Made in Heaven (6 page)

With Gray, the padding of domestic life was missing,
and passion was all she had. Every morning, she would hurry through getting the breakfast ready, making sure that Bob remembered to take his briefcase, his lecture notes, his car keys and then, when he'd gone, she'd rush upstairs to her study, turn on the computer and read the email she knew had been waiting there since the early hours. Gray always wrote very late at night. She always printed out the email and kept all the messages at the back of one of the drawers of her filing-cabinet. She read them so often that she could recite whole paragraphs by heart. As she worked at the library, as she walked through the rest of her life, she found herself unable to concentrate on anything but Gray, and having to make a huge effort to keep the real world – the world she lived in, the library where she worked, the shops she went to – everything else but him somewhere in a mental landscape that had become nothing but his face, his words, his love for her and hers for him. And yet she told herself that she was being good. She wasn't being unfaithful, not really, and she congratulated herself on behaving well and not jumping into bed with someone she'd only just met.

‘What about the second time?' Bob brought her back to the present. ‘Have you seen him since then?'

‘No, of course not.'

‘Why not? Most people who're unfaithful to their spouses manage to get away for a dirty weekend or even a quick shag in a hotel on the odd occasion, don't they? Bit of illicit nookie in a motorway motel.'

Joss stared into her teacup. ‘I'm not most people.'

‘But you don't deny you're unfaithful, I notice.' Bob pushed his fingers through his hair. ‘Did you sleep with him?'

She almost told another lie. Then the words came out before she had time to consider what she was saying. ‘Yes. Yes I did.'

Bob stood up and walked over to the window. Joss
knew him well enough to realize that he was hurt. His back, his shoulders, slumped in a kind of defeat. He looked suddenly much older. Should she say something? What could she say? If she kept quiet, would he ask her something she didn't want to answer? She took a deep breath and spoke as gently as she could. Damage limitation. ‘It happened
once
. Bob. Only once, I promise. It was one night, more than two years ago. It didn't mean anything.'

Oh God forgive me for such a lie. It had meant everything. It means everything. It's governed every single thought in my head since it happened. She glanced at her husband to see whether he believed her. He was still staring out of the window. A silence stretched between them and Joss wondered what he'd say next. He couldn't really object. There was the time, very soon after they were married when he'd confessed, tearfully and full of anguish, to a one-night stand while he'd been away at a conference in Istanbul. She'd almost, but not quite, forgotten the pain she'd felt at the time. She'd forgiven him because he'd begged for forgiveness and she was pregnant with Zannah and had a terror of her life, whose elements she'd constructed with such devotion, coming to pieces around her. She was someone who needed to keep things as they were. In the past, she'd regarded this as a positive quality, but now she considered it a character defect; a sort of cowardice.

‘If that's the case,' Bob said now, coming to sit beside her and taking her hand, ‘why were you so shocked to see him? How come you didn't know his son was engaged to Zannah?'

How to explain their rules? Not knowing such basic things about one another would seem crazy if she were to try to explain it. She said, ‘Adrian's surname is different. We just … we never discussed our home lives.'

‘Would have made you feel guilty, right? Okay, but if sleeping with him didn't mean anything when it
happened, then surely it has to mean
less
than nothing after all this time, right?'

‘It was the shock, that's all. I never thought I'd see him again and then there he is, and his son's going to marry Zannah. Adrian must be a stepson, I suppose. He's going to be … he's going to be family. I just … I couldn't take it in.'

‘We don't have to see them much, I shouldn't have thought. I don't ever want to see him again, to tell you the truth. Not after what you've told me. They're down there in Guildford and we're up here. We'll just keep out of the way.'

‘But what about Zannah's wedding? We'll have to see them for that.'

‘Fuck the wedding!' Bob stood up, red in the face with the fury he'd managed to suppress till that moment. ‘I don't know what you want from me, Joss. You seem to think that I'm meant to get over this in a civilized manner and move swiftly on to thinking about Zannah. Well, I'm sorry. I refuse to worry about that now. Of course we'll go through the motions. I'm not going to mess up Zannah's day, but let's just say it won't be a barrel of laughs. Nothing strange about that. They say that many weddings end in a fight. Punch-up between the families.'

‘Stop it! This isn't a time to be frivolous.'

‘I'm not being frivolous.'

Joss said, ‘I'm exhausted, Bob. I think I'm going up to bed, if you don't mind. We can unpack tomorrow.'

‘Joss, sit down. You can't go to bed now … I'm still … ' Bob ran his hands over his face, as though he were trying to wipe away the stress of the day. ‘What you've said … it's knocked me out. I've always thought we had … I thought we were … well, I've never said as much, I suppose, but I'd always taken it for granted that we were … are … happy. Aren't we happy, Joss? Haven't things been okay?'

Joss thought for a long time before she answered him. Okay … yes, things had been that. How long had it been since they'd spoken of anything more serious than family matters? How long since Bob had been impulsive in any way? Taken her out on a whim, brought her flowers? That wasn't quite fair. Their relationship hadn't been a flowery one, even in the beginning, but in those days, he'd regale her for hours about this or that interesting aspect of his work, and she still read the articles he wrote even though she didn't understand the fine detail. But they didn't laugh as much as they used to. She'd assumed it was simply that they had been together so long that they each knew one another's opinions backwards. Briefly, she remembered a meal at Fairford with Gray, and how they were so happy that anything seemed funny. She'd described a well-known poet as being
like a cross between a geography teacher and a vampire
and Gray had snatched up his knife and fork and made a rudimentary cross with his arms out in front of him at chest-height as he intoned, in a good imitation of every geography teacher Joss had met:
The main tributaries of the Nile, Dulcie
 …
what are they? Pay attention, gel!
It had been completely silly but it still made her smile to think of him with his eyes crossed, leaning sideways in his chair as he spoke. Bob was staring at her, waiting for her answer.

‘Of course we're happy. I've explained what happened. I'm sorry if you're hurt. Truly.'

‘Then you must promise me something.'

‘What?'

‘Promise me you won't see this Ashton except on family occasions ever again. Can you do that?'

‘Yes. I don't want to see him. That's the last thing I want, honestly.'

‘And we'll be okay?'

‘Yes, Bob,' Joss said and allowed herself to be held. She let him kiss the top of her head then hurried out of
the room and up the stairs to her study. She knew he wouldn't follow her at once. His own study was in the basement and he'd check his computer before he came to bed and quite possibly become absorbed in reading something or other. He thought the crisis was over. He thought everything was at least on the way to being
shipshape and tickety-boo
, as he used to say to the girls when they were small. He didn't like it when things were troublesome for too long and always moved straight on after a row or a crisis. She was safe for a while.

She closed the door and went to the filing-cabinet. She unlocked it, found the little phone and her hands trembled as she touched the keys. Three messages. She listened to each one over and over again, drinking in the voice, feeling warmth return to her heart.

‘
Lydia, my darling … know what you're thinking. I can explain everything. Call me. whatever time it is. Call me
.'

‘
Are you there? Ring me, Lydia. How could I possibly know you were Zannah's mother? Please, please phone me
.'

The last message had come in only a few minutes ago.

‘
Are you there? Please call me now. I'm alone. I must speak to you.
'

Joss sent a text message:
Can't speak now. Will phone you in the morning. Time?

Almost instantly, the answer came back:
11.30. I love you
.

And I love you too, Joss thought, but what's going to happen now? I've promised Bob I won't see you. You lied to me. You've been lying to me since I met you. She hid the phone again and sat at her desk, looking at the small tokens of his love all around her and seeing none of them. She was remembering a conversation from their first and last, their only night together.

*

‘You with someone else.' Gray was staring at the ceiling. ‘I don't think I could live with that. What's going to happen to us?' They'd made love for the second time and Joss felt as though her body was being pressed down against the sheets by something huge and overwhelming: a weight of love so consuming that she didn't know how to breathe. Before they'd kissed, before they'd gone this far, she'd told him this was all there would be, ever. They couldn't do this again. This was never going to happen again.

‘I can't leave my husband,' she'd said. ‘I can't do it to the girls. To my granddaughter. This is not something I can do again. I shouldn't be doing it now, but I can't help it. D'you understand, Gray?'

‘I'm not asking you to leave your husband. I just want you to stay tonight. To be here now.'

‘I could go now. I can still leave.'

‘No, I want you, Lydia. What do
you
want?'

‘You. Oh Gray, I want you.'

At that moment, she would have stepped on hot coals to touch him. She couldn't stop herself. She leaned towards him and they clung to one another, touching, breathing, panting, and Joss could feel herself plunging into sensations that she'd never been even close to imagining before.

*

Those were the conditions, she told herself. Everything that happened that night was something I wanted and I've been remembering it and reliving it and inhabiting it ever since. I was the one who laid down the terms. I was the one who said we must never meet again, and not because I didn't love him. He knows how much. I've told him over and over again: in words, in poems, in thoughts, in everything but my presence. He's had the best part of me. It's only my body that's here with Bob. I've been thinking of him, dreaming of him, wanting him every day and every night. He's never asked me to
leave Bob. Joss felt blind fury all over again. I thought he was being unselfish, not making me give up my life, when all the time it was him, his life, his career, that he was worried about. We're as bad as one another: happy to keep our love in a sort of secret drawer. But he knew my circumstances and I didn't know his. Would it have made any difference to anything? It might. Perhaps if I'd known he was married I'd have felt guilty. Was he trying to spare me that? That's the kind interpretation.

Tomorrow, she'd go out for a long walk and phone him and let him know it was over over over. Really and truly. No phone calls. No emails. Nothing any more ever again. It was the only way she'd be able to deal with this new situation. There was a telephone kiosk about a mile from the house from which she made the calls she knew would take a long time. This one would be hard. Gray would try to persuade her … try to change her mind. She picked up the tiny silver phone and listened to his messages again, before deleting them carefully. By the time she left the study, there were tears in her eyes. She wiped them away and took a deep breath, preparing herself to face Bob, who was making his way up the stairs to their bedroom.

Order was important to Graham Ashton. He'd succeeded in organizing every part of his existence to his entire satisfaction, and what had happened yesterday when he caught sight of Lydia sitting in a chair outlined against the light coming through the French windows was something he couldn't begin to describe. A wave of emotion swept suddenly up and over and into his everyday concerns and he wasn't sure how to deal with it.

His life. It was a bit like a filing-cabinet and he had a talent for keeping the various bits of it nicely separate and tidy: Maureen, their house, their friends and children in one drawer, his work and colleagues in another, and Lydia in a locked compartment all of her own, just above the one in which he kept everything to do with his poetry. He didn't hide the fact that he wrote it, but he didn't mention it either. Graham Ashton was a common name and he hadn't published enough to alert anyone in the medical establishment. No one he knew in the hospital was into poetry, as far as he was aware. What he liked about it was the pleasure of finding the right words, and organizing them into sequences that could illuminate something: make the reader see better. He liked the limitations of poetry, too: the rules. He didn't approve of those who blurted stuff out without even counting the syllables or worrying about the form.
Lydia wasn't one of those. One of the things he loved about her was the way she paid attention to every word she wrote, and managed to express deep feelings without a hint of soppiness, or veering into the
hello clouds hello sky
school of verse which he hated.

On his desk, within reach of his hand, was his secret phone. He picked it up and went downstairs. Only Lydia knew the number. It was a pay-as-you-go mobile: the twin of one he'd sent her for her birthday last year. Every call between them went from one silver handset to the other and he took care to delete not only any messages, but the entire call history, so that if anyone happened to come across it, there'd be no trace of her. Nothing would remain of the thousands of words of love and desire that flew between them.