by Jane Moore
“There have been a couple of times before when I thought about saying something to you, but you never gave out any signals that you were interested,” he said, still stroking her hair.
Jo said absolutely nothing, because she didn’t trust herself to speak. She hadn’t given out any signals because she wasn’t interested, it was as simple as that. But alcohol and the excitement of being away from home in such glamorous surroundings had fueled her libido. She was quite happy to drag Martin upstairs for some uncomplicated sex then forget all about it, but she knew it wouldn’t be like that with him. He was an intense man who had obviously thought long and hard before declaring his feelings.
She took a deep breath and tried to regain control of her faculties. “Look, we’re both a little drunk right now,” she smiled, stroking the side of his face as if he were a child. “Let’s sleep on it . . . separately,” she added hastily in case of misunderstanding.
Martin nodded slowly in agreement, but his expression left little doubt he felt crushed by her cautious response. “OK,” he said quietly, picking up the bill and trying to focus on it in the dark club.
As Jo watched him sign for the extortionate amount without so much as a flinch, her mind went into rapid fast forward.
Here was a man who was nice-looking, successful, and extremely wealthy, a man who had whisked her away for the weekend of a lifetime and paid for absolutely everything. He represented everything she could want in life, someone mature and caring, who would probably treat her brilliantly and never let her down. Was she being a fool for not even considering his proposition?
They walked from the club into the hotel foyer and stood waiting for the lift in total silence, both staring fixedly ahead. As they stepped inside and Martin pressed the button for their floor, Jo studied the back of his head and considered the consequences of dragging him by his tie into her bedroom.
But she just couldn’t do it. The passion she always banged on about to Rosie just wasn’t there.
Martin walked her to her room and paused outside the door as she swiped the plastic card to enter.
“Goodnight, sleep well.” He lowered his head and kissed her tenderly full on the mouth.
If he’d kissed her passionately, professed to find her irresistible, and bellowed something like, “Sod the serious stuff, let’s just have a shag and talk about it in the morning,” Jo knew it was highly likely she would have slept with him. But he was too much of a gentleman, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
“The trouble with women,” Tim had once said, “is that you love it when a man bosses you around and behaves like a bit of a rogue. You whine about it, but you love it. Some bird wouldn’t shag me last week because she said I was too nice and wanted us to be just friends. So I called her an ugly cow, but she still wouldn’t.”
He’s got a point, thought Jo, as she watched Martin walk down the corridor and disappear round the corner. I really should be mature enough by now not to dismiss a man for being nice and straightforward. She stood there for a while, resting her head against the doorframe and waiting to see if Martin had a change of heart and came rushing back dressed only in a bedsheet.
Five minutes later, she was tucked up in bed. Alone.
25
phantly as they sat in the kitchen with a large gin and tonic each. “What did I tell you?”
“Yes, yes, you were right,” laughed Jo, “but it really came out of left field. I had no idea it had even crossed his mind before that.”
It was five days since Jo had returned from her St. Tropez jaunt, and Rosie had come round to help her prepare a dinner party for that night. But as yet, all they’d done was gossip about Martin.
“Just think,” said Rosie, “a no-holds-barred Harvey Nicks account, probably some convertible limo thingy, and more designer clothes than Ivana Trump. How can a girl possibly say no?”
Jo tweaked her friend’s nose with affection. “You’ve always been easily bought,” she smiled. “Now come on or it will be doner kebabs all round if we don’t get cooking.”
It was Tim’s thirtieth birthday and Jo had offered to hold a dinner party in his honor, a rash suggestion she had made only yesterday and was now rather regretting.
Those invited were Tim and his new girlfriend Anna, an extra in the desperately dreary daytime soap he starred in, Conor and Emma, Rosie and Jim, and her, Jo, the big, green gooseberry.
“Why didn’t you invite me?” said a disgruntled-looking Jeff when he’d come to collect the children earlier that morning.
“Er, possibly because you have your own life?” said Jo with friendly sarcasm. “Besides, I don’t think Candy would be too thrilled at the thought of you having a cozy dinner with your ex-wife and mutual old friends.”
“She wouldn’t know or care,” he said disconsolately. “She’s gone on some hen weekend to Brighton.”
She seems to be doing more and more on her own, Jo thought, but didn’t bring the subject up because it might be mistaken for her giving a shit and she quite honestly didn’t.
Before last weekend, she would have invited Martin to make up the numbers. But since their little necking session in Caves Du Roi, she’d deliberately avoided any contact with him. As a teenager she’d been amazed to find how a small kiss changed things between her and the opposite sex, and it was exactly the same now. Someone you would happily have called a couple of times a week or whenever you felt like it, suddenly became someone you played it cool with—leaving days between calls and endlessly mulling over when would be the right time to ring. And all because of a kiss. She also knew that contact with Martin might mean having to address the tricky subject of them starting a relationship, and she didn’t feel up to making a decision on that at the moment. The ball had been left in her court, and it was staying there untouched for now. If she was honest, she was still completely hung up on the whole Sean business and unable to make any rational decision about the future.
When she’d got back late Sunday from St. Tropez, there had been a message on the answering machine from him. Her body had broken out in goose bumps at the mere sound of his voice.
“Jo, it’s Sean, are you there?” His voice sounded tentative, obviously knowing she was in the habit of screening her calls. “Um, well you’re obviously out. Look, please call me, we have a lot of talking to do.”
It had taken every last vestige of her willpower to stop herself from calling him there and then. She was desperate to tell him about her weekend and the weird and wonderful people she’d seen, to share her experience and hear him laugh, to say how much she’d missed him.
But she didn’t.
By 10 P.M. the dinner party was in full, raucous swing, with Rosie balancing a dessert spoon on the end of her nose and Jim trying fruitlessly to do the same.
“Shit, that’s a bad coke problem you’ve got there,” laughed Tim as he watched. “Talking of which, did I tell you about Dave Keating’s wife?”
“No,” everyone chorused, desperate to hear a piece of gossip about the soap’s biggest star, a man who, if he were a cake, would eat himself.
“Well!” said Tim dramatically, warming to the theme. “It’s well known he’s got a big coke problem, and she’s been trying to get him off it for years. Last year he went into rehab for a bit of a rest and came out telling her he was clean. But he wasn’t.”
“Don’t they have baths at rehab then?”
The remark was so acutely stupid that at first Jo thought it had to be a joke. But no. Emma’s face was completely straight, and there was a questioning look in her eyes.
“Darling, what an utterly spazzy thing to say,” said Tim, making absolutely no attempt to explain to a clearly bewildered and embarrassed Emma what the expression “clean” meant. “Anyway, where was I?”
Jo noticed that Conor had placed a comforting hand on Emma’s leg and was giving her a reassuring smile. It reminded her what a nice man he was, but in an interesting way, rather than the faintly irritating, patronizing way that
made most women want to run a mile.
“Ah yes,” Tim continued. “So Dave had told Freda, his wife, that he was clean, and she believed him. So imagine her shock when she found a small bag of cocaine in one of his pockets when she was putting his suit in for dry cleaning.”
“No!” Rosie’s eyes were shining at such grade-one gossip. “So what did she do?”
“That’s precisely what I asked her when she told me about it.” Tim took out a cigarette from the packet in front of him. “She said she decided to take some and see what all the fuss was about.”
There was a collective intake of breath around the table.
“I said, ‘Oh my God Freda, what happened?’ ” continued Tim, “and she replied, ‘I don’t really know, dear, but I got an awful lot of ironing done!’ ”
Everyone fell about laughing except Anna, who was smiling indulgently, clearly having heard the story before. Only Emma didn’t react, surveying the others with a puzzled expression on her face.
“She’s not the sharpest pencil in the box, is she?” said Jo to Conor as he helped her carry dirty plates into the kitchen later that evening. A shadow crossed his face and she instantly regretted her unkind remark. “I know.” She held her hands up in a surrender gesture. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. She’s very sweet.”
Conor ignored her and started to pile the coffee cups onto a tray with the sugar bowl and milk. He’s been here so many times he knows where things are better than Jeff ever did, she thought to herself.
“Tim told me about Sean,” he said, his back to her as he organized the tray. “I’m sorry. He seemed a good bloke.”
Jo felt a pang as she heard his name. “Yes, well things aren’t always what they seem, are they?” she said with a sigh. “I really liked him as well, but yet again I’ve been proven to be a crappy judge of character.”
Conor turned round suddenly, an earnest look on his face. “And I really liked Sally,” he said. “But life goes on. I’m proof of that.”
Jo was struck by how handsome he looked in his simple black T-shirt and faded jeans. He really was a striking man. “That’s true,” she said with false brightness. “I must say, being in love suits you.”
Conor picked up the heavily laden tray and started walking toward the kitchen door. “Thanks,” he said, his back to her.
When they returned to the table, Tim was regaling everyone with some ancient anecdote Jo had heard a million times before. Rosie was leaning against Jim, absentmindedly caressing his forearm with her thumb, her face glowing with happiness. They complement each other brilliantly, thought Jo. Jim was no oil painting, with his wiry brown hair, round face and ruddy cheeks, but he had a wonderfully calm nature that tempered Rosie’s wacky side. He also adored her, which had worked wonders for her friend’s cripplingly low self-esteem.
Anna was listening to Tim’s story with an admiring expression. She was young, probably about twenty-six, with short, brown hair cut in a gamine style, and a plainish face that improved greatly when she wore makeup. Jo could tell she was slightly awestruck to be dating such a senior member of the Winds of Life cast, a title that had provided hours of amusement for Tim and his puerile farting jokes. Anna was a regular extra who had popped up in scenes as a beautician, traffic warden, and nurse. It was in the latter costume that Tim had fallen for her.
“I’m a sucker for uniforms,” he’d said. “But even I draw the line at traffic wardens.”
Emma, her red-varnished fingernails stroking Conor’s hair, was supermodel gorgeous. She had wide-set china blue eyes, an elfin chin and button nose, and a Meg Ryan haircut that accentuated her innocent look. She was wearing knee-length black boots with kitten heels, a tight, mid-thigh skirt, and a diaphanous blouse that gave just a tantalizing glimpse of her small but shapely breasts.
No wonder Conor thinks he’s a lucky man, Jo thought. So what if she can barely string a sentence together when she looks that good? Jo let out a heavy sigh, unwrapped another Amaretto biscuit, and stuffed it whole into her mouth.
At 2 A.M. she waved an extremely drunk Tim and stone-cold-sober Anna off into the night and leaned against the hallway wall. Peace at last.
The dinner party had been great fun, but it had felt really strange to be the only singleton in a roomful of couples. Jo had felt encased in her own private bubble, viewing the proceedings as an outsider. Kicking off her shoes and putting the kettle on for a habitual bedtime cup of tea, she once again mulled over her plight as not just a thirty-something singleton, but one who has two young children. A singleton with knobs on, so to speak.
She and Rosie referred to dating in your thirties as “The Pyramid Effect.” Early in life, you are at the bottom of the pyramid, with a wide choice of men. But as you go on, it gets narrower and narrower until hundreds of women are vying for the attentions of a minuscule number of men. Uncomplicated, sane men, that is.
Jo had always thought herself lucky to have met someone in her twenties that she could last the course with. Or so she thought. Instead, here she was back on the market again. The cattle market that was packed with beasts and very few prize specimens.
To her mind, it was incredible that any marriage lasted through the emotionally stressful obstacle course of the twenties and thirties, that time when couples are striving to make it in their chosen careers and be good parents at the same time. It was little wonder so many relationships collapsed under the strain. Maybe, like prison sentences, “for life” in marriage means about ten years, she thought ruefully. That’s all I managed. My husband has gone, and I’m left with Sean, the married man who wants to leave his wife for me, or Martin, the older man who’ll offer me security for life.
She thought back to her conversation with Conor earlier that night. He seemed uncomplicated, was good fun, and she found him attractive. But she’d missed her chance there and he was now in love with Emma. He’d said as much himself and he certainly hadn’t denied it when she’d said it for him.
“There’s only one thing for it, Josephine,” she said aloud. “Stay single.”
26
its cradle and put her head in her hands. “Shit, fuck, damnation,” she said, slapping a chastising palm against her forehead. She had called Sean.
She hadn’t meant to. Her plan had been to spend Sunday in blissful isolation, doing odd jobs around the house and pampering herself with all those deliciously indulgent beauty treatments you never get round to once you have children.
But sheer loneliness had got to her. Dozens of times, she’d stood staring at the phone, willing herself to walk away from it, forcing herself to find something—anything—to do that would stop her from making the call. But in the end, the pull was too great and she caved in. Even as she was dialing his number, she hoped the sound of his voice on the answering machine would bring her to her senses.
“Hello?” He picked up the phone after the first ring.
Jo froze. She briefly contemplated slamming the phone down, but she hadn’t blocked her number so a simple *69 on his part would brand her as the weak-willed creature she was. Besides, she wanted answers.
She didn’t bother introducing herself. “What a surprise to get you. I thought you might be having a cozy Sunday lunch with your wife and children.”
“Jo!” He sounded genuinely relieved to hear from her. “I wasn’t sure if you’d call.”
“Don’t get too excited.” She deliberately kept her voice flat, but she had to admit it felt wonderful to hear his voice again.
“So how are you?” He coughed nervously.
“Been better.” She wasn’t interested in small talk, she wanted to sate her curiosity about Sean’s secret life. “Where is home by the way?”
“It’s up in Derbyshire,” he said quietly. “Look Jo, I’m so sorry about all of this. Why don’t we meet up and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
“Forget it,” she snapped, her heart thumping against her chest at the mere thought of seeing him. She was desperate to make an ar
rangement, but self-preservation kicked in. “Let’s get it out of the way now. So how many times were you in Derbyshire while giving me some old bollocks about working abroad?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Not that much,” he said eventually. “Just a few times. As I said, although I know you don’t believe me, things haven’t been good at home for some time.”
Jo made a loud scoffing noise. “Hardly surprising if you go around deliberately driving your car into strange women because you fancy them. How many other affairs have you had, Sean?” The question had just popped into her head right at that moment. Oddly, she had never thought of it before.
“None at all, honestly,” said Sean earnestly. “I’m not like that, really I’m not. I just couldn’t help it with you. At first I thought it wouldn’t hurt to meet for a drink, but then I became embroiled and was scared to tell you the truth in case I lost you.”
“Which you have,” she said quietly, letting out a long, hopeless sigh.
“Have I?” His tone was subdued. “Is there really no way forward for us? I miss you terribly, Jo.”
Up to that point, she had been fine. But as soon as the bastard said something nice she lost her composure and felt her throat begin to tighten in distress. She had mythically played this conversation over in her mind a million times, how he would say this, and she would say that, and how under no circumstances would she show any vulnerability whatsoever. Fat chance.
“I miss you too.” She tried desperately to keep her voice measured, but it cracked halfway through the sentence as she muffled a sob.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said urgently. “Everywhere I go I see something that makes me laugh, except that it doesn’t because you’re not there to appreciate it with me.”
“I know what you mean,” she said, half laughing, half crying. “I feel that all the time too.”
He let out a long sigh, and they fell into silence. Jo resisted the temptation to fill the void, preferring to leave the ball in Sean’s court.