A Minor Indiscretion (8 page)

Y
ou can tell how old I am. I like my trainers laced right up to the top so that I can walk properly and not shuffle around dragging my feet. I do not, and will never have, a bolt pierced through my belly button, my tongue, my bottom lip or either of my eyebrows. I do not possess any clothing from Kookai. On the rare occasions I venture into a pub, I like to sit down. I know who Craig David is. He's the one with the voice of an angel and the hair of a sheep. But I still can't understand a single word he's singing. I have no desire to watch
Big Brother,
let alone care whether Sada, Andrew, Caroline or Craig, or any other of the seemingly vacuous individuals who inhabit the house, get evicted. I do, however, watch
Cast-away 2000,
which in comparison could almost be considered the social experiment the BBC would have us believe it is. I think Liam Gallagher is a loudmouthed lout and am beginning to understand why women of a certain age see Alan Titchmarsh as a sex symbol. Even though he's a gardener, albeit a celebrity one, you'd never catch him with grubby old compost under his fingernails, would you? Would he ever say an extra-naughty four-letter word if he inadvertently bashed himself with a trowel? I think not.

I look at Christian and feel that he may not share similar views. (Particularly the Alan Titchmarsh theory.) Christian definitely looks like a potential
Big Brother
watcher. I have a brief, shud
dering vision of him sprawled on the sofa with a beer and a take-away on a Friday night in front of Davinia McCall yelling to have Nasty Nick ousted. Christian probably also thinks that Gail Porter is a babe, whereas I see her as someone who could do with a few good meals inside her. Some people would call it getting old and staid. Some people would call it maturing. Fine wine matures. But then again, so does cheese.

It is a glorious spring day with just a slight hint of chilliness adding a sharpness and clarity to the air. I have been persuaded against my better judgment to spend the day with Christian, after all. You might have guessed. And I wonder what he thinks of this. I cannot imagine that Kew is really his bag. Has he brought me here because he thinks it's what older people like to do? I don't know. If he starts to offer me tea and cake on the hour every hour, I'll be seriously worried about his motives. This is what we do on outings with my parents—ply them with calories and Twinings to keep them happy (i.e., quiet). Christian looks cheerful enough. We are walking along side by side, grinning inanely at each other. My brain cells seem to go all haywire when I'm with him. I'll swear they do. He makes me think one thing and then do completely the opposite.

There's a huge Ginkgo biloba tree at Kew, not far from the main entrance. It's one of the oldest trees here, or something like that, and the leaves look like a million bright green butterflies. If you touch it, the bark will give you a bolt of energy so strong that you can feel it all the way down to your socks. Honestly. I'd like to show Christian this, but today, I'm going to give it a wide berth. My energy is whizzing round my body, making everything feel tingly and sensitized already. I feel very weird. On the one hand, I'm relaxed and happy to be here—the sun is shining, the birds are singing, I've bunked a day off work—on the other hand, I've never felt so tense in all my life. I ought to have phoned Kath Brown, but I've never lied to her before and can't face it now. It's Friday and I've got two whole days to think of an excuse before I have to go to work again on Monday. I've turned my mobile off and stuffed it in the bottom of my handbag so she can't contact me, coward that I am.

We've wandered all over the gardens—through the angular, ultra-modern Princess of Wales Conservatory, through the Japanese bit with its reconstructed temple gate, and have made suit
ably impressed-type noises at the towering pagoda which dominates the skyline at the head of an avenue of soaring trees dwarfed by its splendor. I adore trees and flowers and nature in general. Christian seems to as well. Perhaps he sees things through more artistic eyes than the average twenty-three-year-old; people of that age aren't usually known for their appreciation of trees, are they? What did my life revolve around when I was the tender age of twenty-three? I seem to recall it was gearing up for potty training. My children's, not mine.

We are lying on the grass by the Temperate House and I feel as if I'm dressed all wrong. Despite my attempts at casual, I've come in a ballgown to a bring-a-bottle party. I should be wearing trainers, and instead I have on smart imitation snakeskin broguey things that were really trendy when I bought them yonks ago. They would have made my feet sweat like a pig in the office—had I have gone there—and yet they aren't comfortable enough for clonking round gardens in. My jeans are Calvin Klein and have been pressed so much they've formed a white crease down the front, which is very eighties. And, if I admit it, even my sweatshirt's a bit glittery. I feel overdone and tied up. My daughter throws anything on and looks fabulous. That's because she has firm, high breasts that do not even entertain drooping toward the floor and slender, unblemished legs that go on for miles. Christian is clearly of the same mold. He has no hips and a flat stomach and probably doesn't even know what the word “sit-up” means. His clothes hang on him like a catwalk model. He is lying with his arms above his head and his short khaki T-shirt has ridden up, exposing his stomach. He has a great belly button. Neat and round. I'm obsessed with navels after mine went all teardrop-shaped and horrid after my first pregnancy. I try not to stare at it and fail, but fortunately Christian has his eyes shut against the sun. A fine line of blond down disappears beneath his waistband, and then I catch myself wondering whether he has any hair on his chest and blush.

I sit up and hug my knees, turning away from him. It's impossible to buy clothes once you are over thirty-five. You fall into a big hole somewhere between Top Shop and Debenhams. I never want to look like mutton dressed as lamb and spurn crop-tops and Capri pants, which look good on no one over sixteen anyway. But I'm twenty years away from A-line skirts and flatties. My dress
sense is all at sea, and I buy safe middle-of-the-road clothing that will last from Marks & Spencer to anchor myself and, consequently, spend my life feeling beige. Jemma has a wonderful dress sense and combines Karen Millen with drapey bits and pieces from the 1930s that she borrows from her shop and would make me look like a bag lady.

“Do you watch
Big Brother,
Christian?”

He sits up and shuffles forward so that he is right behind me at my shoulder.
“Big Brother?”

“Mmmm.”

“Sometimes. Why?”

“I just wondered.” We've had tea and cake just the once, and I'm taking this as a good sign. In fact, the day has been brilliant. Christian is very attentive and good company. And if it wasn't for the fact that I'm married and do in the odd moment feel like his mother, then I'd probably be in seventh heaven.

We haven't touched. Not really. Just the occasional lingering of fingers on fabric. The hint of a hand in the small of my back. We are self-conscious in our needs. But it's there between us all the time. The desire to is palpable. I want him to touch me and am scared that he might. I want to touch him and daren't. I want to caress his cheek, his skin which looks soft and strong and has no wrinkles. Not one. I want to trace the outline of his pouting lips. I want to know what he feels like and dread what that knowledge will mean.

“I'll say it before you do.” Christian smiles sadly at me. “You should be going home.”

I look at my watch. “Oh, my good God,” I say. “I should. I have to collect Elliott.” He knows all about my children now, and their trials and tribulations. I tried not to go on and on about them and Christian tried to look interested. But it's clear that we're about a million miles apart in our respective lifestyles.

He stands up and holds out his hands. I take them and he pulls me to my feet. “Let's walk through the Temperate House,” he says. “It'll warm us up.”

As if I need it! Christian takes my hand and leads the way and this time he doesn't let go.

The Temperate House is a huge building, a light, airy framework of white filigree ironwork banding a spider's web of delicate glass panes. Inside it is dense, crowded, a jungle of rampant
greenery all crowding, living, thrusting and vying for space. The overwhelming smell in the Temperate House is damp, musky and earthy. It's too heavy to inhale, its weight envelops you and seeps into you, hot teasing fingers of humid air easing inside your clothes. D. H. Lawrence would call it “fecund,” if I remember any of my A-level coursework correctly. How can foliage feel so sexual? Perhaps it's all that sap rising. Perhaps it's just me. Perhaps it's that Alan Titchmarsh thing again.

“There's a platform at the top,” Christian informs me. “We can walk all the way round.” And he leads me up a narrow winding wrought-iron staircase until we are high above the plants, in among the tops of the trees on a vertiginous ledge. If you look down, you can see patterns and whorls in the fronds of the ferns and you can reach out and touch the bark of trees that really would be more at home in a rain forest. There is no one else here as intrepid as us and, as a consequence, we are totally alone suspended high above the greenery.

We are leaning over the rail, and Christian has his arm around my shoulders, pointing out flowers and fruits lurking between the leaves.

“Christian.” My voice sounds heavy even to my ears. “I've really enjoyed today.”

“That doesn't sound like, ‘I've really enjoyed today and let's do it again as soon as possible, Christian.'”

I turn toward him and his eyes lock on to mine, searching.

“You do want to do it again?” He strokes my wild hair, which is spiraling madly in the humid air, brushing my cheek as he does so.

“I don't know.”

“‘I don't know, but yes I want to'?” He is so lovely and young and hunky and I still don't know what he sees in me.

I shake my head. “It makes life terribly complicated.” And at this moment I wish I were a different person, in a different life, who could just say yes without thinking.

Christian leans forward and kisses me on the lips, and it is so light and soft and forbidden, I could faint with the rush of emotion that floods through me.

He holds me and I try not to hold him back, but I can feel the heat of his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt and my hands are trembling.

“Is this so wrong?” Christian asks as he breaks away from me.

“Yes,” I say. And it is. I know that. We both do.

We wind our way down the rickety staircase in silence, still holding hands, and wander out of the Temperate House, slowly following the trickle of tourists who are also heading for home. When we reach the main gate, we stand and look at each other in a forlorn and pathetic way; our hands dangle between us limply, barely touching. I am terrified that Christian will kiss me again, here in the street for everyone to see. But he doesn't.

“Can I at least ring you?” His smile has gone for the first time today and he is fiddling with my fingers.

“No.” I sound as if I mean it.

He makes a sad little tutting sound that sort of sums up everything we need to say. “Oh, Ali.” He brushes my hair away from my shoulders and touches his hot, moist lips to my cheek. I squeeze his hand and then let it go.

“Goodbye,” he says, and then turns and walks away.

I stand and watch him, pressing my lips together, savoring the sweet young taste of him, and wonder how I will manage without it for the rest of my life.

E
lliott sucked his thumb, curled up on Ed's knee. He still looked very unhappy, but at least the tears had stopped, and all that remained were two gray tracks over his cheeks where they had dried. His eyes were rolling under the onslaught of emotionally drained sleep.

“Not long now, sweetheart.” Nicola smiled at him, crinkling her eyes as she did.

Nicola was deeply optimistic. It would be a long time. Ed had never been more sure of anything in his life. You only had to look at the people ahead of them in various states of dismemberment who had the resigned air of people for whom time was passing very slowly. Michelangelo could probably have given the Sistine Chapel another lick of paint in the time it took to get any action in hospital casualty departments these days. Elliott was way down the pecking order, as he wasn't in any imminent danger of dropping dead, not that this seemed to worry the harried staff overly, and they'd been sitting here for hours already.

“It hurts,” Elliott complained. His arm was swollen to twice its normal size and was an alarming shade of scarlet.

“I know. Ssh, ssh.” Ed cuddled Elliott to him and kissed the top of his head. “I'm sorry about this, Nicola.”

“That's okay. He took quite a tumble. I thought it best to bring
him down here and let them X-ray it. I can't tell whether it's broken or not.”

They'd never been required to partake of the National Health Service, or lack of it, for Thomas or Tanya. Both had been remarkably accident-free zones. They even still had their appendix and tonsils. Elliott had broken the mold and was making up for it with all the fervor of a zealot. In his few short years he had fallen over, into or through every conceivable man-made or naturally occurring obstacle that he could find.

“It could just be badly sprained,” Ed said, aware that Elliott, despite his desire to be the most accident-prone person in the household, had not yet broken anything. Other than the things he fell over, into or through. “Thanks for bringing him down.”

“That's okay. Really.”

Nicola was the sort of person you would want running your son's nursery school, Ed decided. She was feminine and floaty in a wholesome way. Everything about her was gentle: Her eyes were soft gray and kind; she was slim, petite and delicate; her lips were pale seashell pink and she licked a tiny tip of her pink kitten tongue over them frequently. Her hair was white-blond with crinkly curls that might or might not have been natural and it hung below her shoulders in fine wisps. She had a cut-glass accent over-laid with sultry tones and a slightly breathy way of speaking as if she were about to gasp with pleasure. And you could never, ever imagine her lifting heavy weights or swearing or doing anything quite as sweaty as having sex. But then, Ed thought, you never could tell—she was probably the type who would wear Agent Provocateur frillies under her long floral dresses. All things considered and despite being a wonder with the children, Nicola Jones was definitely wasted on a bunch of four-year-olds. Elliott adored her, and Ed thought that even at his age he was showing rather good taste.

“I'm fine waiting here,” Ed said, breaking his fantasizing. “Do you need to be getting back?”

“No.” Nicola shook her mass of curls. “Barbara can lock up at the school. I'll wait with you.” She smiled a sweet little smile, showing a row of pearly teeth. “If that's okay with you, Mr. Kingston?”

“Ed, please.”

Nicola looked bashful. “Ed.” She swept her hair away from her
face. Not in an irritated way, like Ali did, but in a slow and sensual movement which exposed her long, slender neck. “Did you manage to get hold of your wife?”

“No,” Ed said brusquely. He glanced at the red No Mobile Phones sign on the wall and eschewed the thought of going outside to try Alicia again and risk the ensuing wailing from a dislodged Elliott. “I can't imagine where she's got to.” Ed mentally acknowledged that Alicia would normally deal with whatever minor crises arose and that this was, in fact, the first time he'd been left, literally, holding the baby.

“I'm sure there's a simple explanation,” Nicola reassured him. “Mrs. Kingston is normally so reliable.”

“Yes,” Ed said vaguely. Which was why her disappearance was even more worrying.

They both looked down at Elliott, who had fallen into an exhausted sleep, a frown creasing his brow.

“Elliott is a lovely child,” Nicola said.

Ed ruffled his son's curls gently. “He has his moments.”

“He's a pleasure to teach. I have quite a soft spot for him.”

“Do you have children of your own?” Ed asked.

“No.” Nicola swished her hair about, and there was the suggestion of a smile at her lips when she looked at him again. “Not yet. Mr. Right seems to be proving rather elusive.”

“Ah,” Ed said sympathetically.

“All the nice men seem to be married,” she continued, and a faint pink blush stained her cheeks. “It's not very fashionable to adore children these days, is it?”

“Probably not,” Ed agreed. “Perhaps you shouldn't mention it on a first date.”

Nicola laughed and it was as soft and gentle as the rest of her. “You're very lucky.”

A lot of people had been pointing that out to him recently and, for some reason, it was starting to rankle.

“Having children must be so rewarding.”

“Financially draining is the predominant emotion,” Ed said with a smile. “But yes, it is on occasions, rewarding.”

He wondered whether he was one of those people who, given the chance to do it over again, would choose not to go down the fatherhood route. But then it was usually the woman who made all the choices in that area, and the men just went along. He'd
never known any man to be governed by the same urges to procreate as women had. In their case all three children had been “accidents,” showing a carelessness in the contraceptive department that bordered on recklessness. Perhaps that's where Elliott inherited his accident-prone nature from. Maybe it was just coming out in his genes in a different way. Ed wouldn't be without any of them now. Of course not. Not even when Tanya was being the most obnoxious teenager on the planet. But sometimes he couldn't help thinking, as much as he loved Ali, that he would be better off like Neil. Free, unfettered. Chasing bridesmaids to his heart's content. But then Neil was looking to find a gorgeous, sexy bombshell who was ready to settle down and have babies. Why is it that we always want the exact opposite of what we've got?

Ed looked across at Nicola, who was gazing at Elliott in an adoring and concerned sort of way and stroking his chubby little leg as he slept. She was a soft, squishy petal in a world full of nasty, catchy thorns. Perhaps he should introduce Miss Nicola Jones to his brother. Ed pressed his lips together thoughtfully and rubbed absently at his chin. He'd had worse ideas.