Fourplay

by Jane Moore

  He cleared his throat. “It would be difficult for us to start again, I know, but if you could find it in your heart to forgive me, I’m fully prepared to leave Anne for us to be together.” His tone sounded really hopeful now.

  “What does she look like?” Damn, damn, damn, she thought. She had been adamant she wouldn’t ask such a shallow, fatuous question. But she had to know.

  “Who?” He sounded confused, but Jo knew he was probably just stalling for time.

  “The woman who serves the cheese in your local Sainsbury’s. Who the fuck do you think I mean?” She had regained control of her emotions now.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “Um, she’s tallish with brown hair.”

  “So’s Michael Barrymore,” she snapped. “Thank God you’re not a main witness in a murder trial with those underwhelming powers of description. How tall? Long or short hair? Plain or pretty?” She reeled off the questions as if she were reading a shopping list.

  “She’s about five foot eight with long hair, sort of layered.” He paused. “And yes, I suppose she’s quite pretty.”

  Jo instantly hated her, then instantly hated herself for hating her. She was not going to become one of those women who blamed the other woman for her misery. That lay firmly at Sean the Snake’s door.

  There was too much about this whole sorry tale that was a cliché already. She’d always vowed she would never get involved with a married man, even more so once Jeff had trotted off with his floozy. Yet here she was, madly in lust, love or whatever, with a married man. OK, she didn’t know he was married when she dated him, but now she did know and here she was still speaking to him when she should just leave well enough alone.

  But, cliché cliché, she found herself being drawn back to him and listening to his stereotypical explanations. They were taken straight from the script used by married men the world over, yet here she was wanting to believe him. Wanting to feel that, somehow, this affair had been different, that this man wasn’t like all the others who had simply been trying to have their cake and eat it.

  Sean loved her, that’s why he had cheated on his wife. The chemistry between them had been too powerful to ignore, she told herself, trying to forget the rather obvious fact that they hadn’t even met or spoken before he deliberately drove his car into hers. The simple fact was, she had to believe that what had happened between her and Sean was different. Because to think otherwise meant she had to acknowledge she was just another mistress to just another married man who got his leg over someone else whenever he could, and the mere thought made her flush with shame.

  “But it’s over Jo, honestly.” Sean’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “I would have left long ago if it hadn’t been for the children.”

  Another cliché straight from the married men script. The children. Living, breathing, innocent beings, and she hadn’t even bothered to ask about them, so consumed was she with the other woman who had been sharing Sean’s bed.

  “How old are they?”

  “A girl of five and a boy of three. Ellie and Max.”

  “Nice names,” she said. A boy and a girl, another Thomas and Sophie whose lives could so easily be shattered by their daddy leaving to pursue his own selfish wants and needs. Little human beings that so many people treated as objects to be shuffled around between separate homes, passed backward and forward like a Christmas box of chocolates to be shared equally between the adults. And all because one or other of their parents has decided that this particular family is surplus to their requirements and they’re moving on.

  “I could start the process as soon as you say you’d like to give it a go,” said Sean tentatively.

  “Sorry?” This time, it was Jo’s turn to stall for time.

  “The process of leaving, of starting a new life with you.”

  She fleetingly considered what he’d said, then let out a weary sigh. “I’m not sure I want to be with a man who’d walk out on his wife and children. After all, I’ve had one of those before, haven’t I?” she said, glancing at the clock and realizing the devil of whom she was speaking was due back with the children at any minute.

  Sean said nothing.

  “Look,” she added. “I’ll think about everything that’s been said, OK? In the meantime, you just get on with your life and I’ll get on with mine.”

  She replaced the receiver and took a deep breath. Initially, she was angry with herself for making the call. But when she thought about it later, she decided it had been fortuitous, because she had finally put names and vague faces to those whose lives were in her hands. Humanizing them had helped enormously in strengthening her resolve to try and stay away from Sean. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she just hoped she could hold out.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Hi. I won’t come in, just dropping them off.” Jeff looked distinctly gloomy, not to mention scruffy, in a stained T-shirt and crumpled cords. The drawbacks of living with a young woman, mused Jo. You don’t get your washing and ironing done for you. It reminded her of yet another of Tim’s classics about older women. “Lousy shag, but at least you get a great fry-up in the morning.”

  Later on, while Sophie read to herself in bed, Jo sat on the closed loo seat and chatted to Thomas who was in the bath. He’d got over his recent embarrassment about nudity and had started letting her back in again.

  “So did you have a fun time at Daddy’s?” she said casually, rubbing a soggy flannel across his back.

  “It was alright,” said Thomas, making “whoosh” noises and dropping his naked Action Man from a great height into the water.

  “That good, huh?” smiled Jo, scrubbing at a particularly grubby area of his neck. “What did you do?”

  “Not much,” he shrugged. “Dad and Candy had a row.”

  “Oh dear. Poor Dad.” Jo had learned over the past year or so that she gleaned far more about Jeff’s new life from Thomas if she kept her responses very low key and didn’t look too interested.

  “We were all going to have Sunday lunch together,” he said. “But Candy got back too late so Dad shouted at her.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s understandable.” Jo had also learned to be very pro-Jeff in her observations or Thomas quickly became defensive. “So what happened after that?”

  “They had a big fight and she said he was really boring. She walked out and said she wasn’t coming back.” Clearly bored of the subject, Thomas ducked under the water and lay there like a modern-day Ophelia, glassy-eyed and staring at the ceiling.

  Jo left him to it and walked into her bedroom where she allowed herself a secret smile. It seemed Jeff’s brave new world was beginning to fray badly at the edges.

  27

  a high-pitched collective scream that filled the room and bounced off the walls.

  Jo was sitting in the open-air café of the local swimming pool, on a table that overlooked the area where Thomas and Sophie were about to start a lesson. Rosie was queuing at the counter for their lunch.

  “Sorry, this was all they had left,” she said, placing two plates of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and sad-looking fries on the table. “They were found in ancient grease, so to speak.”

  Tucking in regardless, they reminisced about their school days and how poor their diet had been.

  “I used to eat at least two Mars Bars a day. No wonder my backside needs its own zip code,” grumbled Rosie, stuffing six fries into her mouth.

  Jo laughed. “Not to mention the two packets of pickled onion-flavor Monster Munch a day. God, we loved those. We were always saying we were going to get into shape, but never did.”

  “Oh, I did,” said Rosie. “Trouble is, the shape was round. I’m resigned to that now.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” said Jo. “I’m sure Jim loves every ounce of you, just as you are.”

  Rosie scoffed and reached across to steal one of Jo’s discarded chicken nuggets. “Normally I’d poke you in the eye with my fork for saying such crap, but on this particular occasion you’re absol
utely right. He’s such a sweetie pie and, for once, I don’t hate him for it.”

  “That’s because he makes you laugh as well as being nice,” said Jo with a sigh. “It’s the lovely but boring ones we can’t tolerate.”

  “True.” Rosie stood up and removed her canary yellow fleece. She never wore quiet clothing. “But I must say it’s a huge relief to find I can be happy with a nice man. For years I thought I could only sustain interest in bastards. To me, drama meant passion.”

  “God, yes. Do you remember Steve?” Jo pretended to stick her fingers down her throat and made a choking noise.

  Steve had been Rosie’s distraction through sixth-form college, a time when she should have been concentrating on her A levels but was instead being led a merry dance by a man with the IQ and energy level of a three-toed sloth. He worked as a mechanic in a motorbike shop, and because he earned $75 a week and owned a Yamaha 100 Rosie clearly thought she was dating Steve McQueen.

  “I always thought he was the strong silent type, but then one day I realized he just had fuck-all to say.” Rosie opened a bag of chips. “Relationships were such an effort in those days, weren’t they? The greatest thing about going out with Jim is that I don’t think too deeply or worry about it. It just seems to work. I now realize that relationships shouldn’t be hard, they should tick along nicely with the occasional hiccup.”

  Jo sucked her coffee spoon and considered what her friend had said for a moment. “True, but there’s a fine line between being easygoing with each other and becoming complacent. The more I think about it, the more I realize Jeff and I fell apart because we had started taking each other for granted.”

  “Er, no,” said Rosie in a staccato voice. “I think you’ll find it fell apart because he ran off with a Barbie doll in human form.”

  “No, that was the symptom, not the cause,” said Jo. “Sure, at first I blamed him entirely, and it still stands that he’s the one who walked out. But what led up to the breakdown? I came to the conclusion recently that I was as much to blame for it as him.”

  Rosie didn’t look convinced. “How do you work that out?”

  Jo wasn’t too sure herself, but she knew that recently she was starting to feel a lot more compassionate toward Jeff. Maybe it was the shock of her experience with Sean, or simply because there were other fish in the sea, whether she was interested in them or not. Whatever, it had made her more understanding toward her errant husband and the routine weaknesses of human behavior.

  “I don’t know who stopped making the effort first,” she said, refusing Rosie’s offer of a chip. “But the other responded and stopped trying too. Before we knew it, we were two strangers living under the same roof. Just existing really . . .” She trailed off and leaned over the balcony to check on Thomas and Sophie.

  It was true that her relationship with Jeff had gradually crumbled to nothing. But, like many couples, they were entrenched in the everyday burdens and responsibilities of daily life, and never took time to address the problems. So it had slowly built up, until it became a mountain and even the thought of conquering it was too exhausting to contemplate.

  Toward the end, their longest conversations had been about the children. They even sometimes spoke to each other through them, using them as a filter for their own verbal inadequacy. When Jeff came home, Jo found herself with nothing to say, resentful even of his time in the office, away from the drudgery of running a home as well as trying to hold a small job together.

  “Funnily enough,” she said, turning back to face Rosie, “I think Jeff’s adultery ultimately did me some good. It was the kick up the backside I needed to start working seriously again instead of just playing at it.”

  Rosie’s eyes widened. “Wow. That’s quite a diversion from the early days when you wanted to roast his chestnuts over an open fire.”

  “I know. I do still feel a bit angry with him though, because he took the Candy route rather than sitting me down and telling me he was unhappy. That way, we might have stood some chance of sorting it all out.”

  “Trouble is, I don’t think many men actually give much thought to whether they’re happy or not,” said Rosie, spooning the froth from the top of her cappuccino. “Some floozy comes along in a short skirt, they shag it, then tell themselves later that they only did it because they were unhappy.”

  For someone who had minimal experience of long-term relationships, Jo was struck by how intuitive Rosie could be. There was an element of truth in what she’d said. Jeff had never alluded to being unhappy until after he’d bolted, making it a rather convenient justification of his bad behavior. Suddenly, Jo didn’t feel quite so magnanimous toward him.

  “Speaking of which, it seems young Candy isn’t such a sweetie after all. Thomas says she and Jeff had a fight this weekend and she said he was boring and walked out.”

  “Ha! If I remember correctly, I predicted that would happen eventually,” smiled Rosie, waving her paper napkin in Jo’s direction. “Bloody well serves him right.”

  Jo sat staring at her for a moment or two, then took in a long, slow breath before speaking again. “I actually feel a bit sorry for him,” she said sheepishly, silently cursing the return of her magnanimity. She couldn’t help herself, she’d always been a very fair person.

  “Sorry?!” Rosie spluttered, sending small specks of coffee froth flying across the table. “For him? What on earth for?”

  Jo could hear a faint, reedy cry of “Mummy.” She looked over the edge of the balcony to see Thomas standing below, waving up at her. She waved back and blew him a kiss.

  “There’s more pressure on him because he’s the one carrying all the guilt of leaving me and the kids,” she said. “He’s the enemy in everyone’s eyes, and if things go wrong with Candy it will seem as though it was all for nothing.” She yawned her way through the last part of the sentence. There was something very soporific about swimming pools.

  “That’s because it was,” scoffed Rosie. “I mean, how could he ever think a young girl like that would stay interested in him?”

  Jo started to clear up their plates and place them back on the tray. “You never know, it might be a mini midlife crisis,” she said. “He’s probably trying to hang on to his youth.”

  “In which case, he’d better not introduce her to other men,” retorted Rosie, and they both burst out laughing.

  “You never know, it might work out yet,” said Jo.

  “Yeah right, and Emma is a secret member of Mensa,” said Rosie.

  They’d already had several catty conversations about Conor’s girlfriend, and Jo had felt horribly mean doing so. But she had to admit there was nothing more satisfying than a good old bitch fest with a trusted girlfriend, as long as you knew your comments would never be passed on.

  She looked up to find Rosie staring at her with narrowed eyes. “Would you have the cheating toad back if he asked?” she said.

  “Which cheating toad? Don’t forget I have two in my life now.” Jo smiled, tucked her hair behind her ears, and began tracing a figure of eight in the sugar bowl with the handle of a teaspoon. “If you mean Jeff then, truthfully, I really don’t know. I’m not the same person I was when we split up, and I’m not even sure we would fit together anymore. But he is still the father of my children, so for that reason alone I’d feel it deserves serious consideration.”

  28

  I ask you! It’s soooo unglamorous, I’ll never live it down.” Tim slapped a hand against the dashboard to emphasize his distress.

  Jo jerked her head to the back of the car where Thomas and Sophie were engrossed in their Gameboys. “Tim, language!” she hissed.

  It was late August, still the school holidays, and the four of them were driving, very slowly indeed thanks to erratic toilet breaks, to Ty Celyn in Wales for a week’s holiday on a caravan site. The same site, in fact, where Jo and Tim had spent many bored, soggy days as children.

  She had originally planned to take just Thomas and Sophie, and was rather looking forw
ard to evenings spent in simplicity, listening to the inevitable sound of rain on the roof. She saw it as valuable downtime in which to get her thoughts in order about life, love and the universe—in no particular order.

  But at the last minute, Tim had discovered he was being written out of Winds of Life and had decided to join them in a fit of luvvie pique.

  “Of all the deaths the bloody scriptwriters could come up with, being flattened by a number thirty-seven bus isn’t exactly up there with the greats, is it?” he moaned, puffing his cigarette out of the window and getting blasted in the face by rain. “You know what? If I bought a cemetery right now, people would stop dying.”

  They were two and a half hours into their journey and he hadn’t yet drawn breath over the tiresome subject of his untimely demise from the show, recently described by one critic as “televisual flatulence.”

  Jo took her eyes off the road for two seconds to give him her best scowl. “If you don’t shut up about that bloody show, I’m going to drive deliberately into the divider just to provide a diversion.”

  “So-rreeee,” he replied, with the tone of wounded indignation she was used to hearing from Thomas.

  To make matters worse, Tim’s girlfriend Anna had dumped him the day after he’d received the script containing his death by public transportation.

  “She was obviously in love with the idea of Dimitri and not me,” sniffed Tim, who had been rather dubiously cast as a Greek waiter whose accent had unintentionally veered wildly between Greek, Pakistani and Italian. “Oh well, she was a moany old cow anyway. If I didn’t have bad luck with women, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.”

  Unable to take much more, Jo pulled into a gas station for a spot of light relief. She parked in a disabled space and limped to the main entrance, where she shoved the children into the video games area while she and Tim queued for coffees.

  “Excuse me, dear.” An old woman had approached Tim. “Aren’t you on TV?”

  “I certainly am,” he beamed. His chest had visibly puffed out by several inches.