Chapter 7
Before Opal had even set herself down into the maroon velvet seat being pulled out beneath her, Gareth ordered for them both.
‘Two white peach bellinis, please.’ Gareth winked at the waiter as he walked away.
‘Honestly, darling, you’re insatiable!’ Opal liked herself when she was around Gareth.
Something about being in his presence always made her feel somehow more carefree, more glamorous, more of a bon vivant.
She’d often find herself calling him ‘darling’ even though it was an endearment she didn’t usually use.
He’d had that effect on her since they’d met.
It was a week after matriculation, and Opal had been feeling increasingly dismayed that her art history classmates at Girton College seemed to have taken against her.
She sometimes had that effect on people, often, inexplicably, on blonde women.
The three other girls who were on her course at Girton were all blonde, though they would have preferred it described as golden, Opal was sure.
Maybe something about her sturdily shoulder-length and triangularly cut grapefruit-coloured curls was off-putting for them.
Gareth, on the other hand, in his ochre-coloured elephant cord flares and skintight tank top had clasped her by the shoulders after their first lecture, and, holding her at arm’s length, had declared that she was ‘a striking beauty, Botticelli-esque with a hint of Da Vincian angularity’.
She had replied: ‘I’m not sure that angularity is a word.’ And he had laughed.
‘I’m Gareth, but you can call me … No actually please do call me Gareth. I think the days of Gary are behind me.’
‘Gareth, hello. I’m Opal but please do call me Pol. Everyone else does.’ She had held out her hand and Gareth had instead linked his arm through hers.
‘Nonsense, Opal is a sensational name. Why on earth would you want anyone to call you Pol with a name like that?’ Opal had blushed.
In truth she had always hated her name. ‘Shall we head to the pub?’ Gareth phrased this as a question, but he was already leading her purposefully down Fitzwilliam Street, towards the Mill Inn.
Now here they were, nearly twenty years later, and instead of a dark warm ale that she would choke down, the waiter was handing her a coupe of sparkling porcelain-pink liquid.
Porcelain. Like the colour of Agnes’s thighs …
The thought came into her head suddenly.
It was almost as though she’d forgotten what had actually brought her here.
Her emotions had overtaken her, and she allowed herself to ride them like a wave, all the while maybe she was hoping it would carry her away from the truth.
That her life, the one she had so carefully constructed for herself, was over.
‘So …’ Gareth took a very large sip and when he set the glass back down there was only a thimble of liquid left in it. ‘What brings you to London town? In a turban? Bursting into tears on a gentleman’s doorstep? Before 9 a.m… .’
Opal took a deep breath. ‘Martin is fucking someone else.’
Gareth did not react like Deborah. He nodded almost imperceptibly, allowing the words to sit between them.
In that time it occurred to Opal that his relationship with monogamy was different to hers.
She’d never really dwelt on this big difference in their approach to relationships, but now she found that she felt envious. How petty this must all seem to him.
‘With our next door neighbour …’ This at least garnered some shock; he brought his hand to his mouth.
‘Deborah! The rascal!’
‘No, no let me finish.’ Opal was feeling a tad exasperated.
‘Sorry.’
‘Our next door neighbour’s daughter. Her name is Agnes; you probably don’t remember her.’
‘I have to admit that I don’t.’ Gareth finished his drink and caught the waiter’s eye, tapping the side of the glass to indicate ‘another one’.
‘She’s nineteen.’ Opal had hoped this might be the consequential blow. But Gareth didn’t miss a beat.
‘So are you going to leave him?’ The question took her by surprise, and it made her angry – why should she be the one to give up on her perfectly pleasant life, just because he had fucked someone else?
Why had she come here? What had she expected from Gareth? Maybe a fraction of the grief that she was feeling?
In that moment she realised that it was a selfish thing to wish for. After what had happened to Joshua, how could she sit across from her dearest oldest friend and expect him to mourn the death of her faltering marriage, when he was still mourning the love of his life.
‘I don’t know if I can,’ Opal replied quietly.
Tears began to prick at the corners of her eyes again, and she cast them down to the drink in her hand, unable to look Gareth in the eye as she made the admission.
‘I don’t think I can be on my own.’ She hoped that he would know that she was not being cruel, but rather, honest. If anything she had admired with a pained heart the fortitude that her friend had shown in the dying days, weeks and months of Joshua’s life.
Even though she had read up on the disease and understood rationally that it could not be spread by skin-to-skin contact, she had found herself, literally, walking on tiptoes through the ward, and fighting the urge to pull her jumper sleeves over her hands as she touched doorknobs.
She had only managed to visit the hospital once. What she had seen had broken her heart.
While Joshua balanced on the edge of death, Gareth had smiled, stroking his hand and reassuring him with a devastating lie. You can go, my love. It’s OK, I’ll be fine.
And now here she was asking for his sympathy. As though he had read her thoughts, Gareth reached across the table and took her hand in his.
‘I’m sorry, Opal, I wasn’t trying to be callous.
I’m only trying to gather the state of affairs before I offer any advice.
’ His smile made his eyes glimmer. ‘You don’t have to tell me how hard it is to reimagine one’s life alone, when you’d already pencilled in the final chapter with someone else by your side.
’ Opal nodded, and Gareth withdrew suddenly, swiping at his eyes and gruffly clearing his throat.
‘So, you don’t want to leave him – but you hate him?’ It was an accurate summing up. Opal just nodded again and washed down the lump in her throat with another mouthful of peachy fizz.
‘How long have you known? I’m presuming you haven’t told him …’
‘I caught them fucking in one of the guest rooms last Saturday.’
‘Well he had the sense at least not to do the deed in the marital bed …’ Gareth accepted another drink. ‘Thank you very much, Anthony.’
Opal wondered for a second how he knew the waiter’s name, and then decided that the answer was too obvious to put to Gareth, who was both a regular and incredibly promiscuous.
‘Yes, it was very considerate of him.’
Gareth sat quietly for a moment. Opal was growing impatient. When was this marvellously considered advice supposed to materialise?
Finally Gareth set his drink down and placed both elbows on the table emphatically.
‘You know what, I think that maybe Martin has the right idea …’ Opal opened her mouth to protest but Gareth motioned for her to keep quiet.
‘I think maybe what you need is also a good fuck. None of this, let’s go on a nice holiday together and remember how things used to be, missionary, kiss on the forehead, maybe a blow job or two to spice things up kind of crap … ’
Opal was stunned into silence. For one thing they were in public; for another, it was mortifying to hear someone so accurately describe your unadventurous, though perfectly satisfactory, sex life. That was the problem, though; Martin evidently did not find it perfectly satisfactory.
‘You need the kind of sex that makes you beg to get your hair pulled if only for the momentary relief from the almost unendurable amount of pleasure you’re experiencing.
The kind of sex you think about for days, and turns you on to remember.
The kind of sex that’s well … just really really sexy. You know what I mean?’
Opal gulped. She didn’t want to admit that in her thirty-six years on this earth, she had never had sex like that. In truth, she’d never really thought anyone did. Gareth took her silence as agreement.
‘The real question is, how exactly can you make that happen for yourself? I mean it’s not like there are any virile young studs wandering around Arylebourne, and I mean it’s hardly like I can take you out on the Soho scene …
’ He leant back then, massaging his chin.
Seemingly he was genuinely contemplating where he could find her some random man to shag.
Opal had come here for some out-of-the-box thinking, but this was too left field.
How could she rewrite her moral and sexual world view at this point in her life?
Before last Saturday she’d finally come to terms with the reality of middle life without the experience of motherhood.
They had stopped trying after Emma. Opal couldn’t stand the idea of going through it again.
Other women she knew, ones she had met through the hospital support group, had tried again and been ‘successful’, but Opal felt that her inability to bear the loss of Emma, to ‘move on’ was in itself proof of her inadequacy to bear the burdens of motherhood.
Unlike these other women, she wasn’t cut out for the heartbreak of it all.
And now to face a future without a proper marriage? In favour of a sort of kiss, don’t tell mutually deceitful relationship where she outsourced the intimacy they’d lost to a lustful stranger? She felt overwhelmed.
As Opal dropped her head into her hands, Gareth moved his chair around the table and closer to her. He put an arm around her shoulders as she began to weep again.