction. 'The Dutch are really into this... or is it the Belgians?' Jen had told her, chucking in a few shrunken, frosty ice cubes hacked from the back of Eve's freezer.
After two glasses, they'd moved on to the biscuit tin of joints in the kitchen and had smoked and drunk their way into a numbed state that even Eve's trauma couldn't reach.
'He was so lovely,' she'd told Jen, as they curled up on the sofa together and shared the last joint. 'Such a great guy. Such a lovely dad to Anna.'
'Such a great fuck,' Jen had added, then quickly, 'I'm not speaking from experience, you idiot, I could just tell by how happy you were and you could never keep your hands off each other.'
'How did I manage to turn him into Richard Branson? Or a sort of good-looking version of Dennis?' This was the question Eve couldn't answer. What had she done? What had gone wrong?
When Joseph left university he had surprised her by taking the first job he'd applied for, in telesales. Even more surprising, he was really good at it and was quickly earning a decent amount.
And no sooner earning it, than spending it. The flat had gained a silver Bang and Olufsen stereo, a flash video recorder, stacks and stacks of CDs and videos. Joseph's wardrobe had rapidly expanded to contain Hugo Boss this, Gieves and Hawkes that... Kenzo ... Emporio Armani. She and the children were showered with gifts too, clothes from DKNY, Calvin Klein, expensive Nike trainers.
She knew all the labels of course – from her former life, the one she'd left behind and vowed never to return to. And she'd felt uneasy.
It wasn't hard to guess that Joseph was not putting anything away, he was spending flat out and maxing the credit cards too. But when she nudged him about it, there was always talk of promotion and next month's bonus and earning more commission.
'I want us to move to a bigger flat in a nicer part of town,' he'd tell her, forgetting that Denny and Tom would have to commute to school.
'I don't know if I want Anna to go to that school. Do you think we should look into sending her somewhere private?' This casual remark one supper had caused the most enormous row.
It wasn't just Joseph's wish for 'something better' for his daughter. Eve knew it had triggered her deep-seated fear. The fear that all would be lost again, that she would be alone and having to start from scratch. That everything would vanish overnight... all the nice clothes and treats and toys that you somehow invested emotionally in, the private school, the social lives constructed around it. This is what had happened to her before and now she only put her faith in things that were solid, that couldn't be taken away. State schools, healthy savings accounts, truly affordable mortgages, cheap clothes . .. human relationships based on solid, solid ground.
Joseph was changing the game plan all the time.
It was true, the flat was tiny for them now, her big teenage sons were crammed into the small back bedroom, Anna slept in a child bed at the foot of their own. But this was her home and besides, it had been very cheap and she had saved hard for it.
'I want what I have,' she would tell him in exasperation. 'I like this flat, Denny and Tom are going to be moving out soon, so Anna will have the second bedroom and we'll have far more space. I like it round here, this is where my friends live. The school is fine. I want Anna to go there.'
And they would stop rowing for a bit until Joseph's unstoppable tide of wants would break out again.
'Stop buying all this stuff!' she would scream at him. 'There isn't any room. No wonder the place is so small. It's got all your shit in every corner.' This had been a memorable outburst, complete with her hauling all the CDs off the racks and scattering them onto the floor.