Other People's Husbands (19 page)

Why
were they all so oblivious to the concept of a certain amount of order? She'd long ago lived through the stage where small children hurled their toys at random. Everyone in this house should have grown out of that by now, apart from Charlie, who hadn't even reached it. And yet how quickly, how thoughtlessly they regressed. Coats flopped over the post at the bottom of the stairs because Pandora, who was sleeping in the studio, couldn't see the point of hanging hers in the cloakroom (‘Why? I'll be going out again soon . . .'). Shoes were trailing from the front door all through the hallway as if their owners had simply stepped out of them as they walked. Heaps of sundry possessions (iPods, CDs, items of clothing) were trip hazards on the lower stairs, waiting for someone to remember that they needed to carry them up and find them a home.

Beyond, through the open double doors to the sitting room, the seat cushions on the big purple sofa had been left squashed and all over the place, because whichever of the younger ones had been sprawling on it the night before had merely got up when their TV viewing was done and moved seamlessly from there straight upstairs to bed, without so much as a cursory backward glance. The pink sofa was covered in Charlie's toys, the blanket from his buggy, a pile of books that Cassandra had been reading. The rug was half hidden under magazines (music ones Jasper). In the kitchen, Panda's computer was charging on the table, plugged in with its wire trailing across to the socket on the worktop. Not what you'd call safe.

Sara cleared some space on the worktop, mopped a puddle where the dog's water bowl had been kicked over but no one had bothered to clear it up, made herself some coffee and carried it out to the terrace, but there was a coolish breeze, this early. Floss ran out past her, peed on the grass then raced down the garden to the studio where she barked to be let in, still not having cottoned on to the fact that Conrad was now sleeping in the house again. Pandora had said couldn't someone keep the dog in, so that she didn't get Floss waking her at what she called ‘the devil's dawn'.

No I bloody can't, Sara now thought as she went back into the bomb-site house, feeling annoyed that her blissed-up mood from the night before was in danger of turning to grumpiness. The only bona fide child on the premises was Charlie. Only he had an excuse not to help keep the place looking habitable. The rest of them were adults: did they still think the tidy fairies came in the night and cleared the surfaces? Truth was, of course, they didn't care what the place looked like – for the younger ones it was no longer ‘home', so the clear-up rules of the benign dictatorship Sara had imposed during their growing up no longer applied now they claimed visitor status.

Even Cassandra, who had left Paul partly because he was an unreconstructed slob, seemed to have reverted eagerly to domestic anarchy; she might need nudging about that. Lizzie too was hopeless. In Cornwall she lived with so many items of casual decoration (collections of shells, curiously marked stones from the seashore, jars of beads, dresser shelves crammed with beach finds) that it was hard to tell whether she was doing just a careless plonking-down of stuff on every surface, or whether it was all thoughtfully placed and arranged. She had a lucky talent that way; always had, Sara remembered. She'd bought ten folding chairs from a car boot sale, all hideous, flimsy and cheap, but by the time she'd painted each of them a different shade of blue and added junk-shop cushions patterned with Siamese cats (which should have looked hideous but worked in a kitsch way), you looked at them and thought, oh what a fantastic idea, why don't I . . .?

Conrad's view on furniture was that it should last. Sara put it down to a generation thing. Their chairs were beautiful, expensive craft pieces, made from twisted elm and commissioned from a genius in Norfolk. They would last for ever and look wonderful for ever . . . so long as people like Jasper didn't try to swing them on the back two legs, risking breakage of both chair legs and his own neck. You couldn't be overprecious about these things, she told herself, after the third time of reminding him over dinner not to do it and fighting back an urge to wallop him. It was people who mattered, not
things
. But
she
mattered too, she told herself. She was
not
anyone's skivvy.

Ace cleaner Xavier would leave if they weren't a bit more together. He was already tutting and disapproving for half of his working hours. If it wasn't that he clearly fancied Pandora (trailing around after her, smiling, telling her she spoke French
très, très bien
, even though he almost always spoke English), he'd probably have left after his first encounter with an inadequately rolled-up dirty nappy that Cassandra had left on the downstairs shower-room floor after she'd got distracted by a phone call from Miranda. Xav's face had been as horrified as if he'd come across a badly dismembered goat, and he had needed extra coffee and a doughnut.

It was hard, Marie told her, to keep a cleaner if you were going to be in the house for much of the day. Hers had left a week after Mike took early retirement. ‘They don't want you hanging around,' she'd told Sara. ‘They like the place to themselves so they can sit on the sofa and call their mates on your phone and watch daytime TV while having a crafty shot of your vodka. We pay them for the three hours and they scratch the surface in just under two, and everyone's happy enough with that.'

What would Ben be doing now? Back in the kitchen, Sara idly wondered about this while the croissants warmed. She collected the newspaper from the mailbox by the front door and went back to the kitchen to read it with her breakfast. Would he be out in his little terrace garden checking the progress of the nasturtium seedlings? Working, maybe, writing against a deadline? Or still asleep? She had an odd moment of wondering what he looked like sleeping. Some people, she thought, look almost childlike and sweet. Conrad looked his age when he slept. Still beautiful, but all the lines and crinkles settled into place, furrowing themselves that bit deeper when they weren't supported by his smile or conversation. Close up, lovely as he was, he looked like cloth that someone had crumpled while damp and left lying around so the creases dried in. Probably her own skin did, too. She would never get a L'Oréal Age Perfect contract, that was for sure. But what, she wondered, would it be like to wake up next to an unfamiliar sleeping man after so many years with Conrad? How odd would that be? What an act of trust it was to be asleep with someone. Almost more intimate than sex.

‘Hey you're up early; why didn't you wake me?' Conrad startled her, sliding his hands round her and kissing the back of her neck. She felt guilty, nervous in case he could read her thoughts. And what about the night before? The guilt was surely even worse about that. Wasn't it horribly sinful that she'd been thinking about Ben while making love with Conrad, or was off-the-premises fantasizing a perfectly normal sex aid? She would have to discuss that with Stuart, next time they went to the pub at lunchtime. He was delightfully uninhibited when talking of sexual matters, even if it did tend to lead to him eyeing her up from behind and checking out the whippiness of twigs fallen from the trees around the Green. And maybe it wasn't really disloyal, merely a bit of highly effective fantasy. After all, she (and presumably Ben) had absolutely no plans to indulge in the reality. It counted as no different from having lascivious thoughts about George Clooney. If
that
was a sin, more than half the women of the developed world were on the fast track to eternal damnation. The recording angel would get RSI trying to keep up with the crime lists.

‘I just wanted a bit of time to myself, before the hordes descended and trashed the kitchen all over again,' she told him. ‘They're like locusts; no, worse – they're like wildebeest stampeding. Have you seen the state of the place? Is it only me who can load the dishwasher? I could spend all day chasing round after this lot. Between them and the Charlie care – which I don't at all mind – I don't even get a moment to think.'

‘Why do you want a moment to think about anything?' Conrad asked.

‘Thinking's overrated. I'm giving it up.'

‘Oh are you?' she laughed. ‘How's that going to work then?'

‘I don't know yet. Haven't thought about it . . . get it?'

‘Yeah, yeah, hilarious!' she conceded.

‘OK – but today . . . why don't we just go out somewhere? Just walk out on it all. We'll tell whoever's here to sort it before Xavier throws a wobbler and we'll just leave the rest of the buggers to it.' Conrad poured boiling water over a camomile tea bag in a mug. ‘I'm supposed to be seeing someone from the
Telegraph
or
Observer
or whatever, to answer some inane questions Gerry's fixed up for them to ask me. I can't be arsed so I'm going to cancel, pleading a subsequent, more entertaining engagement. So let's think of one, then it won't be a lie.'

‘I suppose an exhibition's out of the question?' Sara teased. Conrad hated going to see other painters' work, unless it was of those who'd been dead several hundred years. Sculptors he didn't mind too much, but contemporary painters only made him growl. ‘I can't see what they're saying any more, only the childishly simple techniques they're using to say it,' he would mutter.

Sara saw the sleep years drop away as he talked to her. Enthusiasm, life light, that was what gave you youth, she thought. He used to be able to catch that in his painting. If he really couldn't do that any more, maybe he was right not to take on so much work. He already knew he was over the cusp of fashionable now, these things going in cycles as they did. Gerry might be determined – for profit reasons of his own – that there was one more upward curve in the wheel of Conrad's fortunes, but how much worse would it be to work on something with only half his heart in it?

Sara looked at the used wine glasses beside the sink – there hadn't been enough room for them in the dishwasher the night before. The sink contained a plate and knife from Pandora's late-night sandwich, a saucepan of congealed cheesy stuff, a sludge of greasy cold water. There were mugs on the worktop with half-inches of tea in them and probably several more scattered around the house. What was there to stay home for? She and Conrad would go out and then when they came home, well, who knew? Maybe the tidy fairies would have visited. By magic.

‘Yes – let's escape. I think that would be fun. But first, as soon as I've eaten this croissant I'm going to walk Floss in the park for half an hour, just to clear my head.'

Sara didn't keep to any kind of regular timetable when it came to walking the dog. She took Floss out at any old time, morning or afternoon, and besides, very often it was Conrad who took her. All the same, seeing Mike on the same bench as before, with the poodle and another carton of Starbucks coffee, it was almost as if he hadn't moved. He'd had his hair cut and didn't look quite as wild and mad-professorish, but otherwise was his usual unkempt self. He slightly reminded her of Pigpen in the Snoopy cartoons, shedding clouds of dust everywhere he went. Having thought this, she tried hard not to laugh and somehow ended up giving him a far broader smile than she'd intended.

‘Morning, Sara; what a lovely smile!' he said, getting up. She glanced at the ground, half expecting a shower of sawdust and plaster from whatever DIY project he was currently on. She recalled Marie saying something about him replacing the banister rails. The poodle yapped and pulled at its lead, then growled at Floss, who scuttled behind Sara.

‘Hi Mike,' she said. ‘Gorgeous day, isn't it?' She was, for politeness' sake, going to have to do the park circuit with him now. Knowing what she knew about Marie, this felt hazardous.

‘It is indeed somewhere in the vicinity of glorious,' Mike said, walking along beside her, nudging into her. She moved slightly sideways – the path was not a wide one but there was plenty of space for two to walk without bashing into each other; did he need to be that close?

‘And the day is all the better for seeing you.'

Sara sensed that something wasn't quite right here. She'd moved across the path, but as they walked he was still slightly touching her. Distraction was needed – this wasn't accidental. It was too early for the café to be open, which would have been useful. She could have pleaded the need for a cup of tea and possibly lost him that way. Shame it was closed, she'd often thought the early dog-walkers were a missed business opportunity. In Bushy Park there was a van serving hot dogs and bacon rolls – just the thing if you'd been striding energetically through the bracken throwing a ball for a bounding pet. No such luck here.

‘So how's your old man?' Mike suddenly said, then laughed. ‘And of course he
is
old, isn't he? Sorry! I shouldn't have said that, should I? I just meant that compared with the sweet young thing that you are . . .'

‘Conrad's fine. Couldn't be better,' Sara said abruptly, moving off the path and on to the grass. She let Floss off the lead, picked up a stick, and hurled it as far as she could. What was Mike playing at?

‘Really? Glad to hear it. Though of course, a girl like you . . . and I hope you don't mind me saying but compared with him you
are
a girl . . .' He coughed and looked uncomfortable. ‘Oh God, I'm terribly out of practice at this.'

‘Practice? At what?' She considered whether it might be a good idea to turn back for home now. They were coming to the woodsy part of the park, where there were fallen trees, tangles of elder, hawthorn. She loved it because the scents of the undergrowth were so strong, so rank and fetid. It was repulsive (moist overtones of rot and death) and yet attractive (new growth, ripening). It was also quite dark, secluded, full of wild flowers hidden between crumbling branches, sticky with fungus. She didn't feel unsafe alone, but with someone whose intentions were a bit unpredictable . . . But this was Mike. Overweight, puffing, somehow gender-neutral because he was her friend's husband. How could she even think he was remotely a threat? All the same . . .