The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy (40 page)

I force myself to wait at least half an hour before replying, and then I write, Congratulations but not a good idea I think. By tacitly acknowledging what occurred, I am not only curtailing the chances of anything happening again but also derailing the possibility of even a little harmless flirtation. I try to feel self-congratulatory about having made what I know rationally is the right decision. If there had been no forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, then Eve would never have had to decide whether to eat it, I tell myself. There is little doubt in the tone of my message to Robert Bass, but it is not written
with utter conviction. Being rational is one of those long-term investments with few immediate dividends.

Although I have felt guilty, it isn’t the kind of acute guilt that is alleviated by dramatic confession. It is more the chronic variety that I think might fade in time. I console myself with the fact that nothing had really happened. A tangle, not even a knot, which means there is nothing to unravel and still less to confess. So no one, apart from Celebrity Dad, is aware that we were even alone together. I ignore the obvious fact that secrets give oxygen to fantasies.

A few weeks after sending this text message, the Easter holidays now a distant memory, I wander into the local café, after dropping the oldest boys at school and Fred at nursery, for a meeting convened by Alpha Mum to discuss the forthcoming school fete. It is the first time since the party that I will be in such close proximity with Robert Bass because I have, so far, successfully managed to avoid all but the most superficial contact with him.

Yummy Mummy No. 1 waves at me as I stroll through the door. She proprietorially pats a space beside her and I walk over to sit down, relieved to find that I am early and Robert Bass has not yet arrived. I am grateful and anxious in equal measure. On the one hand I fade into the scenery beside her brightly coloured fifties-style tea dress and massive sunglasses, on the other she will inevitably want to talk about Guy.

‘Hello, Isobel,’ I say.

‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you use my name,’ she says, looking pleased.

I look back nostalgically, to a period not so long ago when I was lucky if Isobel threw me a few crumbs of attention and even those were drained of any emotional content. Now my
feelings towards her are composed of an uncomfortable blend of incompatible flavours, like a culinary experiment where an amateur cook throws improbable ingredients together in a hopeless attempt to produce a memorable new dish. Curry powder, sugar and salt. Admiration, sympathy and guilt. Admiration for the way in which she has elected to deal with the situation, because she has carried the emotional burden alone, without infecting her children with her anxiety, and has faced the world with the same blend of humour, detachment and impeccable dress sense. And these characteristics enhance my sympathy.

Guilt is, however, the predominant emotion. My loyalties are deeply divided. From the outset, I felt it would be wrong to betray Emma. The breadth and depth of my relationship with her are incomparable to my burgeoning friendship with Isobel. But now I feel guiltier about deceiving Isobel than I do about my own brush with Robert Bass. If I remain resolute, there will be no repercussions for me, just a return to the status quo. Her situation is much less predictable and inevitably involves a good slice of pain.

The first few weeks after the party I had several awkward phone conversations with Isobel, about the possible identity of her husband’s lover and new facts that she had uncovered about the scale of Guy’s deception. The fact that these calls have diminished can only mean she is closer to discovering Emma’s identity under her own steam or that she feels I am part of the conspiracy, which I am.

Also I am increasingly frustrated with Emma. I have tried to explain to her that the longer the relationship between Guy and her endures, the more entrenched the pain and anger become for Isobel and the more difficult it will be to repair their
marriage. Each time I speak to her, she promises that she is close to ending the affair. She is using a method she describes as ‘slow withdrawal’, which I have said sounds like a tantric sex technique, but she maintains is part of her campaign to leave the situation in a position of strength.

It is tempting to unmask Emma, but at this juncture it is hardly likely to help the situation. Isobel’s dignity has been maintained in part by her detective work, which gives focus to her anger and allows time to work out an appropriate response.

So my reserves of anger are directed towards Guy. Most surprisingly, I have had several phone calls from him, wanting reassurance that I won’t tell his wife what is going on or persuade Emma to leave him. I wonder whether Isobel is still monitoring his calls and what she will conclude from this new clue on the phone bill.

I look at her. Worry suits her, I decide. She is glowing.

‘You look like Jackie Kennedy, when she was on her honeymoon in Acapulco,’ I tell her.

‘That is an unfortunate analogy from a number of angles,’ she says, peering over the top of her glasses, ‘although at this stage, shooting Guy is one of many options that I am considering. Particularly since I have discovered that the night of that dinner in the restaurant he wasn’t in France at all.’

‘I was referring to your look. Anyway, JFK probably wasn’t having affairs at that stage,’ I say, trying to be at once reassuring and direct her away from talk about her husband.

‘I wasn’t thinking about his affairs,’ she whispers tersely. ‘The reason I’m wearing these glasses is because I have a sports injury.’

‘I didn’t realise that you could tone facial muscles,’ I say in genuine amazement. ‘Wouldn’t that cause wrinkles?’

‘Are you being deliberately contrary, Lucy?’ she asks, but I know she finds this kind of conversation pleasantly distracting.

I would like to tell her that I am deeply uncomfortable with the enforced intimacy of our relationship and want to get back on to the kind of ground that we used to cover. But it is too late. We are bound together by circumstance.

She lifts the sunglasses to reveal a massive black eye extending from her left eyebrow down towards her cheekbone.

‘I accidentally punched myself in the face during my kick-boxing class,’ she says. ‘It’s because I’m so preoccupied.’

‘Having such a fine arse must entail some element of suffering,’ I say.

‘Lucy, you have two choices in life,’ she says, sighing. ‘You either decide to save your face or your bum and I have chosen the latter.’

I must look puzzled, because she continues, ‘If you exercise a lot you get wrinkles, if you are overweight your face looks younger.’

‘But surely your husband sees more of you from the front than from behind?’ I ask. ‘Wouldn’t it make more sense to invest in that?’

‘Actually, since you ask, he doesn’t see much of either at the moment. I have withdrawn all services. Besides, my personal trainer says I should focus on my unique selling point,’ she says. ‘It’s an investment for the future, in case things don’t work out.’ Her voice is a little shaky and a small tear escapes from the bottom left-hand corner of the sunglasses.

She wipes it away, sniffing delicately.

I reach out to hold her arm. I wish that Emma could see this side of the story.

‘Don’t be kind to me, I can’t bear people feeling sorry for
me,’ she says. ‘Say something nasty so that I don’t cry.’

‘Your dress is as blousy as a bed of chrysanthemums. Judges don’t look favourably on personal trainers in divorce settlements. Your next car will be a G-Wizz,’ I say. She smiles weakly.

Robert Bass comes over to join the group and I try to concentrate on my orange juice, sipping loudly through a straw, resisting the temptation to look up. I allow myself to examine his legs from the thigh down and note that he is wearing cut-off shorts that stop unevenly somewhere just above the knee. A hot summer is not the best time of year to banish lustful thoughts. I watch his legs walk towards a chair next to Alpha Mum. I try to find the comedy in his knees, to look for hairs on his toes, callouses on his heel, anything that might prick the bubble of desire.

To say that I haven’t thought about him at least once a day would be a lie, although every time he poaches headspace I make myself think of something different, a serious subject that will underline the frivolity of my obsession. For example, I make mental lists of countries that have borne the brunt of US foreign-policy blunders and then, if this isn’t sufficiently distracting, try and put them in some kind of order. Is Iraq a worse mess than Vietnam? Should one judge the situation by the number of civilian casualties or the decades that will be lost simply to get back to the point of no return? In which case was Nicaragua a bigger mess than Somalia? Sometimes my mind wanders. Would a brush with infidelity radically alter the landscape of marriage? How long would it take to return to the status quo? How many casualties would there be?

If my resolve needed bolstering, I would stop and stare at my children and feel sure that I had the willpower to resist any
overtures from Robert Bass. But what I had failed to understand was that while I was trying to retreat, he was still in pursuit. My weakness for seeing situations from everyone’s point of view failed me at the precise moment when it would have been useful.

Yet despite all this I regard myself as lucky because, whenever the memory of the coat cupboard threatens to dominate my thoughts, I can simply switch attention to the other dilemmas thrown up by that portentous evening. Displacement anxiety, Mark would call these overlapping loops of worry, because he has to attach a label to everything.

Alpha Mum claps officiously to indicate that the meeting has begun and hands me a pen and paper to take notes. We all sit up in our seats and still I resist the urge to look at Robert Bass. Celebrity Dad slouches into the café. He is wearing flip-flops, tight-fitting Super Fine jeans that must belong to his wife and a hat pulled over his head so that only the bottom of his face is visible. He asks Isobel and me to move up so that he can sit next to me. I am now squashed between the two of them. He smells of sweat and alcohol. He sits down beside me and his arm sticks to my own. When he moves it to lift a cup of black coffee to his mouth, I surreptitiously lick my wrist and conclude it tastes of alcohol. He is sweating neat whisky.

‘What’s going on, Sweeney?’ he whispers throatily. I wish he would stop calling me by my surname.

‘She is proposing that the fete should have a Roman theme and that we should all come in costume and speak in Latin,’ I tell him.

‘Is this one of those weird English customs?’ he asks, taking off his sunglasses.

‘No, just one of those weird north London ones,’ I say. He
looks awful, as though this is the end of a long night rather than the beginning of a new day. His eyes are so bloodshot that my own start to water. ‘I think you should keep the sunglasses on,’ I say, pointing at Isobel. ‘You’re in good company.’

‘I am imploding, Sweeney,’ he says. He makes a sound like a bomb exploding.

Alpha Mum looks over disapprovingly.

‘My wife has gone,’ he says. ‘She’s taken the children with her back to the States. My youngest one asked if I was in a stable.’

‘What did she mean?’ I ask.

‘Unstable,’ he says. ‘But I’m not. I go through periods of self-destruction, and then I come back out again. It’s my way of dealing with life.’

‘So what are you doing here then, if you’re no longer a parent?’ I ask.

‘I start filming in Prague in four weeks’ time. I haven’t got anything better to do,’ he says. ‘It’s more entertaining than watching TV and I need to keep an eye on you.’

When I have counted to two hundred and fifty in my head, I allow myself to look up and steal my first glance at Robert Bass. I notice that the sleeves of his white T-shirt are carelessly rolled up to reveal his upper arm and the first hint of his shoulder bone. His skin is tanned. He sits back in his chair, his legs stretched out in front of him. He is using the index finger of his left hand, the finger that touched me, to draw tiny circles on the dusty table. He intermittently runs his other hand through his hair, until it starts to stand on end.

I recall the constellation of awkward situations that hung over the party that night, like a scientist putting together the
empirical evidence to calculate the possibility of a natural disaster. I think of people in offices in Colorado, monitoring tiny movements in the earth’s tectonic plates each day, trying to predict the likelihood of an earthquake. If they applied the same science to my life, they would undoubtedly conclude that a serious incident was still inevitable. I decide I have turned into the San Andreas fault.

I shut my eyes and breathe in, trying to stop myself from sighing. I can recall the smell of Isobel’s sheepskin coat, the dripping of the tap, the way his hand felt so hot on my body, that afterwards I looked to see whether it had left an imprint. I consider how the material of my wrap-dress stretched with the force he used to pull it down from my shoulder. It will probably never regain shape. I start to wonder exactly what he would have done next, had Celebrity Dad not interrupted us. I imagine the hand that is tracing the circle on the table inside the shoulder of my dress, moving down my body. And then I sigh loudly. Celebrity Dad nudges me.

When I open my eyes, Robert Bass is looking at me. I wonder how long he has been staring. He takes his finger from the table and uses it to stroke his lower lip thoughtfully. Then he smiles at me, a sort of half-smile, hidden in part by the finger. I’m sure that he knows what I am thinking.

‘Get a grip, Sweeney,’ whispers Celebrity Dad in my ear. ‘Unless you want the whole class to intercept those hungry looks.’ I sit up straight in my seat, worrying that I am so transparent.

‘Think dormice and denarii. Think gods and gladiators,’ I hear Alpha Mum say excitedly.

‘Any minute now she will introduce a competitive element to the proceedings,’ I whisper to Celebrity Dad.

‘And a prize for the parent who comes in the best costume,’ says Alpha Mum triumphantly.

‘I love the way the English are always looking for excuses to dress up,’ says Celebrity Dad, ‘especially if there is potential for cross-dressing.’