‘So maybe don’t just hug or kiss me when we’re in bed?’ she might suggest, an edge creeping into her voice when you bring it up again while she’s clearing up after tea and you’re about to go and run the kids’ bath.
Again, baffling. ‘But that’s the only time we have together. You’re either at work, or we’re with the kids, or one of us is at the gym.’ Then one of your children will come in and announce they need a wee before your wife has the chance to answer.
So, when you are accidentally touched by this girl in the pub who thinks you’re really funny and because pretty much any kind of physical contact turns you on, as she tells you a story, you will lean in a little closer to hear properly. It’s much louder in the pub now, more raucous. She touches you again, this time her hand stays resting on your arm. Blood begins to pump. You can feel her warm breath on your skin and smell her perfume. You find yourself wondering what it would be like to kiss her. She says she’s going outside for a smoke, and you’re pissed enough now to realise you really fancy a fag, even though you gave up years ago.
Once you’re standing in the warm, summer night air and dragging on the cigarette, London at night suddenly feels like a place that belongs to Bond – all glamour and shimmering possibility, rather than the late trains and limp lunchtime sandwiches of your usual daytime routine. She’s chatting away as someone pushes past her on the street and accidentally knocks her into you. You reach out to catch her, shout abuse at the stranger already out of earshot, look down at her to ask if she’s all right as she looks up at you wide-eyed like you actually are Bond, then all of a sudden you’re kissing, you’re in a taxi, you’re pushing in through the front door of her flat, you’re fumbling with clothes, gasping on the bed… and then it’s over and a possibility no more – just a sickening reality. You’ve fucked everything up forever for one throwaway moment of physical release.
You think about your wife and kids and you shrivel away and die inside. Fully dressed and in the cab on the way home, you numbly stare at the text your wife sent you hours ago saying
Hope you have fun! Don’t drink too much! xxx
and you realise you’ve just traded eight years of fidelity to become a man of the moment – the person you promised you would never be – a serial cheater.
But because you haven’t fucked up quite enough, the following morning, you actually tell your wife what you did the night before, because you’re a gutless shit who hasn’t got the balls to live with the guilt of what he’s done and keep his mouth shut. You want your wife to make even this OK. So you tell her, and you watch her heart break in front of you and no matter how many times you say you’re sorry, you keep coming into a room to find her in tears. She is by turns both devastated – and furious. She goes out and gets drunk herself. In Ibiza, miles away from the hurt you’ve caused her – looking for some reassurance and revenge all of her own.
Once the initial shock of Alex’s confession – and my confusion when she told me who he was – had worn off, I became very realistic about the impact of my behaviour on her actions. I deserved what she did in Ibiza – it was my own fault. But she does not deserve people telling lies about her. Especially not people who have already taken advantage of her and tried to manipulate her to their own end.
Alex stood up suddenly, interrupting my ever-deepening, drilling spiral of loathing for the Day family, wrapped her arms around herself and said: ‘I think I’m going to go and have a lie down, and you’ve got to get on with some work anyway, so…’ She glanced at the kitchen clock reading 9.05 a.m.
‘Do you want me to bring you a cup of tea?’
She hesitated. ‘I’ll make one before I go up. Do you want one too?’
‘Yes, please.’ I pulled my laptop round to face me as she reached for the kettle and began to fill it.
I stared at the photo of Jonathan Day, also accompanying the news item, fixating on the now-familiar eyes staring back at mine; the foppish brown hair, faintly amused smile and clean-shaven chin. They’d lifted the shot from his Instagram feed; it was one I’d already seen. I had become obsessed with looking at the boy that had offered the open arms for my wife to fall into, laced with a very real desire to smash his fucking face in. It was a complicated mix of emotions.
I was starting to feel like I almost knew him myself, I’d now read so many social media posts of his and looked at so many photos. It wasn’t that I was trying to see what had attracted Alex to him, that was blindingly obvious: youth, muscles, classic good looks – all qualities I was well aware I didn’t possess any more. I was searching for answers behind that smug little smile: why had he told such blatant lies? What was in it for him? ‘Do you think he’s fallen in love with you?’ I’d asked my wife.
She’d looked confused. ‘I can’t see that he can have, to be doing this to me?’
‘You say that, but it’s very successfully keeping him linked to you, isn’t it? He’s still part of your life – connected to you – albeit in a very messed up way.’
She shook her head. ‘He started all of this because he thought I was going to tell everyone he’d tried to blackmail me into having sex with him.’
‘Exactly. You’d have to be desperate to sleep with someone to do that. He’s in love with you. Or whatever his version of that is.’
‘No. He attacked to defend. He got in there first with his own far more shocking story, but it snowballed. Now, he – or just as likely his horrible parents – has spotted an even bigger opportunity: fame.’
That startled me. I hadn’t considered that. Jonny boy made for an arresting photo, that’s for sure, and the more papers that picked up the story, the bigger the accompanying pictures of him became. I obviously wasn’t the only one who couldn’t stop staring at him, but as I noticed his social media numbers beginning to soar, I realised Alex was absolutely right. Whatever his reason for starting this, Jonathan Day had now found a platform, something that was getting him noticed and making him stand out among a lot of other good-looking eighteen-year-old boys searching for a space in a crowded market. Now he’d created his fifteen minutes, he wasn’t going to waste it. It became clear to me that the whole thing had become a massive publicity stunt – with him as the star and Alex collateral damage. In my much darker moments I felt a fool for having wondered if they had been sleeping together for three months and if that explained why Alex had stopped being interested in having sex with me? He had made even me momentarily wonder if she’d done it, when I KNEW Alex wasn’t that person. Bottom line: her version of events made sense and was plausible. His didn’t, and wasn’t.
But everyone seemed to be too busy looking at him to notice.
* * *
On Monday, 2 October, I came back from taking Maisie and Tilly to school – Alex had not left the house since the first news item about her appeared – to find her speechlessly sat watching TV. Jonathan Day was beaming out of the screen in front of me, sat on a cosy sofa holding the hand of a simpering blonde, being interviewed by some standin male presenter I didn’t recognise.
‘What the hell is this?’ I exclaimed in shock to see Day animated and talking where I was used to a static picture.
‘Shhhh,’ Alex instructed, and I obediently fell silent, reaching for the TV remote to turn it up.
‘More and more people have contacted me telling me similar stories to my own,’ he was saying. His voice was accent-less and inoffensive; middle-class quinoa bland. ‘And that’s why I realised it was important to do the book.’
‘He’s writing a book?’ I said out loud, in disbelief. ‘About what?’