Читать книгу The One Before The One - Katy Regan - Страница 12

Toby leans coolly against my bedroom window frame, takes a slow, deep drag on his cigarette, his eyebrows smouldering as he does. I swear he’s putting that on now.

‘God, you really look like James Dean doing that.’

‘Do I?’ he says.

‘Yes, except for maybe the socks.’ I squint at his feet. ‘Are they actually South Park socks?’

It’s a rare man that can pull off nudity avec South Park socks with all the style and nonchalance of a Hollywood sex god, but Toby Delaney manages to.

I sit up in bed and pull the sheet up so my nipples don’t escape. It’s 8.08 p.m., still broad daylight outside, the hum of traffic from Battersea Park Road just audible, and Toby is smoking a post-coital cigarette out of my bedroom window. It’s something he’s done every other Wednesday for the past five months, a ritual of the ‘book club’. Except, it isn’t a book club at all. It’s more, well, it’s more of a fuck club. With just the two members: Toby and me.

Rachel, Toby’s wife thinks it’s a book club. She thinks that every second Wednesday, Toby comes to my house in Battersea to discuss the naked prose of M. J. Hyland, when really, he’s just there to get naked with me.

I sink further down into the duvet and take a moment to savour his physical form. I never know when it might be my last chance, after all. When all this might implode. When he, or I, decide we can’t do this any more. His long, slim legs, which drive me crazy, his bum, possibly less firm than it could be but that’s because he spends so much time sitting on it. Lazy bugger. His … Yep, he’s got a very nice one. Surely it spells trouble if you’re starting to find their flaccid penis attractive?

My eyes move up his body to that flat, boyish belly of his, which he’s always stuffing but which never increases. It incites a sort of erotic envy in me. His chest, lean yet broad, that perfect smattering of darkish hair and then that bizarre, mutant third nipple, tiny like a baby’s, which apparently is very common and which I find thrilling because when he’s at work I know it’s there, under his shirt. Our little secret. And, finally, his face. The bit I crave the most when he’s not here: that gorgeous line from his Adam’s apple to his chin to his jaw, emphasized by a two-day shadow, which I know he’s kept for me because I’ve got a thing for facial hair. (A throwback from a crippling crush on Tom Selleck in Three Men and a Baby). The fine, distinguished nose and the sexy quiff of a fringe. Then the famous Delaney eyebrows, which I love and despise all at the same time because they give away all of his feelings. They frequently disappoint me.

Toby sucks hard on his Lucky Strike.

‘So what did you tell your sister again?’ he asks.

‘That I was hosting a book club. That it would be full of geeks reading War and Peace and that she’d hate it.’

Toby laughs.

‘Steele, you’re a genius. And did she buy it?’ He exhales the last of his cigarette and gets back into bed, slipping his cool, hard body next to mine.

‘Oh yeah, totally. She was like, “yawn” and other teenage expressions denoting boredom.’

Toby smiles, amused, snuggles under the duvet and grabs my bum.

‘Anyway, she said she was going swimming followed by some body combat class at the gym, thank God. Otherwise, I don’t know what I would have said to get her out of the house.’

‘Like I said, Steeley, perhaps we’ll have to de-camp.’ Toby puts one arm across my chest then pulls me on top of him.

‘Decamp what?’

‘The book club, of course.’ He cups my boobs in his hands and gives them a squeeze. ‘I can’t do without my book club, no way. I’d go crazy with lust.’

‘Really?’ I say, with more hope in my voice than I’d intended.

‘Er, yeah. Let’s see.’ He frowns up at the ceiling in mock concentration. ‘Firstly, with whom else would I get to discuss whether Pride and Prejudice is, in fact, the perfect novel?’

He gives one of his infectious schoolboy giggles and I kiss him on the lips.

‘How would I get through the week without hearing what a genius – who’s that Japanese bloke you love?’

‘Murakami.’

‘Yeah, him. What a genius he is. Where would we be without having to make it through another fucking Joanna Trollope novel?’ We both burst out laughing. ‘Shit, I mean, seriously!’ We’re both snorting now. ‘Enough to make you want to open a vein. And then there’s that Houellebecq dude. What a barrel of laughs he was.’

He assumes a deep, pompous voice. ‘“I found Atomised very nihilistic text.”’

I bury my head in his chest and shake with laughter.

‘Don’t be mean! At least Charles was actually taking it seriously, unlike someone I know.’

‘Who was just there because he fancied the arse off a certain book club member? A member who, as well as exquisite taste in literature, also happens to have the best norks in London.’ He squeezes them again and we end up snogging.

I guess this is how I manage to square all this in my head (which most of the time I don’t, meaning I spend my waking hours swinging between ridiculous excitement at the prospect of the ‘book club’ and feeling like a wanton whore who is destined for hell). There once was an actual book club. Once upon a time, that wasn’t a lie. It was Marta’s idea, Marta being the office martyr, arranging countless, thankless, work-bonding events. We needed a venue, so I volunteered. It had been two months since Martin moved out and I liked the idea of the house being full once a fortnight. I imagined we’d sit around a roaring fire, sipping vintage Merlot and discussing so-and-so’s use of personification and whether we identified with such-and-such protagonist. What actually happened was that we’d discuss the book for ten minutes, get slaughtered on Blossom Hill. Then have a row.

What was supposed to be a bonding exercise ended up dividing the office. It was ‘us’: Me, Toby, Shona and Charles from marketing (‘The ones with degrees,’ Toby would comment with typical scathing humour) and ‘them’: Marta, Health and Safety Heather and Toupee Dom (‘the plebs’ – Toby, again). The plebs thought our book choices were pretentious. We thought theirs were lame. Everything came to a head when Toby said that Heather’s choice – admittedly it was Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews – had less literary merit than a McDonald’s menu, and she fled from the club in tears.

And so, one by one, people fell away until it was just Toby and I who found ourselves in my lounge, books in hands. I knew immediately this was a bad idea. We were reading Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi (my choice). An account of the night before a man leaves his wife, charting the unravelling of a relationship; how you can look at someone you’ve known for ten years and feel nothing.

‘How can you be married to someone for ten years and feel nothing?’ I said. We were sitting at my dining table. I’d lit candles – something I’d never done when everybody else was here.

‘Oh, it’s possible, believe me,’ said Toby, those eyebrows smouldering, fixing me with his hypnotic blue eyes ‘And it doesn’t have to take ten years.’

I read a passage aloud. The drunker we got, the more seriously we were taking it. Or perhaps it was because discussing the book meant we didn’t have to acknowledge the strangling sexual tension in the room. I could feel Toby’s eyes burn my eyelids as I read. I looked up from the book and he was still holding my gaze. I read on, my heart thumping. Then there was a line where the narrator says how he never found a way to be ‘pleasurably idle’ with his wife; how she was always so busy, wanted too much out of life.

‘I know that feeling,’ said Toby. His gaze was intense, penetrating. Gone was the usual, puppy-dog Toby; he was serious. ‘Feeling neglected, unimportant.’

The room had gone deathly quiet and I pulled a face. No doubt wholly unattractive, but nerves do that to me.

Then Toby said: ‘You know what, Caroline (he never called me Caroline, only Steeley)? I think you may be one of the few women who does understand me.’

I downed a glass of red in one. Then Toby sat down next to me, moved his face millimetres from mine and kissed me, but I’d not had time to swallow the wine so a dribble ended up in his mouth.

‘Sorry!’ Another bit escaped down my chin, so I now resembled an incompetent vampire.

‘Don’t apologize,’ he said. ‘Red wine and Caroline Steele. Two of my favourite things.’

Things went from nought to sixty in about ten minutes. We abandoned the books and my top and started on the vodka (the beginning of the end). The next thing I know, I’m lying on the lounge floor smoking Lucky Strikes whilst Toby showers my belly with kisses (the end of the end) and he’s telling me he thinks I’m ‘enigmatic’ and I’m telling him I find it hard not to touch him at work, that I think he looks like James Dean. At which point, I imagine, I ceased to be enigmatic.

And then he says, giving me the most gorgeous, stubbly kiss, ‘Well, if I’m going to live fast and die young I’d better get the snogs in now …’ And a small explosion took place in my groin.

Then we ended up in my bed.

‘We need condoms!’ I said as he pulled my tights off. ‘We need condoms and we need fags!’ That’s the last thing I remember. I woke up, with just my bra on, a Lucky Strike – you live, or you die, the in-joke of the evening – lodged between my cleavage.

In this case, I died. Of utter embarrassment. Talk about out of character. Toby, on the other hand, thought it was hysterical.

‘And I thought you were stuck up,’ he said, laughing and laughing in the office kitchen the next day, as I stood, face in hands.

‘This can never, ever happen again,’ I hissed. ‘You are bloody well married and I … I want to be single.’

He raised his James Dean eyebrows at me. My cheeks burned furiously.

‘Not that I was suggesting …’

‘Oh, Steeley,’ he said, with his sexy little lisp, taking my hand. ‘Take a chill pill. It’ll be our little secret.’ Then he sighed. ‘But yes, you’re right, we can’t do this again’. He grimaced in a way that told me he didn’t mean this at all. ‘You are, however, sexy as hell. Remember that.’

I did. Oh, I did.

I shuffled into work later after a horrifying, near-vomit experience on the tube where I heaved, but nothing came out, so that people on my carriage just parted, like a wave as I made a sound like a dying walrus. I was green and the heel of one shoe was missing. Last seen, rolling down the escalator of Marble Arch station.

As the day wore on and the alcohol wore off, the reality of what I’d done hit me. I’d slept with a married man. In the space of five months, I had dumped my fiancé, dumped a string of men and slept with someone else’s husband.

And it had all started off so well, too! For the first four years of working together, I was the only person out of twenty-two graduates on the Skidmore-Colt-Davis graduate trainee scheme who hadn’t had so much as a party kiss with Mr Delaney. This was my first grown-up, ‘proper’ job, after all, and I was in the thick of a ten year, very grown-up relationship with Martin Squire. So whilst all my new colleagues were out drinking till 3 a.m. and jumping into one another’s beds, I was batch-cooking risotto.

‘Two birds with one stone, Caro!’ Martin would proudly announce, like batch-cooking actually elevated him to a higher spiritual plain. ‘This will do us for tea and five days of lunches!’

It has come to light since – I know because he’s told me – that Toby was somewhat fascinated by me. He was the unmistakable heartthrob of the grad scheme. His unique blend of raw sexiness and little-boy-lost look had all the girls wanting to soothe his hangovers, then roger him senseless and bear his children, me included.

And yet I never stayed behind to get drunk, always went home to the boyfriend. That wasn’t to say I didn’t have the same filthy thoughts as everyone else, I was just a pro at self-control. On the few occasions that Martin and Toby met at work drinks, I would squirm, then feel terrible for squirming. They would talk about music – nobody is less sporty than Martin and it seems to be sport or music with men. I would be trying to concentrate on whatever conversation I was having whilst overhearing Martin going, ‘David Gray, Toby, he’s your man!’ whilst Toby raised his eyebrow at me over Martin’s shoulder and tried not to laugh.

Then, in 2004, four years after Toby and I met on the first day of the grad scheme, he was head-hunted and we didn’t see each other for another four years. But then, one day in the October of 2008, I heard a familiar voice in the office: loud, slightly husky, with an adorable lisp. My stomach turned upside down.

So now we’re here, with me snogging a married man in the living room of the house I used to share with my fiancé. Like I said, it was all going so well …

Perhaps, I reasoned, that now I was going to hell anyway, I may as well get the best seat there, because despite my resolve, come a fortnight later, when Toby kissed me outside the tube station, cocked his eyebrow and said, ‘Back to yours?’ I dissolved.

Well, that was it. I had lost face, dignity, any enigmatic qualities I might have ever possessed. I was damned if he thought he was just going to continue to get me drunk, then have his wicked way with me any time he wanted. I was damned if I was going to get involved. If we were going to play this game, then there were going to be some rules. The book club rules. My house, every other Wednesday. Out by 9.30 p.m.

So, in an effort to show Toby Delaney that I am not the sort of girl he can just get slaughtered then shag, I have become the sort of girl who makes a fortnightly appointment to sleep with someone’s husband. Which suits me fine, of course. Sex with someone who is already taken. I couldn’t get involved if I wanted to.

We’re dozing in bed now. Beside me I can see the red digits of my clock winking, menacingly: 8.16 p.m. Forty-four minutes until he has to go.

‘Would sex vixen of SW11 care for a glass of wine?’ asks Toby.

I roll on top of him and sigh. ‘Is it that time already?’

‘’Fraid so, treacle.’ He smacks my bottom. ‘Wine time, home time … Worst luck.’

I kiss his nose and get out of bed. ‘You don’t mean that,’ I say, turning towards the window so he can’t see my smile.

We get dressed and go down to the kitchen. Post-coital, ice-cold Sauvignon Blanc being one of the book club rituals.

‘Do you know what I love about you most, Steeley?’ says Toby, pouring me a glass.

‘No, go on, what do you love most about me?’

‘You’re like a bloke.’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh, baby!’ he says, seeing my face fall. This time his schoolboy snort is a little irritating. ‘I don’t mean in the way you look – you’re foxy as all hell, you know I think that – I just mean in the way you are.’ He pushes me gently against the worktop and kisses me. ‘You have a rare gift for a woman.’

Our noses are touching now; I’m staring right into his blue, blue eyes.

‘Really? And what’s that?’

‘You’re able to compartmentalize things. Get what you want, when you want. You’re in control of things. It’s ridiculously sexy …’ He puts his hand between my legs. I remove it.

‘Stop that! You’ll set me off.’

‘Like, take a look at this. This book club. This little fuck club of ours, young lady.’ He’s putting his hands through my hair piling it on top of my head.

I open my mouth to laugh but nothing comes out.

‘Don’t pretend you didn’t orchestrate all this. This suits you down to the ground, doesn’t it? You schedule me in on a fortnightly basis. Three hours. Your house. Nice and tidy.’

I prod his stomach, look at him saucily.

‘Now you’re making me out to be some sort of cold fish.’

‘I’m trying to give you a compliment, actually. All I’m saying is that you’re not governed by constant, irrational emotion like most women, are you, Caroline?’

‘Oh God no. No, no! Never been like that.’

‘Not like Rachel. Jesus! She’s such a woman, is Rachel.’

I lean against his chest. The mention of Rachel – which doesn’t happen often – incites a sort of fascinated fear in me. Like I want him to shut up and carry on all at the same time.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I just mean it’s constant, you know?’

‘Constant what?’

Don’t dig too much. Remain nonchalant. Nonchalant and not governed by constant, irrational emotion.

‘Constant woman-ness with her. It’s all about her, Steeley. If she’s not spending the whole bloody weekend counselling some boring friend about her drama, she’s having a drama herself. Or we’re going to yet another do with the boring Uni Girls, or yet another boring awards ceremony for her. Or she’s working, always working.’

I feel a stab of insecurity. Rachel is well-known in the industry for winning awards. When she first met Toby she was selling soft drinks and used to sweep the board at the Trade’s Awards, twice being named Sales Person of the Year.

‘Sex has gone completely off the radar, she’s not interested.’

‘How …’ I kiss him ‘… can that be possible when you’re such an irresistible sex god?’

He laughs.

‘She’s uptight. Doesn’t let herself go, like you. If we do have sex, it’s like something that’s got to be factored in to her tight schedule, something on her fucking endless To Do list, do you know what I mean?’

I shake my head. To Do list. Who would reduce their entire life to a To Do list?

‘To be honest, sometimes,’ he says, ‘I feel like an extra in the show that is Rachel’s life.’

‘Well,’ I say, slipping a hand under his shirt. (Must balance fine line between wanton sex goddess and only-woman-who-understands-him.) ‘We can’t have that.’

Toby cups my face in his hand.

‘Fuck me, I fancy you,’ he says. ‘What is it about you, Caroline Steele, that means that when I am around you, I just want to have sex with you?’

Our top halves are off in seconds, the bottom two of Toby’s shirt buttons sent skidding across the floor. Toby pushes me backwards against the fridge, sending magnets and papers flying. I cover his chest with kisses, his hair smells incredible, that shower-fresh, sugary, bakery smell, times about five hundred. I inhale as he pushes my hair back and kisses me, hard; on my face, my neck, my breasts. There’s the feverish undoing of belts, which is awkward since I am wearing one of those fabric ones and for some reason he keeps squeezing it the wrong way so that my insides are getting squashed. Finally, after much giggling, I’m up against my fridge, naked, jeans around my ankles. A woman possessed. Possessed by a harlot in my own kitchen.

I want him so badly now. I drop down and take him in my mouth. His pubes smell delicious, clean, with a faint muskiness that sparks another explosion that spreads from my groin, right down my thighs.

‘Jesus, you’re good at that,’ he says, leaning back onto the fridge, and laughing, a sort of half-laugh, half-groan. His eyes are closed, his whole body rigid, except his hands, which are gently pushing my head, and his knees that are bending, along to the same rhythm as me.

‘Stop,’ he says, softly. ‘Stop. I won’t last two minutes if you carry on like that.’

Then we’re on the floor, he wants me on top of him and I happily oblige. I am possessed, again, by someone who writhes and swishes her hair and her hips, like a belly-dancer, there, next to the whirring fridge, as, outside, the birds break out into evensong and, inside, I think I might explode with desire.

We’re lying on the kitchen floor now – me on top of Toby in a breathless, sweaty, elated heap.

Then I hear the door go.

‘Fuck!’

‘What?’ says Toby alarmed.

‘It’s Lexi, she’s back!’

‘You’re joking?’

‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ I’m scrambling off him now. Toby’s spread-eagled, naked except for a large erection and the South Park socks.

‘Get up!’ I hiss, flapping my arms about.

‘All right keep yer knickers on.’

‘I would if I could find them!’

I’m flitting about the kitchen now. Toby’s standing, scratching his head and smirking at me. He thinks this is funny.

‘Right, you through the utility room and into the bathroom,’ I say, spotting my knickers scrunched up like a sleeping rodent next to the fridge.

‘What?’

‘Just do it!’ I push him, still sniggering through the door and kick his clothes in after him.

I hear Lexi slam the front door shut and call down the hallway,

‘Hel-lo-oh! I’m back!’

‘Just using the loo!’ I shout back. It’s lame but, frankly, I need anything that’s going to stall her.

I manage to get one leg in one hole of my knickers, as I hear her drop her bag on the hallway floor, then follow Toby, limping, into the bathroom.

‘I can’t find my pants,’ he whispers, rummaging through the pile of clothes.

‘Well, just wear your trousers then. You’ll have to go commando.’

I hear Lexi cough, dramatically, and drag her heels towards the kitchen. Just those two sounds tell me she’s drunk. Body combat class, my arse.

Then she’s hammering on the bathroom door.

‘Hurry up, Missus. I’m gonna piss my pants! Can’t make it upstairs!’

Toby’s buttoning his shirt, his face red with the effort of not laughing.

‘Won’t be long!’ I shout. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck it! How was I going to get out of this one now?

‘In the bath,’ I mouth to Toby ‘The what?’

‘It’s leaking out!’ moans Lexi.

‘All right, can you just hang on a second?’

‘Not su-re!’ She’s singing the words now, intermittently leaning against the door and making it bang. ‘There might be a little puddle in your kitchen if I don’t get in there soo-oon!’

Eventually, I get Toby crouched safely down behind the shower curtain, flush the toilet and open the door.

‘Ohmigodimgonnapissmyself,’ Lexi barges right past me clutching her crotch.

I hear the toilet cover go up, then Lexi sigh, heavily, as she announces. ‘Oh Lordy,’ over the longest, loudest wee ever known to man. ‘I fucking needed that.’

To be honest, at first I’m so relieved that Lexi didn’t catch me riding Toby on the kitchen floor that I forget to be annoyed that she’s drunk. But she is. Leathered, in fact. My little sister is totally pissed.

I managed to persuade her upstairs for a few minutes by presenting her with a pile of laundry, thus freeing Toby up. As far as she’s concerned when she comes down, he just emerged from the lounge.

Lexi stands, arms folded, giving Toby the once over.

‘So. Who’s this then?’

‘This is Toby Delaney.’ I’ve no idea why I give him his full title. Like we’re in a Jane Austen period drama or something.

‘Hello, Toby Delaney,’ she says.

She’s wearing a black, stretchy minidress, pointy shoes with bows on them and a leather biker jacket. In my mother’s book this would definitely qualify as a look that says, ‘On the game.’

Toby’s sitting up on the worktop, hands clasped neatly in his lap in a gesture that says, ‘Do I look like a man who was just having sex on the kitchen floor?’

‘Hi …?’

‘Alexis,’ she says.

Alexis? Since when did she ever want to be called Alexis?

She pulls out a kitchen chair and sits down, stretching out her long, bare legs. If I didn’t know any better I’d say she was flirting.

‘Cool name,’ says Toby. ‘So how was the body combat class? Back when us two old timers were young …’ Ha! He’s got a cheek. Less of the ‘old timers’ and the ‘us two’ thanks very much. ‘It was aerobics or step class. Everyone was lugging these step things about.’

Lexi giggles. A mixture of nerves and a certain thrill, perhaps, that a handsome, older man is talking to her.

She leans forward and rests her dainty chin on her hand so that you can see her perfect B-cups resting in a floral lace bra.

I check Toby. His eyes dart upwards. Caught!

‘Eh, so you’re that Toby off the photo aren’t you?’ she says, her accent even stronger now she’s obviously had a drink.

Oh, that’s great, that is. Now he’s going to think I’m obsessed with that photo.

‘What photo’s that?’

‘Brighton,’ I say curtly. ‘Anyway, hadn’t you better be getting a shower or something, Lexi?’ I glare at her but she ignores me or she’s just too pissed to take a hint.

‘It doesn’t do you justice,’ she says. She’s looking up at Toby from under mascara-smudged eyes. She is flirting. God, I could kill her! ‘You know how some people look better in a photo and some people take a rubbish photo but look much better in the flesh?’ she slurs on. ‘Well, you’re definitely the latter type.’

Toby laughs, flattered. I shoot him a look.

She takes off her leather jacket and puts it on the back of her chair, sliding it back from the table slightly. That’s when I see them. Toby’s Tommy Hilfiger boxer shorts, caught under the front right chair leg! I look over at Toby. Had he spotted them too?

‘Thanks very much,’ says Toby. ‘If that is a compliment, which I think it is. It’s all your sister’s fault, anyway …’ He winks at me, which I respond to with a tight smile and cock of the head in the direction of the floor. ‘Shoddy photography.’

Lexi mumbles something but she’s already thinking of the next question. She has her audience and she’s determined to keep them.

‘How was the book club, anyway?’ she pipes up. (How much longer was this going to go on?)

‘Great,’ we say in unison.

‘So where is everyone?’

‘They left,’ we say, again in unison.

‘But they were here,’ I add, totally unnecessarily.

Lexi nods, uninterested, and looks around the room, her eyes finally landing, unfocused on Toby.

‘Sowhatsyerjob?’ she slurs

God, when was she going to shut up? I look again at the pants, the chair’s moved slightly now, so that more material is on show. My heart’s beating ten to the dozen.

‘I’m an account manager. I sell stuff to supermarkets the same as your sister, but I’m much better at it than she is,’ he says, to which I roll my eyes.

‘Wow!’ says Lexi.

Wow? She’s never said my job is wow.

‘So that must mean you have to do a lot of like, speeches?’

‘Present—’

‘—ations,’ he was going to say, but then Lexi kicks off her shoes, which land with a slap on the wooden floor, inches from the pants.

I see Toby do a double take as he spots them; his eyes linger there for a second before he looks up at me, mouth open.

‘What’s wrong?’ Lexi giggles. Her eyes flit about the room and rest on the floor for a second. I clench my stomach muscles, hold my breath.

‘Nothing. Er, just saw the time, actually,’ says Toby, brightly. ‘I’d better get going.’

‘Really?’ Lexi’s face falls, her eyes drunkenly following him as he gets his jacket.

I’d normally see Toby to the door, catch one more lingering kiss before he has to go but I can’t risk it this time. Besides anything else, leaving Lexi alone with the pants could be potential suicide.

‘Good book club this week, Delaney,’ I opt for, lamely, as he puts on his jacket.

‘Best book I’ve had … sorry, read, for ages,’ he says, which is a joke he wheels out every book club. ‘Hope your head’s not sore tomorrow, Alexis,’ he adds as he’s walking out. I watch as he opens the door, closes it behind him and goes home to his wife.