What Might Have Been (12 page)

20

S
outh of the river, Sarah fixed her make-up, then practised fixing a smile on her face as she waited for the first of her guests to arrive. Despite the fact that they didn’t broadcast their relationship in the office, everyone at the bank knew she was the boss’s
girlfriend
, and treated her with a mixture of respect – especially since she and David had become engaged – and friendliness, although Sarah was sure the women were probably bitchy behind her back. She didn’t get that many invites for girly lunches – though she didn’t get that many lunch offers from David either – but that was fine. She had Grace, and Sarah had long ago decided she couldn’t afford to let that many people in – especially since those she’d let in in the past seemed to make a habit of leaving her.

And while she’d got to know some of her female co-workers quite well over the past year, tonight was more out of duty than because she’d wanted a party. David had insisted on a small
wedding
with just family and a handful of close friends, possibly to avoid the minefield of who to invite/not to invite at work, and that had been fine by Sarah – her mother’s disappearing act had pretty much destroyed any childhood dreams she’d had of a big, fancy
wedding
. But her fiancé’s well-broadcast desire to drink London dry on his stag night had prompted a few of the women to ask what she was planning in response, and so Sarah had felt obliged to invite them for drinks this evening. She hadn’t expected them to pay, and
certainly
didn’t want David to, hence the reason they were having it at her flat - and besides, she mixed a mean Cosmopolitan,
better
than most of the bartenders in London, anyway. Though as the evening had approached, for some reason, she didn’t feel at all like celebrating.

Sarah hoped it was just a case of cold feet, rather than anything to do with Evan’s sudden reappearance, though she couldn’t help thinking that maybe the two were related. A part of her had always hoped he might come back, even though she’d known that once she’d accepted David’s proposal, the Evan chapter of her life would finally come to an end. She’d had a while to get used to the idea, so she’d been a little surprised to find herself still so angry at him. Maybe she resented him for making her do the ending; certainly she’d been sure Mel was right, and she’d had to do what she did, but even so, Sarah hadn’t wanted things between them to end like they had. And yet here he was, not even back for five minutes, and she was questioning, well,
everything
.

She stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, wondering what Evan – no doubt looking sexy in his dinner suit – was going through this evening. Maybe the strangest thing would happen, and he and David would actually bond, or find out they had something in common – something other than her, at least. But she doubted it. You could hardly find two people more different than David and Evan. Which was what had made her situation all the more difficult.

Just before she’d learned of Evan’s imminent departure, Grace had suggested making a list on a piece of paper – Evan’s name at the top of one column, David’s above the other – of all their good points, everything she liked about them, and all their bad points, too, but she’d rejected the idea almost immediately. Because while she’d known that was a useful exercise if you had to make a choice between, say, two similar apartments you were interested in buying, this had been like trying to decide between a bohemian house in the West Village and a Park Avenue condo. Both were so different, both would have offered her such opposite lifestyles, and she could see the merits in either of them, but as for picking one logically –
and for the rest of her life
– she may as well have tossed a coin.

In the end, of course, she hadn’t had to choose between them. Fate had done that, and then circumstances had taken over, and David had proposed, and she’d said yes, partly
because
of circumstances, but perhaps also, as she now suspected, because she hadn’t thought there was any alternative. Plus Sarah understood there was a problem with getting what you thought you wanted in life – you were too frightened to find out it wasn’t perfect, or certainly not all it was cracked up to be. She was sure this would be the case with David, just like she knew it was bound to be with Evan, because experience told her that ultimately, reality let you down. Her mother leaving when she was a little girl, and then her selfless father’s long, painful, but ultimately losing battle with cancer had taught her life just wasn’t fair.

She sighed, then checked her lipstick and walked out of the bathroom and into the kitchen, where Grace was arranging sushi on a tray, and a thought suddenly occurred to her. Had she agreed to marry David only because she was grateful that he’d proposed?

‘Ready?’ asked Grace, pouring her a large glass of Chardonnay.

Sarah shrugged, then hugged her friend. ‘As I’ll ever be,’
she said
.

And she had to concede that that, at least, might well be true.

21

E
van had flirted with the idea of just getting drunk in order to get through the evening, but he didn’t want to risk losing it completely and blurt something inappropriate out to David, so in the end, he’d decided to nurse his drinks. As the night wore on, he’d been glad he was pacing himself, because the alcohol had kept on coming, and despite his relative abstinence, he was already fearful of the following morning’s hangover.

He was amazed at these City boys’ capacity to put it away,
and –
despite his earlier resentment – glad he wasn’t paying, given the number of Champagne bottles that had kept materialising, not to mention the wine, the port, and then the bottle of Napoleon brandy that had made its way round the table which, given its price tag, Evan feared had actually
been
Napoleon’s brandy.

They’d finished their dinner, then moved back into the bar until eleven-thirty, when their increasingly noisy party had been politely but forcibly asked to leave. Evan had thought of calling it a night, but he hadn’t wanted to be the first, and no-one else had looked like they were going, which was why he now found himself in some ‘gentlemen’s club’ – though ironically, the place was full of barely dressed ladies – just off the Strand that one of the party knew. As soon as they’d arrived, the whole group had become women-magnets, though Evan suspected that had more to do with the
contents
of their wallets than any laws of attraction. As he looked for somewhere to sit that wouldn’t come with a compulsory overpriced bottle of cheap Champagne, a heavy arm draped itself around his neck, and Evan looked up to see a glassy-eyed David grinning at him.

‘Having a good time?’

Evan decided to dodge the question. ‘Thanks for inviting me.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He seemed to be forming his words with a bit of effort, though Evan was amazed he could talk at all. ‘Any friend of Sarah’s, and all that.’

Evan knew it was his turn to speak, but so far, and apart from the obvious, he’d struggled to find much common ground between the two of them this evening. ‘So . . . looking forward to the big day?’ was the best he could manage.

David stared at him for a moment, then raised both eyebrows. ‘You mean next Saturday?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh yes. Though it’s a bigger day for Sarah, of course.’

‘How so?’

David removed his arm from Evan’s shoulders. ‘You not married, Evan?’

Evan shook his head. ‘Nope. Never . . .’ He’d been about to say ‘met the right girl’ but that wasn’t exactly true, so he left it at that.

‘Well, it’s what they’re all after, isn’t it?’ said David, addressing Evan as if he were delivering a lecture. ‘Huge diamond on the finger, two-point-four kids, the full housewife experience. Or rather “home-maker”, as the Yanks prefer to call it.’

‘And you’re . . .’ – Evan was aware he needed to choose his words carefully – ‘. . . sure that’s what Sarah wants?’

‘Like I said, they all do.’ He grinned, though it was more of a leer. ‘And in any case, it’s what I want.’

‘But she’s got her, you know . . .’ Evan swallowed hard. ‘Career.’

David let out a short laugh. ‘This is the City, Evan. Women don’t really have careers here. Besides, there’s only one kind of working girl I’m interested in, and speaking of which . . .’ He rubbed his hands together theatrically. ‘Time to get stuck in.’

With a lopsided smile, David headed over to the stage in the middle of the room where two girls were demonstrating the kind of flexibility normally only seen in Olympic gymnasts, and lured one of them down with a wave of a twenty-pound note. Evan watched in disbelief; the picture he was beginning to form of Sarah’s fiancé was hardly a flattering one, at least where his attitude to women was concerned. Surely David was different when he was with Sarah, he thought, though a part of him hoped he wasn’t. It would certainly make his job easier.

Suddenly desperate for the toilet, he peered around the club’s dingy
interior, taking in the heavy purple curtains and red velour booths. He’d been to a couple of places like this in the U.S., dragged along for the occasional after-party by the other boys in the backing band, yet the only thing they’d ever done for him was kill the post-show buzz.
He foun
d them depressing and always felt sorry for the girls, even though they probably earned more than he did. Sure, some of them were just paying their way through college, but he knew a few had either a drug problem, or – even though they seemed to be little more than teenagers themselves – a family to support, and were happy to supplement their incomes by going way beyond the ‘no touching’ rule.

One of David’s friends paid for a private room, and as the party went in, it became clear that a number of girls came with it, one of whom was doing her best to interest Evan in – well, he didn’t like to imagine what – by showing him just how easily she could touch her toes. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, and even at such a young age she was sporting such an over-the-top breast enlargement that Evan was impressed when she managed to stand back upright.

‘Fancy a dance, love?’ she said, swaying suggestively to the thumping background music. ‘Or something else?’

Evan lowered himself into the nearest chair and tried his best to maintain eye contact, though her side-to-side movement coupled with her out-of-proportion physical attributes meant her chest kept obscuring her face. ‘Can you tango?’ he said, trying to make a joke, but the girl just frowned.

‘I don’t think we sell ’em.’

‘Sell what?’

‘Cans of Tango.’

Before he could reply, the girl jumped onto his lap and rubbed herself against him, her backside pressed into his groin, which only served to remind Evan of his painfully full bladder. As she climbed slowly off, he admired the series of floral tattoos that spread across her back and disappeared into her barely-there underwear, wondering what drove someone to do this to themselves.
A lack of self-esteem
was the textbook answer, though at times like this he found that hard to believe, given how the girl was gyrating in front of him in next-to-nothing.

He glanced around the room. The rest of his group seemed to be mesmerised by the girls, encouraging them into more and more daring acts by dispensing twenty-pound notes at an alarming rate, and while David was nowhere to be seen, Evan wasn’t surprised. Given the amount of alcohol he’d been mainlining all evening, by now he was probably asleep in a corner somewhere.

‘So,’ the girl said, licking her lips, revealing a tongue piercing that made Evan wince. ‘That dance?’

‘Maybe later,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me where the gents are?’

‘Ain’t no gents dancing here, sweetheart. If that’s your bag then you should be at a different club.’

‘No, the gents’
toilets
.’

The girl glanced across at the huge bouncer, then leaned in close. ‘I’ll show you if you like?’ she whispered, a mischievous glint in her eye.

‘No. That’s fine.’ Evan reached into his pocket for his wallet. ‘Here,’ he said, handing her a twenty-pound note. ‘Keep my seat warm for me.’

‘Ooh,’ said the girl. ‘Kinky.’

In the far corner, two other girls had begun to kiss, causing David’s friends to cheer as if they were watching a fist-fight, so Evan slipped out to find the gents’. Under the watchful eye of the bouncer, he headed back along the corridor, aiming for where he thought the toilets must be, but instead, found himself faced with three unmarked doors. Assuming they’d
all
be gents’ – after all, he doubted any of the club’s customers were likely to be female – he cautiously pushed the middle one open, and for a moment, his eyes wouldn’t adjust to the gloom, but once they had, he found himself transfixed by the sight of David lying face-up on the sofa in front of him. From what Evan could tell, he seemed ill, or was maybe having some kind of heart attack, given the moaning sounds coming from his mouth and the semi-naked girl bouncing up and down on top of him, as if trying to perform some over-vigorous cardiac massage. Then Evan noticed the girl was facing in the wrong direction compared to any first-aid instructional videos he’d ever seen, and that David’s trousers were round his ankles, and realised exactly what was going on.

David hadn’t noticed him come in. His eyes were shut, and at once, Evan felt angry: at David for taking advantage of the girl, partly, but more importantly, at his betrayal of Sarah. He felt like going over and pulling them apart, but what good would that have done? Besides, there were some sights you didn’t want to see, and he already knew this one would stay with him for a long time. And while the girl seemed not to be phased by what was going on – in fact, and out of David’s line of vision, she seemed to be using her free hand to compose a text on her phone while randomly shouting an enthusiastic ‘oh baby!’ every few seconds – somehow that made it worse.

He backed swiftly out of the room, careful not to make any noise, and as he shut the door behind him, Evan suddenly realised something. He’d
won
. All he had to do was tell Sarah what he’d seen, that this was the kind of thing David got up to, and he’d be home and dry.

It occurred to him she might demand some sort of evidence – and a picture snapped on his phone would do – but somehow,
taking
a photo seemed a little too sordid. Sarah would just have to take his word for it – and surely David wouldn’t be able to deny
this
. He marched back down the corridor, a spring in his step, and found the toilets, but as he relieved himself, something else became clear to him. He didn’t want to win by default. No, Evan thought, he needed to make Sarah realise she should be with him because he was what she wanted, not because some bad deed by David had pissed her off. But at the same time, he was smart enough to know this was a piece of information that he’d keep filed away, close to his chest, and only use in an emergency. Though what constituted an emergency, Evan wasn’t sure yet.

He headed back to the private room. Only a couple of the group were left in there now, the others probably having been enticed somewhere
more
private, just like David had, and Evan wondered how many of them had girlfriends, or were even married, and whether this was just par for the course. Sarah had told him how sexist, how chauvinistic the City was, and he imagined visits to these kinds of places were all part of doing business. Given how David had seemed to be on first-name terms with the barman, Evan could believe it.

Just then, the girl who’d been ‘dancing’ for him earlier came over from where she’d been enjoying a sit-down at his expense.

‘Anywhere else you’d like me to sit, love?’ she said suggestively, but all Evan felt was a sudden need to be anywhere but here. He retrieved his wallet from his pocket, slipped the girl a couple of notes, and made his way quickly towards the exit.