Men I've Loved Before

by Adele Parks

  ‘Get out,’ she yelled. She was unsure if she meant this or whether it was just the sort of thing she was expected to say. She was in too much shock to rationalise. She knew things were a mess but hadn’t thought he’d actually be having an affair. She hadn’t thought things were that bad.

  ‘No, no, Cindy is not a friend, she’s a stripper,’ Neil tried to explain.

  ‘A stripper!’ Nat didn’t know if this was better or worse. Did it matter?

  ‘I’ve made friends with a stripper,’ added Neil, trying and failing to be clear.

  ‘That’s what they’re calling it now, are they? Friends?’ Nat snarled. She reasoned that if he was admitting to being friends with a stripper, that meant he was sleeping with a stripper as it was unlikely he was spending time with a stripper and talking about the meaning of life. Neil disgusted her. She wanted him out of her sight. Now. Now and for ever. ‘You’re having an affair.’ She stated the fact in order to get used to it. Neil was shagging someone else. He was screwing someone else. He was fucking someone else. The horrible thought flung itself around her head like a ball in a pinball machine, relentless, unstoppable. Suddenly something clicked in Nat’s head and she realised that maybe, on some level, she’d been expecting this since Neil had come home with fake tan on his crotch. He’d confessed to visiting a stripper then and tonight she’d discovered that the visits were regular. That could only mean one thing. ‘You bastard,’ she screamed again, unable to articulate anything more crippling or reasonable.

  ‘No. No, not an affair. Just one kiss.’

  He was admitting to kissing someone else. A stripper. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It’s true. We’re just friends.’

  ‘Friends that kiss.’

  ‘That was a mistake. I got carried away. Confused. Nothing happened because her husband interrupted us. It was him who gave me this.’ Neil pointed to his face. He thought that by coming clean he might salvage the situation but it was a huge miscalculation. The truth sounded stranger than fiction and Nat did not believe him.

  ‘Her husband?’ She gasped in shock. They’d been caught at it by the stripper’s husband. The thought was inconceivable. She’d lavished sympathy on him about that bruise. She’d rubbed arnica cream on it and now she discovered it had been delivered to Neil by a cuckolded husband. The bastard!

  ‘We’ve been so weird recently. You know that.’ Inadvisedly Neil started to justify his indiscretion.

  ‘Oh, so this is my fault.’ Nat had her hands on her hips now. She was adopting the pose that a million betrayed wives and lovers had adopted over the years. A pose that suggested resilience and was designed to disguise the agony of a breaking heart.

  ‘No, I’m not saying that.’ Neil got off the bed with the intention of taking Nat into his arms but she emitted vibes of distrust and resentment. Suddenly he was aware of his nakedness. He felt vulnerable, unsure how Nat’s anger might manifest. She might very well kick him in the bollocks before he got the chance to explain himself; she was a feisty woman and wild when wounded. He scrambled into his jeans. ‘I’m just trying to say that the thing between Cindy and me is not something terrible and sordid.’ Neil glanced at Nat, she didn’t look convinced. She looked as if she might kill him. It was understandable, he’d called out another woman’s name during their best ever lovemaking and now he’d admitted that the other woman was a stripper whom he had kissed. He had to admit, it did sound very terrible and sordid. He wondered how he could explain Cindy. How he could convince Nat of his innocence. ‘She has a little girl. I’ve met her daughter. I’ve bought her an ice cream.’

  ‘Get out, Neil.’ Nat delivered this line in a low, calm voice. Unlike the furious screeches, this tone could not be argued with.

  Neil looked at his feet. He noticed some coins on the floor; they must have fallen from his jeans pocket. He saw that her bedtime reading book was lying on the rug, it was being used as a coffee coaster for an empty mug so there would no doubt be a circular stain on the cover now. He noticed Nat’s pale blue panties were lying forlornly on the floor too, where he’d thrown them just minutes ago. Everything looked so normal, just the same as it always did and yet everything was different. Everything was ruined.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Neil, trying to sound as confident as he needed to be, rather than as under-confident as he felt. He clawed around for a solution; he couldn’t find one so he resorted to a complication. ‘You weren’t out with Becky last night. I saw her at the tube station. Where were you?’ he demanded, aware that this was a stunning blow.

  Nat blinked, astonished by the turn of the conversation. She had not felt she had the upper hand; indeed she was some way from it since her husband was sleeping with a stripper, but she thought she was at least unlikely to encounter any more shocks. Yet it turned out that she was wrong, Neil had another surprise up his sleeve. He knew she’d lied to him. She sighed. She had nothing to lose now, therefore no more reasons to hide.

  ‘I met Alan Jones for a drink,’ she admitted.

  ‘Alan Jones?’ It took Neil just a moment to place the name. As he did so, the lines on his furrowed brow seemed to slip to his mouth, weighing it into a nasty twisted grimace. ‘Your ex?’ he bellowed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you having an affair, Natalie, with Alan Jones?’

  ‘No.’ Nat was using every fibre in her body to appear in control. She wanted to yell but did not dare. If she started to howl at him, or scream at him, she might never be able to stop until every window in the street was shattered. Her eerie composure further confounded Neil and caused him to roar louder.

  ‘I think you are!’

  ‘That’s very predictable of you. I’m sure it would be very convenient for you if I was but I’m not. Of course that’s bound to be the first thing you’d think of, considering your own position.’ Neil was sleeping with someone else. He’d betrayed her. He was going to desert her. She’d lost him. The bleak thoughts tore at her gut.

  ‘What am I supposed to think? You don’t want a baby. You’re never here. Even when you are here, you’re not. Not really.’

  ‘I’ve been seeing other people,’ said Nat matter-of-factly, keen to deal a hurtful blow of her own while she was reeling from his killer punch.

  ‘Fuck.’ Neil slammed his hand into the bedroom wall. Crap, that hurt! Really, really stung. He had no idea it would hurt that much. He wasn’t thinking about his hand. Well, yes, the hand hurt but not just the hand. His heart bled too. She was seeing other people! Not just one person but multiples.

  ‘I’m not sleeping with them,’ she said evenly. It was easier to take refuge in sarcasm than deal with the agony she felt.

  ‘I’m not sleeping with Cindy!’ yelled Neil. He realised he wasn’t presenting his case in the most convincing manner. He sounded hysterical and irrational, the traits of a liar. He’d just punched the wall, the action of an idiot.

  ‘Whatever.’ Nat shrugged. Clearly she didn’t believe him. But it scared him to see that she was so calm and untouched, almost as though she didn’t care whether he was telling the truth or not. ‘I’m not even kissing them,’ she added slyly, somehow insinuating that kissing was now the accepted code for fucking someone’s brains out in a gang bang.

  ‘What then?’ Neil challenged.

  ‘I found an old address book, a couple of months ago. Packed full with the names of my exes. I’ve got into this habit of calling them up.’

  ‘Why?’

  Nat shrugged. She really didn’t know right now. She couldn’t explain. Something to do with checking Neil was her One. Well, she had her answer now, didn’t she? It was loud and clear.

  ‘Who have you met up with?’ Neil demanded.

  ‘Michael Young, Richard Clark, Matthew Jackson, Daniel McEwan, Gary—’

  ‘You slept with all those men!’

  ‘No. I told you. I didn’t sleep with any of them. Stop going on about that. We just met up for a drink in a bar or a gallery. I went for supper
with one or two of them. That’s all.’

  ‘You dated!’ His tone made it clear she might as well have said she’d been having sex with these men. Neil thought he understood his wife and he jumped to the inevitable conclusion and asked in horror, ‘Are you planning an escape route?’

  ‘No. I’m trying to understand why I chose you,’ Nat finally replied honestly and flatly.

  Neil swayed, he thought his knees might give way beneath him and he’d fall like a discarded rag doll. He concentrated very hard on breathing deeply and then found the air to mutter, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Fine, then I’ll go,’ said Nat. Neil froze. In minutes she’d pulled on underwear, jeans and a top, shoved her feet into her trainers and banged the front door behind her.

  The door banging seemed to pull Neil round. He rushed to the window and was relieved to see that, even in her fury, she’d paused to pull on a coat and pick up her bag; at least she wouldn’t be cold and she’d have money to get a taxi to wherever it was she was going. He banged on the window.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he yelled. Or maybe those words just stayed in his head because Nat didn’t stop in her tracks or acknowledge him in any way. He watched her brittle, determined figure march up the street and round the corner. He shook his head in case a thought happened to be hiding somewhere. Nothing. He simply didn’t know what to do next.

  32

  Nat hurt so much that she thought her heart was bleeding. She leant against the damp, slimy wall of the house at the end of her street and felt the pain spread through her body. It seemed to squeeze the life out of every internal organ. She briefly wondered whether she should call for an ambulance. She’d had a crash, after all. Not a car crash but in some ways her crash was just as devastating, just as fatal. She and Neil had been on a collision course for some time now; she’d known it but she just hadn’t wanted to think about it. All the insecurities she’d been swamped with when she was younger once again swirled around her and she thought she’d suffocate or drown in them. This was it. This was the disaster that she had always secretly anticipated. She hadn’t known it would take this form. She’d thought that she could control events and protect herself against loss by not getting pregnant, not taking that particular risk, but no, she couldn’t protect herself against loss. She’d lost Neil.

  If these past weeks had shown her anything, they had shown her that she wanted Neil. Neil above all. Above the other men she’d dated and even those she’d never dated, above the men in the street that she’d walked past, the movie stars she’d fantasised about, the writers she’d admired, the band members who had sent flickers of lust through her knickers when she’d listened to their tracks. Above them all. They were nothing in comparison. Resting against the damp, inhospitable brick, Nat suddenly knew for certain Neil was her One.

  Nat could hear neighbours hosting a dinner party. She listened to the sound of loud laughter and clinking glasses, good-time sounds. She felt a deep and terrible loneliness as she stood on the empty Chiswick street; it was a nasty, haunting feeling. She wondered what she could do next. Just what could she do? She considered hopping in a cab to Waterloo and catching a train to her parents’, but she’d probably missed the last one and being alone on a station late at night was the last thing she needed right now. She couldn’t face going back to Ali and Tim’s, even though they lived within easy walking distance. Ali, snugly wrapped in her longed-for pregnancy, was the last person Nat could expect understanding from. Besides, Tim was Neil’s oldest friend, she’d be putting him in a terrible position if she dashed round to his home to slag off Neil. Jen lived in Earl’s Court; Nat could hop on a tube to hers but then wouldn’t it be more likely that Jen had gone back to Karl’s? Karl was only a ten-minute walk away. Unlike Tim, Karl would have no scruples about her dishing dirt on Neil. He’d listen to the angry trashing of his best pal just as though he was listening to the weather report; it would not embarrass him or challenge him morally and he would still be best pals with Neil on Monday morning. He’d probably award Neil a medal when he heard about him calling a stripper’s name out during sex, Nat thought irritably. Yes, she’d go and find Jen at Karl’s.

  Nat ran through the street, relieved to have a direction to go in. She arrived at Karl’s door breathless and covered in a cold sheen of sweat. She leant on the doorbell. Her insistent ringing was answered by Karl flinging the door wide open.

  ‘Hi, babe.’ He always called her babe. He called everyone babe. Karl immediately recognised a woman with hurt in her head. Even if she managed to keep her mouth clamped closed and resisted giving him the lowdown (unlikely, in his experience women liked to talk about pain), her distress splintered out from her eyes.

  ‘I’m looking for Jen,’ replied Nat hastily, pushing past him and bounding up the stairs to his first-floor flat. She was too distraught to manage to be civil, let alone consider that she was being actively rude; it was his flat, after all, she should probably have waited until he invited her in. Nat automatically headed towards the kitchen, Karl followed her.

  ‘Not here.’

  ‘She’s not?’ They stood in the cramped but surprisingly clean room and stared at one another. Nat was deflated. She’d run to Karl’s expecting gallons of comfort to be sloshed on to her wounds. Karl couldn’t do that, she needed Jen. ‘Did you have a row?’

  Karl glanced at her quizzically. He knew enough about women to understand why Nat had jumped to that conclusion, she and Neil must have had a row. Why else would she have run here in such a state looking for Jen? Nat was unlikely to be dashing here with a new idea for the bridesmaids’ dresses. It must be quite a serious row as Nat wasn’t usually the hysterical sort.

  ‘No, no row,’ he said smoothly. ‘There’s some bridal fair in Earl’s Court exhibition centre tomorrow and she wanted to be outside queuing at about 8a.m. or something seriously mental. Not my thing. I told her I didn’t want to be woken up that early so she went back to her place as it’s practically on the doorstep.’

  Nat wondered, not for the first time, why Jen put up with Karl’s selfish behaviour. Was it true that love was blind or was it that Jen was hell bent on dashing up the aisle just to show her ex that she was desired? It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Nat really needed to talk to Jen about this wedding. But she couldn’t think about Jen’s problems at the moment, especially as Jen was unlikely to think her engagement was a problem. Nat swept the thought away impatiently; she had her own problems to deal with right now, she definitely couldn’t face any more.

  ‘Want a cuppa since you’re here?’ Karl held up the kettle.

  ‘During sex tonight Neil called out “Cindy”,’ said Nat flatly. She hadn’t planned to say this but the thought had been banging its way around her head throughout her dash here and it just exploded into the kitchen.

  ‘Fuck. Something stronger then,’ replied Karl.

  Karl was surprisingly sympathetic. Not an adjective Nat had ever associated with him before. When Nat refused to join him in drinking a neat whisky he insisted she at least have a measure in her coffee as he claimed it was good for shock. He made the coffee very sweet and led her into the sitting room. He almost lowered her on to the sofa because he noticed that she wasn’t up to functioning on her own.

  ‘OK, tell me all about it. Don’t censor, pretend I’m Jen. I won’t remember tomorrow anyway as I drank shedloads at Tim’s gaff, and I’m pretty pissed.’

  ‘Cindy is the stripper he’s been visiting.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Nat was stung by Karl’s nonchalance. Of course he knew more than she did, he’d covered for Neil only this evening when he backed up that ludicrous story to account for Neil’s bruised face. No doubt Neil had been sharing all the nasty details with him for months now. She knew what she had to ask. ‘Is he having an affair with her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Karl shrugged. He answered the question he’d been asked without thinking about whether he should try to protect his mate or comfort Nat; both things
could have been achieved had he said he definitely didn’t think Neil was having an affair. But, Karl reasoned, it was possible that Neil was doing just that and frankly, Karl didn’t think it was his job to protect his mate or comfort his mate’s missus. If blokes got messed up in this sort of stuff they ought to be able to handle it, like he could. Neil was a prize twat to have called out the other bird’s name while he was shagging Nat; that was just careless. That sort of thing let the brotherhood down.

  ‘You’d tell me, right, if you knew for definite,’ pushed Nat.

  ‘Of course, if you wanted to know.’

  Nat didn’t know whether she believed Karl. He was more likely to cover for his mate, wasn’t he? He didn’t owe her any loyalty and honesty wasn’t exactly his natural state. Nat thought she might as well leave. She’d finished her coffee, Jen wasn’t here to sympathise with her and Karl couldn’t do that job. She stood up but then it hit her, she didn’t have anywhere to go. She glanced at her watch; it was nearly one in the morning. Even if she could still get a tube or hunt down a cab, she couldn’t go and knock on anyone’s door at this time of night. Karl read her mind.

  ‘You can stay here. I’ll take the couch.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She flopped back on to the sofa, infinitely grateful that she didn’t have to go back out into the wretched, cold night. ‘I don’t want to go to bed yet, though,’ she added. She knew she’d just lie awake all night, staring at Karl’s ceiling, going over and over tonight’s events. Could he be having an affair? Neil? Was it possible? Yes, of course it was. ‘I think I will have a whisky now, if you’ll join me by having another.’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m always up for it.’

  Karl went into the kitchen to get Nat a glass. She pulled her knees close to her chest and sat in a small ball at one end of the sofa. Oh God, his sofa smelt of sex! How was that even possible? What an off-putting thought. How many women had Karl seduced in this exact spot? Karl was such a grubby man and yet he was her only port in the storm. The thought depressed her. Sex seemed to be all around her. Illicit sex. Karl was a grubby man and Neil was Karl’s best friend. Of course, Neil was having grubby, illicit sex.