A Minor Indiscretion (23 page)

I
put the phone down and turn to face Christian. “Ed wants us to have the children for the weekend.”

“All weekend?” Christian's voice has gone up an octave. He is lying on the sofa in the kitchen and immediately swings his feet round and sits up in the manner of a man who's just had an awful shock.

“Yes. Isn't that great?”

“Oh no,” Christian wails. “That's terrible.”

“No, no,” I try to reassure him. “That's good. It means that Ed is starting to accept things.” I'm not sure about this even as I say it.

“Why can't he have them?”

“He's going away,” I say absently. “On business.”

“Where to?”

“I didn't ask,” I admit.

“But the whole weekend, Ali?” Christian tosses aside his music magazine. “Two hours in McDonald's was bad enough.”

“You don't have to come,” I say breezily and put on my face that says, “If you loved me, you'd damn well come!”

“Where will we take them? What will we do?”

“Let me worry about that,” I say airily, thinking: Where will we take them? What will we do?

“We've got packing and stuff to do.”

“How long can it take to throw a few pairs of shorts in a case? There's nothing there but sand, you said so yourself. My holidays are usually like military operations,” I say. “You forget I'm used to packing for five.”

“But it's Friday, already. We might have had things planned.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know.” Christian spread his hands. “Couldn't he have let us know earlier?”

“So that you could have planned to flee the country?”

We both laugh. “You're a hard woman, Ali Kingston,” Christian says and pulls me down onto the sofa next to him, spanking me playfully on my bottom as he does.

I pout my best soft, pouty pout. “I want you to like them,” I say. “I want them to like you.”

“I'll try,” Christian promises, and that's all I want.

“I know this isn't easy.” I kiss the tip of his nose. “But they're part of the deal.”

“Maybe I should have read the small print first before I signed up?” he says with a smile that barely reaches his mouth, let alone his eyes. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. He kisses me, and any doubts I feel for the future or for spending a weekend with my own children are quelled by the passion of his embrace.

 

“You're going away with another woman!” Neil shrieked in surprise, spraying the froth from the top of his beer.

“Sssh!” Ed looked round. The barmaid had inched closer. It was lunchtime and the Groucho Club was crowded. “It's business.”

“Bollocks,” Neil said.

“It is.”

“Monkey business.”

“Orla thought it would be a good idea,” Ed said.

“I bet she did!”

“Look, Neil,” Ed reasoned, “you said yourself that I was a free agent.”

Neil frowned. “Edward. Since when have you ever listened to a word I've said?”

“I'm taking your advice. I'm going with the flow.”

“That was to go with the flow when it involved the soft, nice, squishy stream of Miss Nicola nursery-school teacher Jones, not the torrential battering of Ms. Ball-breaker Orla the 'Orrible.”

“It's no good telling me that now,” Ed said. “And, anyway, Orla's okay once you get to know her.”

“Which you no doubt will if you're going to be ensconced with her for the weekend.” Neil frowned at his beer. “And what does Ali think of this new departure?”

“She doesn't know,” Ed admitted. “I told her it was a business trip. But then I hardly feel I have to take Alicia's feelings into account after she announced that she's going to the other side of the world with the toy boy.” He gulped at his beer.

“Is she?”

Ed wiped the froth from his lip. “Maldives.”

“Really? It's supposed to be very romantic….”

“Don't think about going there, Neil,” Ed warned.

“…in a sandy sort of way,” his brother added quickly.

“Alicia hates sand,” Ed said thoughtfully.

“Well, there you go, mate.” Neil clapped his brother on the back cheerfully. “She'll have a crap time.”

Ed looked rueful. “And me?”

“Cancel it, Ed.”

“I can't.”

“She'll understand.”

“She won't. She's only just about forgiven me for making her fall in the canal.”

“It's your marriage that's at stake here.”

“I'm not sure that it's in Orla's interests for it to continue.”

“And yours?”

If things didn't work out with Alicia and, at the moment, that looked somewhere between slim and remote, then Orla was his lifeline, his escape route, his tunnel out to better things. He could put all this behind him, start afresh in a different, more glamorous life. A life where the sun would shine every day and people wouldn't take the piss out of him for talking about Harrison Ford.

“This is so unfair, Edward. I can't get hold of a decent woman and here you are, still technically married, and you've got them stacking up like junk mail.” Neil tipped some peanuts into his
hand and tossed them into his mouth, snapping it shut. “Life is constantly cruel,” he moaned.

It was, Ed agreed. The one woman he wanted was about to pack her bucket and spade and increase the distance between them even further.

I
'm standing in the kitchen of my own home, feeling like a stranger. A stranger who's just made a bad smell. The kids are sitting quietly at the table—even Elliott—and my kids just don't do quiet. Ed is fidgeting, and I can feel my irritation rising. He is wearing his coat already and his weekend bag is at his feet, and I resist the temptation to ask him if he's sure he's got everything. He's chewing his fingernails, which drives me barmy, and he's been doing it for fifteen minutes.

“I thought I'd be gone by the time you got here,” he says for the millionth time.

“It doesn't matter,” I say. “Does it?”

Ed glances out of the window. He seems very agitated.

“It's not like you to work at the weekends.”

“No,” Ed says and doesn't meet my glance.

“Shall I make a cup of tea?”

“I might not have time to drink it.”

“Oh,” I say. I'm trying to be bright and chirpy, but no one is helping me and the whole kitchen feels like an elastic band stretching to twanging point. “Do you mind if I make one?”

“No. No. Go ahead.”

This is my home. My kitchen. My kettle. My tea bags. And I'm asking if I can make a cup of tea! Except that it isn't really
my home anymore. It's more grimy than it was when I left it, and there are things left out on the work surfaces that should have been put away. I don't seem to feel comfortable anywhere anymore. I feel as if I'm in limbo, which is the outskirts of hell according to the Bible—which I would agree with, but I have no idea why it should produce such a strange breed of dancers.

Christian is concerned that I don't feel at home at his house. But then none of them seem to be particularly at home there either. They don't know how anything works—or care to. They don't clean it. They don't cosset it. Robbie doesn't really move from the sofa in the kitchen, and Rebecca, during the fleeting time she is there, never comes out of her bedroom. I mentioned to Christian that it might be the decoration—as every room, apart from the two which Christian has customized, has a sad, unloved air about it. The dining room is never used. It has cobwebs all over it, like something out of
Great Expectations,
but I haven't had the strength to tackle it yet. It takes me all my time to tidy up after the boys—so some things are exactly like home.

Christian's kitchen has neglect stamped all over it. When I went back there yesterday, he'd painted a six-foot mural of Lara Croft on the kitchen wall and was glowing with pride through his covering of emulsion. It is stunning. Though quite why he thought a gun-toting, large-breasted, scantily clad cartoon goddess would make it feel more homely is beyond me. He was anxious that I adore it and I do. I just have this thing about making spaghetti bolognese with a machine gun aimed at the back of my head and, no matter how hard I try, I can't help feeling somewhat attached to floral prints and pastel shades. I blame Kath Brown.

I fill the kettle and take a mug from the cupboard, mainly because it gives me something to do rather than out of a burning desire for the delights of PG Tips. “Why aren't you taking your car?” I ask Ed, again for something to say more than anything else.

“I…er…” he says and then stops and looks vacant.

“Who's collecting you?”

“I…er…” he says again and, at that moment, a large shiny car pulls into the drive.

An utterly, utterly gorgeous woman gets out and stands on my gravel. She is as sleek as her car and as slender as a reed. A reed that's been on the Vanessa Feltz
Let's Get Svelte
diet. For her entire life. She's wearing black jeans and a tan leather jacket that
shrieks expensive and a cream silk roll neck underneath. Her hair is piled up on her head and she's wearing trendy
Men in Black
sunglasses. She is doing casual like she's on a catwalk. When I do casual, I do it like I've just fallen out of bed.

Ed doesn't move. No one does. Only Elliott. He looks up and out of the window at the approaching woman. “That's Orville,” he informs me.

“Orla!” everyone else says.

Ed and I exchange glances. Orla taps at the back door and then walks straight in—which even I didn't feel comfortable about doing. She takes off her sunglasses, and her eyes are gorgeous too. They're like the blacked-out windows of a swanky limousine. They let the occupant see out, but are far too dark to let people on the outside know what's going on behind them. I hate her already and she hasn't even opened her mouth.

I look at Ed. Ed looks at Orla. Orla looks at me. I look back at Orla. Who looks at Ed. Ed blushes. “This is Alicia,” he mutters.

“Hi,” she says and folds her arms across her cleavage.

“What time does your conference start?” I ask, looking at Ed.

Ed looks at Orla. Orla looks at me. I look back at Orla. Who looks at Ed. Ed blushes even more. He could well burst a blood vessel at this rate. I hope. “I…er…”

“You don't want to be late,” I say.

I look at Ed. He looks at me. I look back at him. We don't need to speak—we've been married far too long for that. My eyes can convey every message I'll ever need and now they say, Business? Bollocks!

“No.” He snatches up his case.

“I take it you won't mind if Christian comes round here while you're away? On business,” I add.

“No,” he says with a look that translates as, Of course I bloody mind!

“Good.” I smile magnanimously and nurse my tea. “Nice to meet you, Orville,” I say.

“Orla,” Ed hisses.

He kisses the children hastily and rushes to Orla's side, taking her elbow, steering her to the back door.

“What shall I tell Nicola if she calls while you're away?” I ask as he leaves. His face is dark and stormy.

“Tell her I'll be back tomorrow.”

Before the door closes, I hear Orla saying, “Who the hell is Nicola?”

I cover my smirk, knowing I'm being childish. How is Orla to know that the only love interest Miss Jones has in this house is Elliott? It might give her something to think about while they're doing their “business.”

I sit down with my tea and my children. I don't know whether I want to laugh at our situation or cry. “It's nice to be home,” I say, and my voice sounds wobblier than Jell-O.

“There was an awful lot of looking going on,” Elliott observes.

“Was there?” I say.

“I can't wait until I get older and can do looks.” He smiles at the thought.

“You won't need to do ‘looks' when you're older, Elliott,” I say. “I'll have killed you by then.”

“You're the one who's going to get Daddy into trouble,” he advises me.

“Really?” I say. “Why?”

He leans toward me conspiratorially and lowers his voice. “I think Miss Jones stayed here all night.” Elliott puts his hand across his mouth and giggles. “In Daddy's bed.”

Tanya's head snaps up from her magazine. “Elliott, you little snitch. We don't know that for sure!”

The one good thing about having a son with a big mouth and no idea of discretion is that I get to hear everything. Eventually.

“But she might have done?” My voice isn't at all steady.

Tanya shrugs and retreats behind her glossy pages.

“I don't think Orville knows,” Elliott says. “And I don't think she'd like it.”

My hands have turned to ice, despite the warmth of my tea permeating through the cup. “She's not the only one,” I reply.

W
e have decided to take the children to a fairground, Christian and I. And it seemed like a really good idea at the time. But let's face it, a day that starts with you poking yourself in the eye with a mascara brush just isn't going to get better, is it?

And I couldn't find my rings this morning. Not that I wanted to wear them, but they were conspicuous by their absence, and the dusty ceramic dish on the bedside table was empty. I don't know where they are, and neither does Christian. But then men never know where anything is, do they? I expect I've put them in a safe place and as with all safe places, have totally, utterly and completely forgotten where.

Then, to top all that, I find out that my husband, even though he might almost be considered my ex-husband, has not one, but two young, pretty gorgeous women on the go which is a bit more than anyone could reasonably be expected to bear. And it's going to take a lot more than a bit of limp pink candy floss to sort my mood out, I can tell you.

I used to love fairgrounds when I was a child. Everything about them. I loved the smells and the noise and the flashing lights. They were places of excitement and daring, exotic and glamorous. I'm sure they were. Memory seems to have a very cruel way of playing tricks.

It's been raining for the past few days—when isn't it? Which means that the once green and pleasant playing field upon which the fairground has disgorged itself is now a sea of sticky brown mud with the odd tuft of flattened grass struggling through. It's a very small playing field, and all the stalls are cramped together, so that you can't help but walk on the mud. The skies are dark and moody, a bit like me, and the clouds roll across them like waves the color of tar. The cheery colors of the fairground, red, yellows and flashing neon struggle bravely against it, but prove themselves unequal to the task. It's the sort of day when you should stay indoors with sheepskin slippers, a glass of mulled wine and a weepy film. With three children? What a laugh. I think I last did that in about 1980, when I had a bad bout of the flu and the mulled wine had been Lemsip. I can dream though, can't I?

Although the full-blown rain has died down, there's a sort of gray drizzle running from the conical rooftops, so that if you stop to look at any of the stalls it manages to drip directly down the back of your neck. Surly, scruffy people man the stalls and everything is so expensive. If you want to win one of the poor, half-dead goldfish it could end up costing you about twenty-seven quid! But you do get a “free” poster of some greased-up WWF wrestling hero to go with it, which might be some consolation when the fish dies, as they usually do, a few days later.

There are half a dozen white-knuckle rides, some of which I remember from my youth, some of which are clearly newfangled inventions and spend far too much time upside down for my liking. The children—well, the boys—are so excited and hyper. Tanya is far too cool to be hyper about anything. She is tottering over the mud in her four-inch platform shoes, pretending that it isn't a problem. Have you ever tried to find anything to do that will keep both a fifteen-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy entertained? Don't. It's impossible. Totally impossible. Tanya would rather be with her friends, and she's made that patently clear, but if I don't insist on her coming with us, then I won't see her at all. It's something we'll have to address. But not today. Not after the mascara, the rings, Orville and everything else. Not today.

I wonder if children have a capacity to ignore the peeling paint, the fixed shotguns on the rifle range, the bent, blunt darts that haven't a hope in hell of connecting with any of the playing cards
and hoops that are too small to fit over the glass bowls of the fish who have lost the will to live.

Thomas is smiling broadly, and I'm so relieved because he has seemed so down recently. And it's hardly surprising, I know. I hug him to me. “Okay?” I say.

He nods. I miss the children so much, I can't tell you. When I'm not with them, there's a gaping hole inside me that, try as he might, Christian just isn't able to fill. No one else can.

Elliott is beside himself with joy. Anything that has the potential to be life-threatening, extremely dirty and involves spending lots of other people's money hits the spot in Elliott's book. Every single thing we have passed so far Elliott has wanted to have a go on, whether it turns him the wrong way up, shoots him sideways or just simply tries to terrify him. My son is indiscriminate in his desire to be shaken about every which way. As you'll probably guess, that's exactly how I'm feeling without the need to part with a pound for a fairground ride.

“Let's go on the dodgems,” Christian suggests. He's entering into the spirit of this very gamely, and I love him all the more for it. “Elliott,” he says, “come with me.” And before I can say anything, he snatches my youngest son's hand and they race to the dodgems, which are idling in between bouts.

“Come on, Tom!” Thomas and I chase after them, and Tanya paddles in our wake. Thomas grabs a dodgem, easing himself into the driver's seat, and exchanges the pound I've given him for a token with the grubby man who's jumping between the cars with the ease of someone who has done it for too many years. “Want to go on with Tom?” I ask my daughter. She shakes her head and lurks at the side of the rink, leaning insolently against one of the brightly painted supports, arms hugging her leather jacket around her.

I jump in beside Thomas, and a man with all the clarity of diction of a British Rail announcer mutters that
“We're off!”
And we are, shrieking and screaming at the other cars as I direct Thomas to smash into as many dodgems as we can hunt down. Never has being a back-seat driver been so much fun. For a moment I forget where I am and who I am, caring about nothing but bracing myself against the pain of another bump. Smashing legitimately into other cars is very therapeutic. And then I see Tanya out of the corner of my eye. She is watching Christian with a strange
expression on her face and it jolts me as surely as my lover's dodgem hitting us squarely in the side does, that Tanya, in her own teenage way, feels the same about Christian as I do. The man collecting money on the dodgems is watching Tanya, but she is oblivious to him. Her eyes are following one face. A face that is laughing and smiling and shouting encouragement to Elliott, roaring in triumph, and is completely unaware of her. And I can't express the emotion I feel when I realize that Christian is closer to her age than he is to mine. How would I feel if she brought someone like Christian home? It isn't beyond the bounds of possibility, let's face it.

The dodgems grind to an abrupt halt, and we unfurl ourselves from the cramped cars unscathed. Physically, at least. My back is aching and so is my head, and we've only been here ten minutes.

“Let's go on the Ghost Train,” Elliott yells, and we splash across the mud to some cracked plastic ghosts that glow yellow in the gloomy light. “Coming, Tanya?” I shout as we all leap into one of the rickety carts shaped like a coffin.

“I'll wait here,” she says. And I hope it is fear of being seen by her friends at somewhere so tragically uncool that is making her hang back. We trundle into a tunnel lined with lime-green fur fabric and what appear to be old sheets, and Elliott starts to vent forth earsplitting screams before anything has happened. And I try to push down the feeling that this cheap and tacky ghost train, with its lurking Lurex phantoms and macabre, staged shocks, holds infinitely less terror for me than my daily life.

 

I am broke. Utterly and absolutely. And I suppose it wouldn't have mattered so much if I hadn't just rendered myself gainfully unemployed. We have eaten toffee apples, candy floss and hot dogs. In that order. We have been on the dodgems, the Ghost Train, the Twister, the Sky Rocket, the Wild Mouse and the Thunder Racer. Tanya is clutching a pile of moth-eaten soft toys, a WWF poster featuring an extremely dubious greased-up orange wrestler called The Rock and a goldfish, yet to be christened, which is not looking well already.

I am clinging on to a cup of warm, hairy-chested tea in a polystyrene cup and trying to get my center of gravity to agree to go back to where it belongs. The boys are drinking Coke and are pink-cheeked and grinning. And the rain has held off. Mostly. I
think, with one notable exception, you could count this as a fairly successful day.

“Let's go on the Waltzer!” Elliott shouts.

“You've been on enough,” I remind him, ever the voice of reason.

“Oh. Just one more.” My son pouts like Marilyn Monroe.

“Elliott, you'll be sick.”

“I won't.”

“You will. You've just had Coke and hot dogs.”

“Just one last thing,” he begs.

“I'll take him,” Christian ventures.

“You'll be sick too,” I warn.

He grins. “I promise I won't.”

“Okay.” Elliott takes hold of Christian's hand and they exchange smiles, and you won't believe how much that means to me. “Do you want to go too, Thomas?” But my older son shakes his head. Thomas has more sense than the rest of us put together.

“One go!” I say sternly, trying too late to reassert some sort of authority in the face of being viewed as a pushover.

“We won't be long,” Christian assures me, and they head off to be twirled and whirled again.

“Shall we go and watch?” We follow them, and by the time we reach the Waltzer, Christian and Elliott are trapped in one of the cars by a big metal bar and are meandering slowly round the track as the ride picks up speed. Elliott's knuckles are white from gripping. Christian has his arm round him, and my son is tucked into his side with a look on his face approaching ecstasy. We lean on the rails round the side and can feel the vibrations beneath our feet. Everything is clanking and rattling more than the chains in the Ghost Train, and I wonder how often any of these rides are checked for safety.

The ride picks up speed. Thudding music is pumping at some hideous volume out of the speakers above us. When I was a girl, Waltzer music always blared out “All Right Now” by Free, which still seems to have a certain melodious charm compared to this stuff. Sorry, I'm doing my mother again. “DO YOU WANT TO GO FASTER!” the man in the central control box shouts. The lights flash on and off, faster and faster. I hear Elliott scream, “Yes!” above everyone else. Their car comes round and they are a blur, huddled into one corner, hanging on for dear life and my stom
ach joins the lurching. “DO YOU WANT TO GO FASTER!” Elliott is virtually lying on the seat now, the car trying to vest itself of the insubstantial weight of his body. Christian has hold of him by his jacket.
“Yeeeeeesssssss!”
he shouts as he passes us. The ride seems endless, and just as I think I can bear it no longer, the lights cease flickering madly, the insane rattling slows to a series of worrying clonks and the cars instead of whirling like dervishes, spin as gracefully as ballerinas to a halt.

They stop just in front of us. Thomas rushes to open the bar. Christian is laughing and sitting Elliott upright. My little boy gets out of the car, gripping its sides as it starts to whirl again, and staggers toward me, his legs trembling like Slinkies and his face chalk white. His eyes appear to be rotating in his head.
“That,”
he says, “was absolutely brilliant!”

Christian gets out and comes up behind him grinning from ear to ear. I smile at him and want him to know that I really do appreciate how much effort he is putting into trying to get to know my children. Christian answers my smile—he knows how much this means to me. And I know that somehow this is all going to work out all right. At that very moment, Elliott also turns round, smiling cheesily, and is promptly and heartily sick all over Christian's trousers.