Sex with the Ex (14 page)

Then my phone rang.

“Lola, it's Richard, I called earlier.”

My heart was beating with what he was about to say, but then he went on to say he didn't know what to say but that he needed to see me. The phrase “needed to see me” seemed to echo on forever. I was meant to be meeting the girls after work, but I agreed to meet him at my flat first. I decided I finally knew what Kitty and Martin meant about passion. What I felt for Richard was so absorbing, so overwhelming, I didn't have room in my life for work or friends right now. My real focus had to be Richard.

“It's fucked up,” Elizabeth told me when I called to say I might be late because Richard was dropping by.

“Excuse me?”

“This sudden obsession with Richard, it's madness. You're letting your friends down and your job suffer.”

“Look, I was late once!” It was actually twice, but I hadn't told her about the alarm thing because that was just an accident that could have happened to anyone. It wasn't like I'd been deliberately late.

“Twice. Charlie called me earlier. He told me you went off with Jeremy last night.”

I was angry about everyone talking about me behind my back. “Well, if you know about Jeremy why are you accusing me of being obsessed with Richard?”

“Because it's fucked up, and I'm really worried about you. We're all really worried about you.”

I was worried about me, too, but I didn't share it with Elizabeth because I had a plan, and as long as you have a plan everything will work out fine; that's my life motto.

After I got off the phone from her, Jeremy rang. I rejected him but took Kitty's call a second later.

“We've found a copy of Camilla's will,” she explained. “The original is with her solicitor. Darling, you know she was quite well off.”

“Yes,” I replied, more interested in the group of record executives confabbing in the corner. I still hadn't got a chance to speak to Joel, so I made my way toward him now.

“I suppose you were her favorite, I always thought it was the spinster connection.”

I accepted a mineral water from the tray, my hangover was starting to kick in again and I needed to hydrate. “Thank you, Kitty.”

“Maybe it was because of the Oliver chap, perhaps there was more to it. Anyway, that's not the point. She's left quite a bit of money to you.”

I waved at Joel and made a sign to show I wanted a word.

“Can we discuss this later, Kitty? It's just that I'm at work and can't really talk now.”

Joel gave me a kiss on the cheek. I gave him a signal to show him I was getting rid of someone on the other end of the phone and he laughed.

“It's over seven hundred thousand pounds actually, and then there is her cottage, which she owned outright. Now, of course, there will be an enormous amount of death duty to pay, but still it will make for a very nice little nest egg.”

Henrietta's love for Edward does not appear to have affected her wifely duties. She fell pregnant within the first year of her marriage, and by all accounts enjoyed motherhood immensely. She wrote to her sister, Elizabeth, extolling the virtues of children. In all, she had three children, each of them, as far as she was concerned, were sired by her husband; a son, Frederick, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Katherine.

 

When she was seven, her youngest daughter, Katherine, became perilously ill with scarlet fever, and Henrietta ignored the doctor's advice and tended to the child herself. Edward, who had again forsworn gambling and was once again a frequent guest at society parties, was extremely put out by her motherly duties and soon sought solace in the arms of her closest friend, Matilda, the Duchess of
Carlone. Although it seems implausible that Matilda could have known of her friend's devotion to Edward, Henrietta never forgave her and she was never invited to Posche House again.

 

Secret Passage to the Past:
A Biography of Lady Henrietta Posche
By Michael Carpendum

I
arrived home at eleven to find Richard waiting for me outside my flat door. Not my building, my actual flat. He didn't have a key to the building, so someone must have buzzed him in. Typical of Richard to be able to charm my fellow residents to ignore the police sticker inside the lift warning that allowing strangers into the building was an open invitation to thieves, muggers, murderers and rapists.

Richard looked more like a dog that had been beaten than a criminal, though, and I immediately regretted sleeping with Jeremy as I juggled the flowers he'd sent me to open the door. The flowers had been accompanied by a card declaring “Glad you are back in my life.” I felt guilty as I'd folded the card in half and slipped it in a bin.

I wrapped Richard up in a cuddle and he nuzzled my neck and I realized I wanted to make him feel better not worse. Actually, I wanted to make
us
feel better. I wanted to heal the scars, tend to the wounds and make us whole again, and
no amount of conflict or warning signs seemed to be capable of making that feeling go away.

Once inside, Jean demanded I put the news on for her while Richard went to the loo without so much as a word. I figured he was taking cocaine—well, the flat was so microscopic I could hear him snorting the stuff. I listened to the sounds of ritual cocaine use, the tap running while he snorted his line off the cistern, then a flush of the toilet as if he'd actually been emptying his bladder. But I justified his cocaine usage. He was going through a rough time, so I was prepared to forgive him. I mean, lots of people take cocaine, especially successful people like Richard, I reminded myself. Apparently, tests had shown that there wasn't a five-pound note in circulation that hadn't been touched by nose candy. We were probably all inhaling the stuff by proxy, I told myself. I hardly knew anyone who didn't do a line
occasionally.
“I shouldn't be so judgmental, should I, Jean?” I asked my rabbit, who studiously ignored me as the headline music started up.

When Richard reappeared, he was eager to chat, eager to laugh. The Richard of old, the Richard I had fallen in love with. The Richard who never tired of conversation, never took anything seriously, the Richard who could always make me laugh. Of course, I wondered whether the cocaine was the conduit to the personality I loved so much. But I wasn't troubled enough to find out the answer. I had other things to worry about. Like my own guilty conscience about Jeremy.

Besides, I was glad Richard was happier. I watched him as he stood over Jean's litter tray and scratched his head. He was always so fastidious about her tray when we lived together. “I forgot how much work she is,” he remarked, smiling at me. “Shall I change this?”

I laughed. “It's fine, I'll do it later,” I promised, but he set to work anyway. Seeing him carrying out such a mundane domestic task pulled on my heart more than any amount of flowers or words. He'd always been wonderful at things like that when we were together, and it truly felt like coming home.

After he bleached his hands clean, he sat me on his lap and I told him about my inheritance, and to be fair to him, he cast off his own problems and gave me one of his boa constrictor hugs. As I gasped for air he spun me round, just the way he used to when he came home from work—he used to say he couldn't believe how lucky he was to have a wife like me. This was the man I loved, the man with boundless enthusiasm and endless capacity for fun. Jean looked up from her news broadcast and scowled. She hates being interrupted when the headlines are on.

With all the excitement I utterly forgot about Jeremy and my nasty torturing-Richard plot. I suddenly saw what an awful person I'd been; Richard knew how he felt about me, he was just struggling with the problem of sorting his life out and didn't need the specter of Jeremy to make him realize how much he loved me. I felt horribly ashamed of my cheap ruse to make him jealous. But I was putting all my awfulness behind me now. My unexpected windfall was just the incentive I needed to be compassionate and understanding about Richard's problems. I even felt more compassionate toward Leggy Blonde, especially now I was certain she was going to be cut out of the picture.

“We should have champagne to celebrate!” he insisted, and even though normally I would agree, I really couldn't face alcohol so soon after my horrendous excesses with Jeremy.

“I've got a bottle in the fridge, but I got totally trollied
last night, so you'll have to toast me alone,” I explained, doing my hangover face, which is a mixture of pathetic self-pity and remorse. It always used to make Richard laugh and propel him into a mad nurturing frenzy.

“Rubbish,” he cajoled. “You can't win all that money and not drink champagne.” He lifted me off the ground in another hug.

“I haven't
won
it,” I pointed out. “Poor Aunt Camilla died.” I thought of her broken engagement with the man called Oliver who drank too much, and felt strangely irritated by Richard's enthusiasm as a wave of loss engulfed me. But then he broke open the champagne, poured two glasses and I dutifully drank one. He didn't seem to care whether I drank or not after that, happily polishing off the bottle himself in short time, although to be fair he did make me a pot of green tea.

“I love that you drink green tea,” he said as he watched me sipping my brew. I fluttered my lashes coquettishly, smitten that a man could love me for something as simple as drinking tea. “It's so comforting.”

I didn't reply that I loved that he snorted cocaine, but there was no escaping it now. He didn't even slope off to the loo to conceal it anymore; instead, he began racking the lines up on Jean's vanity mirror.

“You're riding the dusty wagon pretty hard at the moment,” I remarked when he asked to borrow Jean's mirror.

He looked up from his task with a grin on his face, joking, “I have to if I'm going to spend any time with you, madam.” At least I hoped it was a joke. He wasn't actually asking me to accept responsibility for his drug taking…was he? “You keep very antisocial hours. I'd be falling asleep by now, and then what sort of company would I be?”

Before I could answer, he added, “I can't believe Jean has
her own mirror,” cleverly segueing the conversation off his cocaine and onto my favorite subject, Jean.

“Well, she has to look her best. She doesn't want to be laughed at by the other rabbits!” I told him casually as he chopped up his lines.

“Sure you don't want one?” he asked.

“No, I'm happy with my tea,” I replied with exaggerated primness.

But here's the thing…for once I wasn't putting my hands over my eyes and pretending it wasn't happening, and that had to be progress. I decided that once we were back together we could deal with his drug problem; besides, once things were settled he'd probably want to take less himself. He'd definitely cut back when we were together…until his business went bad.

Besides, Leggy Blonde was still the main specter that had to be dealt with finally, so later when I heard him on the phone in the loo, I panicked that he might be talking to her. When he came out, and said he'd had a call from Marcus, a guy from work, I was immeasurably relieved.

“He has to drop something off to me. Would you mind if he dropped it here? I hate to ask, only I don't feel like going back to mine…not now?” His face was so adorable I would have said yes to a troop of circus tumblers dropping round to my flat.

“Oh God, no, definitely have him drop it off here,” I gushed with relief, not even caring what it was this Marcus fellow was dropping. He could move his offices in for the night, because all I cared about was that he'd asked to stay the night, which meant Leggy Blonde was going to be spending the night alone.

Marcus turned up an hour later, and Richard went downstairs to collect his “papers.” When he came back he kissed
me passionately and then tried to cuddle Jean, who bit him nastily on the hand.

“Jean,” I scolded. “Don't be such a bitch or I'll take you to the vet and have your teeth filed!”

She ignored my empty threat and hopped back over to watch an advertisement for a charity that rescued sad and abused pets. I've been threatening her with teeth filing, and neutering, forever, and I think she'd worked out that I was all talk.

“Right, shall we have another pot of green tea?” Richard asked. “I think it's high time I got to grips with the attraction of this brew, don't you?”

We were a freeze-frame of married coupledom, snuggled up on opposite ends of the sofa, our legs entwined, sipping green tea, watching the news with our rabbit. Just like any normal married couple.

I wasn't really interested, but he spent an hour explaining how he was taking over a smaller software company. It sounded madly boring, but he seemed so excited I didn't want him to stop. I loved the way a gorgeous man like Richard could get so excited about the maddest, most insignificant things.

When the light began to creep through the blinds, I suggested we go down to Berkeley Square for Jean's bunny run. Finally, I felt I was winning the battle; Richard and I were like the married couple we always should have been, watching our Jean as she hopped her way about the square.

“She might be a he,” Richard suggested as he nuzzled my ear.

“What do you mean, she might be a he? Her name's Jean,” I reminded him.

He coughed nervously. “I didn't really ask about her sex, I just bought her from a kid on the tube.” He grinned his
naughty-schoolboy grin, the one I had always found so adorable.

Until now! “What do you mean you bought her from a kid on the tube?” I demanded. I didn't like the idea of my Jean being procured randomly on the public transport system. In my imagination he had planned the surprise of giving me Jean. In my imagination he had driven long and far into the countryside to find a bunny-breeding field and looked at hundreds, if not thousands, of rabbits before choosing just the right one for us. In my imagination many a rabbit had been rejected before our Jean was chosen.

“Just one of those beggars that go down the aisles hustling for change. I was alone in the carriage with him and he was irritating the shit out of me. You know how they hassle you and hassle you until you pay up. In the end I said I'd give him five quid for the rabbit if he left me alone. I didn't think he'd actually give it to me. These bloody beggars, they have no sense of sentimentality!” He shook his head at the outrage of it all.

I swallowed back my immediate reaction before replying carefully, “So, actually, you didn't even mean to buy me Jean.”

“What's that supposed to mean? You love her, don't you? Does it really matter where she came from?”

“Of course I love her. She's ours. I thought she was a carefully planned first-month anniversary present,” I told him, trying to hide the hurt in my voice.

He shrugged then shook his head as he wrapped me in a cuddle. “She was. That is, I
was
planning on buying you a rabbit or at least something nonallergic, and then I ended up with her.” He kissed me on the nose. “It was fate, in a sense.”

“Hardly much planning if you only bought her as a means of being left alone by the boy hassling you on the tube,” I pointed out crossly.

He pulled away as if he was pissed off. “Lolly, don't get weird on me. It's five o'clock in the bloody morning. Some of us have to be at work in a few hours. I'm not in the mood for one of your sulks.”

I heard the warning voice of Elizabeth in my head, “When a guy says ‘Don't get weird on me' he means don't expect anything from me, because I'm only in this thing for low-maintenance, low-input sex and casual affection.”

I picked Jean up and kissed her tiny nose, listening to my own voice, which reasonably pointed out that Richard was right. It was five o'clock (if not later) in the morning, and did it really matter where Jean came from?

Richard put his arm around Jean and I on the walk back to the flat and I nestled my head on his shoulder. He kissed me at the door and asked if he could see me tonight.

I nodded, still conflicted about what he'd said about buying Jean from a refugee, but I pushed all that from my mind. I was used to staying up all night in my job, but Richard wasn't.

I had a good day's sleep and made sure I was at work on time, and when Charlie invited me in for a cordial at the end of the night everything seemed to be back to normal. In fact, when I told him about my inheritance he joked that I should invest some of it in shares of the club. Jean and Cinders watched the news as he proffered the bottle of Veuve.

The memory of my drunken night with Jeremy had started to fade and it was a nice feeling having things back on track with Charlie, so I agreed. We toasted my aunt and settled into comfortable conversation while Cinders licked Jean maternally. I decided to share Richard's theory about Jean being a boy, which in effect meant I told Charlie the whole sordid story of how Richard had come to purchase her.

He was silent for a while, staring into the bubbles of his glass before remarking, “Did you tell him about your inheritance?”

“What's that got to do with Jean's gender?” I asked hotly.

“Nothing, just a thought.” He continued to stare into his champagne as if he might divine something from the upward flow of tiny bubbles.

“Well, of course I told him, why wouldn't I? It's hardly a national secret.”

Charlie shrugged. His long legs were resting on the desk, he looked the very image of the relaxed gentleman as he took a small sip of his cordial. But I didn't like the tension that was crackling in the room, the tension of unasked questions and unspoken opinions, so I asked straight out, “Do you have a problem with Richard or something?”

He looked me straight in the eye as he replied, “Or something.”

“Don't be cryptic, Charlie, just say what's on your mind.”