‘Never mention this to anyone and never call this office again.’
‘I won’t. I promise. Thank you so much … sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
She laughs. ‘There’s a reason for that. Goodbye, Sue.’
The disconnect tone buzzes in my ear for a good thirty seconds before I place the phone back in its cradle. If she’s right and Alex Henri is in the club tonight how am I going to get to speak to him if he’s in a cordoned-off VIP area? A beautiful fifteen-year-old might be able to bat her eyelashes past security but what about me? What’s a dumpy forty-three-year-old who hasn’t been to a club in over twenty years supposed to do? And, more pressing than that, if I can’t pop out of the house in the afternoon to buy ‘magazines’ without Brian checking up on me, how on earth am I going to convince him that it’s a good idea for me to go out until the early hours of the morning in London?
Wednesday 27th June 1991
James and I are living together. Well, James, his mother and I. I moved in just over a week ago. Jess from work cut my hours again (I’m only doing fifteen a week now) and I couldn’t afford the rent on my bedsit any more. I told James I was going to try and get my TEFL job back to make up the shortfall but he insisted I move in with him instead.
‘Think of it as a new start,’ he said. ‘Screw Maggie and her tin pot company. You deserve to be paid for what you do. The spare room’s big enough for your sewing machine table so get set up, get making some sample pieces so you can apply for a proper wardrobe job or set up your own business and I’ll pay the rent and get the food in, don’t worry about that.’
It was almost too perfect a solution, the only fly in the ointment being his mum. She didn’t come down from her room the whole of the first evening I was there and the next morning, when I came down to breakfast with James at 7.30 a.m. there was a list of ‘jobs’ for me to do on the kitchen table. They included grocery shopping, hoovering, toilet scrubbing and weeding and were written in a handwriting I didn’t recognise.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ James said when he saw my raised eyebrows. ‘Her carer’s gone on holiday for a week and you know what she’s like with her arthritis and agoraphobia.’
Arthritis? She’d seemed sprightly enough when she’d stormed out of the room when James and I arrived late for that, now infamous, lunch.
‘Besides,’ he added. ‘You’ve got a lot of time on your hands now your hours have been cut, haven’t you?’
I wanted to remind him that he’d suggested I set up a sewing business in our bedroom but bit my tongue. Helping out was the least I could do considering the fight he’d undoubtedly had to put up to persuade his mother to let me move in and besides, it was only for a week. I could start setting up my business when the carer got back.
By the time James got home from work nine hours later my hands were raw and my forearms were a mess of nettle stings but I’d ticked off every single item on the list and had a pot roast happily bubbling away in the oven. He looked delighted and said he knew that his mother and I would get on like a dream if we just gave each other a chance. The truth was I hadn’t seen her all day. I’d heard the landing floor creak at about 9 a.m. as she made her way to the bathroom but, other than that, I hadn’t caught a glimpse of her. By lunchtime I was worried that she might be ill and I knocked on her door to ask if she was okay and whether she’d like some homemade tomato soup and a cheese sandwich. She replied that she was ‘in perfect health, thank you’ and told me to leave the food on a tray outside the door. I did as I was told then went back down the stairs and waited silently in the hall. Five minutes later the bedroom door opened, a pair of slippered feet appeared and the tray was dragged into her room.
James couldn’t keep his hands off me and, as soon as we’d finished dinner (which his mother had in her room again) he dragged me into the bedroom and threw me onto the bed. I squealed as he pulled off my clothes and buried his face in my breasts but was promptly silenced when he slapped a hand over my mouth and held it there.
‘Sssh,’ he whispered. ‘We don’t want Mother to hear us.’
I was just about to reply when he yanked off my knickers and entered me, thrusting so hard I hit my head on the headboard. I gasped in shock and pleasure.
James took his hand off my mouth. ‘Or do we?’ And slammed into me again.
Afterwards, as we lay in each other’s arms, sweat sticking us together, he stroked my hair back from my face.
‘You’ve got no idea how much I missed you, how much I missed having sex with you, when we were apart.’
‘Me too.’ I ran a hand over his broad chest and raked my fingers through the hair.
‘It was torture,’ he kissed the top of my head. ‘Lying in bed alone imagining you naked in your bed and not being able to touch you.’
‘I know.’
‘Did you sleep with anyone else while we were apart?’
I looked him in the eye. To look anywhere else would be dangerous. ‘No.’
‘Really? You didn’t mess around with someone because you were lonely?’
‘No,’ I blocked the image of Steve’s face on my pillow out of my head, ‘of course not.’
‘Kiss someone when you were drunk?’
‘No.’
‘It’s okay,’ he smiled tightly, ‘you can tell me if you did, I won’t be angry. I fucked a couple of people.’
‘What?’ My chest spasmed with pain. I’d never considered that he might sleep with someone else. Not once.
‘I fucked a couple of women.’ He shrugged. ‘No big deal. We weren’t together. Did you?’
Did he mean it? Did he really not care? I looked into his eyes, at the pinprick pupils and the grey iris, flecked with blue. I’d never been able to read him. His eyes were impenetrable.
‘No,’ I lied. ‘I didn’t do anything, not even a kiss. I missed you too much to even think about touching another man.’