Chapter 26
TWENTY-THREE YEARS AGO
Cliff and I got married in the October of the year he proposed with only his boss and wife, Ernie and Joan, in attendance.
It was very low-key – a registry office wedding after which the four of us had a pub lunch.
We’d been married for four years when Ernie sold the business and Cliff decided it was time to set up on his own.
He was a skilled joiner, reliable and personable, so it didn’t take long for him to get established, at which point I left the council and became his assistant.
The offer remained for me to go to college and retrain but there was nothing that appealed.
As long as I had time for crafting, I was content and fulfilled.
The years sped past through my twenties and early thirties and I never once regretted accepting Cliff’s proposal.
Our friendship grew stronger and stronger and I couldn’t imagine my life without Cliff in it – my best friend who made me laugh, who understood my difficult relationship with Marianne and supported me after every challenging phone call, who radiated positivity and who made me feel so loved, albeit platonically.
Every year as our wedding anniversary approached, he asked me if I was still happy and reminded me of the promise he’d made to release me from our marriage if I ever met someone I wanted to be with romantically or physically.
I always smiled and assured him that, as long as he remained happy with our arrangement, I was still fully committed to making our marriage work.
I meant it. Cliff had promised to be the best husband possible and he’d fulfilled that promise in so many ways.
But something happened shortly after my thirty-seventh birthday which made me so much more aware of the ways in which Cliff couldn’t be a husband.
It was a chilly Saturday afternoon in early February.
After a morning of work, Cliff and I had planned to go into Keswick to buy some fabrics and thread, get an early pub tea then go to the cinema.
As we were preparing to leave the house, a call came through from a potential new client who I’d been trying to pin down for a quote appointment for weeks.
‘He’s free now,’ Cliff mouthed to me, grimacing.
It would be a huge project and great for the business so I nodded vigorously.
‘But that messes up our plans,’ Cliff said after he’d hung up.
‘The quote’s more important. I can do the shopping on my own and meet you in the pub for tea.’
It didn’t take me as long as expected to get what I needed in town and I was bitterly cold so I went to the pub early and made my way to our reserved table, clutching a large glass of wine.
There was a man sitting at the table beside ours with a sleeping toddler in a pushchair next to him.
I gave him a half-smile in greeting as I passed, then settled into a chair and retrieved a book from my bag.
I’d only read a couple of pages when I had a strong sensation of being watched.
‘Sorry,’ the man said when I looked up questioningly. ‘I didn’t mean to stare but I’m sure I know you.’
I took him in – tall, good-looking with a mop of dark hair and bright blue eyes – and searched my memory bank. I couldn’t place him, but there was something about those eyes…
‘It’s Yvonne, isn’t it? Yvonne Lambert?’
‘Erm… Kellerman now, but yes.’ He clearly knew me from way back to have used my maiden name.
‘We were in the same French class at school. Brett Palmer.’
And suddenly I knew exactly who he was. I apologised for not recognising him and he laughed and said most people wouldn’t after so long but he had an uncanny ability to remember the faces and names of everyone he met.
‘It freaks my wife out,’ he said, ‘but she does find it funny when people clearly don’t have a clue who I am but play along anyway.’
‘I definitely remember you now that you’ve mentioned French class.’
I told him who he’d sat next to and the hairstyle he’d had at the time and we fell into easy conversation about what we’d been doing since school.
The longer we talked, the more aware I became of how attractive he was.
He’d told me he was happily married and that his wife was going to appear at any moment with another two children, but that somehow didn’t stop me focusing on the sparkle in his eyes, the way one of his eyebrows curled up at the end, how he spoke with his hands, or how kissable his lips looked.
A longing that I’d buried deep down inside of me clawed its way to the surface and suddenly my thoughts about what it might be like to kiss Brett became a lot more X-rated.
Heat flowed through me and I grabbed at the menu on the table to fan myself, making a joke about the thick jumper being a mistake for a warm pub.
I didn’t know what had come over me. I’d had fleeting moments of attraction before but the intensity of this was something else.
I hated that I was feeling this way about a married man although it wasn’t as though I was about to act on it.
This was a friendly catch-up between two former classmates and nothing more.
Brett’s wife arrived with a young boy and girl and Brett hugged his kids before giving her a soft kiss. A look of such deep love passed between them and then they focused back on the children, helping them out of coats and settling them at the table with colouring books and felt tips.
Cliff arrived moments later and we exchanged introductions and I wondered how on earth I was going to be able to act normal and force a meal down my neck with Brett sitting so close and a fire burning inside of me.
Thankfully a group nearby vacated a larger table and Brett and his family moved over to that so I was able to relax.
But, every so often, I found my gaze drawn to them and another longing emerged.
The toddler had woken up and Brett’s wife was bouncing him on her knee, eliciting the most adorable giggle.
‘Everything all right?’ Cliff asked. ‘You seem a bit distracted.’
There was no way he could have failed to notice me repeatedly looking over to Brett’s table so I told a part-truth. ‘It’s weird seeing Brett again after all these years. I knew him when Mum died so there’s all sorts going on up here.’ I pressed my finger against my forehead with a sigh.
* * *
That night, I lay awake with the curtains open, staring out at the darkness, thinking about all the dormant feelings Brett had awoken inside me.
Cliff and I were tactile, hugging all the time, so I hadn’t felt like I’d missed out on affection, but now I wanted more than that.
I wanted intimacy. I wanted real love. Not with Brett, of course.
Even if he hadn’t told me he was happily married and even if I hadn’t seen that for myself, I was sufficiently in tune with my feelings to know that my reaction towards him had been purely sexual rather than emotional, but it was enough to trigger some doubts.
Did I really want to go through the rest of my life without ever experiencing sexual intimacy?
But to get it, Cliff and I needed to split up.
After everything he’d done for me, after the wonderful years we’d spent together so far, was that a sacrifice I wanted to make?