Agent Provocateur

by Faith Bleasdale

  Johnny sits in the taxi, unsure why his hands are shaking. Is he going to tell her that it’s over? Or is he going to tell her it’s just starting? He doesn’t know. Panic is threatening to overtake him. He is getting closer to her flat, but he is no closer to knowing what he is going to do.

  Betty washes her face and applies her make-up. Maybe he will come back home within the hour, as he said, and if he does she doesn’t want him to see her looking such a mess. She picks up the first tabloid newspaper, settles herself on the sofa and reads. Perhaps there is only one way to win, and that is normality. Johnny loves his life with her and he will not jeopardise it for a wild fancy. That is not his style.

  Grace can’t face it: that much she knows. Her life feels traumatic, which it hasn’t done since she was young. She knows that she is seeing Eddie that evening to tell him that their fling is over. But what is she going to say to Johnny? Can she walk away, as Betty has asked her to do? She knows that she should walk away. But can she?

  With indecision still flying around her head, her buzzer goes. She answers it and nearly screams when Eddie announces himself as her visitor.

  ‘This isn’t a good time. You were supposed to be here tonight.’

  ‘I couldn’t wait.’

  ‘Eddie, please, not now, really not now.’ She panics.

  ‘I’m not leaving until you let me in. I mean it. I’m not being ignored, like you try to do to me.’ He sounds hysterical.

  Reluctantly she buzzes him up. He has always been so calm and together. She feels a pang as she realises that she will miss him, but she doesn’t want him to be there now.

  ‘I want to know what’s going on.’ He sounds oddly formal, like in old films, and Grace expects him to call her a hussy at any minute.

  ‘This is not only unnecessary but it’s not what we do. You knew when we started that this wasn’t going to be one of those relationships where we could put our hands on our hips and demand answers from each other.’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe I knew that, but you let me fall in love with you.’

  ‘I didn’t. I always told you not to.’

  ‘Well, maybe my heart isn’t such a good listener.’

  Grace feels as awful as she has ever felt. The tears return. She looks at him. He’s so dishevelled, yet Eddie is not that type. He looks hurt, and she has caused that hurt. There is so much hurt around that she doesn’t even know how they will contain it. Will it ever go away? Then her buzzer goes.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘My financial adviser,’ she says automatically.

  ‘On a Sunday?’

  ‘We’re friends. I don’t need to explain that to you. Anyway, I guess I better get rid of him.

  ‘Hi,’ she says, eager, despite everything, to hear his voice.

  ‘Hi yourself.’ He still doesn’t know what he will say when he gets to her door.

  ‘Listen, I should have called, but a friend dropped in unexpectedly. Do you mind if we give coffee a miss?’ I mind, she says to herself. I fucking well mind.

  Disappointment hits him. He wants to know who she is with. He pauses for a moment.

  ‘No problem. Will you call me? Tomorrow?’ He still has no answers, but he was hoping that he would find some in her fiat.

  ‘I will. Bye.’ She feels as if she has to physically tear herself away from the intercom as she walks back to Eddie.

  ‘Is he worth it?’

  ‘Worth what?’

  ‘Worth sacrificing everything for. Me, whoever else you play around with. Your life.’ He is almost spitting the words out at her.

  ‘I’m not sacrificing my life.’ It is all too much. She is exhausted.

  ‘Tell me, Grace, would you give up your job for him?’ He looks her in the eyes. Everything is still. Time has frozen.

  ‘Yes,’ she answers, honestly, as she watches Eddie walk out of her life.

  Johnny is by his car, but he hasn’t yet got in. He sees a man walk out of the front door, and he wonders if that is the person Grace was with. He looks upset. He could just live there though; he might not have been with her. He feels jealous at the thought, as he reluctantly gets into his car. He considers turning back for a second, but he stops himself.

  Betty calls him. If she is going to lose him, she won’t do it easily.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Babes, it’s me.’

  ‘Hi.’ He sounds upset.

  ‘I just wondered if you were any way near coming home?’

  ‘I’m in my car now. Took me ages to get a cab. Anyway, I’ll be home soon, honey.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

  Grace looks out of her window and sees Eddie disappear up the street in one direction, and Johnny start up his car and pull out in the other. She has no idea what happens next, and she doesn’t know how to begin to find out. But one thing is clear as she looks around her perfect flat: her life has changed now, and there is no going back. No matter how awful she feels, or how guilty she is, there is no way she can let Johnny go. Betty is irrelevant, almost. Grace needs him, she wants him, she would give up her job for him. No one has ever entered her life and given her what he has given her. No one has ever made her feel the way she feels with him. She hasn’t touched him, she admits that she barely knows him, but that is the amazing thing. She cannot walk away – she has tried, but she cannot. The next time she meets him she will tell him how she feels, and she will pray that he feels the same.

  He opens the door and plasters a smile on his face. He feels wretched, and is unsure how he will spend a normal Sunday afternoon without giving away that fact that he is consumed with jealousy. He is unsure how he will resolve the situation, but he knows he must. It’s not indecision, it isn’t, but he does not know what the right thing is. He still loves his wife, but he fears that he loves Grace too. And he can’t have them both. He has to choose one.

  Betty greets him with a hug. She notices that he looks upset but she ignores it. She will not show him weakness. She will be Betty, Super-Superwife. She leads him into the sitting room, where the papers are scattered, like a normal Sunday. She gently pushes him on to the sofa and she sits down too. She touches his arm lightly. She smiles, straight into the eyes she loves. She will not fall apart and she won’t lose him.

  ‘You will not believe what they’ve printed about that MP,’ she says, as she launches into the latest scandal, and he laughs and they discuss it. For a while she has got him back. Her Johnny. She prays with all her might that she will keep him.

  Johnny relaxes into the familiarity of the routine. He has always loved Betty’s idea of a Sunday. She will read the newspapers, he will read the sports pages, she will regale him with gossip and scandal, and he will discuss it with her. Then they will watch the EastEnders omnibus if they aren’t going out, while still making their way through the papers. Then, if they haven’t gone on Saturday, they will rush to the supermarket before it closes and buy the food for the week (normally ready meals and, of course, cat food). They will return home, open a bottle of wine and have supper. Occasionally they’ll attempt a roast, but more often than not they will have lasagne (one thing Johnny likes making), and garlic bread. After supper, they’ll again return to the sofa to watch TV, before having an early night.

  Johnny kisses Betty on the top of her head. You cannot buy that comfort. You cannot buy the warmth. But you can choose to give it up, if you really think that it’s the right thing to do.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Grace feels girlish as she dresses, all attempts at sophistication masked by a silliness, a nervousness, a feeling that she is on her first date. That is how he makes her feel. She is doing what Betty asked; she is forgetting the bet. Only, one thing she doesn’t know is that she is going to follow her heart. No guilt. Eddie took it badly and she felt wretched for the whole of Sunday. She ended things because it is time for her to do what her heart tells her to do. Her heart tells her to be with Johnny. There is no bet. Just a love affair waiting to happen. She will
tell him how she feels, she will let him decide how he feels. She will feel bad if he leaves Betty for her; she will feel worse if he doesn’t. But she will take the risk.

  She pulls on a short blue floral dress, one which makes her look feminine, because she wants that femininity. She wants to give it to him. Johnny makes her feel this way, and oh how she loves him.

  She searches her wardrobe for some strappy sandals, and pictures his smile. Such a gentle smile, such an inviting smile. She longs to kiss him, to feel his arms around her. She has become the heroine of a romantic novel, because that is how he makes her feel.

  And tonight is the night. The night when he will tell her that he feels the same. She knows this; feels it in her heart, and in her head. After the disaster on Sunday, he said he had to see her, and the urgency in his voice told her what she needed to know. She has won him, which has nothing to do with winning the bet.

  She won’t entertain the thought that she has lost him. Grace isn’t a person who has always got what she wants – that isn’t the reason. The reason she will not think about him not loving her is that she has no idea how she will deal with it. It is easier not to think about it, but to enjoy the feeling she has that it will all work out.

  She brushes her hair. It is getting so long, but that makes her feel girlie, and that is how she wants to feel: like a girl falling in love for the first time. That is who she is now. Not Grace the honey trapper, but Grace the woman, the young woman with a huge romance ahead of her.

  As she applies her mascara and her lipstick – not too much make-up, just a little, to complement her features because she no longer needs to hide her face behind it – she contemplates her future, with Johnny. Because that is what she hopes she has now: a future.

  The taxi drops her outside the restaurant. It is an expensive choice – his choice. Not the sort of place you take a friend. She hopes it is not the sort of place he would take a friend.

  She didn’t mean to do it – fall in love. That wasn’t her choice. In her line of work she knows the hurt and she would never fall in love with another woman’s husband on purpose. But Betty told her that love was something she would, could never understand, and Betty was right. She didn’t understand, she just was. Which is why she now tries not to think of Betty, but, because Grace isn’t a total bitch, she does think of Betty. Often. She thinks back to when Fiona came up with the idea of the bet, the purpose of which was either to wipe the smirk off Betty’s face, or to find the man so in love with his partner that she would be rejected. At the time, she didn’t mind which outcome, but now she wants neither. She wants to be in love with Johnny, she wants him to be in love with her. If that is selfish, or wrong, then she cannot help it. Love is like that.

  She knows that he might not feel the same. The fear that that thought evokes is something she has never experienced. When she was younger, the fear she felt at being bullied had nothing on this: the fear of rejection. Without Johnny there is a huge gap inside her, a black hole, one that will grow, without him, until it takes her over. She cannot live without him. She is so sure of that. She is so sure of him. Her feelings have been identified. She is thirty-two years old, not a kid playing with relationships. She knows what she is doing. She knows exactly what this is. For the first time in thirty-two years Grace Regan is in love. Properly, absolutely, totally in love. With someone else’s husband.

  She pushes the door open and notices that it is a small, dark, intimate restaurant. It is romantic, or it feels romantic. She sees that the, small number of tables are seating couples. Some are holding hands, others staring into each other’s eyes, some are talking, softly so you can hear a murmur but not what is being said, others seem to be silent. It is where Johnny has chosen to take her and that says more than Grace ever needs to hear from his lips. She is led to the back, where Johnny is sitting. He stands when she approaches the table. He is wearing a shirt, no tie, and his hair is neat. He looks troubled. As the waiter who led Grace to the table stands aside, Johnny leans towards her and kisses her cheek, leaving her feeling warm and tingly. She smiles, and despite the fact that he looks as if he doesn’t want to smile, he smiles back. They sit down.

  Johnny can see that even though they are in the middle of coupledom, the men are all looking their way. Men normally do when he is with Grace. Despite the fact that he doesn’t want to, he feels proud – something he abhors himself for. He is at a loss at what to do, what to say, but he knows that he has to be honest with her; it is killing him. She is the most beautiful woman he has ever met, and so vulnerable, so delicate, so in need of him, and he is faltering. The perfect veneer he believes in so strongly is slipping because he wants her. But then he is only human and there is no man that wouldn’t want her – most would want her just after looking at her. At least he got to know her. But there is a huge problem, and that is his wife. He loves his wife. She is his life. So why is he so drawn to this woman sitting opposite him? Is it because he is human, or is it because he is married to the wrong woman? He knows that he is going round in circles. Every decision he tries to make brings him back to the starting point. He is repetitive, and he is also stalled; he is getting nowhere.

  He tells himself it has to stop. He tells himself to make a decision. He chastises himself, he beats himself up, but that does not change a thing. He is edging closer but getting further away. The horizon has disappeared. All there is a vast space. He has to sort it out, he tells himself, but he is not being as obedient as usual.

  Grace wishes she could see into his mind. When she works, she normally can tell what men are thinking, they are so transparent. They may as well have flashing neon signs on their heads. But Johnny’s eyes are so full of confusion, and she knows that she is on dangerous ground. He is unhappy, she can see that, and she knows that she is responsible. She is vulnerable because although she thinks he invited her here to tell her he loves her, he might have invited her here to tell her that he cannot see her any more. The fear is threatening to engulf her.

  ‘Would you like the wine list?’ the waiter asks and, grateful for a break from their thoughts, they both smile.

  ‘Red or white?’ Johnny asks. Grace wants so badly to touch his face.

  ‘Red,’ she replies.

  He gets an urge to kiss her. Johnny orders the wine, and then they both pick up the food menus. ‘Johnny …’ Grace says, then falters.

  ‘Yes?’ Johnny looks at her.

  ‘Did you invite me here to tell me that you can’t see me again?’ There is a silence. Grace didn’t mean to ask that question. After all, they are not having an affair. Their contact has been non-physical, and all of a sudden she has suggested something else. But they both know that they cannot carry on, and she has decided to release him, if that is what he wants. She didn’t plan it, but she felt it. She desperately does not want to hear the answer is yes. She is so terrified of that ‘yes’ that she wants to run away as horror inside her intensifies. But she stays.

  ‘Grace ...’ It is now Johnny’s turn to falter. Luckily the wine waiter returns, giving him a respite. ‘Grace,’ he continues after the wine has been tasted and poured, ‘I don’t know.’ He sits back, feeling inadequate. She is relieved. He doesn’t know why he feels so guilty but he does – not only for Betty but for Grace. Can you be in love with more than one person? If you can, you are not allowed to be. He briefly wishes he was from a country where a man can have more than one wife. He truly believes that if he could have both Grace and Betty, then he would be complete. But they probably wouldn’t be so keen on the idea.

  Grace thinks that his not knowing still gives her a chance. He is confused, and that means he feels something for her. She understands that it is so much more complicated for him. He has a wife – a wife he loves – and he doesn’t normally cheat; has never cheated on her. This for him is much more than that. She understands, but she also knows that he has no clear decision. She could do the right thing and walk away, or she could do the right thing for her.

  ‘Johnn
y, I don’t want to come between you and your wife.’ She does, though. That is exactly what she wants, but only because she loves him. It is no longer vindictive. Love isn’t real if it is at all vindictive; that much she has learnt.

  ‘I know. I don’t understand what’s happening.’ He takes a sip of wine. ‘Grace, first you were a client, then we became friends, but I don’t know where we are now. I love my wife, I do, and I’ve never pretended otherwise, but you confuse me.’

  He looks so sincere that her heart threatens to break. All she has to do now is the right thing. She knows what the right thing is, but she cannot. Bet or no bet, she cannot let him leave her.

  ‘Johnny, I don’t need to tell you how I feel, and I certainly don’t need to put any pressure on you. To be honest with you, I think I’ve done enough of that.’

  ‘No, Grace, you haven’t.’

  ‘That’s sweet of you to say but I know I’ve been relying on you, on your friendship, and I didn’t want to ruin your marriage, I still don’t.’ She lies again, or maybe not lies exactly, because she doesn’t want to ruin his marriage, but knows that unless that happens she will never be happy.

  ‘It works both ways. I enjoy being with you.’

  ‘I know, and I think that perhaps we should stop.’ Grace is taking the gamble of her life. She is putting all the chips on red, and she is praying the ball doesn’t land on black.

  ‘Stop seeing each other?’ Despite his confusion, the thought of not seeing her upsets him. He is so mixed up.

  ‘Just until you know what to do. Johnny, I want you around, you know that, and well, I love you. I hope that we can work it out, but I don’t know. Maybe if we take a break ... I’ll wait for your call, I won’t bother you …’ She tails off and her eyes fill with real tears.