Women of a Dangerous Age

Sighing, she picked up the phone and dialled Hooker’s number.

5

Standing in her walk-in closet, Ali looked around her. Everything was as it should be. Her boxes of shoes were stacked one on top of another, illustrated labels outwards, so she could see which pair was where at a glance. Beside them were the drawers with transparent fronts. The order with which she’d organised her wardrobe would have amused her in someone else, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself. Behind her was the hanging space, divided into sections: trousers, skirts, shirts, dresses and coats. No item remained unworn for longer than a year before it was thrown out. On the end wall was a well-lit mirror. She checked herself, stood sideways on, anxious to make the best possible impression on Ian, pulling at her black and cream striped asymmetric jersey dress so that it sat straight on the hips, then adjusting her hair. He’d once said how much he liked it short because it emphasised the length of her neck. A half-smile crossed her lips as she anticipated him running his finger along her naked right clavicle and up her throat to the point of her chin, before they kissed.

Satisfied she could do no more, she turned to walk through the bedroom, glancing round to make sure everything was ready. She touched the bedside table, checking that her few sex toys were out of sight. They were for later. Nothing too way out but she knew what he liked, and what she liked too. She ran her hand over the bedspread, making sure every wrinkle was smoothed out, before pulling the heavy curtains and arranging precisely the way they pooled on the floor. She straightened the pile of books by her side of the bed and moved the three red roses on the table to be just so, then moved to the door where she stood for a moment, surveying the scene she’d set for seduction, and dimmed the lights a little more.

As she went downstairs, Ali thought how lucky she was to have the apartment. Ten years earlier, one of her lovers, Peter Ellis, a wealthy middle-aged property developer, had been converting the Victorian school into a number of des res. A generous and kind man, he had thought nothing of offering her a place of her own in exchange for the several years of pleasure she had given him. Resistant at first, she had eventually been persuaded to accept.

She was as much in love with the place now as she had been then. She loved its quirkiness and the utilitarian elements of the design that featured exposed RSJs and cast-iron school radiators. Upstairs, the two bedrooms and bathrooms were designed to be more intimate but she never tired of the large dramatic space of the living area with its vast multi-paned windows and wide oak floorboards. She’d furnished it minimally but as comfortably as she could afford, concentrating on good lighting and statement rugs to separate the different living areas. A sofa sat in the centre with a coffee table in front of it, two smaller chairs opposite. Her dining table stood by the open-plan kitchen and in the opposite corner, under the low hanging light, was her jigsaw table, where Brueghel’s Allegory of Sight and Smell lay scattered in six thousand pieces awaiting her attention. Enlarged photographs from her travels hung on the walls: rolling blue mountains of Mongolia from the Great Wall; Mount Fuji from the railway line; a farmer with horse and plough tilling a terraced hillside in Vietnam.

She poured herself a cranberry juice. Leaning against the divide between the kitchen area and the rest of the living space, she checked the time. Fifteen minutes and he would be here. He was never late. She switched on the wide-screen, wall-mounted TV and flicked through the channels unable to find anything that grabbed her interest. Instead, she went to the dining table, where her laptop lay open, her accounts file on-screen.

There was no escaping the truth. Her turnover was down on last year’s. She’d hoped the three months before Christmas would make the difference as well as help cover the cost of her holiday. She ran her finger down the sales and stopped at the name ‘Orlov’, suddenly remembering that their order was still sitting in her safe, uncollected and unpaid for – a pair of emerald and diamond earrings with a matching necklace worth over three thousand pounds. She always asked clients to pay a fifty per cent deposit on commission so she was still owed the other fifty per cent. She made a note to contact the Orlovs as soon as she got to the studio in the morning. But for how long would that and her other commissions tide her over?

Perhaps she should call in the loan that, in headier days, she’d made to Rick, her studio share and friend. When he was starting up his silversmithing business he was having trouble meeting his mortgage and alimony payments so Ali had agreed to let him use a space in her studio rent-free until he started making ends meet. Then, she could afford to be generous. Now, it was less easy. At the same time, she didn’t want to jeopardise their friendship. Despite the odd reminder, he never seemed embarrassed by the debt. While she was debating how to persuade him to part with the few grand he owed her, the doorbell rang.

As she crossed the room, she felt she might burst with excitement. She was so looking forward to seeing Ian again, to making plans together. Three years of passionate but clandestine encounters, of secret overnight stays in hotels when he travelled on business, of meals in discreet restaurants and of entering and leaving theatres and cinemas separately – ‘just in case’ – were almost over. Soon their relationship would be in the open. She prayed that he had broken the news to his wife and that everything would be reasonably civilised between them. She didn’t want anything to cloud their happiness.

But the minute Ian walked into the flat, Ali knew something was wrong. Earlier, on the phone, he’d been unusually abrupt but she’d put that down to his being preoccupied by something at work. Now she could see there was more to it than that. Although they hadn’t seen each other for over two weeks, he barely reciprocated her welcoming kiss. She thought she detected alcohol beneath the strong smell of peppermint on his breath. By the time she’d hung up his coat, he was sitting on the sofa, staring into the middle distance, elbows on knees, hands steepled in front of his face, fingers tapping against one another. His shoulders rose and fell with each breath.

‘How was Christmas?’ she tried.

‘Yeah. Fine.’ He still didn’t look at her. And he didn’t mention his wife.

‘Is something the matter? Difficult day?’ This was hardly the reunion she’d envisaged.

‘I’m sorry.’ He snapped out of his reverie and turned to her. ‘Something at work’s bothering me. That’s all. Give me a minute or two to come down. I want to hear about the holiday.’

Experience had taught Ali never to probe into whatever was troubling a lover. Her role was to distract, to provide an alternative to their other world. That was why they liked coming here. Her apartment was a retreat, not just for her, but for those men who had lives they wanted to forget for a few hours. Spending time with her was therapeutic although she was no therapist. She asked no awkward questions, never held them to any kind of emotional ransom. And in return, she got to run her life just as she wanted it.

She busied herself by bringing over two small bowls from the kitchen, one filled with the black olives he liked, and the other with cashews. After returning for the bottle of Medoc and two glasses, she turned her iPod to Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, one of the most soothing pieces of music she knew, and went over to him. She was practised in jogging a man out of his worries for a few hours. That was what she did. As she sat down, she thought she heard him sigh but she just tucked her feet under her and sat with her head resting on his shoulder. This was where she belonged now. This was how they would spend so many evenings in the future, just the two of them.

‘I’ve missed you,’ she murmured. ‘Really missed you.’

‘Have you?’ he asked, sounding as if he was a million miles away.

‘I think that was your cue to say how much you’ve missed me.’ She gave a nervous laugh, sat up and looked at him, puzzled by what could be distracting him so much, feeling the first whisper of alarm.

But instead of turning to her, he stood up and went over to the window, staring out across the communal garden. His hands were in his pockets, jingling his loose change. ‘Of course I did. You must know that.’

‘But it would be nice to be told.’ Annoyed with herself for sounding like the nagging wife she imagined he was escaping, she tried again. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve been so looking forward to seeing you.’ Going over to stand behind him, she wrapped her arms around his waist. ‘We could go upstairs. Or I’ve got champagne in the fridge.’

‘Not yet.’ He turned and kissed her nose. ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment. I probably shouldn’t have come.’

‘But we haven’t seen each other for weeks. We’ve got so much to talk about.’ She took both his hands and kissed him back. Over the two years she had known him, Ali couldn’t remember a time when he had refused an invitation to her bedroom. But, having trained herself not to question her lovers’ moods but just to wait them out, she didn’t object. She was confident he’d tell her what was bothering him when he was ready. Despite her growing unease, she was prepared to wait. Worming his troubles from him was a wife’s job, not a mistress’s. In a few weeks, when everyone knew they were together, things would be different. They would be able to talk and share so much more than they ever had before. She would get to know him so much better. She could afford to maintain a sympathetic silence now.

‘Tell me about your holiday.’ He held her hand and guided her back to the sofa.

‘How long have you got?’ Ali pretended she hadn’t noticed how uninterested he sounded. But rather than bore him about what he didn’t want to hear, she passed across the linen Nehru shirt she’d had specially made for him. In the Udaipur fabric emporium, she had been so sure it was the perfect present. But as he pulled it from the packet, there was something distinctly charity shop about it. The stitching, which had looked charmingly authentic in Udaipur, now looked embarrassingly amateur, the linen cheap, and, when he held it up, the sleeves were obviously way too long.

‘It’s not you at all, is it?’ she said, disappointed.

‘Not really.’ As he put it over the arm of the sofa, they exchanged a smile that reassured her that he was coming back to her.

‘OK, let’s forget Christmas and India,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about now, about us.’ Since it seemed the wrong moment to ask him if he’d told his wife about their plans, she went to the table where she’d put the particulars she’d collected from a couple of estate agents just before she went away. ‘I love the look of this one. And I’m sure we could get the price down.’ She picked up a brochure showing an end-of-terrace three-storey Georgian town house. ‘Great kitchen and look at the roof terrace.’ My God, I’m trying so hard, I even sound like an estate agent, she thought. Ease up or you’ll never get him onside.

But Ian was pouring himself a glass of wine without even asking if she’d like one. ‘I thought we’d decided to live here,’ he said, his voice flat and matter-of-fact, the enthusiasm of a few weeks ago vanished.

‘You decided to live here, but I thought that once you saw what was around, I might be able to change your mind.’ She flicked over the photos in the brochure. ‘I know we could be so happy somewhere else. A house of our own, with none of the history this place has.’

‘You make it sound as if someone was murdered here,’ he said, coming over to take the details from her. He didn’t look beyond the first page.

‘Oh, you know,’ she said, becoming more exasperated with his refusal to engage. ‘There were other men before you.’

His face tensed as he put the brochure down. ‘I thought we’d agreed not to talk about them.’

‘But of course there were,’ she protested. ‘I thought you’d be happy that I want to leave behind the life I had before you.’ She could feel herself beginning to gabble, so reined herself back. It would be a wrench to leave the apartment but she felt sure it was the right thing to do. ‘Anyway, we need somewhere a bit bigger than this.’

Ian placed his hand on top of hers, heavy and warm. ‘I honestly don’t think we do.’ His grip tightened. ‘I can live with your past if you can.’ Her relief at the sudden improvement of his mood was muddled by the growing realisation that they didn’t see their future in the same way at all. During her holiday, she had used the time she spent on her own to think of little else, planning and plotting their life together. How disappointing to realise that he obviously hadn’t done the same. There was so much ahead of them that he hadn’t even considered.

‘And if I get pregnant?’ The words slipped out without her having time to stop and think. Watching his face darken, she would have given anything in the world to be able to retract them.

‘Pregnant!’ He sat down as if he’d been winded, the wine tipping in his glass. He saved it just in time. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Why not? Why are you looking at me like that? Wouldn’t it be wonderful? We’d be a family.’ She wished she could erase the need from her voice.

‘Family,’ he echoed, so quietly that Ali could barely hear him. But she didn’t need to, to know that she had just made a huge mistake. She began to backtrack as fast as she could.

‘Not that I mind if we don’t, of course. I can understand that you might not want any more.’ She stopped, not knowing what else she could say, at the same time feeling sadness engulf her as her dream foundered.

‘But you’ve never mentioned anything about wanting children.’ He seemed perplexed. ‘That was never part of the deal.’

‘Because they were never an option. But when you asked me to live with you, I couldn’t help thinking. I want more out of my life now than I’ve ever dared to admit to myself. You’ve presented me with a chance …’ She wanted to explain, to persuade, for him to take her in his arms and assure her everything would be all right. But that was not going to happen.

He’d put down his drink and crossed his arms over his chest, wearing an expression that was new to her: distant, calculating.

‘But of course, I was being stupid,’ she went on, desperate to rewind the whole conversation and start again. ‘It was a silly fantasy. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘I would’ve thought I’d done my bit towards populating the world. I’d never imagined us …’ Words failed him as he tried to imagine. ‘And, well, aren’t you a bit …’ He paused, searching for a kinder way of putting it and failing. ‘… too old?’

He had no idea how hearing him say that hurt. Fired up by his insensitivity, she retorted, ‘Women can have babies any time before the menopause. It just gets more difficult.’ To her fury, she felt her chin wobble, and her voice began to crack. ‘Just forget it. Please. I shouldn’t have said anything.’ She went to pour herself a glass of wine. She took a big gulp before turning to look at him. He had emptied his own glass and returned to stare out of the window. Something had happened to make this evening go way off track. He’d arrived in the wrong mood and she had only made it worse. Much worse. But why should she make it easy for him? A few weeks ago, he had been desperate for them to be together. What had changed? Perhaps she had gone a bit too far, but she didn’t deserve to be knocked back so cruelly. She sat down again, and waited, dreading whatever he was building up to say.

Eventually he turned, but his face was hidden as he concentrated on his right thumb, pushing at the cuticle of his left. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘So sorry.’

‘So am I.’ A sigh of relief escaped her. They would sort out their differences and things would be all right after all. ‘I got far too carried away. Of course we can live here – to start with, anyway. Whatever you like.’ She plumped up the deep red cushion beside her and rested it against the back of the sofa, making a space for him, but he made no move to join her.

Instead, he murmured, almost as if he was talking to himself, ‘It’s too late.’