The One Before the One (9 page)

Martin used to tell me that, too.

The man behind the reception of the Malmaison has a bleached blond crop and a name badge that says ‘Antoine’.

‘Alors
 …’ He scans a computer screen. ‘Mr and Mrs …?’

‘Steele,’ I say.

Toby squeezes my hand. It’s the first time he’s held my hand in public and it feels lovely: protective and reassuring.

‘Bon,
Mr and Mrs Steele. Welcome to the Malmaison Lond-on.’ He hands me a key. ‘You are Room 314, which is just up on ze zerd floor, turn to your right and three doors alon-g.’ I can see Toby staring at him. Surely he is putting it on? Nobody has a French accent that strong.

‘Would you like a newspaper in the mornings?’ Antoine looks at me, then at Toby, who looks at me. I go red.

‘Um, maybe just tomorrow. We’re just here for the one night,’ I say.

‘Of course, sorry, just the one night. Très bi-en,’ says Antoine, slowly stapling some sort of receipt together and looking us up and down from beneath his pierced eyebrow. ‘
Pas de probleme. Pas de probleme du tout.’

Antoine flounces from behind the reception area and shows us into the lift, where Toby and I promptly burst out laughing.

‘You is ’ere just for ze massive shag?’

‘Stop it! There might be cameras in here!’ I squeal, putting my hand over his mouth.

‘Monsieur Steele, ’e ’as un grand one?’

‘Pack it in, Toby,’ I say, creasing up. ‘I’m gonna wet myself!’

The room is huge, softly lit, with an exposed brick wall behind a gigantic bed and bed linen in muted tones of stone and taupe. A huge rosewood wardrobe stands beside a similarly imposing dressing table. There is a bottle of mineral water by our bed and a small box of chocolates.

We open the door to the bathroom and swoon: monochrome sleekness, free-standing bath, shower head the size of a dinner plate.

‘Post-coital power shower, baby,’ says Toby.

‘Really?’ I say, excited. ‘Was thinking more of a bath.’

Toby walks into the bedroom and turns around slowly.

‘Steeley, you have surpassed yourself,’ he says, opening his arms widely.

‘Do you think so? Do you like it?’ I say, hugging him.

Despite everything, the excitement today has been killing me; turning me deranged. I’ve been dropping everything, forgetting to forward messages, been completely unable to concentrate.

‘What the hell is
with
you today?’ said Shona eventually, after I’d left the stapler in the office fridge. It took all my strength not to just blurt out: Guess where I’m fucking well going after work? Only the fucking Malmaison Hotel with Toby fucking Delaney.
Arrgghh!

In front of Toby, however, I am determined to exude a slight air of intrigue, at least. ‘It was a stab in the dark, as it were,’ I say. ‘I just Googled “romantic hotels in London” and this one came up.’

‘I love it,’ he says, pushing me back on the bed. Looks like the air of intrigue isn’t going to last long.

‘Hang on a minute! I haven’t got my shoes off yet! I’m
going to get the duvet dirty!’ I squeal, batting him off as he covers my neck with kisses.

‘Since when did you worry about being dirty, CS?’ He takes one shoe off and flings the other across the room.

‘Now, let’s get these prissy little ballet shoes off, shall we? And this skirt and all these bloody …’ He gestures for me to lift my arms so he can take my top off.
‘Layers.
What is it with girls and layers? Because we are going to be getting really quite dirty.’ He unhinges the back of my bra and throws that across the room. ‘Very dirty indeed.’

‘So what do you reckon we should be reading today?’ mumbles Toby.

We’re lying naked, salty damp bodies entwined in one another, a shaft of evening sun warming the bed.

‘Why, is this like an extended book club, this overnight stay?’

‘Oh God, yeah,’ he says, still breathless. ‘My reading credentials tell me that was already of the highest, epic standard.’

‘Epic bonkbuster?’

‘Exactly, Steele.’ He laughs.

‘Mmm, I guess we should be reading
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
?’ I say, sleepily.

Toby laughs. ‘Very good. But how about
Madame Bovary
, since we’re in a French hotel?’

‘You’d have to poison me with arsenic, though, then watch me die a slow and painful death, which I don’t think would be too romantic. How about
Les Liaisons dangereuses?’
I suggest, stroking his chest hair.

‘
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
?’

‘Wow. We
have
come over all literary this evening.’

‘Yeah, fuck that,’ says Toby, rolling over to kiss me. ‘Is there a book version of
Debbie Does Dallas
?’

* * *

We order wine from room service, then take a candlelit bath, me leaning back on Toby’s chest as he gently strokes my hair. I feel divine, content, so relaxed it’s all I can do not to fall asleep.

‘I feel like Julia Roberts in
Pretty Woman
,’ I murmur.

‘What, like a hooker?’ asks Toby.

‘Charming. You’ve got all the lines, you have.’

Toby laughs, the vibrations of his voice sending shivers down my back to my feet.

‘Why do you say that anyway?’ he says.

‘Because there’s a scene where she and Richard Gere take a bath, a candlelit bath like this, it’s all very romantic.’

‘So what happens then?’

‘Well, they cross the boundary of client–prostitute, I guess. They form a relationship. They fall in love.’

He doesn’t say anything. There’s just the sound of rippling water as I sway my knees from side to side. Then, Toby says, ‘Well, you’re my pretty woman, anyway,’ and I turn my face to kiss him.

‘Thanks, but I cost a bomb,’ I say. ‘I’m extortionate, actually.’

‘I bet you are. But you’re gorge, so you’re worth it.’

‘Who are you now?’ I laugh. ‘Cheryl Cole?’

We kiss, drink wine, and Toby washes my hair. Then we chat in the bath for what seems like hours, until the water is cool and the sky we can see through the window fades to a dusky blue. The only light is candlelight.

Toby tops up the hot water with his toe again and I sink down further in the deliciously soapy water, feeling the wine and a sudden burst of happiness surge through my veins. I seize it. I am determined to enjoy the moment. I know that soon, like a drug addict coming down, the paranoia and guilt will set in and the reality of what I’m doing will hit me. For now though, here with Toby, I can pretend this is a film. I can live in the moment.

Tonight is the first night that Toby and I will spend the whole night together and the web of lies is growing thicker by the second.

‘It’s book club tomorrow night,’ I told Lexi whilst she sat painting her toenails last night. (Since the pregnancy scare, she’s been lying very low.) This was LIE 1.

‘And it’s being held at Angela’s house in Barnet.’ LIE 2 AND 3, since Angela doesn’t exist and she certainly doesn’t live in Barnet.

‘Oh, okay, so what does that mean?’ asked Lexi.

‘It means I’ll be staying over and not coming home.’ LIE 4.

‘Who’s Angela?’

‘She works in the post room so you won’t have met her.’ LIE 5.

Then I drank almost a bottle of wine to myself because the lying made me feel so agitated, but now, just in this moment, it all seems so worth it.

Spending the night together seems like a huge milestone in mine and Toby’s relationship, and yet the fact I call it a ‘relationship’ at all also seems like a milestone – one that shouldn’t really have been reached at all. When the snogging first happened, I could convince myself it was short-lived, a blip. I could stop any time I wanted to – I just didn’t want to yet.

It was a bit like a smoker who convinces themselves that if they only do it when they drink, then they’re not a smoker at all. The book club was for two hours, once a fortnight, for God’s sake. An appointment at the hygienist had more spontaneity and romance. Plus, this was how I liked it, didn’t I? He had a wife, so I couldn’t get involved if I tried. After the casualties that followed Martin – Mark and Nathan and Garf – this was all I could handle, and it was perfect. All the thrill of the sex, someone to flirt with at work but without the commitment.

But lately, especially since Lexi arrived and made the logistics of the book club difficult so that we have had to decamp to romantic French hotels, it feels like our relationship’s been stepped up a gear without me even realizing.

Of course, any sensible person might have marked the day their sister arrived on their doorstep needing guidance as the day they stop ‘extra-curricular’ activities. Ordinarily, that would be exactly what I would do, but that’s before emotions were involved, that was before I accepted I was actually having an affair. Now I feel like there are four things I know about this (and about a million that I don’t):

That last bit
definitely
wasn’t supposed to happen.

In fact, I think as I lie here, feeling Toby’s hands caress me, the rise and fall of his chest beneath my head, that of all the people in all the world, I could safely say that my friends would consider me: Woman Least Likely to Have an Affair with a Married Man.

I have far too big a guilt complex, for a start. My brother always said I should have been born a Catholic. I am the sort of person who on hearing a police siren, becomes convinced it’s me they’re on their way to arrest for that arson attack I must have committed several years ago but which my memory has clearly erased. As teenagers, my friend Pippa tried to embroil me in shoplifting – it was Anti-Capitalist, she said; Dorothy Perkins had loads more money than we did and, therefore, why should we ever pay for anything they sold? It made sense when we were fourteen, but I just couldn’t do it. The one time I attempted to nick some bangles, I got
as far as the next shop, broke out in hives, then had to go back and say that I’d just recovered from brain surgery and, therefore, had forgotten to pay. Pippa was not impressed.

So there’s all that – the fact I am what an investment broker might call ‘utterly risk averse’, along with the small matter that my mother’s entire life was ruined by someone like me; someone who slept with married men. It’s the reason her insides are like the roots of an ancient tree, they’re so gnarled up with bitterness.

So, how am I
doing
this? How did this
happen?
And why, if I am so controlled in all other areas of my life, can’t I make this stop?

And … zoom out. And … zoom in. Rachel’s chin normal, Rachel’s chin(s) huge.

And … Zoom out … And …

Oh.

It’s only when my mobile vibrates that I realize it’s been lodged between the sun lounger and my left buttock for approximately an hour.

I can just read ‘mum’ beneath the film of sweat.

‘Hi, Mum, how are you?’

‘Oh, hello. It’s only your old mum – I’m not interrupting anything am I?’

No, no. Was only on Facebook blowing my lover’s wife’s face up.

‘No, no. I’m just in the garden, sunning myself,’ is what I actually say.

‘That’s nice. I’m glad one of us is getting the chance to relax. [Note the martyrdom; anyone would think Mum was calling from the spike she sleeps on.] You always seem so busy, so hard to pin down.’

Shit!
She rang five days ago and I never called her back.

‘Well, I have been
extremely
busy, Mum,’ I backtrack. ‘I still am. In fact, I’m sitting here in the garden with the laptop
on my knee, working whilst I sun myself. Also, I’ve had a visitor for a while …’

‘What,
Martin?’

The excitement in her voice is just heartbreaking.

Since Martin and I broke up, Mum has lived in hope that he’ll change his mind. That’s because, like Lexi, Mum thinks it was his decision to call off the wedding. She adored Martin – Martin being the kind of capable, solid man she should have married instead of my dad, and I haven’t had the heart (or the guts) to tell her that it was
I
who rejected him. In the circumstances, you’d think she’d assume he was a total bastard who left her darling daughter in the lurch. Not so. On hearing the wedding was off, her words, verbatim, were: ‘Well, what did you do? You must have done
something.’

‘No, not Martin. Lexi’s here for the summer,’ I say. I wish I hadn’t.

‘Oh, don’t tell me! Your father and the She Devil have gallivanted off to one of their witchcraft meetings [Mum has gone literal on the demonizing front], dumping Alexis with you?’

‘Well, sort of.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. That man is
unbelievable.
In fact, the two of them are just abominable. Utterly selfish. No sense of duty.’

‘It’s not all Dad’s doing, Mum. Lexi wanted to come. Dad said she needed a bit of support.’

‘Needed? Don’t talk to
me
about needs. I had my needs un-met
for twenty-two years married to your father …’
I can pretty much mouth it these days. ‘It’s any wonder you turned out as okay as you did, although you obviously didn’t get off scot-free. Nobody’s single at thirty-two for no good reason.’

Good old Mum. I can always count on her to make me feel like I am an emotionally scarred freak destined never to
be able to form normal relationships due to my philandering father.

‘Mm, well never mind. Anyway, how’s you?’ I say, changing the subject. ‘How are the Lovely Ladies of Harrogate?’

The Lovely Ladies of Harrogate are more the Separatist Spurned Sisters of Harrogate, bonded in their bitterness and acute hatred of men. Mum spends most of her time with them.

‘Oh fine, we’re all battling on. We don’t have much choice, do we? Life goes on.’ [Does it? She seems to have been stuck in the same bitter mind-set for seventeen years now.] ‘Anyway, when are you coming up?’

‘Erm …’ Oh God. I knew that was coming.

‘Because you did say May, then it was June, and now it’s July.’

‘August, I’ll definitely come up in August.’

‘Okay, it’s just I won’t have seen you for eight months by the time August comes around.’

Oh, here we go. All aboard the Guilt Trip. It’s not that I don’t want to see my mum as such, even if she does make me feel like a dysfunctional freak who’ll never have a normal relationship (a therapist once called it projection), it’s just, the thought of going to see her in that depressing dormer bungalow she rattles around in where seventeen years of bitterness seem to ooze from the furniture doesn’t exactly fill me with glee.

‘I promise August, Mum, okay? And I would have to bring Lexi.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose you’ll have much choice since her own parents don’t seem to care where she is.’

‘You could come here,’ I say.

‘Oh no, there’s nowhere to park and you know me and driving in London.’

Not that she’s ever tried it in ten years of me living here.

‘Your dad always used to do the driving, I’ve never been very confident.’

‘Yes, I know, Mum. I know that’s difficult for you.’

‘Well, I’ll look up train times then, shall I? Maybe if I book one in advance, you’ll get it cheaper. We could go for lunch with the Ladies?’

‘Yes, Mum, that would be lovely.’ Although last time I went for lunch with the Ladies, Brenda went on for an hour about how she beheaded her ex-husband’s prize chrysanthemums after she found out he’d been unfaithful to her. Maybe this time she’ll confess she actually beheaded
him.

I eventually get rid of Mum, close the laptop and sink back down on the lounger. It’s the most beautiful summer’s day. Blue skies, the smell of sweet peas in the air, the odd hum of an aeroplane coming into Gatwick, and I’m here embroiled in self-torture on Toby’s Facebook page. Sad, sad cow. God, I miss him now. I miss him so much at the weekend when I can’t see or call him and I know he’ll be at Kew Gardens or swanning down the Southbank when I’m sitting here obsessing over photos of him and his wife. The thing that gets me is that it doesn’t actually add up, although I’ve never brought this up with him – the less asked the better, I think. The way he tells it, Rachel is some kind of militant wife who never has time for them as a couple, but the page is full of photos of them having a good time: diving in some far off place, heads poking out of a tent, chins cupped in their hands, New Year’s Eve …

‘’Iya!’ The pitter patter of flip-flops on the garden steps. That’ll be Lexi back from the newsagent’s.

She stands over me clutching a copy of the
Guardian
and a pint of milk.

‘What you doing?’ she asks.

‘Oh, just a bit of work.’

‘Hey, guess who I saw in the shop?’

‘Who?’

‘Wayne!’

‘Ah, yes, now we need to talk about Wayne,’ I say, as she sits on the end of the sun lounger, blocking out the sun. ‘I think after the Tristan Banks fiasco that I should meet Wayne.’

‘He’d love that. He’s the best. Very laid-back. I feel I can tell him anything. What about tonight?’ she says, excitedly. ‘I could ring him now!’

‘I can’t tonight. I’m going out with a friend.’

‘Oooh,’ she says. ‘A friend? Likely story. You’re on Match.com, aren’t you?’ She grabs the laptop. ‘You sly little fox.’

‘Give me that!’ I say, snatching it from her. ‘I certainly am not. It’s Martin, actually.’

She rolls her eyes at me and groans.

‘Why you seeing him? You’re mental, you are. He dumped you and you want to be his best friend? I don’t get it.’

Tell her now, why don’t you just tell her now? The words are on the tip of my tongue, but for some reason they just won’t topple out and, just like the situation with Mum, the longer I leave it, the harder it is.

‘Look, grown-up relationships are complicated,’ I say. ‘It’s not black and white. You’ll see when you get older.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ she says, getting up and going into the kitchen. ‘It’ll all end in tears! You just listen to Lexi, she may be seventeen but she does know some stuff.’

The Duke of Cambridge pub is one of those London ‘gastropubs’ that gets away with charging twenty-five quid a main course just because it has flocked wallpaper and a chef who ‘trained with’ Marco Pierre White (i.e., probably went to Scouts with).

Martin’s standing outside when I get there, ten minutes late. (Martin believes it’s rude to sit down at a table before your female companion has arrived. So sweet and gentlemanly, but
sometimes I just wish he would, so I wouldn’t feel so bad about my persistent, low-level tardiness – a chromosomal blip in an otherwise thoroughly anal DNA profile.)

He’s got his hands in his pockets and is rocking back and forth on his heels, which I know to be an expression of strained patience.

‘Sorry, Lexi was in the bathroom for ages so I couldn’t get ready and then the phone went just as I was leaving and—’

Martin ruffles my hair. He knows I can’t just say, sorry I’m late. (*Note to self: must work on this.) ‘Come on, let’s eat, shall we?’

The pub’s packed, mainly full of the Sloaney Chelsea types – the girls with their ballet pumps and fringed scarves, the SW11 boys with their Pink shirts – with the odd, cool Bohemian thrown in. Possibly from the nearby houseboats moored just off Battersea Square.

We decide to have an aperitif in the bar before dinner. It was a ritual we followed when we used to come here as boyfriend and girlfriend, which was pretty much every weekend: Kir Royale, followed by wine with dinner and then a Quarante Tres as digestif, and since neither of us are great fans of change, it’s a ritual we’ve stuck by.

‘Great look, by the way,’ says Martin, into my ear, putting his hand on my back as we’re standing at the bar.

‘Do you think so? You don’t think my hips are too big to wear a pencil skirt like this?’

‘No. You’ve got gorgeous hips.’

‘Not too Miss Jean Brodie?’

‘Too who? No, you look a million dollars.’

‘But what about the blouse – you once said that Pussy Bow blouses were the work of the devil.’

Martin frowns. ‘Did I? Well, I suppose it depends who’s wearing it. Like I said, I think you look great.’

Martin doesn’t look too bad himself tonight. It can go one
of two ways with Martin, depending on the shirt and the facial hair situation. When he’s got a couple of days growth of stubble, it disguises his rapidly developing thirty-something slack jawline, and when he’s got a good shirt on, like tonight – a navy blue number over well-cut dark jeans – it disguises his rapidly developing thirty-something waistline. So, he looks good tonight, handsome. A cuddly bear kind of handsome, but handsome all the same.

We get our drinks and sit down in the conservatory, which is filled, as conservatories should be, with cheese plants and wicker furniture.

‘So, this is nice, we haven’t done this for ages, have we?’ says Martin brightly, straightening his shirt.

‘Well, I thought you were officially under the thumb what with P on the scene,’ I say, looking at him coyly over the top of my glass.

I’ve been dying to ask him about Polly since we bumped into them in Battersea Park, but there’s never been a good time. I thought he might offer information the last time we met, but then I didn’t probe for any information since I was far too wrapped up in my lost little sister – something I feel a bit bad about now. Still, he did turn up that evening as soon as I called, so I’d begun to wonder if I’d read the situation wrong.

‘Polly’s just a friend,’ says Martin. A friend? Oh. I try not to smile.

‘Oh, but you looked kind of close when we saw you in the park together the other day.’

‘She goes to the same pastry class as me’

I can’t help it, I burst out laughing.

‘What? You bonded over shortcrust?’

‘Yeah, something like that. Why what’s it to you?’

‘Nothing I just …’

‘Come on, you know you’re dying to say it, so you may as well spit it out.’

‘She just looks like the sort of girl who might go to a pastry class, that’s all.’

Martin laughs. ‘And what, Caroline Steele, is that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing! She’s just, sort of homely.’

‘Fat?’

‘No! Not fat.’ (Yes, fat!) ‘Domesticated-looking. Domestic Goddess.’

‘Mumsy?’

‘No!’ (Yes, mumsy!) ‘Warm. That’s what I meant to say. Warm and friendly and really approachable.’

‘Well, she is,’ he says. I’m aware of a prickling up my back. ‘Warm, approachable. All of the above.’

‘Not the uptight ice-maiden that I am then, evidently?’

‘Did I say that?’ We’re both laughing now but both of us know it’s in a nervous, loaded kind of a way.

The waiter calls us to a table. A candlelit one at the far end of the modern, high-ceilinged gastropub. There’s a hatch right behind us, where bombastic French chefs are shouting out orders – all adding to the relaxed charm of the place, or so I thought.

We sit down. The waiter goes to put Martin’s napkin on his knee but by the way Martin’s pursing his lips, I know what’s about to come.

‘Sorry, I …’ He puts both hands up, like expecting us to sit here is akin to putting us in the laundry room to eat. ‘Would it be a problem if we moved?’ he says. I roll my eyes. ‘It’s just … Caroline, what do you think?’

‘I’m fine here.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Oh, well I’m not. I’m sorry.’ He grimaces apologetically. ‘It’s too noisy with the hatch so close and the plates clattering.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, this is the only free table. We’re fully booked,’ says the waiter.

This is a rigmarole we used to go through practically every time Martin and I went for dinner. If I am anal about everything else, Martin makes up for it ten-fold with his seating-in-restaurants and food obsessions. He once moved not once, not twice, but three times in a restaurant we then had to stop going to and Martin has been known to serve Christmas dinner at midnight, so anal is he about the ‘perfect chestnut stuffing’.

That’s possibly why we worked. Or didn’t. I could never make up my mind. I would certainly say there was empathy where Martin and I were concerned. Both of us as bad as each other but in our own separate ways, which is why Martin has never once, ever, suggested I ‘just chill out’, something I love him for.

‘Look, Martin, it’s fine, let’s not …’

‘Nope. No. Sorry we’ll
have
to move.’

‘You can sit
here
if you like.’ We turn round to see a man with dirty-blond, thick hair and wearing an awful, baggy jumper, standing up from his table. ‘We’re going.’

He’s with a tiny, dark-haired woman who hasn’t taken her jacket off and who is still sitting at the table, looking down at a full plate.