Men I've Loved Before Read online

  ‘A great night, thank you,’ said Neil with just a slight slur. He turned towards her and kissed her. It was a long, warm, tender kiss. He didn’t try to involve his tongue which, considering his state of inebriation, was a definite act of chivalry. Yes, thought Natalie, getting older had all sorts of compensations and being settled with Neil was the biggest one.

  Before Neil, Natalie had had a few long-term boyfriends and a number of flash-in-the-pan types of boyfriend. They provided an eclectic mix of amazingly passionate and rather more prosaic relationships for her to look back upon fondly. In her time, she’d dated cute but thoughtless men, frighteningly intelligent but arrogant men, kind but dull men, fabulous but didn’t want her men, fun but going nowhere men, intense but too-much men. The assortment of liaisons had two things in common. One, Natalie gave each guy her best shot. She was always fair, faithful, and she tried very hard to suppress or at least disguise any weirdness she undoubtedly harboured. Two, all these men had a but. A big flashing but that signalled they weren’t her One; someone else’s One very probably, as none of her exes were actual monsters, but not her One.

  And then there was Neil.

  Natalie and Neil met one another in a pub, seven years ago. It all happened the old-fashioned way: their eyes collided across a smoky haze. It wasn’t Natalie’s usual sort of place, she was not a corner pub sort of girl, in fact it was her first time visiting the Goat and Gate. She’d only ended up there because her friend had a blister. Her pal had said she couldn’t bear walking the distance to the wine bar that they usually went to on a Friday night, but after a long and tricky day at work they were both desperate for alcohol a.s.a.p. so agreed to take refuge in the nearest watering hole. Later, Natalie found out that whilst it was Neil’s local, it wasn’t his usual night to visit the pub. He normally met up with his mates on Thursdays but Karl hadn’t been able to make that Thursday so they’d swapped nights to a Friday. So, neither Nat nor Neil had planned to go to the Goat and Gate that night and yet they did. Nat thought it was that sort of thing that might make a person believe in fate and such, although Neil didn’t (he was resolute that fate, horoscopes, tarot cards and Karma were all bollocks; Neil was sure that life was even more random than those crutches would have you believe).

  The Goat and Gate wasn’t then, and still wasn’t now, an especially smart place. There were no leather tub chairs, just frayed Draylon-covered benches, no potted plants, no shiny reclaimed floorboards, and there were only two wines for sale, house white or house red. But nor was it frighteningly grungy; the floors weren’t sticky, the glasses weren’t smeared and the loos didn’t smell like cesspits.

  Nat had noticed Neil, Tim and Karl almost as soon as she walked into the bar. She was single at the time and had a keen ‘potential radar’. Tim was by far the most handsome of the gang and Karl looked quick, alert and fun but it was Neil who held Nat’s attention. He was about five foot ten, the height where most men started to describe themselves as six foot; he had decent dress sense, the absence of a large beer belly and impressively muscled arms (which Nat had a particular fondness for). She liked his hair as it was particularly shiny, especially for a man. So far, so normal. If this had been all there was to Neil, Natalie might not have lingered. Neil would have had to live out his life with no other accolade than, ‘slightly above averagely good-looking’, but then he laughed. His laugh rang through the pub, turning heads and flipping hearts. If you listened carefully to his laugh you could hear echoes of the best nights out you’d ever enjoyed, you could hear your boss offering you a promotion, you could hear waves lap the shore on a hot summer day. Neil’s laugh shook the cynicism out of the vicinity; those looking at life through half-empty cups suddenly saw they were overflowing. His laugh offered promise; it was full of sincerity, certainty and potential. In that instant Neil was hauled up, by the laces of his Converse trainers, out of obscurity and instantly transformed into a man of note. A man Natalie wanted to get to know.

  Neil knew that he’d caught the attention of the hot chick standing by the bar. Wow, she was a stunner. She had a glow about her. She had blond, longish hair that swished around her shoulders as she animatedly chattered with her girlfriend. He’d be hard pushed now to describe exactly how long her hair had been. He’d say longer than Demi Moore’s in G.I. Jane, shorter than Daryl Hannah’s in Splash, sort of girl length. The thing he noticed was that as her hair swished he felt a breeze in the air, as though a tide had changed. And her smile (wide and regularly bestowed) was dazzling. Neil was fascinated by Natalie’s smile. It started slowly, her lips on the right side of her face rose first, almost reluctantly, and then there was a moment – no, a fraction of a moment – when she seemed to decide that she truly did want to smile and bang! It was there, broad and confident and irresistible. She had plump, plum-coloured lips. From the moment Neil saw them he knew they were blow job lips. She had blue eyes, a cracking figure – small boobs, a neat arse – and everything reasonably tight and toned but not skinny or scrawny or hard. Perfect, in Neil’s book.

  He’d stood in the bar, simultaneously nurturing yet battling with an image of her lips clamped round his cock (battling because which man in his late twenties was proud of an uncontrolled hard-on in a crowded pub?), wondering how he should approach her. Sending a drink over only happened in really bad movies, sidling up to her and making conversation seemed a little lacklustre; striding up to her and snogging her face off seemed a little presumptuous (even after four pints).

  And then, suddenly, she was standing next to him.

  ‘Hi. Saw you staring,’ Natalie said, giving Neil the benefit of that delicious smile, which was even more compelling up close.

  ‘Oh, yeah, I thought you were someone I knew,’ Neil muttered, quite pathetically.

  ‘No, you didn’t. But I am someone you should get to know,’ Natalie bounced back.

  And it should have been cheesy. God knows, if Neil had been the one to come up with that line there would have been groaning in the stalls, women throwing rotting fruit, but when Natalie said it, it was funny and confident and unexpected. Neil just knew Natalie was all those things. He laughed and his laugh caused her to flash her big, beautiful beam once again.

  ‘Are you married?’ She threw out the line.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Engaged?’ She dangled the bait.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Living with anyone, got a serious girlfriend?’ She waited patiently like all good anglers.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not gay.’ He liked the way she didn’t feel the need to check, despite the fact that he was wearing cool clothes and he smelt good. ‘Mine’s a vodka and cranberry,’ she said, reeling him in.

  After an evening of, if not quite wine and song, then at least vodka and chatter, Neil asked Natalie if she was interested in going to see a movie later that weekend. He asked her because he fancied the hell out of her and definitely wanted to see her again but he also rushed to ask her as he needed to make up some macho ground. As she’d done all the initial legwork, he knew he wouldn’t be able to look at himself in the mirror when shaving if she pipped him to the post on asking for a date too. He asked her what she wanted to go and see. Nonchalantly, she shrugged and assured him that her tastes were wide. She said she was comfortable sitting through films with scenes of unnecessary violence and graphic sex but she liked girly romantic chick flicks too. Neil was narrower in his taste so they went to see Kill Bill, Vol. 1.

  He wasn’t testing her, as such. It was the only thing neither of them had seen, but Neil was curious to discover whether Natalie really could handle the blood fest of a Tarantino movie or whether she was just bullshitting to impress him. After sitting through 111 minutes of pastiche kung-fu moves, punctuated (regularly) with unwarranted and unreasonable, queasy-making scenes of bloodshed (decapitations, amputations – you name it, Uma chopped it), Natalie’s only comments were, ‘I’d do Uma Thurman if I was a man. What am I talking about? I’d do her if she asked. Do I have po
pcorn stuck in my teeth?’ And then Neil knew for certain that Natalie was the coolest woman he had ever had the pleasure to know. And while at that point he did not know her in the biblical sense, the image she had just tattooed on his brain made him count the seconds until perhaps that might be the case.

  ‘Do you think things are all right between Karl and Jen?’ Natalie asked, breaking the comfortable silence in the cab.

  Neil was startled out of his semi-comatose state. He’d been thinking about Karl too, about his endless sexual exploits, and for a moment he was spooked into believing Natalie could read his mind (which most of the time she could). Neil was trying to decide whether Karl had been talking rubbish or was he right. Was sex everything? He wasn’t sure.

  ‘Hmmm?’ mumbled Neil, not committing.

  ‘Do you think Karl plays away?’ pursued Natalie.

  Nat and Neil, snug in their seven-year relationship, often gained a certain amount of pleasure by discussing other people’s relationships, especially the inferior ones. Such discussions made the taxi journeys home, after countless couple dinners and parties, fly by. But Neil had always opted to keep details about Karl’s infidelities from Natalie. Karl maintained that his flings (discreet and contained, usually opportunistic encounters on business trips) meant nothing. Neil knew that Nat would not see it in the same light and she’d be thrown into a complex moral dilemma, as she’d have to decide whether or not to pass the information along to Jen. Neil told himself that by keeping silent he was protecting Nat and, besides, tonight definitely wasn’t the night to reveal all. Neil wanted sex with Nat when they got home and for reasons that were beyond his comprehension (but placed firmly in his gut) he knew that by revealing Karl’s secrets, he would get into trouble (even though it was Karl not Neil putting it about; it was not fair but it was a fact).

  Neil was pretty sure that Karl and Jen’s relationship was a bullet train heading towards a signal failure. How could their story have a happy ending? Karl was a good mate. He was funny, fair about buying in his rounds, enthusiastic about all consoles (but with a slight preference for the Xbox 360) and a Man. U. supporter. As a mate Karl was exemplary, Neil couldn’t ask for more. As a boyfriend, even Neil could see that Karl stank.

  ‘He talked about his promotion a lot, didn’t he? He seems really excited by it,’ said Neil, neatly sidestepping the issue. Karl had some new international role. There’d be lots of travelling. Loads of shagging.

  ‘Yes. Jen thinks he might pop the question now that he has a bit more cash. Or at least suggest that they move in together. Personally, I don’t think she’s got a snowball’s chance in hell.’ This was another thing Neil loved about Nat, she was especially clear-sighted. Romantic but realistic. It was a rare combination. ‘Did he hint that he might be thinking of choosing a ring?’ asked Natalie. Her tone was not hopeful. ‘Because if he does ever bring it up, she wants a solitaire diamond, princess cut. That’s a square to you. On a platinum band, quite thick and contemporary but she wants to be surprised by it.’ Natalie sighed, torn by a desire for her friend’s dreams to come true and an underlying belief that in fact being married to Karl might well be a nightmare. ‘She keeps buying bridal magazines. She leaves them at his flat for him to stumble over.’

  ‘The ones with vacant-looking women wearing tablecloths?’ asked Neil, with a drunken giggle.

  ‘Yes, that’s how you’d see it,’ replied Natalie with a grin.

  ‘The ones that show societies where men have ceased to exist?’

  ‘Well, I suppose.’

  ‘Karl’s not going to like that, he likes being centre stage.’

  ‘I think that is the least of his long list of objections about entering into the holy state of matrimony. She leaves them in the bathroom, in the bedroom, she once left one in the fridge, right next to his beer.’

  Neil burst into such a loud fit of laughter that Natalie couldn’t help but join in, despite her concerns about her friend’s desperate and pointless plight. If you thought about it, the magazine drop was funny.

  ‘What is she hoping for? Does she imagine that one day he’ll wake up and think, “Oh yeah, lovely. I can dress up in a kilt and a dicky bow, all my dreams come true?”’ asked Neil, his shoulders shuddering now. ‘No, no and no again.’

  ‘I know, and Jen is normally such a rational and bright woman. Why can’t she see that he regards her interest in these magazines with the equivalent horror he’d feel at discovering her secretly reading Mein Kampf or Jeffrey Archer?’ Natalie and Neil’s ribs ached. Through their helpless laughter Natalie managed to mutter, ‘Poor Jen,’ which she did indeed mean. ‘It’s such a shame that she’s wasting her time trying to convert a commitment phobe.’

  The couple’s chuckles subsided and when Neil caught his breath he thought to ask, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Tim and Ali are trying for a baby?’

  ‘I thought he’d have told you.’

  ‘Don’t be crazy.’

  ‘Well, if he hasn’t told you, he doesn’t want you to know.’

  ‘But you tell me loads of stuff about Jen and Karl that Karl wouldn’t want me to know.’

  It was true. Karl certainly wouldn’t be comfortable with the idea of Neil knowing that he’d cried when watching Love Actually (he hadn’t even had a drink) or that Jen called his penis the Man.

  ‘Yeah, interesting stuff, funny stuff,’ explained Nat, fighting a yawn. ‘Trying for a baby isn’t that interesting. I don’t know why Alison insists on going into so much detail. It’s gross.’ Bored of the subject, Natalie added, ‘Shame Ben and Fi couldn’t make it. Did you miss your big bruv on your special day?’ She ruffled his hair teasingly.

  Natalie often joked about how dependent Neil was on his friendship with his brother but in fact she liked their closeness. She was the eldest of four but her three siblings were all brothers. They were fun and she loved them well enough but as a child she had always secretly wished that at least one of them had been a girl and perhaps a bit closer to her in age. There was a nine-year age gap between her and her first brother, the second and third arrived in eighteen-month intervals thereafter. Her parents had clearly decided just to get on with it; obviously a nine-year age gap for each child would amount to decades of nappies, on and off – no one could want that. Fairly or unfairly, naturally the three boys being close in age and the same sex tended to be regarded by everyone as a pack, rather than individuals. It was always ‘Nat and the boys’, rather than ‘the children’. It was hard not to feel left out occasionally. Other. Separate. There were compensations. Nat got plenty of one-on-one time with her parents, especially her mum, usually on the sidelines of rugby or football pitches while they cheered on the boys, who were bathing in mud. Having seen her brothers’ closeness, Nat understood the special affiliation between Neil and Ben. She’d often witnessed the delights and darker moments of same-sex sibling relationships; one minute you love them, the next you hate them and a minute later back to love again.

  Natalie sighed contentedly; she’d been lucky with her in-laws too. Neil’s parents were decent working-class people who, now in their late sixties, found the world around them largely fascinating but occasionally frightening. They didn’t understand what any of their children actually did for a living but they were certain that all three had ‘done well for themselves’ and proudly carried photos of their children and grandchildren, which they loved to flash at any willing soul. They were content. A rare commodity and as such they were not hard work at all. Largely they kept themselves to themselves, at a 130-mile distance. They only visited when invited and were always thrilled and hospitable if Neil and Nat chose to visit them, which they did approximately once every six weeks. Mr and Mrs Preston senior were uncomplicated and Ben, Neil and Ashleigh had inherited their parents’ straight forward, no-nonsense approach to life.

  All three were what-you-see-is-what-you-get types of people, although Ben and Ashleigh were significantly more financially ambitious than both their parents and Neil. Nat felt f
ortunate that Neil had inherited the gene that allowed a person to be content and undemanding; it was a great relief to her that she was enough for him. Neil had always appreciated the cosiness and continuity that his family had provided and he still preferred battered cod with chips and lashings of vinegar to the blackened variety. Ben and Ashleigh had ripped through what they saw as the limitations of a working-class childhood and firmly established themselves in the epicentre of middle-class existence, a world where Egyptian cotton sheets and ballet lessons for any offspring were seen as basic essentials. Although they were both still grounded enough that if anyone were ever to try to have a conversation with them about thread count, they would have thought that person to be clinically insane.

  Neil had meandered past any limitations, real or imagined, and he had no idea what his sheets were made from. They all three went to university and none of them worked in jobs where they had to get their hands dirty or ask their bosses if they could take a toilet break. And while Neil wasn’t as well paid as his siblings, he swore he loved his job more than the others. Ben was a city lawyer, he lived in Clapham (in a house that was worth an inflated fortune) with his wife (a dentist by training although no longer practising due to the arrival of Angus, Sophia and Giles). Nat loved visiting their large, noisy, warm house which was crammed with finger paintings and where the smell of organic chicken stew always lingered. Neil’s kid sister lived in New York; she worked in some high-finance, grown-up, ball-breaking job and lived in an uber stylish Manhattan loft. Neil and Nat went Stateside at least once a year and then Nat and Ashleigh would hit the shops and the latest trendy bars. They’d dress up and pretend to be extras in Sex and the City, which made Ashleigh a fabulous sister-in-law. Nat really had been very lucky indeed.