BARROW-IN-FURNESS
CUMBRIA
Manette didn’t want to face the fact that her former husband hadn’t come home on the previous night. More, she didn’t want to face how she felt about that fact. But it was difficult not to do so.
They’d talked the subject of their broken marriage right into the ground over the years. They’d touched upon every aspect of what had happened to them and what might have happened and what would definitely happen if they didn’t make some sort of change. They’d decided, ultimately, that the lack of romance had done them in, the getting-down-to-business aspect of every part of their lives, and particularly the utter lack of surprise. They’d become a couple who had to check their diaries and make appointments for an interlude of intercourse during which they both had been pretending for ages to feel something that they did not feel for each other. At the end of what had seemed like hundreds of hours of dialogue, they’d decided that friendship was more important than passion anyway. So they’d live as friends and enjoy each other’s company because at the end of the day they’d always enjoyed being together and how many couples could actually say that more than twenty years along the line?
But now Freddie hadn’t come home. And when he was home he’d taken to whistling in the mornings as he got ready for work. Worse, he’d taken to singing while he was in the shower— Freddie, singing, for God’s sake— and he always chose the same damn song, which was driving her bonkers anyway. It was that bloody call to arms from Les Misérables and Manette knew if she had to hear “the blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of France!” one more time, she might water the meadows of the bathroom with Freddie’s blood.
Only, she wouldn’t. Not Freddie. She would never hurt Freddie.
She went to his office at work. He’d removed his jacket and was bent over his desk in his crisp white shirt and his red necktie with the ducklings on it, and he was reviewing a massive set of computer printouts. More investigation into the books, preparatory to stepping into Ian’s job should her father offer it to him. If he had any sense, he would.
She said from the doorway, “So how was Scorpio?”
Freddie looked up. His expression told her he had no idea what she was talking about but he reckoned it was zodiac signs.
She said, “The nightclub? Where you and the latest date were meeting?”
He said, “Oh! Scorpio.” He laid the printout on his neat-as-a-pin desk. “We didn’t go in, actually. We met at the door.”
“Good Lord, Freddie. Was it directly to bed after that? You’re a sly one.”
He blushed. Manette wondered at what point in their marriage she’d stopped noticing how often he blushed and how the colour washed across his cheeks from his ears after making his ears go completely red at the tips. She also wondered when it was she’d stopped admiring how nicely his ears lay against his head like perfect shells.
He laughed. “No, no,” he said. “But everyone going inside the place looked round nineteen years old and most of them were dressed like the cast of Rocky Horror Picture Show. So we went for a meal at a wine bar. Rigatoni puttanesca. It wasn’t very good. Rather heavy on the putta and light on the nesca as things turned out.” He smiled at his own silly joke and added in his usual appealingly honest fashion, “I didn’t come up with that. Sarah did.”
“That’s her name? Sarah?” At least, Manette thought, it wasn’t another shrub. She’d rather been expecting Ivy or June-short-for-Juniper as his second foray into Internet dating. But of course, ivy wasn’t a shrub, was it? More like a vine. So … She shook herself mentally. What was going on inside her head? She said, “And?” although she didn’t actually want to know. “Are there grisly details? I have no life, as you well know, so I’m taking the opportunity for vicarious excitement.” She sauntered into his office and sat in the chair next to his desk.
He blushed, more deeply this time. “I don’t like to kiss and tell,” he said.
“But you did it, didn’t you?”
“‘Did it’? What kind of term is ‘did it’?”
She cocked her head and sent him a meaningful look. “Freddie…”
“Well, yes. I mean, I explained all that to you: how things are these days. You know. When people go out together. So, well … yes, we did.”
“More than once?” She hated herself for asking, but suddenly she had to know. And the reason she had to know was that in all the years they’d been together— even when they’d been twenty years old and hot for each other during the six months that they had actually been hot for each other— she and Freddie had never locked themselves into a passionate embrace more than once in a twenty-four-hour period.
Freddie’s reaction was a look of gentlemanly shock. He said, “Manette, good Lord. There are some things— ”
“So you did. More than once. More than with Holly? Freddie, are you taking precautions?”
“I think we’ve talked enough about this,” he replied with dignity.
“So what about tonight? Are you seeing someone else tonight? Who is it tonight?”
“Actually, I’m seeing Sarah again.”
Manette crossed one leg over the other. She wished for a cigarette. She’d smoked when she was in her twenties and although she hadn’t thought about cigarettes in years, she suddenly wanted the comfort of doing something with her hands. As it was, she reached for a container of paper clips and played with it. She said, “I’m curious about this. Since you’ve done it already and that’s been got out of the way, what comes next? Family photos? Or do you get on to surnames and communicable diseases?”
He looked at her strangely. Manette reckoned he was evaluating her remark, weighing it and matching its weight to a response that equaled but did not exceed it. Before he could say what she knew he was about to say— “You’re upset about this. Why? We’ve been divorced for ages and we’ve decided on friendship but I never intended to be celibate for the rest of my life”— she went on with, “Well, will you be home tonight at all or should I expect you to be spending it with Sarah again?”
He shrugged, but still his face maintained that expression, which was something stuck between curious and confused. He said, “I don’t know, actually.”
“Of course. How could you? Sorry. Anyway, I hope you bring her home. I’d like to meet her. Just give me fair warning so I don’t show up at the breakfast table without my knickers on.”
“Will do. Of course. I mean, the other night was rather a spontaneous thing. I mean, with Holly. I didn’t quite know then how these things tend to develop. Now that I do… well, of course, there are arrangements, aren’t there? And explanations and whatnot?”
It was Manette’s turn to look curious. It wasn’t like Freddie to stumble round with his words. She said, “What’s going on? God, Freddie, you didn’t run off and do something… something rather mad, did you?” She didn’t know what that madness would have been. But madness of any kind was out of character for Freddie. He was an arrow, straight and true.
He said, “No, no. It’s just that I didn’t tell her about… well, about you.”
“What? You didn’t say you’re divorced?”
“She knows that, of course. But I didn’t tell her that you and I… well, that we live in the same house.”
“Holly knew, though. That didn’t seem to be a problem for her. Lots of blokes have female flatmates and such.”
“Yes, of course. But Sarah… It felt different being with Sarah. It felt like a risk that I didn’t want to take.” He picked up the printouts and he tapped them neatly together on the top of his desk. He said, “I’ve been out of action for ages, Manette, as you well know. I’m going by feel with these women.”