Matthew was friendly, busy, remote. They made love about once a month now, but without much enthusiasm, as if they were doing it for their health. He went away on business every two or three weeks and he sometimes brought her back a present. One night when she was nearly asleep he suddenly put his arms round her and said in a low voice, ‘I’m sorry it’s not all better. I’m sorry we never really talked about the baby and all that.’ She was so startled that for a moment she couldn’t reply; then she said, ‘Never mind, it’s all right,’ and held his hand while she thought. Finally she added, feeling on some deep level that she still owed him her first loyalty, if only for this shared experience, ‘Maybe we still can.’ She waited for a reply but none came and she realised he must be asleep. She was angry, sad and relieved all at once, for the missed opportunity.
In some obscure way that was what made her go to Sean’s hotel room the next afternoon, although she couldn’t have explained it to anyone, not even Angie. It was as nearly spontaneous as anything could be after nearly four months of weekly meetings. She was having a drink with him at Heathrow where he had just arrived from Nice and was staying overnight to catch the morning flight to New York. It wasn’t worth going home, he said: Anne was away researching a programme about zoos. Home, she had long ago discovered, was a flat in Bryanston Square and a cottage near Newbury, but she had refused to visit either, no matter how sure he was that Anne wouldn’t be there. She felt it would be an invasion of territory, though she was intensely curious; she was also extremely afraid of getting caught.
But the airport, that awful crowded noisy neon place, seemed like home, their home, because they had met there. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to move on to the airport hotel, like going at the right moment from living-room to bedroom. They hung the ‘PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB’ notice on the door and turned to each other, looking and kissing, undressing and stroking. It could so easily have been a disappointment but it wasn’t, because they had waited long enough but not too long. Through some divine skill or luck, they had judged the moment just right. She forgot all about Matthew and the children and work and guilt and Angie’s jokes: she seemed to have deposited all those things with her clothes on the floor. She knew only that she and Sean were at last naked together on the bed and able to give each other unlimited pleasure, as if they had both been deprived for a long time. But it was more than that: it had all the excitement of strangers and the familiarity of friends. She felt abandoned, yet safe. She couldn’t remember ever before having such a sensation of release.
When it was finally over and they couldn’t come any more, they lay in a tousled, sweaty, untidy heap, with their bodies still entwined, gazing at each other so closely that their vision went slightly out of focus. She felt they had both been away on a long journey, together and yet separate. She heard the fatal words spoken: ‘Lynn, I love you,’ and her own voice answering: ‘I love you too.’ The solemnity of all this and its terrifying implications might have overwhelmed her but he had the instinct to turn the moment into something lighter, without taking anything away from it.
‘Promise me,’ he said, ‘give me your solemn word of honour you’ll never cut your hair,’ and suddenly she was laughing.
Angie was shocked. Lynn could hear the good old-fashioned honest shock in her voice. She had never imagined herself capable of shocking Angie.
‘You can’t be serious,’ Angie said. ‘This whole thing is meant to be about sex and lunches and presents. Not love. For heaven’s sake, you’ve got a husband and two children. That’s what love is about. That’s why it’s not exciting.’
‘I can’t believe this is you talking,’ Lynn said. ‘You sound exactly like my mother. That’s just what she’d say if she found out. Well, the last bit, anyway.’
‘I feel like your mother.’ Angie was almost shouting at her. ‘You do realise this is 1982 and people don’t have to fall in love to justify falling into bed. Particularly not if they’re married to other people. Particularly not if they’re you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lynn said humbly. ‘It just happened. I know it must sound crazy to you but –’
‘Yes, you’re right about that. You’ve lost your marbles.’
‘But I feel so happy,’ Lynn said, and almost laughed. She felt light-hearted and light-headed. ‘Can’t you be happy for me? There’s no one else I can tell.’
After a long pause, Angie sighed heavily. ‘Yes, of course I’m happy for you. In a way. I haven’t heard you sound like this for about ten years. In another way I’d like to kill myself because it’s all my fault you’re in this mess. I was the damn fool who encouraged you.’
‘I’d have done it anyway,’ Lynn said.
‘Maybe. All I can say in my own defence is, I never dreamed you’d be such an idiot as to fall in love.’
‘But we both have. That’s why it’s so wonderful. I wish you wouldn’t keep making it sound so one-sided.’
‘Listen,’ Angie said. ‘I have three of them down here, right? They all say they love me but I know they don’t and they know I know they don’t. They love their wives. They fancy me, that’s all. It’s a game. It’s all perfectly safe so long as you stick to the rules. But you, my poor sweet innocent child, are going to get badly hurt if you think for one minute –’
‘This is different,’ Lynn said firmly.
Angie let out a positive wail. ‘God help us. Now I’ve heard everything.’
Sean borrowed the flat of a friend who lived in Chiswick. It was above an estate agent’s, so Lynn could always say, if seen by neighbours, that she had been enquiring about property. She and Matthew had always hoped to live in Chiswick eventually, but it cost a lot more than Hounslow. She also could no longer actually imagine moving with Matthew to a new house anywhere.
Sean’s friend was away a lot because he worked for an airline, so they began to think of the flat as their own. They gave each other presents that could be left there discreetly, such as scent, scarves, records. They bought special champagne glasses. They sent one another cards to the same address, as if they were living together.
She began to feel she was two people. At home the calm friendly busy person Matthew knew. She marvelled that the explosive secret inside her did not leap out at him like a live thing. She waited daily for him to say, ‘Lynn, what’s happened? You look different,’ but he never did. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed.
At the flat she was the excitable crazy romantic person Sean knew. The place was full of flowers and bottles of wine. They were always meeting to make love and drink champagne and talk, and they never had enough time for any of it. They certainly never had time to quarrel or get bored. One day she said that to him.
‘We wouldn’t anyway,’ he said with perfect confidence.
‘Yes, we would,’ she said. ‘Everyone does.’ But she didn’t believe it.
‘Not us,’ he said.
She began to daydream about letting her two selves merge. If she couldn’t get back the excitement with Matthew, could she find security with Sean? They joked about running away together.
‘Anne wouldn’t mind too much, would she?’ Lynn asked. ‘She’s got her career. She could have an affair with some television person, couldn’t she, and let you go?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘We don’t talk very much. We always seem to be having people to dinner.’
Lynn wondered where Anne found the energy for entertaining after a long hard day in the studio. It was ages since she and Matthew had had anyone to dinner, except her mother from a sense of duty.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘if we were together, the children would drive you mad.’
‘You know that’s nonsense,’ he said. ‘I love children. But you couldn’t take them away from Matthew. What’s he done to deserve that?’
She was never quite sure how serious these conversations were. Were they planning a future together or playing parts, as they had at their first lunch, pretending to be characters out of
Humphrey Bogart films? When she went home, the sheer solidity of Matthew and the children shook her, the noise they made, the demands on her time, attention and energy, the actual reality of them filling the house. And yet they did all that without seeing her, Lynn, the person, who was all that Sean saw. She found herself shaking her head as if trying to clear a moment of double vision.
She felt sorry for Matthew these days, as if he were an old friend who had fallen upon hard times. She felt his life was still black and white, whereas hers had launched itself into technicolour. She felt great affection and pity for him and wanted to cook him nourishing meals to make up for all the emotion she could not give him. She was startled to find that her mind wandered even from the children, so that they often said in that cross, forthright way they had, ‘Mummy, you’re not listening.’ She no longer fantasised about Sean in bed but merely tried to avoid making love with Matthew, who seemed easily deterred.
Italy in August, the precious two weeks of blissful family foreign holiday they had all worked and saved for and looked forward to so avidly, now began to loom as an endurance test, an impossible amount of time to spend away from Sean. It would be their longest separation since they had met. In self defence they planned a weekend in Devon while Matthew was away on business. It was beginning to obsess them both that they had never actually spent a night together. Lynn begged Angie to provide her with an alibi.
‘Matthew will be in Ireland looking at someone’s house,’ she said, ‘and I’ll get my mother to look after the kids. Then I can pretend to be with you and you can ring me at the hotel if there’s a crisis.’
‘God forbid,’ Angie said automatically. ‘And ask for Mrs Reilly, I suppose.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You realise this is about as silly as us both dressing up in our mothers’ shoes when we were ten?’
‘There’s no one else I can ask,’ Lynn said. ‘And I can come and see you and you can meet Sean.’
There was a long silence. ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler,’ Angie said, ‘to make it another weekend and let Matthew look after the children? Then you needn’t involve your mother.’
‘I know,’ Lynn said, ‘but I can’t somehow. It doesn’t feel right.’
Angie actually laughed.
Matthew thought it was a splendid idea for her to visit Angie while he was away. She was looking tired, he said, and the change would do her good. Her mother was thrilled at the prospect of having the children all to herself, and they were only moderately put out at the prospect of Lynn going away. She was surprised how easy it all was and wished she had dared to try it before, often. Proverbs such as nothing ventured, nothing gained, or seizing the nettle danger drifted through her mind. But mostly she was just bemused at the thought of two whole days and two whole nights with Sean. He was visiting the West Country on business and would meet her at Taunton to call on Angie and drive to the hotel.
She was so happy. Afterwards that was what she remembered most clearly. There was something very pure about her happiness as she arrived at Paddington with her luggage in good time to choose magazines to read on the train. As an afterthought she bought the evening paper as well. She was full of goodwill for the whole world; she caught herself smiling at strangers.
As the train drew out she relaxed with a sensation of carefree liberation. She was off on an adventure and no one was angry with her, no one could stop her. She gazed out of the window for some time, savouring the feeling of floating in space with no duties, no anxiety. Then she decided to read: a further indulgence, a positive luxury. On impulse she opened the evening paper first.
She never read headlines if there was a picture, because her eyes were always drawn to the picture. This time it was a picture of Anne Reilly smiling with all her impressive teeth, and the caption said: ‘Baby for TV Auntie’. She blinked as though someone had hit her in the face, and read it again. Anne Reilly went on smiling up at her with what seemed like a look of triumph and there was a short interview in which she said how it seemed too good to be true that she was pregnant after so many years of disappointment. The interviewer too appeared impressed, as if it were a miracle that Anne Reilly, having entertained millions of the nation’s children for years on television, should finally face the prospect of entertaining one, all by itself, in her own home.
Lynn wasn’t aware she was crying until she caught the woman opposite staring at her with a blurred face. She put on her dark glasses, which she had brought partly because it was sunny, partly because she wanted to look mysterious, and cried on and off for the rest of the two-hour journey. She hadn’t cried so much since she was a child, deprived of some treat; then, she had cried herself to sleep. She wished she were in bed now: she would have liked to hide from the whole world.
He was waiting on the platform when she arrived at Taunton. He actually came running towards her as she got off the train. He looked so innocent, radiant; so pleased to see her, as if he had nothing to hide, nothing to fear. She held out the paper and watched his face change, to a look more of rage than guilt, though, she was surprised to see.
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Damn it all. She said she wouldn’t tell them for at least a month.’
‘Them?’
‘The bloody press. Of course I was going to tell you, I knew I had to, but I thought there was plenty of time. We’ve only just found out ourselves.’
Lynn put her suitcase down and sat on a bench. Her legs seemed to have gone very weak. He sat beside her and tried to hold her hand, but she pulled it away.
‘Darling,’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry. I never meant it to happen like this. It’s a hell of a shock, I know. It was for me too.’
‘It must have been,’ Lynn said, ‘if you were like brother and sister.’
He flushed slightly. ‘That was true at the time,’ he said. ‘Well, nearly. That was how it felt, anyway.’
Lynn said, ‘I think you lied to me right from the start.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘You must have nearly died laughing at how gullible I was.’
‘Stop it.’ He shook her by the shoulders, quite roughly, and passers-by glanced at them. ‘I never lied to you. I just left a few details out because I was so afraid of losing you. That’s God’s honest truth.’
Lynn pointed at the newspaper lying between them. ‘That’s quite a detail to leave out.’
‘But I was going to tell you, only Annie jumped the gun. Look, when you think about it, when you get over the shock, there’s no reason why it should make any difference to us at all.’
Lynn got up. She picked up her suitcase but left the newspaper lying on the seat. ‘I’m going to get a taxi,’ she said.
He got up too and followed her to the exit. ‘But I’ve got the car.’
‘I know that, but we’re going in different directions. I’m going to stay with Angie.’
‘Darling, please. It’s a lovely hotel. We can sort out this whole mess, you must give me a chance.’
‘There seem to be things I can’t do,’ Lynn said, ‘and sleeping with a man who has a pregnant wife is one of them.’ She caught a look of genuine bafflement on his face and added, ‘You see, I know how I’d feel if Matthew had done that to me. You’re so vulnerable then, you feel so –’
She started to cry again.
He said, ‘But I love you so much.’
She got into the taxi she could not afford and gave Angie’s address. Her last sight of him reminded her of one of her own children about to say, ‘But it’s not fair …’
About halfway through the journey she noticed that he was following her taxi in his car. When they reached Angie’s cottage, he paid the driver, who went off reluctantly, as if he would have preferred to stay and find out what happened next. Sean and Lynn struggled over her suitcase, which he was trying to put in his car. Angie came out and asked what the hell was going on. ‘I want to stay with you,’ Lynn sobbed. Angie threatened Sean briskly with the police, as if that was something she had to do
every day, and he drove off.
Angie hugged her, took her inside, poured her drinks, made her eat, listened. She managed not to say ‘I told you so.’ By the end of the evening Lynn was so exhausted that she surprised herself by sleeping well.
In the morning Angie brought her breakfast in bed. ‘Pity I don’t have neighbours,’ she said, ‘they’d have loved all that last night. Better than the telly.’ She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Lynn closely. ‘How d’you feel?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Well, you look as if you’ve been in a fight but you just won on points. If you want to cry any more and you’re really going home tomorrow as planned, then try to get all the crying done by six o’clock tonight, or your eyes will never recover in time.’
Lynn smiled.
‘I’m serious,’ Angie said.
‘I don’t think I could cry any more. Not now, anyway.’
‘Well, it’s now or never,’ Angie said. ‘You absolutely mustn’t let Matthew know about this. That’s all that really matters.’
‘Is it?’ Lynn said, and started to cry again. ‘I was thinking of leaving him.’
Angie put her arms round her. ‘Not really you weren’t,’ she said. ‘You were just a little crazy. We’ve all been like that once or twice. By the way, you’d better ring your mother. Tell her you tried to ring last night but the phone was out of order.’
‘You think of everything,’ Lynn said.
‘It comes of getting caught out once too often.’
Angie’s cottage was in an isolated spot, but they went for drives and spent a lot of the weekend walking in the countryside or along the beach. By the time Lynn went home even she felt she had talked out her problems to the point of exhaustion.
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