Chapter 11
ELEVEN
‘So please try to calm down, Moira, and, er, back up a bit…’ It’s 11 p.m. in England. Nat was on her way to bed. She’s wearing her polar bear dressing gown with the ‘ears and black nose’ hood. In the background the TV has just been switched off. Everything is silent. Except my shame. ‘What do you mean you bonked Frank?’ she asks.
I was pacing the floor – I have paced the floor for the last couple of hours to the point where I’m sure I must have worn a hole in the hardwood – but I have finally forced myself to sit down. ‘Are you truly alone?’ I ask her. The last thing I need is for Tara to be earwigging on this.
‘Perfectly,’ she says. And then I hear the tell-tale squeak of a door being gingerly opened – then closed. ‘I am now,’ she owns up.
‘Revenge sex. Remember?’ I say it in a rushed whisper. My eyes shoot to the chaise, but I can’t bear to look at the thing without seeing the almost pornographic scene that went down on it, which makes me heat up a thousand degrees.
She looks puzzled at first, then her face drains of all expression. ‘Oooh… Wait. You took me seriously on that?’
Our gazes hang together. My heart has just suspended beating. ‘ Weren’t you serious?’
‘Well… er… no. Of course I wasn’t.’ She gives a little shocked laugh. ‘I mean, I said it, but it’s not like I ever thought you’d do it.’ She is studying me like she hasn’t met me before, and the fire that is still blazing from Frank’s kisses, from Frank being inside me, starts to die. ‘What I mean is, you’ve had three sexual partners in your entire life, Moy. You’re super cautious about everything. You overthink things until you’re blue in the face. You’re just not the person who screws virtual strangers just to…’
‘Take my power back? To feel like if he can do it, I can too?’ My heart is racing now, all this confusion sloshing around in my head. Nat said it, but she didn’t mean it. I did it because… Why did I do it again?
‘Hmm…’ She grimaces. ‘Okay, then.’
That strange expression is still stuck on her face until I almost can’t look at her. ‘Why do I feel you’re judging me?’ I say, trying not to sound quite as thrown off balance as I feel.
‘I’m not!’ She shakes her head, emphatically. ‘I’m truly not. Look, for God’s sake, I married a good man I didn’t love – who I didn’t even fancy, not even vaguely – because I was a liar and a coward. Because I was in love with a woman. Because I had fancied her from the minute we met, when we found ourselves in the same class that first day of comprehensive school. And I thought that made me weird, and that it was wrong. And then I left the good man I married, giving him the shock of his life – for that woman. So, I’m hardly one to criticise anyone else’s actions. I just… isn’t this going to make things more complicated for you now?’
I let that sit there. The bit about me, not the speech about her. Then I say, ‘No,’ equally as emphatic as she is. ‘Not at all. It’s possibly the most straightforward thing I’ve done in my whole life, to be honest.’ I had sex with someone I despise. For all the right reasons. What’s complicated about it?
She processes this – and me. The new me whom I’d like to think she’s just met. ‘So, what was it like, then?’ she asks. By her jolly tone I can tell she’s trying to summon a bit of the ra-ra sisterhood thing, but it comes across as painfully fake.
I can hardly say fast, and – oddly – insanely hot, but totally mortifying at the same time. That I can’t stop seeing him, feeling him, smelling him. Every uncovering of a new nerve ending, every touch of his fingers, every bead of sweat that trickled down my chest. Every time his eyes would mesh with mine, that meaningful way that I’ve never had anyone look at me while they’re…
I can’t tell her that I can’t stop reliving it to the point where my heart is pounding from the memory and I’m so turned on I can barely see straight. So, I say, ‘It was fine. The actual act itself was… Good, I suppose.’ I try to chirp it out, like you might chirp out something you’re not desperately trying to erase, but deep down the reality of it just keeps hammering there.
You had sex with Frank. Your daughter’s boyfriend’s father. Whom you hate. To get back at your cheating husband. Why couldn’t it have been anybody else – animal, vegetable or mineral – but him?
‘Right,’ she says, brightly. ‘So, er, how have you left off with him, then? What happened after you…?’
Covered my crotch with both hands and walked crab style to the bathroom so he couldn’t see my bum? Even though he had seen my bum and every other inglorious part of me in broad daylight. While he hurriedly tucked himself back into his shorts. The bathroom door closing at the same time as the apartment one did. Not a word said.
‘We had a civilised cup of tea, and a nice little conversation about it,’ I tell her.
‘You did?’
‘We didn’t,’ I say. ‘Not even close. He just left.’
I don’t tell her that I’ve spent the last couple of hours frantically refreshing my messages. That I thought he might have at least texted, even if for no other reason than to say sorry, that was awkward . Or, sorry I got the hell out of there so fast. Or, we never did talk about those kids…
‘Well,’ she says again. But then she falls silent.
I don’t like how she clams up and turns a little rigid and a little unreadable. I know that look. I know what a clammed-up Nat means. ‘What is it?’ I inquire, with a twitter of dread.
She pulls her hood on, tells me, sorry, Tara switched the fire off and it’s freezing in this room. Then she says, ‘Moira, I’m going to say this as your friend who cares about you dearly. You’re an adult. As I’ve said, it’s not for me to tell you what to do. But I think if you have an affair with Frank, I think it’s ultimately going to be a poor decision, one you’ll regret.’ She lets this breathe. ‘Purely unsolicited advice. But I have to say it.’
‘But I’m not having an affair.’ I’m distracted by the furry friend on top of her head, the black nose pointing into the air; it’s like we’re streaming the porn channel and the Disney channel at the same time.
She doesn’t exactly look reassured. That’s when I know she’s not done. ‘Go on,’ I say.
She rolls her eyes back in her head, pulls her hood down her forehead a bit, so now two black beady eyes are staring at me like they’re waiting for my reaction. ‘Moira, I’ve got something to tell you, but I don’t really know how to tell you, so I’m just going to come right out and say it. Okay?’
Harriet’s ominous words just over a week ago. People have to stop saying this to me.
I am held there in critical suspense, when she says, ‘Rupert came to see me today.’
I play that back. ‘What do you mean he came to see you?’
Rupert is not Nat’s friend. Rupert wouldn’t pop round to Nat’s home; I doubt he even knows where she lives. Rupert doesn’t understand women who aren’t attracted to men. Or women who are confident enough to sport a head of very short grey hair at the age of forty. Plus, with her being a psychologist, Rupert thinks she has superhuman powers and can see right into his head.
‘He came to the office.’
She clearly sees my astonished face.
‘The second he appeared, I told him you’re my friend so this would be a conflict, and he had to leave.’
My heart pounds to the point where I might pass out. ‘So did he? Leave?’
‘Not exactly.’
I press a hand to my mouth for fear I will throw up.
‘I mean, he started to talk. It all came pouring out of him. Moy… I think he’s just lonely and confused.’
I picture them both sitting there having some lengthy heart-to-heart about me and our marriage. My husband. And my best friend.
‘ He’s lonely and confused? You mean he came to see you to tell you that we should all be feeling sorry for him ?’ My voice climbs. I get up and pace around the floor again, go out onto the deck but the sun is too bright, so I come back in. ‘He’s being manipulative, Nat. He knew you’d tell me, and then I’d pick up the phone, then he’d get to peddle his lies again. Even I can see that and I’m not the marriage therapist. Did he insist nothing happened between them? That he was the victim of some nutter who got the wrong idea about him? He did, didn’t he?’
She must be roasting now, because she takes the polar bear off her head. ‘You know, this is the very position I didn’t want to be in,’ she says. ‘Torn between the two of you. But yes, he told me nothing happened.’
‘Torn?’ I repeat.
I try to take all this in but reject it at the same time.
Did she really just say torn ?
‘Wow,’ I say, because nothing else will come. There are truly no words. I know it’s normal in break-ups for friends to take sides, but only when the friendship was with both parties. How has Rupert even got a seat at this table? ‘And you believed him,’ I manage to say. ‘I think that’s what I’m gathering.’
I’m fully expecting her to say, Of course not! But she says, ‘You know, oddly enough… I think I do believe him.’
My heart gives a series of juddering beats. I sit back down on the sofa, mainly because my legs have turned to jelly.
‘I don’t think he was lying. Beyond, perhaps, some unwitting encouragement of this co-worker’s attention, I don’t believe he acted on it.’
When I can’t respond, she presses on. ‘Look, I’ve been a marriage counsellor for a long time. Believe me, I know how to spot a bullshitter. I know how people behave when they’re doing damage control, and I also know when people are opening up from a place of truth. He said he might have been vulnerable to attention because he hasn’t felt you two have been close in a long time. But that’s all it was – he was a silly fortysomething fool who was flattered. His words.’
‘But anyone could say I was flattered but I never did anything. ’
‘I know they could – and they do, all the time. And it’s for you to make your own mind up; it’s your marriage and your life. But for what it’s worth as your closest friend – and a professional – I felt he was being honest.’ She lowers her eyes briefly. ‘He adores you. I really don’t think he was unfaithful to you.’
I am spinning with this new information – and the fact that Nat suddenly seems to know more about the inside of my husband’s head than I do. We haven’t been close in years, he claims? Then why has he never told me he’s unhappy? Then again, when was the last time we sat around and talked about our marriage or our feelings? We’re just not that couple.
The idea of him not having cheated tries to override my conviction that he did. Could the text really have been the words of someone who was trying hard to lure a guy into bed – rather than someone who already had? Did I only see what I wanted to see? Was I looking to think the worst of him for some odd reason? Then one little chink in our marital armour and I was off to…
Mount Frank.
I slap both hands over my face and hide. If I never come back out, maybe none of this will be real.
‘I think I’ve heard all I can hear right now,’ I tell her. I stand a little too abruptly and gouge my calf with the lethal edge of my coffee table. ‘Ow!’ I bend over and rub it like I’m trying to start a fire with sticks.
I will not cry. I will not cry. Damn it, a tear breaks out anyway.
When I can manage it, I say, ‘Nat, no woman would say “I really need to fuck you” to a man, unless she felt she could.’ Perhaps in telling Nat this, I am really telling myself. ‘That is not flattery. No matter what bullshit he’s peddled – and what you have believed – women don’t go around saying that to men they work with, unless they are not just men they work with.’
When I’m looking at her straight on again, she says, ‘Where the line is, what constitutes infidelity… that’s up to you to decide. I’m just offering my thoughts on things. Yes, I was sure he’d had sex with this woman in the beginning. But after talking to him, I don’t believe he did.’ I’m only half listening. Because I just keep hearing torn. ‘You’re upset with me.’ She scours my face. ‘I know you are. I’m sorry. I really did try to get him to leave. But short of picking him up and throwing him out myself…’
‘I’m not upset at you,’ I lie, because I can’t take one more shred of conflict with another person right now; not one. But if my best friend’s husband – or wife – had come to me with the same bullshit story, I’d have wanted to cause them grievous bodily harm, or at the very least I’d have said on your bike.
I go back to rubbing my leg, so I don’t have to look at her again. Suddenly everything is colliding in my head. Images of Rupert having sex with some woman called Dagmara, then him looking me in the eye and telling me he didn’t do it. Images of me and Frank. Me under him. Me on top of him. Him pushing aside the flimsy material of my knickers with his tongue.
Him not texting, not calling.
I might have to do the primal scream again.
I tell her I’m bursting for a pee, so I have to go. Normally when we sign off, we do our lingering, Bye! Bye! Bye! complete with kisses and waves, and we press ‘end call’ simultaneously, so we disappear together. But right now I click out of there almost before I’m done speaking. Nat is gone, like she never just happened.
If only the past few hours could be so easily erased.
Two hours later, I am still pacing my apartment floor and chewing my fingernails off. So I grab my phone and decide to just march on up to the canon’s mouth.
Frank. Moira here. Just so we’re clear, what happened was a terrible mistake and it can never happen again.
Hello, Moira there. The thought of a repeat never crossed my mind.
Hmm… Hateful response from hateful man. How could I have expected better?
Glad we’re in agreement on that .
He is typing again.
Though it clearly crossed yours. Given you just texted to say it can’t be repeated.
I groan.
Didn’t realise we had to analyse the ears off it. Just wanted to ensure there are no misunderstandings between us.
None. Sleeping with married women is not my thing.
Not sure I’m loving how this decision to never have a repeat has somehow become his decision.
And I don’t make a habit of having sex with strange men.
‘Strange’ being the operative word.
Excellent, then.
Perfect.
This should not detract us from the task at hand, he types after a moment or two.
Fuck off.
When I don’t respond, I hear, Ping!
I am staring at an emoji of an aubergine.
I’m confused. Why is he talking about tasks at hand and sending me an emoji of one of my favourite ingredients of Mediterranean cooking?
I google: aubergine emoji.
Who knew, but the goddamn aubergine emoji has its own Wikipedia page:
Social media users have noted the emoji’sphallicappearance, and often use it as a euphemisticor suggestive icon during sextingconversations, to represent a penis.
‘Ewwwww!’ I pelt my phone at the patio door.