Okay, I wasn’t the first, but that first time that Jez had been unfaithful there’d been extenuating circumstances: he was unhinged by his mother’s sudden death; demoralised by the lack of illustrating jobs – or rather, his lack of the business skills to nail them; ground down by the need to attend to a precocious and emotionally demanding 4-year-old while I attended to the media interest in my article in the British Medical Journal. He needed nurture, promotion, appreciation.
And along came author Annette; gathering him up into her ample bosom, delighted, no doubt, by the charisma and attention to detail that he showed in both his illustrations and his lovemaking. She even recommended an after-school drama club for Seb, allowing him to burn off his energetic fantasies while giving them extra time to do the same. The series of insect story books eventually graced Seb’s bookshelf. Then one day Seb was trying to impress a new friend from school, and pulled one down.
‘Look what my Daddy did! He made it with Annette.’
By this time the cycle of upsets and reassurances, following the earthquake confession, was almost over. The wound had healed, leaving a fading scar. We looked at each other and I think I even laughed. Later, when searching for an adaptor or something, I found the books wrapped in a Tesco bag at the back of his studio cupboard, instead of on Seb’s bookcase, or the shelf in his studio where he lined up the books he’d illustrated. He came in to the studio and found me arranging them on the shelf – it was just too sad that his best work, however achieved, was not displayed.
When his mother’s money came through he seized the opportunity of a fresh start, moving us to the country even though far from ideal for my work, buying this little bungalow in its massive garden.
‘So much sky!’ Seb shouted when we arrived, the three of us running around the soggy January grass waving our arms. And then Kenny came along, much to the delight of Jez’s Dad, whom we persuaded to move out this way at the same time. It was probably the happiest time in our lives.
But as we began to realise that something was wrong with Kenny I sensed a change in Jez. I’ve often thought that he somehow felt that Kenny’s condition was some kind of punishment for his affair. I found we were spending less and less time together: he was always playing with Kenny or working in the garden, and I seemed to spend much of my life on a train or helping Seb learn play words or practise his piano and singing. Our family had split into two halves. Just occasionally – sometimes when we had time alone – we could laugh and feel excited about each other again. I think I always thought, as Jez probably did, that our difficulties were a phase, they would pass. I wasn’t ready to give up believing that.
15.
‘See you at lunch. My list has been cancelled so call when you finish xx.’
The basket was piling up: a clumsy pre-schooler; the annual challenge of a teenager with severe learning difficulties and a complex prescription; a possibly malingering 9-year-old. I didn’t feel up to dealing with any of them.
‘Sorry, will have sandwich in clinic xx.’ What was the point of meeting in the canteen? We wouldn’t be able to talk, it was just going to be a strain trying not to give anything away.
‘No Rosie, it might look odd if you don’t.’ That was not a reason to have lunch together. ‘Even just having you near again will be good xxxx.’ But that possibly was. Why did he have to be so sweet.
So I got on with the patients, but each time I took one there was a text: barely audible with the 3-year-old’s tantrum; causing an unwelcome diversion to the already diverted teenager; spoiling my train of thought when I was trying to use my tricks-of-the-trade to catch out the malingering prep school boy. But when I got round to fishing my phone out I found that the texts were from Seb, not Ricardo, and were all the same: ‘I’m ill. I want to come home. Please pick me up.’
I rang the school nurse, who told me that he’d been having them on, missing the science exam with a well-acted migraine but later spotted through the window grooving around to his iPod. She said it was being dealt with, whatever that meant. ‘The nurse will look after you,’ I texted; I’d had enough of malingering boys for one morning.
‘What are you having dear?’ I was holding up the lunch queue. He was sitting opposite Damian and Lisa, next to a dark-haired beauty who had to be Isabel. I suddenly didn’t want anything, but something had to go on my tray.
Dipti was beckoning, and it suddenly seemed like a good idea to go and sit with her and the other optometrists. I tried to concentrate on the elaborate plans for Dipti’s wedding, but my eyes were drawn over to him. He was wearing his scrubs, the V neck revealing the dark hairs on his chest, his arms – my arms – bare for all to see. I watched his hand as it danced around gracefully in the air as he talked, as it had done for me. And then it waved at me, accompanied by a short smile: a colleague’s acknowledgement.
‘Rosie? I said how’s Seb doing?’ Dipti asked.
They loved hearing about Seb. They’d been quite interested in his shows, but listened with delighted horror to stories of rows over smoking and drinking, late nights in Brighton and school suspensions. No doubt wondering how I, renowned for coping with difficult young patients, could be such a truly awful mother. I suddenly realised how bloody old it made me feel, dealing with Seb’s behaviour. I didn’t want to feel old; I wanted to go over to Ricardo, sit in his lap and feel his arms around me again. Even though they had almost certainly since been around Ana.
I said Seb had been doing okay recently, depriving of them of a hefty backlog of tales. Then just as Dipti was offering to do the tea-and-pudding round, there was a tap on my shoulder.
‘She won’t need that.’ Damian’s voice. ‘She’s going to come and join us, aren’t you Rosie. Share the gossip from the meeting. Lisa’s just getting you an apple crumble, come on.’
So I followed him over, and waited while he and Ricardo got rid of their trays to make room for mine. It was going to be a squeeze. It was almost certainly going to be a bad idea.
Ricardo glanced up and smiled briefly. It was weird. It was painful. I can’t do this, I thought for the umpteenth time; some women might find this kind of thing exciting, but I’m just not cut out for it.
Damian was introducing me to Isabel. ‘And here she is – everyone’s favourite optometrist! Don’t bother asking for anyone else, she’s the best.’
‘Well, hardly,’ I said, irritated by his portrayal of me as an ophthalmologist’s handmaiden, ‘this is my only clinic day. The rest of the week I do research.’
So Isabel started to ask me about that, but Damian interrupted her.
‘But it’s true, Ricardo won’t let anyone else test his son.’
Ricardo shrugged. ‘Gabriel adores her.’
‘Must be nice having a full hour for lunch, for once,’ I said, trying to steer the conversation away from myself, but then realised I’d let on that I knew that the operating list had been cancelled. Damian looked at me with interest for a moment and then started criticising his lasagne, asking Isabel what she thought of the English food in the canteen. But Isabel was all affability and had no complaints. Unlike Lisa, who started moaning about both her undercooked broccoli and overbooked afternoon clinic.
‘Only four days to the ballet, Lisa!’ I said, trying to cheer her up.
‘Oh yes? What are you seeing?’ asked Ricardo, as if he didn’t know.
‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Lisa announced, ‘Rosie says there’s lots of dashing bare-chested men with bulging tights and flashing swords.’
Damian grinned and looked at me for a response.
‘No I... Okay you do get that, but it’s also very moving of course,’ I said.
‘Well... yes and no,’ Damian said, wiping his long chin with a napkin. ‘I mean, as a love story it’s a bit daft isn’t it? A couple of meetings, one shag and it’s worth dying for? She should have married that nice chap Paris and kept Romeo on the side. Best of both worlds. What d’you think Ricardo?’
Isabel said she had to go and left the table. I
n disgust I liked to think, as no doubt did Lisa. Ricardo was pretending not to have heard.
Damian persisted. ‘I mean, d’you think day-to-day married contentment can compete with the excitement of forbidden love?’
Leave him alone, I wanted to say. Ricardo finished his mouthful and sipped his water. ‘For me, love’s about a person, not excitement,’ he said into his plate.
‘Ah. Well said. And what about...’ It looked like he was going to ask my opinion too, but Ricardo interrupted him with an update on a patient who had an emergency appointment that afternoon.
And then my phone rang.
‘Rosi! Is okay I speak with you now? Is very noisy.’ Ali.
‘I’m in the canteen. Can I call you back in five minutes?’
Ricardo was looking at me. ‘My piano pupil – probably changing the lesson again,’ I said. Damian’s eyebrows shot up. ‘My God, how many talents does this woman have? How much d’you charge?’
‘Don’t even think of taking him on Rosie!’ said Lisa. ‘Do you play anything?’ she asked Ricardo.
‘Clarinet. Badly,’ he said. I wanted to argue that he couldn’t be that bad if he’d got up to grade six.
I was in my office, about to call Ali when my phone buzzed in my hand. ‘Be careful with Damian.’
‘I avoid him like plague. Vile locust of a man,’ I replied.
‘But clever. I think he suspects.’
‘How?’
‘Just be careful.’
I rang Ali’s number.
‘Ah Rosi! Now is quiet. You are alone?’
Why in hell did he need to know that? ‘Yes. Is there a problem?’
‘For tonight, yes. Is like last time, I have to cover for the dancer with injury... But this time I call you and say, because I think last time you are cross, think I just change of mind.’
‘No I –’
‘Yes Rosi, maybe you were thinking that I stop. Is why you not make reply. But look, I don’t change mind when something is important for me.’
‘Okay, that’s –’
‘You are important, understand?’
‘Oh...’
‘So the Thursday, is okay for you?’
‘Yes, that should be fine.’
‘Vale. Until then.’
My phone buzzed in my hand again. ‘Meet me in hospital chapel at twelve tomorrow. Romeo xx’
***
James also had a consultant admin morning on Tuesdays, and was in hyperactive delegation mode. Could I bring him up to date on the study numbers for a lecture he was preparing; would I download and print out a grant application form; could I edit his PhD student’s application to the Ethics committee.
‘No I fucking can’t and won’t,’ I said to a smirking Lisa when he’d left the room for what I hoped was the last time that morning. ‘Everything okay with you and Damian?’
‘Yes. And he’s taking me along to dinner at Ricardo’s tonight, when he could have just gone on his own and sat drooling over Isabel.’
Ricardo’s. For a moment I thought it was the name of an Italian restaurant.
‘You know, one of these department dinners. Apparently Ricardo likes to have his at home. His wife’s meant to be an amazing cook. I think you’re right, I’d be barking up the wrong tree there.’
‘Oh,’ I said. What else could I say. In less than an hour I would be doing just that. And while I was having a romantic meeting with her husband, Ana would be out buying ingredients for his work dinner, or tidying the house so that he could feel proud of his home. I felt lousy but told myself it would be even lousier to just not turn up.
I floated round the hospital, checking the piles of questionnaires, buying a couple of sandwiches and drinks from the Friends’ shop since I imagined that we’d be missing lunch. And then I went to the chapel, arriving at exactly twelve.
There was a sign saying Closed for refurbishment. A temporary chapel is provided on the third floor. But the room was filled with office equipment: it wasn’t being refurbished at all, just used for storage while admin offices were redesigned.
And there he was, pulling me inside and locking the door. He took me to the corner of the room where we couldn’t be seen through the glass in the door.
‘What do you think? God is on our side, no?’ he whispered.
‘There might be another key.’
‘There is, but I’ve got it. This place is ours,’ he said, starting to kiss me, and pushing against me, soon bruising me with his hardness. Then I noticed a half unrolled piece of carpet covered with some blue scrubs and thought, my God, does he think we’re going to make love here? Now? He was wearing a dark suit, the very picture of respectability.
‘What’s with this?’ I asked, pulling at his lapel.
His arm was round my waist, his hand on my cheek. ‘Oh, a meeting later. Not as important as this one.’ He smiled, letting go to take off his jacket and shirt and hanging them on an upturned chair leg. And then he took off his trousers.
I stood there awkwardly, clutching my plastic bag of picnic. But he had it all worked out.
‘Ah. Double picnic,’ he said, taking my bag from me and putting it down next to a similar one. ‘Come on Rosie, take some clothes off. We’re on the beach, so you need to be in a bikini.’ He showed me where the sea started – the strip of blue carpet in the aisle. Apparently we were sitting next to a pile of folded-table sun beds, and were sheltered from the wind by some computer-monitor rocks.
‘Watch out, you nearly stepped on a jelly fish,’ I said, giggling and pointing to some discarded polythene near his foot. We were in Florida again.
‘Come on,’ he said, sitting on the carpet in just his boxers, looking up at me with those irresistible big eyes. And then he pulled down my skirt and put his arms round my legs, his soft black head caressing my thighs and sending shivers through my body. I ran my hands through his hair as he started to kiss the inside of my legs. Then he pulled me down to sit next to him and pushed me down on to the scrubs, cradling me in his arms. He lay on top of me looking into my face for a moment and I thought we’d cuddle for a while, but he was immediately pulling at our underwear, whispering in Portuguese. And then it was happening, not gently as I remembered, but desperately, as if he was cross with me for having denied him. It was soon over for both of us, leaving us clutching each other with pounding hearts.
‘I’ve missed you so much,’ he said. ‘And I can’t bear to think of you...’
‘Don’t,’ I whispered. I knew what he meant. ‘Come on, we promised we wouldn’t ask each other... Try not to think about it.’
‘So you don’t?’
‘Of course I do. But... don’t let’s waste our precious time.’
‘You’re right,’ he said, sitting up. ‘So what’ve we got here.’
We opened our plastic bags and congratulated ourselves on getting each other’s favourite sandwich right.
‘They might start wanting to move some of this stuff next week. I’ll have to give the keys back before they’re missed. I was thinking... maybe a hotel... once a week, even a few hours,’ he said without looking at me, as if fearing I wouldn’t agree. ‘And maybe swimming. Join a club.’
‘What?’
‘A pool – the only place left on earth where you can’t answer a bleep or a mobile,’ he said. ‘Sometimes we could go there first, before the hotel. Wednesday afternoons – I’ve been cutting my private practice down, by the end of the month I’ll be almost free. And nobody will miss you: James, the research coordinators, that nasty statistician woman – they spend all afternoon in the weekly Research Governance meeting.’
It was true. It was a maddening time when nobody was available if you needed them. Lisa would assume I was floating round the hospital on my errands, and Damian tended to be in the lab.
The mood lifted with the excitement over our plan, Ricardo gallantly insisting that he did all the research for it. And then he said I was getting burnt and needed more sun lotion, started to stroke my shoulders and
back. We were soon running our hands all over each other and making love again, but this time happily, mischievously.
And then he put his face close to mine and stroked my cheek. ‘It won’t always be like this,’ he said, indicating the dusty jumble around us that we’d so successfully ignored.
I started to wonder if I should believe him.
16.
Cheating. I’d never for a moment thought I would. Didn’t think I ever could. Yet there I was, hurtling along the M25 with Jez, his hand on my thigh exactly where Ricardo’s soft black hair had been twenty-four hours earlier. Very painfully aware of this and yet somehow laughing. How was that possible? The thing is, it just felt so normal to be in stitches over Jez’s spot-on mimicry of the charmingly over-tolerant Asian bank lady we usually saw. He entertained me, I supported him: it’s what we did. What had happened the day before seemed separate, irrelevant. I seemed to be developing a double heart, but it gave me a constant background pain.
We linked arms and charged through the bank’s sliding door. ‘Okay, let’s pitch this mother,’ he said, as if our request to stretch our mortgage past breaking point was a business opportunity the bank couldn’t possibly pass up. I let out a head-turning guffaw.
We gave our names and took a seat in the relentlessly red environment. ‘Bloody hell, even the doorstops match,’ I said.
Jez picked up some leaflets and checked them against the Venetian-red windowsill. ‘But they haven’t got that quite right,’ he said. I dissolved again. ‘Oh God Rosie, get a grip – we haven’t even started yet.’
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