The Yummy Mummy (24 page)

Shit, I am. I wipe my eyes and laugh. I can no longer hold his gaze. “You win.”

“No one wins. It’s not a competitive game.”

“Sorry, I don’t know what happened there. My eyes just got all sort of watery . . . as if I’d been staring into the sun or something.” This suddenly strikes me as very funny. I try to choke back my giggles.

Josh doesn’t laugh. But, interestingly, this doesn’t bother me. I feel incredibly comfortable with him. Like all the awkwardness of our social encounter had been burned away by the brutal intimacy of the staring.

“Bleuhhh!” Josh shakes his hands and his head, lips wobbling. “Need to wake up. I’m very Zen today for some reason. It’s going to be a very relaxed class.” He yawns, stretching his arms back. They arch like bows. “I’m so pleased it’s you who came,” he adds quietly, almost purring.

“Well, if you wanted an easy class, I’m your woman.”

“No, really.” He lays a hand on my forearm. “I would rather it was you than anyone else. It makes sense.”

I cannot help but soften weakly under this blatant flattery.

“Let’s do some stretches.”

They are powerful stretches, creating space between my knees and hips. I’m flexible today. My body feels intelligent, obedient. No longer a lump of Play-Doh.

“Upward dog,” he commands, squatting by my side, his palm pushing down on the small of my back.

So I lie on my front and push myself up, spine arching improbably upward.

“More, more, toward the sky.”

“I can’t go farther.” It hurts. I might snap.

“You can. Let me hold you up.” He slides a hand under each of my shoulders and supports the whole weight of my upper body on his arms, veins swelling.

“There, you see!”

A rush of pride. Josh breaks all my old limits. That’s why he’s such a good teacher. Flushed and exhilarated, I flop down onto the mat, my cheek resting on the sticky rubbery surface. Then I remember.

Botox.
“Do not bend down for the rest of the day.”

I spring up. Shit, shit, shit. Swamped by the deliciousness of having Josh to myself in the sunny studio, I’d totally forgotten the doctor’s advice.

“You okay?” Josh looks concerned. “Don’t leap up. Take it easy.”

Will my eyelids droop? Christ.

“I’ve got to go.”

“What? We’ve got another twenty minutes.”

“Really, I’ve got to—”

“Amy, you do not
have
to do anything. The world won’t collapse without you . . .”

Excuse? I can’t tell him about the botulism worming its way under my forehead.

“. . . and you were just beginning to let go.” He looks a bit crushed. I feel bad.

We stay frozen in this odd tableau for a few moments, me crouched on the mat, like a runner at the start of a race, him squatting next to me. Each waiting for the next move. Both not wanting me to leave. He sighs heavily, eyes darkening as his lids lower.

“God, Amy . . .” His voice tails off. “I think you are
so
beautiful.”

Each word hits with the force of a punch. Me? Josh thinks I am beautiful? No one calls
me
beautiful. Breath catches in my throat. My heart thumps and a confused heat spreads inside like a blood stain.

I didn’t imagine it. I didn’t imagine it.

“I’ve spent so long wanting you. Wishing”—he looks at me for some kind of response—“that I could get you on your own.”

I never thought I’d hear a man say that to me ever again. It’s like tasting a delicious soft cheese after the embargo of pregnancy. He raises his hand, my eyes follow it, wondering where it will end up. My face. His fingers trace the curve of my cheek. They feel hot and damp.

“There’s something between us. I’m not sure what, something . . .”

I still cannot speak. Why would such a man desire someone like me? His fingers tremble down my neck, across my breastbone, over one breast. As it journeys over my nipple, I shiver. Perhaps I am desirable.

“Do you feel it, too?”

“We . . . we . . . shouldn’t,” I gasp, breath unlocked now, coming faster.

“Probably not.” His fingers walk each bump of my spine. I’m frozen, unable to knock his hand away, to stand up and do the right thing and leave. He pushes me against a piece of Pilates equipment that jabs into my leg, as if pricking at my conscience. “Here.” Josh grabs my hand and puts it on his chest. His heart thumps through his rib cage into my palm. He pushes my hand down so it skids on his honey skin, toward the sweat-damp V of hair around his belly button. I want to pull away but the message is lost somewhere in the journey between brain and hand. He leans forward, cups my face and kisses me, the pillows of his lips caving my mouth into his, our tongues, first tentative and tasting, then folding together like spatulas of cake dough. I haven’t French kissed for months, and its intimacy is shocking.

“You taste nice,” he whispers, pushing my hand down farther, over the erection tenting his trousers. First, I think, That’s pretty big. Second, I think, That’s not Joe’s. The unfamiliarity is shocking. No, whatever Joe’s done, I won’t do it back, lower myself to his level. This is not the way forward. I pull away. “Josh . . . I . . . I can’t do this.”

But Josh ignores me, nuzzling his mouth into my neck and pulling me toward him, trapping me in an embrace. I don’t fight it too hard: A shameful part of me wants to be trapped, to absolve myself of responsibility. Then his hand tugs at my tracksuit bottoms, my big white mum knickers. He pushes them toward my ankles, his bare brown foot on the gusset, until I am harnessed by them, immobilized, partly naked, sincerely wishing I’d got round to that bikini wax. “Josh, I really don’t think I can . . .”

“Shhhush . . .” Gasping loudly, like a diver before submerging, Josh bows his head and buries it between my legs. I freeze.
Go on, I hear Alice cry, go on, girl
. I resist and resist and then I think about Joe’s betrayal and something in my brain snaps like elastic: I give in, legs scissoring in pleasure. Josh tugs up my top, exposing wild red nipples. Involuntarily, I buck toward him, astonished at the appetite of this body that no longer has anything to do with babies or breast-feeding or stretch marks and has become just a vessel of pleasure. I dissolve into a space that I’d forgotten existed.

Oh. Freeze again. What’s this? Advanced sexual technique? A peculiar vibrating sensation beneath my naked bottom. A quick twitch. Then a ring, an extremely loud ring.

“What the fuck’s that?” pants Josh.

I arch myself up and scoop my mobile phone from beneath me with a trembling hand.

“Man,” Josh sighs, glaring at the intruder.

The caller interface flashes insistently. It reads, JOE.

Thirty-three

IT’S 10:45 A.M. AND WE ARE DRIVING DOWN THE M23
.But I’m a few hours behind, groundhogged in the studio. I can still feel the aftershocks of Josh’s tongue in my mouth like an exploding sherbet sweet. Christ, what would have happened if Joe hadn’t called?

I am horrified by what I’ve done but can’t help dwelling on the memory. And my body feels different, alive at last. Surely I must look different in some way, indelibly branded? But Joe doesn’t notice anything. He stares at the road ahead, aloof, preoccupied. We don’t talk much, which is a relief. I’m terrified I’ll incriminate myself with an answer to the simplest of questions. He doesn’t even seem pissed off with me anymore: The B word hasn’t been mentioned, like a dirty liaison ignored for the sake of stability. And I haven’t mentioned the jewelry. Not yet, not now. How could I? Where can I find the appropriate outrage? It’s gone. Josh was the price Joe paid for his dalliance. Joe and I are even.

Time passes slowly. Joe coughs, massaging his shoulders into the back of his seat rest. I sit primly, legs crossed at the ankles, skirt tugged politely over my knees, occasionally swiveling around to check on Evie, who sleeps peacefully in her car seat behind me. We sit quietly like this, not uncomfortably, for more than two hours. We stop to grab coffee, change Evie’s nappy, the capsule family scene somehow appallingly incongruous. Road markings zigzag past, signs, junctions. And I notice that with every mile on the clock yesterday begins to drop away from me, the fade of a vivid dream. God, I have just been unfaithful. Was that really me?

“This is the turn, isn’t it?” asks Joe, pulling off the motorway and onto an A road, clouded with trees and cow parsley. Flies dash to their deaths on the windscreen. He relaxes as the traffic subsides and turns to look at me.

“You look exceptionally well today,” he says. “That blue top really suits you.”

He doesn’t see me blush because his eyes return to the road, admiring the vintage green Bentley ahead.

“Thanks, Joe.” My voice is girlish, softly submissive, a natural reaction to my infidelity, the insistent gnaw of guilt. Not only for yesterday. The guilt for the fantasies. The guilt for the coffee in the greasy café. I never did tell Joe where I’d been.

“Here we are. Brace yourself.”

He turns off the road. A lane. A stone tablet reads THE NOOK. Joe turns the car into it, leaves brushing the window, before crunching up the gravel of Kate and Pete’s drive. The Nook is a large square house, Georgian, with an arched trellis of honeysuckle over the door. To the left of the house you can glimpse an orchard, the nubbly twists of pear and apple trees, fruit shiny, still hard. To the left, framed by the gap in the open wooden gate, is a slice of pea-green lawn.

“Oh, I prefer the Kilburn High Road . . . ,” quips Joe dryly. He’s always viewed Kate and Pete’s growing wealth with wry detachment rather than envy, bemused at how their personal problems seem to keep pace with their share options. Joe fully expects that he’ll have all this himself one day, when he’s older. Not a doubter. He used to say that all his grand plans for the design company were just a means to an end, the end being a glass-fronted eco-house, by the sea in Cornwall. He hasn’t mentioned these plans for a long time.

Barking dogs. Three Labradors lollop around the back of the house, jump up at us as we get out of the car, flicking saliva on the windows. Kate swings open the front door and runs into the drive. “You’re here! Welcome!” she shrieks with delight, rushing up to Joe and squeezing him tight. She nuzzles Evie and air kisses me on both cheeks, slides an arm over my shoulders. “You’re looking
fab-u-lous
. Have to tell me your secret over lunch.” She laughs. “I must look like quite the country bumpkin to you now.”

Nothing is further from the truth. In her pink Ghost dress, coral-encrusted designer leather flip-flops, and large straw hat, Kate looks every inch the city-imported country wife.

“Come this way, this way. Such a lovely day. We can eat in the garden if you don’t mind sharing your pudding with the bees.”

We’re ushered into the bottle-green hall, the dogs hungrily sniffing Evie’s dangling pink feet. As we walk, Joe grabs my hand and holds it very tight, showily, like we are new lovers who want to display their coupledom. I squeeze back reassuringly hard and feel like a two-faced wretch.

Installed on teak patio furniture we pick at olives and oily focaccia while Kate buzzes around the kitchen, opened up to the garden by her new architect-designed folding concertina doors. I close my eyes and throw my head back into the sun. Josh. Josh on the back of my eyelids. I open them again and the images vanish, like a magazine flopped shut in a hurry. I notice Joe is staring at me, his eyes soft and affectionate, but slightly puzzled. Am I giving off clues? Does he
know
on some subliminal level?

“Guys! Hi. Welcome to fair Sussex.” Pete’s monotone. He shakes Joe’s hand stiffly as if greeting a bank client and kisses me like a dog, leaving two wet lip prints that I discreetly wipe off on my napkin. “Er, so . . . nice day,” he mutters, glancing over at Kate, wanting her to take the conversational responsibility. He readjusts his trousers—thorn slacks, the kind advertised at the back of the
Sunday Telegraph
—as if they were pinching. Since I last saw Pete, business lunches have pumped up his face. And he’s lost more hair, the polish of his forehead creeping farther up his square skull. How old is he? Thirty-eight? Forty? Funny, as Kate gets thinner and prettier in her thirties, her husband seems to be aging at an exponential rate.

We chat about the weather, the dogs, things that have no relevance to the tumult in my head. I’m a little stunned at how easy it is to operate on two different levels. So this is how people get away with affairs?

Pete has a disconcerting habit of looking at my hairline when he talks. Not so much shyness as a certain arrogance, so rich he need not try. Still, it’s easy to spot the strain, the bitten-down nails, the way he and Kate do-si-do around each other rather than risk physical contact. “Bess! Naughty Max . . . ,” he says.

But it’s too late. The dogs have singled me out as the number-one attraction, nudging their noses between my legs, sniffing greedily. Christ! The dogs know! I try to kick them back beneath the table, but everyone can see because the table is perforated. Joe thinks it’s hilarious.

“Sorry, Amy. Such damn randy creatures.” Pete taps them playfully on their noses and banishes them to the kitchen.

The doggy kerfuffle distresses Evie. Pete tenses, involuntarily backing away from the cry. He’s much more comfortable with dogs than babies. Kate notices this reaction and glares at him, before cracking a tight white smile. She flicks her eyes up to check that Pete is watching and scoops Evie out of Joe’s arms. “My little sugar plum, whads da matter?” Kate buries her head in Evie’s crisp yellow dress, then starts back violently.

“Sorry, she probably needs changing,” says Joe, smile twitching his lips.

“Oh,
I
don’t mind,” says Kate rather unconvincingly. “Pete might, though!”

Pete, registering the dig and trying to be polite, shakes his head. Evie responds to being the center of attention with a howl. Her eyes fix on me, begging to be rescued, which I can’t without offending Kate and ruining her orchestration of this marital psychodrama.

“Don’t take it personally,” I say.

“You’re going to have such a lovely holiday, little smelly one,” coos Kate. Evie eyes her warily. “I’ve redecorated your nursery. . . .”