Any Way You Want Me (19 page)

‘Wednesday?’ I suggested at once, conveniently forgetting my original plan for once and once only. I stretched my arms behind my head, knowing it made my boobs look good, thanking my lucky stars that I’d shaved my pits that morning.

‘How about tomorrow?’ he asked, tracing a circle around my nipple. We both watched, fascinated, as it quivered.

I shook my head. ‘I’m busy tomorrow night,’ I said, half-regretfully. Lizzie’s book group. I’d been looking forward to it for ages, actually read the book and everything, and now I was on the verge of bailing out.

‘Wednesday it is, then,’ Mark said. ‘Tell you what. Why don’t you come straight here? Save time.’

‘What, less vodka, more shagging?’ I said, paraphrasing.

He laughed, and suddenly squeezed my breast hard, on the very edge of too hard. ‘If you want to put it like that, yes,’ he said lazily, watching my face as I tried not to gasp out loud. ‘What do you say?’

I reached over for my bra. ‘Sounds good to me.’

There was an awkward couple of moments when we pulled our clothes back on. We were somewhere between the lust-fuelled shagging scenario and the goodbye ceremony. Suddenly I could hardly bear to look at him. He flipped a side light on and I looked around his studio instead.

Large windows at one end. Wooden plan chest along one side of the room; a long shelf of books and files above it. White tilted drawing board in front of the window, with a couple of papers attached. The top one showed an intricately mapped-out floor plan.

Aha. Flashing light bulb. He was an architect. Now I remembered.

‘Got everything?’ he said. He took a step towards the door.

I would have liked to look around for a while longer in the hope of picking up more clues about Mark, this man I’d just had electrifying sex with on his office sofa, but he was obviously keen to leave. Shagged her, time to go. Was that what he was thinking?

‘Yeah. Yeah, I reckon,’ I said, fiddling with the zip on my tracksuit top. There was a knot of something – disappointment? anticlimax? – inside me as well as the routine guilt, but I couldn’t identify it. I wasn’t exactly wanting him to shower me with romantic compliments, but all the same . . .

This is an affair, a fling
, I reminded myself as I followed him silently down the stairs and outside.
It’s just sex. Nothing else. You don’t get the hearts and flowers thing when it’s just sex
.

‘Right, bye then,’ I said in a too-loud voice, as he locked up. I watched the back of his head bent over the lock, and scuffed my trainer along the ground, feeling rather cheap. Used. Yet how could I possibly complain about that when I was using him too, just as much?

He stuffed the keys back in his trouser pocket and pulled me in to him; it took me by surprise and I clung to his arms to stop myself losing my balance. He kissed me, slowly, and the tingling feeling started again inside me.

So what if he was using me, anyway? It felt great to be used by Mark, thank you very much.

‘I am so glad this is happening,’ he said thickly, muttering the words into my hair.

I squeezed his hands. ‘I’d better go,’ I said.

‘One last . . .’ he said, sliding his hands under my top.

‘Mark!’ I giggled as he reached my bra.

‘You just have the most amazing breasts, Sadie,’ he said. ‘I can’t help myself. I can’t bear to look at them without touching them.’

I looked away, suddenly embarrassed. ‘Stop it. Get your hands off them at once,’ I said sternly. If he didn’t, we would be back on that sofa all over again and I’d never get home.

‘Goodbye, Sadie,’ he said. ‘Roll on Wednesday.’

There couldn’t have been more of a contrast between Monday and Tuesday evening. From the sublime of an illicit lust-shag to the ridiculous of Lizzie’s book group – ten thirty-something women in a bland suburban front room, drinking herbal tea and earnestly discussing Sarah Waters. Was I the only person in the world who had thought that book groups were more about drinking wine and gossiping, with a few token minutes spent discussing the book in question? I had turned up with a bottle, which the hostess, Celia, had duly fridged, but everyone else had opted for camomile tea, making me feel like the biggest lush in south London.

The absence of calorific snacks was something of a letdown, too. I had been banking on a plate of gooey cakes, or a bowl of Kettle Chips at the very least, but all I could see, food-wise, was a nutritionally stacked fruit bowl up on the sideboard, which was no doubt intended for Celia’s kids. My stomach rumbled in disappointment, and the very faint hope I’d had of someone producing a spliff went out of the window immediately.

Lizzie, resplendent in a fawn cashmere jumper and cream trousers that made her blend in with the magnolia walls, like pale, don’t-look-at-me camouflage, introduced me around Balham’s answer to
The Late Review
.

Skinny, anxious-looking Amanda, who was clutching her beaded evening bag as if she thought someone might do a runner with it.

Dreamy-eyed, Pre-Raphaelite-haired Sara, who talked so slowly I wondered if she was on Mogadon.

Fast-talking Fee, who needed some Mogadon. Or maybe a good slap.

Caroline, with cropped dark hair and an intense stare, who was having problems with her nanny.

Gwen, in a Prada suit, who was having problems at work.

Margaret, with the MG keys prominently placed on the coffee table, who wanted everyone to know how well read she was.

Gail, who wanted everyone to know she was gay.

Lily, who showed me her diamond engagement ring within approximately eight seconds. I caught Margaret rolling her eyes at Gwen in the background.

Once the camomile had been served – and a solitary glass of wine for li’l old alcoholic me – we got down to business.

‘I love all the literary allusions Waters makes,’ Margaret began. ‘Dickens is the obvious reference, of course, but when Sue is at Briar, there are definite echoes of Brontë there. Even Poe.’

Po? I nearly giggled. What about Tinky-Winky?

Lizzie was nodding earnestly, and opened her mouth to speak the second after Margaret had finished. ‘All the twists and turns were done brilliantly,’ she said quickly. Her cheeks flushed as everyone looked at her. ‘Just as you thought you knew where you were and you had everyone sussed, the whole thing turned upside down again.’ She leaned back, taking a sip of camomile in what looked like relief. I had the feeling she had rehearsed that line all week and, now that she had made a contribution, could relax.

‘I agree,’ I said. Sisterly support and all that. ‘It really—’

Gwen’s mobile was ringing. ‘What? What?’ Her voice rose in irritation. ‘Look, tell the little fuckwit I’ll . . . Yes. I’ll be back in at eight tomorrow. Well, he’ll have to wait.’ She sucked her lips into her mouth and shook her head. ‘You’ll have to stay and do it, otherwise. You decide.’

No one seemed perturbed by the interruption but I felt a creeping horror for the person on the other end of the line, still at work at eight-thirty, only to be barked at by Prada Gwen. Poor sod.

‘Sorry,’ Gwen said, with a tight white smile that must have cost thousands. She slid her phone back into her bag and clasped her hands. ‘I thought the novel was very dark, personally.’

‘Yes,’ said Lily, nodding sagely. ‘Very dark. Actually, Celia, I’ll have a glass of that wine. If that’s OK with you, Sadie?’

‘’Course!’ I said, grateful that I had a drinking partner at last. ‘Tuck on in! Anyone else?’

‘I’m only going to have the one,’ she said, pouting in a naughty-me way that might have looked cute on a four-year-old but didn’t suit a grown woman. ‘I’ve got to lose half a stone before the wedding, you know!’

Again, that look between Margaret and Gwen. It was a mix of shut-the-fuck-up-about-your-wedding crossed with she’s-so-o-o-naive-it’ll-end-in-tears.

‘They were both very incomplete, weren’t they, Maud and Sue?’ drawled Sara. It took her about a minute to get the question out. ‘Sue has never learned to write. Maud can’t dress herself. They are both victims of confinement in their own way.’

I stared at her hard, while other people congratulated her on this insight. I was sure I had read that comment myself on the internet, when I had swotted up on clever things to say earlier that afternoon. In fact, I’d been waiting for a moment when I could drop it in myself.

‘And what about Mrs Sucksby?’ Caroline asked. ‘Fascinating character. What did everyone make of her?’

Everyone had something to say about Mrs Sucksby. The conversation was so heated, Celia started to make shush-shush gestures and motioned upstairs. ‘Can we just keep it down a bit?’ she pleaded. ‘Jeremy is such a light sleeper.’

Lizzie looked sympathetic. Time for a mum moment. ‘Felix is, too! I just have to walk outside his room sometimes and he wakes up,’ she said. ‘I don’t—’

‘I thought every character had darkness and light,’ Gail said, with a determined glint in her eye.

‘The theme of madness was incredibly well handled,’ someone else said.

‘Weren’t the asylum scenes terrifying?’ another person droned in agreement.

I had tuned out. I was wondering what Mark was doing, and planning what to wear tomorrow, for our next assignation. Maybe my lilac push-up bra. He would love that. I shivered, remembering the way he had shoved his hands up my top as we had parted.

You just have the most amazing breasts, Sadie
, he had said.
I can’t bear to look at them without touching them
.

Lizzie was elbowing me. ‘Still here?’ she asked in a low voice.

I nodded. ‘This is great,’ I told her. ‘Really interesting.’

The book discussion seemed to be over. Margaret had launched into a story about her day at work, and Lily was telling Amanda and Sara about her wedding plans. I found myself included in a conversation with Lizzie, Caroline and Celia about our children, and tried not to groan. Please! I’d had years of mum discussions – I’d come here hoping for a break.

After another mouthful of wine – now distinctly warmish – I managed to break away from the school league tables debate, and escaped to the conversation on my other side. Surely Fee, Gwen and Gail could manage to talk about something interesting?

‘So I told the imbecile, that’s it, you’re sacked. I want you out!’ Gwen was saying.

The others were nodding sympathetically.

‘Trouble at work?’ I asked.

‘Work?’ she sniffed. ‘No, that was my husband. Just found out he’s been having an affair. Prick.’

Ouch. Looked like I’d invited myself into a personal one. ‘I’m . . . I’m sorry to hear that,’ I replied awkwardly.

She didn’t seem to care who knew about it, though. In fact, give her two more minutes at that volume, and Jeremy upstairs would know the whole story, I thought. Her face was granite-hard; not a flinch of emotion. Small lines around her mouth rose and fell in bitterness as she spoke. ‘It’s been going on for six months, he said. Him and this slag. He said I was too busy with work for him.’

‘Diddums,’ Gail put in sarcastically.

‘Exactly. So I said . . .’

I made my excuses and left. I didn’t want to hear about slaggy mistresses and the ensuing fall-out. I didn’t want any of that to spoil my own fun.

I drove away from the quiet closed-curtains Balham streets, where good little children were sleeping and their good little parents were watching the news, and back to the narrower terraces of home, where music blared from cars and the corner shops were all still open and lit.

It goes on everywhere, I thought, wherever you live. Adultery and treachery and lying. Everyone does it. Stripped of our Prada suits and cashmere camouflage, we were all just animals who liked fucking, and who lied about it, simple as that. Put like that, it was quite a liberating revelation.

Eleven

Wednesday evening turned out to be a veritable feast of fucking and lying about it, in fact. Mark was waiting for me in his office, as arranged. He buzzed me in through the intercom and I all but ran up the stairs to meet him. After Monday, I had expected more frantic sofa sex – in fact, I was half expecting him to be lying there, kit off, wearing nothing but a large smile – but he surprised me again.

He had turned the lamps down low. The blinds were closed, shutting out the rest of the world. A blues CD was playing; Ella Fitzgerald, it sounded like, throaty and seductive. There were white roses in a vase on a side table.

‘Wine?’ he asked. He looked pleased with himself.

‘Great,’ I said. I had been propelled upstairs by the momentum of seeing him again. Now that I was here, I found myself standing still, arms by my sides, waiting in delicious anticipation to see what he was going to do next.

He poured out a glass for me, put it on the table next to his, then pulled me into him. ‘Let’s dance,’ he said, his hand on the small of my back.

I put my arms around him, leaned my head on his chest. I listened to the steady bump of his heart, traced around his shirt buttons with my fingers. I am here, in Mark’s studio, dancing with him, I thought. I reached up behind him and stroked the back of his neck, where his short hair became its shortest, that soft, vulnerable line above the shirt collar. I felt myself ticking inside with excitement, a time-bomb waiting to explode.

We swayed to the music, and his hands slid down, slowly, slowly to my bottom. ‘Two ripe peaches,’ he said, nuzzling the top of my head.

I snorted. ‘Peaches? I don’t know about that.’

‘Watermelons, then,’ he said. ‘Two firm watermelons . . .’

I giggled. ‘Oi,’ I said. ‘That’s a bit much. One watermelon, I can just about live with. TWO watermelons, and you’re getting insulting.’

‘Am I?’

‘Yeah, stick to the nice stuff.’

He stroked my hair, pulled gently at the end of it. ‘Take your clothes off,’ he said.

‘You take them off.’

‘I thought you’d never ask.’

It was slower, this time. Peeling, rather than pulling off my clothes. Sliding his hands over the material, then under the material, nothing hurried about it. Somehow, it was even sexier because I could hardly wait to get out of them. Now it was my turn to be impatient.