The Adultery Club (10 page)

I’ve got to say, this is all messing with my head a bit. I’ve never had a man get under my skin like this; I’m not sure I like it. I just wish to God I knew what it is about Nick that’s clicking my mouse.

Professionally, he’s confident, surefooted; arrogant, even. I’ve seen him wring concessions from other lawyers that make our clients want to cast his image in gold—and after Nick’s finished with their exes, they can afford to. What’s more, he knows how good he is, which is
so
erotic. When he’s in full flow, tearing the opposition a new arsehole, I almost feel scared of him myself. Certainly in awe. A brilliant older man at the height of his power, secure and certain of himself—yep, knicker-wetting, no doubt about it.

Then there’s the other Nick, so frigging hopeless with women, acting as if he wouldn’t begin to know his way around a bedroom;
blushing
, even.

And of course he’s totally, but
totally
, off limits. Married, kids, way older than me, and my boss to boot.

Oh, this is
so
not a good combination. And it so
is
.

I could’ve kissed that lech Fisher when he gave me this Manchester gig, except I’d never prise him off me again. Finally, the chance to scratch the itch that is Nick. So I pulled out all the stops for this evening. The Donna Karan dress set me back a month’s salary—shit, sweet Nick,
no
, I’m not “going out” anywhere afterward—but way worth it. I borrowed the scarlet Jimmy Choos from Amy—two sizes too small, but this is the twenty-first century: Ugly sisters with big feet get to go to the ball too, or we’ll sue. Between them, the dress and shoes did most of the work—with a little help from my Wonderbra—but Nick’s so bloody clueless, he couldn’t flirt to save his tightly clenched arse. Which meant I’ve had to do it all this evening: draw him out, get him to
talk about himself, guide us back onto safe conversational territory whenever he got nervous—and then cut the ground out from under him with the tried-but-true crumbs-down-the-cleavage trick. (About the only food I actually ate tonight. I’m bloody starving: I didn’t want to eat too much and put him off. Men hate women with an appetite.)

OK, it’s all antifeminist crap straight from
The Rules;
but then let’s face it, so are men. I can impress him later with my sparkling intellect and flair for case law. The way to a man’s heart is straight through his ego via his dick: which is what this evening has been all about.

The question is: Have I pulled it off?

Only one way to find out. Since he now seems to have lost the power of speech altogether, I stand up, throwing down the bedroom gauntlet with a final flourish.

Do something, Nick
. I’m out on a limb here, and it’s bloody windy—

Alleluia, he stands up with me. “I think,” he says hesitantly, “I think—”

The phone in his pocket rings.

Oh, shit. Not his wife, please, not now. Not when I’m
this
close.

“Good evening, George—no, absolutely not, not too late at all.” Nick mouths
Wainwright
at me, and I breathe again. Our client. It’s nearly midnight, but you can’t blame the man for being nervous; his whole future is on the line tomorrow. “How can I help? Of course, fire away—”

It’s only the usual last-minute panic-and-reassurance Q&A; but ten minutes later, as Nick snaps shut his phone, I suddenly realize from the rigid set of his shoulders and the shutters screening those muddy eyes that I’ve lost him. It’s more than the moment having passed. He’s just had a brief
encounter with the Ghost of Divorce Future—all custody battles, maintenance checks, bedsits, and Ramen Noodles—and it’s terrified him shitless. No doubt he sees that phone call as a Nick-of-time reminder of all he has to lose.
Fuck, fuck, and double fuck
.

Or rather, not.

So, isn’t this lovely
. A happy family Christmas with Ma and Pa, a mixed-nuts selection of uncles, aunts, and cousins, various freeloading friends and neighbors and—I’ve stepped into Bridget Jones hell—their “eligible” collective offspring; not forgetting, of course, the vicar. Who is wearing a paisley Laura Ashley smock, a fashion crime rendered only slightly less shocking by the fact that she is at least a woman. Or so we are given to understand. It’s a little hard to tell.

All I need now is for Colin Firth to turn up wearing a hand-knitted sweater featuring Christmas trees and robins.

Actually, that
is
all I need. That, and a right good—

“Sara, love, there you are! It’s all right, Muriel, I’ve found her, she’s by the sausage rolls. Did you drop something, dear? Almost didn’t see you there behind the sofa. No? Well, out you come then.”

“Pearl, sorry, no, actually I was just on my way to the—”

“That’s
Auntie
Pearl to you, Little Miss All-Grown-Up!”

Great-Auntie
, if we’re going to be picky.

I smile weakly. “Sorry, I—”

I’m enveloped in a hug reeking of eau-de-mothball and menopause. “Not too old to give your auntie a kiss at least, I hope? That’s a good girl. Oh, dear, your hair really
is
very short, isn’t it, lovey? You look like a boy. Your mum did warn me. Never mind, it’ll grow back. Now, then, stop
skulking in a corner and come and say hello to everyone. No need to be shy.”

Actually, having to say hello to everyone is precisely
why
I’m skulking in a corner, and trust me, shyness has never been the problem. I cut my teeth on the boys in this room, and from the way most of them are either (a) glaring at or (b) studiously avoiding me, I’d guess they’re still nursing the bite marks.

My mother has been throwing her Christmas Day soirées since the days when I still believed that having an old man in red pajamas sneaking into your bedroom at night with presents was a good thing. It combines her two favorite occupations: showing off (to the down-market relatives) and social climbing (with the up-market neighbors). It also gives her a very good excuse to replace the carpet every January because of wine stains.

God knows why my father goes along with it. Poor Dad. He hates parties. He usually slopes off to the greenhouse with Uncle Denny once HRH has addressed the nation, where they while away the afternoon leering over the collection of soft porn Dad thinks no one knows he keeps in a plastic bag under the cucumber cloches. Way to go, Dad; though I’m not sure about the
Busty Beauties
mags. Some of those girls look positively deformed.

Every Christmas the usual suspects pitch up clutching their homemade trifles and hideous poinsettias (what
is
it with these loathsome minitriffids?) plus or minus the odd newborn/granny at either end of the mortal coil. Which means that over the years, I’ve played Snakes and Ladders, doctors and nurses, Monopoly, PlayStation, blackjack, and doctors and nurses again, with the same assortment of cousins and neighbors’ sons. In fact, due to extreme amorous
laziness on my part, at one point or another I’ve dated most of them, for periods ranging from an hour to a year. These annual festive get-togethers are an excruciating exhumation of my romantic roadkill.

First was Gareth, who, every time he met my parents, hugged my dad and shook hands with my mother. He was a bit odd, to be honest. I told him I loved kittens, and he took me to see a lion cub at the zoo. And he zigzagged when he mowed the lawn.

Mark had even smaller nostrils than me. Our children would have had gills. I dumped him forty minutes after our first snog before one of us suffocated.

Cousin Jonathan was—and still is—the most gorgeous man I’ve ever dated; a less stroppy Jude Law. He came out three weeks after we started seeing each other—Jonathan, that is. I suppose I should have guessed when I signed us up for a dirty dancing course at the Y, and he asked if they offered ballet.

Daryl was sweet. But dim. I told him I needed space and he spring-cleaned my wardrobe.

And then there was Andrew. Women have a dozen mental channels, and manage to keep all their thoughts separate in their heads. Andrew had only two. The first: “Can I get sex out of this?” And the second: “I’m hungry.” Quite often, the two coincided rather nicely.

Andrew and I lasted almost a year purely because of the sex. It was sensational. No problems with that side of our relationship at all. Unfortunately, there weren’t any other sides. Things were very simple with Andrew. When he said: “You have beautiful eyes,” he meant
I want sex
. When he told me I had a pretty smile, he meant
I want sex
. It didn’t take a Ph.D. to master the lingo.

Trouble was, he didn’t believe in limiting classroom size. I wanted one man to fulfill my every need. Andrew wanted every woman to fulfill his one.

I’m guessing—from Auntie Pearl’s sotto voce infomercial that having just obtained his second divorce at the age of thirty-one, Andrew is newly eligible, “so it’s not too late, love”—that he hasn’t changed in the six years since I caught him teaching linguistics to Mrs. Newcombe-from-two-doors-down’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Libby, in my parents’ bed.

Looking around, it’s clear I’m the tribal bike. But frankly, I think the number of notches on my bedpost is fairly modest, all things considered. It’s not my fault that three quarters of them are currently in the same room.

Oh, God. And Martin. I’d forgotten about Martin. And let me tell you, that hasn’t been easy.

If English schools did those American yearbook things, Martin would be voted Most Likely to Die Alone. Put it this way: If he were on fire, I’d toast marshmallows.

“Well, hell-ooo,” Martin says to my breasts.

Nice glasses, Martin. I particularly like the
Star Wars
Band-Aid holding them together. Neat touch.

“Sorry, just leaving—”

“Leaving? I thought you were staying the night?”

I pull the half-chewed piece of coronation chicken that has just fallen out of his wet mouth from my cleavage. Trust me, this time I’m not doing it for erotic effect. “I am, but I—er—just have to check in with the office; no reception on my mobile—have to go outside—”

“It’s Christmas Day. Isn’t the office shut?”

“Yes, it is, but I’m the—ah—duty solicitor. Lot of divorces at Christmas. All that family time. And indigestion, often a trigger.”

“Really? I never realized. Well, we must catch up some time,” he calls after me as I leg it toward the back door. “Pick up where we left off, hmm, hmm?”

Where exactly
did we
leave off? For the life of me, I can’t remember. Little shit probably used a roofie.

I’m halfway up the back garden before it clicks that it’s four o’clock on a December afternoon and I’m wearing thin silk jersey and a fixed smile.

Shivering, I plonk myself down on the stone bench beside my mother’s new “water feature,” a hideous stone abortion that would be spouting fluid from every orifice if it wasn’t frozen solid.

I stamp my feet to get the blood flowing and blow on my hands just as it starts to drizzle. Oh, God, what am I
doing
here? My life sucks. I’m twenty-six years old, with my own job, flat, friends and glow-in-the-dark vibrator, and here I am spending Christmas Day shivering in my parents’ back garden with assorted pieces of faux classic statuary.

There was a glorious window somewhere between sweet sixteen and a year or two ago, when all my friends were single too and we’d spend Christmas skiing in France, surfing in Oz, getting fucked in Phuket. It never occurred to me that it’d ever
end
. Suddenly they’ve all paired off, some of them even have kids, and most of the time I
so
couldn’t care less; but at Christmas, how can you help but notice you’re
still
on your own? So it’s either a turkey Ready Meal for one in front of the
Only Fools and Horses Christmas Special
or a trip back to the suburban shag-pile-and-pelmeted mock-Tudor nest, where I fit as seamlessly back into my childhood landscape as a Shiite in a synagogue.

Oh, why the fuck does Nick have to be married? And why did I have to let him get to me like this? And why, in the
name of Manolo, does he have to be the one married man on the planet apart from my dad who’s faithful to his wife?

I don’t even try to kid myself we can pick up where we (almost) left off, once the country reopens for business after Christmas. You can’t reheat a soufflé.

Nick called my room the next morning to say that the other side had abruptly caved—“Never mind, Sara, the work wasn’t wasted.
Si vis pacem, para bellum:
If you seek peace, prepare for war”—and he’d be on the next train home as soon as he’d completed the relevant paperwork. Back to his dippy wife with a heartfelt sigh of relief at his lucky escape from the office Jezebel, no doubt. I didn’t even see him check out.

Even now he’s probably carving a perfectly cooked, moist turkey at the head of a groaning table as his three pretty little girls excitedly pull Christmas crackers in their clean new party dresses. Beneath the exquisitely decorated tree (real, natch) in the corner is a heap of still-unopened presents, carefully rationed to prevent overexcitement. “Hark the Herald Angels” is playing quietly on the sound system. On the sideboard, a bottle of Chateau Latour ’85 is breathing. And upstairs, on
her
pillow, ready for when the children have gone to bed, is the tiny velvet box containing—oh, God.
Enough, already
.

The drizzle suddenly turns into a downpour. Martin is still lurking in the rockery near the kitchen waiting for me, so I make a run for the greenhouse. It’s in total darkness as I burst in; it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. It smells of damp earth and compost and dead spiders. Dad is at the far end near the potting shelves, and with an inward smile I make a big show of flapping out my rainsoaked
skirt to give him and Uncle Denny time to hide the porn magazines.

But it isn’t Uncle Denny who shuffles past me with an embarrassed murmur a few moments later.

It’s Libby, Mrs. Newcombe-from-two-doors-down’s daughter.

“She sneaked me out
a piece of chocolate cake,” Dad says, handing me the crumb-strewn plate. “You know your mother’s got me on another of her bloody diets—” He breaks off as he catches sight of my expression. “Why, what did you think she was doing in here? Slipping out for a quick bit of nookie with your old man?”