17

Lisa was astride him, eyes closed, body arched back, her full breasts thrust upwards, pink nipples erect as she stroked and pinched them with her long fingers, groaning with pleasure as Jack moved inside her. This was her favourite position, where she controlled the action – Jack wasn’t complaining, his knees weren’t what they used to be – as she lifted her body to slow things down, then accelerated, riding him faster and faster as she neared orgasm. She’d pushed his hand between her legs tonight, instructing him in short, staccato commands to touch her, ‘There … lower … not so hard … yeees.’

But Jack was miles away, just going through the motions. He hadn’t wanted sex. After Eve and the others left, he’d been tired, and longed just to stretch out on one of the two deckchairs in the garden and have a snooze. But instead there had been a painful argument.

He and Lisa were in the kitchen, clearing up the lunch. She was wrapping the remains of the beef in foil; he was putting the blue pottery serving dishes back in the top cupboard.

‘I’m thinking of staying down tonight,’ he said as he bent to put the last of the tea mugs into the dishwasher. ‘I can drop you off at the station after supper, if that suits.’

Jack knew he should have mentioned it before, but he was a self-confessed coward when it came to confrontation with his wife, preferring to leave things to come to a head, then deal with it – a strategy that sometimes worked, but which failed him spectacularly tonight.

An ominous silence greeted his remark. He turned to face his wife. It was early evening and the sun was still bathing the garden in light, though the kitchen was in shadow and suddenly chilly. Lisa, dressed in a pale-pink strappy dress – she seemed to have hundreds of dresses, seldom wore anything else as far as Jack could see – was standing stock still on the far side of the table, arms crossed tight over her chest.

‘Why?’

Knowing from her expression alone that he was in trouble, Jack ploughed on, affecting a nonchalance he hoped was convincing. ‘Oh, you know, the usual … You’re working all week, and I need to get on with my book. It’s quiet here, not so many distractions as in town.’ He tried for a grin. ‘I might actually get something done.’

Lisa twisted her lips vigorously from side to side, then shook her head.

‘I don’t want to go back to London without you. I hate being alone in an empty house, especially on a Sunday night.’

Jack said cautiously, ‘But you’ll be off at sparrow’s fart. I don’t see what difference it makes. We can still have supper together, then I’ll take you to—’

‘It isn’t fair,’ Lisa interrupted him, ‘slinging me on to a train so you can doss about in the country all week. This isn’t what we agreed.’

‘ “Agreed”?’ Jack was baffled.

Tapping her fingers impatiently on the worktop – the noise sharp from her gel-manicured nails – Lisa said almost casually, ‘You’re a selfish bastard, Jack Holt. I don’t know why I bother.’ She let out a long sigh. ‘It’s always all about you, isn’t it?’

Jack waited, not sure where this was leading, but making a pretty good guess as he watched his wife’s face.

‘That’s why you don’t want a baby, isn’t it? You can’t be bothered with anything that might disrupt your precious life.’

True, he thought, and said, not for the first time, ‘Lisa, sweetheart, I told you right from the start that I didn’t want any more children.’ He paused. ‘And to be fair, you said you didn’t either.’

Rocking backwards and forwards on her sandal Fitflops, hands now wrapped around her slim body, tears dripping unheeded down her cheeks, Lisa said very quietly, ‘I know. But I’ve changed my mind.’

Jack came round to where she stood, but she backed away, holding her hands out as if to fend him off.

‘Don’t hug me and tell me it’s all right. It’s not all right. I really want a baby, Jack. Your baby.’

There it was. No more subtle hints. Lisa was staring at him mournfully, waiting, he supposed, for him to relent. And his heart went out to her. She hadn’t conned him, like some women might, and just gone ahead and got pregnant ‘by mistake’. She was begging him; it really cut him to the quick to refuse. And at forty-three, time was against her finding someone else to father her baby. But he couldn’t do it. He didn’t deserve another child. He couldn’t even bear the thought of being a father again, let alone the reality.

‘Lisa …’

‘It’s not fair,’ she said quietly, finally letting Jack take her in his arms. ‘You don’t love me like I love you,’ she added, her words muffled, her head buried in his chest. ‘If you did, you’d be dying to have my child.’

Pushing her away a little, so that he could see her face, he said, ‘I do love you, Lisa. You know I do.’

Jack meant what he said. He did love Lisa. But recently he’d had the uncomfortable feeling that he was letting her down, that he’d become a disappointment to her.

He had worked so hard in the early months to seem virile, energetic and, if not exactly young at past sixty, then as youthful as possible. He’d lost weight, made a brief attempt to get really fit and allowed Lisa to update his look with a shorter hairstyle and buy him clothes that were more on trend. His wardrobe when they’d met had consisted of four suits, all M&S and years old; shirts, mostly shades of light blue, with classic collars; subfusc ties; jeans. Clothes were not Jack’s thing.

His retirement, he was well aware, had been a blow for Lisa. For a journalist he was young to stop work – many of his associates were pushing seventy and still hard at it – but Jack had woken up one day and known he wanted out.

In the year since his retirement, however, he’d come to the conclusion that his decision was radically affecting their marriage – and not in a good way. Lisa saw herself as the wife of a highly respected journalist, working for one of the top financial broadsheets, whose opinion was much sought after, who had close relationships with leading politicians, was regularly on television and welcome in the highest political circles. Not a retired codger pretending to write a tome on how Europe would live without the UK. A book that he should be able to write with his eyes shut. But Jack’s problem was that every time he shut his eyes, the only thing he saw these days was his son, Jonny.

Now, unwillingly, his thoughts returned to Stella and how she’d looked up at him earlier that afternoon, her tear-stained face beseeching him to let the past be. He had wanted so badly to put his arm round her and comfort her, but he wasn’t sure how she would react. Her wishes had to be respected, obviously, however hard that was for him. But it didn’t change how he felt, nor quell his aching desire finally to give voice to his long-buried sorrow.

‘Jack?’ Lisa was looking down at him, flushed and breathless from their supposedly make-up sex. ‘Did you come?’

Disoriented, trying to pull back his thoughts to the present, Jack shook his head, realizing that his erection had sunk miserably to nothing. Lisa pushed both hands on his stomach as she crossly twisted herself off his body and flopped down on her back on the crumpled sheet.

‘Great, thanks,’ she said, sounding peeved. ‘I was just about there.’ She raised her arm and laid it across her eyes as if she couldn’t face him.

‘Sorry. Sorry, sweetheart. Don’t know what happened.’

‘Huh, I’d have thought it was blindingly obvious,’ she retorted, pulling herself up from the bed in one graceful movement. ‘You’re terrified I’ll get pregnant – even through that creepy condom.’

Jack, eyes shut from sheer exhaustion, heard her stamp across the room and the bathroom door bang. He honestly didn’t know what to do. The two of them seemed to have come to an impasse. And threaded through the recent row, the tears, the anger and finally the sex was the depressing knowledge that he would have to return to London with his wife tonight.