Ant began dropping contracts and payments off at our house, rather than at Joe’s workshop. It was more convenient than driving all the way out to Hoath, he claimed, and Joe would agree and hand him a beer from the refrigerator. I’d catch Ant’s eye and see the desire lurking there, and then make an excuse and vanish.
Pretty soon he worked out the rhythm of Joe’s schedule and took to dropping by when I was home alone. He always had an excuse – an envelope he’d leave on the countertop, or a question he hoped Joe could answer – but the real reason for his presence was pretty obvious. The tension in the air was unmissable and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t imagine kissing him. Sometimes I’d see Ant’s car from an upstairs window and hide until he drove away. I’d mutter, ‘God! Not him again!’ and tell myself I was too busy for the interruption. But the truth, revealed by the flutter in my chest, was that I was merely avoiding temptation.
And yet until I saw Ant that day on the doorstep, I truly had no idea that he was Lucy’s father or Heather’s husband. Because why would he ever tell me that?
I’d mumbled something vague about needing to get going and bustled poor Ben down the drive. But from those few seconds of proximity on the doorstep, my heart was racing, which should give you some idea just how powerful the attraction felt.
I don’t blame myself for any of this because the magic of attraction is precisely that – it’s magical. We can’t predict who will set our pulses racing and nor can we explain why it happens when it does. As to the archetypes of attraction – in my case: tall, muscular, suited, and yes, a bit mean-looking – they’ve been anchored in my subconscious for as long as I can remember. I expect a psychological archaeologist who went digging through my childhood could unearth the origins: the villain in a James Bond movie, perhaps, my father’s attractive business colleague, or the uncle who sat me on his lap and bounced me up and down once too often. Everything has an origin, even if you can’t work out what that is.
So no, I don’t believe that any of that was my fault. My racing heart was simply not under my control.
Where my personal responsibility did come into play, because I do believe in free will – I’m not putting what happened down to destiny – was bringing them with us to Spain. I knew it was dangerous, I knew it was stupid, and, worst of all, I’m pretty sure I knew what would happen. But I did it anyway.
Part of me hoped that I’d hate him, I think. There was something unpolished about Ant, a scally lurking beneath the suit. He was what my mother would call a ‘rough diamond’ and I hoped that I’d simply get bored with his company. Perhaps I was just kidding myself, but I told myself that spending time with him was maybe the best antidote; that I’d be able to compare him to indisputably lovely Joe, who couldn’t fail to come out on top.
But I’d underestimated the power of attraction even as I was succumbing to it. Ant set my pulse racing by simply walking past me, in a way that Joe never had. Being in the pool with him yet not touching him was so unbearable I took risks by brushing up against him. We both knew it was going to have to happen.
I convinced myself I was doing it in order to get him out of my system. The alcohol had worn down my defences – it had diluted my ability to say no. But as I followed him into the outhouse, I told myself I was doing it in order to save my marriage. I’d get this over and done with and forget it. Because how good could it possibly be?
The experience of having sex with Ant was ecstatic. He smelt amazing, his skin felt like velvet, and once he was inside me I came almost immediately. Joe was no lazy lover and he invariably managed to get me there in the end, but it had always been something of a marathon he was forced to run, long after he’d reached the end of his sprint. But with Ant . . . I don’t know quite how to explain it, except to say that merely the concept of him had been enough to bring me to the brink.
The drive to the airport began in silence. I was feeling wretched about everything: about how upset Joe had been, about leaving Ben behind, about what I’d potentially done to our marriage and about crossing paths with poor Heather on my way back down to the house. But perhaps the hardest bit to own up to is that I was feeling distraught about Ant’s imminent departure, too.
‘I fucking hate this,’ he said, about half an hour south of Granada. ‘I hate all of this.’
I sighed and licked my lips. I tried to think of a reply.
‘Are you happy with him?’ Ant asked me a few minutes later. ‘You aren’t, are you? You can’t be. Tell the truth.’
I drove on in silence and eventually he asked if I was giving him the ‘cold shoulder’.
I smiled at him sadly. ‘I’m just trying to think of an honest answer,’ I told him. ‘It’s complicated.’ The honest answer would have been, I’ve never been happy with anything, I guess, but how unattractive was that?
‘I thought I was,’ I finally told him.
‘And now?’ Ant asked.
‘And now I’m not so sure.’
He turned to look out of the side window, and I forced myself to think of Joe and Ben, of the life we had built together. I forced myself to think of all the things Joe had done to try to make me happy.
‘I’ve always believed that anything is possible,’ Ant said. ‘D’you know what I mean?’
‘Go on,’ I told him. ‘I’m not sure I do.’
‘I mean that if you want something bad enough, you can have it,’ he said. ‘You have to work hard for it and you have to believe in yourself, but basically, anything you want, you can have it.’
I nodded. I wondered if he’d read The Secret, as that was the book’s basic premise: that the universe conspires to bring you what you want, as long as you believe that you deserve it. ‘Yes, in a way, I believe that too,’ I said.
‘But here’s the thing,’ Ant said, resting his hand on my leg. ‘I want you. I think we’d be amazing together. Sky’s the limit.’
I laughed gently. ‘Would we, though?’ I asked. I could picture myself beside him with shocking ease. He was the kind of man I’d always pictured myself with, if truth be told.
‘You know we would,’ Ant said, and he pushed his hand down between my thighs.
I wanted him desperately, even then. We’d made love twice in the hotel in Orce, but still I wanted more. I stared out at the shimmering motorway and asked myself how it was possible to want sex with someone so badly.
‘What about Heather?’ I asked, hoping that saying her name would act like a spell to save me. ‘What about the girls?’
‘She doesn’t want me,’ Ant said. ‘I think she hates me, if truth be told.’
‘But she needs you,’ I said. ‘They all do.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Ant said. ‘And I’m not just saying that to . . . you know . . . convince you or whatever. Sometimes I think they’d all be happier without me.’
‘I doubt that,’ I said.
‘I nearly left her once,’ Ant said. ‘I probably should have, really. I’ve regretted it ever since.’
‘God, really?’ I said. ‘What happened?’
‘It was right at the beginning. We’d been going out for a few months and I decided to call it a day,’ he explained. ‘But then she told me her mum had cancer. I couldn’t tell her after that, could I? She’d just found out. She was all over the place. And then by the time that was over, she was pregnant . . . It was just one of those things.’
‘God,’ I said. ‘That’s terrible. Does she know? Did you ever tell her?’
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I’m not a monster.’
‘So you’ve been unhappy from the get-go,’ I said, comparing his story with mine and Joe’s. I’d never been particularly happy either, but I honestly wouldn’t say that was Joe’s fault. But what if it was? Not his fault, so much, but what if I’d just spent all these years with the wrong man?
Ant slid his hand a little deeper. ‘I know I’d be happy with you,’ he said.
‘Happy,’ I said, in a sarcastic tone of voice, even though I wasn’t
entirely sure why.
‘Yes, happy,’ Ant said. ‘We get one life, you know, and then it’s gone. And I’m halfway through mine. Don’t you think we deserve to be happy?’
I nodded thoughtfully and sighed, because I did believe that. ‘I have a husband,’ I said, ‘I have a son.’
‘I know,’ Ant said. ‘But I think we need to find out what this thing is. We can try, can’t we?’
‘Try?’ I repeated. ‘Try what?’
‘Try to see if this thing between us is real . . . I mean . . . if I can carry on feeling the way I feel right now, then it’s worth it. If I can carry on feeling like this, then everything else is bullshit.’
I turned from the road and glanced at him. He was always so proud-looking, so upright, where Joe had always been such a sloucher.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said. ‘I just want to spend the rest of my life fucking you.’
Joe had told me that, back in the beginning. How beautiful I was. How much he wanted to make love to me. When had that stopped? I wondered. Five years ago? Ten?
‘We could book a hotel in Malaga,’ Ant said. ‘And then I could fuck you to kingdom come.’
‘I think I prefer to call it “making love”,’ I said, doing my best not to picture the scene, but failing. And was it even true that I preferred ‘making love’? Wasn’t Ant’s touch of rough part of the attraction?
‘Oh, I’ll make love to you as well,’ he said. ‘But first I want to fuck you again. Come on. Spend the night with me in Malaga.’
‘I don’t think that would be reasonable,’ I told him.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Heather will think I’m back home. You can tell Joe you need a bit longer to sort out your thoughts or whatever.’
‘But what then?’ I asked. ‘It’s just putting off the inevitable, isn’t it?’
Ant started rubbing his hand against my inner thigh. ‘If we get sick of each other, then we go back to our boring little lives,’ he said. ‘And no one needs to know.’
‘So there’s no point,’ I said. ‘Not really.’
‘But what if we don’t, Amy? What if this is real?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Ant,’ I said.
‘Then maybe you don’t feel the way I do,’ he said, pulling his hand back.
The absence of his touch felt like grief. I wanted it back. I needed it back there, right now. I needed all of him.
‘I don’t know about you,’ he said, ‘but living the rest of my life feeling like this . . . well, that’s not something I can just give up on.’
Until the very last moment, I maintained the fiction that I could resist him, that I’d simply go back to my life. But then, less than a mile from the airport, he pointed at a sign. ‘There’s a hotel there,’ he said. ‘Please, Amy?’
‘What about your flight, though?’ I asked, glancing at him quickly while trying to read all the signs.
‘I don’t give a shit about my flight,’ he said.
I pulled into a bus siding so suddenly that a truck almost rear-ended me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, but my heart was racing again, and I’d admitted my hesitation, so in a way the decision had been made. It’s not for no reason that people say he who hesitates is lost.
‘What don’t you know?’ Ant asked. ‘Talk to me.’
‘I have a husband, Ant!’ I said again. ‘I have a son!’
‘And they’ll still exist,’ he said. ‘Neither of them are gonna vanish. But if you’d rather be with me, then what kind of life is that? What if you regret this for ever? That’s no good to anyone, is it? That won’t make anyone happy.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, glancing over my shoulder in case an airport bus should arrive.
‘OK, listen: I’m not getting on that flight,’ Ant said. ‘You can drop me there.’ He pointed at the entrance to the Holiday Inn car park. ‘Then you can come inside, and we can talk this through without getting a Spanish bus up the arse. And if you decide to, you can still drive back tonight.’
‘I told him tomorrow anyway,’ I said. ‘I already told Joe that I’d stay over somewhere to get my head straight.’
‘Well, then!’ Ant said. ‘Come inside and get your head straight.’
We didn’t talk so much, in the end. We drank the contents of the mini-bar and ordered a tapas platter from room service. And then Ant did exactly what he’d promised to do, and this time it was even better because afterwards we really did make love. By the time it was over, I was lost to him.
I woke the next morning to find him sleeping beside me. He had an angelic expression on his face that I’d never seen before, and I realised that it was a glint in his eyes that made him look hard. It was an exterior he projected rather than his innate nature, and sleeping, he was stunningly beautiful.
I propped myself up on a pillow so that I could look outside, just as the morning sun began to creep around the edge of the window. When I turned to study Ant’s features more closely, a gentle strip of orange sunlight had fallen across his face, and I took this as a sign from the universe. I knew in that instant that I wasn’t going back. I just had to work out how to do it causing the least harm to all concerned.
By the time Ant opened his eyes, my decision had been made, reflected on, and psychologically notarised. To his surprise, I climbed on top of him and smothered him with kisses.
‘Hey, hey,’ he said. ‘What’s going on with you?’
‘Nothing,’ I told him, straddling him and pulling him inside me. ‘Nothing’s going on with me except this.’ I reached out and pinched his nipples, wondering if he’d enjoy it or, like Joe, complain like hell.
‘Oh God, I love you,’ he said, blindsiding me. ‘I’m totally fucking in love with you, Amy.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Me too.’
We stayed in that generic hotel room for three nights, only dragging ourselves out and into Malaga once for a total of maybe three hours.
It’s not that there was anything wrong with Malaga – in fact, it was far prettier than I had expected. But everything we wanted was in that room; everything we wanted was in that bed. So we drank and ate snacks and made love, and when that was over we showered and started all over again.
On the morning of the final day, I borrowed Ant’s laptop so that I could write Joe a proper thought-out email.
I’d toyed with the idea of driving back up there so that I could say what was needed to his face, but it was better this way, I decided.
Writing has always struck me as the purest expression of thought. You have the time to weigh up every word and you can rewrite bits and move them around. You can look out for things that could get misinterpreted and change them to make sure you’re being clear. You don’t get interrupted, and most importantly, you don’t get angry and say things you don’t mean.
Of course, you don’t have to face the other person’s emotional response to whatever it is that you’re saying either, and that perhaps makes it all a bit cowardly. But by the time I’d written, edited and re-edited my mammoth email, I was satisfied that this was the least harmful solution.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to call Heather before I send this?’ I asked. Ant had read my email and approved. He shook his head dismissively.
‘You understand that Joe’s going to tell her we’re together, right?’ I pointed out. ‘Don’t you think she at least deserves to hear it from you?’
‘She won’t care,’ Ant said. ‘It’s not the same as you and Joe. I told you. She hates my guts. She’ll be glad.’
I was pretty sure that this was untrue, but ultimately, how Ant dealt with Heather was for him to decide. It really was none of my business.
‘You’re sure?’ I said. ‘I’m about to click.’
Ant leaned over so that he could see the screen, and then he reached out and clicked send. ‘Now put that bloody computer away and come back to bed,’ he said.
Nine
Heather
Joe’s taxi, driven by a Spaniard with a comic-book moustac
he, arrived just after four. He didn’t work between twelve and four but there was no point leaving earlier anyway as the car-hire place opened even later.
Because Ben had pleaded to go with Joe, and because he’d ultimately caved in to Ben’s demands, Lucy was spitting blood as we walked back to the house. ‘I hate you!’ she told me repeatedly. ‘I hate you! And I want Daddy.’
Lucy’s moods had never bothered me unduly. They were like violent storms that swept in from nowhere and vanished again just as unexpectedly. So I’d always treated them exactly like weather – I ignored them and waited for the sun to come out. Her ‘I want Daddy’, though, had felt like a stake through the heart. We all want Daddy, I thought at one point. But then I wondered, Or do we? Do we want Daddy at all?
Lucy’s indoor sulk gave me some quiet time with Sarah in the pool, and as I swung her around, dragging her through the water, I thought about Amy and Ant and wondered what the attraction was. Because to my eye, at least, pop-star Amy was way out of Ant’s league. Then again, she was out of Joe’s league too, so perhaps she just liked slumming it.
Still, they were both physically attractive, I admitted. Hadn’t I read somewhere that the couples that last the longest are those where both participants are equally good-looking? It crossed my mind that it was a wonder Ant and I had lasted this long, but then perhaps he liked slumming it too.
I tried to imagine life without him, but the void of it terrified me into numbness. I toyed with the idea of phoning Kerry again – she’d be reassuring, I was sure of it. But as I was looking after the girls, I couldn’t really speak to her, even less cry – and cry, I would. Just the thought of her friendly voice was enough to bring tears to my eyes.
‘Is Joe going to get Daddy?’ Lucy asked, making me jump. Her sulk was apparently over.
‘You know he isn’t,’ I said. ‘I told you, Daddy’s gone home. To England. To our house.’
From Something Old Page 21