Chapter 22
22
‘Who is he?’ Connor said, cutting through the pointless apologies.
‘Nobody. It’s not serious,’ Jen said, tears sliding down her face. Connor was slightly worried onlookers would think the lovely brunette was out with her brutal captor.
‘It’s not serious but he’s in possession of porny photos of you?’
‘Hardly porn! You see as much on any beach.’
‘You’re not on a beach, though. You’re in his iCloud for all time. Have you got photos of him?’
‘Y—yes.’
‘Can I see them?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want to know what he looks like?’
‘They’re irrelevant and you’re only going to mock.’
Jen was hunched over her V&T in misery. This would be a Gluggle jug tale for Libby, but there would be no schadenfreude.
‘Maybe I won’t mock, maybe I will be awed by the size of his bulbous salutation.’
‘See what I mean?’
‘How did you meet?’
Jen sipped her drink. ‘In Spence.’
‘You met him in our local bakery?’
An odd crucible for a sexy liaison: tangerine-orange frontage, five types of sourdough and huge queues on Church Street of a weekend morning. Full of parents with toddlers called things like Myst and Dufraisne.
‘Was he staff? “Here you go, one custard horn and also my custard horn”.’
‘You know what, Connor, I appreciate I have fucked up badly but what is the point of ridiculing me?’
‘The point is it’s at least bleakly funny, and right now I will take bleakly funny over dwelling on how I found out my girlfriend of five years is shagging someone behind my back. I’m going to need a name and some details for him, I’m afraid. Do I know him?’
‘No. He’s called Francis and he’s a personal trainer. We got chatting and he started joining me on my runs, going for coffee after. It started about four months ago.’
‘Is he single?’
A small silence and Jen said: ‘He lives with his girlfriend.’
‘Woah. How did it happen? “That’s enough about leg day, now let’s try dick day?”’
Jen tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘Messaging, I guess, and it turning … more intense. He says he’s unhappy with Victoria …’ she trailed off.
‘And you’re unhappy with me?’
‘Well, we’ve not been great, have we?’
Connor could see that as Jen hadn’t foreseen Connor would find out, she’d done no forward planning on what she should disclose. It was like opening an overfull cupboard held together only by its lock, and the contents coming out in a cascade.
‘We haven’t. I didn’t know we were “sexting secret lovers” though. Did you not feel gross about it? If I’d not got it by mistake, you’d be sitting here with me getting his replies.’
Jen covered her face with her hands for a moment.
‘Honestly, nothing has made sense since it began. I’ve not been myself. I’ve just felt such a psychological mess, you know?’
Connor hadn’t registered Jen was on her phone more and thought his lack of registering things full stop had played a part. Shaun once said all infidelity starts with attention, too little of it in one place and too much of it from another. His brother could really try being right less often.
‘Are you saying you’ve never thought about it? Other people? I wondered if … I wondered if you had.’
‘Nope,’ Connor said. ‘If I’d got to the point of wanting to sleep with someone else that much, I’d have told you.’
‘Look. It’ll be completely long over when you get back. I’ll finish it now and you can have access to my phone to see I’m telling the truth,’ Jen said, manner a little frantic, ‘I promise.’
‘Hold on,’ Connor said, being careful to modify his voice lest any drinker nearby tune into the soap opera-worthy content: ‘You think we’re not splitting up?’
He could see from Jen’s stunned expression that she really didn’t think this was terminal if she didn’t want it to be. Connor was going to have a lot to think about in the coming months of dreary solitude up here.
‘You don’t want to even try?’ she said. ‘Unfaithfulness can be a reset opportunity.’
Connor rubbed his eyes. ‘Oh, please, can we not with the therapy phrases. Let’s not find out it was your Father Wound.’
‘It can be worked through, long-term relationships are work.’
‘I don’t want to try, Jen. You’ve taken three weeks to bother to visit, because you preferred to be vigorously nailed by Franco Manco the PT. I take it there was no book launch?’
Jen cast her eyes downward. ‘You didn’t ask what book it was. What does that tell you, Con? I’ve not needed to invent cover stories– you had no interest.’
‘That’s called trust ,’ Connor said, trying to exclaim in fury at a low volume: ‘Are you for real? You think your lying to go bone some other man reflects badly on me ?’
‘Sorry,’ she said, but her tone and face were sullen. When the mortification of this faded for her, Connor realised her dominant feeling would be one of resentment that she’d given him the upper hand.
‘There’s no amount of Relate sessions that’s going to fix this for me. When would you have told me about him, if ever?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. I still love you enough to try, that’s all I’m saying,’ Jen said, raising limpid eyes to meet his. She was trying to guilt him and it wasn’t going to work.
‘You said it yourself, things weren’t good before this. You hated me ditching my career,’ Connor said.
‘Have you got any idea how hard you were to live with during the worst of it? You barely spoke to me.’
‘I know. I’m sorry for that,’ he said. ‘I was keeping my head above water and everything else had to take second place. But you should’ve been glad I quit, then? Instead you actually told me not to.’
‘I worried about how we’d make it work with a mortgage and kids, that’s all. You were so unhappy that all you cared about was escaping. I was worried you’d still be as depressed afterwards.’
‘What you mean is, you thought the problem was probably me, so it might as well be rich me.’
‘You know what? With all your razor-sharp insights, I get the feeling you just don’t like me very much anymore.’ Jen put her hands up. ‘I know, I know– I’ve got no right to complain as things stand.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ Connor said, which was an easy dodge. ‘Where did you have sex with him?’
Jen cast her eyes to the table. ‘Hotels. Never at ours if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘How many times?’
Jen swallowed.
‘Um … Four.’
Somehow, even though Connor hadn’t felt what a partner ought to feel throughout, the specificity of four was antagonisingly graphic. He felt like he’d been in the room.
They stared at each other until Jen looked away.
‘I guess I should start looking for somewhere to rent?’ she said.
‘Yeah. No rush for leaving. It’s not like I’m using the flat again until August.’
Connor’s napkin level maths in the past told him he could pay Jen her share from it and still afford the remaining mortgage.
‘While we’re doing practicalities, there’s no point you coming back to Salford and there’s only one bed. Why don’t we check you into a hotel near the station after this, go for dinner and you can head back south tomorrow morning?’
‘You don’t have to go to dinner.’
‘We need to eat, and I’d rather make this amicable, if we can.’
Jen slugged the last of her V&T and nodded. They went through the tasks mechanically, Connor watching her ask if they had any rooms left for tonight and the receptionist’s quick look to him that said got lucky, eh ?
After they were seated in Erst, Connor, wishing he’d not made a proper dinner reservation, said in a low voice: ‘Oh, I almost forgot, in all the excitement. If we get approached by a girl called Amber this evening, you’re my sister. I’m doing an undercover assignment where I’m supposed to be dating a colleague.’
He’d been so concerned at saying this, and it was such a nothing burger after the missent bare boobs.
He palmed the stone from a Gordal olive and took a swig of Negroni.
‘What? Which colleague?’
‘Bel.’
‘Why would she need you to be her boyfriend?’
‘She was working undercover and I walked into the situation and she was forced to introduce me as her bloke. I promise you, she’s sick about the fact. Not least because she doesn’t want to share credit for the story.’
‘Newsflash, Bel is using this to pull you.’
‘Hah. I promise you, Bel would not pull me out of the way of a speeding truck.’
‘What does it entail? Making out with her?’
‘No, of course not. In name only.’
It was strange, Connor thought, how Jen didn’t really want him anymore, but didn’t want anyone else to have him either.
‘Do you find her attractive?’
‘Why? What does it matter?’ Connor said.
‘I don’t know,’ Jen said. ‘I hate the thought of you with someone else, Connor. I’ve spent five years fending off the competition. I don’t want to see whoever she is coming in as I’m leaving.’
Connor thought Jen might be trying flattery as a last bid– there’d been no fending he was aware of.
‘Well, be reassured the only desire Bel Macauley creates is the longing to be out of her company.’
Jennifer turned to him, eyes shiny with natural wine and real emotion, outside the Britannia lobby.
‘I know I’ve behaved appallingly. But I didn’t realise how totally out of love with me you were, until tonight. Carrying on when you knew you didn’t love me anymore wasn’t right either. I know what you’re like when you’re devastated, because of losing Maurice.’
Connor pushed his hands into his pockets. Do not take Maurice’s name in vain to minimise your shittery.
‘I’m the bastard because I haven’t been horrible to you about this?’
Connor had expected her to be bowled-over grateful he’d not gone crazy. He realised now that Jen’s ego didn’t like that he’d coped, that she’d been denied him storming and raging about his jealousy. She’d wanted him to fight for her, over her.
‘If you’d been sent a dick pic tonight, intended for another woman, and I said you’re ultimately in the wrong for not loving me enough, how would that go down?’
Jen sniffed and shrugged. ‘I’ve never been able to out-argue you, Connor.’
‘Night. Safe journey tomorrow,’ he said, giving her a quick, tight hug, too brief for either of them to feel anything.
Forty-five minutes later Connor was once again sitting up bare-chested in bed, doom scrolling alone, finding Francis the PT in Jen’s friends with ease. He looked like Joe Wicks trying to be punk rock. Willy-flashing goon.
Now they had reached the end, he thought about his and Jen’s start and could see them in totality. He was playing the part of a somewhat spontaneous North London playboy in their early years– hey, I know we’ve only just met, but want to come with me to New York for my brother’s wedding? – and he’d found it an exhilarating escape from himself, at first. The fact it wasn’t really him was the buzz. No wonder, really, Jen felt that he was mis-sold goods.
She was, in fact, entirely correct in her parting words. He’d stopped caring about her when she hadn’t cared he was suicidal. He’d survived that experience, but his feelings for her had curled up and died. They were a good-times romance, untested by crisis, and when bad times arrived they had discovered they weren’t compatible sharing a nuclear shelter.