Tempting Fate, Page 3

  I remember when I too thought the world revolved around me, says the smile; I remember when I too thought I knew everything, deserved everything, was entitled to everything and more.

  Oh how little we knew.

  Few of the mothers worked when Gabby moved to town. They were, they announced proudly, ‘stay-at-home moms’. They volunteered to be room mothers, joined the PTA, accompanied the children on every field trip, showed up in the classroom having spontaneously baked two dozen nut-free, lactose-free, gluten-free cupcakes.

  These same women were left stranded when their children turned eleven and moved on to middle school. The women who didn’t work suddenly longed to have something to do all day, wanted to reinvent themselves, or perhaps find themselves again. They would invariably take up Zumba, yoga, meet friends for lunch every day at the Organic Market, before slowly rejoining the work force, some working part-time, others attempting to be CEO of businesses from the comfort of their kitchen table.

  Gabby was lucky in that she was able to follow a different path. Using her long-suppressed creativity, she started restoring furniture. Initially it was for herself, but when the other mothers saw how she picked up cheap tables at the consignment store, or the dump, and stripped them, refinishing them to look like beautiful antiques, they wanted her to do the same for them, and soon she could fill as many hours of the day as she wanted, doing something she loved.

  A few of her friends have worked all along. Trish, one of the mothers Gabby knows, was one of the first women Gabby knew to have divorced. Soon after her fourth child was born, her husband announced he was leaving her for his secretary. She started designing accessories for the home – vases, trays, boxes, cachepots – and is now stocked throughout the country. Every time a new range comes out she has a house sale in town, always hosted by a different woman. At the end of the day, the hostess and the various friends who have helped her with the sale all have a renewed sense of purpose and ideas for businesses of their own.

  Gabby sees how the bodies of her friends have changed. Once soft and squishy, elastic from the stresses and strains of childbirth, those bodies have, in their forties, suddenly been honed into shape by Pilates, yoga, spinning.

  After the dowdiness during the days of early parenthood, Gabby is now surrounded by two extremes of women as she approaches her mid-forties. There are the women like her, in their shapeless, comfortable clothes, secure in their husband’s love, in their place in the world. These are the ones who have not felt the need to change themselves as time slips slowly away. Then there are the glamour pusses like Trish, those who have reinvented themselves in middle age – although Trish has doubtless been perfect since the day she was born.

  The other glamour pusses may be forty-something, but they are fitter, prettier, far better-dressed than they were back in their late twenties.

  Partly because they have to be. In this affluent town, at this age, there is always someone around the next corner who could take their place. And it isn’t just the women who need to be worried. In the last twelve months alone, four women Gabby has known for years – not friends, but women from the neighbourhood – have suddenly left their husbands.

  Gabby found herself sitting in their living rooms, drinking coffee and sympathizing as these women told tales of how unhappy they had been for a long time, how terrible their husbands were. She was surprised because the husbands had always seemed delightful. Then the women suddenly lit up, swooning with delight as they described the perfection of their new man. It turned out that in every single case there was another man involved. In one, it was the husband of her best friend. In the others, it was random men picked up at the gym, at an AA meeting, the contractor.

  ‘But nothing happened,’ they all swore. ‘He was just a friend until we split up.’

  None of them thought of herself as the kind of person who would have an affair. Each time, they described these men as their soulmates. Each time, they believed they had found the one person the gods had chosen for them, the one person they were supposed to have married had circumstances not got in the way and slipped in their boring old husbands instead. Why else would they have broken up their marriages, exploded their lives, alienated or, at the very least, caused immeasurable pain to their children? Why else would they have betrayed their spouse so monumentally, so unforgivably, so heartlessly, unless they had no choice?

  Of the four wives that left, three of them are no longer with their soulmates. One of them confessed to Gabby that she had made a terrible mistake. She would do anything to turn the clock back, but her husband had met someone else. He was not only happy, but happier than he had been with wife number one. It was too late, and now she spent her kidless weekends at bars much like the one last night, wondering how her life ended up in such a mess.

  Gabby, who has always thought of infidelity as a mid-life crisis, hasn’t ever really understood why these women left their stable lives, their loving husbands, their comfortable homes. Until today. Today, when she slouches back on the sofa, blankly staring at the television screen, she knows exactly how these things happen.

  ‘You have a choice,’ she was fond of saying. ‘Just because you’re married doesn’t mean you’re not attracted to anyone else. You’re married, not dead. We’re all going to be attracted to other people at some point, but ultimately it comes down to a choice.’ So easy to say when you have never been presented with a choice. And honestly? Gabby has never felt an attraction to anyone other than Elliott since the moment they met.

  Last night, Gabby had a choice; she had many choices. She could have gone home with her friends. She could have called a cab from the bar. She could have declined to go back to the hotel with him, because, however much she may try to deny it, even to herself, she knew the possibility was there.

  That moment in the hotel lobby, late, quiet, when their eyes locked and held, neither of them speaking, chemistry surging in waves … well, she had a choice then. She could so easily have stayed, let him lean forward, kiss her gently on the lips. He didn’t, but she knows he could have done. She sits, playing this moment over and over again in her mind. He didn’t, but he could have done. He didn’t, but he would have done.

  And if he had, how would it have felt?

  And if he had, how would she be feeling now?

  She shudders with lust, but then guilt replaces the small smile that unbeknownst to her has been playing on her lips since she started thinking about him.

  She didn’t do anything. She has nothing to feel guilty about. She is married, not dead. This isn’t anywhere near the big deal it could have been, and if she can’t stop thinking about it, so what? This is just … flattery. This is just … pleasurable. Having the undivided attention of someone other than her husband, feeling the sparks of attraction fly between them, was … exhilarating.

  Even now, she is torn between feeling sick with guilt at even considering the thought, and elated at still being desirable, still having a sexual power she’s not sure she was ever aware of having. She and Elliott have always had a great sex life, but it is great partly because they are so comfortable with each other. Making love with Elliott is a tried and tested routine, with little variation. She has never wanted more variation, has been perfectly happy with the routine they have; she is almost always brought to orgasm and feels entirely sated afterwards.

  But it doesn’t light fires any more. She’s not sure it ever did.

  Last night was a blaze of glory.

  She pictures Elliott moving inside her, his eyes filled with longing and love, and feels … content. She pictures Matt, imagines him flipping her over, his fingers inside her, his mouth on her nipple, and she gasps, her entire body flooded with desire.

  Thank God nothing happened, she thinks. For if he were to phone now, and say, ‘Come with me; I need you at my side,’ she honestly isn’t sure she’d be able to say no. But there was no talk of them staying in touch. Even though Gabby could get hold of him – his contact details flash up on the
home page of his website – she knows already she will not.

  He is too dangerous, she decides. She cannot be in touch with him.

  So it is with a mixture of horror and delight that she suddenly remembers mentioning her own email address during a silly conversation they had at one point in the evening about vanity number plates, vanity names, vanity email addresses … But she convinces herself he’ll never get in touch. Why would he? He must have thousands of women flocking to him, and she was just a passing fancy. Perhaps he has a penchant for older women; perhaps he is attracted to the unavailable. Either way, last night has to be written off as a fun flirtation. It needs to filed away and never thought of again.

  Chapter Three

  Elliott tries to move away but Gabby is holding on tight, and he laughs, stepping forward again and lifting her up.

  ‘Wow!’ he murmurs into her hair. ‘You really missed me, huh? I should go away more often.’

  ‘No!’ Gabby says into his shoulder, then she pulls back to gaze at her husband, the man she loves, and wells up with shame at the thought of what she could so easily have done, of even having the temerity to daydream about another man when Elliott is here, with all the familiarity, and comfort, and love that she needs.

  How could she possibly have thought about anyone else?

  ‘I missed you.’

  ‘Liar,’ he teases. ‘I heard you last night. You were having a great time with the girls. I bet you didn’t even think about me.’

  ‘I’m just glad you’re home,’ she says, kissing him full on the mouth. He smiles in delight and raises an eyebrow, gesturing towards the house.

  ‘Ewww.’ Olivia brushes past them, scowling the typical scowl of a seventeen-year-old. ‘Can you not do that in front of us? That’s gross.’

  ‘Kissing is entirely natural,’ Elliott says. ‘And we are your parents. It’s not like there’s anything illicit going on here.’

  Gabby quickly looks away. Why did he say that? Why would he choose those words? She looks at him carefully but there is no way he knows anything, not that there’s anything to know; it was merely a harmless flirtation. Thank God.

  ‘Hi, sweetie.’ Gabby puts an arm round Alanna and pulls her in to kiss the side of her head. ‘Did you have fun?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Alanna manages, her attention focused on her phone.

  Gabby suppresses a pang. Grief would be too strong a word for it, but oh how she misses the days when her girls were tiny, when they adored everything she did; when they wanted nothing other than to spend time with their mother.

  Looking at them now – Alanna so petite, with her dark blonde hair streaming down her back, the image of her father, and Olivia, tall and curvy, her curly hair just like Gabby’s, just beginning to find comfort in her skin – it is hard to reconcile them with the small girls they once were.

  Olivia, when young, wouldn’t let her mother leave the bedroom at night. Gabby would go in to snuggle, adoring how Olivia’s tiny body fitted so perfectly into hers, adoring how Olivia would chatter away, doing everything she could to make her mother stay longer. Gabby never wanted to leave, and only ever did when the clock ticked on, and she knew Olivia had to go to sleep.

  Now, Gabby doesn’t remember the last time she snuggled in behind Olivia and gave her a cuddle. At seventeen, Olivia barely allows Gabby into her room. Even Alanna, at eleven, so calm, so wise, is now far more interested in her friends than in her mother. Gabby knows so little about what is going on with Alanna in school that she has started doing the unthinkable and going through her texts. Still, she learns nothing.

  Oh how she misses the early years, the delicious all-consuming love, the hours and hours of doing nothing other than playing with the babies, watching them with wonder and love, unable to believe she had created these two miraculous little lives.

  ‘Tell me she didn’t spend the entire camping trip on the phone,’ she says, turning to Elliott.

  ‘Not the entire time,’ he says.

  Alanna looks up. ‘I’m not on the phone. I’m on Instagram.’

  ‘Oh.’ Gabby nods. ‘Well, that’s okay, then. So how many followers do you have now?’

  Alanna smiles. ‘Three hundred and forty-two.’

  ‘Wow. You are popular!’

  ‘Mom!’ She rolls her eyes. ‘It’s not about popular.’

  ‘So what is it about?’

  Alanna shakes her head dismissively as she disappears inside. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ Elliott corroborates, pulling their bags from the car and handing some to Gabby. ‘Neither would I, apparently. We’re too old.’

  Usually Gabby would laugh and agree, except she didn’t feel old this weekend. For the first time in years she didn’t feel like she was past it, and she’s not ready to relinquish the feeling that life still holds possibilities, that there are still adventures to be had, even if she will never repeat the adventure of last night.

  ‘How was Alanna? Was she sweet?’

  Alanna, always known as the good one, has become more of a handful over the past few months. Middle school, not easy for anyone, has seen Alanna finally accepted by the girls she has always referred to as ‘the Populars’, and with that acceptance comes an attitude that Gabby and Elliott have not welcomed in the slightest.

  ‘She was pretty crabby when we got there, but she settled down. We really did have a lovely time. Tim and I think you and Claire should come next time.’

  ‘I thought you said you understood that sleeping bags weren’t my thing any more.’

  ‘We could get a blow-up mattress. It was amazing, being out in nature.’

  ‘I’m totally happy being out in nature, as long as it’s at a spa.’ Gabby grins.

  ‘By the way, Tim said we should go to theirs for dinner tonight. He’s got a ton of burgers and dogs he needs to get rid of.’

  ‘Perfect.’ Gabby sets the bags down on the floor of the hallway. ‘I’ll ring Claire and see what I can bring.’

  ‘First, I think you should come upstairs.’ Elliott puts his arms round her from behind, nuzzling her neck, and Gabby, who so often pushes him away, telling him no, insisting she’s too busy, or his timing is horrible, or she’s not in the mood, allows herself to be led to their room.

  With the door locked, Gabby sinks to her knees, unbuckling Elliott’s belt while he murmurs in surprise and delight.

  It is, she realizes, the least she can do.

  Years ago, when they were first married, they swore they would never become the kind of couple they so often saw in town. The couple who would sit in a restaurant and gaze around the room, having nothing to say to each other. They swore they would never become like the people they knew who would laughingly relate how little sex they had: who has the energy? Who has the time?

  Gabby and Elliott have never been a couple to sit in silence. In the mornings Elliott turns to Gabby and invariably starts a conversation about something he’s been thinking about since he woke up. It could be politics, the solution to the town parking problem, his fears for the future of the world.

  In turn, Gabby shares everything with Elliott. Unlike so many of her friends whose husbands are gone for most of the day and who turn to their girlfriends for everything in their lives, Gabby has never needed much more than Elliott. She has Claire, her closest friend, and is included in the group of girls, but she would never phone any of them for a chat, wouldn’t think to turn to them if ever there was a problem in her life. The only best friend she has ever really had, has ever wanted, could ever really count on, is Elliott.

  He says it’s because they have been together twenty years, but there are plenty of couples Gabby sees who have been together as long – longer – and they are not friends in the way she and Elliott are.

  After their chance meeting, Elliott was talking about marriage by the end of their third date. Everyone told Gabby she was crazy, and much too young, at twenty-three, to even think about settling down.

  Which is why she
waited to get married until she was twenty-five. And still everyone was wrong.

  Although, and it is only grudgingly she will admit this, their sex life is not what it was. Gabby loves the smell of Elliott, the warmth and closeness their lovemaking brings, but, and she would never say this to him, if they only had sex every once in a while, it really wouldn’t bother her.

  It isn’t that she doesn’t think about sex. It isn’t that she doesn’t get turned on reading certain books, or watching certain films; it isn’t that she doesn’t masturbate. It’s more that Elliott is her best friend, her family, and although she always enjoys their lovemaking once they start, the idea of making love with him is just one she rarely suggests.

  Frankly she’d rather read a good book and have an early night.

  Claire and Tim watch porn together, which Claire says has transformed their sex life. Tim has no idea that both Gabby and Elliott know this, and although Elliott persuaded her to do the same, the few times they tried it Gabby couldn’t stop herself critiquing the acting, the fake boobs and the thrusting that went on for so long that she found it exhausting.

  It didn’t do anything for her, although Elliott was demonstrably more imaginative for a little while.

  Oral sex, while an imperative part of their lovemaking during those early years, rarely happens any more, and it is unheard of for Gabby to initiate it.

  Until now. Naturally Elliott doesn’t think to question why. Doesn’t wonder if this is the female equivalent of the guilt gift – women get jewellery when their men have strayed, or thought too seriously about straying.