‘Maybe,’ he suggests, ‘this is just the end of the beginning.’
I can’t see it. ‘All that upheaval, it would be horrible for everyone.’
I’d told Josh that we should use this week to think about what we really want from each other. But I’d only meant that he should get his head straight. I already know what I want: nothing serious or soul-searching. Just fun. And, yes, hot sex.
Other people having affairs might be different, their connections are genuine and go way beyond incendiary sex. They are actually in love, and they change their lives for each other – leaving jobs, moving cities, breaking up families.
But I don’t love Josh, and Josh – despite whatever he might be telling himself – doesn’t love me. I suspect I’m being played and in ways I don’t understand. All I know for sure is that I don’t want it to be over because without Josh I have nothing. Actually, that’s not true and I feel guilty for even thinking it – I have Neeve, Sofie, Kiara, Mum, Pop, Derry, even Alastair …
I look at my phone. It’s ten to five. ‘I’m calling it a day,’ I say. ‘It’s Friday after all.’ I switch off my computer, put on my coat, then squint at Alastair. ‘What will you do if you don’t have a girlfriend by Valentine’s Day?’ I’m curious.
He shrugs. ‘She may not be the woman of my dreams but I could probably scare up somebody.’
With undeniable affection, I say, ‘I despise you.’
‘And I love you. Although not in that way. Have a nice weekend.’
Well, that would be wonderful. I can but hope.
However, when I get to Mum and Pop’s, I discover that Sofie, Jackson and Kiara have hatched plans to go to the cinema club on Sunday night – with Hugh!
‘Why don’t you come too, Mum?’ Kiara says. (Kiara, after her initial suspicion that a freshly returned Hugh was going to be making overtures to every woman in Dublin, has warmed to him again.)
‘Do, Amy.’ Jackson is all smiles.
‘Ah, do,’ Sofie says.
Goggle-eyed, I stare at them. Are they insane? I don’t want to spend any time with Hugh. Like, never. Every time our paths cross – when he picks the girls up or delivers them home again – I can hardly breathe from the assault of my emotions. All that out-of-control sorrow, jealousy, rage, guilt …
But to go to the cinema club – I can’t think of anything worse! I haven’t been there in ages, not since before Hugh came back, and I’ve no plans ever to go again. It’s the place where I feel most exposed and most judged. Too many ‘friends’ of mine go there. And to show up with Hugh, to masquerade as a happy family, to know that everyone is speculating about us would be too shaming.
All these thoughts explode in my head as Sofie, Kiara and Jackson smile encouragingly at me.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Um. No. It’s okay. I don’t want to. No.’
Such a clamour of objections breaks out – ‘Ah, Mu-um!’ And ‘Oh, Aaa-mee!’ – that I have to leave the room, go upstairs and wait for the high water of feelings to abate.
As a result, every second of Saturday and Sunday is infused with a type of angry dread. I don’t want all those bitches – Genevieve Payne and her ilk – checking out Hugh.
Maybe it won’t happen, though. Maybe Hugh will realize what a bad idea it is.
But at four thirty on the dot on Sunday, he arrives to pick up Sofie, Kiara and Jackson. It hurts terribly to see how handsome he’s looking. He’d always been burly, which I’d loved, but every time I see him these days he’s slightly thinner. He’s now at the stage where his clothes are noticeably looser; any woman’s nurturing instincts would be alerted. It’s even happening to me. I want to hold his body and comfort him, sit him down in my kitchen and feed him.
‘Sure we can’t persuade you?’ His tone is gentle.
‘Quite sure,’ I mutter.
Sofie, Kiara and Jackson troop down the stairs and out of the house. I close the front door behind them. But as soon as the car has gone, I open it again and slam it with all my might, then sit on the stairs and sob hot, angry tears. They mutate into howls of sorrow because the stupid, mortifyingly middle-class cinema club had represented something rare and precious. It was the one part of my life where the people I love the most came together harmoniously – Hugh, me, the three girls, even Jackson.
If I look back over my life I can honestly say I’ve never been as happy as I have been in Pizza Express on some random Sunday evening after seeing a very odd Iranian film.
Separation, then divorce … It really is one of the hardest things any person will ever go through. Well, maybe not everyone. Other people fall out of love gradually and in perfect synchronicity, so by the time they realize it’s all over, both of their landings are super-soft and they’re able to be friends.
Hugh and I, though, it’s different. We were so tightly bonded and our sundering has been shocking and brutal. His departure was too sudden; the wrench was ragged and rough. We’ve been pulled apart as carelessly as someone tearing off a piece of baguette. The destruction couldn’t have been cruder and I am raw.
But one day I won’t be, I remind myself. Even if it doesn’t feel like it, I’m already healing because every second that passes is bringing me closer to a new normality. One day I’ll be in the middle of something and I’ll suddenly see that I’m happy and everything will be okay.
It will come. I just need to be patient.
107
Tuesday, 7 February
‘Fuck me, Josh, harder!’
He duly slams into me with more force. I moan and thrash about a bit on the hotel bed … but something’s wrong.
I don’t want to be doing this. I actually hadn’t wanted any of it – being yanked into the room, discovering Josh already undressed and naked, having my knickers whipped off, lowering myself on to him, moving with deliberate calculation on top of him, listening to him plead for me to remove my shirt and dispassionately watching his face as he disappeared inside his climax.
It’s just what we always do, he hoicks me inside and we start tearing into each other, but if it hadn’t been so habitual, I wouldn’t have done any of it, not today.
Instead we should have talked. Too many serious considerations erupted last week and it was a mistake to think we could sex our way past them.
I’m not going to come. I just want it to stop. He’s behind me, going for it hammer and tongs, and I wonder if I should fake it.
But faking it is the worst, it’s a violation of intimacy and I haven’t done it in literally decades, not since I was with the nice-but-dull single dad from Neeve’s crèche, back in the day.
Also, I haven’t the energy to fake it.
However, if I don’t come, it’s a line in the sand. Josh will take it personally.
But something worse seems to be happening … For a moment I think I’ve imagined it, then I feel it again, the floppiness, the lack of control, he keeps thrusting but he’s slowing and I’m not stupid enough to rub it in with another yelp of Fuck me harder.
Then he exclaims in frustration and my heart sinks like a stone.
It’s gone. It’s over. His weight lifts off me and angrily he disappears into the bathroom. When he comes back and climbs under the covers, he won’t meet my eyes.
I say nothing. Josh is not a man you discuss that kind of masculinity fail with.
‘Do you want me to …?’
‘No!’ Whatever he’s offering, to help me come, I don’t want it.
More silence ensues while lines run through my head. There’s no shame in it. It happens to every man at some stage. Anyway, he came already. Even if normally he comes two or three times with me. None of them seems suitable.
‘Yeah, you know, I’m going to go,’ he says.
‘Okay.’
With short, angry movements, he’s dressed and gone within seconds. I wait ten minutes until I’m certain that he’s really gone, then I leave too.