Exeter came and went, and I admitted to myself that I was still hoping Billy was going to save me from my mundane little life in almost exactly the way he’d saved me that summer of 1990.
A sign for Newton Abbot slid past, and I accepted it was a ridiculous desire to have, but I couldn’t quite shake it all the same.
Fritts Combe, Dunstone, West Prawle…
It was there, in West Prawle, that my revelation came. It felt so profound that it sent shivers down my spine.
I wasn’t sure where the thought had come from, but when it came to me I knew it as truth: I had spent my life fantasising about Billy Ruddle, but had no idea whether my fantasy was based on a reality I’d experienced long ago, or a sort of madness that had briefly possessed me during my hormone-addled teenage years.
That fantasy, I finally saw, had pushed a wedge between Rob and me. It was the thing that had made me unable to relax into my relationship with my husband.
I was here, in my green Polo, shattered from seven hours’ driving, but on a mission to find out the truth, and there was nothing frivolous about that at all.
It would be nothing, or it would be something, as Billy had said. It would be a really bad or a really good idea. And the fact that he’d been able to put that into words so succinctly meant that he’d been having the same doubts himself.
So, today, I would find out, I decided. This had gone on long enough.
If I had to sleep with Billy to find out, then sleep with Billy I would. If the fantasy was real, and I had to leave Rob to be truly happy, then leave Rob I would, as well.
And if, after all, it was nothing more than a stupid teenage fantasy that had got stuck inside my head, then I’d be done with it, once and for all, and I’d go home and damned well be happy.
ELEVEN
CLOSING BRACKETS (BY ROB)
Have you ever been in love and then fallen out of it? Because if you have, you’ll know that it’s a strange, unpredictable process. Amazing how fast it can happen, too.
If she’d known the details, which of course she didn’t, Dawn would almost certainly say that it was pure misogyny on my part. She’d say that I’d enjoyed no-strings sex with Cheryl but at the moment she’d become an actual person – an actual woman, with needs – I’d gone off her. And in many ways I suppose she’d be right.
If it hadfeltthat way, if being like that, thinking like that, had been conscious decisions on my part, then I’d have to own up to being a right monster. But that’s not how it felt to live through it. I swear to you that’s not how it was.
How itfeltwas that I wasin love, though perhaps, with hindsight, in lust might have been a better description. I was in lust for Cheryl’s body, and in lust for sex in general. I was lusting for my lost youth – mymissedyouth, even – for fun, for change and for some plain old excitement to stave off death. And as Cheryl provided all of the above, she’d seemed totally irresistible.
What’s perhaps most shocking, looking back, is that my infatuation lasted so long, because, all in all, it was almost four years. That last year was all about decline, though, so perhaps we should only count the first three. But ultimately, aspect by aspect, character trait by character trait, Cheryl began to grate on me, and once that process had started it seemed unstoppable.
Her make-up seemed to take longer and longer, so she was never on time for anything. Her heels – heels I’d once found so sexy – suddenly seemed a bit absurd, bad for her health, not to mention totally impractical. Specifically, we missed a train home from Manchester one afternoon because she refused to run in her heels, or indeed to take them off. The result was that I got home after midnight and had to put up with Dawn’s fury for a whole week because I’d missed an important family meal.
Cheryl’s music, particularly the rap, I found I suddenly couldn’t stand. Herthink positiveplatitudes made me sigh and roll my eyes. The way she touched me all the time in the car, the way her leg was always in the way of the gearstick, the way she could never seem to remember which of the bloody toothbrushes was mine and which was hers, her snuffling with hay-fever at the breakfast table… These were all things that I’d loved about her at the beginning – even the snuffling – but now they became things that irritated the tits off me. And the list kept getting longer.
If she’d been my wife, if she had been the mother of my children, then I suppose we might have seen a couples’ counsellor to try to work out what was going wrong. But she wasn’t my wife, was she? Shewasn’tthe mother of my kids either. Not yet. So in a way our relationship going wrong feltright, like it was perhaps a healing process rather than an illness to be cured. Like the closing of a set of brackets.
I saw her less and less often, and when we did see each other I found myself avoiding sex. I wouldn’t have said no to a blow job, but Cheryl now deemed those a waste of spunk.
‘Is it the kid thing?’ she asked me one time I refused. ‘Because I can always go back on the pill.’
I told her I didn’t know what it was, and that I was just in a weird mood, and I was sorry, and these things all seemed true. All I really knew, the only thing I’d actually understood at that point, was that our relationship was losing its shine, but it hardly seemed fair to say that to Cheryl.
* * *
She got to the hotel in Newcastle before me, and I found her seated on the balcony smoking.
‘Hello,’ I said, dumping my case on the bed and shrugging out of my overcoat. I crossed the room and pointed to the ‘No smoking’ sign behind her and, when she shrugged and looked away, I sensed something major was about to happen.
‘How was your trip?’ I asked, sliding into the seat opposite her. It was cold on the balcony and I wished I’d kept my coat on, but as that would have looked like I was uncommitted to staying it was probably better to be cold.
‘Terrifying,’ she said.
‘Terrifying?’
