I Invited Her In Page 19

  ‘I just think she has to be careful,’ he says.

  Even though I understand his concern is coming from a decent, caring place, I find myself snapping, ‘That’s just it, she doesn’t. She can be as wild and bold as she pleases. Age is just a number. You are only as only as you feel.’

  I think we both simultaneously reach the thought that, if the saying is correct, then we’re both fifty-plus, at the moment. I didn’t even get to have a party. We stay silent with our thoughts until I can’t keep it in any longer.

  ‘Ben, they record themselves having sex,’ I whisper.

  ‘Is that wise?’ he asks.

  ‘Wise?’ I don’t understand the adjective. ‘It’s sexy, it’s exciting, it’s fun,’ I insist.

  ‘I just mean, she’s in the middle of a divorce. That sort of thing in the wrong hands . . . ’ He trails off and I’m glad. He’s being boring. ‘Mel, there was a call from Liam’s college today.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I don’t know. I missed it. There was a message on the answering machine. A name and number to call back.’

  I wonder for a moment what that might be about. I start to fantasise about prizes and plaudits. Liam is a great student. Well-liked by the staff and kids. I guess they’ve heard about his internship and want to congratulate us.

  Ben kisses my forehead. ‘Early alarm clock tomorrow, plus you’ll have a hangover. Should I get you a glass of water?’

  He gets out of bed and heads towards the door.

  My eyes spring open. ‘Ben. You must put pyjamas on! Abi is downstairs smoking,’ I hiss.

  ‘Oh, I’m far too old for her,’ he says with a grin, but I’m relieved that he reaches for his pyjama bottoms.

  31

  Melanie

  Thursday 5th April

  It’s a quiet day in the store, for which I am eternally grateful because someone is taking a cleaver to my head and repeatedly smiting it. The agony is so real I expect to see blood splattered all over the rails of clothes. I’m grey, shivery, my back and even eyelids ache. Yes, this is absolutely the hangover I expected. My boss takes pity on me. I don’t think, for a moment, that she buys the story that I’m coming down with a flu bug.

  She simply replies, ‘Good night, was it?’

  I nod, shamefaced. She laughs and tells me I can go and tidy the stockroom. We all know this is code for ‘take a couple of aspirin and sit on the stockroom floor with your back up against the wall until the world stops spinning’. Most staff members have availed themselves of this facility in the past, at one time or another. The best thing about ‘tidying the stock room’ is that I have a chance to look at my phone. Ben has sent me a text. How’s the head?

  I type Not great.

  My phone pings again. This time there is the blushing face emoji. You were pretty well oiled last night.

  I know. This morning I discovered I have a bruise on my knee where I tripped as I clambered out of the taxi. Literally legless. I don’t need him to remind me. Maybe his tone is supposed to be playful but I feel embarrassed. I don’t reply. A few minutes later another text arrives. Did you speak to Liam’s college? No. Damn, I haven’t. Not yet. I got the girls to school wearing clothes; I consider that an accomplishment. I turn off my phone.

  Somehow, I manage to struggle through to the end of my shift, which is two thirty p.m. today. I didn’t think I was in a fit state to drive this morning so I caught the bus, so naturally I must do the same again. As I wait at the bus stop, I find my attention being drawn to the young men who walk past me. Men in paint-splattered overalls, men in jeans and hoodies, men in suits. I try to guess their age. I realise that I haven’t got much clue. Most men look ‘young’, then ‘about my age’, then ‘old.’ I can’t finesse the categories down any further. I’m good at this game when it comes to children. I can differentiate between a seven and an eight-year-old, just by looking at their teeth. I know if a teenage boy is sixteen or seventeen because of the way he holds himself. There’s something about their upper backs – they tend to stand taller at seventeen, broaden at eighteen. But adults? No, I have no clue.

  I’m still very curious to know what The Stud looks like. I feel silly referring to him that way. I need to ask Abi what he’s really called. My guess is he’s called Brad or Dex. Something cool.

  I arrive home and push open the front door. I yell hello but no one answers. I think Abi must be out looking at flats this afternoon. I head for the kitchen, needing a big glass of water. I notice two things: one, the home phone is flashing; we have a message. It will be my parents, or someone from Liam’s college or the girls’ school – no one else uses the landline. Two, Abi’s phone is on the kitchen table.

  Abi never leaves her phone unattended. It’s usually surgically attached as she never wants to miss a call from her lawyer or her London contacts or now, presumably, her lover.

  Her lover.

  I don’t think about it. If I think about it I won’t do it. I reach for the phone. Luckily and surprisingly, it’s not password protected. There must be a shot of this guy. Why is she being so coy? She must have a photo and I can’t imagine he’s ugly. I am not planning on looking at the home videos, the ones Gillian stumbled upon last night. I’m just . . .

  Curious.

  It’s the first thing I see. It pops up on the screen without me even knowing how I’ve accessed it. It must have just been the last thing she was looking at herself. I’ve never seen a home sex tape before. My body starts to pulse, my hands are clammy, my heart is beating so fast I think it’s going to explode. She is lying on the bed, legs spread, shaven, like she’s told us. Her panties are around her ankles, they are black and lacy, they look a little like bindings. Her bra has been pulled up over one breast, she’s clasping both her breasts, fingering her own nipples while she stares provocatively at the camera. Her expression is a more extreme version of one I have seen before, she is teasing, then pouting. It’s a beautiful hotel bedroom, the sheets are white and silky. She slides and glides, wiggles. I can almost feel the sheets shimmer down my back. She puts one finger, first in her mouth, and then inside her. I should stop this but I can’t. I don’t. She’s beautiful. Her skin is golden, smooth and then red, raw. Like a wound. Private. I should not be seeing this. I press the button to stop it playing but as the image freezes her expression changes – she is alight.

  He has just walked into shot.

  My finger hovers over the button that would get the images to play on. My heart is beating so fast and furious, I think my ribcage is going to explode, I think my ear drums are. This is what Gillian saw last night, probably. That’s all. I press play and her lover walks onto the shot. Toned, smooth, paler skin than hers. I can’t see his head as the image is cut at his broad shoulders, but as he crawls onto the bed, arse in the air, head dipped to pleasure her, I see it.

  The brown birthmark on his right buttock.

  Then I throw up. Over the phone, over the kitchen table and all over my life.

  32

  Melanie

  I want to fling the phone across the kitchen. Smash it into a thousand pieces. Erase the image. Erase the action. But I don’t. I airdrop the video onto my phone. I don’t know how I manage this when her phone is slick with my vomit and the stench is everywhere, when my hands are shaking and my stomach is still queasy, but I do. It’s instinctual. Evidence.

  I realise I’m in shock. This happened to me once before when Imogen split her head open falling off a wall in a friend’s garden. She was concussed, out cold. I managed to call an ambulance and accompanied her to the hospital, answering the medics’ questions, but as I did so I fought the feeling that I was living a second before or after reality, not quite in the moment. I was running through a thousand scenarios where I had intervened just a second before and prevented the accident from occurring and I was also thinking, what next, what? What might happen? What can I do? I feel the same now.

  My throat is parched and painful, I keep gasping at the air but can’t ge
t enough oxygen. I’m shaking so much I want to sit down, lie down. Fall down. But I can’t, I need to clean up. I nearly run her phone under the tap, but stop myself just in time. I quickly reach for the paper towels and wipe away what I can. I set to work cleaning up the sick, but I know I can’t. This sickness can’t be eradicated.

  The landline rings. I pick it up, even though I am not sure I’ll find a voice to speak.

  ‘Mrs Harrison?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Mark Edwards here. Principal of Wolvney Sixth Form College. I’ve left you a few messages.’ He sounds a bit irritated, all business.

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Erm yes. I know.’ I should tell him that I’ve been planning on calling him back. I should have called him back. Whatever, I can’t find the words and it’s too late now. The unwanted images keep assaulting my consciousness. The birthmark. I know. I know it is him.

  The principal was perhaps expecting more but, no doubt, used to dealing with tricky parents, he clears his throat and launches in, keen to stick to his agenda. ‘I’m ringing because Liam’s attendance has been extremely irregular over the past five weeks. I know there was the Easter break, but even before then. I wondered whether that was something you were aware of?’

  ‘No,’ I whisper. No, I know nothing about my son. Or at least knew nothing. Now, I know more than any mother ever should.

  ‘Well I’m sure you can appreciate this is a critical time. A-levels are just around the corner. He really needs to be in school.’ He pauses, waits for me to comment, to agree. I have no voice. ‘With most of our pupils, if truanting occurs in upper sixth there’s little or nothing the parents can legally do. But as Liam is not eighteen until June, I thought we might be able to work together on this. Assuming, that is, Liam still lives at home.’

  ‘Yes, yes of course he does,’ I mutter finally. Liam is a child, my child. Yet. ‘What are we talking about, exactly?’ I ask in what I hope is a normal voice.

  ‘Three or four days of absenteeism a week. Very little homework handed in.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I whisper.

  ‘I was wondering whether there was a problem at home that we’re not aware of. Liam has a good academic record. When he arrived at our sixth form we were very excited, we thought great things were in store.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I agree eagerly. I think I sound manic. ‘He’s just secured an impressive internship. He’s going to UCL.’

  Mr Edwards pauses. I bite my lip. Anything I say will be wrong. ‘Well, the internship will be subject to references, I assume, and UCL is a conditional offer. This level of truancy is certainly going to have an impact. He’s in danger of dropping two or even three grades below our predicted ones, as it stands now.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So, is there?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Anything going on at home or within his friendship groups, maybe girlfriend troubles?’ Mr Edwards laughs self-consciously at this suggestion, almost as though he’d rather not hear if it is the latter. I want to scream. Maybe I do because Mr Edwards adds, ‘Have I caught you at a difficult time, Mrs Harrison?’

  ‘Yes, yes, actually you have.’

  ‘Perhaps it would be best if we made an appointment for you and Mr Harrison to come and speak to me. To sort this out.’

  ‘You can sort this out?’ I grasp at straws. I’m not thinking clearly.

  Mark Edwards tries to sound upbeat and confident. ‘Well, most likely. We need to have a conversation and then we need to engage with Liam. If he wants to turn things around then we can work together to do so. We just need to get to the bottom of what’s going on in the young man’s mind. All is not lost, Mrs Harrison.’

  But it is lost. I know what’s going on. My son is having sex with my best friend. My son is having sex with Abigail Curtiz, wife of Rob Larsen. I don’t know how we can turn that around. I suspect that will be outside the principal’s area of expertise.

  I put down the phone and then curl into a ball on the floor, in the corner of the room. The smell of vomit lingers.

  Liam hasn’t been going to school.

  For five weeks, he has been lying to me, to be with her.

  I think back over the past weeks. Have there been signs? Clues that I’ve missed? When did it start? During the Easter holidays, when I took extra shifts and Abi and Liam were mostly here, with no company other than the girls? I thought he was revising. Was it before then? Did they share looks, codes, messages that I’ve been oblivious to? How could this affair have been raging under my very roof?

  I thought I knew him. I thought I knew him better than anyone.

  And her? I thought she was my friend.

  The feeling of hazy shock vanishes as I’m seized with livid fury. A ball of angry fire swirls around my stomach. He’s throwing away his career on that bitch, that interloper, that manipulative slut. I hate myself for falling on the hackneyed phrases that hurt women, I’m a feminist and don’t call women names. I’m ashamed that my response is so basic, so lacking and backward. But I don’t know how to be better.

  I think of the things she told us last night. How her lover was obsessed with her, couldn’t get enough of her. He followed her into the shower. Liam. I don’t want to think these thoughts but I do. I think of her, hands flat against the wet tiles. His hands on her hips. Or maybe her breasts. Have they done it here in our home? Well, they must have. In his childhood bed? Maybe in mine and Ben’s bed? The kitchen table? Anything is possible.

  I need Ben. I have to speak to him. Him first. He’ll know what to do, what to say. I text Gillian and ask if she’ll collect the girls and keep them for me, then I grab my car keys and head for the door.

  ‘Oh hello, you’re home. I didn’t hear you come in.’

  I hear her voice behind me. It’s like a knife being plunged between my shoulder blades. Slowly, I turn around. She’s stood on the stairs, wearing not much, no surprise there. Her short silky robe, the one she wears to come to breakfast. I’ve often marvelled how she can climb out of bed and look so gorgeous and together; now I consider it isn’t as effortless or artless as I had thought. She’s dangerous.

  ‘Were you in bed? I ask, my voice scratching.

  ‘I’ve been painting my nails.’

  This is her explanation for being half dressed in my home at three thirty in the afternoon, an excuse she’s given me before when I’ve found her here semi-clad. Other times she’s said that she was having a lie down. I’d always imagined her having a dreadful afternoon, needing to retreat, to reminisce and recover, time to grieve for her marriage. I sympathised. I treated her with kindness. Now I understand. She’s been spending the afternoons in bed with my son when I thought he was at school learning about great philosophers and political theory.

  ‘Is he up there?’

  She doesn’t even deny it. ‘Yes, he’s taking a shower.’

  I don’t know how she expected me to respond but I scream, it’s loud and primitive and I can’t stop it. All my frustration is pouring out of my mouth. This is not what I want for my boy. This is not what any mother could want. Liam comes running out of the bathroom, a towel around his hips.

  Abi orders him back into his bedroom. ‘I have this,’ she says calmly.

  And he goes. Like the obedient boy he is, he backs into his room, glancing at me just briefly. His face colours but I know my son: that blush isn’t for his embarrassment or his shame; it’s because he feels pity. Pity for me.

  Abi slaps me. I feel the sting before my brain can register what she has done. She steps smartly away from me, in case I retaliate. I wouldn’t have. I don’t want to touch her. The slap, short and sharp, does the trick she wanted. I stop screaming. I stare at her, stunned, waiting to see how else she will choose to hurt and humiliate me.

  ‘Shall I make us both a cup of tea?’ she asks.

  ‘No.’

  She walks through to the kitchen anyway. I see her sniff the air but she doesn’t say anything. I notice she glances at her phone. I realis
e that she’s played me. The phone was there for a reason. How lucky that it was unlocked and the porn was on the screen. She knew I would pick it up. She knew I was curious about her and her boyfriend, that I’d want to find a photo. She’d told me just enough to pique my interest.

  ‘I didn’t know how to tell you,’ she comments, shrugging.

  She has her back to me, looking out onto the garden. The girls have a swing, there is a deflated football under a rose bush. A boy’s toy. Does she notice?

  ‘You didn’t know how to tell me because you know it is wrong,’ I mutter.

  ‘It doesn’t feel wrong,’ she says simply. ‘It feels absolutely perfect.’ She turns to me and smiles. I hold up my hand, wanting to silence her. My retinas are scarred; I don’t need my ears to bleed too. ‘I didn’t expect that OTT reaction.’ She moves her head in the direction of the hallway. ‘A little extreme, even for you.’ I stare at her. I can see her but she’s a stranger, a monster. ‘I mean, last night, you thought my dating a younger man was a fabulous idea. Quite titillating.’

  ‘You said he was twenty-six.’

  ‘Well, if I’d said he was seventeen you might have guessed straight away. I wanted to help you get used to the idea. To embrace it.’

  Her complete lack of embarrassment, regret or even rancour, almost floors me. Surely, she ought to be more frantic. I’m shaking still, wondering when my usual fluency will return. I’m articulate as a rule, verbose when irritated, I have a torrent of things to say but I daren’t let it out, I must control it. ‘What you are doing is unnatural,’ I say. ‘Sick. Immoral.’

  ‘That’s just your view.’

  ‘You could have given birth to him.’

  ‘But I didn’t. You did.’

  ‘Exactly. Me. I’m his mother and I’m your best friend. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Aren’t I owed any loyalty?’

  ‘For being my best friend? Ha!’ She laughs. ‘That’s really funny.’