The Other Half (9 page)

“I’m sure he doesn’t.” Maggie couldn’t imagine it. Or could she?

“I promise if he does it’s harmless. But I bet he does. Even Geoff admitted it once. Not that he’d do anything either, of course, but he said good old-fashioned sexual chemistry can get clients to spend a little more … you know the kind of thing.” She noticed Maggie’s worried expression. “Anyhow, we’re not talking about our husbands, we’re talking about you. And you need something to distract you. When Jamie sees you’re a bit less focused on him, believe you me, he’ll come running back. Next thing, wham, bang! You’ll be pregnant, he’ll be delighted, and everything will be tickety-boo.”

“Gosh.” Maggie was taken aback her sister should be so matter-of-fact. Even if she was only talking about flirtation, wasn’t mental infidelity just as bad? Nonetheless, she was intrigued. “How am I supposed to meet this man? The village is hardly chock-full of bachelors beating a path to my door.”

Fran paused to consider while Maggie got to her feet and reached up to the top shelf of the dresser for the teapot. “Now there you have a problem. Let me think what I did.”

“
What you did?
” Maggie was amazed. Her sister was surprising her at every turn.

“Oh, yes, I had an affair. Didn’t you know?”

“
Fran! You didn’t!
” Maggie nearly overfilled the teapot.

“I thought you knew,” said Fran, knowing full well that Maggie did not. It was her way of having the upper hand in their relationship, keeping a few trump cards close to her chest, ready to be revealed when they’d have the most impact. “It was nothing major, you understand. At least, I realize it wasn’t now, although I didn’t see things that way at the time.”

Maggie carried two mugs to the table and suppressed a smile. Fran even seemed to need to get one up on
herself
just as she did everyone else. Hence the older, wiser Fran always knew more than the younger, naive Fran.

“So who was he?” she asked, getting the milk jug out of the fridge. “When did it happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You never tell me anything.”

“There’s nothing much to tell. Anyway, tell me now.”

“Promise not to laugh.”

“I won’t.”

“He was the postman.”

Maggie hooted.

“I knew you’d think it was funny. But he was really attractive. A six-foot-two young Robbie Williams type.”

“Not your average Postman Pat.”

“If you’re going to take the piss, I won’t tell you,” Fran huffed. They were nine and ten years old, once again.

“Aw, go on, I want to know, honest. After all, even Shere has a postman. Maybe you can help me seduce him.” Maggie knew Fran would like being cast as the expert, albeit in adultery.

“
He
seduced
me
,” she continued buoyantly. “We first met when I walked Dan to school. Tim, his name was. He was always very friendly, and we were headed the same way, him with his trolley. He’d let Dan push it, then give him letters, and show him where to post them. Dan loved it, loved him. You know what it’s like—someone’s nice to your child, it makes you warm to them.”

“I suppose so.” But surely there’s warming to someone and having the hots, thought Maggie. The two are quite distinct. I hardly succumb to every man who’s nice to Nathan—I’m married, as is Fran. And what about Geoff? Are things stickier than they seem? I guess you never know what goes on behind closed doors.

“I always had the impression you and Geoff got on so well. When was all this?”

“About two years ago.” Fran lowered her voice. She looked uncharacteristically embarrassed. “We’d stopped sleeping together.”

“No! I thought you two…” Golly, thought Maggie, is all Fran’s swanking mere bravado?

“Well, we do
now
, but for a while, when Dan was younger, it tapered off a bit.”

“Why? There must have been a reason.”

“Do you think there’s a reason that things have slowed down between you and Jamie?”

The idea made Maggie uncomfortable. Might Jamie’s lack of libido relate to some deeper issue? “Our sex life hasn’t died. It’s only not as frequent as it used to be. After so many years together that’s quite common, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. Though things with Geoff and me had got worse than that. I think it started because he was having a dreadful time at work. It was when his firm merged with that other one—remember?”

Maggie did. Geoff had been nervous that he might be made redundant; she had felt sorry for him.

“After a while he got anxious about sex too. Pretty soon it became a vicious circle. I felt he wasn’t communicating so I wanted affection, he felt I was demanding, emotionally and physically, and he couldn’t answer my demands. So he worried and I got more demanding.”

Maggie could just imagine how Fran’s impatience might make a man—especially one as sensitive as Geoff—insecure. Poor chap. Yet surely the solution was not to sleep with someone else?

“Anyway.” Fran, breezily recalling the excitement of her liaison, was oblivious to her sister’s concern. “In the end Tim the toy boy satisfied my desires, or at least for a while.”

“How old was he?”

“Twenty-four,” said Fran proudly. “Showed me a thing or two, I must say.”

“So you slept with him?” Maggie was horrified.

“Of course. I said I had an affair—it’s hardly an affair if there’s no sex.”

“I suppose not.” Maggie felt distinctly unworldly. Just how did one end up sleeping with a postman? “What happened?”

“I’m not going to tell you
everything
,” said Fran, relishing withholding the very information she’d promised, “but I will say one day he had to get me to sign for something—a registered letter, I think it was. I’d already taken Dan to school, and he invited himself in, and we knew each other quite well by then and one thing led to another, well, almost before I could stop myself—he was so attractive—we were shagging in the hall. I think he had a bit of a thing for older women,” she added, as if this explained the entire episode.

“Good God!” Fran “shagging” the postman! The phrase that made her squirm—it seemed so mechanical. In fact, it sounded like the kind of thing men said to impress their mates in the pub. Not something her slightly too tall and skinny younger sister would confide in her, seated at her very own kitchen table.

Fran got up and opened the cupboard where she knew her sister kept the biscuits. She rummaged around in the tin and took the last of the Bath Olivers.

“The reason I’m sharing this,” she said with her mouth full, “is because it helped my relationship with Geoff no end.”

“It did?”

“Yup.” She swallowed. “Because I stopped wanting to sleep with him so desperately. I don’t know if it was ’cause he sensed something was wrong, and it made him appreciate me more, or whether the pressure being off meant things got better between us. We started making love again, and gradually I even introduced some more adventurous things into our sex life—positions I’d learned with Tim—a little mild S and M using silk scarves, stuff like that. Then, finally, I didn’t need Tim anymore so I finished with him, and now everything’s just great.
That’s
why you should have a fling.”

“And Geoff never found out?” Maggie was agog. Fran was attractive, but outlandish positions? Mild S and M? With silk scarves? Her primary-schoolteacher sister!

“Of course not.”

Somehow Maggie couldn’t help sympathizing with the men in this scenario: the Robbie lookalike who’d been dumped the moment Fran’s marriage got back on an even keel, and her brother-in-law, whom she’d known for ten years and was fond of.

Dear Geoff, thought Maggie. He puts up with Fran’s incessant one-upmanship and bossiness. No one deserves to be treated like that, least of all such a kind, if occasionally bumbling, man like my brother-in-law. For what sounds like months he was unaware that my sister was satisfying her lust elsewhere. On the hall carpet … Maybe they even tied each other to the marital headboard! Surely he must have had some idea. I would, I’m certain of it. And what about Dan? Cavorting with the postman is hardly the behavior of a responsible mum. What if my nephew picked up on something while they were supposedly innocently posting letters? I know from Nathan it’s uncanny what small boys understand.

Maggie shuddered. Infidelity—what a horrible,
horrible
idea. She’d never let things between her and Jamie get that bad.

No, she thought firmly. A flirtation elsewhere is not the solution, not for me. Not ever.

11

By Tuesday morning Chloë had convinced herself she wouldn’t hear from James again, not in that way, at least. Anyway, today she was meeting Vanessa Davenport for lunch, and she had more important things to think about. Or so she’d persuaded herself until she pushed open the rotating doors to UK Magazines’ Covent Garden offices. There he was, in the foyer, waiting with a couple of members of staff for the elevator.

True to form, Chloë went pink immediately. James, on the other hand, with his jacket thrown over his briefcase—it was hot outside—appeared incredibly cool. She was struck again by how effortlessly well-dressed he was. In some ways men have it easy, she thought.

“Hello,” he said, on seeing her.

“Hi.”

“How are you?”

“Oh, I’m okay.” Should she ask how he was? No—far too familiar.

Silence.

A bell signaled the arrival of the elevator. The doors opened and all four of them got in. James took control of pressing the buttons.

“Which floor?” he asked the others.

“Two,” said a man in a pinstripe suit.

“Three,” said a middle-aged woman.

He didn’t bother to ask Chloë, just pressed the button for her floor regardless. Then he stepped back. Did that mean he was getting out with her? Or at the second or third? Chloë’s heart raced. If they were both headed for the fifth, they’d have a few seconds alone. Help!

They all stood pressed against the walls, looking everywhere rather than at each other. What was it about elevators that made chatting with people—even those one normally got on with easily—so impossible?

Ping!
At the second floor, the man in pinstripes got out. He probably worked in accounts. More silence.
Ping!
At the third, the middle-aged lady disappeared.

James and Chloë were alone.

“I’m meeting Vanessa Davenport today,” said Chloë, thankful to have thought of something to say.

“I heard. She told me.”

This threw Chloë again—he’d been talking about her. But before she had time to consider every possible reason why, James said: “I couldn’t stop thinking about you all weekend.”

She looked him in the eye, trying to be stern. But … POW! There it was again. Chemistry so intense Chloë could imagine it causing the elevator to explode out of the top of the building.

“Me neither,” she said.

“I’d like to see you again,” said James. He seemed a little nervous.

Chloë virtually came on the spot. “Er…”

“Thursday night?” asked James, as the elevator arrived at the fifth floor.

The doors opened.

To hell with her diary—she’d cancel anything she had arranged. “Yes,” she said quickly.

He followed her into reception. “I’ve a meeting with your editor,” he explained. “Good luck with Vanessa,” he added, giving her a broad grin.

“Thanks,” said Chloë, wondering what it would be like to kiss him right then. There were several people she didn’t recognize sitting waiting on the sofas and the receptionist’s face was raised in anticipation, ready to greet James politely, so a hushed “see you” was the most Chloë could manage before heading to her desk.

*   *   *

Three hours later she was sitting across from Vanessa Davenport in the Soho restaurant Petit France. Vanessa looked good in a ghoulish way, with her rather sharp, beaky nose and gaunt cheeks. She was elegantly dressed in black Gucci (UK Magazines must rate her for her to afford that lot, thought Chloë), and they were surrounded by a precarious mêlée of papers, side salads, and glasses. It was a challenge for Chloë to eat pasta and present her documents while maintaining a semblance of decorum.

Vanessa was guardedly positive in her responses to the idea, and Chloë tended to feel most at ease with people who were more intuitive in their reactions. As a result, she had a wicked urge to say casually, “Did you know that after discussing this last Thursday, James Slater spent the night with me and I discovered he has a
huge
willy.” I’d like to see whether Vanessa could be so disconcertingly formal about
that
, she thought.

All morning Chloë had been trying to fathom what that second date meant. The more she analyzed it, the more sure she was: he was keen. One encounter and she could have put James’s behavior down to the heat of the moment, but two after-work meetings—with him suggesting both—that was a different thing altogether.
“It’s very dangerous,”
she could hear Rob warn her, but she’d never had such an attractive and successful man interested in her before and she was flattered and thrilled.

Lit up by the knowledge that James liked her, Chloë glowed throughout the meeting, despite her distracted mind and Vanessa’s daunting reputation.

Vanessa must have picked up on her confidence, because at the end of their lunch she agreed tentatively to take Chloë’s idea to the board. “But it does need a title,” she said crisply, as Chloë got up. “As you doubtless know from working on
Babe
, that’s not easy. Try and come up with something, if only to work with for the time being. It’s important if people are going to take this seriously higher up the company. I’d like your thoughts by early next week and eventually you’ll need to find something really memorable.”

“Okay.” Chloë shook Vanessa’s hand. Her long slim fingers were laden with silver jewelry and her nails were immaculately French-manicured: the weapons of a woman who knew how to intimidate another. Yet Chloë could stand up to her—especially today—and said with genuine self-assurance: “I’ll come up with some ideas. And thank you for lunch and for seeing me.”