The Other Woman's Shoes (39 page)

She smiled to herself. That morning, Martha had been flicking through her diary and realized that she and her husband had split up half a year ago. Half a year seemed a long time, and as a percentage of, say, Maisie’s life, it was a long time. Mathew had now accepted he had two
homes (like a prince). Maisie would never know what living with her father was like. She’d think her parents living apart was the norm.

For Martha, being married seemed like a lifetime ago; it also seemed like yesterday. She liked her bare fingers tapping in time to Nina Simone. She had nice hands and they suited nudity; she rarely felt for her rings now. She adored her twenty-dollar tops and forty-dollar trousers from Urban Outfitters that sat in bags beside her. She was pleased with the jacket she’d bought, too. They seemed to be full of possibility. There was so much more tomorrow, so much more promise in them than anything she’d ever worn before.

Jack came back to their table, bearing a tall, skinny latte and a fruit juice. He too collapsed into a squishy chair. He smiled and asked, ‘Tired?’

‘Totally bushed. How far do you think we’ve walked today?’

‘Miles. I’m shagged too.’

Martha smiled to herself. She was bushed, he was shagged; the vocabulary was so different, but they were the same. When she’d met him, she’d talked about chaps, he’d talked about dudes. Now they met on middle ground and talked about guys. There were more similarities than disparities.

‘Shall we ring Eliza and see how the kids are?’ he asked.

Jack had brought a Tri-band mobile with him to the States, as he knew that Martha’s phone wouldn’t work on this continent. Every morning, even before breakfast, Jack asked, ‘Do you want to ring the kids?’ One day, Martha had slept in and by the time she woke up, at
11 a.m. US time, Jack had already called and could report that Mathew had been to playgroup and had drawn a picture of a racing car, and that Maisie had said ‘cat’ very clearly when she spotted the neighbour’s cat. He was clearly, ridiculously, excited by this news, which Martha loved him for.

She did.

Love him.

She was sure. Jack was… No, she really didn’t want to say this, not even to herself. Well, she did. On one level she really wanted to say this and nothing other than this. It was possible that Jack was… She did still believe in it. Hope for it. Jack was…

The One.

Sex with a Soul.

This was what it was about. This was what all the books and magazines and chat shows and Hollywood aspired to.

It was lucky that they’d found each other.

It was just a question of learning to trust.

She couldn’t identify the exact moment when she’d fallen in love with him. It could have been when he bent down to put on his ice skates. Despite his wide shoulders, he looked vulnerable as he skated around the rink at the Rockefeller Centre. He’d never skated before but he was prepared to risk life and limb because Martha had wanted to skate there since she’d seen it on an episode of
Friends
.

She might have realized she loved him yesterday when he made her a paper airplane as she sat crying over her breakfast in the diner. They’d been in New York for three days and Martha had called Eliza. Eliza sounded so in control, so sorted. She’d said that the children were ‘Perfect.
Brilliant. Angels, both of them’. She’d said that they were eating ‘well’ and sleeping ‘fine’. Her family sounded as though they were operating seamlessly without her.

Which was of course what she wanted.

So why when she’d put the phone down had she decided that she didn’t want to go on to the comedy club after all, and that she’d rather just go back to the hotel to sleep? The next morning she’d woken up feeling miserable and even the breakfast of French toast with fresh strawberries and honey at their local diner had failed to raise a smile.

‘You’re missing them, aren’t you?’ Jack had asked.

Martha didn’t even think of disguising the truth. ‘So much, it hurts.’

She didn’t want to appear ungrateful. She was having a fabulous time, but she felt bereft. He made her a paper airplane from a drinks coaster and then took her to FAO Schwarz toystore to buy holiday gifts and something special for Mathew’s birthday, which would be soon. She wandered around and only just managed to stop herself swooping down on every little boy and girl and smothering them with kisses. Instead, she had to make do with beating her Amex card to death buying gifts.

She could have fallen in love with him when he helped her pick out a nail varnish for Eliza, or when he stopped at the window of a handbag shop and said, ‘I think your mum would like that.’ It might have been when they were playing pool on the purple pool table in the trendy Hudson Hotel. Or when he patiently handed her garment after garment over the top of her changing-room door as she tried to find something new to wear to go dancing in, although she’d brought a heaving suitcase with her.

Or, of course, she might have fallen in love with him in the Salsa club last December. She wasn’t sure.

Michael and Martha had been planners, now she was learning to live in the present, never forecasting, just relishing. But she could no longer explain this relationship simply in terms of a need for experience. She would not be that much of a sham. She could only say it was to do with egotism, beauty, appetite and feeling complete. Alive. Irresistible.

That seemed like love to Martha.

Still, Martha was confused. How had she managed to get to the age of thirty-two and still be so entirely ignorant as to how men’s brains worked? She considered buying
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
, but she thought that that was the ultimate defeat. What was he thinking? Did he love her passionately? He’d picked her up in the street today and swung her around. It seemed so free, so positive. Did he do that with all his women? Did it matter? She didn’t want to torture herself.

She couldn’t do anything but.

When he made love to her he was a silent and conscientious lover. A sexual Ninja, he called himself, and Martha grinned at the recollection. ‘Highly skilled in deadly arts, strike without warning, don’t see them coming.’

Mad as they come.

He clearly wanted to please her; in fact, it appeared that he wanted that more than anything. All he seemed to want to do, both in and out of bed, was make her happy.

At that moment Jack leant forward and gently but firmly clasped Martha’s neck and held her steady whilst he moved his full, rose-pink lips towards hers. She felt the kiss inside
her ribcage and between her legs. Was he kissing her in that way because he knew she would dissolve (she was) or because he was rapt? It was so difficult to tell. How could she ask? When would she know? Did it matter? She was so proud of him. So bloody, bloody proud of the pair of them. Peas in a pod, he’d called them. And when they made love she never ever had to imagine Robbie Williams or Jude Law or that bloke from the Calvin Klein adverts. Wow.

He constantly asked what she wanted to do, where she wanted to go, which film she wanted to see, what type of food she wanted to eat. But he wasn’t sycophantic or excessive the way doting men could be; he came up with wacky choices and interesting options. Martha had never come across that before.

She watched him drink his juice. He nodded his head in time with the tune, then he flicked his gum out of his mouth on the end of his tongue and in a flash the gum disappeared again. His every move made her melt as though she were snow in sunshine. Pounding his thumb on the side of his glass, in time to music, threw her into a near-frenzy. Jesus, she was thirty-two and he made her feel fourteen. Uncontrollable, uncontrolled.

Jack caught Martha’s eye and grinned. His eyes glistened with tears of laughter as if he were recovering from something hilarious Martha had said. She wondered, could he love her? Was he waiting for the correct moment to declare his undying love and tell her that she was super-special?

It seemed unlikely.

Everyone had assumed that the difficult thing about coming out of a marriage was believing you’d fall in love
again, but that had been easy for Martha. The tricky thing was believing someone would fall in love with her.

And it wasn’t just her, was it? Why would he choose them? Why wouldn’t he take all his chances with a single, childless woman? A blank slate. Why would he bother taking on someone else’s children, wife and life, and have to put in an enormous amount of effort in the hope of making them his own?

It was a lot to ask.

Even if he did declare undying love, how could she believe him? Martha realized that she shouldn’t make comparisons, but it was difficult not to. If she compared Jack to Michael when she’d first met Michael, there were some similarities, although Jack was nothing like the Michael she’d been waking up to over the last few years. It was the similarity that scared her. Even if he meant it now, it didn’t follow that he’d always mean it. She’d heard the ‘I love you for ever’ line once too often.

It was even possible that he feared her. Was he wary of that terrible moment when she would declare her undying love to him? When she would let down her guard and tell him that, actually, it wouldn’t be so bad lying in bed and reading the Sunday papers with him for the rest of her life.

Probably.

He could be somewhere in between. But where?

‘I don’t think I could walk another step,’ said Martha.

Jack looked at the day’s booty. They each had several huge bags crammed full of clothes, CDs and pressies. ‘Let’s grab a cab,’ he suggested.

They returned to the hotel. Their room was very small,
not much bigger than a caravan, and now it seemed minute as they filled it with their shopping. They stretched out on the bed, flicked through the cable-TV channels, raided the mini bar, and decided to eat the M&Ms anyway, even though they cost four times the amount they’d pay in a store. They used Martha’s stomach as a plate, and then they made love.

44

After they’d made love, Jack fell asleep, but Martha didn’t. Instead she lay awake, listening to the dustcarts collecting rubbish and watching car headlights making patterns on the ceiling of their room. They’d had so much fun that day. They’d bought doughnuts and ice cream. They’d shared them, actually fed them to one another, the way people do in films. And they’d tasted so good, better than anything she’d ever tasted before. In her past, she’d visited some of the finest restaurants in the major cities of the world, and yet nothing had ever sated her as well as those mini doughnuts. What was it? Did Jack simply know how to live life better than most? He certainly met all the boxes on the boyfriend wish list. Way more than Michael had ever met. Jack was chatty, better-looking, a better lover, had a larger penis, was a better dancer.

She loved him.

It should have been enough. But it wasn’t.

Jack didn’t want her in an all-consuming way.

Jack had other naked friends.

What did men want? More, always more. Why couldn’t they trust and love one woman? Why wasn’t that enough? What had this world allowed itself to become? There was always more choice, more variety.

Too much choice, too much variety.

Why hadn’t Michael been happy with her, his beautiful
children and home? Wasn’t it enough that they had fun friends, lovely holidays and good health? Had he given all that up because someone younger, more obliging, had caught his eye? And what was Jack looking for? Another pair of tits, a slimmer set of hips? The next pretty blonde or brunette or redhead, or shaved head or pink head or just plain good head? One woman was no longer enough. Sometimes one at a time wasn’t even enough, even if it was a new one every night for a month. Threesomes left Martha cold. Some men wanted to visit prostitutes or sleep with strippers; others went so far as to draw a distinction between strippers and lap-dancers and wanted to tick off both on their list. Martha was no longer prudish – she was having far too good a time in the sack to be prudish – but she was still a realist; she knew no woman could be all of these things. It wasn’t possible to be the current one and the next one.

All Martha wanted was to be someone’s number one.

She deserved it. As Martha listened to the sirens of police cars, she decided that if he wanted to sleep with other people he could, but he was no longer going to sleep with her. She’d done a pretty good job at ignoring the naked friends right up until the moment that she’d admitted to having fallen in love with him, and then she couldn’t ignore them for a second longer. Suddenly they were everywhere. They noisily demanded that Martha take notice of them. They ordered an espresso when she ordered a latte. They looked out of the mirror in the bathroom when she took her make-up off. They climbed into bed with her when she climbed into bed with him. It wasn’t to do with jealousy. Although she was jealous.
Jealous of the breasts he’d touched. The shape of their muffs. The waists he’d known. The tone of their groans. But it wasn’t to do with jealousy.

Martha knew that she wanted Jack, God she wanted him so much. Despite everything. Despite knowing that loving anyone was a risk. Despite the fact that she still grieved for Michael. Despite knowing that Jack
was
dangerous, that he noticed other women and they noticed him. There would always be an endless trail of possibilities. Still, she wanted him.

Martha pulled the duvet tighter around her body. She was cold. She glanced at the clock. At 3.05 a.m. she decided that she wanted him, but only if he wanted her, and only her. It was the best and the worst moment in many extremely good and criminally bad moments.

Jack was good and kind and handsome and sexy, but if his soul didn’t burn for her, then the essential ingredient that Martha was demanding was missing. Martha knew her dizzy passion could easily spiral into something more permanent, but she was convinced that he didn’t feel the same.

It was annoying, but she’d become very good at recognizing when men weren’t in love with her.

Martha woke up feeling sad. She remembered that when she was with Michael she’d often felt sad. Or tense, or stressed, or exhausted. She’d been used to the horrible dull ache in the pit of her stomach, the ache that told her she’d forgotten, or failed, or ruined something somehow, even though she was always trying her best. She’d been so used to carrying around a sense of personal disappointment
that she didn’t even have to try to ignore it. She’d worn it like a pair of old spectacles. But things were different now. Martha wished she could ignore her sadness or resign herself to getting used to it, but she knew that was no longer possible. She was now far more honest with herself.