I’d driven as fast as I could, accelerating dangerously between speed cameras in order to get back to Midhope as quickly as humanly possible. Nick had said that Kit’s year leader had been trying to ring me all lunchtime and, in the end, just as Nick was about to depart Heathrow for Vladivostok International Airport, had managed to get hold of Nick instead. Nick had seemed very confused as to what it was that Kit had actually done that warranted a week’s suspension, and it was obviously up to me to sort it all out. A dozen possible reasons for Kit’s fall from grace were crashing through my brain: inappropriate text messages, cheating at a French test, thuggish behaviour, drugs… Oh, my God, drugs?
I’d collected India from school, glared at Sally Saxton who, I was convinced, already knew not only what my elder son had been up to at school but what his mother had been up to in Manchester, and then dashed over to Lilian’s to pick up the twins. I’d declined the offered cup of tea and Jamaica Ginger cake with Lilian and her friend, Joan, and was back in time ‒ waiting with folded arms, like a seaside postcard character awaiting a drunken husband ‒ for Kit to come in.
‘Don’t you even think about sloping upstairs, Christopher,’ I’d called, using the name last heard as the vicar poured water over my son’s head fifteen years earlier. ‘In here, now.’
‘So,’ I said, five minutes later when Kit finally owned up to playing some sort of game in lesson time. ‘You were playing a game. In chemistry. What sort of game?’
Kit didn’t say anything, just flung himself on to one of the kitchen chairs and fiddled with a teaspoon left out from breakfast. The bottoms of his trousers were fraying, I noticed, and his black school shoes were scuffed and scruffy looking. I usually insisted he polish his school shoes on a Sunday evening, but lately I’d had other things ‒ the twins, Grace, Alex ‒ on my mind, and the everyday minutiae of family life seemed to be going over my head without me paying it a great deal of attention. Oh, God, what sort of woman was I becoming?
One who has sex on a Monday afternoon with her husband’s ex-SBS work colleague while her scruffily dressed adolescent son is suspended from school and her best friend is carted off to a psychiatric unit, Your Honour.
‘Kit?’
‘What?’
‘Were you playing on your phone or something?’
‘No.’
‘Well… what, then?’
When he still didn’t say anything, but flicked moodily at the spilt sugar on the pine kitchen table, I went and sat down beside him. I had a sudden vision of Grace and me and the rest of our gang at Kit’s age, in the games shed ‒ and Amanda, as head girl, discovering us playing a sleazy version of Consequences, the consequence of which led to our own suspension for a week.
‘Were you playing Consequences?’ I now asked him gently. I could see it was no good ranting and raving at him if I was to get to the truth.
‘Consequences?’ Kit looked up at me. ‘What the hell is Consequences?’
I made a mental note to make sure we played it this Christmas ‒ no child should go through life not being able to play Consequences ‒ at the same time as the words, ‘… Harriet had passionate, all consuming, illicit sex with an SBS man, and the consequence was…’ skittered, unwelcome, through my brain.
I shook my head slightly in order to dispel the vision of Alex peeling off my knickers with his teeth…
‘Game, Kit?’
And you haven’t been playing games all afternoon, Harriet…?
‘Kit?’
He sighed and, scarlet faced, muttered, ‘Cock or balls?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Cock or balls?’ He was defiant now.
‘And are you going to explain how this game is played?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Oh, but I do, Kit. I most certainly do.’
‘Well, you just show a tiny bit of your, er, cock or your, er, balls… and the others have to guess if it’s your, er, cock or, you know, your balls.’
Thank goodness it was an all boys’ school. Otherwise my son might be looking at being on the sex register for the next twenty years. I had a wild, hysterical urge to laugh. Long and loud. Instead, I said, ‘In the middle of a chemistry lesson? On a Monday morning?’
‘Why does a Monday morning make it any worse?’ Kit asked crossly. ‘Would it have been OK for you in the middle of French with old Juan Kerr on a Friday afternoon?’
Perish the thought. ‘Will you please stop calling Mr Kerr Juan, Kit? Especially as he has been here for dinner.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Kit looked at me in astonishment.
‘Well, I suppose he’s a friend of the family now. Anyway, we’re getting off the subject. This really is not on, Kit. How do you think your father and I feel?’
‘It’s all in the letter, Mum.’ Kit brought out a grubby envelope that he’d obviously opened and resealed on the journey home. ‘It wasn’t just me, you know.’
‘Well, no, obviously. Presumably, if you were playing this game by yourself, it would be called “Flashing”.’
Kit and three of his mates had been hauled out of Mr Dickinson’s (a young newly qualified teacher) practical chemistry lesson and, in no uncertain terms, told that any repeat performance ‒ once they were allowed back into school ‒ would result in permanent expulsion.
‘How typically immature,’ Liberty had scoffed when she came in from school. Although she’d not been on the two schools’ shared school bus because of after school hockey practice, it seemed the word of Kit’s suspension had spread, deliciously, from teenager to teenager ‒ and, presumably, now, from parent to parent. While Sally Saxton had no child at my eldest children’s schools, I was in no doubt that she would, even now, be storing up this little nugget to use as ammunition if I ever again dared to question her daughter’s integrity.
And who was I to talk about integrity? This particular Jelly Deal I’d made was sticky as hell, but totally addictive. I wanted more. While I felt enormous guilt at my session with Alex ‒ and let’s not couch it in any other terms: it was a session ‒ I also felt alive, sexy, wanted. All clichés, I know, but to hear, ‘You’re gorgeous: you do something to me,’ instead of, ‘Didn’t you wash that shirt of mine I put in the laundry basket?’ was opium to my brain, and I knew I would be back for more.
It was bloody hard work with five kids, even when Nick was around to help ‒ but lately he’d been away so much, drumming up business, at the beck and call of David Henderson as well as myriad Russians, that we only ever seemed to pass on the stairs or up the garden path. I’d be coming home from Sainsbury’s just as he was leaving for Russia, or London or Italy. I’d be ironing his shirts as he waited to pack them back into his case. A quick peck on the cheek, passport in hand, and he was off once more. Yes, of course, he was doing it all for us, his family: keeping us in clothes and school fees, ridiculously expensive blueberries on our morning porridge instead of golden syrup, and Dolcelatte cheese rather than Edam (although, to be fair, he’d brought home a whole Edam from one of his trips to Holland), but he was doing it for himself as well. Did I want to go back to where we were a year ago, no money, not daring to look at bank statements, Nick hating his job and me coping with a full time teaching job at which I wasn’t particularly good? No, of course not. I loved having money again and not having to mark and prepare until midnight, but in gaining material wealth I did seem to have lost the love of my life somewhere along the way.
You spoilt, adulterous bitch, I can hear you thinking. You go and screw the first good looking man who gives you the eye and then blame your husband for you doing so. Ashamed, I shook myself mentally, making a big effort, in the manner of Worzel Gummidge, to discard my adulterer’s head, replacing it with my usual Mum one.
It wasn’t easy.
I needed to see to my family, my children, my home. After a day of the house being alone, it gradually returned to its usual weekday routine, its evening activities, its end of day noise. Doors banged, Liberty and Kit shouted ‒ Liberty because Kit had left the lavatory unflushed, while Kit retaliated that her make-up was on his favourite Manchester United towel. The BBC local news reported a pile up on the M62 near Leeds, that a body had been found in a house in Bradford, that Harriet Westmoreland was, as of today and no going back, a cheat.
I made food for us all, sorted several lots of washing and put in the first load, listened to India read her Biff and Chip story and praised her drawing of Bones. I bathed the twins, sang to them, buried my nose in their perfect, soft, peachy skin and laid them in their cots. I paired and balled socks, picked up knickers, folded school shirts ready for ironing and, once India was bathed and in bed, read her several chapters of the very first Famous Five book. She hadn’t been interested until now in storybooks without pictures, but she hung on every word in the same way that the eldest two had so many years earlier. For half an hour, we had the delights of Aunt Fanny, Dick and lashings of ginger beer.
India seemed so much happier recently and I gave up a silent prayer of thanks that, at least for the time being, I didn’t have to concern myself too much about Adriana Saxton and her bloody mother. There was a new girl in her class, India told me happily, as she snuggled down to sleep with Boozy Bear. She really liked her ‒ she’d been her partner in PE, and when could she come home for tea?
By nine o’clock the only sound was the insistent thump of music coming from Kit’s room. I knew I should go in there and have another chat with him ‒ at him? ‒ but I still hadn’t rung Amanda to find out what was happening with Grace, and to be honest I didn’t relish having another go at him. Surely cocks, balls and any other relevant appendages were Nick’s area to sort out, man to man?
‘Hat? Where are you?’ My sister Diana’s voice came up the stairs as I closed India’s bedroom door, checked on the twins once more and was making my way back downstairs.
‘Hello… what are you doing here?’ Much as I loved my big sister I knew she could read me like a book and, adoring Nick as she did, would hit the roof if she knew what I’d been up to with Alex. I don’t think there’d been anything in my life I’d not shared with her. This would be a first.
‘Just had a late meeting,’ she said, ‘and hoped there might be a glass of wine going. I want to hear all about how the wedding went.’
Diana was happily single, a social worker ‒ very high up now and, from all accounts, revered by colleagues and clients alike ‒ and she probably dealt with families splitting up through adulterous affairs on a daily basis.
‘You OK?’ she asked. ‘Nick away again?’
‘Yes, I’m fine. Just shattered: it’s been a long weekend, and I’ve been to Cheadle Hulme today to look for curtain fabrics.’ How easily the lies slipped from my tongue. I was almost beginning to believe I’d actually been there, to John Lewis, searching through the Jane Churchill and Designers Guild books to find just the right colour and pattern to go with the recently painted ‘crazy cream’ walls. I don’t think I’d ever really lied to Diana ‒ apart from when we were kids, and I’d totally denied nicking her Rimmel eyeshadow, or being the one who’d taken her best skirt without asking and then fibbed about the red wine stain being anything to do with me.
Di peered at me. ‘You’re not pregnant again, are you?’
‘What?’ I was genuinely horrified.
‘You’ve a bit of a glow about you ‒ obviously having lots of sex with that wonderful husband of yours.’
‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘He’s never here.’
‘Well, he’s doing it all for you lot.’
‘And himself.’
Diana turned from the fridge where she was hunting for a bottle of wine and gave me one of her looks. Probably the same look she gives a client bemoaning the fact that they had no money now that they’d spent it all on booze, fags and at the horses.
‘I do hope you’re not complaining. Don’t you dare, Harriet. You’ve got it all.’
‘I know, I know.’ Jesus, Diana must never know about Alex. Sordid, she’d call it. Sordid and utterly, totally, unbelievably stupid.
Diana sat on the sofa, kicked off her boots and appeared to be there for the duration. Bugger. I wanted to think about Alex, wanted to go over every minute with him from when he’d removed each earring, one by one, placing them carefully on his ultra-modern kitchen worktop, to when he’d taken my hand and led me to his bedroom and to when we’d come together in a sweaty tangle of clean, white Egyptian cotton.
‘And?’
‘Sorry, Di, what did you say?’
‘Sylvia? How did she look? Do you now have to call her Milady?’ Di laughed and, ever the socialist, said. ‘Euwh, how can she fancy that stuffed shirt? He’s a randy old goat, you know: I always get the feeling he knows exactly the colour and type of pants I’m wearing.’
I laughed. ‘God, yes. I know what you mean. He’s what Granny Morgan always called “leet geen”.’
‘What does that mean?’ Di said. ‘I can’t remember. It’s such a Yorkshire term, isn’t it?’
I thought for a minute. ‘“Lightly given”,’ I think it translates as. You know, someone who has their hand on your bum, but they don’t mean anything by it.’
‘Yes… well, he had his paw on my bum last time he was here.’
‘Really? You didn’t say.’
‘Totally irrelevant. I just brushed his sweaty hand away and gave him a withering look. Not my type at all.’
‘I hope not,’ I laughed again. ‘He is pushing seventy.’
‘I quite fancy older men,’ she said and went on to tell me about a new ‒ much older ‒ man she’d met a couple of times through the Guardian dating column. Once I’d told her all about Anna and her cornering of me in the Ladies’ loo in Epsom, acting out the bit where I was standing at the mirror pulling faces at myself to embellish the tale, it was almost eleven o’clock.
By the time I’d been up twice to Fin, rubbed his poor, hard, red gums and got him back to sleep, the whole Monday morning session with Alex seemed a lifetime away and totally unreal. I could believe it hadn’t happened, except in my imagination. My eyes were gritty with tiredness, but they refused to close in sleep. I realised I’d eaten very little all day ‒ in fact, apart from a slice of toast at breakfast and the couple of glasses of wine with Di, nothing had passed my lips. Well, not nothing: I blushed at the memory and tossed and turned on my side of the bed. It seemed even more traitorous to wander over to Nick’s side.
The house appeared to sigh and relax in to itself. Everything was quiet. Apart from the hammering of my heart. No more, I told myself. No more. What I did with Alex was a one-off and must never happen again.
Ever.