If You're Not the One (3 page)

‘If Karen's up for it I will,' she said, leaving Aidan behind to go and get her friend who was inside on the dance floor.

Once she knew she was out of his line of vision, Jennifer stopped trying to walk sexily and started practically galloping towards her friend, gesturing to Karen to meet her halfway. ‘Aidan's got some e's,' she shouted into her friend's ear over the deafeningly loud music. ‘Shall we have one?'

‘Oh my god, so not only have you pulled the hottest person on the island, he's got pills as well?' she shouted back,
out of breath from dancing, eyes shining. ‘You are such a bitch. Why didn't you say earlier? Make sure he gives one to Mark too.'

Jennifer nodded and turned on her heel to find Aidan, hoping desperately he wouldn't have disappeared or met someone more interesting during the last forty seconds.

As she made her way back, she decided that with regard to the pill, she should probably just go with the flow. Her dad had always told her that in life it was better to regret something you'd done than something you hadn't which sounded like good advice to her, even if he probably hadn't had class A drugs in mind when he'd said it…

One hour later and Jennifer was standing in the middle of the club, with her hands in the air, feeling happier than she ever had in her entire life. ‘Rhythm is a Dancer' by Snap was playing, a tune which they'd heard on average at least three times a day recently but at this precise moment it sounded more amazing than it ever had before.

Jennifer scraped her hands through her hair and exhaled noisily, letting the rushes she was experiencing travel up her body. Right now there was not one place on earth she'd rather be.

Suddenly she felt Aidan's hands on her shoulders, massaging her, kneading her. His touch was so firm and felt so
good that she staggered a little bit, almost losing her balance. She turned round.

‘All right,' he grinned, chewing gum, his eyes wide and pupils really black.

‘Yeah,' was all Jennifer could manage to utter, but she grinned back at him and it didn't seem to matter in the slightest that she'd lost the power of speech. She literally couldn't care less. All that did matter was that she was with her best friends, and with Aidan, who happened to be the most beautiful man she'd ever seen in her life, listening to music that was literally transporting her to another dimension. She looked over at Karen who was dancing at a hundred miles per hour as if someone had told her all human life depended on it, Mark watching adoringly from the side, a daft grin on his face. Meanwhile, Esther and Lucy had kicked their shoes off and were having a chat on the cushions, stopping now and again only to give each other a big hug. God she loved them all.

‘Good isn't it?' said Aidan.

But Jennifer was too fucked now to reply. Her jaw was trembling a bit and she could feel her eyes rolling slightly in the back of her head but she wasn't remotely bothered. Quite the opposite in fact. Instead she was relishing every minute of the warm, soupy sensations that had taken over her limbs and merely wanted to enjoy them flooding over her.

‘Hey you, you OK? Come and sit down,' instructed Aidan.

Stumbling slightly but happy to do as she was told, Jennifer let herself be led to the cushions where her mates were sitting.

‘Jen,' they said delightedly as if they hadn't seen her for a week, eyes huge and shining. ‘Come here, babe. Love you.'

‘Love you too,' she said softly before lying down on the cushions. She was overcome by a desire to writhe around on them but something told her it was probably best not to.

Maybe she'd run that thought past the girls.

‘Don't you feel like rolling around on the cushions?'

‘What?' said Esther, whose jaw was quivering slightly.

‘I said,' repeated Jennifer, suddenly desperate for some water, ‘don't you feel like rolling around on the cushions?'

Lucy nodded. ‘I do, I feel like stuffing them up my top too and pretending I'm up the duff.'

This struck Jennifer as not only funny but wise.

‘And I feel like sticking one down my pants so I've got a massive butt,' added Esther.

‘And I feel like…' Jennifer tried to join in but was defeated once again by ever increasing sensations that were flooding her system. After a long pause, she uttered ‘sticking one up my arse'. Only by then, the thread had been rather lost so it came out as a totally random statement. However, rather than feel embarrassed, she was amused by how ludicrous it all was. Besides, what anybody thought just didn't seem to be a problem.

‘Stick what up your arse?' enquired Aidan, looking confused.

‘Nothing,' muttered Jennifer, the notion of trying to explain her thought process far too daunting at this stage.

‘You girls are funny,' said Aidan, head bouncing in time to the beat, and as they bathed in his compliment, it was like they'd known him for years.

‘Where did you all meet?'

‘School,' said Esther looking really out of it and clearly loving the next tune that had just come on: ‘Everybody's Free' by Rozalla.

Karen came whooping over. ‘Come on you lot. Fucking tune! Come and dance Jen, on your feet now.'

‘Too wasted,' She managed.

‘But happy?' checked Aidan.

‘Oh yeah,' she said, flopping back onto the cushions.

Everybody's free to feel good
.

She waved her hands around, playing air piano.

‘Hey, you girls are great,' said Aidan, continuing on the same theme, chewing gum frenetically.

‘We sure are,' concurred Lucy, trying to pull her friends in for a hug, but Jennifer was too wasted. She just wanted to sit in peace, in her own space, without being manhandled.

‘Love you girls.'

‘Love you too,' agreed Jennifer, hardly able to open her eyes, she was rushing so intensely.

‘Even Bonehead's all right,' said Esther, looking over to where he was busy stacking boxes.

‘I may have let Bonehead have a cheeky half, whereas this lunatic told me she definitely wasn't coming up so she's had a whole one,' Aidan said, gesturing to Jennifer.

‘Have you?' said Esther and Lucy in unison, slack-jawed.

‘Yup,' said Jennifer, collapsing into the cushions again. ‘Oh my god this tune is amazing.'

‘Nutter,' said Esther.

‘Can I have another one?' asked Jennifer.

‘No you cannot,' said Aidan, stroking her leg as her friends looked on, not knowing whether to be impressed or worried by how well Jennifer had taken to the drug. ‘I can see I'm going to have my work cut out with you, you little minx.'

And that was it. From that sentence forward, continuing in the vein of giving everything little or no real deliberation, choosing instead to be steered only by instinct and desire, as you do when you're young, Jennifer and Aidan were an item.

Everything was very, very quiet, apart from the dull, ominous thudding in her head. She was aware that there was stuff going on around her, commotion, chaos even, but she could only very vaguely decipher what any of it was. It all seemed so far away and she wasn't sure she had the inclination to tune in properly anyway, for instinct told her that if she were to, that suddenly everything would really hurt. So instead she let herself drift further towards a state of mental limbo, refusing to choose the path of either resistance or acceptance. Something terrible had happened. That was a certainty. Her entire body was like a piece of lead, and somehow didn't feel like her own.

A scream pierced the warm, dense fog she was in. It was a guttural, horrifying sound.

‘Jen,' yelled the same voice, its tone desperate and distressed.

Karen.

It was Karen.

And then came another voice, one she didn't recognise, telling Karen to stay back. Not to touch.

She knew she should probably be feeling more than she was. Doing something perhaps, and yet doing anything was a complete and utter impossibility. She couldn't open her eyes and yet still managed to be dimly aware of flashing lights and at one point of someone manhandling her eyelids and asking her things. She wished they'd all go away and let the cloudy haziness which was shrouding her, envelope her completely. That would be easier.

While Max went to collect the children from his parents, Jennifer raced round the house trying to get it into a vaguely fit state. Friends were coming for lunch and she was running behind. If she was honest she wasn't feeling a huge amount of joy about the fact they were coming. Lately they'd had a lot of people over and while it was nice to socialise, Saturdays were starting to feel as structured and routined as the rest of the week. What with the cooking, cleaning and never-ending washing up and putting away. Still, in reality, if it was Karen and Pete who were coming over, she'd be looking forward to it a whole lot more. Apart from anything else, Karen wouldn't care if the house was a tip, or if she served up a bit of old spaghetti for lunch.

Whereas with Judith and Henry Gallagher, she felt obliged to achieve that ‘I've thrown this magnificent feast together effortlessly, à la Nigella, wearing an unstained silk dressing gown while simultaneously raising two angelic children in a house liberally festooned with fairy lights' look, that actually requires
tons
of effort, perspiration,
lots of shouting at the children and some swearing. But then, when it came to Judith and Henry, ‘friends' was probably rather a loose term and therein lay the problem.

Judith was a work colleague of Max's who was alright…ish, only she talked about work incessantly, in a way that tended to make Jennifer feel totally excluded from proceedings. With Judith always hogging Max, Jennifer was usually left feeling obliged to entertain Henry, who frankly was hard work. A quiet, uninspiring, humourless bloke, Henry was one of those people who liked to exist under an umbrella of shyness, as if by labelling himself thus, he was excused from having to make any effort on the conversation front. As far as Jennifer was concerned though, once past the age of twenty-one, no matter how bloody ‘shy' anyone was, she felt they should at least pepper a chat with the odd question, thus making it a two-way thing. As it was, whenever Jennifer was doing her bit by talking to Henry she felt like she was interviewing him.

To add to the already non-enticing prospect of lunch with the Gallaghers, this was the third time in two years she and Max had invited them over for a meal and they'd never returned the invitation. Max insisted it was a good idea for him to ‘keep in' with Judith, for work reasons. But Jennifer was starting to think it was probably Judith's turn to spend hundreds of pounds in the supermarket on feeding
their
faces, and that furthermore,
perhaps she didn't give a shit if they ‘kept in' with her or not.

Having finally finished tidying downstairs, even going so far as to squirt a bit of polish on the coffee table so at least the room
smelled
clean, she started on the children's bedrooms. By the time she'd got to her and Max's room though she'd lost the will, and was suddenly overwhelmed by the prospect of still having to produce a meal for four adults, three children and a baby. So, after she'd stuffed everything that was on the floor into the laundry basket, she stopped for a second and sunk onto the bed, taking advantage of the unusual silence. For a few minutes she reflected on how easily she'd given up on her mission to seduce Max. As she did, the disappointment from the previous evening washed over her once more, and she found herself wondering idly when and indeed
if
she should try donning her new underwear again. After all, Max wasn't psychic, so to be fair to him how could he have known what she'd had in mind? If she'd been really serious about having her wicked way with him she probably should have gone downstairs and shown him what she was wearing because if he'd had the visual stimulation she suspected he definitely would have gone for it. So why hadn't she done that?

She sighed. Marriage. It was such bloody hard work sometimes. Make an effort was all anybody said and it
was
an effort. That was the problem. She missed the days when being with each other wasn't any effort at all. The
days when
not
being together were the ones which felt like the effort.

Jennifer willed herself to get up and continue her attack on the house but it wasn't happening, mainly because her thoughts had turned to a subject which had been occupying her mind a lot lately. Sex. Or rather, her lack of it. As soon as she allowed the thought in, she felt a lurch of possibility in her nether regions.

The next thing she knew, despite the fact the potatoes desperately needed peeling if lunch had any hope at all of being served for one o'clock, her hand had slid into her knickers. Right, she needed to be quick so who should she think about? Aware that time wasn't on her side she turned to an old favourite, if you like, a golden oldie, though part of her detested the fact she was still dining out on sex she'd had nearly twenty years ago. However, when it came to fantasy, Aidan was still guaranteed to get her going. And fast.

Once again Jennifer returned to a hot, airless room, which had a bed with a squeaky mattress and a ceiling fan, and replayed the best sex she'd ever had in her entire life. Images of brown limbs entwined and his strong hard body pressing into hers, manoeuvring her into positions she hadn't even known existed, swam into her head. An enjoyable three minutes later, and her very old flame was just on the brink of giving her an almighty orgasm when she became dimly aware of the key turning in the door downstairs. She couldn't believe it…

‘We're back,' called Max up the stairs.

‘Muuuuummy,' two little voices yelled in unison, feet charging up the stairs.

‘Shit,' gasped Jennifer, withdrawing her hand, and springing into an upright position, feeling utterly frustrated. Thirty seconds more and she'd definitely have been there. ‘Hello-ooo,' she called back, slightly screechily. ‘Have you had a lovely lovely time, kids?'

As she leapt up from the bed she experienced a bit of a head rush. Quickly she patted her hair down and did her jeans up, legs feeling slightly wobbly.

The children barrelled in. ‘Mummy.'

‘Hello my little loves, how are you?' she warbled ‘I've missed you. Were you good for Grandma?'

‘Yes,' said Eadie.

‘What about you, Pol?'

‘Yes,' her youngest agreed, though she seemed more interested in trying to get her T-shirt off.

‘What are you doing?'

‘I need a wee.'

‘OK, well you don't need to take your top off to have a wee do you? Come here.'

Just then Max called up the stairs. ‘Jen, what the hell have you been doing? You haven't peeled the bloody potatoes. They're going to be here soon and nothing's ready. You haven't even laid the table.'

Jennifer rolled her eyes so vigorously they actually hurt a little bit. ‘Well…feel free to go for it.'

‘All right, there's no need to be sarcastic about it, it's just you said you'd get things under control while I got the girls and nothing's done.'

‘All right,' said Jennifer testily, stomping onto the landing and into the bathroom so she could plonk Polly on the toilet before heading downstairs.

She found Max in the kitchen, peeling potatoes angrily. Whole chunks were coming out.

‘I'll do that,' she said, trying to grab the peeler off him.

‘No, it's fine, I'm doing it.'

‘What are you so grumpy about anyway? Is it that much of a big deal that little wifey hasn't done everything by the time you've got back?'

‘Little wifey hasn't done anything, let alone everything,' muttered Max.

‘Oh rubbish,' disagreed Jennifer. ‘The house was a complete state if you must know, and besides, I'm getting a bit sick of having people over every single weekend when we don't even enjoy it.'

‘Yes we do,' said Max, shooting her a look of real disdain.

‘No we don't,' she replied petulantly, simultaneously acknowledging that now they were sounding like their children.

‘We do,' said Max, oblivious.

‘Oh yeah, we're having a great time preparing for the arrival of smug-arse, “high powered” Judith and dullard
Henry. And it goes without saying I can't wait to spend the rest of the day washing up after them while you bum lick her,' huffed Jennifer.

Max wrinkled up his nose at her choice of words, which actually made Jennifer giggle for a second and broke the tension a little.

‘Muuuuuuuuuuuum,' yelled Polly from upstairs. ‘I've got wee wee on my sock.'

‘Yours,' said Max.

Jennifer tutted before turning on her heel, faintly wondering if she'd get away with quickly locking herself in the spare room, so she could finish what she'd started earlier. Hmm…probably not.

Half an hour later the doorbell rang meaning the people she couldn't be bothered to see, let alone entertain, had arrived.

Taking a deep breath and summoning up a smile she opened the door.

‘Hello everybody, come in, come in,' said Jennifer, ushering them all into the house and down the hallway. ‘It's so lovely to see you all. Oh my look at James, hasn't he grown and doesn't he look
so
like you, Henry?'

‘He's a chip off the old block all right,' agreed Judith, immaculate as ever in tasteful navy, which she'd offset with funky ‘weekend' jewellery and ballet pumps. ‘No questioning who his dad is.'

Jennifer agreed totally, because actually James really did look exactly like Henry, only given that he was only
ten years old, looking like a gone-to-seed, middle-aged man wasn't necessarily a good thing. ‘So how was your journey?' Jennifer enquired brightly, snapping out of her reverie before anyone noticed her staring.

‘Fine,' said Judith, kissing her on both cheeks and handing her a bottle of wine. ‘Sorry we're a bit late. Work's been sooooo manic this week I simply had to have a bit of a chill out this morning. I bet Max did too, we've literally been working like Trojans this week.'

‘I can imagine,' said Jennifer, quite wanting to punch her.

An hour and a half later than planned, lunch was finally on the verge of being served up.

The children were all starving despite having been fed various ‘just to keep you going' snacks and were getting fractious. Judith and Henry had polished off two entire bags of Kettle Chips and had already had an argument about who was driving home. Oscar, their eighteen-month-old baby, was having a sleep upstairs and they were well into a third bottle of wine. Meanwhile, Max was sucking up to Judith so much it was making Jennifer's skin crawl. She herself was worryingly pissed given that she still had to get lunch on the table.

As Judith roared with laughter at yet another dull work anecdote of Max's, Jennifer flinched. The way Max was giving her his undivided attention was grounds for
jealousy quite frankly, only she couldn't be bothered to make a fuss. Instead she just felt saddened that every time she tried to join in with a vaguely witty remark he barely looked in her direction. Perhaps she should get her tits out she thought wryly. Run round the kitchen with them jiggling about.

With little enthusiasm Jennifer replenished the crisp bowl (this time with Frazzles and Pom Bears instead of posh Kettle Chips—it was all she had left). As she did so she smiled weakly at dull Henry who was sat on a stool by the island like a fat useless turd. She was just about to ask him yet another question about how his work was going when she realised she didn't care and couldn't be bothered. So instead she turned her back on him, and bent down to open the oven to investigate what might be happening in there. As boiling hot air blasted her in the face, she realised she was one hundred percent, definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, drunk.

She was also glad, and a little bit smug, that for once she'd cut corners by picking up (on Karen's recommendation) some small stuffed chickens from the local deli. Not having to cook a meat dish of some description meant all she'd had to do in theory was make the roast potatoes and cobble together a salad. So why did it all feel as stressful as though she'd been preparing a banquet for eighty under the same conditions as the
Masterchef
final?

Seconds later she emerged from the oven once more, red in the face, sweating, and clutching the ludicrously
heavy tray in an oven glove only to realise that the island needed clearing before she could put it down.

‘Max,' she called over, to where he was deep in conversation with Judith about something tedious.

‘Max!'

‘Hey, there's no need to yell. What is it?' he said, trying to sound like he wasn't snapping when in fact that was exactly what he was doing.

‘Sorry,' she said, not sorry at all. Her hands were practically on fire. ‘I was just wondering if you could clear a space for this. It's very heavy,' she grimaced.

‘Oh right,' he said, finally realising her plight.

Once dumped on the side, one by one, Jennifer lifted the little chickens out of the roasting tray and onto the chopping board. They were less chickens really, more parcels of poussin, tied up with string and stuffed with pork and herbs. Jennifer immediately decided that she wouldn't bother fobbing the meaty creations off as her own. After all, she'd never boned a piece of meat (fnar fnar) in her life and had certainly never been arsed to tie up anything you could eat with string.

‘Ooh, those look wonderful, Jennifer,' said Judith, gliding over to have a look at what she was about to stuff her self-satisfied face with. ‘Aren't you lucky, Max? That's what comes of having a wife at home who's got time to actually create things like this. Poor Henry is lucky if I remember to buy him a ready meal aren't you?'

‘I do work,' said Jennifer, probably a bit defensively.

‘Do you?' said Judith, looking first surprised and then apologetic, as if she'd just realised her error. ‘Oh god of course you do, and it goes without saying that looking after children is probably the hardest job of all. I certainly wouldn't have had another if I'd had to stay at home and look after them,' she honked, loudly enough for her offspring to hear and therefore quite possibly need therapy in the future.