It took a week, exactly a week, from Angelina’s first e-mail. Wednesday morning, 9:30 A.M. in Norwich, 8:30 P.M. Melbourne time. I had resolved to put the whole thing out of my mind, and then up popped the window.
Hi
Still married to Charlie. Three kids. Working full time.
Angelina
xxx
I have a husband. I have children. And I have a job in Australia. Do not entertain any thoughts inconsistent with those facts.
Except for two things.
The first was the xxx. It’s not as though three kisses at the bottom of an e-mail meant I’m still in love with you, or even I want to kiss you three times, but they suggested that something remained from our past. The second thing was that she was writing at all, and apparently not to ask about holiday options. What had prompted it?
I composed my reply with some care. Angelina might have initiated the exchange, but her replies had reflected mine in the amount they disclosed. It seemed it was up to me to decide if and how it escalated.
Very belated congratulations. A lot happens in twenty-two years. Happy?
The reply took less than fifteen seconds.
Thanks. A quarter of a lifetime. Kids are great. Work challenging, but I love it.
I noted the omission of the marriage and went back to her previous e-mail. Still married to Charlie. Still. Was there a suggestion that this was a temporary state of affairs? How would I have written it?
I scrolled down and saw that I had written Still with Claire. If anything, that reinforced my interpretation that things might be shaky for her, or at least a bit dull. But how else would she say it? Everything wonderful with Charlie?
Before I could reply, there was another message from Angelina.
Charlie’s out tasting wine. It’s his regular Wednesday thing.
And two Wednesdays in a row you’ve e-mailed your old lover. Because you’re lonely—or bored—without Charlie, or because he’s not watching?
We were at a turning point. I could ask the names of her kids, what sort of work she was doing, where they lived. I sensed that if I did, I would slowly dismantle my fantasy of her. I was being offered the pill that would make me hate the taste of alcohol. It was too big a decision to take without more information.
I wrote:
I’m e-mailing my lover from twenty years ago. It’s in danger of becoming my regular Wednesday thing.
xxx Dooglas
Not as witty as I’d have liked, but it would have to do. She had left me hanging the previous week and I would return the favor. I shut down the computer and went for a run.
The shot of adrenaline from upping the ante carried me to an extra circuit of the park before I changed and walked into town where, along with doing the week’s shopping, I introduced myself at the piano shop and spent an enjoyable couple of hours chatting and trying out keyboards. Back home, I managed to restrain myself from checking my e-mail and headed for the pub.
I was on fire all evening, and my resolution to stick to a single pint in the interests of weight loss only added to my edge. Phil Upchurch’s big hit of 1961? “Oop Poop Ah Doo.” Roy Orbison song covered by Creedence Clearwater Revival? “Ooby Dooby.” Capital of Burkina Faso? Ouagadougou. Sheilagh barely got a look-in.
“You’re looking fantastic,” she said. “Have you got a job or something?”
“Started running again.” A week ago, but I was feeling a difference.
“Well, keep it up.”
We nailed second place, beaten only by the pub champions. Stuart waited until Sheilagh went outside to make a call before offering his take on my reinvigoration.
“Are you having an affair, mate?”
“What? No.” And then, because I knew I should share it with someone and that person was not going to be Claire, I added, “Someone I used to know got back in touch.”
“Old geezer, happily married, wanted to talk databases, right?”
“One out of three. She’s married, she lives in Australia, and we’ve exchanged about a dozen words on e-mail. No big deal.”
“Except for the new personality. So you’ve told Claire and she’s good with it, right? Copying her in, maybe the four of you can have a holiday together. And since it’s no big deal, you can stop now.”
“It’s only a few e-mails. Just woke me up a bit.”
“I’m not complaining about that. I suppose it was the only way you were going to get out of the funk. Other than getting a job, which, of course, is out of the question. I keep thinking one day I’ll pick up the Telegraph and there’ll be a picture of you holding a blanket over your head, and I’ll find I’ve been playing the pub quiz with the bloody Unabomber.”
“Come on, I’ve been fine. I’m out three nights a week.”
“True, but with what sort of people? Seriously, I know your mum’s been sick, I know you and Claire are struggling a bit, but you’ve been flat as a tack since before Christmas. Maybe you need some sort of distraction, but these things turn dangerous quicker than you think.”
On the bus home, I checked my e-mail. Four messages from Angelina.
Do you want to live dangerously?
Stuart had been prescient. There’s a lot of time to get to know people between pub quiz rounds, and I had two circles of friends as a result. Sheilagh and Stuart were in the center, with Derek and the other once-a-weekers around them. I counted myself lucky. Short-term work assignments are not a good way to build long-term relationships, and I had lost touch with the friends of my early adulthood as they retreated into family life.
Claire’s friends were scattered around the country. She and I went out together on the weekends, but we had not been out with another couple for a long time. And none of my conversations with anybody involved flirting, innuendo, and double entendres.
The next message just said,
Well?
She had waited three minutes.
Then:
Hey, I asked you a question.
Eight minutes. And, finally,
Wimp.
She would be asleep now. I e-mailed her something to wake up to.
I was in a meeting. Feeling dangerous now.
I was feeling extremely dangerous. Claire was still up, working at her computer. When I kissed her good night, I tilted her head and kissed her lips instead of her cheek, and she gave me a smile back.
I slept till eight A.M., went for a jog, stole some of Claire’s muesli and yogurt for breakfast in place of my usual fry-up, and checked my inbox. There was a message.
xxx
That was it. But it lifted me for the rest of the day, so high I couldn’t concentrate on anything. For the first time in living memory I felt switched on, in that driven, edgy way that affects your whole body. Wired. The way I used to feel before a big date.
They say your libido hits the downward slope hard at forty-five, and I was staring down the barrel of fifty. In less than a year, my friends would gather in some typically English pub, drink pints, and wish me happy birthday. After that, Claire and I would go home, she might feel obliged to offer me some sexual favor that I would feel embarrassed about accepting, and later I would go to sleep in my single bed without ever feeling what I felt when those three kisses appeared on my screen.
It was odd, in a way. Sex had been an important part of my relationship with Angelina. But my memories of her were romantic, nostalgic, downbeat. She had not featured in my erotic fantasies. I could see that changing.
I walked around the house like a caged lion, making coffee just for something to do, which made the problem worse. I was going to go crazy without some sort of distraction. Stuart had had a point.
I e-mailed my contracting agency in London. Distraction or not, I was due to do some honest work.
I only needed to work six months a year to match Claire’s income. Although I had lost interest in the progress of database technology, there were plenty of legacy systems needing maintenance and enhancement. Veterans prepared to forgo the excitement of the new were rewarded with premium rates.
On the other side of the equation, Claire had thrown in her project management job to join a start-up software company that was doing better at building a brilliant child-support payments system for one government client than at making a profit. Three months ago, an American company had offered to buy them out and they had been in negotiation since then. As one of the principals, Claire could be coming home at some time in the future with a big check and no job. Or a transfer to run the new owner’s Ouagadougou office.
I had no plan for dealing with that, let alone next Wednesday.