I can’t even tell you what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. Let alone that what we were doing was about the worst thing we could ever do, short of me murdering him and leaving him dead on Michelle’s doorstep with a fetching ribbon tied around his neck in a bow and a note saying, ‘Ha ha.’
After a few minutes (I’ve decided to say fifteen, the prosecution may say twenty-five) it was as if I came to my senses, like I’d been given a shot of adrenalin to counteract the overdose. Drunk to sober in sixty seconds. His fingers were now inside my underwear. Inside me. I pushed him away.
‘We can’t do this.’
Patrick put his hand out to pull me back towards him. I shuffled backwards to make it clear that whatever had just happened was over.
‘No. This is crazy. We can’t.’
It was as if he suddenly realized what we were doing too. He dropped his hand, looked down at it as if it had a mind of its own. Did up his flies (his flies were undone!).
‘Fuck. No. Of course we can’t. Shit.’
Once there was a gulf between us, Patrick sat looking in my direction while not actually looking at me at all. He kept his gaze fixed on the ground like a dog caught standing by the breakfast table with a Pop Tart in his mouth.
‘Shit,’ I said. And then, ‘I’m getting up.’
‘I should get going …’
I readjusted my clothing. Zipped up my hoody over my still undone bra.
‘Michelle …’
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ he somehow forced his eyes up to almost meet mine as he said this.
‘Me neither.’
‘I didn’t mean for that to happen.’
‘Me neither. Jesus. We just need to forget it ever did. Like …’
‘Right.’
‘We’ve just had too much to drink. Me anyway …’
‘Me too …’
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t come over for a bit …’
‘No. I don’t want you to feel you have to stay away … Just … I don’t know.’
Both of us seemed incapable of actually finishing a coherent thought.
‘Anyway,’ he said, making a vague gesture towards the door. ‘I should go …’
I nodded, hands firmly in my pockets.
‘Bye then.’
‘Are we …’ he said. ‘I mean, is it going to be OK?’
‘It has to be.’
He turned and opened the door, waving a low hand at me as he went. Once he’d shut it again I double-locked it behind him.
That was half an hour ago. All I’ve done since is sit and stare at the walls, a creeping feeling of self-loathing and fear threatening to engulf me. What the fuck have I done?
This time there’s no one to confide in. My two usual sounding boards, Michelle and Bea, are out of the question obviously, and I’m clearly not about to divulge what’s happened to my brothers or my mum. We rarely get deeper than ‘How’s work?’ or ‘What are you having for your tea tonight?’ and I don’t think me telling them I’ve just had a fumble with Michelle’s husband would be the way to change that. My family love Michelle. I think my parents have entertained the thought that she’s really the daughter they should have had. So have I for that matter.
I decide to get changed again, now that I’m sure he’s not about to come back. I shove all my clothing into the washing machine and set it to high. I don’t care if everything shrinks. I can feel a hangover kicking in already. I force myself to drink a vat of water, take Ron out for a quick bathroom break, and by half past nine I’m curled up under my duvet, wishing the world would go away.
The worst part is that there’s nothing I can do now to change what’s happened. It’s going to be there forever. It’s on my record now, written in indelible marker. No chance of parole. We might not have ‘had sex’ but we HAD SEX.
I know I’m not going to get any sleep. But I know I don’t want to get up either. I don’t want to risk catching sight of my face in a mirror.
Somehow I am out cold when my alarm goes off, though. Sprawled across the width of the bed in a semi-circle around my half-conscious dog. My first thought is, Oh shit, is it time to get up already? My second thought is just, Oh shit. I’m tempted to call in sick. I’m the boss, who’s going to question it? I’m not sure I can face people. I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to act normally again. But the thought of spending all day at the scene of the crime is worse.
The first order of the day is our development meeting. We have these every other Wednesday and they generally consist of a quick rush through our slate with everyone contributing any news they have on any of the projects, followed by a twenty-minute gossip drinking coffee and eating biscuits. Everyone except Ashley attends. Lucy and Bea take it in turns to make notes that they later transcribe and distribute to Ian, myself and Anne Marie. I doubt any of us ever refers to them again. It’s the only time we formally all get together, though, so we cling on to the tradition regardless.
We always gather in Ian’s office – the largest of the upstairs rooms. It was easy for us to decide who would be where when we first moved in. He cared about size, I cared about view. Ian is sitting on his desk chair but, as usual, he’s pulled it to the side so as to appear less formal, Anne Marie and I occupy the two-person sofa and Bea and Lucy perch on chairs they’ve wheeled through from the other rooms. It’s a scorching hot day so we have the little window open as wide as it will go (no aircon here in our mid-Victorian terrace) and consequently have to shout above the invading street noise.
I have nothing to contribute. Nothing. My head is completely elsewhere. I’m feeling exposed, as if the others might be able to sense what I’ve done. The way some dogs can sniff out cancer or spot an epileptic fit before it happens. Even though I spent an extra ten minutes in the shower this morning scrubbing and exfoliating till my skin was pink, to try to erase all traces of Patrick, I feel as though I can still smell him on me. As if he got under the epidermis and now I’m sweating him out, bit by bit.
I explain my fragile state to Bea – who notices everything – as a hangover, plain and simple. At least I don’t need to act that part. There’s a small toffee hammer knocking on my temples every few seconds and someone seems to have put my brain in a vice. My stomach hurts, but whether it’s from genuine or guilt-induced nausea I can’t tell. She laughs sympathetically and produces an ancient Resolve from her bag, mixes it with a glass of water and hands it to me.
When we get to any of my projects I just say ‘nothing much to report’ and let Bea fill them in with whatever she’s managed to glean from my emails and phone calls. Because she’s Bea, this means she pretty much knows everything about everything, so no one really notices the fact that I am mentally absent.
‘Are you OK?’ she hisses as we head back to my room once the meeting is over.
‘I’m fine,’ I snap. And then immediately feel bad. ‘I’m never drinking again,’ I say, attempting a joke.
‘Where did you go last night?’
My brain won’t even function well enough to make a proper excuse. ‘I don’t want to think about it. Suffice to say me and my friends are too old for clubs.’
‘Ha!’ Bea says. She knows I despise nightclubs. ‘You went to a club? Which one?’
‘Shit. I can’t remember the name. It was in Notting Hill somewhere.’
‘Mode?’ she says. ‘Or Peacock? Although that’s more of a bar.’
‘I need to sit down,’ I say and it isn’t really a lie.
‘Of course, sorry, I’ll shut up.’ She stops in the doorway to my office. ‘Do you need anything?’
I adopt a gentler tone of voice. Even though I’m fighting the urge to say, ‘This is all your fault,’ I know it isn’t. It’s mine. ‘No, thanks. I’m just going to get on with some stuff.’
I go in and shut the door behind me, something I rarely do. Then I sit at my desk, elbows on the table, and put my head in my hands.