for months and when I stopped crying I started hating. It took several more months for the hate to cool and when it did I was left in a pool of icy resentment. ‘So I figured I should try and turn it to my advantage. No more shocks. No more surprises. I decided to have a very low expectancy threshold on what should be gained from a relationship. I don’t think unconditional love is a possibility, never mind a probability, which guarantees no disappointment.’
Fi is concentrating on what I’ve just said as she taps out the tune playing on the jukebox with her fag pack.
‘Sounds a bit extreme. Couldn’t you have just dated someone your own age and sort of – she pauses – ‘I don’t know, muddled along like the rest of us?’
I raise an eyebrow and she shrugs, perhaps realizing how unappealing the alternative is.
‘I did date someone my own age next. He was a fop. Lovable, I guess.’ I think about it, perhaps for the first time. ‘Yes, certainly. But his willingness to please, at first a novelty, quickly became tiresome. Why don’t we value those who most deserve to be valued?’ I turn to Fi, but she’s concentrating on drawing a loveheart on the table with drips of wine. ‘Answers on a postcard please. Before I knew it I’d sort of fallen into a series of one-night stands, mostly with married men or commitment phobes and, on one occasion, a homosexual.’
This gets her attention. ‘How did you know? Did he make you dress up and do funny things with strap-ons?’
‘No, Fi, he had an opinion on my wallpaper.’ I run through my sexual misadventures in my head and it could be the alcohol but this reminiscing is making me decidedly morose. I rouse myself into my more acceptable, tough, public persona. ‘Just take it from me it’s easier to enjoy the moment and not expect anything more because really there isn’t anything more. I heartily recommend the married man.’ I swallow and then refill both our glasses.
‘Doesn’t it bother you that someone else is getting the best bit?’
‘The best bit?’ I’m genuinely challenged to understand what Fi means.
‘The companionship, the stability, the history, the future.’
‘The dirty washing, the belching, the rows, the incessant football results.’
‘But it doesn’t make sense. You suffered first-hand because your father had a mistress. Why would you want to inflict the same pain on someone else?’
To be fair this is a pretty good question. Especially considering the units we’ve consumed on empty stomachs. It is a question I’d asked myself, once upon a time. The first time I fell for a married man it was purely accidental. I didn’t really expect it to happen again. I did hate the very idea of ‘the other woman’. Women who are compliant in this perpetuation of misery repelled me. After all, if there hadn’t been a Miss Hudley, there wouldn’t have been a deserting father and a deserted mother.
A deserted daughter.
The problem is, of course, you can take out Miss Hudley but a Miss Budley or a Miss Woodly would replace her. The choice is clear to me: become a Miss Hudley because the alternative role is worse – become the deserted wife. My mother’s face, worn and weary with clinging to her pride whilst losing her husband, her home, her name and her identity, burns into my consciousness. Fear flung me into relationships with men committed to someone else. It was safer. I should have been struck by lightning when I broke the taboo the first time. I sometimes wish I had been. With alarming ease I’ve broken every rule and never been punished – in fact, I’ve often been rewarded. It seemed that what I was doing was sanctioned. Whilst I collected compliments and Cartier, tenaciously avoiding commitment or Kleenex, my friends who hoped for the Happily Ever After were discovering that the road to fairyland was long and winding. And often heartbreaking.
Somehow I’ve developed secret signals that repel available men or men with a penchant for commitment yet simultaneously attract married men or any of the others who don’t want anything more than sex. Or maybe it’s just that the numbers are in my favour. I don’t say any of this to Fi. I turn back to her question and simplify.
‘I’m not threatening. I don’t want to be someone’s girlfriend, or, horror of horrors, wife. Therefore I’m not a risk. I never demand. I never call at inconvenient times; I never criticize