Errors of Judgment

by Caro Fraser

  ‘Come on back to bed,’ he murmured, fondling her through her robe.

  She turned and kissed him. His mouth tasted of lager, but she didn’t care. She probably tasted worse, and he didn’t seem to mind. Her mind and body took comfort in the feel and touch of him. Sex, the great healer. They would go back to bed for an hour or so, keep the reality of Sunday at bay for a little while longer. But then, Felicity decided, they would make something civilised of the day.

  ‘I’ll come back to bed,’ she said, ‘if you promise to take me for a nice lunch later. Somewhere we can sit and read the Sunday papers. Down by the river, maybe. A gastropub.’

  Vince groaned. ‘I hate those poncey places. Posh waitresses, sawdust and no spit, and the beer’s usually rubbish. Can’t we just go down the Kempton Arms? Ossie’ll be there. They do burgers and stuff, if you want lunch. And they’ve got Sky. Arsenal are playing Juventus.’

  ‘No, Vince. I want to have a nice day. A civilised day.’

  ‘All right. But you’ll be the one paying. I’m skint.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ She would pay a fortune not to have to sit in the Kempton Arms with Ossie and his weird girlfriend, watching football all afternoon while Vince got slowly pissed.

  He kissed her again. ‘It’s a deal, then. Come back to bed.’

  ‘OK. Let me just make my tea first, and bring it with me.’

  Choosing The Heron in Chiswick for Sunday lunch had been Rachel’s decision. She was nervous about Oliver and Simon meeting for the first time. Her relationship with Simon had been chaste so far, consisting of that first evening at Abacus, a lunchtime drink, and supper and a play at the Menier, after which she had gone back to Simon’s flat in Bermondsey for coffee. Rachel knew that her wary approach to sex, based on bad experiences from long ago, had a tendency to confuse and deter men, and she had been apprehensive about being alone with Simon. But he seemed remarkably sensitive to her mood and her feelings, and an hour after their first kiss and all that followed, she had found herself desperately wishing she didn’t have to go home. But there was Oliver to think of, the babysitter to pay, work and school the next morning. Rachel knew that the only way forward was for Simon to stay at her place some night, and that would have to be very delicately played where Oliver was concerned. So she had suggested that Simon and Oliver should get to know one another, that the three of them should spend a Sunday together. She liked Simon very much, more than any man she had met in a long time. He was easy, funny, and uncomplicated. And, rather gratifyingly, he seemed pretty smitten with her.

  So on a bright, chilly December Sunday, Rachel and Oliver met Simon in Kew at noon, and the three of them took a long ramble along the river, aiming to get to The Heron between half one and two. Initially Oliver, who was quite jealous of his mother’s company, treated Simon with marked indifference. Simon took this in his stride, and didn’t try too hard to engage him in talk. Twenty minutes into the walk, in the course of a conversation prompted by the sight of rowing eights practising on the river, Simon revealed that he had been a rowing blue at Oxford. Once the term was explained to Oliver, he seemed grudgingly impressed. He was even more impressed when he discovered, in the course of a lengthy discourse about X-Men, that Simon had decided views on whether Cyclops’s ability to shoot red beams of force from his eyes was superior to Sabretooth’s accelerated healing powers and resistance to disease. By the time they reached the pub, Oliver had accepted Simon as a worthy friend, and was busy filling him in with information about the ancient Egyptians, whom he was studying at school.

  The Heron was big and busy, but the early lunchtime rush had subsided, and they found a table at the far end by the window and ordered lunch. There was a deck outside, fenced around, and Rachel and Oliver went outside to feed the ducks on the river with some stale bread Rachel had brought. Simon stayed inside, leafing through the Sunday papers. After ten minutes Rachel came in.

  ‘Too cold for me.’ She pulled off her gloves and sat down. ‘Oliver’s determined to stay out there till the bread’s all finished. What’s in the papers?’

  ‘Oh, mainly the Bernie Madoff story. You do wonder why people weren’t more suspicious. Didn’t they ask themselves how he was managing to get people twelve per cent returns on their money in such an appalling economic climate?’

  ‘People are greedy, I suppose. And they like to have faith. Obviously Madoff inspired that.’

  ‘Some of the victims I feel sorry for – not all of them are rich. Some of them are charities.’ Simon sighed and folded up the paper. He glanced out at Oliver, who was still crouched down on the deck outside, his woollen hat down over his ears, patiently waiting for ducks to paddle past so that he could throw them pellets of bread.

  ‘He’s a very good little boy,’ observed Simon. ‘I’d have been roaring round the place at his age.’

  ‘He can be a terror when he wants to, but he’s very focused when he wants to be. Just like his father.’

  ‘I take it you and his dad still get on?’

  ‘Better than we used to.’

  ‘How long ago did you split up?’

  ‘A year after Oliver was born.’

  ‘Can I ask what happened? I mean, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want—’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’ Rachel paused, glancing out to check on Oliver, who had finished the bread and was leaning against the palings, watching the river. ‘Leo just wasn’t – isn’t – very good at commitment. Which is a nice way of saying that he was having affairs with other … people. Some I knew about, some I didn’t. I wasn’t prepared to put up with it.’ She sipped her wine. ‘What about you? No one reaches thirty-six without some kind of back story.’

  ‘Oh, fairly typical stuff.’ Simon sipped his beer. ‘The usual girlfriends before, during and after uni, nothing serious. Then a long-term girlfriend that I lived with for about six years. We broke up just after my thirty-first birthday. Messy, splitting up with someone after that long. Carving things up. Possessions, the flat.’

  ‘At least your relationship lasted longer than my marriage. Why did it end?’

  Simon shrugged. ‘She wanted to get married. I didn’t.’

  ‘Another man afraid of commitment. The world seems to be full of them.’

  ‘Not entirely fair. I ended it because I thought, well, if I didn’t love her enough to marry her – what was the point? I was wasting time. Hers and mine. I do want to get married some day, have children, the whole family thing. Most men do, I reckon. But it has to be the right person.’

  At that moment Oliver barged back in from the deck area, bringing a gust of chilly air. ‘Mummy, when’s lunch?’ he demanded. ‘I am so unbelievably hungry.’

  Simon spotted their waitress heading towards them with a laden tray. ‘I think your roast beef is on its way right now.’ He grinned and ruffled Oliver’s hair. Rachel winced – it was something Oliver generally hated. But Oliver let his hair be ruffled and grinned right back, then wriggled onto his chair and watched appreciatively as his food was set in front of him.

  Twenty minutes later, on her way to the Ladies at the very back of the pub, Rachel saw Felicity. She was sitting at a table with a dark, broad-shouldered man dressed in jeans and a combat jacket. He had two-day-old stubble, and seemed mildly, cheerfully drunk. He was sitting with his legs propped on a chair, paying no attention to Felicity, conversing with two couples at a neighbouring table. Felicity’s attitude was one of defeat and boredom, verging on apprehension. Although the two men at the next table were responding to whatever Felicity’s friend was saying with wary tolerance – it seemed to be something to do with football – it was clear that their girlfriends were fed up with the intrusion. Rachel took this all in at a glance. She stopped by the table and said hello.

  Felicity looked up, startled. ‘Rachel, hi!’ Rachel could sense her embarrassment. Felicity glanced across at Vince, who had been sufficiently distracted by Rachel’s arrival to stop chatting to the two men. ‘Rachel,’ said Felicity,
‘this is Vince. Vince – this is Rachel Davies. She was my boss, once upon a time.’

  Vince smiled at Rachel woozily, giving her an appreciative once-over. ‘Was she now?’ He lifted his feet from the chair and stood up. Rachel, not quite sure what was coming, put out her hand. Vince shook it, then leant in to kiss her cheek. He reeked of both beer and whisky. ‘Rachel, you are most welcome. Like to sit down? Get you a drink?’

  ‘No thanks. I’m just on my way to the Ladies.’ Rachel turned to Felicity. ‘I’m here with Oliver and a friend. We took a long walk along the river before lunch. Isn’t it a glorious day?’

  ‘Glorious!’ exclaimed Vince loudly, imitating Rachel’s proper vowels. ‘I say, isn’t it absolutely glorious?’ He laughed and turned to the two men at the next table for confirmation and approval, then sat down clumsily. One of them grinned sheepishly and looked away. The other muttered something into his drink, not smiling. Vince gave him a bleary, searching glance, then decided to let it go. He looked back at Rachel. ‘Glorious. You’re fucking glorious, you know that?’

  Felicity put her hand on Vince’s knee. ‘Vince! Stop it!’ she urged. People at nearby tables were glancing round.

  Rachel pretended it was all fine. ‘Listen, good to see you, Fliss. Give me a call some time.’ She turned and headed to the Ladies.

  When she came out a few moments later, something had clearly kicked off between Vince and the men at the next table. He was shouting incoherent abuse, and one of the men stood up and fetched Vince a punch that knocked him off his chair. The girls began to scream, and then the table went over, sending drinks crashing and spilling across the floor. Bar staff raced across. Felicity crouched down to try and help Vince up, but he pushed her away so forcefully that she went sprawling backwards.

  Rachel stood on the edge of the commotion, uncertain what to do. Felicity was getting unsteadily to her feet. Rachel went over to her. ‘Come on,’ she murmured, ‘you don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. Let him look after himself.’

  Felicity gave her a stunned, frantic look. ‘I can’t just leave him! Look at the state of him!’

  At that moment three bar staff waded in, grabbing hold of Vince and his assailant, and hustling them both towards the back entrance. Felicity went after them. Rachel watched her go.

  Sarah sat by the window in the half-darkness, staring across the river at the glimmering lights of Canary Wharf, waiting for Toby. One small lamp cast a muted pool of light in a far corner of the room. Her heart felt numb. She was about to inflict a terrible injury on someone to whom she had once – almost – been prepared to give her whole life. She couldn’t feel sorry for him. He was lucky to be making his escape. She had pretended not only to him, but to herself, that she loved him enough to marry him, simply because it meant a life of relative ease and prosperity, and freedom from certain kinds of menial cares. But take away those pleasing prospects, and the affection she felt simply wasn’t enough. She had been put to the test, and found utterly wanting. She had never felt less capable of love in her life.

  She picked up her gin and tonic from the black lacquer coffee table and took a sip, thinking that a bit more self-reproach and spiritual abasement might be in order. But she’d done enough of that. She needed to move on, calculate the likely fallout with Toby’s family, and with her father.

  Then the sound she had been dreading all day interrupted her thoughts. She heard Toby’s key in the door, the sound of it opening and closing, the thump of his overnight bag on the hall floor. His tall figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the glow of light from the hall. He stood there a few seconds, accustoming his eyes to the gloom.

  ‘There you are.’ He crossed the room. ‘What are you doing sitting in the dark?’ She said nothing. He gazed at her for a moment, then sat down on the sofa, but not next to her. Something in her silence, perhaps in her tense posture, put him on his guard.

  Sarah swallowed the remains of her gin and tonic, and set the glass down. ‘How was your weekend?’ she asked.

  ‘Excellent. Always gratifying to beat the Scots. Paul’s wife and Alan’s girlfriend came along. They went shopping on Princes Street. You should come next time.’

  ‘Be a WAG, you mean.’

  Toby laughed uncertainly. ‘Well, it’s a weekend away. I just thought, if other people take their wives …’ He decided to leave the subject, and leant over to pick up her empty glass. ‘Another?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Think I’ll join you.’ He stood up and went to the drinks cupboard. Sarah wondered if he was as aware as she was of the level of tension in the air. She had no way of behaving normally. It was merely a question now of getting from A, this instant moment, to B, the point at which she would put on her coat, pick up the bag that was already packed and sitting in the bedroom, and leave.

  Toby uncapped the gin bottle and poured drinks. ‘Annabel was down for the weekend,’ he remarked. Annabel was Toby’s younger sister, already earmarked as a bridesmaid. ‘Mummy was trying to persuade her to suggest some colour or other for the bridesmaids’ dresses. Annabel said she should leave it up to you and stop interfering.’

  Sarah could think of nothing to say. Toby brought the drinks over and sat down, still keeping a distance between them, but stretching out an arm along the back of the sofa. He stroked her hair, and asked, ‘You OK?’

  Sarah took a swallow of her drink. ‘No. Not really.’ She waited for him to ask what was wrong, but he didn’t. When he lifted his glass, it was almost like a defensive movement. Sarah wondered for a fleeting instant if he suspected, or guessed what was coming. If he did, he wasn’t going to help her out. She had to continue. ‘I’m afraid something happened this weekend.’

  He turned to look at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  She looked down at her glass, which she was clutching between both hands in her lap. ‘Saying it like that makes it sound as though it was out of my control. But it wasn’t. It didn’t just happen. It was something I did.’

  Toby set his drink down sharply on the table. ‘For God’s sake—’

  She carried on quickly, not letting him speak, just wanting it to be told, out of the way, the hellish moment over. ‘I slept with Leo Davies. On Friday. After Grand Night. I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t anything. I did it because I wanted to.’ She had wondered earlier if she would have to try to manufacture tears, but they came naturally. Saying it out loud charged her with genuine, ice-cold guilt, and she began to cry. ‘I did it, and it changes everything.’

  She wept, pausing once to sniff and take a long pull at her gin and tonic, thinking what nice, strong ones Toby made, while Toby sat with his head in his hands.

  After a while he lifted his head, staring straight ahead at the lights of Canary Wharf. She was appalled to see that he had been crying, too, and her first impulse was to take him in her arms and comfort him. But she resisted it, and when she heard his next words, was glad she had. He turned to look at her. ‘It doesn’t have to change everything. I don’t want it to. People do these things. I’m not … it’s not like, well … that is, it’s not like I haven’t had a bit of a moment myself.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I mean, it didn’t go anywhere – it was when we went on that cricket tour last summer. It honestly didn’t matter, it meant completely nothing, and that’s why – that’s why I don’t want this to make any difference. To us.’

  Sarah allowed herself a moment to digest this unexpected revelation. ‘Toby, it’s more than just a casual fling. I’m moving in with Leo.’

  ‘What? You slept with him once and you’re moving in? What are you talking about? This is mad!’

  ‘It’s complicated. It’s also much more than you think. Leo and I go back a long way. It’s made me realise’ – she spread her hands – ‘that there’s no way I can marry you. I don’t want to. I don’t love you. It’s simply no good.’

  Sarah knew that a point had been reached where this either escalated into a full-scale row with atte
ndant histrionics, more tears, and abuse hurled – which would be a waste of time since there couldn’t be any of the customary reconciliation – or she cut to the chase and left. So she stood up. Toby stood up too, and grabbed her by the wrists.

  ‘Sarah, please. This is ridiculous. You don’t mean any of this. You can’t just walk away. Please, baby.’

  ‘Toby, let go. I’m sorry. I never wanted this. But it’s over, completely over. Let me go.’

  ‘Do you love him?’ he demanded.

  ‘Let me go.’

  ‘Come on – I want to know!’

  Sarah wanted to say no, but to her surprise she found that she couldn’t disown Leo. It was one lie she would not tell. ‘That’s not the point. The point is, I don’t love you, Toby. That’s all that matters.’ Perhaps the gentle finality with which she said this made him realise there was no further point. He let go of her.

  ‘I’ve packed some of my things. It’s best if I just go now. I can get the rest another time.’

  He said nothing. She went to the bedroom. Her case lay on the bed, her handbag next to it. She took out her mobile and rang for a cab, then sat down on the bed and waited. After five minutes or so, Toby appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Look, do what you want now. Go where you want. I can’t stop you. We’ll talk later. No matter what you say, it can’t be over. Not just like that.’

  Sarah knew it was best to say nothing. At that moment an alert buzzed on her phone. The cab was downstairs. She put on her coat, picked up her belongings, left the flat, and went down in the lift.

  When the cab reached Chelsea, the driver missed the house, and Sarah got out a few doors down. She was just paying the fare, and as she glanced towards Leo’s house she saw the door open, and Leo emerge with a girl. The cab purred away up the street, and Sarah quickly picked up her case and retreated to the edge of the central garden and the shadow of the trees. At this short distance Sarah could see the girl was young and extremely pretty. Leo and the girl spoke briefly, then she kissed him and went down the steps and unchained a bicycle from the railings. She waved once at Leo, and cycled away. Leo went inside, closing the front door.