Infidelity for Beginners (26 page)

I have to admit, this came out sounding slightly rapier than
it was meant to, but Elenor didn’t seem to mind and continued to sob all over
my collar.

It occurred to me at that moment that Elenor and I lived our
lives on very different frequencies. Elenor’s life sounded as if it were full
of ups and downs, highs and lows, adulation and misery, pandemonium and
loneliness, whereas mine – up until recently – had been pretty plodding
by comparison; calm and steady, cosy and domestic, easy and peasy, comfortable
and uncomplicated.

Which of us had the better life?

I guess that’s a subjective question. The grass is always
greener on the other side and that whole quandary. I didn’t know and I couldn’t
tell you. Not least of all because I was pretty sure Elenor enjoyed some
fantastic and memorable highs when the music was pumping, the Cava flowing and
me and Sally were in our pyjamas and three hours into bedtime. Yep, I don’t
think there was any doubt about that. All I really knew was that I wouldn’t
have traded my lot for hers for all the green tea in China because I was
spectacularly happy with my plodding calm, steady, cosy, domestic, easy peasy,
comfortable and uncomplicated life. It had just taken an utter calamity for me
to realise it.

Now, all I wanted was to have it back. If only I could.

I pulled Elenor from my neck and looked into her puffy red
eyes.

“Elenor, you have no idea how lucky you are, do you? You’re
such a lucky girl,” I informed her. “You’ve got it all; looks, personality, sex
appeal and youth. You’ve got the world at your feet and you don’t even realise
it. Don’t go getting yourself worked up about things you’ll be laughing about
in a few weeks time. Honestly, life’s too short,” I told her, running out all
the old tried and tested lines in absence of any wisdom of my own.

“I just want people to like me,” she muttered
apologetically.

“And they will. I do. But the main thing is you should like
yourself first. I reckon that’s the secret to life. Find that and everything
else will fall into place,” I reasoned.

“And if it doesn’t?” Elenor asked, not unreasonably.

I thought about this for a moment because she was quite
right, there was a definite flaw in my argument.

“Well,” I pondered, “you’ll have the most important piece of
the jigsaw in place so what does anything else matter?” For a moment, I though
Elenor was going to ask what sort of answer was that, but instead she just
wrapped her arms around me and gave me a grateful hug.

“Thank you, Andrew,” she simpered.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” I said, then turned my thoughts to
her injuries. “I think maybe while we’re at it, we should probably get you to a
doctor’s and get your cuts cleaned up properly. Just to be on the safe side.”

Elenor was about to say something in reply when a voice came
at us from behind and told us both to pack it in. We looked around and located
an elderly lady decked out in tweed who was walking her dog on a nearby path.

“I say, you there, these are public woods. They have
children playing in them, so stop that immediately, it’s indecent,” she was
yelling. “Why don’t you go home to do that sort of thing?”

This was so ridiculous that I couldn’t help but laugh.
Elenor soon joined in and the tweed lady strode off purposefully, either to
report us or to go home and do her own indecent thing.

“Do you want to get out of here then?” I asked Elenor.

“Yes, let’s go,” she agreed, then stole a quick kiss before
I could do anything about it.

“Just for keepsakes,” she told me and smiled.

I don’t know how to feel about my
last session of Taxol. I’d been counting down the weeks, but now that it’s come
I can’t help but feel anxious. I’d developed something of a love/hate
relationship with my drip. I hated it because it sapped me of strength and
knocked me for six, but I loved, or at least, had come to depend on it because
it was my treatment. And my treatment was what was helping me fight my illness
and lower my CA 125 count. I’d always feared the day when my illness spread out
of control and the doctors said, “I’m very sorry Mrs Nolan, but there’s nothing
else we can do for you. Next patient please”, and that’s how this feels.

I know it’s stupid and that all my test results have come
back to show that my cancer is in remission, but I’m still nervous about being
cut loose. Of course, I’ll have regular check-ups but my check-ups won’t be
every three weeks, so the trick is learning to believe that my cancer has gone
for good and isn’t just waiting around the corner for the doctors to turn their
backs.

Andrew thinks returning to work will help me slip into my
old routine again and Carol agrees. She says the children keep asking after me
and this in itself gives me a lift every time I hear it.

I have the rest of the summer to prepare so I can put off
any final decision for a little while longer but I’m pretty sure I’ll go with
Carol’s advice. She’s an exceptional lady and has always been an inspiration to
me.

Perhaps now it’s my turn to be an inspiration to others.

I drove Sally to school her first
day back. She could’ve walked but I wanted to be with her when she picked up
her life again. Her last session of Chemotherapy had been back in July and now
here in September, with the leaves turning brown and the streets full of
children in school uniforms, the world had a comfortable ring of familiarity to
it once more.

Tom had come too, which meant we were both going to be late
for work this morning, but Norman had given us his blessing and sent his own
good luck message to Sally.

“What is it with you and Norman these days? Anyone would’ve
thought he’d adopted you or something?” Sally asked, unclipping her seat belt
as we pulled up outside the school gates. I’d always had a bit of a blind spot
for Norman in the past, I’ll admit, although this was probably just because he
represented my job and my little station in life. But Norman had acquitted
himself magnificently over these last few months and I couldn’t have asked for
a more understanding boss or a better friend. Of course there was a reason for
all of this, as I’d consequently discovered, and it was the same reason his
wife’s picture hadn’t changed in twelve years. Her fight had been with breast
cancer and sadly it had been a fight she’d started too late. But this was something
I would keep to myself. No good could come of sharing Norman’s motivations with
Sally. Better she thought they were driven by pure benevolence than fear.
Still, Norman had been Sally’s strongest champion and I owed him a debt I could
never repay, but which I’d spend the rest of my company days trying (although
this didn’t actually stretch to my doing his report, as Tom pointed out).

Carol was waiting for us at the gates when we arrived. She
came strolling over as we climbed out of the car and gave Sally a welcome back
hug she’d clearly been saving up all summer long.

“You’re here; the children will be thrilled,” she said.

“What, at being back at school? Are you sure?” Tom replied,
making Sally laugh and Carol purse her lips in a prickly matronly way. This was
Carol’s domain and woe-betide any man for suggesting the kids might not
actually want to he here as much as she did.

I interjected, telling Sally how lovely she looked to prompt
Carol and Tom to do the same before they went for each other’s throats and they
duly bit with a dozen compliments of their own until Sally was well and truly
swamped. Still, it wasn’t just to defuse the moment, I truly meant it. Sally
did look amazing right now. She’d always been beautiful but in the depths of
her treatment she’d been but a paper-thin version of herself. Now with the
Chemo ended her glow had returned. The colour had come back to her skin, her
eyes again sparkled and her hair had grown almost an inch, enough for her to
discard her summer bonnet. She could even fit into her old jeans again, the
ones she kept around for motivational purposes, all without having to fork out
for [and then cancel] another year’s gym subscription. All told she could’ve
almost passed for one of those skinny, cropped Parisian catwalk models –
if it hadn’t been for the bag of books on her shoulder.

“You run along love and I’ll see you tonight,” I said,
giving her a kiss that belonged more behind the bike sheds than outside the
school gates. “Have a great day.”

“They all are,” she said, giving Tom and I a little smile as
she headed on into the playground with Carol to ring the bell.

We hung around to watch her go inside before climbing back
into the car. Well I climbed in, Tom grunted and groaned. After a summer of
arduous physiotherapy Tom now walked like John Wayne in tight trousers with a
choc-ice melting in each pocket. It would take a few more months before he was
totally grunt-free but there was no rush. The Camberley 5K Fun Run was still
some months away and there were plenty of places – which was possibly why
Tom still hadn’t got around to filling in that entry form I’d picked him up.

“She’ll be fine, she’s a trooper,” Tom assured me
unnecessarily and I didn’t doubt it. Sally had resources of strength I could
only dream of. Only a few months earlier she’d been told she would never have
children and yet here she was returning to a job where she’d be surrounded by
them all day long and the school board couldn’t keep her away. They gave her
the choice of postponing her return until after Christmas but they would’ve had
more chance of convincing Godfrey to turn down his new job on a porno mag to
stay with me on
Caravan Enthusiast
than they would’ve at keeping Sally at bay. She’d been a force of nature this
morning and I couldn’t wait to get home this evening to hear about her day.

“Are you popping over later?” I asked Tom, but he said he
couldn’t. Kate was coming over this evening and he was taking the phone off the
hook. In days gone by he might’ve given me a suggestive little wink but it
wasn’t like that with Kate. She was different. She was special. She –
he’d even gone so far as admitting to me – was ‘the one’.

Well Kate may have been the one for Tom, but she’d been just
one of two hundred to Martin who drank in the Duke of York. He’d pulled her,
shagged her and dumped her all within the space of a forgotten weekend, but
that weekend hadn’t been forgotten by Kate and when she’d finally bumped into
him again, out shopping with his wife, life caught up with Martin with a
horrible vengeance.

“I guess his wife did mind after all,” I said, starting the
car to take us both to work.

“Well fuck me, wouldn’t you?” Tom replied, and I tried to
make out if he’d intended that to come out as some little dig about Elenor, because
that’s how it had felt, but I let him have it in any case, only too aware of my
own passing lunacy.

Still, Tom had bagged Kate on the rebound and things had
gone from there. She’d given him a confidence he no longer needed to display
and he in turn had restored her faith in men. Really, him? It’s funny isn’t it
how sometimes we need to be broken before we can be fixed.

“And how is Elenor?” Tom then asked out of the side of his
mouth.

“See, I knew that was a dig,” I said, turning onto the A30
to take us down to the motorway.

“No dig, just a question. How has she been around you?”
which in itself could’ve been a dig.

“She’s been fine actually,” I told him. “It’s helped that
Godfrey’s left so there’s no one to pull the wings off any more, but by and large
she’s been okay,” and she had. We’d talked things through on our way back from
Lincolnshire and reset the thermostat to a temperature we both felt comfortable
with. Elenor was mortified to have exposed so much of herself to me, both
physically and emotionally, but she’d learned something about her own needs and
limitations in the process so I guess it had been a worthwhile experience for
her. It had certainly been for me so we made a pact that we would never talk
about it again, not to anyone (not even Tom), and this oath of secrecy had
helped cement a new found friendship.

And did I ever regret not taking Elenor up on her offer?

No, of course not, because I would never have been able to
look either myself or Sally in the eye if I had’ve done. But that’s not to say
I no longer found her attractive. Her body had been all I’d imagined it to be
and every now and again, on occasional slow work days, the memory of Elenor in
her underwear would tip-toe into my cubicle to give me a glimpse of what I’d
passed up before sauntering away again to rejoin Abigail and in the furthest
recesses of my mind.

Well I am only flesh and blood and Nicorette patches you
know. To have claimed otherwise would’ve been a lie. But I was no longer
tempted by her. No longer gutted. No longer wondering what I’d missed out on
because I now knew I’d not missed out on anything. I’d found a soul mate in
Sally, the woman I’d spend the rest of my life with and we’d share the wine and
roses and bumps and bruises together come what may. I was finally content that
I was exactly where I wanted to be.

But it’s funny, if things had worked out differently it
could’ve so easily been Tom instead of me and curiosity once more got the
better of me.

“So go on then, in the spirit of honesty, tell me, what did
happen between you and Sally back at University?”

Tom looked over and raised an eyebrow. He’d rebuffed me
before and I expected him to do the same again but instead he just shook his
head and smiled.

“You really want to know?” he asked.

“Nothing you tell me’s going to change the way I feel about
her,” I replied. Tom shifted awkwardly in the passenger seat before finally
shrugging and shaking his head.

“Okay. I told her I loved her,” he said, and this was so
unexpected I thought it had to be a lie.