by Jane Moore
“Do you have a watch?” Jo asked him, sneaking a little wink at Thomas.
“I have absolutely no defense except to say I overslept,” said Sean, raising his hands in surrender above his head. “Shoot me.”
Thomas made a gun shape with his fingers, pointed it at Sean, and made a firing noise.
“All . . . my . . . money . . . is . . . in . . . the . . . urrrgh,” said Sean, clutching his chest and falling to the slightly wet ground.
Thomas and Sophie both burst out laughing, and any hostile feelings Jo felt toward Sean for being late suddenly evaporated.
“He was amazingly good with them,” she told Rosie, the day after she and Sean had enjoyed a long walk and light lunch with the children.
“Probably got the same mental age,” her friend had replied dismissively.
Snapping out of her retrospective daydream, Jo cleared her throat and focused on the little spectacle unfolding outside.
Jeff was huffing and puffing as he pulled suitcases out of the boot of the car, while Candy held both of the children by the hand ready to march them across the road. She was wearing a microscopic denim skirt. Jo had to admit she had bloody good legs. Halfway across and certain that the road was clear, she let go of their hands and gestured for them to walk alone up to the front door. Although Jo had mellowed considerably toward the Jeff and Candy situation, she had made it quite clear she didn’t want to meet her in any circumstances.
“Hello!” she shrieked, flinging open the door and enveloping Thomas and Sophie in a huge bear hug. “Did you have a lovely time?”
“It was brilliant. And look, I got my hair braided,” said Sophie, pointing to four brightly colored plaits in her hair.
“Hope you don’t mind. They come out very easily,” said Jeff, walking up the garden path with a conciliatory smile.
“Not at all. It looks great,” she said, actually meaning it. “Was it a good holiday?”
“Very nice, but very tiring.” Jeff suddenly looked older than his thirty-seven years. “I think I need another holiday to get over this one.”
“Well, at least you’ve got the weekend to recover before you go back to work,” she smiled, secretly marveling to herself how Jeff could be so easily worn out by his own children. She looked after them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with little help or thanks from him.
“I’m afraid Sophie may have picked up a little tummy bug,” he said, turning to open the gate. “She was sick this morning and was still complaining of stomach pains half an hour ago, so keep an eye on her.”
An hour later, Jo was holding back Sophie’s hair while her seven-year-old daughter retched over the bathroom sink, sobbing in distress.
One thing was for sure. Her night out with Sean would have to be canceled.
23
exhausted from so much vomiting, Jo phoned Tim to say he wasn’t needed. Now all she had to do was track down Sean.
She dialed his cell number and waited. There was no answer and, unusually, it failed to divert to the message system. Next she dialed the flat and got his answering machine.
“Hi, it’s me,” she sighed. “Look, Sophie is sick, so I wanted either to cancel tonight, or suggest you come round here instead. I’m not sure if you’ll come home first to get this message and I can’t get through on your cell, but I’ll keep trying.”
She put the phone down and sucked the end of her pen, deep in thought. She’d never needed a number for Sean at work because he’d always been contactable on his cell, but she remembered he’d said that, before coming to meet her, he had to edit his latest piece of film about life in Berlin after the collapse of the wall. She dialed directory inquiries, got a number for GoWorld Television and punched the numbers into the handset.
“Hello, could I speak to Sean Goode in The World Right Now office please.” Jo stood and watched two sparrows fighting on the bird table outside as she waited for the switchboard operator to find the right number.
“I don’t have anyone of that name on my list. What does he do?” said the woman, adopting the singsong tone often used by stewardesses and makeup saleswomen.
“He’s a cameraman.” Jo cleaned her nails with a safety pin while she waited.
“Ah, that explains it. They don’t really have their own extensions because they’re rarely in the office. I’ll put you through to production and maybe someone there can help you. Hold on.”
“Thanks.” Jo was left hanging on the line listening to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons being murdered by computerized sound.
“Hello?” The female voice had that I’m-very-busy tone to it.
“Oh hi, sorry to bother you,” said Jo. “I’m trying to get a message to Sean Goode.”
“He was here this morning, but I can’t see him now. Have you tried his cell?” The disembodied voice was slightly less edgy now.
“Yes,” said Jo. “But it doesn’t seem to be working properly. It’s just that I’m meant to be meeting him for a drink later on and one of my kids is a bit ill.”
“Hang on,” said the woman. There was the familiar clunk of the phone being put down, then Jo heard her shout across the room to one of her colleagues. “Bob, you seen Sean?”
She came back to the phone. “Sorry, he seems to have gone on the missing list, but I’ll tell him you called and give him the message. It’s Anne, isn’t it?”
“No, my name’s Jo,” said Jo, making a mental note to visit Sean in the office one day so his colleagues would remember her name.
There was a small pause. “Oh sorry, I thought it was his wife calling. So it’s not one of Sean’s kids who’s ill then?”
A fist of nausea punched itself straight into Jo’s diaphragm, winding her momentarily.
“His wife?” She heard herself say the words, but felt as if they were being uttered by someone else at the far end of a long, dark tunnel she was now staring down.
“Yeah, his wife, Anne. I thought you were her.” The woman was starting to sound slightly curious as to who was on the other end of the phone.
Somehow, Jo managed to gather herself. “Sorry, yes, an easy mistake,” she said. “No, I’m not Anne, I’m an old friend of theirs. Our oldest children are the same age in fact. I was supposed to be meeting Sean for a quick drink, but it’s my daughter who’s got a tummy bug.”
“Oh, I see.” The woman was clearly bored with the conversation by now. “So I’ll tell him Jo called and she can’t make it tonight, right?”
“Perfect. Thanks.” Jo replaced the receiver and started to shake, the naked flesh of her arms covered in goose pimples of shock.
Leaning on the work surface, she stared fixedly at the cutting board, trying to analyze and absorb the consequences of the conversation she’d just had.
There were no misunderstandings or mistaken identities, try as she might to find them. The undisputed fact was that Sean was a married man with two, maybe more, children. Jo felt like the most gullible, naÏve person on the planet. Armed with this fact, everything suddenly and effortlessly fell into place. The unreliability, the trips abroad that could cover a multitude of sins, the pristine flat with absolutely no personal effects in it.
That was his London pied-à-terre, and somewhere else was his family home, complete with unsuspecting wife and blissfully ignorant children. Children just like Thomas and Sophie, innocent little creatures who deserved better from their father.
Her elbows propped on either side of the kitchen sink, she started to retch at the thought of it. Unwittingly, she had been doing to another woman what Candy had done to her. It made Jo flush with shame even to think about it. Worse, she had spent a year of her life getting to know this man, sharing his bed and—Jo let out an involuntary sob at the thought of it—introducing him to her children.
“You conniving, fucking bastard,” she muttered under her breath. “You low-life, duplicitous worm.” She knew what had to be done. The question was, how was she going to do it and where?
A flush-faced Tim arrived at
7:30, clutching his script in one hand and a bag full of Boddington’s Bitter cans in the other.
“First she wants me to babysit, then she doesn’t, then she does,” he chanted with a grin as Jo opened the door. As soon as he saw her blanched face, he stopped.
“Ooops. Has Jeff been winding you up again?”
“Right gender, wrong name. It’s Sean,” she said in a clipped voice, trying desperately not to cry.
“Oh dear, had our first tiff, have we?” said Tim, raising an eyebrow. “Well, it has been a while now. You’d be unnatural if you hadn’t.”
Jo bit her lip as her eyes filled with tears. “He’s married.”
The vacant smile on Tim’s face vanished quicker than snow on a radiator. “Married?”
“That’s right, married.” Jo gestured for him to follow her into the child-free sanctity of the kitchen. “I found out today when I tried to track him down at the office. A woman there thought it was his wife calling.”
“Fucking hell, the wanker,” said Tim.
“Can’t argue with you on that one,” she fumed. “Anyway, I need you here after all because I have to deal with this. He doesn’t know I know, yet.”
“Shit, I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes.”
“He rang earlier having got the message I left at his flat about Sophie being sick,” she said, her voice tight. “I managed to convince him she was feeling better, and said I would pop round to his place later on. I want to make sure I end it in private and well away from the children.”
“So you’re going to end it, then?” asked Tim.
He flinched as Jo exploded in response. “Tim, you’ve said some pretty stupid fucking things in your time, but that one is the daddy of them all! Of course I’m going to bloody end it! Do you seriously think I’m just going to go round there and give him a little telling off?”
Tim sank further into his chair and raised his hands in surrender. “Well it’s just that you seemed so keen on him. It’s such a shame to lose it.”
Jo gave a heavy sigh and plopped into the chair next to him. “I was keen. Very keen. But he’s married, which means he has been lying to me and the children all this time. Which makes him scum, in my book. You can’t have a relationship with someone who consistently lies to you.”
“I see your point.” Tim stretched his legs out in front of him and yawned. “Well, don’t worry about anything here. I’ll crash in the spare room tonight so stay out as late as you like. Just don’t kill him, because there’s the drawback of a life sentence.”
“Hmm, well maybe just a bit of torture then,” said Jo, picking up her car keys from the top of the microwave.
She pulled up outside Sean’s flat at 8:15 and sat in the car for ten minutes to gather her thoughts and do some deep, meditative breathing.
The plan was to deliver her speech in a menacingly low tone before leaving immediately afterward with her dignity intact. The last thing she wanted to do was lose her temper and show him how much she cared about his emotional treachery.
With a heavy feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach, she rang the bell and waited for his voice to boom through the intercom.
“Hi darling, I’m just in the shower and I’m dripping all over the floor. I’ll leave the door open for you,” said a disembodied voice. The door buzzed and she pushed it open.
As Jo slowly but steadily walked up the stairs, a brief flash came into her mind of the last time she’d arrived here when Sean was in the shower. As she’d been rummaging in the fridge for some ice to put in a gin and tonic, he’d crept up behind her, naked and soaking wet. Grabbing her hand, he’d led her to the bathroom and dragged her into the shower as she screamed with giggling hysteria.
Her white cotton blouse and T-shirt bra were rendered instantly transparent by the water, and the dark pink shade of her nipples had aroused Sean to the point of no return. Saturated and with sprays of water jetting into her face, Jo had leaned back against the tiled wall while he lifted her floral skirt and pulled her newly acquired La Perla’s to one side.
Within seconds he was inside her, pumping away, while his hands roamed up her top to caress her erect nipples. It all lasted approximately five minutes, but it was the most urgent, passionate sex she’d ever had.
“Another fifty-five minutes and that would have been our finest hour,” laughed Sean as he helped her out of her wet clothes and draped them across the radiator.
Remembering it now, Jo felt a terrible sense of loss as she pushed open the door to his now familiar flat and walked inside. She really thought she’d found someone she trusted, someone she could have fun with but also feel secure with. But it turns out he’s just another wanker, she thought, walking into the spotless living room and sitting down.
“Won’t be a minute,” shouted Sean from the bathroom, and seconds later the sound of the shower ceased.
Jo sat motionless, her eyes darting around the once seemingly innocuous room that now held so many obvious clues to Sean’s secret life. No photographs, the hotel slippers, a couple of untouched coffee table books. How could she have been so blind? No one lives like this, not unless it’s merely the occasional stopover. Even the most slovenly bachelor has family pictures and old books scattered around.
“Hello, gorgeous,” said Sean, toweling his hair as he walked across the room and planted a kiss on her lips.
Just twenty-four hours ago, the “gorgeous” and the kiss would have made her knees buckle with lust, but now she felt nothing but cold contempt for the man she had shared so much with over the past few months. Or thought she had. She resisted the overwhelmingly childish urge to wipe his kiss from her mouth, preferring instead to fix him with a cold, hard stare.
“I know, Sean.” Her voice was low and measured.
“Oooh, you know, do you? Er, what do you know?” he smiled, looking for all the world like an innocent man who had absolutely no idea what was coming.
For a fleeting moment, she thought there may have been some terrible mistake. A misunderstanding. Crossed wires. Anything that meant her personal life wasn’t about to be turned upside down yet again. But she knew it was hopeless, the evidence was all too obvious.
“I know about Anne,” she said, not taking her eyes away from his face, desperate to see, and judge, his reaction.
“Anne? Sorry, you’ve lost me.” He didn’t flinch. Not even a blink.
Irritated in the extreme, Jo stood up and walked across the room in a bid to disguise her agitation. She was determined to remain in control of the situation.
“In that case, Sean, let me refresh your memory,” she said icily. “She’s your wife, the mother of your children. The woman you conveniently forgot to mention to me.”
This time, guilt was written all over his face as he started to blink repeatedly and breathe heavily. Jo wanted to walk out there and then, but she was desperate to stay and hear his explanation, if he had any. Slowly, he raised his head to look at her, his eyes narrowed as if deep in thought. Finally, he spoke.
“Have you been snooping, Jo? I would have thought your experiences with Jeff would have taught you not to do that by now.” His face was impassive.
It took a few moments for his remark to sink in. At best she’d been expecting a profuse apology, at worst a further denial. But this? This was even worse. He was attempting to make her the villain of the piece.
When she discussed it later with Rosie, she acknowledged she should have walked out in total disgust at this point. But the injustice of his remark kept her rooted to the spot in cold anger.
“I rang you at the office and the woman who answered thought I was your wife. It’s as simple as that,” she said dully. “I had no reason to snoop, as you put it, because I trusted you.”
Like a fly in aspic, she stood there, wanting to leave yet trapped by her desire for the whole sorry mess to be explained away as some terrible misunderstanding.
Sean patted the sofa cushion next to him. “Sit down,” he said quietly.
; Jo sat on the armchair opposite, hunched forward with her arms drawn protectively across her abdomen.
“Look,” he continued. “I’ll admit that when I first started seeing you, all I wanted was a bit of a fling. My marriage has been stale for a long time, and I suppose I was looking for a bit of uncomplicated excitement.” He paused and started wiping his finger across a small coffee stain on the table in front of him. After a few seconds, he looked up to gauge her reaction, but Jo flatly refused to show any emotion at all. “But then I started to really care for you and got more embroiled than I ever planned to,” he continued. “It got to the stage where I wanted to tell you I was married, but knew that if I did you would stop seeing me. So I took the selfish option and carried on . . .” He trailed off.
Struggling to fight back tears, Jo felt her face contort. “You agreed to meet my children. How could you do that when you knew the score?”
He slowly shook his head from side to side. “I know, I know, it was unforgivable. Again, I was just being selfish. You seemed really keen for me to get to know them, and I knew if I hesitated you might become suspicious or doubt my intentions.”
“Intentions? What fucking intentions?”
Sean stood up and walked across to the armchair, kneeling on the floor beside her. He tried to take her hands in his, but Jo jerked them away.
“Don’t let this split us up Jo. I’ll leave her, I promise. We’ll become a proper family, you, me, Thomas and Sophie,” he said in a pleading tone.
Jo had heard enough. She leapt to her feet, picked up her handbag, and headed for the living room door.
“Do you seriously think I could play happy families with a man who had destroyed one family to be with another? Christ, you must be a complete fuckwit to even think that I could. Which also makes me wonder what I ever saw in you in the first place.”
She ran out of the flat, slammed the door and flew down the stairs without daring to look back. After driving for about half a mile, she turned into a side road and pulled over, her eyes blinded by a wall of tears.