Six months before – in June
I shut the door to my office. This weekend was going to be different. Not the same old clubs and same people. I was journeying into the past.
‘Good luck with the reunion, Jack.’
‘Thanks, Em, enjoy your weekend.’
Em and I had shared a house through the last two years of university and now we shared a business. We were polar opposites but the two of us together were the perfect blend for success. I was the insanity and ideas and she was the voice of reason and a planning genius.
Ivy, one of the women who worked for us, was leaning on my personal assistant’s desk as I walked towards the door, telling Tina something, and her bottom was prominently aimed in my direction. She was wearing her chequered trousers; the ones that exaggerated her curves and made my groin heavy with longing.
‘Bye, Jack.’ Tina lifted a hand in parting.
Ivy straightened and turned around. She had the most amazing eyes. They were a lavender colour, purple-grey, and she dyed her hair a quirky pale mauve to match them. It made the colour of her eyes a dozen times deeper.
My diaphragm shoved all the air out of my lungs every time I looked at Ivy and those eyes. She was tall and slender but she had curves in all the places a woman should and a face that looked like something an artist would paint. Plus she had the purest ivory-white skin. Who kept their skin white these days? None of the girls I knew, but Ivy shied away from the sun and fake tan and kept her skin pure.
I’d have put her in front of the camera in one of our adverts but I had a feeling if I did that I’d never see her again; some modelling agency would pick her up and steal her away. And the thought of not having Ivy around to look at, and get my kicks over in the day, was gut wrenching.
But my kicks were all safe and innocent – she was with someone – and she was not the sort of girl to go anywhere near me when I had a wife. Plus Em would kill me if I tried it. And anyway I wouldn’t; Ivy was a nice girl. Too nice to treat like a throw-away.
‘Have a good weekend, Jack.’ She smiled at me.
I smiled too. ‘See you on Monday – have a good one.’
Nice, and someone else’s or not, though, every time she looked at me her eyes told me she fancied me too.
When I rode the lift downstairs I stared at myself in the mirror, looking into my eyes. I didn’t like who I saw in the mirror any more. I was getting bored of me. This school reunion had made me do a lot of reflecting on the boy I’d been and the man I’d become.
I changed into my leathers in the toilets on the basement floor, then lifted my hand to the security guy when I walked out.
This used to be the part of the week I looked forward to most. Friday night. Spending the money I’d earned, showing it off to win girls.
I preferred being at work now.
I shoved my clothes and the shoes I’d taken off into the pannier on my motorbike. Then I straddled the machine, revved the engine and gloried in the roar and vibration between my legs. I rode it out of the car park with a good feeling about going to do something different this weekend.
It was a warm night. The sky was pure blue. I dodged through the traffic, weaving in and out, avoiding the queues, unless I saw a police car and then I waited and queued with the rest, my feet on the floor as the engine rumbled between my thighs.
I loved the bike. I loved the anonymity of being behind a helmet and the freedom of speed. But it was getting out of the city on it that was the best. Then I could speed, especially in the middle of the night when hardly anyone else was around.
Riding the bike absorbed my thoughts and my mind needed to be absorbed in something else when I was heading home to my wife. Tonight I hoped Sharon would be out.
I used the word ‘wife’ loosely. My marriage wasn’t really a marriage; it was more like regular sex for the investment of half my income, the cost of a penthouse and every other thing Sharon wanted.
When the lift opened on to the top floor I owned, I sighed as I walked over to put the key in the lock. I hated coming home. I came home because this was where I lived, but the place didn’t feel like a home.
I turned the key and opened the door. ‘Sharon!’ I called out her name because I never knew what I was walking into and I wanted to give her the chance to stop if necessary.
I unzipped my leather suit and left my helmet on a chest by the door.
There was nothing wrong with the apartment. The place was amazing. It would be perfect if it didn’t house Sharon.
A part of me sulked all the time over the fact that Sharon had ruined this place for me.
I’d got myself tangled up in something stupid with her; every room in this place was tainted by it and I didn’t know how to untangle myself from the mess I’d made.
The place was a massive open space with three walls of glass. There was a Jacuzzi in the bathroom and a pool on the roof outside that had a view across London through another glass wall when you swam. I’d thought the place was ‘us’, me and Sharon, when I’d bought it. A wild place for a wild couple, who loved to live without limits. We had orgies up here and took drugs that made the skyline and the world distorted. We lived life to the extreme – on top of the world. Riding the world like the world was a motorbike, to be raced and dodged through the stationary and slow traffic.
I still loved the place, despite it not being homely. But I didn’t love Sharon any more. I probably never had and I didn’t like the way we lived any more. I think I’d just been in lust with Sharon in the beginning and excited by the way she lived – so fast and far on the outside of normal.
The life I led with Sharon ran parallel to everything else. It had felt like unleashing the true me in the beginning. The rebellious, fast-living, independent, unboundaried me. But if this was the real me, why didn’t I like it, or myself, any more?
Maybe I’d always known this wasn’t right for me because I’d never told my friends about it, not from school, not from my climbing club, uni, work or anywhere.
‘In here!’ Sharon shouted from the bedroom. I hoped this wasn’t going to be another gift. She knew my interest was waning and so she’d started trying everything she could to keep me in the game with her.
I didn’t want to play.
Ever since I’d had the invite to go back to my old school I’d been evaluating my life and nothing fitted. I’d been ambitious as a kid and Em and I had the business, and I had my investment properties and ten times more than I could have expected to achieve at my age – except that it all tasted sour because I’d never been ambitious for this empty fucking marriage. This was not how I’d seen myself. This was not where I wanted to be five years from now.
Sharon was on her own in the bedroom, in her underwear – just old-fashioned suspenders and stockings. Maybe she hoped I’d be motivated to react to her nudity before I left. I wasn’t. I started stripping off my leather suit. After I’d released my arms, it hung from my waist
‘What time are you going out?’ she asked.
‘As soon as I’m showered and ready.’ I removed my boots and took the leather suit off my legs. Then straightened and stripped off my t-shirt.
‘Is it okay if I ask some people over?’
By ‘some people’ she meant her friends – I used that term loosely too – and a mix of strangers, who’d take cocaine that I’d pay for and drink booze that I’d pay for. Then they’d come in here, into my bedroom and have sex on my bed, a twisting puzzle of tangled bodies. Or maybe not in here, maybe in the Jacuzzi or in the living room, or in the pool… ‘Do what you want.’
I left my clothes in a pile on the floor for the cleaner to pick up, then went to have a shower.
I washed my hair and let the water teem over my head, tipping up my face, then I sighed. I spat out the water that had run into my mouth and turned to face the wall. Fuck. The thought of tangled bodies and long legs wrapping around me and the tongues and mouths that would be all over me, if I stayed here, did still turn me on. With one hand flat on the cold marble slab lining the back wall, and the water running over my head and down my back, I took my dick in my hand.
The images in my mind had made me hard.
I gripped it with anger, because I really didn’t want to be like this. Then I shut my eyes and let thoughts of sex wash over me with the water.
Sharon would be willing to murder me if she knew I’d rather wank than have sex with her. She thought I was going to pick someone up at the reunion party. I had no intention of doing that. The girls I’d been at school with were not like Sharon.
But maybe that was why I’d been so absorbed by Sharon when this had started.
I groaned when the orgasm rattled through my bones. My head fell forward and I took another breath.
That would keep me going without sex until I got back.
I washed off the marble in front of me, then washed the soap off my body and turned off the shower.
When I looked at the guy in the mirror to shave, I still didn’t like him.
I walked back into the bedroom with a towel hanging low on my hips and droplets of water still on my skin. Sharon looked up at me from where she sat before a mirror painting on her lipgloss. She’d put a robe on. She turned around on the stool. ‘We could mess around before you go, if you come over here.’
‘No thanks. It’s a long drive. I’m going to be late already.’
I found a shirt and trousers out of the wardrobe and got dressed. She watched me, but she didn’t say anything else.
I picked out a dark-blue, thin tie just to break up the white of my shirt, but I left the tie loose, the top button of my shirt undone so the collar was open. Then I rolled up my sleeves. It was too hot to put a jacket on.
Tonight we were meeting for a drink in the hotel, then tomorrow the school were holding a formal dinner. I’d packed this morning when Sharon was asleep, so at least I didn’t have to do that with her watching me, like I was a panther she was trying to work out how to trap.
Two nights away. Two nights to look at my life and think about where I wanted it to be in another five years. I needed to work out what my end game was.
I turned and looked at Sharon. She uncrossed her legs, with her back arched, so her breasts looked good. She never said, don’t you fancy me any more? But the words were in her eyes all the time lately.
Yes, I did fancy her still. I’d have to be blind not to; she had an amazing body. I could still get hard for her and enjoy every minute of sex with her. But emotionally – she did nothing for me.
I walked over and gripped the back of her neck, pressed my lips on hers for an instant, then wiped the gloss off my lips with the back of my hand. ‘See you on Sunday. Have a good time.’
Her eyes, which some people called green, but were really hazel, stared at me. Ivy’s lavender eyes came to mind. She was the only woman I’d ever seen with really distinctive eyes. I’d never seen anyone else with lavender-grey eyes.
‘You have a good time too. Don’t shag anyone I wouldn’t.’
I gave her a crooked smile. ‘That leaves the field open, then. You’d shag everyone.’ She liked girls as well as guys. That had been one of the novel things about her, when I’d first met her – that she loved bringing other women to bed with us and she loved watching me fuck them as much as messing around with them herself.
She gave me a half-hearted laugh. ‘Bye.’
‘Bye.’ I walked out and grabbed my leather jacket off the hook by the door. Then picked up the keys to the Jag. I was going on an adventure. Stepping into the unknown. I probably felt as excited as most young guys felt when they were invited to join an orgy.
l was bored of orgies. They were full of self-centred, greedy people.
I was looking forward to going back to the simplicity of the life I’d led as a youth – with a heart-wrenching need. I wanted to be who I’d been then – the boy I used to look at in a mirror and like; the one who had dreams in his eyes. The person I’d been before I’d made my first million and had to fight off the parasites.
As I drove down there, I wondered what people would say if they knew how I lived. Some of the others had become involved with drugs too. I’d heard that. When you had money to waste and youth on your side it was too tempting. But some of them… most of them… would probably turn their backs on me if they knew everything about me – like my parents had. And my parents knew hardly anything.
Nostalgia hit me in the stomach with a punch when I drove into the small town where I’d gone to school. It was old-world. Dickensian. I’d spent years of my life here. This school had formed who I was; it had made me a stronger person and given me the confidence to believe in myself – and my belief had made me a millionaire by the age of twenty-two.
Loads of people here had money. It wouldn’t be exceptional turning up here as a rich man. But I would be one of the few who’d made it himself. Most people had trust funds; money given to them on a plate by mummy and daddy. Not that I hadn’t had that too; my parents’ initial investment had started me off, but I’d paid them back and I was still rolling in it. Advertising and my brain full of the weird and wonderful were my pots of gold. I had a skill for concepts and big corporations loved it, and I’d invested my profits in property.
I parked up around the back of the hotel, took a breath, then steeled myself to walk in there.
The guy at the reception desk signed me in, gave me my room key, said they’d take up my luggage, and then pointed me in the direction of the bar where everyone was meeting.
There were probably a hundred people in there; there would be three hundred plus tomorrow. I recognised a few faces.
‘Jack!’
Edward. He’d shouted from about ten feet away. He lifted a hand.
‘You made it,’ he said, when I got over to him. ‘It’s great to see you. I was looking out for you.’ He held my arm for an instant, pulling me into the group of people he’d been talking to. We’d been best friends at school – we’d kept in contact. He worked for a bank and sometimes I went over to Canary Wharf and met him for a drink after work. ‘This is Helen, my fiancée…’
‘Hi. Nice to meet you, Helen. Edward’s talked about you, and nothing else, every time we’ve met for the last year.’
The conversation they’d been involved in cracked up again. My hands slid into my trouser pockets as I stood there and listened.
I’d known you could bring partners; I’d never considered bringing Sharon. She’d have embarrassed me. She’d have tried to get into all the guys’ trousers and if she knew it made me uncomfortable she’d have been trying ten times harder. And if she’d succeeded with anyone, I’d have died if she’d expected me to share my bed with people I knew from school.
That was the thought that had made me start reflecting harder. If my life was not something I’d share with friends because my wife was embarrassing and the way I lived so bad it had to be a secret – what was I doing living like that?
Edward had never met Sharon. I’d been married for nearly three years.
When we were younger, maybe he’d have whacked me on the back in applause if I’d told him I was in an open relationship, which meant shagging anyone you wanted in any mix of people, anywhere and anytime. But we were meant to be grown up now; it was a very different thing to say it now.
It was weird. I lived a weird life.
I turned to the bar. I needed a drink to hold so I didn’t feel like a prick. The guy serving lifted an eyebrow at me to ask what I wanted. He was probably pissed off with the posh twits that must haunt this hotel all the time – people with more money than sense. ‘Champagne. A bottle. A good one.’ But you had to play the part if you had money. He showed me a list of the bottles they had. I picked one.
When he opened it, he gave me a taste. I nodded that it was okay, then he poured me a glass. ‘Put the bottle back in the chiller and keep it for me.’
‘Sure.’
When I turned back to the room I noticed someone I recognised in a way that was more than mental.
Victoria.
I knew her smell and her taste.
We’d dated for a year while we’d been at the school, but she’d left before year thirteen. She’d gone home one summer and I’d never heard from her again. I’d texted her a few times, but then I’d given up chasing her. I’d had enough girls chasing me. I didn’t have to chase them.
Her head turned and her gaze stretched across the room, catching a hold of mine, as though she’d felt me looking. She was still really pretty. Blonde and slim. I smiled. I’d have gone over to talk to her but she looked away, her expression saying, shit, not him. She didn’t want me over there, then.
I turned to the group Edward and Helen were among. The crowd around them were the guys he and I had hung out with at school. I didn’t listen to what they said, I thought of Victoria. Of the nights when we’d snuck out of our dorms in the dark and found quiet spots down by the river – of how it felt to slide my hand up under the long skirts the girls had had to wear. Of how soft her thighs had felt and how I’d discovered heaven between them.
Victoria had been my first. This was a true walk down memory lane.
But shit, if she knew how I lived my married life I’d bet her nose would screw up in disgust. She wouldn’t be into this me. I’d bet Victoria was a ‘normal’ person.
When the evening wound up I walked upstairs to my room alone. A little drunk but not high on anything. I stripped off, then lay on the bed staring at the ceiling.
I needed drugs or sex to sleep. I had neither thing to bring my constant adrenaline rush down.
I got up and opened the window on to the street. The shop windows were still lit up across the road. It was past midnight but the sky seemed light. It wasn’t much past the longest day and to me this was the best part of the year. I liked being up in Cumbria when it was like this, maybe I would go up next weekend. Maybe getting away from London and the people and the life there would put my head straight again.
Sharon hated the place I’d bought in the Lake District. It wasn’t her scene. There was no one else to have sex with when we went up there. It was quiet, peaceful and idyllic. To me it was better than the best trip I’d ever had on drugs, and it went on forever when you were up there. Nature was addictive. Life was addictive when I was there.
I dropped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, which was grey because the night was so bright.
Things churned around in my mind. The work I had to organise for clients next week. What Sharon would be up to in our bed back at the apartment. What I had got up to in that bed all week, and in the Jacuzzi, and the pool.
I took a breath, longing for some weed to smoke at least, so my mind could come down from its height of activity enough to sleep.
I couldn’t sleep. I never could. I’d been a raving insomniac for years.
Victoria came into my mind and I wondered how different things would have been if I’d stayed with her. But that was stupid, because I hadn’t loved her, just liked her a lot, so we’d have split at some point between then and now, either in year thirteen or when we’d gone on to university.
I slept for about an hour, maybe, I think, or maybe I’d lain there thinking all night, wishing I’d done what Sharon had thought I’d done and found an old school friend to fuck. One of the girls would have been up for it. I’d seen a few of them who’d used to sleep with me in year thirteen, looking.
There was something about a woman’s eyes that gave the game away when they were up for it. Sharon had taught me that. She was good at spotting the people in bars who were cool for a night of naughty sex. She said it was because their pupils flared. The easier measure was who stared back at you when you stared at them.
After breakfast everyone walked down towards the school. I walked beside Edward and his fiancée. None of the guys I’d kept in contact with had asked me why I hadn’t brought my wife. Every one of them who had a partner had brought them. I suppose they were used to me not taking her whenever I saw them. I guess they all thought I was just a bad husband. I think that was what everyone outside of the bubble I lived in with Sharon believed.
What would happen if the bubble burst?
The shit would fly.
My hands were in the pockets of my trousers, pinning my suit jacket open as I walked. I had skinny- cut trousers on and a pale-blue shirt. My suit was a dark blue. We were probably meant to wear black, everyone else was in black, but I’d always liked to be different.
I mentally heard one of the masters shout at me, ‘take your hands out of your pockets Mr Rendell!’ as we walked through the doors of the Harry Potter-ish school.
It was an amazing place. The building made you respect it. It had always gripped at my soul but today it seemed to look inside me and prod my conscience. It didn’t like what it saw either. It didn’t approve of what I’d become. It was ashamed of me.
We listened to speeches from the school heads about the achievements of our year’s alumni group and the achievements of the school since we’d left, as we sat in rows like we had as kids – only this time on chairs not the floor or a bench.
My theory was we’d been brought back because we were of average child-bearing age and they hoped we’d send our kids here.
Kids. That was one mistake I’d not made with Sharon and I had a very firm condom rule in our sex games. A child wouldn’t want the sentence of a life with me as their parent, or Sharon acting as mother.
After the speeches, we were given time to wander about the ancient halls and rooms, re-familiarising ourselves with the place. It was weird. I could see myself at desks, talking to people in halls, kissing Victoria and some of the other girls after Victoria had left, up against the walls.
Victoria had been three rows in front of me in the hall, but if she’d sensed me behind her, she hadn’t looked back.
As I wandered around the halls alone, wondering how my pathway from here had ended up where it had, I saw her walk out of a room with a friend. When she saw me, she walked back in.
I carried on, walking past the room she was in, as she clearly didn’t want to speak to me. I ended up outside on the lawn on my own, walking about the rugby pitch, wishing for a joint again. I hadn’t ever smoked cigarettes. I only smoked when the tobacco contained something with more punch.
Hands in pockets, I walked along the recently re-marked white lines, viewing me then and me now in my mind’s eye. I suppose the two of us were not that different. I’d been a self-obsessed shit then too, only then I’d valued it as self-belief. But it had helped me create a successful business. It was not to be knocked too heavily.
It was that cocky attitude that had made me tell everyone else they were wrong about Sharon when I’d met her. My parents and Em had warned me I was taking a wrong path. I’d told them to fuck off out of my personal business. But it was the wrongness and forbidden nature of the life I led that had made me get involved in it. It held a sense of risk and that made my blood pump with adrenaline. And, of course, anything that had pissed my parents off, and got my adrenalin raging, I’d been into it when I was younger. My self-focused attitude had made me rebellious and I wouldn’t have let my parents set boundaries around me when I’d just made a million. In my eyes, then, I’d been a genius and they’d been beneath me.
I’d been a big-headed dick, and now—
‘Jack.’ I turned around to see Victoria walking towards me, in a pair of pale-pink stiletto heels that were sinking into the grass of the pitch. She had a light flowery summer dress on, one that covered her breasts entirely and fell down to her knees. One that showed the outline of her body as the sunlight shone through the cotton and made me want to guess what everything looked like beneath.
I was more used to women who wore tops that shoved their breasts up in your face, or showed you the first curved edge in a dress secured by tape. While their skirts were so high you had no leg left to imagine, and if they opened their legs, which they frequently did deliberately, you had nothing at all left to imagine.
Imagination was nice and Victoria’s simplicity and prim dress had me hornier than any of the half-naked women Sharon liked us to play with.
I was glad Victoria had come looking for me. Maybe she’d been waiting for a moment to speak quietly. Just the two of us. Maybe I would do what Sharon expected me to do tonight and share a bed with Victoria, for old times’ sake.
‘Hi,’ I said, as she came closer. ‘I got the vibe you didn’t want to talk to me, otherwise I’d have come over and said, hello, last night. How are you? Is life treating you alright?’
She gave me a faint smile and looked me in the eyes. The look wasn’t there. Her pupils didn’t flare. She just looked awkward. It didn’t look like she even fancied me.
I had another sleepless night to look forward to… My internal voice, which never fucking shut up, laughed.
‘Hi,’ she answered. ‘I do want to speak to you, but I’ve been building up courage.’ She swallowed as if she had a dry throat.
I held her arm and turned her away from the school towards the edge of the narrow river where there was a path her heels wouldn’t sink into. She didn’t try to shake my hand off.
Was she thinking about the times we’d lain out here and used the grass as a bed? I remembered. I could remember every element of what it had felt like because she’d been my first.
I let go of her when we reached the river path, but we kept walking, following the path further away from the school. My hands slipped back into my pockets. I looked ahead, not at her.
‘You’re married,’ she said. ‘I heard Edward tell one of the others when she was asking about you.’
A sound of amusement slipped out of the back of my throat. So Edward had been guarding me from propositions. He definitely would not agree with mine and Sharon’s open way of life. ‘Yes, I’m married. What about you?’
‘But you didn’t bring her.’
‘No, this type of do isn’t her thing. She’s high-maintenance.’ It was the only way I could describe Sharon to people. She was, though – I had to invest eighty per cent of my mind and money on her to keep her happy, or to make sure she was not up to something that would make me unhappy. It had got to the point that I only really took part in the orgies because the argument if I didn’t take part took too much energy, Sharon never backed down.
I’d rather be with someone quiet like Victoria. It would be like going away to Cumbria. The solitude and solidity of having sex with one woman was currently the best fantasy I had. ‘And you? You didn’t answer. Are you married, settled down, single… What?’
‘Married.’ She looked at me with the smile I remembered from our school days and lifted her left hand to show me the ring. On top of it was a beautiful white-gold engagement ring too, with a sapphire and a diamond entwined.
‘Is he here?’
‘No. I have a daughter…’ Her breath caught for a second, but then she carried on. ‘She’s at home with him.’
‘Are you happy?’
She smiled. ‘Yes. Very.’
It was weird, because if I took Sharon out of the equation, the two women who’d counted in my life were the complete opposite of me. The sensible part of me was drawn to level-headed women like Victoria and Em. The wild me…
Here was Victoria settled into a quiet life with a husband and a kid, in her below-the-knee length print dress that covered all of her breasts, and I’d bet she only went out to a restaurant for special occasions because her world was all wrapped up at home. It was nice. I was glad for her.
Then there was Em, with her accountant’s brain, and her black-and-white way of looking at life. She had everything in our business and her personal life sewn up tight; she never let anything slip. I liked to be all over every project at work, but I didn’t need to be, with Em, because she was always there before me. But even she did not know how I lived my life with Sharon, and I saw Em every day. What did that tell me?
Sharon loved trying to rock that relationship; she hated me being close to Em. She even sent girls into work to try and get Em riled up with me, so that Em and me would fall out. My wild side laughed it off, and in the early days I’d indulged with one or two of the really pretty ones, because my attitude then had been ‘why not?’.
Now it was – why?
‘Are you happy?’
I should have known I’d get the same question back.
‘Yes.’ No. The white lie was easier.
‘There’s something I need to tell you, Jack. It’s the only reason I really came here. But I was a coward last night. Can we sit down and talk?’
‘Sure, shall we sit here and watch the river.’ The grass was dry. We’d sat down out here on the grass a thousand times before.
She let her handbag fall off her shoulder and dropped it on the ground, then swept her skirt beneath her and sat. I hoped the pale cloth wouldn’t be stained by the grass.
I slipped my jacket off, but I couldn’t offer it to her – it was too expensive to sit on. I folded it and dropped it on the ground, then sat down beside her with my legs bent up and my arms resting on my knees.
She twisted sideways, her legs bending so she could face me. One of her hands settled on the grass to balance her.
I smiled at her. ‘What do you have to say? That you’re really sorry you ran out on me at school. Don’t worry, I received the message, even though it was silent I got used to you not being here. And you were allowed to make choices that didn’t include me.’
‘It wasn’t a choice.’ She looked down, her gaze falling as if she found it hard to look at me. She hadn’t used to find it hard when we were at school. Her free hand picked a daisy out of the grass and then she spun it between her fingers, looking past me at the river. The sound of the water played on the air around us.
She was still being cowardly because whatever she’d come out here to say to me wasn’t erupting from her lips. ‘Did something happen, then?’ Maybe she’d left school to avoid me? Perhaps she was holding some blame against me because life hadn’t gone in the direction she’d wanted and she’d pinned it all down to not staying at school? But she’d just said she was happy. And I hadn’t done anything bad to her.
She took a breath and looked at me again, as if she’d spent the last couple of minutes trying to slot words into place. ‘My daughter is really beautiful. She’s made my life what it is. I love her – like you cannot imagine. She says funny things all the time and every new thing she does and learns… It’s beautiful… I have a picture on my phone.’ The daisy fell from her fingers and she turned to her bag.
That was nice for her, but I didn’t want to look at her photo.
When she found her phone she tapped in the code to unlock it and I saw her hand shake as she brought up her pictures. Then she held it out to me. ‘She’s seven years old, Jack.’
I looked at the image of a little girl, not really looking.
‘She’s yours,’ Victoria said.
The words hit me. Shit. ‘What?’ She’d punched me in the stomach and followed it with a slap around the face. ‘What?’ I rocked back, as though she’d really hit me.
‘I fell pregnant when we were here.’
‘We used a condom every time.’
‘Most times – not every time, when we were just messing around, and they aren’t one hundred per cent safe. You managed to get me pregnant, anyway. I did not sleep with anyone else, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
I looked back at the phone and took it from her. My free hand shook. Like hers had done. My fingers brushed back my hair.
No. This was insane.
The words, you’re fucking with me, spun around though my head in a sharp growl. But why would she?
The girl had black hair like mine and blue eyes like mine, and her face shape was mine. I stared at it. ‘Why are you telling me now? If she’s seven, why tell me now?’ I was looking at a picture of a child that was meant to be mine.
‘Because you should know. You should have known then, but my parents are old-fashioned, they didn’t want anyone told. I pretended it wasn’t happening, because I didn’t know what to do. They found out about Daisy when I had her a month early on the floor in my room. Mum found us there and they rushed us both to hospital. I was lucky I didn’t kill Daisy.
‘Afterwards Mum and Dad told everyone the child was a maid’s and they were going to adopt her and look after her. It took three years for me to stand up to them and tell them I was going to let people know Daisy was mine.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’ I stared at the image on her phone. My child. I had a child. Those words kept spinning through my brain. ‘What do I say?’
‘I met David after that, and he’s a great dad. He didn’t want me to tell you. That’s why he isn’t here. But when I got the letter from the school, it was like it was telling me I had to come here and let you know. You should know her, and she should know you.’
I stared at the picture. My daughter. I’d never choose to have a child. Never. My life was too fucked up. But I had a child. I’d had a child for all the years I’d been acting like a selfish bastard with Sharon. This little human being was made up of part of me. ‘You should have told me.’ I was a father. Me.
‘I should have. I know. I’m sorry. But at the point I felt capable of speaking to you about it, she was already four and I didn’t know how to begin.’
When she’d been five I’d married Sharon. Would I have made the same decision to lead a hedonistic life if I’d known about this child? Shit. I’d come here feeling introspective and nostalgic—questioning my life. This spun everything on its head. It was like someone had put my life in a box, picked it up and shaken it.
A child. I looked at Victoria, a frown probably making a line down the middle of my forehead. ‘Am I allowed to see her, then?’
‘Yes. David’s agreed.’
‘I doubt I need David’s agreement.’
‘Don’t be like that, please. If we’re doing this, if you want to see her and get to know her, then you have to do it sensitively. She’s a child. It will be a massive thing for her. You’ll need to take it slowly.’
‘This is a massive thing for me. I just discovered I have a seven-year-old daughter.’ When I’m not fit to be a father.
‘You’ll have to see her in my company, at least to begin with. I can’t let her visit someone who’s a stranger. You’d scare her.’
Scare her, my own child. But I had a legal right to her. I looked back at the picture. ‘Does she know about me?’
‘Yes, since she was four I’ve shown her your pictures from school, and said you’re her daddy.’
I looked at Victoria again. ‘So I’m not a complete stranger to her, but she is to me.’ I shut my eyes as a wave of pain washed through my soul. ‘You should’ve answered my messages that summer and told me. I would have helped you.’
‘Jack you liked me but you didn’t love me. You’d have felt guilty and made choices that changed your life, we’d have been stuck—’
‘It changed your life. If the two of us made her, shouldn’t the two of us have had equal impact? I would have loved her. I’m capable of love…’
Did I even know that? God, I hadn’t experienced it. I loved my parents and they were probably the only people, and look at what I’d done to them; we’d only spoken on birthdays and at Christmas since I’d been with Sharon.
I stared at the picture. My child. The emotion in me was like flowing ripples on a pond racing outward after someone had dropped a stone in the middle. Her eyes were so like mine. There was no point in denying it. I’d made a child. Me. God! I wasn’t going to mess her up. I had to do this. I had to be that man. As Victoria had said, there was no choice. I would love this child. I would shift heaven and earth. I would turn my fucking life around to be good enough for her. I had flesh and blood in this world.
How different would my life have been if Victoria had told me she was pregnant when I’d been seventeen?
There was no knowing.
Jealousy threw another fist into my stomach and clasped around my throat. I was jealous of Victoria, of her normal life, of her happiness – of the fact she’d brought up my daughter and seen her start to walk and learn to talk. ‘Tell me about her.’
I asked her everything. When did Daisy ride her first bike? What was the first word she’d said? What did she like to do? Was she a fast runner, like I’d been? Did she swim? Was she reading? I spent an hour talking to Victoria about Daisy, with her picture held in my hand, as odd emotions twisted over in my stomach.
The school clock rang out the hour.
It brought back a hundred memories of being in school here. I had a daughter who went to school somewhere… I was going to start asking questions about where she lived and what school Daisy went to but Victoria gripped my arm. ‘We’d better go back. I want to get ready for the ball this evening.’
‘Okay.’ I stood up, suddenly numb. This level of shock was like being hit by a car that had then reversed and run over me; it wasn’t just my feet that had been taken out from underneath me. ‘When can I see her?’
She smiled. ‘Talk to her on the phone first, Jack.’
I didn’t want to wait, I wanted to follow Victoria home. I didn’t want to stay for the ball. Patience had never been a skill I possessed.
She held my wrist. ‘I’ll see you at the ball tonight and we can swap numbers and organise something in the next couple of weeks.’
Weeks. Uh-uh. No. I wanted a deadline. Days. But I bit my tongue and nodded.
I didn’t ring Sharon when I got back to my room, I rang Mum. ‘Hi, it’s Jack.’
‘Hello dear. This is unusual. How are you?’ She never asked how Sharon was; they ignored her existence, sweeping the embarrassment I’d made of my life under one of their nice ornamental carpets.
‘I’m feeling a bit weird.’ I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my elbows on my knees and my forehead balanced on my free hand. ‘I’m at my old school. There’s a reunion thing.’
‘That’s nice.’ Her voice made it sound as though she was surprised I’d bothered to go. But I’d earned, and created, every ill opinion they had of me. Rebellious, self-centred bastard that I’d been. I think money was bad for you when you were a kid. It had made me take everything, including them, for granted.
But right now, Mum was the only person I wanted to talk to.
‘Mum, one of the girls told me I got her pregnant when she was sixteen. She had a baby when she was seventeen. A girl. A daughter. The child’s nearly eight now, and she’s mine. I have a daughter I’ve never seen, and you’re a grandma.’
The connection went silent. I didn’t know what I expected her to say, but despite the fact I’d hardly spoken to her in three years, Mum was the only person I’d had an immediate urge to tell because I was looking for reassurance – come on.
‘Well…’
The single word ran through my nerves. Was well good or bad? Mum’s perfectly rounded upper-class accent made it hard to tell what emotion was in her voice sometimes.
‘That is a shock.’
I was still not sure of her tone.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Numb. Weird, like I said.’ But beneath those, ‘excited too.’ I had a reason to turn my life around now the box of my life had been shaken. If I opened it up all the pieces inside would look different. I had a reason to pick the pieces up and put them back in a different order. I sighed down the phone. ‘Like I can change.’ I needed to tell Sharon and set down some ultimatums. ‘I wish I could turn back time and start over. I want to know her.’
Mum breathed in deeply. It sounded shaky. ‘It’s wonderful, Jack, and it will be lovely if you have a relationship with her. Children need loving parents who are involved in their lives.’
I choked back a laugh. I’d spent my life in boarding school while she and Dad had travelled on business; they hadn’t been all that involved. I didn’t say anything. She hadn’t been thinking of herself; her pitch was challenging me.
‘Children need consistency. I know you hated us leaving you in school but it was better for you than being on the move every other month. But what you must remember with this girl, if she’s yours, is that children are not toys. You have a tendency to lose patience with things, Jack, you always have. If you step into this child’s life you cannot walk out a few months later when you’re bored.’
‘Mum, I have a business I’ve been running for years. I’ve been climbing since I was a teenager. I don’t get bored of everything.’ But she was right, I did get bored of a lot of stuff. I was bored of my life. But I would not become bored of my child. Daisy. She would be a constant. Like Em. Like the business. Like my male friends. I had constants. ‘I know, Mum.’
‘Then I’m glad for you. I’d like to meet her.’
‘She looks like me; I’ve seen her picture.’
The sound of another deep breath slipped through my mobile phone. ‘I hope this turns into a good thing for you.’
‘This is a good thing. I know it.’ Hope… No. There was no hope about it.
‘Thank you for calling me, Jack. I’m glad you did.’
I took a breath, words wanted to come out of me which were not natural to me. ‘I’m glad I did too. I’m sorry I don’t call you enough. I love you.’
‘I love you too.’ That emotion was in her voice – loud and clear. She ended the call.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d said those words to her. Years ago.
Maybe this was already starting to heal over the errors I’d made. A granddaughter could build a bridge to reach my parents. Maybe even Dad would forgive me for messing up.
When I stripped off and showered, my mind span through what I would need to do to become a man who’d make a good father. I’d never have planned this, but it had happened and I didn’t want irregular phone calls and hour-long visits, watched over by Victoria. I wanted to change my life. I wanted to be a dad. I needed to get a DNA test done and then I’d get my lawyer on to it, to get proper rights. I wanted part-custody, agreed by a judge – and if I was going to get that, then I needed to clean up my life.
I didn’t even drink at the ball, I watched Victoria as she talked to people and danced with friends. Now I’d had time to digest the news, I was angry with her. She should have told me. I’d made a mess of my life. I could have stopped myself doing it if I’d known there was a reason to live life differently. Suddenly everything wrong with my life was her fault, which was bollocks, but I was looking for someone to blame because it was easier to blame someone other than myself.
We swapped numbers at the end of the night, having hardly spoken to each other, so I bet people thought something weird was going on, but she hadn’t told anyone, so I didn’t. Then I said goodbye to the other people I’d caught up with and afterwards I made the decision to drive home.
What was the point in staying here? I hadn’t drunk and I wouldn’t sleep.
While I drove back, my mind ran through what I’d need to do to turn myself around – grow up. I had to become someone who wouldn’t make me feel guilty. Someone I’d be happy for my daughter to know. Someone who could invite a child over for the weekend. Someone I could stand to look at in a mirror
I called John, my lawyer, as I drove, even though it was two-thirty a.m., and left a message on his work phone. ‘Hi, John, I’ve got a new job for you. Please keep this quiet. I discovered I have a child. Call me on Monday and I’ll give you the mother’s details, then you can contact her and ask her to get a lawyer. I want a DNA test done and I want to apply for access rights. I want to be able to have the child stay with me.’
I was going to be the person who could have my daughter stay over. I’d needed a new ambition for the next five years of my life. I had it. Become a decent man who could be a father.
When I got home it was four a.m. I lifted a hand, acknowledging the security guard as I drove into the basement car park. He nodded at me with a smile. He’d know who was in my apartment, he saw everyone who went in and out, and at what time they went in and when they came out, because there was a camera in the lift.
He’d probably seen a lot of parts of Sharon and me in that lift too, and parts of the people we brought back. God, if Victoria wanted to stop me seeing my daughter she’d have a ton of evidence against it.
But I hadn’t known I’d had a reason to be respectable.
It was a pathetic excuse. I got out, locked the car up with the button and walked towards the lift, carrying my bag. I’d left my suits hanging in the car.
As I rode the lift up to the top floor I thought about the security guy watching me when I’d let Sharon suck me off in here, or fucked her, or fucked one of the girls we’d brought in. I bet he thought I was an arrogant prick. He’d probably watched it like a porn show and laughed at me.
I hadn’t cared before.
When the doors opened I walked into our private hall and unlocked the door. The place was quiet.
I didn’t shout. I had no doubt there would be people in here. I ran upstairs first and checked the spare rooms on the mezzanine level. There were no people in there. Thank God. This would be easier than I’d thought. I checked the bathroom and looked outside, no one.
I went into our room last, my heart pumping hard.
They were sleeping.
There was a guy I didn’t know on the bed, tangled up in the sheets with Sharon, and one of her girlfriends was cuddled into his back. She must have gone out with Sharon. Another girl, who I didn’t know, was sleeping next to Sharon. My guess would be they’d pulled a couple in a club and promised them the night of their lives. It was the promise Sharon always made. She’d used the line on me when we’d met.
I stood there looking at them for a minute. If Sharon was awake, her hand would be lifting out to me, begging me to join whatever tangled cobweb of sex they were in. I was her handsome, rich plaything. I don’t think she loved me any more than I loved her. I’d been kidding myself in the beginning and she’d been having fun. But this was the end. It was time to call stop. I couldn’t bring a child into a life like this.
I kicked the sole of the guy’s foot. ‘Get up.’
He groaned. He was going to feel like shit. They’d probably snorted cocaine and Sharon loved picking out people who didn’t normally do that sort of thing.
I kicked him again. ‘Get up.’
He rolled over, on to Sharon. ‘Where the—what the fuck?’
The women woke too.
‘Get up and get out. This is my place. I don’t want you in it.’
He sat up, looking back at Sharon. He was a bulky, muscular guy. If he wanted to fight me he’d probably win. ‘I thought you said your boyfriend was cool with this…’
‘He’s my husband—’
‘And he is cool with it, very cool,’ Sharon’s friend Karen, who had fairly regular sex with us, answered.
‘Not any more. Get out. All of you. I pay the bills here, I own the sheets you’re fucking on, and I am not cool with it. So, fuck off.’ I grabbed the top sheet and pulled at it, revealing some of their tangled-up naked bodies.
The guy got up. ‘Alright, mate, no need to go fucking mental.’ He walked past me and picked a pair of jeans up off the floor. Then looked back as he put them on. ‘Come on, Pen.’
‘You too, Karen. Get out.’ I glared at her.
She got up, all long skinny limbs. She was into heroin, not just cocaine. She had needle marks all over the inner sides of her arms.
My conscience kicked; her relationship with Sharon and I was probably a part of her addiction. I don’t think I’d ever looked at her when I was sober and clean before. I saw a different person.
She smiled at me, came over and touched my crotch. I gripped her wrist and took her hand away. ‘Just get out.’ She smiled as if she believed we’d call her in an hour and ask her back.
Never again. I’d received my wake-up shout and Daisy was my get-out-of-jail-free card.
When they walked out, clothes thrown on or hanging in their hands, I went into the hall and watched until they walked out the main door. It clicked shut behind them.
For the first time I thought about what all the hangers-on in my life might have done with the freedom of my apartment while I’d been out of my head. But I didn’t have much to steal. Sharon and I didn’t spend money on trinkets, we spent it on sex and drugs – and clothes – but Sharon did have some jewellery. We’d probably had stuff stolen and not even known.
I went back into the bedroom and looked at her. She was leaning up on her elbows in the bed. ‘What’s brought you back in a bad mood?’
I stared at her. I didn’t know what to say to this.
‘Come and get into bed. You’ll feel better.’
‘No.’ Oh, just say it. ‘I have a kid with one of the girls I was at school with. I found out today.’
She sat up and the sheet slithered to her lap, revealing her body to the waist. ‘What?’
‘My daughter is seven years old. I got a girl pregnant and she didn’t tell me.’
‘Oh, my God. That was a riot, then.’ It was said in a dismissive, sarcastic tone.
‘I need to change my life. I want my daughter in it, and this is not the sort of life a child can see. We’re not having any more parties and no more cocaine.’
Her face screwed up, as though she was annoyed and she thought I’d gone crazy.
‘I mean it.’
She slid across the bed and got up, then grabbed a dressing gown off the floor, walked past me and went into the bathroom. ‘Don’t be pathetic.’
‘I’ve had enough of living like this. I don’t want to do it any more. I’m not this man.’
‘You’ve never complained before.’
‘No. But I’m complaining now. We need to settle down. I want to be normal. I want to be able to invite my daughter here. I want to stand up in front of her and not feel dirty.’
She made a face at me, then squatted down over the toilet and weed, with the door open. ‘How do you know she’ll even want to see you? How can you know you’ll even like her?’
‘I like her already.’ Victoria was in my mind and through Victoria I could imagine our child. She’d be sweet, polite. If I’d had a child with Sharon, it would be a spoilt brat. ‘I called John. I’m getting a DNA test done and then he’ll start working on legal rights and I’m going to set up a trust fund for her.’
‘You haven’t even met the kid—’
‘I don’t need to meet her. She’s mine and I have seven years of her life to make up. So, Sharon, you need to change or we’re over.’
‘What?’ She shouted as she wiped herself. ‘What have you taken?’
‘Nothing.’ For the first time in a long time.
Only Sharon would have this sort of conversation with me while she was using the toilet. She had no decency. But even that had turned me on in the past.
‘Then where’s this sudden burst of anger come from?’ She walked past me, her dressing gown hanging open. Then she climbed on the bed. ‘Come to bed, Jack. You’ll get bored of the kid and forget about this and think differently in a few days. Come on. I’ll make you forget your bad mood.’
‘No thanks. Me and my bad mood are happy together. I like it. You can go back to sleep.’
I walked out and went into the living room, then sat on the floor with my back up against the sofa and my knees bent up, and watched the sun rise over London through the glass.
Sharon wouldn’t change and she wouldn’t go, and I didn’t want to be with her. If I was going to change my life, I had to be the one who left.
At seven I went back into the bedroom and started packing. She was out cold in the bed. I packed my clothes into five suitcases. She didn’t wake. My clothes were all I wanted – everything else I’d leave for her and buy new.
I took the cases down to the car, then went back up to tell her I was leaving her.
I shook her shoulder. Her eyes opened. ‘I’ve decided. You won’t change. But I’m changing. So I’m going. I’m leaving you. Don’t bother calling – and find a lawyer. I want a divorce.’
I took a room at the Hilton, left my car and my things there, then caught a tube back and got my motorbike out of the underground car park and rode that over to the Hilton too. Then I started looking on the Internet for somewhere new to live and rang Em.
‘Hi. Sorry to interrupt your Sunday, but I wanted to warn you, I won’t be in tomorrow. Can you run the meeting and tell everyone I’m off because Sharon and I have split? I’m going to get somewhere else to live. I want to do some viewings and then I’ll be back in.’
‘You split up?’
‘Yes, and do not say I told you so, or thank God, or anything. We split up because I discovered I have a daughter, a seven-year-old daughter.’
‘Oh my God. You—’
‘Say nothing.’
‘Saying nothing. I’ll see you on Tuesday, with any luck. I hope it goes okay. If you need me, call.’
‘Cheers, Em.’
I sat on the sofa in the hotel room and scrolled down through the pages of apartments. I’d done it. I was making a new start.
At one o’clock I called Victoria. ‘Hi, it’s Jack.’
‘I know, your number’s in my phone.’
‘Can I speak to her? Daisy. Have you said anything?’
‘We’re eating, Jack.’
‘Shall I call back, then?’
‘No. I’ll call you later.’
‘Do.’
‘I said I would, Jack.’
It was two hours later when she called. I grabbed my phone. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
My heart pounded like the bass rhythm from a speaker in a club. ‘Is she there? Is she with you?’
‘Yes.’ Victoria sounded nervous. ‘Daisy, do you want to speak to him still? His name is Jack, remember.’
Victoria’s voice had become more distant at the end of the sentence, as if she held the phone out, then I heard some short, sharp breaths. She was there. ‘Hi. Daisy?’
‘Hello.’
Tears clouded my vision. ‘Hello. It’s nice to talk to you.’ What did I say?
‘Mummy said she met you at the party she went to.’
‘Yes, she did. I’ve only just discovered you, Daisy. I’d like to come and see you sometime.’ Sometime soon.
She took a breath. ‘Mummy said your eyes are like mine.’
‘Yes.’
‘I want to go and play again.’ The sound dropped away.
‘Sorry, she has about as much patience as you did.’
It felt like something had been ripped away from me. ‘When can I see her?’
‘Jack, don’t start pressuring me. It’s not only Daisy who needs to get used to this, it’s my husband too, and I’m not risking my marriage for you. Take it easy.’
‘You can’t dangle her in front of me and then say no.’
‘I’m not doing that. Please don’t start being awkward.’
‘Wanting to see my daughter is not being awkward.’ I was tired and desperate and falling to pieces. ‘But I will play it how you want to play it.’
John would fight my case. In the meantime I needed to do everything right, and if I was lucky, maybe by Christmas, I would have a daughter to spend that day with. That would be something. That was a goal worth aiming for.