“I – I’m sorry, it just didn’t click for a moment…”
“I’m a woman,” she reminded him bitchily. “I don’t walk around in a dark-blue suit with wallets and phones in the pockets.” She knew her bitchiness was uncalled for, but she forgave herself because she was sure he would say something equally insensitive to her any moment now.
“Hang on… You had about… God, how much money did you lose?”
“About £500,” she replied. “In cash.”
There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end.
“You said you’d put it straight into your card account!” he reminded her accusingly.
“I know. I didn’t. I forgot. And didn’t feel like it, anyway.”
“I told you not to carry that sort of money around.”
“Well, I did, and it’s lost. So what?”
“I don’t work for nothing, that’s what.”
“You insisted on giving me the money. Another few days of my card being overdrawn wouldn’t have killed us. I could’ve taken it out of my wage next week.”
“We agreed: your wage is for the house repayments.”
“Fine. So are you happy now?”
There was a pause while he digested the fact that they’d once again proved their ability to cook up an argument in three minutes or less, using only minimal ingedients. Then he said, “I have to go to work now.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll see you this evening.”
“Are you going to work yourself?”
“How can I?” she said. “I’ve just spent all night sitting on a bus, I’ve had no sleep.” She knew she’d perhaps forfeited her right to any sympathy from him, and she also knew she wouldn’t value it if he showed it, but she wanted it anyway, if only because she was angry that he lacked the imagination to figure out how she must have got back to Edinburgh in the circumstances.
“On a bus?” he exclaimed, as if she’d just told him she hitchhiked back, clinging to the tarpaulin of a lorry.
“Yes, on a bus,” she sing-songed. “Do you think I’d ask my sister on the first day of her honeymoon if she could lend me the dosh for a private jet?”
He sighed; the whole affair still didn’t quite make sense; but he was smart enough to bite his tongue on further demands for explanations.
“You could at least have rung me. I was worried about you.” Ah! Here it was, at last – too late as always, a whole argument too late.
“I tried,” she said. “Several times.”
There was another pause, while he decided whether she deserved to be felt about any differently from the way he was currently feeling about her. When he spoke again, she noted he was aiming for a neutral, tolerant tone.
“So you’re not going to work. Do you want me to ring them for you?”
“I can ring them myself, thanks. I’ve got 70, maybe even 80 pee. The kindness of strangers…”
“And… uh… You must be tired. Do you think you’ll be able to sleep today?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve got a pile of washing. If I don’t do that I’ll have nothing to wear.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve got wardrobes full of clothes.”
“No, I don’t mean that sort of clothes. Underwear. I used up all my underwear during the trip – I’ve got my period.”
He laughed, attempting to repair their disharmony with a good-humoured expression of shared intimate knowledge. “Say no more,” he said.
“Fine. See you later,” she said, and hung up. If he thought she derived any comfort from his intimate acquaintance with how copiously she bled and how usual it was for her to soil her panties at the gusset edges, he was mistaken. Again. Nor did she get any thrill out of the other little details he knew about: her creamy discharges mid-cycle, the yellow stains she sweated into the armpits of her spencers, the pale brown stains caused by farts whose constitution she’d misjudged, and so on. She could live without his knowing these things, though being married to him made that impossible. For a week every month, by mutual arrangement, she would sleep in the guest room, to spare the expensive linen on the double bed.
“I’ve married one that leaks,” he’d commented once, as a sort of mawkishly well-meant joke. They’d argued about that one, too, until she started leaking from the eyes.
On the bus home, she dozed over her suitcase, her matted hair falling over her face. She hadn’t had time to have a shower before leaving London. She must have a shower when she got home – but not right away. First things first.
She walked in the front door of her house at a quarter to nine, dumped her suitcase next to the living-room sofa, and got the call to her boss over with. It was painless. Concern was expressed about the shock and outrage she must have felt at the theft, the inconvenience of her all-night trip, and the loss of the £500. There was even some suggestion that this day off might be treated as sick leave, a possibility which did not interest her just at the moment, though she made an effort not to sound too blase.
“Thanks, see you later,” she said, and hung up.
On the dining room table she found the remains of her husband’s breakfast: dregs of orange juice in a tall glass, an empty coffee cup, a bowl plastered with bits of milky cereal. She cleared these things away, washed them properly in detergent and hot water, dried them and stored them in their appointed cupboards. Then she filled the blue plastic laundry tub with warm water, poured in some pink liquid described on its label as a “super dirt dissolver” and “stain shifter”, carried the tub into the living room, and set it down in front of the sofa.
Her bum was still sore: she noticed it especially as she leaned over from her sitting position to pull her dirty clothes out of the unzipped suitcase. Not one of the garments was bloodstained, of course, because her period was only starting now, or to be more precise, it had started last night on the bus.
Out of sudden curiosity she rocked back on the sofa and pulled off the panties she was wearing. She tossed the lightly soiled pad aside without even bothering to roll it up; it was the crotch of the panties that interested her. She had been certain, when she’d first settled into her seat on the bus, that she had felt another little trickle of come seep out, but had decided it wasn’t possible: it must be some sort of nervous tickle.
Now, in the warm light of mid-morning, she held the gusset of her panties taut and stared at the uneven, elongated diamond-shape of semen, like a primitive painting of her own cunt. She held it up to her nose: it still had a smell, though nowhere near as strong as the smell she’d got on her fingers when she had pointed her rear at him and, in lifting the cheeks of her arse for his easier penetration, had found her flesh slippery with his come from earlier on.
Dropping the panties into the tub, she rummaged in her suitcase for the slip she was wearing when she’d first hugged his prick inside her. She had observed the delight on his face when he felt how wet she was for him, and as she had guided him into her she’d laughed and said, “You’ve been getting me wet for hours.”
It was true. Foreplay had begun virtually the moment they’d been introduced to one another at the wedding reception, even though they had stood at a demure distance from each other and done nothing but talk.
And talk, and talk. Their talking was like nothing she’d ever been able to do with anyone else: free of pretence, free of condescension, free of dilution. There were things she was able to say to him that she’d ceased attempting to say to other people years ago, and he not only understood these things, but understood the way she felt about being able to say them as well. Some of the things he said to her, although she took them in with more intellectual attention than she’d given to just about anything ever said to her, had the additional effect of a warm middle finger sliding up between her labia.