Better Than Easy (6 page)

“He sounds gay!” I laugh.

Jenny squashes her lips together. “I knew you'd say that, but no, he's very masculine. Not every straight man is a caveman you know. No, he's good looking and fun and great company and good in bed …”

I laugh. “So you
are
in love with him!”

“I'm not that sure I understand the love thing anymore. I mean, I loved Nick, really I did, and he used to give me a black eye every other weekend. So …” She sighs. “I think maybe I don't trust my judgement anymore,” she says. “And anyway it's just temporary. I think. Maybe I have commitment issues … anyway, we'll see. Plus, I keep waiting to find out what's wrong with him, you know?”

I laugh. “Yeah, I know that one,” I say.

“Anyway, it's just good to have sex to be honest,” she says. “And good sex at that. I was worried that my vagina was gonna heal over.”

I pull a face.
“Jenny!”
I protest.

“Oooh, never use the V word with a gay man,” she says mockingly. “We have to listen to all
your
gruesome details! At any rate, it's good at the moment, so I'm just trying to enjoy it while it lasts.”

“Well, I'm intrigued,” I say. “I'd like to see him.”

Jenny nods and squints. “Yeah, I'd like a second opinion really. I mean he's very sweet, but … Oh, I don't know. I'll arrange a dinner or something so you can meet him and judge for yourself. If it lasts that long.”

I frown at her. “You don't sound very convinced.”

Jenny shrugs and laughs. “Anyway,” she says. “What's up with you and Tom? I mean, I'm assuming that if you've finally remembered my existence it's because you two have had a row.”

“That's
so
unfair!” I protest.

“But you have?” she asks.

I shake my head. “It's so not true that I only come and see you when …”

“Tom
told
me,” Jenny interjects. “I saw him at the
boulangerie
this morning and asked how things were, and he pulled a face. And now here you are. That's all.”

I frown at this news. “This morning, we hadn't
had
a row,” I say. “Anyway, it's not really a row.”

“But?”

“OK. Ready?”

Jenny nods and settles into her chair. “Ready,” she says.

So I tell Jenny about Tom and the gîte. I try not to exaggerate his words, nor to make myself sound better by deforming my own. I'm honestly searching for understanding, not just an ally.

“So you see,” I finish. “It just worries me – it seems important to me – that our motives are so different. For me it's about Tom – I don't really give a damn about the gîte. And Tom …”

“Tom doesn't really give a damn about
you,”
Jenny says.

I roll my eyes. “I
so
didn't say that,” I say.

Jenny nods, seriously. “I know,” she says. “I'm just pushing things to extremes to think about them more clearly.”

“It's like that Dante character,” I say. “You remember?”

Jenny nods. “The serial killer psychopath mafia guy?”

I nod. “Yeah. That'll be the one. Well,
that
was all about Tom's mid-life crisis and his need for change too. He was far more in love with the farm, with the idea of a new life, than he was with anything Dante had to offer.”

Jenny nods. “I see what you mean.”

“Dante was like a complete package deal,” I say. “I'm not sure I
want
to be Tom's life change
package.”

Jenny frowns, then smiles. “Why not?”

I shrug. “Why not what?”

“Well, if he's the man you love, if it's
all about
him like you say it is, then why
not
be the life change package he needs?”

I laugh. “Yeah, I suppose you have a point.”

“And of course it doesn't mean he doesn't
love
you,” Jenny says. “It's like Nick. You know he was, well, pretty loaded really. And I used to sit and think – it's a terrible thing to say – but I used to sit and try to work out what I liked about him. And part of it, quite a big part really, was the nice house and the holidays and the car. And sometimes I think that if he'd been some poor skivvy builder I never would have ended up with him.”

I grimace. “Ouch,” I say.

“But that doesn't mean I didn't love him,” Jenny says. “And it doesn't mean I was only with him for the money. It's just that you, you know, have a relationship with the whole thing, the whole package. And that includes love and sex, and how easy they are to get on with, but also lifestyle, holidays and house, and blah-dy-blah. What I mean is … no, I'm not quite sure
what
I mean.”

She pulls a face and frowns, then smiles and looks at me intently. “Yes I do! What I mean, is that you'd have to have a computer for a brain to be able to separate each bit out, to isolate each part of your overall contentment, or lack of …”

I nod. “Yeah, I kind of see what you mean,” I say. “So, say Tom's motivation is sixty-percent the gîte and forty-percent me and mine is the other way around – does it really matter?”

Jenny shrugs. “Well yeah,” she says. “Not if you're happy with it. That's what I would say.”

I nod and smile. “Wise words,” I say.

“It's like people with, you know, toy boys or sugar daddies. People get so self-righteous about it all.” She
shakes her head and then sips her tea. “But I always think, what does it matter? As long as everyone's happy. People leave all the time because of shit lifestyle, because the husband never gets up from in front of the telly, because there's always too much debt; shit like that breaks up relationships every day. If you can't get the things you need in a relationship, then you fuck off. So what's so wrong with enjoying being with someone because they
do
give you the things you need? Including, in some cases,
money.”

“I suppose so,” I say, doubtfully.

“And just because one person supplies money and the other one doesn't, well that doesn't mean that there isn't any love or respect,” Jenny says. “That's my point. Surely the whole basis of love
is
the desire to give the person you love whatever they need, whether that be sex, or security, or hard cash?”

“Or a new-life-in-a-box,” I say.

Jenny nods. “Exactly!” she says, clapping her hands. “Well, in a gîte. So it's settled.”

I grin at her. “You are very wise,” I say. “When you try.”

Jenny laughs, picks up her mug and peers inside. “Only for other people though,” she says. “Not so good at my own shit. More tea vicar?”

I hand her my mug. “More tea!” I say.

Jenny's right of course, and my anger slips away, and suddenly I'm left wondering quite why I was angry in the first place. But then, as she makes the tea one last thought does cross my mind – that if sixty percent of Tom's equation
is
the gîte, then what happens if it
doesn't
work out? Then and only then will we find out if the forty percent that remains is enough to keep us together. And that
doesn't
strike me as an entirely irrational worry.

When I get back downstairs to our flat, Tom is being chirpy. He doesn't really do
sorry
, not even sorry-lite, the,
I'm sorry you're upset,
kind of sorry that placates without accepting any personal responsibility. But he does a great,
let's-change-the-subject-and-pretend-it-never-happened
act, and when he makes that effort – for it clearly costs him quite a lot to do so – I do my best to take it as an apology and let whatever is happening go.

“Hey, if we found the husband, would that mean we could buy the place?” he asks me excitedly as I step back into the flat.

I shake my head, a little stunned by his energy levels. “Sorry?” I say. “If we found a husband
what?”

“Chantal's husband, Jean. If we found him, would that mean we could buy the gîte, or would it make it more complicated?”

I push my lips out and give a Gallic shrug. “No idea. It's not likely though is it? I mean, if the police haven't found him. Anyway, he could be dead.”

“Well,” Tom says. “I was looking on the net for places to promote the place. And I found a hill-walking forum that mentions
Chateauneuf d'Entraunes
, and there was a post by him. By
[email protected]
.”

“Yeah?”

Tom wrinkles his nose. “It's from 2004, so it's before he disappeared. I don't suppose the email works anymore anyway.”

“If it does, it'll be Chantal picking it up,” I say.

“Exactly, but anyway, that got me thinking so I Googled him. There are only three others on the web that I could see – Ancey seems quite rare. There's a politician, so that won't be him, and there's a BMW
dealer in Los Angeles and a satellite dish installer in Italy.”

“The BMW dealer doesn't sound likely,” I say. “But I suppose he could have run off with some Italian floozy to install satellite dishes.”

“Well, I emailed them both anyway,” he says. “I sent fake business enquiries, asking them how long they have been established; I joined that hill-walking thing too. Seemed like a good idea.”

“You? Hill-walking?” I laugh.

Tom winks at me. “You'd be surprised what I'm capable of,” he says.

At the exact moment he says this, his computer makes an
Uh Oh,
sound. It would be cute were it not the
you have a message
signal from the Recon chat sites. Leathermen.com, bikermen.com, bondagemen.com
…
I've checked them all out at one time or another, sometimes through boredom, sometimes through desperation. I know the little,
Uh Oh,
sound only too well.

“What's that?” I ask.

Tom frowns and peers at the screen. “I'm working on the website,” he says vaguely.

“The
Uh Oh
noise,” I say. “It's Recon.”

“Oh that,” Tom says, casually. “Yeah, I was just, erm, chatting to someone.”

I nod. “Yeah?” I say. “Anyone I know?” I'm trying not to sound like a desperate housewife here. I think I'm failing.

“Nah, I don't think so,” Tom says, forcing a disinterested tone of voice.

I frown and swallow, trying to decide whether to pursue the issue. “Who then?” I eventually ask.

“Someone
I
know,” Tom replies pedantically.

“OK,” I say, moving to his side on the sofa. “You had better show me.”

Tom swallows, glances sideways at me and apparently realising that there's no escape, sighs and switches to the web browser.

“Hot butt!”
the most recent message says.
“When can I fill your hole?”

I raise an eyebrow and look at Tom. “Nice,” I say.
“Sophisticated.”

“I sent him one of the dirty photos you took,” Tom says, apparently deciding to brazen it out.

I nod. We spent the previous weekend playing around with the digital camera. I didn't think the end result was destined to be sent to all and sundry. “Oh good!” I say sarcastically.

“Huh,” Tom says. “I knew it, and now you're jealous, and you're going to be in a huff all evening.”

I frown at him. I haven't even started to react yet. I haven't even the first inkling of how I might feel about this.

“I was gonna tell him,” Tom says. “I was just about to tell him that I'm married and that no-one fills my hole without my husband's approval.”

I nod, perplexed. “And that's supposed to what?
Reassure
me?”

Tom sighs deeply and with a theatrical flick of the wrist, closes the chat window with
hungry-tool
-
brighton
, and says, “If you're determined to make this into a drama, go ahead.”

I stand. I'm still feeling pretty much nothing. Not anger yet, though I can sense it coming. No real jealousy, though it's probably not far off either. No, for the moment, I just feel numb. It seems to me that Tom is being provocative, and yet somehow blaming me for reacting. I need to walk away – to be on my own to think out a reasonable attitude to this new data without Tom prodding and poking, manipulating my reactions. I don't want to react blindly to the provocation. Otherwise, my onboard computer says, it could
really
be a biggy.

“My fault,” I say, as I put on my coat. “Sorry. Of course.”

“Oh don't go out in a
huff,”
Tom says. “It's not what you think. I was just
…
”

“I DON'T
…
” I interrupt him; my voice comes out in a shout, so I pause, calm it, and then continue, “I don't want to talk about it with you right now.” I manage to close the front door quietly behind me.

As I walk down to and then along the seafront, still wet from the rain, I turn the problem over in my mind, probing it from different angles.

Intelligent thoughts don't come easily, and the best process I find seems to be to think about how other people I know would react to
their
partners sending naked pictures out over the net and discussing the filling of holes. Most of my straight friends would be outraged, offended, jealous, and more than anything dissapointed in something I reckon most of them would find a bit pathetic – a bit distasteful.

Most of my gay friends would say, I think, that it was harmless fun – mere text porn with a stranger in a moment of boredom. Unless it was happening to them of course, in which case it would be cause for drama if not actual divorce.

I slip and slide down to the edge of the Med and start to throw pebbles into the smooth, undulating sea – the lights from the prom' are reflecting on the waxy surface.