The One Before the One (17 page)

‘Oh.’ I say. I guess I hadn’t really seen that in her, but I mean you can be beautiful and friendly and charming, but it doesn’t mean you’re a good wife, does it? It just proves, one never knows what’s happening behind closed doors.

We go back to the hotel, Toby with his arm around me and the last of the day’s sun finally making it through the clouds, and I feel a little better about things, still raw but more connected, like the not unpleasant exhaustion you feel after a good cry.

I have a renewed sense of looking forward to our evening together; maybe a snooze on the bed would be nice when we get back, or maybe ordering room service and watching TV in bed wearing the hotel’s fluffy dressing gowns.

I put my head against Toby’s. I love how my head only comes up to his chest.

‘Shall we just go upstairs?’ I whisper, looking up at him.

‘I think that might be wise,’ he says, kissing me on the head. But just as we’re going towards the lift, a lady on reception calls, ‘Mr Delaney?’

Toby turns around.

‘A Mrs Delaney called earlier … But I see you’ve found each other?’

* * *

‘Why the fuck did you book it under your name?’

We’re in the lift now. I’m absolutely astounded.

‘I don’t know,’ says Toby defensively, ‘habit I guess. Look, it’s fine, calm down. Nobody will twig.’

‘But what if the woman on reception had said something to Rachel? Like, oh, hello, how are you enjoying Brighton?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Steele. They’re more discreet than that. What has got into you this weekend? You’re so worked up. I’ll have to call her, you know. I’m sorry,’ he says.

‘I know that, Toby, you don’t need to apologize.’

Don’t bloody patronize me, I think. I don’t need to be handled with kid gloves. ‘I’ll just go in the bathroom and make myself scarce and you just do what you have to do, okay?’

So I do just that, stare inanely at myself in the bathroom mirror as he calls his wife. I feel like I look different recently, like I’ve aged, the contours of my face not as firm as they once were. I pull at my temples, imagining what I’d look like with a face-lift, wavering between wanting to hear everything and nothing at all. In reality, I can’t hear any actual words but the tone sounds anxious. Both anxious and tender.

‘Is everything all right?’ I ask, coming out of the bathroom when I hear him hang up.

‘Yeah, sure,’ he says, with a tight smile. He looks pale and fidgety. ‘Everything’s fine, she just had an important meeting today and wanted to tell me how it went.’

‘Are you sure?’

He puts his hands in his pockets and grins.

‘Course.’

‘Because you look a bit weird, a bit nervy. There’s nothing wrong, is there? Do you need to call her back?’

Toby groans and rolls his eyes.

‘Caroline, Caroline, Caroline …’ He takes me by the
shoulders and kisses me on the nose. ‘What’s with all the insecurity today, hey? All the—’

‘Constant irrational emotion?’ I say, remembering our conversation in my kitchen all those weeks ago, thinking, See, I’m just the same as all women, Toby. It was all a front to impress you. I love you, you moron.

He laughs. I don’t think he quite grasps what I mean, but then, quite out of the blue, he gets hold of my face and starts violently snogging me, eating my face.

‘Toby!’ I’m trying to say, but his mouth is suckered to mine. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘Kissing you, what do you think?’ he says. ‘God, I really want to fuck you right now, I really, really do.’

He pulls me closer, starts undoing my skirt at the back, running his hands all over my bum.

‘Toby, calm down!’ I’m half saying, half giggling. ‘We’ve got all evening, you know.’

‘Okay, well let’s order bar service, then.’ He eventually comes up for air, wipes his mouth. ‘I could do with a drink, what do you say?’

I laugh at him. ‘We’ve got a minibar,’ I say. ‘I’ll make you one, if you like, if it’s going to stop you behaving like an animal on heat.’

I go to the minibar and mix a gin and tonic, whilst he smokes out of the window.

Good, I think. Maybe a drink and a smoke will chill him out a bit, because I’m not in the mood for sex. The phone call has made me feel exposed and on edge.

He smokes two cigarettes in succession, then takes the gin and tonic and downs it in one.

‘That better?’

‘You bet,’ he says. ‘Feel a million dollars now and incredibly horny, as it happens.’ He sticks both hands up my top and cups my boobs. ‘Let’s go to bed, CS.’

‘Oh, Toby, I …’ am really not sure I feel like it.

But he’s already lifting my top above my head. ‘I don’t know why you’re resisting me,’ he says. ‘You are a very, very lucky girl.’

Within seconds, he’s got me down to my underwear and on the bed, his tongue down my throat and his hand down my knickers. I lie back and stare out of the window at the fierce blue sky against the white facades of the buildings and, for the first time in my life, I don’t want to have sex with Toby Delaney. Not this sort of sex, anyway, this rampant, raw, animalistic fucking like I’m a prostitute or a one-night stand. He’s being almost aggressive, his touch rougher than usual, more selfish and detached. This is the sort of sex that seedy men have with their seedy mistresses and I don’t want to be a seedy mistress any more.

‘Toby, stop!’ I say, pulling away.

‘What’s wrong?’ he says. ‘What’s wrong, my darling?’

‘I’m just not in the mood,’ I say, pulling the sheet over me. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all. Must be all that sea air.’

‘Oh,’ says Toby, sweeping the hair from my face. ‘It’s okay, don’t worry.’

He lies down beside me. We don’t say anything for a while. Outside, I can still hear the gulls cry.

‘I guess I feel a little bit strange,’ I say. ‘All this, it’s a bit weird.’

‘What do you mean?’ he says.

‘I mean, I don’t know where this is going.’

‘Oh, Steeley,’ he says. ‘Come on, let’s just lie here.’

So we do; we don’t say anything for a while. I stare at the light fitting on the ornate corniced ceiling, my head in pieces, not knowing what to think. Maybe I should just leave, just leave now, put all this behind me. Go home to Lexi, forget him, get on with my life.

Then he says, ‘I love you Caroline.’

My heart thumps.

‘What?’ I whisper, turning to him. ‘What did you say?

‘I said, I love you.’

I feel a swell in my chest, hot tears in my eyes. I touch his face.

‘Really?’ I say.

‘Really,’ he says.

‘Oh, Toby …’

Then, before I know it, we’re making love.

Leaving him at Victoria Station on Sunday afternoon, knowing he’s going home to Rachel, is agony. I’m exhausted from a million different emotions, the sliding emptiness of Friday afternoon before the elation of that night and the ‘I love you’. I LOVE YOU!

That’s what he said.

People do leave their wives, I think when we’re on the train, this time with me leaning on his shoulder and it feeling so right. It happens, it happened to my own mother! Was I the most awful woman in the world for even thinking that? But this could be a whole new chapter, I think to myself. The promise of things to come. When I kiss him at the taxi rank at Victoria Station, he doesn’t pull away. I can still smell the sea air in his hair, hear the cry of the gulls. We say goodbye, a long, lingering one, and this time it feels like a film but the sound-track is playing and I’m not watching myself, I’m fully in role.

We get into separate taxis and I feel happier than I have in years. I take out my mobile, my hands are shaking. ‘I love you too’ I text. The giddiness builds gloriously inside me as my fingers touch the keys. ‘Sorry for going wobbly on you! Sorry for being insecure. xx’

I wait for the reply. Nothing. Maybe he’s run out of battery, I think, or fallen asleep. Then the realisation washes over me.

I feel sick to the stomach – he never did tell me if he loved her, did he? He evaded that whole question. Did he just tell me he loved me so we could have sex?

My mobile goes just as we’re driving down Battersea Park Road.

‘Hello?’ I slam it to my ear, not even looking who’s calling.

‘There you are!’

Martin. My heart sinks to the floor.

‘I was beginning to think you’d emigrated.’

‘Oh,’ is all I can manage.

‘Are you all right?’ he says. ‘You don’t sound very good.’

‘I’m fine.’ You can hear the wobble in my voice, I can feel tears pricking my eyes and I don’t want to cry, I really do not.

‘Well, you don’t sound very fine,’ he says. ‘I know when my Caroline doesn’t sound fine.’

The concern in his voice only makes things worse, and I blink back the tears. Do not open your mouth, I think, do not say a thing. Whatever happens, do not emotionally spew, not to him.

‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Just tired, that’s all. I’ve just come back from a client do in Brighton. Didn’t get much sleep.’

‘Oh,’ he says. He sounds deflated. ‘Well, you won’t want to be going out tonight, then?’

‘Go out where?’

‘It’s a cookery event,’ he says. ‘Very late notice, I know, but I just got tickets on the spur of the moment, thought it might be up your street.’

‘Where is it?’

‘A restaurant just off Regent Street.’

I think about tonight – even getting that far without caving in and calling Toby and I feel depressed. I could do with something to look forward to, something to take my mind of him, a bit of good old TLC from Martin to bolster my spirits.

‘Yeah, okay then,’ I say. ‘Sounds really nice, Martin. Text me the details and I’ll drop my bag off and meet you there.’

When I get home, I dash up the stairs and call for Lexi, but there’s no answer. Off working with Wayne in Camden, I think, more than a little relieved that I don’t have to have a conversation with her just yet. Not with thoughts of Toby’s ‘I love you’s filling my mind.

The ‘Cook Italiano!’ event is held in the kitchens of a small Italian restaurant on Heddon Street. It’s hurling it down by the time I get there – a summer evening storm – and Martin is standing in the doorway, his beige Gap jacket wet through and his glasses steamed up.

‘I’m so sorry I’m late!’ I’m panting, having legged it like a madwoman from Oxford Circus. ‘Some sort of suicide on the tube.’

Martin’s lips twitch.

‘Some
sort
of suicide, eh?’ he says, giving me the look that says I’ve known you for fourteen years, don’t you think I know by now that you’re ten minutes late for everything? ‘I don’t know, these selfish, depressed types, throwing themselves in front of trains?’ he ruffles my hair. ‘Now, shall we cook Ital-ian-o?’

Martin’s good at planning original, interesting things to do. This was always one of the many plus points of going out with him. It’s one of the things I miss. Whereas most of my friends would complain they could barely get their man dressed of a weekend, Martin and I would already be embroiled in the first of the weekend’s many planned activities come 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

Over the course of our fourteen year relationship, I have learned how to make sushi, how to mix a ‘Hemingway’ cocktail, had tea at the Ritz and lunch on board the London Eye. I went horse riding, paint-balling and did a tutorial on French wines at Vinopolis, London’s wine museum. Most of the time it was fun and he got it right (apart from, possibly, a Victorian re-enactment day – five hours in a boned corset that was almost the death of me).

This time, he clearly didn’t read the small print.

I know something’s wrong the minute we get inside. It’s something about the clientele: Too diverse, too oddball, too excited, too
nervous.

It strikes me: why on earth would you look this terrified at the prospect of cooking a meal? Then I see it, in huge, bright-pink letters on the far side of the kitchen.

‘FLIRTING WITH FLAVOUR! COOK. DINE. YOU NEVER KNOW!’

I laugh out loud at first, with shock more than anything. The sheer farce of it all. Then it dawns on me, did he? Would he? Surely not.

I look over at Martin, but he’s still engrossed in taking the beige jacket off and hanging it on the back of a chair with …
his name on.
I look behind my chair and realize mine has my name on, too, as does everyone else’s. This is turning out to be like some hideous
Come Dine with Me/Blind Date
hybrid.

Eventually, Martin looks over at me. I’m pointing frantically over at the banner, but he frowns; he hasn’t got a clue what I’m on about.

‘Bravo! Okay, people!’ At that point a lanky Italian man with greased back hair and wearing chef’s whites marches into the room, clapping his hands. ‘I’m Stefano Melzi and I’m your host for zis evening of Flirting wiv Flaveeeuur!’

The audience break out into a lame trickle of applause. There’s a ‘woop woop!’ from a horsey girl in a pashmina. Some dude in surfer shorts and Birkenstocks starts hammering the table with both fists.

I look over at Martin, who’s staring, open-mouthed, up at the banner now and I know by the pale sheen on his face and the expression like he just had the results of a paternity test on live television that no, he had no idea what this was when he booked it.

‘Okaaaay!’ Stefano Melzi flings his arms open as if he’s about to start singing an operatic solo. ‘Let’s get cooking Italiano! On your right, you will find ze tantalizing menu I have personally put together, carefully planned to set your senses alight, ladies and gentlemen, to increase your powers of seduction, to …’ he raises one black, arched eyebrow and spreads his fingers like a magician, ‘arouse.’

The horsey girl in the pashmina starts snorting with laughter, which makes everybody else except Martin – ten of us in total – join in, including me. I check Martin again, po-faced, a trail of sweat now making its way down the side of his face and I think, come on Mart, it’s not that bad, is it? We can laugh at this, can’t we? It’s not such a big deal?

He looks over at me and swallows.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mouths

‘Don’t worry,’ I mouth back. We were here now. If I could relax and see the funny side, surely he could?

‘Now,’ continues Stefano, parading around the kitchen, chest puffed out. Something tells me, however, that this might get worse before it gets better. ‘In your drawers are all the utensils you shall need to produce tonight’s dinner and in the silver fridges … Do you like my silver fridges, ladies and gentlemen?’ He runs both hands down one. ‘Pretty sexy, ha? You will find all the main ingredients you need, the rest will be in the cupboard. IF!’ He stops, sends a finger theatrically
around the room … ‘you are not sure whether your dish looks or tastes as it should, do not ask me!’ He bangs on one of the tables for emphasis. ‘Zis is not ze way to flirt with flavour! Instead, be brave! Be bold! Ask the person next to you. Stick a finger in your bowl, then stick it in zer mouf!’

‘Eh, Stefano, are we allowed to stick what we want, where we want then?’ honks the dude with the surf shorts and ponytail – Australian, unsurprisingly. Nobody laughs back.

Stefano wags his finger at him. Surf dude rearranges his greasy, bleached ponytail.

‘Please,’ he says, ‘’ave some decorum. This is a sophisticated evening of seduction and let me tell you … people—’ he lowers his voice right down to a whisper – ‘I demand courtesy, manners and, above all, romance! I ’ave ’ad many, many couples leave this room hand in hand at the end of the night then come back the following week to the COUPLES’ event!’

There’s a round of ‘woo-hoos!’ Some shrieks from one table. One guy – corduroy jacket, about forty-two and probably still a virgin – is staring at me in a rather intense way. Still, I think, this is okay, this could be a laugh. We might both get a little flirting in, and where’s the harm in that?

But Martin’s staring down at his table. Then he looks at me. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says again, shaking his head.

Despite the initial disaster, however, Flirting with Flavour turns out to be fun. Ten minutes into it, I realize I’m really enjoying myself. Martin seems to be, too. He’s been accosted by an Italian woman called Gisella, who has wild, wiry hair and an extremely loud voice.

‘Zis,’ she is saying to Martin as he hacks into the bone of his guinea fowl, ‘is a very hard bird to crack, Martin! Ha ha ha!’ She laughs, throwing her head back, and Martin laughs too. He looks over at me and I raise an eyebrow at him. Could it be that Martin Squire has found an admirer?

It’s 9 p.m. by the time Stefano finally releases us from his
clutches and us ‘Flavour Flirters’ spill out, heady from too much Italian red, into the balmy London night. We gather on the cobbled area outside La Tavola under the glare of a street lamp, promising we’ll do this again, congratulating each other on our efforts. With the absence of anyone else who’s under the age of thirty and gagging for it, Surf Dude Dan seems to have made a beeline for Horsey Pashmina.

‘Mwah! Mwhah! Ciao, Martin!’ Gisella, kisses him theatrically on both cheeks, nearly suffocating him with her hair.

‘Goodbye, Gisella,’ says Martin, back rigid, hands in pockets. ‘Lovely meeting you. Hope your fowl goes down well tomorrow.’

Martin watches as Gisella strides off into the night on shiny red stilettos, then looks at me.

‘What?’ he says.

‘Nothing,’ I say, feeling my lips twitch as I burst into a giggle. ‘You’re just so
cute
sometimes!’ I kiss him on the cheek.

‘Cute?’ he says, flatly.

‘The way you phrase things.’

‘Oh,’ he sighs. ‘Did that come out all rude?’

I giggle. I feel a new sort of lightness for Martin of late. When I first called off the wedding, it was anything but light, it was hard work to see him and there were many ill-judged excursions. In particular, a trip to Ikea to kit out Martin’s new bachelor pad, where Martin burst into tears into his Swedish meatballs. Those times were dark, full of strained conversations. It’s amazing how you can suddenly become like strangers after you’ve known someone for fourteen years, like the path of conversation is so riddled with potential potholes and no-go areas that there’s nothing safe left to say.

But lately I feel like we’ve turned a corner, and tonight was an accidental milestone. I genuinely didn’t care that Gisella was flirting with him; in fact, I thought it was rather sweet. Yes, Martin Squire and I have successfully made the transition
from lovers to friends and it feels
good.
I’d rather be a hundred per cent friend to him than a fifty per cent girlfriend.

I take his hand.

‘Hey, it was great tonight, don’t you think? Despite the um … initial shock.’

‘Sorry about that,’ says Martin. ‘Teach me to read the small print next time, eh?’

‘So anyway, Mr Squire …’ I say as we walk away from the restaurant. ‘You and Gisella, eh? I reckon she had the hots for you, did she not?’

Martin rolls his eyes.

‘But she so did!’ I say. ‘And I saw you both chatting all cosily, you telling her about your ravioli triumph, swapping pesto recipes, mm?’

Martin looks at the floor and gives a noncommittal grunt.

‘Even
I
got flirted with,’ I carry on. ‘Did you see him? That Howard bloke? He said, and I quote, that my guinea-fowl was pretty damned near perfect.’

‘Did he? Coz it looked like a burnt body part to me.’

‘Although did you see his hair, bless him?’ I carry on, deciding to overlook that comment – out of character for Martin, who has never dissed anything I’ve done. ‘No points for guessing why Howard was single. Trust me to always end up with the goons.’

‘Thanks,’ says Martin

‘Oh shut up,’ I say, ‘you know what I mean.’

The air is warm and fragrant, the rain long over. I’m enjoying not thinking about Toby for a night, just having fun with someone who feels like family now, and I don’t want the evening to end.

‘Come on,’ I say, ‘let’s go to the Shakespeare, just me and you, like we used to, remember? Like old times?’

He screws his face up. ‘I think, actually, I might just go home.’

‘Oh, really?’ I’m disappointed. It’s only just after 9 p.m., surely we can’t go home yet?

He takes his glasses off and rubs his face ‘I think I’m probably getting a migraine. A combination of too much red wine and my wisdom tooth playing up, no doubt.’

‘Oh. Well come back for a coffee then, at least,’ I say. ‘Or we could go to the local near us?’

Martin sighs, looks the other way and I feel suddenly a bit silly as if I’m forcing him to do something.

‘I’ll come for a coffee,’ he says, eventually. ‘But just a quick one and then I’ll walk back home.’

I know something’s up the minute we walk through the lounge door. It’s the way the lounge is eerily untouched, no cooking smells, no TV, no DVDs scattered around, or Lexi, for that matter, curled up on the sofa with her heart pyjamas on. There’s music coming from upstairs, some sort of jazz – since when did Lexi like jazz?

Martin puts the kettle on. He always used to do that when we lived together, walk into the house and put the kettle on without even taking his coat off. I open the fridge and take out the milk.

‘Just a sec.’ I walk to the foot of the stairs. ‘I’ll just see what my sister is up to. Lexi, I’m back!’ I shout. ‘Are you going to come downstairs and say hello?’

No answer, so I leave Martin making coffee and go upstairs. The music is louder now, the erratic beat of some avant-garde jazz or other that sounds incongruous in this house, like going home to Mum’s to find she’s playing Nineties trance. I knock on Lexi’s door, which is ajar; put my hand on the handle with its little silver dolphins hanging on a pink ribbon. A lucky charm, Lexi said, for the summer.

It’s funny what we miss when we’re not looking for it. It’s almost like I know, even as I’m entering the room, that if I
could have played the previous few seconds of events back, I wouldn’t have gone in there at all, because all the signs were there: the coat on the banister, the tobacco and Rizla papers near the back door that I missed, the faint smell of cigarette smoke wafting through the house, the smell of a foreign body, coming now from inside her room.

But like I say, I haven’t registered those things yet. My body is ahead of my brain. So I walk straight into her room …

‘
Caroline! Like fucking knock first, please!
’

And it’s only then that I see she’s in bed with a man.

I say ‘in bed with a man', but it’s not exactly that. Perhaps if she had actually
been
in bed with a man it might have looked more normal. The man is lying on his back on the bed, naked, arms behind his head, whilst Lexi, who sprang back when I opened the door, is crouched by his feet, legs up by her chest, like a small, frightened animal. She’s wearing her knickers and a small, cropped pink T-shirt with a silver circle on the front. Her hair looks post-coital.

I stand paralysed for a second, milk in my hand. The man very slowly covers himself with the duvet, but like it was an afterthought, like he’s only really doing it for
my
dignity.

‘God, I’m sorry!’

‘Well, close the door then!’ says Lexi, but there’s fear, not annoyance in her voice. She has her hands between her knees, she looks terrified.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ The man stands up now, the duvet wrapped around him, looking for his clothes. He’s tall and lanky with shaven dark hair and several angry-looking spots across his shoulders.

Then, Martin is beside me, breathless from running up the stairs. He takes one look at the man fastening his belt now.

‘Oh. It’s
you.
What the fuck are you doing here?’

Lexi is crying now. ‘Look, can he just fuck off, please?’ she
says, gesturing to Martin but looking at me. ‘What is he doing here again? It’s like he’s fucking following me.’

‘I think you should just leave, Clark, okay?’ says Martin. (Clark. Why the hell was Clark Elder in my sister’s bed?) ‘Get your stuff and go.’

Lexi seems to retreat further back, tears streaming down her face.