The Playdate (30 page)
“Um, Suze,” I venture. “Would you mind sitting with Rae for five minutes while Tom and I, er . . . ?”
“Sure, hon,” she says cheerfully, ignoring Tom and walking into the house.
I lean into the small hallway, pull the inner door to my flat shut behind Suzy, then come back outside, pulling the exterior door gently behind me.
“You’re looking very serious,” I say, warily.
He glares.
“Really. And why would I be looking serious, Cal?”
“Er, I don’t know, Tom . . .” I say, a joke in my voice, trying to regain the connection we made yesterday.
“Last night, perhaps?” he says bluntly.
“What do you mean, last night?”
“I mean, last night.”
What is he talking about?
“What about last night?”
“You’re going to keep that up, are you?”
“Really,” I mutter, confused. “Tom, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“OK. Well, what about how when I left here, I sat in the car for ten minutes, talking on my phone.”
“So?”
His eyes burn into me. And then I realize. A thousand pieces of jigsaw are thrown up in the air. They fly through the air, turn, then head back to the ground, randomly scattering into places out of my reach.
“So—you know what I saw.”
“What?” I murmur, already knowing it’s pointless.
“You KNOW what.”
Suzy walked into the sitting room and sat down beside Rae, with a beaming smile. Good. Ten minutes alone.
“Hey, babe,” she smiled, lifting Rae’s feet onto her legs.
Rae smiled and looked back at the television.
“Henry’s so excited about the party, he can’t wait,” Suzy said.
Rae smiled and nodded.
“I’m sorry, hon,” Suzy continued, taking one foot and rubbing it gently. “I really thought Mommy would let you go.”
Rae shot her a look. “What?”
“Turn round, watch the telly. I’ll rub your feet.”
Rae did as she was told. “But I want to go,” she whined.
Suzy shrugged and made an apologetic face. “I’m sorry, I know. She’s just being a little mean. I don’t know why.”
Rae shook her head tearfully.
“Poor little boo-boo. I know Hannah will be disappointed you’re not there.”
Rae’s bottom lip jutted out.
Suzy sighed. “I know, hon. It’s hard. If you were my little girl, I’d let you go.”
Rae kept her face to the screen, but her eyes slipped sideways toward Suzy.
Suzy took her other foot and rubbed it gently. “You know, Rae, I’m going to have a little girl one day, too. I can’t wait. I’m going to take her shopping for clothes, and to see all her favorite films, and I’m going to give her the biggest birthday party in the world. Even bigger than Hannah’s. And I’m going to be there to pick her up every day from school with a cookie and a kiss. She’s going to be the most loved little girl in the whole world.”
Rae was looking straight ahead, her eyes glistening, brow furrowed.
Suzy leaned forward and stroked her face.
“Poor boo-boo. It’s not your fault. Listen, I can’t promise anything, but do you want me to see if I can fix this with your mommy?”
Rae nodded.
“OK, well, I’ll do my best. Leave it with me. But you might have to help, sweetie. You remember what we said to do. Like, when you didn’t want her to go to work? You remember what you did?”
The little girl turned. “But I did want her to go to work. Hannah’s mummy goes to work.”
“Rae, Hannah’s mommy leaves her in the park for bad people to hurt her body. Do you want your mommy to do that?”
Rae shook her head, tearfully.
“Good girl, so you know what to do.”
A noise from outside made Suzy bring her head back up and look out the curtains. Callie was standing on the porch, her face ashen, as Tom slammed the front gate and walked off.
Friday evening is spent in a state of terror. I chat to Rae, I make her favorite tea of pasta with tomato sauce and cucumber. I read her a story, and change the plaster on her leg, and lie with her for a while, talking about tomorrow’s party. All the time, I see her scrutinizing me closely, but I brush it off.
Because I am forcing myself just to breathe.
Tom has done it. He has found out the worst secret of all; the ghoulish truth that I keep hidden in dark corners. The one that keeps me awake the most at night.
It is 9
P.M.
before I can close Rae’s bedroom door and pick up my mobile.
“It’s me,” I say. “We have to talk.”
I can hear from the grunt in his voice that this is not a good time.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I walk around my flat, tidying up with fingers that seem large and clumsy. I put a mug on a shelf carelessly, knowing
I have not placed it firmly enough and let go anyway. It falls heavily and smashes on the floor. I take it out to the trash can in the back garden, and unlock the bolt on the back gate, before returning to the kitchen.
I am standing, waiting, hands on the counter, when there is a knock on the back door.
And I open the door. And there he is. My child’s father. Just like last night, his big frame filling the door. But this time the expression on his face is tense and serious.
“Come in,” I whisper, checking the garden behind him to make sure no one is watching this time.
And in Jez walks.
* * *
I usher him through the hallway where I stood last night in my dressing gown, trying to deal with Suzy at the door as Jez hid in the kitchen. We enter the sitting room.
“What is it?”
Shutting the door, in case Rae hears, I turn round to look at him. The physical awkwardness is back, as quickly as it disappeared last night. When Jez returns to being distant like this, he has this way of pulling himself up to his full height, towering above me. His body becomes a sheer cliff once again, unclimbable.
“Jez, can you sit down?” I ask, wishing he didn’t need to make this show of reestablishing the boundaries every time. I know where the boundaries are. I know who I am. The treacherous liar who pretends to be his wife’s best friend.
Jez raises his eyebrows, then lowers himself into my sofa, causing the cushions to ride up gently on either side of him. He opens his knees and places linked fists between them. The hands that held my wrists so firmly last night are out of reach
again, his actions tell me. Tonight they are locked into expensive cuff links. The dark curls that fell furiously onto my hot skin are restrained once again, swept off his face. The shine of his leather boots patronizes my shabby old green carpet. In case any of this is not clear to me yet, Jez makes a show of picking away a piece of fluff that has attached itself to his trouser leg.
“So,” he sighs heavily. “How’s Rae?”
“She’s fine.”
“No complications?”
I shake my head.
“Good. You need anything?”
I shake my head.
“I put two hundred pounds in the account this morning, just in case.”
I nod a thanks.
“So what is it?”
When I say nothing, he lifts his heavy eyebrows impatiently, and scratches at one of his immaculate, dark sideburns. Don’t do it, the expression in his eyes says. Don’t pressure me.
“I need to tell you something,” I say, trying to hold my voice steady.
“What?”
“Tom saw you here.”
A slight tremor passes across his face.
“Last night? I could have been borrowing coffee. I live across the road.”
I blink.
“Jez. He’s not stupid. He’s furious that this is happening again. He’s especially furious that you were here when Rae had just got back from the hospital.”
“Right,” he mutters. He pulls at his cuffs, takes a deep breath,
and then gives a second sigh so heavy that the movement brings creaks from my sofa. I try to catch his eye, but this is what Jez does. He looks at you for a second with those eyes as dark and secret as a forest at night, and just when you think you have him, he brings down his heavy lids, shutting you off, and you are left instead to gaze at long lashes resting on a sweep of cheek that runs down to the curl of his top lip, annoyed with yourself for wanting more. Of anything.
“So, what’s he going to do?”
“I don’t know. Nothing, hopefully, but I don’t know. He’s furious. When he came this afternoon, Suzy was here. I thought he was going to march in and tell her. He left without seeing Rae.”
Jez shakes his head, looking at the floor, as if admonishing a naughty dog.
“You can’t let him do that, Callie. The boys?”
“Jez!” I say. “It is not exactly an ideal situation for either of us, is it? But I can’t control what he does. So I’m just warning you, so you know.”
He stands up.
“What—is that it?” I snap. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. I need a drink.”
Suddenly I notice how rattled he is. He paces beside the curtain, pulling it even more tightly closed. I go to the kitchen and return with the last glass of wine. He takes it without thanks, gulps it down, and looks at me.
“There’s stuff going on you don’t know about. With me and Suzy.”
“What? The boarding school stuff?”
He glances at me, surprised, then shakes his head.
“No. Yes. Other stuff. But the thing is, Callie, if she finds out at the moment, it would just . . .”
He finishes the wine in a second gulp, then finally looks me in the eyes.
“This has just occurred to you now, has it, Jez?” I say bitterly.
“No. But this has to stop,” he says.
“What, like last time?” I mutter.
He shrugs, moving his downturned eyes toward the window.
“And the time before,” I continue.
He puts the glass down and frowns. A gentle sigh pushes his lips apart, and it’s all I can do not to go over and kiss them, hating my own weakness.
“No, I mean, all of this has to stop completely. This, between you and me. And you and Suzy being friends. It’s too risky.”
I stop breathing.
“What do you mean—completely?”
He groans. “I’m not sure, but someone’s been trying to get into my bank accounts. Asking around. And I have to think about the boys.”
“What do you mean, ‘trying to get into’ your accounts?”
“Someone Suzy’s hired. Or maybe not. I don’t know. But I do know I need to nip this in the bud. Sell the house. Move. Before she puts two and two together.”
His words hit me like knuckles in the face.
“But what can she find out?” I say weakly. “Tom’s name is on Rae’s birth certificate. And if he tells Suzy we’re sleeping together, we just deny it. Say it’s Tom being nasty. She thinks he’s horrible to me, already.” The words roll off my tongue with ease. I have, after all, worked all of this through in my head hundreds of times in the dead of each restless night over the past two and a half years.
“It’s too risky,” he mutters, shaking his head.
Jez stands up and walks toward me. Under the bright sitting room light, I realize how puffy his face looks. There are dark circles under his eyes. One long wave of hair has worked its way loose and falls across his forehead.
I continue, fighting desperation. “Look—let me just do what I was trying to do. I go back to work. Get some money. Stop relying on her so much. Move to a different road. Gradually, break it off with her. I get back on my feet. Then”—I drop my eyes to the floor—“see what happens.”
Jez sighs. “I know you think you know her, Cal, but I’m telling you, if she finds out about this, the way she’s been recently—I don’t know what she’ll do.”
“You mean, she might take the boys?”
As Jez goes to answer me, his mobile beeps. He checks it. “That’s her. I told her I was getting wine at the corner shop.” He starts to walk into the hall.
“No. Don’t.” I shake my head, panicked. “Don’t go. Not like this. I . . . I . . .”
I peek carefully through my sitting room curtains. I see the lights of Suzy’s house shining across the road.
For a second, I imagine that light extinguished. I see a future where she is no longer there, and neither is Jez. When there is nobody there to run to when I need to talk after an empty day, and no one to touch my body when I am so lonely I think I might die. Air squeezes from my lungs as my chest tightens.
“Jez?” I whisper loudly, following him into the kitchen. “Jez.”
He stops.
He knows that tone in my voice. That pitiful ache.
He turns.
“Please. Stop. Just stay, for a few minutes. Don’t say that, not till . . .”
He takes my hand, and the touch of him does what it always does to me, however much it makes me hate myself.
I inhale deeply, and exhale slowly.
He bends down and looks me in the eye, finally. Jez knows the power his eyes have over me. The dark forests part to reveal hidden pools at witching hour.
His lips drop close to mine. They brush along the skin. They are warm and taste of wine, and make my body arch in a way I can’t control. I push my face up toward him, unable to hide it. But I should know better than to ask Jez for anything. He sees me, and stops. With one hand, he takes my hand and without warning pushes it behind my back, trapping me against the wall.
I stand there, unmoving. Then Jez moves his feet closer to mine. He pushes the heavy weight of his body against mine. Not Tom’s sweet, comforting weight with its safe places to hide. Jez’s body is like armor.
He drops his face down to my ear and breathes heavily. “Callie, I have to decide when and how,” he whispers.
Still pinning back my arm, he uses his other hand to run down and up my left side, from my breast to my hip. One long stroke, up and then down.
I wait, frozen, to see what he has decided to do right this minute. His features slacken, watchful and unhurried.
I hate myself. I hate myself that he does this to me. I hate myself that by the time Jez decides when and how, I am so weak that I have no control.
Then without warning, he lifts my T-shirt and kisses me hard on the mouth. Teeth scrape skin.
