Any Way You Want Me (21 page)

‘Good day? See anyone interesting?’ he asked.

I stared hard at Molly’s hair. Making sure her Mohican was bang in the centre of her head was suddenly crucial. ‘It was OK. Met up with a couple of the mums. You?’

‘Same old, same old.’ He stood up and rolled down his shirt sleeves. ‘Now you’re back, could you finish off in here? I’ve got a few emails to send.’

Before I could reply, he was gone. ‘Wait, I . . .’ I began, but I could already hear his footsteps tramping down the stairs.

‘Mummy, you be flannel monster again,’ Molly said insistently, leaning over me to try to pull it off Nathan.

‘Careful, love – gently!’ I said, as Nathan lost his balance and almost fell. Now that I could drop my air of forced gaiety, I felt exhausted. I didn’t have the energy to be the entertaining flannel monster any more. It was all I could do to be corrupt Sadie, she who had gone so terribly astray.

It wasn’t until the kids were in bed that he finally confronted me. Large whisky in one hand, eyes unwavering, he sat forward on the edge of the sofa, with his elbows on his knees.

‘Who’s Jack?’ he said.

‘
What?
’ I replied.

‘I said, “Who’s Jack?”’ he repeated grimly. ‘I found this in our bedroom. Who is he?’

He was holding Jack’s business card – where the hell had he found that? – and I tried to take it off him but he snatched it away.

‘Jack,’ I began haltingly, ‘is some guy I met in the pub. When I went out with Becca a few weeks ago.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing! He chatted me up, gave me that card, then
you
phoned, my boobs started leaking everywhere, and I came home. That’s it. End of story.’

‘Sadie, just tell me. If something’s happening, just tell me. Seriously.’

Thank God he doesn’t know the truth, I thought, as adrenaline pumped around me. It was like a premonition of another conversation – an infinitely worse conversation – we could be having if he ever found out about Mark.

I sat down next to him. ‘Nothing is happening with Jack,’ I said evenly. ‘I promise. I
swear
! He was just some wideboy, that’s all. You can chuck that away. I didn’t even know I still had it.’

‘Why did you take his card, then, if he’s just some wideboy? Have you phoned him?’ His eyes were glittering. He looked as if he wanted a fight – with me, or preferably with Jack for daring to speak to me and press his number on me in the first place. For all his left-wing, right-on, new-man behaviour, there still lurked a slice of caveman in Alex’s personality.
You looking at my bird? I’ll kill yeh!

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Politeness, I suppose.’ His face hadn’t changed. ‘Phone him if you want. Ask him yourself if you don’t believe me.’

Don’t phone him. Don’t ask him. Please believe me. After Jack had seen me in the park the other day, the last thing I wanted was for Alex to start ringing him up, harassing him for looking at ‘his bird’.

There was a silence. ‘Anyway,’ I said, trying to sound hurt. ‘If you don’t want to marry me, what am I supposed to think?’

His eyes swivelled round. He looked incredulous. ‘Run that by me again,’ he said coldly. ‘You think that because I don’t want to get married – not just to you, to anyone – it means that . . . what? That our relationship doesn’t mean anything to me?’

Damn. That had not been the best thing to say. ‘No, I didn’t mean—’

‘So the fact that we’ve got two kids and a house, and we’ve been together donkey’s years doesn’t count for anything, is that what you’re saying?’ He was on a roll now. Oh, Christ. I could write off the rest of the evening, then. It would be lecture, lecture, lecture until dawn, if he had his way. ‘And you take that as meaning you can go off and chat up the likes of
Jack
with your single mates, yeah?’

‘No! I—’

‘Because that is bollocks, Sadie. That’s a piss-poor excuse, and you know it.’

‘All right, I . . .’

‘Why do you have to keep going on and on about getting married anyway? I don’t want to. I just don’t want to. It’s not you or us or anything, I just think it’s all a load of cobblers. And we can’t afford it anyway. Not unless you want a second mortgage or—’

‘All
right
!’ I shouted. ‘You’ve made your point! I am sorry I spoke to a strange man when I went out. I am sorry I mentioned the dreaded, forbidden M-word that is obviously so traumatic for you to hear. I’m sorry I . . .’ I’d run out of things to be sorry about. Well, things he knew about anyway. No, wait, I’d just thought of another one. ‘I’m sorry you can’t
trust
me to go out with my friend – well, to try and go out with her anyway – only to be called back because you can’t cope with two children for one evening, even though I have to do it every single bloody day, and—’

‘All right, all right. Stop shouting, will you?’

‘I’m going to bed,’ I said, and walked out before he could see the tears gathering in my eyes.

It’s hard to sleep next to somebody you’ve just had an argument with, so I lay under the duvet, trying to nod off as fast as possible before Alex came up to bed. Instead, though, my mind kept running through our argument in an annoying, spot-picking kind of way. Even when I was trying to be scrupulously fair about what had been said, I found it impossible to decide who should be madder with whom. Both of us were in the wrong somewhere or other in the argument, but both of us, equally, could claim the moral high ground for different reasons. Moreover, I was nursing my Mark secret and feeling guilty enough to start with, so I didn’t feel I could blame Alex for everything. Although, after a bit of effort, I eventually managed to.

I was still awake when he came to bed a few hours later.

‘Are you awake?’ he whispered.

I shut my eyes hurriedly and tried to breathe as slowly and evenly as possible.

‘Oh, right, you are. Not farting and snoring like you usually do.’

I rolled over indignantly. ‘Fuck off. I don’t fart and snore. I think you’ll find that’s you.’

He climbed into bed and put an arm across me. He was drunk, I could tell by the clumsiness of his arm. That and his breath, which smelled of pure Laphroaig.

‘Sadie, Sadie, Sadie,’ he slurred.

I was hoping he’d fall into an alcoholic comatose sleep. That often happened. Although when it didn’t happen . . .

‘I don’t suppose you fancy giving me a hand-job, do you?’ he asked, fumbling around with the old T-shirt I was sleeping in.

‘No, I bloody don’t. You stink,’ I told him. ‘And get off me.’

‘Come on, Sade. It’s been hours. It’s been days! Come on. Let me show you where I am. Let me
introduce
you to an old friend.’

He took my hand and tried to drag it down to his boxers, but I snatched it away. ‘Sod
off
,’ I said. ‘First you wake me up, crashing around like a tanked-up wart hog, then you start insulting me, then you start on the sexual harassment front . . .’

His hand had found a way underneath my T-shirt. ‘Oh, Alex,’ I moaned. ‘I’m too tired.’

‘You just go back to sleep then,’ he slurred boozily. ‘Pretend it’s a dream. I won’t be long.’

I laughed, despite myself. ‘You are so romantic, it’s untrue,’ I said sarcastically.

‘I know. The Yorkshire Casanova,’ he said, rolling on top of me and nearly toppling off the other side of the bed.

‘God, careful, you moron!’ I cried, dragging him back.

His hand had found my breast now. ‘Good evening,’ he said reverently. ‘Nice to be back here, at Sadie’s left breast. My particular favourite.’

‘Since when?’ Oh, no. Now I was getting drawn into his booze-soaked bullshit. Even worse, I was starting to feel turned on by the breast-stroking thing he was doing.

‘Or is it the right?’ He’d managed to roll on top of me now and I could feel his stiffy against my leg.

He was kissing my neck. Jesus, he stank. He absolutely reeked. ‘You are such a pig,’ I grumbled, not trying to stop him any more. Sod it, a guilt shag would ease my conscience a tad, I reckoned. ‘You are such an animal. Such a bloody oaf.’

‘I love it when you talk dirty to me. Keep going.’

He was in me, his breath panting out heavily.

‘You’re a dirty, stinking, caveman sex maniac,’ I told him, warming to my theme. ‘A—’

‘UHHHHHHHH!’

He collapsed on top of me. After a moment or two of silence, I tentatively pushed at him, only to hear a grumbling snore start up in his nose. Oh, great. And now, having ravished my love, I will . . . fall asleep on her. Before even rolling off!

I shoved him away from me. He weighed a bloody ton.

‘We’ve got to get some condoms,’ I said to the darkness. ‘
Must
get some condoms tomorrow.’

The Yorkshire Casanova snored throatily in reply, a satisfied smile across his face. So that was that.

Twelve

Dear Ms Morrison,

Thank you for your letter regarding our Producer vacancy. I’m delighted to invite you for an interview on 29th March at our Soho office, and would be grateful if you could contact me to arrange a convenient time . . .

It was the morning after the night before and I practically choked on my mouthful of toast as I read my letter from Firestarter.

Nathan, smeared in Weetabix, tried to grab it from my fingers. ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ I told him, snatching it away quickly. ‘Mummy’s going to frame this and put it on the wall. Mummy is so desirable and talented that she—’

‘What’s that?’ Alex said, walking into the kitchen. He jammed two slices of bread down the toaster and rubbed his eyes. ‘Have you seen my blue shirt anywhere?’

I stared at the letter again as Molly swarmed up my legs. Yes, I’d read it correctly. No, I hadn’t been delusional.

Shit. SHIT!! They’d believed it. Ha! They’d really believed it, all those outrageous bullshit lies I’d so enjoyed concocting! And now they wanted to interview me!

I laughed out loud in delight. ‘Oh, nothing.’ I stuffed it into my dressing-gown pocket before he caught sight of the red embossed flame logo. ‘Molly, be careful, love. Blue shirt is probably in the clean washing pile, Alex, if you can remember where that is. Nurofen in the usual place if you just so happen to need a handful.’

He stared at me, his eyes bloodshot and gritty-looking. ‘A handful? What, you’re encouraging me to top myself now? Are you going to book me in this afternoon for a stomach pump as well?’

I raised my eyebrows in the no-hangover-here smug kind of way that he hated. ‘Bit tetchy this morning, are we, darling?’ I cooed. ‘Is the Yorkshire Casanova a teensy-weensy bit tired after all his molestation activities last night?’

His expression was that of a man who feared he might have overstepped the mark but wasn’t exactly sure how. ‘Sadie, I’m not in the mood,’ he muttered, pouring himself a coffee.

‘Yeah, I think that’s what I told you last night too, only for you to completely ignore me,’ I added.

Funnily enough, he completely ignored that, too. Alex tended to descend into the depths of primitive beast whenever he was soaked in a hangover. His speech regressed to grunts, his actions became clumsy and ham-fisted. He practically swung his arms in front of him when he walked.

The letter crackled in my pocket as I stood up to clean Nathan’s goo-splurged face, hair, hands and vest. So the big question of the morning was, what the hell was I going to do about this interview?

Well, I phoned up a few hours later, and arranged a convenient time for it, of course. In for a penny, in for a pound, as my nan would have said. Keep your options open, as my school careers officer would have advised. Keep on lying until they catch you with your pants down, as . . . Who had said that? Oh yeah, it was me, wasn’t it?

March 29
^th
, 2.30, Michelle McKean. I wrote it in my diary triumphantly. I would persuade Alex to skive off work – it never took that much persuading, let’s face it – and he could look after the kids, while I . . . Well. While I did whatever.

I stared into space. Or, of course, slightly more realistically, I could always bail out of the whole thing. I mean, obviously, I
would
bail out of the whole thing. There would be absolutely no point in going for an interview for a job I couldn’t possibly do, on the basis of a CV full of lies, would there?

I doodled a string of hearts along the edge of my diary page.
Michelle McKean, 2.30
. It did look nice there on my blank week. It looked important, businesslike. No, I wasn’t ready to cross her out just yet. I would phone up and break the news to her nearer the time. Yes, that was what I would do.

Time seemed to have become crystallized for me into Mark time and non-Mark time. Somehow I’d become an addict. Thursday was the worst day. It was painful to think about how long it would be before I could see him again. I even made a detour around to his office on the way back from a friend’s house in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. The kids were conveniently napping in the double buggy so it would have been safe to say hello, at least, and I was light-headed as I pushed them down the alley to his building. I rang the buzzer and felt quite desolate when nobody answered.

And then we were into the weekend, which from first glance at Friday teatime seemed to be stretching out boringly for ever. Alex did his usual working-late-oh-accidentally-fell-into-a-pub-on-the-way-home routine on Friday night, which was intensely irritating until the phone went again at nine o’clock, and then, all I could feel was sheer joy, plus relief that Alex
wasn’t
there.

A voice, low and teasing, said, ‘Hello, sexy.’

There was a warm rush inside me, and I grinned broadly. ‘Is that that architect again? The one with the gorgeous arse?’

His chuckle sounded intimate against my ear. ‘I think I might put that on my business card, you know. See if it gets me more work.’

I stretched full out on the sofa. My whole body was tingling blissfully at the unexpected sound of his voice. ‘Oh, it would. If I was going through the Yellow Pages, I’d definitely pick out an architect if he was claiming to have a nice bottom. Sod your qualifications. How do you look bent over a plan chest? That’s what it comes down to.’