Chapter 17

When he met her, on their first day of law school, the thing that had bowled Gareth over about Rachel was how unfamiliar she was to him. The otherness of her. She was uncharted territory and the conquest of her had been thrilling.

He had been attracted to her immediately. Not just the way she looked, in fact not the way she looked at all. All his other girlfriends had been petite and brunette. And Welsh. And here was Rachel, tall and red headed and English and clever. Very clever and not afraid to show that cleverness off either. Teasing him about his Welsh accent and quoting Under Milk Wood at him.

“I will knit you a wallet of forget me not blue, for the money to be comfy,” she’d said, in a breathy tone, that had made the hair on the back of his neck prickle. It was the first time Dylan Thomas had ever meant anything to him.

He hadn’t known when they’d sat next to each other that first day that the seating plan for the remainder of the year was being set in stone. But the next day, without discussing it, everyone sat back down in exactly the same seats as they had the day before and every day after that. Rachel and Gareth, sitting side by side, from September till June the following year.

When she mentioned during that first week that she had a long-standing boyfriend whose name was Will and that she was going to visit him that weekend, for some bizarre reason he’d felt shocked and hurt. Just because he was single following the break up of his last long term relationship in the third year at university, why should she be single? Most of the people at law school were in long-term relationships. Why had he assumed she wasn’t? Most probably because of the way she teased him about his accent and laughed at his jokes and caught his eye from time to time in a flirty way, which he had hoped was a reflection of his own attraction for her.

“Good weekend?” he’d asked, nonchalantly, the following Monday.

“Great thanks. You?”

“Very good.”

In fact, he’d missed her. Ridiculous. They’d only just met, had only had coffee together round and about lectures, not even been for a drink. And he’d missed her all weekend long.

So he set out to get her, to prise her away from her Will, who had just started training to be a chartered accountant in Southampton. It was hard work training to be a chartered accountant – long days at work during the day, studying at night – and Will was careless and complacent with Rachel’s affections. Work and his exams came first and Rachel needed to fit round those two priorities. Gareth put Rachel at the very top of his list and he wooed her fiercely. Weeks of walks in the park and drinks in the pub and long lingering looks while trying hard to beat her at their coursework.

He remembers vividly the first time he saw her naked. Her face freckled but the rest of her body so very pale. Alabaster is how her skin would have been described by poets but to Gareth it was like skimmed milk, so pale it had a bluish tinge. Her pubic hair, fiery red against her skin, had shocked him.

The way she approached sex was also different to anyone he’d met before. Rachel was much more focussed on her own orgasm than anyone else he’d ever slept with.

“Not like that, like this,” she’d instructed him in those early, guilty days, when Will had all but lost the battle he didn’t even know he was fighting. She’d put her hand over his hand and shown him how she wanted him to move his fingers over her. “Slower, deeper strokes, like this. Don’t try to flick me on and off like a light switch.”

This had put him off his stride at the beginning. But the things she showed him worked. They always worked. And because they worked for her they worked for him. Rachel had taught him how to make her come within minutes if he wanted. And then he’d come, immediately after her.

Lots of studying and lots of great sex. That’s how Gareth remembers law school. Whenever people complained about how awful that year of exams had been and how they would never want to have to live through that ordeal again, all Gareth could do was smile and enjoy the memory. There had been a couple of weekends of tears, over the course of which Will finally got dumped and was considerably more hurt than Rachel had expected him to be. One long night he turned up outside Rachel’s flat and called her on the phone, over and over, begging her to come outside and talk to him. Gareth was all up for going out there and talking to him himself until finally Rachel went and sat in Will’s car for a while. Gareth watched from the window, his insides turning, coiled tight and ready to rush out and physically fight for Rachel if it was called for. Even though his last fight had been at primary school and he’d lost. He watched while Will pleaded with Rachel and banged his hands down on the steering wheel a few times; Rachel talked calmly to him, shaking her head throughout. Finally Rachel got out of the car and Will drove away and when she came back inside with tears in her eyes Gareth took her by the hand and led her into her bedroom and made love to her till they both felt better.

After that, they hadn’t looked back. Gareth and Rachel, side by side, for the rest of that year and every year since. Working hard and raising a family together. Getting the domestic chores done. Laughing and eating and drinking and still having sex. Happy ever after the random act of choosing where to sit in law school.

And now there is no otherness about Rachel any longer. Her body is as familiar to him as his own. How she looks when she is pregnant, or has just given birth. How she looks when she cuts her toenails or cleans her teeth or puts on her tights, the concentrated look on her face as she eases the tights over her calves and then her thighs and finally over her belly button, snapping the elasticated waist with her thumb in satisfaction at having got them on without laddering them.

The steps they each take in the dance of lovemaking. What he does to Rachel and what she does to him. The way she looks at the moment she comes. The exact same look every time.

Rachel and Gareth. Gareth and Rachel. Extensions of each other, parts of the same being. Like the way a person can clap their hands, even in the dead of night, and never miss. They have been together so long that being with Rachel is as instinctive and effortless and as vital to life as breathing.

Cassandra Taylor is other to him, in the way that Rachel once was, so many years ago. Unknown, unexplored, even though Gareth has spent a lot of time today talking on the phone to her or emailing her. She had made the first phone call by 9am.

“Can I ask your advice on something?”

“Of course, that’s what you pay me for.”

“I’m not expecting to pay you for bouncing ideas off you. I consider that to be one of the added value services which all you lawyers should deliver free of charge.”

“Fire away then – at no cost.”

“What would you say to Perfect opening its own stores?”

“I’d ask whether you really need your own shops when you have concessions in most of the major department stores.”

“Good question. But the amount of space a department store will give us is limited, they are expensive and we can’t expand our offering. Our own shops, as you call them, which is a far cuter word than stores by the way, will give us more control.”

“So have you looked at rental costs or done any other budgets?”

“Not yet. It’s still at the blue sky thinking stage at the moment.”

“Well, where do you have in mind?”

“Notting Hill or Chelsea.”

“Expensive.”

“Very. But I think we’ll be able to make it work and achieve more customers and more sales. In-store browsing will also drive up online sales.”

“What are the risks? Cost of course. But will you be prejudicing good relationships with the department stores? Biting off more than you can chew at a time when you already have large new projects on the go?”

“One thing you will learn from working with me is that biting off more than I can chew is what I do. I function at my peak when my mouth is too full.”

She pauses here and on the other end of the phone Gareth is wondering if she too is thinking about that kiss outside a London pub. He feels himself stiffen again as he had done that night.

“Are you there?”

Gareth gathers himself.

“Yes, just thinking. I suggest you get on to some London agents, get some prices, do some budgets and forecasts of likely sales. When you put your blue sky thinking in terms of cold hard cost it will help you make your mind up.”

“I agree. Already on it. I’ll get back to you. Thanks for your input. It was constructive.”

And so it had gone on all day with phone calls and emails, discussing heads of terms and contractual clauses, negotiations and new ideas, compiling checklists of things they need to discuss while she is in Wales next week doing the site visit, how she wants him to come on the site visit with her given his personal knowledge of the area. Gareth’s inbox is full of Cassandra Taylor but his head is even fuller. Despite being able to detach himself enough to do his job, in every single one of his exchanges today with Cassandra Taylor the issues running through his mind on a loop have been Did you go out for dinner with Adrian? Did you kiss him like you kissed me?

He even forgot it was Thursday and a squash night until Celia walked into his office and pointed at his squash kit in the corner and then at her watch.

*

When Gareth arrives home after squash, having played worse than he has for years, he pushes open his front door to hear loud laughter coming from the kitchen. He finds something of a party going on there. All of his children and Grace are seated round the table and Rachel, too, who has a virtually empty bottle of red wine in front of her. There is a strange young man sitting at his kitchen table, sitting as close to Eloise as is physically possible without actually sitting on her lap and grinning from ear to ear.

“There you are, at last!” Rachel says. “We’ve all eaten but there’s plenty left in the pan. Might need a minute in the microwave. Do you want a glass of wine? I’ll hunt down another bottle, this one’s almost done.”

“You sound like you’ve had one glass too many already!” Gareth says as he heaps spaghetti and meatballs into a bowl and shoves it into the microwave. “Who’s this?”

“This is Liam. A friend of Eloise’s. He was taking her out for a drink but I persuaded them to stay and have a drink with me instead.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr Maddox.” Liam gets to his feet.

“Hello Liam. Now if those of you who have finished eating could clear out, I’d like to eat my dinner in peace.”

“Of course, shall we go for that drink now, Eloise?”

“It’s far too late for her to be going out,” Gareth says, tetchily. “She has school tomorrow, you know.” He stresses the word school heavily. “And she’s not old enough to drink.”

Eloise glares at her father and Liam grins. “Fair enough. I’ll catch up with you again, Eloise. Goodbye everyone.”

As Eloise leaves the table she bends down and whispers in her father’s ear.

“You’re a total arse, Dad.”

“I know. It’s what dads do. Now go see Liam out.”

“Yes, why are you being such a dick, Gareth?” Rachel asks when the other children are all out of earshot.

“The term Eloise used was actually arse.”

“Arse. Dick. Ordinarily the difference between those two things is rather important but on this occasion there is no distinction.”

“Stop talking like a lawyer at me Rachel. It’s been a long day. I didn’t want to have to make small talk with some spotty faced kid that my eldest daughter is clearly lusting after.”

“Are you for real Gareth? It’s Thursday! You’ve played squash. It doesn’t count as a long day if it’s only long because you’ve been out playing squash. You’ve no need to be so grumpy. Liam is a nice kid. Courteous and well spoken but fun, too.”

“Perhaps it’s you not Eloise that’s lusting after him.”

“Now you’re just being childish. Anyway, it’s about time Eloise fell in love. She’s ready for it.”

“She may be ready for it but I most certainly am not.”

“And so we arrive at the true cause of your being a dick. Or an arse. Take your pick.”

“Yes! Maybe! I don’t know. Yes I do. I’ve been a 19 year old boy. I know the sorts of things he’s thinking. I don’t want him thinking those things about my baby girl.”

“But she’s not a baby Gareth. She’s 17. And I’ve been a 17 year old girl and believe me, she’s thinking much the same sort of things he is and has been thinking them for some time by now.”

“Well that’s made me feel a whole lot better. I’ll have that glass of wine now.”

“Certainly dear. I’ll get it for you now, dear.”

Gareth applies himself to his bowl of pasta. Rachel puts a glass of wine down in front of him and kisses the top of his head.

“Better?” she asks

“Sort of,” he grunts.

“How was the rest of your day? Pre-squash?”

“Fine. Busy. Tons of drafting.”

“On the Perfect deal?”

“Mostly.”

“Have they decided on the factory site yet?”

“Not yet. Cassandra Taylor is doing a site visit in the Rhondda on Monday. Maybe there’ll be a decision after that.”

“Isn’t she one of the directors?”

Gareth hesitates. He realises just in time that he has not up until now ever referred to Cassandra by name when talking about Perfect. “Yes, she is.”

“Then they must be seriously considering it then, mustn’t they. Are you going on the site visit with her?”

“Maybe.”

“Well if you go, do the Rhondda a favour and hold back on filling her in on all the sacrifices the miners made.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. Don’t go all Arthur Scargill on her the minute you hit Llantrisant roundabout and start telling her about all the injustices heaped on the struggling workers. Don’t try to guilt her into opening her factory in the Rhondda by talking about the past. Focus on the positives of the Valleys and how they can help her business for the future.”

“It’s not my job to choose the factory site or to try to influence that decision. It would be wholly unprofessional for me to allow my personal interests to cloud my judgement.”

“I know that. You know that. But don’t delude yourself by thinking you won’t try anyway. I’d like to meet her sometime. We could ask her over here to dinner. It’s never any fun staying in hotels and eating on your own.”

“That would be weird, Rachel!”

“Why? We’ve invited clients over for dinner plenty of times.”

“Only clients we’ve known for years and who have become friends. Not ones we’ve only just started working for.”

“I was just being nice.”

“Well there’s no need. Cassandra Taylor doesn’t strike me as the type who’s the least bit fazed about eating on her own in hotels anyway.”

“How would you know? Have you even met her yet?”

“I’ve spoken on the phone to her numerous times. Right, that’s enough talking about work. You go check on the kids. I’ll do the dishes. “

“Deal.”

As he clears the plates and stacks the dishwasher, Gareth shakes his head at his own stupidity. He could have explained to Rachel any number of times this evening that he had met with Cassandra Taylor twice already. Cassandra is one of the bosses of the company and the person driving this project – of course he has met with her, why would he not have?

He hears in his own head the way Rachel would have applied her trained mind to reply to such questions if posed by anyone else.

You’re being coy because you feel guilty and don’t want that guilt to show. You’re avoiding referring to her in case your body language somehow reveals that you are attracted to her. Doubling back now and admitting to me you’ve been dealing with Cassandra Taylor all along will cause suspicion because why would you not have put me right on this seemingly unimportant point long before, unless of course there’s something to hide.

Rachel has a fine mind and a lawyer’s tenacity and she’d be right.