Wishful Thinking (25 page)

‘I bet Cal said that.'

Georgie didn't comment. ‘You must have a holiday romance,' she said. ‘There's nothing like it. You pick some guy on looks alone – usually a waiter or barman – 'cos you won't be with him long enough to discover he has no brains or personality. You're crazy about him for a few nights and then you leave before it all goes sour on you with a great story to tell your friends. Everything's fine until you get the pictures developed . . . Make sure you chuck out the awkward ones. You don't want to look back ten years later and think: My God, that's Stefano – or Jean-Yves – or Angelos. Was I really at it with
him
?' She checked herself, and sighed. ‘That didn't come out quite the way I intended. I meant to encourage, not put you off. Bugger. Nothing's coming out the way I intend any more.'

All the same, I liked the idea of a commitment-free fling. It was just what I needed, post-Nigel – an antidote, an ego-boost, a dash of fantasy sex in the real world. There hadn't been many flings in my life; I hadn't been the sort of girl men wanted to get flung with. Maybe I could find an Angelos who looked a little like Hugh Jackman, in a bad light . . .

Lin hadn't booked a holiday either. With three kids and no backup, Abroad was too expensive and much too much like hard work. Later in the summer Vee Corrigan was taking the twins to the Isle of Wight for a week, whether they liked it or not, and Lin had fixed some time off after Georgie got back to ram some culture down her offspring's throats, in the form of museums, art galleries, and theatre trips. ‘What're you taking them to see?' I asked. ‘Shakespeare at the National?' I could visualise the boys quite enjoying the tragedies, if there was enough blood.

‘
The Lion King
,' Lin said. ‘And
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
. I needed to play safe.'

‘The kids are bound to find them awfully slow,' Georgie said.

(In fact, despite affecting to despise musicals, Sandy and Demmy adored both shows. ‘I
like
musicals,' Meredith declared. ‘It's just the songs I can't stand.' She was sick in the foyer at
Lion King
and in the auditorium at
Chitty Chitty
. Lin couldn't get tickets for anything else and now suspects she's on a blacklist.)

Meanwhile, on the Friday, Cal stood Georgie up after Christy, who had to attend a fund-raising dinner, commanded his services as a babysitter. As they had been planning to go to the cinema to see the latest summer blockbuster Georgie was very pissed off.

‘It isn't Cal's fault,' I said.

‘I know,' said Georgie. ‘It never is.'

She rang Neville from her mobile, making a date for Saturday: cocktails and a restaurant.

‘You're doing this for all the wrong reasons,' I pointed out.

‘I know,' Georgie said again.

At Monday lunchtime, we all dived into the nearest pub to get the details. ‘Why didn't he call for so long?' Lin wanted to know.

‘Apparently he had a family crisis. His father's been ill for a while, and he collapsed suddenly and had to be rushed to hospital. He was in Intensive Care. Neville's parents retired to one of the remoter parts of Wales, so he had a long way to go to be in attendance.'

‘Was it heart?' I asked. ‘I don't want to be over-optimistic, but these things can be genetic, can't they?'

‘As it happens, it was,' Georgie said. ‘I did ask Neville if he'd inherited the condition, but he just laughed. I think he was a bit shocked at my asking, though. Why is it nobody ever takes my ad seriously?'

Lin and I were silent, feeling comment would be superfluous.

‘So where did he take you?' I resumed presently.

And: ‘Is he as nice as you thought?' from Lin.

‘We had cocktails at The Savoy and dinner at Quo Vadis,' Georgie related. ‘And, yes, he's very nice.'

‘Nice and fanciable or nice and unfanciable?' Lin demanded.

‘Fanciable,' Georgie insisted. ‘The impossible combination. He's got a palatial flat in Cadogan Gardens, he's going to buy a house in the Dordogne, and he drives a Saab with a Jaguar on the side. You don't get more fanciable than that.'

‘How do you know his flat's palatial?' I said suspiciously.

‘I went back for a nightcap,' Georgie confessed.

‘And bedsocks?'

‘Not funny. We had a kiss and cuddle, that was all; then I got a taxi home. Anyway, why're you fighting Cal's corner? You're supposed to be on my side. You're supposed to tell me that married men are a bad idea, and I should get myself a decent single guy. You're supposed to tell me I'm being had for a sucker.'

‘Cal loves you,' Lin said unhappily.

‘You love him,' I averred.

‘He's married,' Georgie retorted. ‘Married,
married
. He's not planning to leave his wife. He doesn't even bother to lie about it. All I'll ever get is all I've got – crumbs of his time and attention. What happens when I'm older, and my looks start to go, and he doesn't lust after me so much? I'll become someone he feels he must visit because he always has, a habit, a chore, and then there'll be nothing left.' She was clutching her glass so hard I could see the whites of her knuckles. ‘I won't wait around for that. I'm not going to be suckered all my life. I married Franco in a whirl of romantic folly; I'm not letting Cupid make a fool of me again. Besides,' she added, relaxing a little, ‘I might fall in love with Neville. He wants to take me for a week in Mallorca. Mountains, olive groves, de luxe hotel. Sounds like a good place for falling in love.'

‘Majorca?' I said sceptically, pronouncing the J.

‘Mallorca,' corrected Georgie, not pronouncing the Ls. ‘They spell it differently now. You're behind the times, Cookie. These days, they've changed the image as well as the spelling. The lager-louts have all gone to Cyprus; Mallorca's very upmarket now. Neville was telling me all about it. He's been several years running.'

‘Who's Neville?' said a voice. A flat, hard voice, familiar and unfamiliar.

Cal.

Lin and I looked at each other and then, with one accord, down into our glasses.

I heard Georgie say: ‘He's a man I'm seeing.'

‘You didn't mention it.'

I nudged Lin's leg with my foot. ‘This is where we get off.' We vacated our seats, moving towards the bar. Cal slid along the empty bench without a word of thanks or a glance in our direction. I don't think he even registered we'd been there. His face had a tight look, as if someone had wound up a spring inside him, tensing his muscles, pulling flesh against bone. His features were compressed, even the eyes and eyebrows, all thin and taut. The same tightness was evident in the scrunch of his shoulders.

We didn't watch.

Georgie told us about it afterwards.

‘How long have you been seeing this bloke?' Cal asked, in a carefully level tone.

‘Does it matter?' He made an impatient gesture. ‘Not long.'

‘Are you sleeping with him?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Not
yet
?'

‘He wants to take me on holiday,' Georgie repeated.

‘So I heard.'

‘That usually includes sex.' She paused, fishing for the right words to say what she meant; but there weren't any right words. Only wrong ones. ‘He's attractive . . . and attracted to me . . . and unattached. You've got a wife – children – responsibilities – commitments. I don't fit in. I'm not part of the long-term picture. You've said some nice things to me, but ultimately, they're not worth a damn.'

‘D'you think I didn't
mean
what I said?'

‘It isn't relevant.' Her voice was light, brittle. You could have cracked it with a feather. ‘Words don't count. Actions count. Your most consistent action is to go home to your wife. It's easy to say you love someone. It's much harder to act it.'

‘You really don't get it, do you? I act it every moment – every moment that I can – but I can't walk away from everything. My responsibilities – my commitments – my children. I can't just . . .
leave
.'

‘The boy stood on the burning deck,' she said. ‘Bully for you.' He flinched from her sudden flippancy, as if she had struck him. ‘You're married, I'm single. That's the way you want it. I'm a single woman, free to go out with other men. Neville offers me—'

‘Security?'

‘Maybe. Maybe just . . . fun.' She knew that would hurt him, and it did. She saw the hurt in his eyes.

She wanted to hurt.

‘This is it, then,' he said.

‘Yes.'

They sat staring at each other, unmoving. Their discussion wound down like an old-fashioned gramophone.

‘This. Is. It.'

‘Um.'

At two o'clock they walked back to work, side by side, not touching, not speaking. They parted on a monosyllable, without a kiss, diverging to their separate offices, where neither got anything done for the rest of the day.

It wasn't that simple, of course. They kept bumping into each other, talking, arguing, covering the same ground, again and again, over coffee at Ransome, over drinks in pub and wine bar. Cal was by turns angry, hurt, bitter, desperate, contrite. Georgie was contrite, desperate, bitter, hurt, angry. It seemed to get them nowhere, and it drove the rest of us to despair. We wanted to help, but they were beyond human aid, and all we could do was to watch them grinding away at each other's self-control until one of them snapped, usually Georgie. She would rage at him with the fury of someone who's trying to blot out her own inner voice, while he wrapped himself in an icy, brooding quiet which kept everyone at a distance. He vented his feelings on the Design Department – who rapidly succumbed to something resembling Gulf War Syndrome – and anyone else rash enough to put their head above the parapet. One hapless writer, calling to complain about the background colour for his dust jacket, was crushed without finesse. (Mind you, any input from writers on dust-jacket artwork is invariably crushed, usually at editorial level, but finesse is supposed to be involved.)

‘Why does it have to be green?'

‘Because I say so.'

‘But look—' the writer clearly had a death-wish ‘– I just don't see my whole literary concept as being best represented in green.'

‘Fuck the fucking concept. It's fucking green and it's staying fucking green and that's that.'

‘Ah.'

Most people gave the Design Department a wide berth. Even Alistair, wandering in to demand something tasteful for one of his pet protégés at Porgy, re-emerged wearing the stunned expression of a man who has just strolled inadvertently into a tiger's cage. In Publicity, Georgie remained charming, injecting extra husk into her huskiest tones and flashing dazzling smiles down the telephone at people who couldn't see them, but her surface glitter was unnatural and she would lose her thread in mid-sentence, or listen for five minutes with apparent attention before murmuring vaguely: ‘What?' However, any suggestion that she should abandon her prospective trip with Neville evoked a violent response. ‘Why?' she would say, her voice rising. ‘I'm single, he's single – why shouldn't I go with him? Why shouldn't I have some
fun
?'

‘You have fun with Cal,' Lin said unwisely.

‘When he has the time,' Georgie retorted, with a savagery out of all proportion to the words.

It didn't look good.

On Friday, I left, adjuring Lin to keep the peace.

‘What peace?' she sighed.

‘Well . . . keep the pieces, then. We'll stick them together when I get back.'

I was trying to sound upbeat, but it didn't come out right. There are few things more distressing, in an everyday context, than the sight of two people you like, who you know love each other, wantonly tearing their relationship apart. But there was nothing I could do to stop it, and I was off on holiday, and utterly determined to leave all my worries behind. Ransome Harber and its denizens were a long way from the Isles of Greece, and I was going to take advantage of that distance. No more agonising over Georgie and Cal, no more babysitting, no more bumping into Nigel on the social circuit, no more Jerry Beauman. (Especially no more Jerry Beauman.) At least for a fortnight. At home I packed my new bikini, clothes, books, suntan oil. I left my upstairs neighbour several tins of cat food and comprehensive instructions on feeding Mandy. I refused to look Mandy in the eye. (I never can when I'm going away.) There are times when I wonder if going on holiday is more trouble than it's worth.

At an unearthly hour on Saturday morning I set off for the airport, too sleepy even to fantasise about the possibilities of a Cretan romance.

I noted earlier that everyone who is reading this book has probably been on a diet at some time in their life. The same can be said for going to Greece. It's one of those things that most people do, sooner or later. When I was a child I dreamed of visiting the haunts of legend and history: the Athens of Theseus and Themistocles, Odysseus' Ithaca, the Oracle at Delphi (although in those days I thought this was in India). But somehow, as I got older, my priorities deteriorated. Now – like most people – I want sun, sand, sea, and lots of booze. The Isles of Greece offer, relatively cheaply, picturesque beaches, a relaxed attitude to nudity, and bars that stay open most of the night, with bronzed, god-like natives as an added extra. While some of those amenities must have been available in the classical era – no wonder Jason and Odysseus spent so much time island-hopping instead of getting on with the job – both the wildness and the grandeur of the mythical world seem to have somehow been lost. And, as a tourist, I know it's my fault. Sinead and I did visit Knossos, nursing the kind of hangovers that made the bull-paintings quiver on the walls, but there was little atmosphere left in the sun-baked ruins: the visitors had driven it away.