Infidelity for Beginners (14 page)

“Oh my, Andrew, whatever are you doing?” she’d giggle, as I
peppered her with kisses.

“Shut up! Just shut up and take it!” I’d reply, pulling down
her panties and ripping open my fly.

“Are you going to fuck me Andrew? Are you going to give it
to me good and proper?”

“Oh God yes. I’m going to give it to you like you wouldn’t
believe,” I’d say.

I’d sink into her with one smooth thrust and… hang on a
minute, did I use a condom? Did I stop half way through and tell her to hold
her horses while I rooted around the room, found my overnight bag, ripped open
the packet of three I’d bought for the evening and stretched a little rubber
hat over my pan handle?

“What are you doing in there? Andrew, where are you?”

“Hold on a sec, I put the first one on backwards, now I
can’t unroll it. Hang on!”

I’d pull the second one out and tear it in half as I opened
the foil then fiddle with the third one and mutter and swear as I flicked
myself a few times, before finally managing to roll it down my shaft, painfully
trapping half a dozen hairs in the process.

“Just coming, almost ready. Sorry about this.”

Elenor would still be on the bed, lying in the position I’d
left her. Her legs would be open and breasts would be bare. “What were you
doing?”

“Putting on a condom,” I’d say, showing her my handiwork.

“Why? This is just a fantasy Andrew. Why are you putting on
a condom in your own fucking fantasy?” I didn’t get the chance to explain. At
that moment there was a knock on the door that made me jump off the bed. My
pulse suddenly soared and my stomach was swamped with a million frantic
butterflies.

Jesus, she’d come. Elenor had actually come.

In the blink of an eye I saw what lay in store: the
seduction, the longing, the having, the passion and the release. A fulfilment
of all that I had desired in one insane headlong rush into the unknown and
then…

The knock came again.

“Just a moment,” I croaked, scurrying up off the bed and
folding my eagerness out of sight before making for the door. I was just about
to twist the handle when a thought suddenly occurred to me.

What was I doing? What the fuck was I doing?

My hand hovered as my pre-match jitters suddenly mushroomed
into an all-out panic attack.

I repeat, what
the
fuck
was I doing? I was married. And not just married, I was married to
Sally. Oh Jesus, what about Sally? Some might’ve argued this thought had
occurred to me rather late in the day and I would’ve had trouble disagreeing,
but let’s put a positive spin on it – at least it
had
occurred to me. Tom’s friend Martin, the one who drank in the
Duke of York, who’d notched up more than two hundred confirmed conquests; I bet
if you asked him for his thoughts on his wife while he was tucking into Miss
Two Hundred and One, he’d look up from his perfectly unrolled condom and ask
“who?”

Was that who I aspired to be?

Did I really want to be that bastard?

I was a rabbit stuck in the headlights of an oncoming
disaster and I didn’t have a clue what to do.

If I opened the door, Elenor would come in and I would end
up having sex with her. I was sure of that. Oh God, such sweet, intoxicating,
fulfilling frantic, insatiable lust – which was everything I desired but
probably the worst thing in the world I could do (short of then killing and
eating her afterwards).

If, however, I didn’t open the door, I’d never get this
chance again and I would never ever know the heady exhilaration of illicit
ravenous sex ever again – which admittedly would be in keeping with that
vow I’d made in front of all those people all those years ago, but which would
chew my guts up for the rest of my life.

Just as my Abigail non-adventure did.

What a dilemma!

No matter what I did, I suddenly realised I’d be hanging my
head in shame and beating myself up about it tomorrow. It was a lose-lose
situation. In fact, it was probably the most lose-loseiest situation I’d ever
known and, coming from a perennial loser like me, this was really saying
something.

Knock knock knock?

My eagerness flexed in my trousers and pleaded with me to
open the door but when I grabbed the handle, my wedding ring clinked against
the steel to fire one last warning shot across my bowels.

Oh Jesus. Sally…

“Andrew?”

Uh?

“Andrew, are you in there?”

Hang on a minute, that didn’t sound like Elenor. Elenor had
a sweet, sexy, pouting voice. This voice was pompous, idiotic, annoying and the
bane of my working life. I twisted the handle and swept open the door to come
face to face with a walking bucket of cold water.

“Ah, you are in. I thought so,” Norman said. “Can I come in
for a moment?”

I stared at him in open-mouthed
confusion before stepping aside to let him in, though the moment I did, I
suddenly remembered Elenor. She would be knocking on my door any second now
too. Norman would see her. She’d see Norman. What would I say? More to the
point, what would they say?

NORMAN: “What’s going
on here? Why is she coming up to your room?”

ELENOR: “What’s he
doing here? Is this some sort of set up or something?”

NORMAN: “Are you two
going to have sex?”

ELENOR: “Did you bring
him up here to go twos on me?”

NORMAN: “Are you
asking him or offering it?”

ELENOR: “Why, are you
interested?”

NORMAN: “Are you
alright with that?”

ELENOR: “Are you?”

“What?”

“I said are you all right, Andrew? You look a little peaky,”
Norman asked.

“What? Oh yes, just a little hot and tired from the party.
Thought I’d come upstairs for a quick five minute breather,” I replied, staring
at my door in dismay as I hyperventilated over the impending shitstorm. “I’m
fine now so let’s go back downstairs. Okay?”

“Actually, there’s something I’m afraid I need to tell you.”

Norman had a reticence in his voice that pulled my eyes away
from the door. He avoided my gaze when I looked at him and frowned as he
struggled to find the words.

Boy, did I not like the look of
this. What the hell was he about to tell me?

“Elenor’s made a
complaint and I’m afraid I’m going to have to fire you.”

“Elenor’s made a
complaint and I’ve had to phone Sally.”

“Elenor’s made a
complaint and it turns out she’s actually only twelve.”

“Elenor’s made a
complaint, but more to the point, I’m gay and you have to bang me instead or
I’ll tell Sally.”

“Elenor’s made a
complaint but none of this matters now that the world is being attacked by
flying saucers. Also, I’m gay and you’re going to have to... etc”

Or most horrifyingly of all.

“Elenor’s not made a
complaint and she reckons you still haven’t done your report yet.”

When Norman didn’t speak I
realised I was going to have to beat it out of him. “What is it, Norman? Bad
news?”

“I’m afraid so,” he replied, tightening my screws all over.
“I’m afraid it’s Tom…”

“What?” I blinked in total confusion. “Hang on, what?”

“I don’t know how it happened but the police are here and
they say he’s been in an accident. He’s been run over.”

“Run over?” Before this had a chance to sink in, there was
another, gentler knock at the door and I yanked it open without thinking to see
Elenor leaning against the door frame seductively.

“It’s okay, I’ve already told him,” Norman told her,
stepping into view and knocking Elenor for six as she went back on her heels.
“Oh dear.”

I rushed to her assistance and whispered in her ear to keep
quiet as I put my arms around her slender young waist and picked her up again.

“Norman’s just told me about it, about Tom being run over,”
I told her, for the benefit of the audience. Elenor’s eyes widened but I
pinched my face and shook my head until she got the play.

“Ah, yes, you’ve told him then, have you?” she agreed.
“Right. Good.”

“Yes, well look, the ambulance has taken him to Mayday
Hospital so I’d better go along and see that he’s taken care of. I didn’t know
whether or not you’d want to come along too, seeing as he was… erm, sorry I
mean,
is
a friend of yours. I’m going
up there now. Andrew?”

I could barely take in what Norman was saying. It was all so
unbelievable. Tom had been run over. The ambulance had taken him to hospital.
The police were downstairs.

And Elenor had come to my room.

She looked at me long and hard and I looked right back at
her. Her dress and her hair and make-up and legs still looked as stunning as
they’d looked that first moment I’d laid eyes on them. Only now they were
standing in my room.

I soaked her all in but I knew I was just dithering. I had a
decision to make and Norman and Elenor were waiting for me to make it.

Something terrible has happened. Tom
was run over last night after the Christmas party and the doctor’s say he
might’ve broke his back. He’s already had one operation just to stabilise him
but he’s going to need a great many others. They say he might never walk again,
which is just awful awful awful. Andrew’s taken it really badly and even seems
to be blaming himself, but he won’t say how or why. I’ve tried talking to him
about why he thinks he’s responsible but he won’t be drawn on it and we even
ended up having a blazing row. I don’t know what happened last night but
something was clearly said or done and I think I know what it was. I’ve always
been worried that my time with Tom might surface one day and cause problems for
us and that seems to have finally happened. I only hope Andrew and Tom can
patch things up between them because Tom’s going to need all the friends he can
get right now. Poor silly Tom. Whatever else that might’ve gone on between us,
I hope and pray he’s going to be okay.

I did something the night of the
party I’m not proud of and that Sally can never find out about.

I smoked a whole packet of cigarettes in less than six
hours.

Unbelievable. That’s like a fag every eighteen minutes.
Pretty good going but my lungs felt like they’d been in a fight with a cheese
grater the next morning. Holy smoke!

I don’t know what came over me. I guess it was a combination
of stresses. Stress at skirting so close to infidelity. Stress at Tom’s
suspicions. Stress at the palaver with Rosemary. Stress at broken backs. And
stress at having to sit in a hospital waiting room with only Norman and stress
for company. I challenge anyone not to chain smoke twenty fags in those
circumstances.

Of course, I couldn’t smoke in the hospital so I had an
excuse to get away from Norman and go and wear circles in the car park, and it
was out there, in that bitter January darkness that I did some serious
thinking.

My thoughts came in no particular order, they were all
jumbled up and piled on top of each other, with no single thought taking centre
stage over the rest of the pile but one of the more recurring images was of
Elenor standing in my room and urging me with her eyes to stay.

Unfortunately I couldn’t. Or should that be fortunately? I
don’t know.

Under laboratory conditions, with soft lights and candles,
music and privacy and a signed and sealed permission slip from Sally I would’ve
undoubtedly sucked Elenor from her dress and written off the hotel bed. But I
didn’t. Because my friend in hospital, my boss at the door, a taxi ticking over
downstairs and Sally – my wife Sally – was waiting for me at home.
And whatever else I chose to do, the next morning I would have to drive back to
Camberley, park the car, take a deep breath and try to pick up everything from
where I’d left it the previous day.

And I couldn’t have done that had I spent the night with
Elenor.

I know some people can – Tom’s mate Martin, who drank
in the Duke of York, being the obvious case in point – but I simply
wouldn’t have been able to. I mean, if you think about it, what a terrible
burden to shoulder. And not just for a day or a week or a year, but for the
rest of my life, because unless I split from Sally, I could never have told
her, not unless I wanted to prompt said split. And even then I still couldn’t
because it would’ve devastated her. Married, divorced, estranged or even
forgotten; it didn’t matter, because who wanted to know that their loved one
had cheated on them while they were together? If we lived to be a hundred and
never had another argument again I still wouldn’t be able to tell her. Not
because of what I feared the consequences might be (although there was that
too) but because it would make her unhappy.

And all of a sudden, all I could see was Sally’s
unhappiness.

Elenor’s legs, her bum, her provocative lip-chewing and her
curls had all but disappeared from my thoughts so that all I could see was
Sally huddled over in her hands, bawling with despair and asking me over and
over again why I’d done it.

It sent a shiver done my spine just thinking about it and
that shiver started dancing with a shudder when I realised how close I’d come.

Cue another fag.

What really amazed me though was just how quickly my mind
had snapped shut. Only a few hours earlier I’d been following Elenor around and
whispering conspiratorially in her ear. One calamity later and I was suddenly
back to DefCon 5 and dumbfounded at how I could’ve let things escalate beyond
fantasy so spectacularly. Because it would’ve happened, wouldn’t it? It had
moved up to the next level and was no longer a game, or a daydream or a
flirtatious little misunderstanding.

It would’ve been an affair.

I had almost had an affair.