Paul didn’t quite know why he’d suggested the whole family go tenpin bowling that evening.
Other than it seemed an age since they’d done anything as a family.
And that he’d been feeling incredibly guilty about what was happening between him and Natalia.
Not that anything was happening. Really. Other than him thinking about her every minute of the day. Particularly since their game of squash. The image of her in that skimpy outfit, nipples straining against the thin fabric of her top, beads of sweat trickling between her firm breasts. The way those tiny shorts had …
‘Dad. You’re up,’ shouted Leo.
Paul almost toppled off his stool. He was up. In more ways than one. ‘Oh, er, my turn, is it?’ he bumbled, jabbing his fingers into the bowling ball as, with some difficulty, he dragged his mind from Natalia’s tiny white shorts, and back to the pleasant evening he was supposed to be spending with his family.
‘You okay?’ Julia asked, as he took his place at the head of the bowling lane. ‘You seem a bit distracted.’
‘Oh, just work stuff. You know?’ he breezed. ‘Now, everyone. Watch the master in action.’
Having launched the ball down the lane, Paul watched as it executed a beautiful curve into the gutter and disappeared from view without knocking over a single skittle.
‘That was rubbish, Dad,’ said Faye, snorting with laughter.
‘I was just testing the camber,’ chuckled Paul. ‘And now that I have, I’ll know exactly what angle to bowl at next time round.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Faye. ‘Now watch me. This is how it should be done.’
Faye drew back her arm and, in one smooth move, hurled the ball towards its destination. Seconds later, all ten skittles had been toppled.
‘Yay!’ she shouted, jumping up and high-fiving Julia.
‘Wow,’ Julia exclaimed. ‘Am I glad you’re on my team.’
‘Well done, Faye,’ said Leo. ‘I didn’t know you had it in you.’
‘Of course she has it in her,’ cut in Paul, putting his arm around Faye and hugging her to him. ‘She’s my daughter.’
They played for another half an hour, Faye achieving a strike every time, before Paul suggested going for ice cream.
‘Well, this is really nice, isn’t it?’ he exclaimed, as the waitress placed three tall ice-cream sundae glasses on the table, each one overflowing with strawberries, cream and chocolate sprinkles. ‘Us out as a family.’
‘I’m having a great time,’ said Faye. ‘But that’s probably because I enjoy nothing better than thrashing my brother. And you don’t know what you’re missing not having one of these sundaes, bro,’ she continued, whipping a huge dollop of cream off the top of her glass with her finger. ‘This is divine.’
‘You should be worried about your cellulite, not bragging about your bowling,’ remarked Leo, chuckling. ‘You’ve been lucky, that’s all. Me and Dad are just warming up.’
‘We should make an effort and do more stuff like this,’ said Julia, scooping the cherry off the top of her sundae with her spoon. Once a month at least.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Paul. ‘We should.’
And he meant it. Once he’d firmly established himself in the moment, and not let his mind wander to all-things-Natalia, he’d thoroughly enjoyed himself. And it was good to see Faye smiling for a change. While Leo breezed through life, his sister seemed to suffer more than the usual amount of teenage angst. Paul felt a tinge of guilt that perhaps they focused too much on Leo with all his high achievements, and not enough on Faye. It couldn’t be easy for her, after all, living with a sibling who outshone her at every turn. Except – obviously – at bowling. She’d been like a different girl this evening. A pleasure to spend time with. He and Julia really should make a concerted effort to help build up her self-esteem. Before she went off to university.
God! Paul could hardly believe that that time was so imminent. It seemed like only yesterday when Julia had announced she was pregnant. And for all the last eighteen years had blurred into one, that was one day Paul would never forget …
He’d met Julia when she’d been visiting a friend of hers at Durham University, where Paul was studying for his Master’s degree. A red-hot June day, exams just finished, spirits were high, hormones raging, and alcohol flowing. The river which meandered around the city had been crammed with students in the wooden boats normally hired out to tourists. Paul, attempting to row a bawdy crowd of six over to a landing strip on the opposite riverbank, had thudded straight into the boat occupied by Julia and her friends.
‘Hey! It’s not the bloody dodgems,’ Julia yelled back, as the plastic cup full of red wine she’d been holding spilled all down her white T-shirt. ‘Look what you’ve done,’ she exclaimed, standing up in the boat to demonstrate the extent of the damage.
In his semi-inebriated state, Paul hardly noticed the spilt wine. What he did notice were lovely pert breasts, delectable long legs, a glorious mane of chestnut hair, and amazing brown eyes flashing with rage.
‘I’ll buy you another drink later,’ he shouted back, amidst the lewd comments being bandied by his mates.
‘Don’t bother,’ Julia sniped. Before sticking her nose up in the air, flicking back that lustrous hair, and turning her back to him.
For all that, in the intervening hours, copious more amounts of alcohol were consumed, and various typical end-of-exams pranks undertaken, Paul couldn’t shift the image of the girl in the boat from his mind. When he spotted her and her mates in a pub in town later, he’d scarcely believed his luck. She’d changed her clothes and was now sporting a pink and yellow sundress, her mane of hair clipped back in a messy ponytail. She looked, he thought, completely adorable.
‘Remember me?’ he asked, courage bolstered by the ridiculous amount of lager sloshing about his veins.
‘No. Should I?’ she retorted, those incredible brown eyes twinkling with what he later discovered to be humour.
‘Dodgems. Red wine,’ he proffered by way of explanation.
She screwed up her nose as if attempting to make sense of the information.
Paul had been transfixed by the smattering of freckles across its bridge.
‘Ah. Yes,’ she eventually conceded. ‘You owe me a drink.’
They started seeing each other immediately after that. But it was always down to Paul to make the arrangements, to suggest a suitable day, to think of things to do. While he thoroughly enjoyed being with her, he could never be quite sure what Julia was thinking. He knew she’d had a serious relationship before him, with some guy called Max, but she never seemed to want to talk about it, so Paul didn’t push it. And, as she was in her final year, and he knew how desperately she wanted to achieve a good degree, he trod carefully.
It was five months down the line before they properly consummated their relationship. They’d slept together in the same bed on many occasions, but they’d never had sex. Naturally Paul, like any red-blooded male in his prime, had attempted the event several times, but Julia had never been ready. Then, one day, completely out of the blue, she’d turned up at his room in Durham. And, without waiting for him to speak, ripped off his clothes, before removing her own. The result had been dynamite.
‘What made you change your mind?’ Paul asked afterwards.
Julia shrugged. ‘It was time.’
The physical side of their relationship continued in that incredible way. Until, only weeks after graduating, and still searching for a job, Julia turned up at the house in Bristol where Paul was now working, sharing a house with three other guys. The moment he set eyes on her, he guessed something was wrong. She looked pale, drawn, completely exhausted.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she announced, the moment he ushered her upstairs to his room and closed the door.
Paul sank down on the un-made bed and gawped at her. ‘Pregnant? B … but how?’
Julia flopped down onto her back beside him and addressed the ceiling. ‘Too many graduation parties. Too much alcohol. Too much throwing up. None of which is conducive to taking the pill. Apparently.’
Paul didn’t know what to say. A million thoughts whizzed around his brain like an overexcited swarm of wasps. What about his job? What about money? Where would they live? How would it work? Did Julia even want to keep the baby?
‘Wh … what do you want to do?’ he eventually stammered. ‘Do you want to keep it?’
Julia reached for a pillow and placed it over her face.
What seemed to Paul like several hours, but in reality was only a couple of minutes, passed, before she eventually removed the pillow and asked, ‘Do you?’
Paul opened and closed his mouth several times before any words came out. ‘I … I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘It hasn’t sunk in yet. But if you want to keep it, then I’ll support your decision.’ He swivelled around on the crumbled duvet and took hold of her hand. ‘I know we haven’t talked about feelings much in the past, but I do love you, Julia.’
‘I know you do,’ she replied, before rolling over, burying her face in the pillow, and breaking her heart.
Paul held her all night, lying on top of the duvet, both of them fully clothed. He hadn’t slept a wink and, although Julia had her back to him, he knew she hadn’t either. As the first rays of sun began filtering through the thin curtains, she’d turned to face him.
‘I think I want to keep it,’ she said. ‘But I’m scared.’
A wave of panic suffused Paul. Up until a few hours ago, he’d never thought about having a kid. But millions of other people did it, didn’t they? Granted at not such a young age. And not so unprepared. But he and Julia were two intelligent beings. Surely they could make it work.
‘I’m scared too,’ he admitted. ‘But I’m sure we’ll cope. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.’
Through hours upon hours of talking, they convinced themselves that a baby didn’t have to mean the end of their young lives. Julia could still find a job, Paul was already earning half-decent money, there were plenty of childcare facilities out there they could make use of. And he did love her. He really did. Probably from the first moment he’d set eyes on her in that boat.
But how naive they had been. Even trying not to be fazed when they’d discovered there wasn’t just one baby, but two.
Still, though, for all it had been hard work – very hard work in fact – and that things hadn’t panned out quite as planned vis-à-vis Julia’s career, Paul would never regret their decision. He loved his kids. And he still loved his wife. Granted, not in quite the same way he had during those heady first months of their relationship. More in a cosy, familiar kind of way. But, after nearly twenty years of marriage, could you really expect anything else?
*****
Max’s business card burned a hole in Julia’s bag. How many times had she taken it out and looked at it? Too many. But, as delicious as it had been spending time with Max, she really couldn’t do it again. After leaving the garden centre, she’d felt like she was floating on air – a wonderful feeling she’d forgotten existed. Then she’d arrived home. And reality had kicked in. A big hard kick in the centre of her gut. Followed by a torrent of guilt. She’d only just managed to pull herself together following their first encounter in the cereal aisle and now, here she was, back at square one. She shouldn’t even be thinking about Max, let alone going for coffee with him. She should, as she’d told herself more times than she cared to recall over the last few weeks, be concentrating on what she did have, rather than what she didn’t. And that fact had been hammered home to her during the family’s bowling evening. It had been great spending time with Paul and the kids. Too immersed in all the humdrum day-to-day drudgery, she’d almost forgotten that there could be good times as a family, as well as bad. Okay, so her life wasn’t perfect, but there were lots of people a heap worse off. She had two healthy children, lived in a lovely house in a beautiful village, and her husband earned a more than decent salary, meaning she’d never had to worry about money and could have any material thing she wanted – including the ‘sporty little Merc’ Paul was constantly needling her to trade in the Punto for. She should count her blessings. She’d coped perfectly well – well, perhaps not perfectly, but she had coped – for the last twenty years without Max Burrell in her life, and she could continue to do so. Which was why, to minimise the chance of seeing him again, she decided to change her shopping day.
‘But you’ve always gone to the supermarket on a Friday,’ Paul pointed out, evidently bewildered by this change to their well-ordered lives.
‘It’s far too busy,’ Julia countered. ‘Sometimes I have to wait ten minutes for a parking space.’
‘Oh,’ Paul had conceded. ‘Well, I don’t suppose it makes much difference whether you go on a Thursday or a Friday really.’
‘Quite,’ Julia had agreed, relieved that more justification had not been required.
Now all she had to do was stop the persistent thoughts about Max rioting through her brain like Japanese knotweed, and things could return to normal. Whatever that was …
*****
The only thing in life Julia dreaded more than an internal examination of her reproductive organs was an invitation to Paul’s company’s social events. While thankfully rare, it meant that when they did crop up, she was ill-placed to decline. It wasn’t only the event itself she dreaded, but all the ridiculous preparation. This latest invitation – to a corporate cocktail party – involved hours trawling round the shops for suitable attire – an activity of which Julia had never been fond – plus an interminable amount of time in the hairdresser’s making banal conversation about the weather.
‘Can’t you say I’m ill or something?’ she pleaded with Paul, making one last escape attempt as they were about to leave the house.
‘No, I can’t,’ snapped Paul. ‘For God’s sake, Julia. It’s only one evening. It’s not like I ask much else of you, is it?’
Julia gawped at him. ‘What do you mean, you don’t ask much else of me?’
‘Well, you have a pretty nice life, don’t you?’
Julia’s eyes widened. ‘Is that honestly what you think?’
Paul shrugged. ‘Of course. You’ve never had to go to work. Never had any pressure to …’
‘But I wanted to go to work. I wanted to be an interpreter, if you remember.’
‘Of course I remember. But that was before the twins came along. You haven’t mentioned working for years.’
‘But it doesn’t mean my ambition went away.’
Paul shook his head, looking completely nonplussed. ‘And how the hell am I supposed to know that when you never said anything? I thought you were quite happy with the way things were.’
‘Yes, well I’m not. But you wouldn’t have a clue how I feel because you never ask me,’ retaliated Julia, unable to recall a time when she’d felt so angry. But now really wasn’t the time to carry on this discussion. The taxi was outside and she had hours of inane chit-chat ahead of her. She blinked rapidly to dispel the tears pooling in her eyes, and sucked in a deep breath. ‘We’re going to be late,’ she said, before striding out of the front door.
Anger still coursing through her, Julia couldn’t think of a single word to say to Paul during the ride to the hotel. And, by the uncomfortable heavy silence which pervaded the cab, he evidently felt the same. Sitting next to her husband in the back of the car, the man with whom she’d spent almost twenty years of her life, it occurred to Julia that Paul didn’t know her at all. But was that really so surprising? They’d spent so little time together as a couple before the twins had arrived, detonating – with the efficiency of a nuclear missile – every last shred of life as they’d known it. Julia’s world had instantly shrivelled, revolving entirely around these two tiny beings. And so it had continued for the last seventeen years. Every ounce of her energy, every second of her time, being sapped by the twins, leaving no room in her life for anything else. Her husband included. In fact, now she actually thought about it, the only time she and Paul communicated was to talk about twin-related matters. Never about their own feelings, hopes, fears or desires. Was it really any wonder, then, that Paul had no idea how she’d felt all these years?
By the time the taxi pulled up outside their destination – a palatial hotel in the centre of Leeds – Julia had resolved to do something about their sorry situation. The twins would – hopefully – be off to university in a year. She should be encouraging them to be more self-sufficient. And she should be making more time for herself – and Paul.
‘Paul. I’ve been waiting for you.’
No sooner had Julia and Paul stepped into the lush hotel lobby than Paul was accosted by a tall, willowy supermodel, whose perfect figure and golden limbs were encased in a strapless ivory silk sheath.
‘Did you get my text?’ she asked, tossing a lock of long honey-blonde hair over her toned shoulder.
Julia gaped at her. Who was this woman? Why was she texting her husband? And why did Paul look so awkward all of a sudden?
She watched as Paul cleared his throat and straightened his bow tie. ‘Er, yes, thanks,’ he muttered. ‘We’ll, um, discuss it later.’
The girl beamed at him, displaying two rows of perfect white teeth. ‘Great,’ she gushed, before turning her attention to Julia.
‘I’m Natalia. Paul’s assistant,’ she announced, holding out a smooth, tanned hand. ‘You must be his wife, Juliette.’
‘Julia,’ Julia corrected her.
‘Of course,’ continued Natalia, with a disingenuous smile. ‘He’s always talking about you.’
Obviously, Julia resisted saying. If you don’t even know my name. ‘How nice,’ she replied instead, injecting her tone with a large dose of sarcasm.
‘Well, it’s lovely to meet you at last,’ Natalia breezed, casting such a meaningful glance at Paul that Julia’s heckles immediately rose. ‘Excuse me a moment, won’t you? I’m expecting an urgent email. I must go and check my phone.’
As Natalia’s pert bottom sashayed across the lobby, Julia turned to her husband. ‘You didn’t mention you had a new secretary.’
Was it just her imagination, or did he look sheepish?
‘Didn’t I?’
‘No. You didn’t.’
‘Well, it’s not really important, is it?’ He ran a finger under the collar of his shirt. ‘Anyway, she’s more of an assistant than a secretary.’
‘Is she now?’ muttered Julia. ‘How old is she?’
Paul fiddled with his cufflink. ‘I, er, can’t remember. Twenty-two. Twenty-three, something like that. She’s on the new graduate trainee scheme. She’s hoping to travel with the company eventually. Spend some time working in Japan.’
A bolt of unaccustomed jealousy struck Julia. ‘How nice. I would’ve liked to have done something like …’
‘Oh, look,’ gushed Paul, his voice dripping with relief. ‘Here’s a couple of familiar faces for you. It’s Hugh and Helena Bell. You’ve met them before, haven’t you?’
‘Unfortunately, yes,’ Julia mumbled, her stomach plummeting. Hugh and Helena’s faces might be familiar, but she couldn’t stand either of them. She swiped a glass of champagne from a passing tray before turning to the approaching middle-aged couple.
‘Paul, good to see you,’ exclaimed Hugh, slapping the younger man companionably on the back. ‘And your lovely wife, too. Judith, isn’t it?’
‘Julia,’ corrected Julia, tipping the entire contents of the champagne flute down her neck.
‘Of course. Of course,’ guffawed Hugh. ‘Well, how are you, old girl?’
At the ‘old girl’ reference, Julia’s already heightened hackles shot off the scale. Firstly, she wasn’t old. And secondly, did people really still say that? It sounded like something out of a 1950s black and white film. Well, two could play at that game.
‘Spiffing, thank you,’ she replied.
‘Good show. Good show,’ cackled Hugh. ‘Well, lovely evening for it, isn’t it? We’ve just been for a spin in Helena’s new car. One of those sporty little Mercs. Convertible and all that. Just picked it up this morning.’
‘I’m trying to persuade Julia to get one of those,’ said Paul. ‘She is, however, welded to her old car.’
‘I know how she feels’ piped up Helena, smiling sympathetically at Julia. ‘I loved my old BMW. But Hugh insists it’s no good keeping a car for more than two years. What do you drive now?’
‘A Fiat Punto,’ Julia informed her, relishing the sight of colour draining from Helena’s perfectly made-up, surgically enhanced face. ‘It’s ten years old.’
This final piece of information appeared to push Helena close to the edge. The woman looked as though she were about to pass out.
‘Another Pimms, darling?’ asked Hugh.
Helena flashed her husband a grateful look.
The look which Paul flashed Julia contained zero gratification. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he growled, through a clenched smile, as Hugh steered a clearly bewildered Helena out of the lobby and towards the bar.
Julia feigned innocence. ‘Telling the truth. I do drive a ten-year-old Fiat Punto.’
‘Yes, well, you shouldn’t,’ Paul snapped. ‘I’ve a good chance of being promoted to the Board this year but you carrying on like this is not helping my chances at all.’
‘I’m not “carrying on”,’ Julia protested. ‘And what’s wrong with my Punto anyway? It’s a good little car.’
‘It’s a car with no status. As a director’s wife, you have a role to play.’
‘And that’s how you see me, is it? As a “director’s wife”?’
Paul looked confused. ‘Of course. And a mother.’
‘A wife and a mother. Nothing else?’
Paul stared at her blankly. Several seconds passed, during which Julia could almost see the wheels of his mind whirring.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ he eventually confessed.
Julia rolled her eyes. ‘What about me, Paul? Me? As in me as a person in my own right?’
His befuddled expression conveyed the fact that he had no idea what she was trying to say. ‘Of course you’re a person. We’re all people.’
Julia closed her eyes for a moment, in an effort to compose herself. She’d only just opened them again, and was about to explain to her husband exactly what she meant, when up tottered Natalia, all swishy hair, moist lips and perky breasts.
‘Sorry to bother you, Paul,’ she began, completely ignoring Julia. ‘But I’ve just had a call from Japan. That top-secret proposition we were discussing last week? There’s been a development. You don’t mind, do you?’ she said, turning cold dark eyes to Julia. ‘But we need to get back to them right away.’
Then, before Julia could say whether she minded or not, Natalia, speaking conspiratorially to Paul, had placed her hand on his arm and begun steering him away.
As Julia watched their retreating backs, yet another wave of anger engulfed her. Who the hell did Natalia think she was? Since when had twenty-two-year-olds shown so little respect for their elders? And since when did fresh-out-of-school assistants partake in ‘top-secret propositions’? Julia’s blood began bubbling like a freshly stewed pot of jam. And that was before she’d given any thought to Paul’s recent interest in his shirts. And, worse still, his comments on Julia being nothing more than a wife and a mother. No identity of her own – only that linked to other people. Paul’s wife. The twins’ mother. End of. Ugh. She was so furious she could scream. But she couldn’t scream. Not in the middle of all this … this … corporate-ness, however tempting it might have been to observe the snooty Helena’s reaction. No. If Julia planned on making any kind of anti-social noise at all, it would be much more sensible to do it in the privacy of her own home. Precisely where she wanted to be. Right now. She fished around in her handbag for her mobile to call a taxi. Her hand landed on a small piece of card.
Max’s business card.
Causing Julia’s thoughts to hare down quite a different track.