The Unmarried Husband

‘Of course I don’t know!’ she exploded furiously. ‘But I prefer to cross that bridge when I get to it.’

They both sat back and regarded one another like adversaries sizing up the competition.

‘I’ll compromise with you,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll talk to Mark, with you and your daughter present. That way there’ll be less of an atmosphere of confrontation and more an air of discussion.’

Jessica stared at him. She hadn’t banked on this solution being proffered, and she suspected, judging from the look on his face, that he had only suggested it on the spur of the moment, to get her off his back.

‘Would they agree to that?’ she asked finally, and he shrugged.

‘Possibly not.’

‘In which case, at least you can say that you tried…?’

‘That’s right,’ he said with staggering honesty.

‘Where do you want this meeting to take place?’ Jessica asked, making her mind up on the spot. What he offered was better than nothing.

‘I can reserve a private room at a restaurant in Hampstead. Thursday. Eight o’clock. It’s called Chez Jacques, and I know the owner.’

‘I can’t afford that restaurant, Mr Newman.’ She voiced the protest without even thinking about it, but she had read reviews of the place and the prices quoted were way out of her reach.

‘Fine.’ He shrugged and began standing up, and she glared at him.

‘All right.’

He sat back down and looked at her.

‘But we don’t make it an arranged meeting,’ she said, deciding that his manipulation had gone far enough. ‘I don’t want Lucy to think that I’ve been manoeuvring behind her back…’

‘Which you have been…’

She ignored that. ‘So we meet by accident. It’ll be tricky persuading her to go there, but I’ll make damn sure that we turn up.’

‘Why should it be tricky? Doesn’t she like going to restaurants? Is this part of the teenager phase you say she’s going through?’

‘Lucy and I don’t eat out very often, Mr Newman— Anthony. I take her somewhere on her birthday, and we usually go out on mine, but it’s not a habit…’

He frowned, trying to puzzle this one out. ‘You surely can’t be that impoverished, if your daughter’s at private school…?’

‘Private school…? Whatever gave you that impression?’

‘Isn’t that where she met my son?’

‘No, it isn’t. I work as a secretary in some law offices. My pay cheque, generous though it is, manages to cover the mortgage and pay the bills and buy the essentials. However, it doesn’t quite run to private schooling.’

She hoped that she didn’t sound resentful of her state of affairs, or else defensive, but she had a suspicion that that was precisely how she sounded. And she also had a suspicion that that was precisely how he saw her. Wealthy people often led an insular life. They mixed in social circles where foreign travel was taken for granted, as were expensive meals out, best seats at the opera, and cars that were replaced every three years.

Anthony Newman had just been brought face to face with one of those more lowly creatures who didn’t lead the charmed life. It wasn’t apparent in his expression, but she found herself reading behind the good-looking, detached exterior, even though she was appalled by this inverse snobbery.

She wondered whether he was horrified by the thought of his son mixing with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. There was nothing in his manner to suggest any such thing, but then he struck her as a man who was clever at concealing what he didn’t want the world to see.

He signalled for the cheque, and was irritated when she made an attempt to settle her half of the bill.

‘Right. So that’s settled then. Eight at Chez Jacques. Thursday.’

‘Unless you change your mind and decide to have a quiet word with Mark.’

‘Naturally.’

But he had no intention of changing his mind, and when they parted company outside the hotel she wasn’t quite sure whether she had done the right thing after all, or not.

She was also taken aback at the reaction he had provoked in her. She had gone to his office to ask for his help, one parent to another. Now she found herself thinking of him, and not simply as a parent. She found herself thinking of him as a man, and a disturbing one at that, although she couldn’t put her finger on the reason why. She just knew that his face kept popping up in her head.

For nearly seventeen years she had steered clear of any involvement with the opposite sex. She worked amongst them, went out for drinks occasionally with some of them, in a group, but she was careful never to get involved. Never to get involved was never to be hurt. It was a self-taught lesson. She had her daughter—life would only be complicated if she allowed a man to intrude.

And the decision had hardly cost her dear. In all those years she had never met anyone who had tempted her with the possibility of romance. A few had tried, and she had kindly steered them away. It hadn’t been difficult. Most men were frankly unwilling to get involved with a ready-made family unit anyway.

Anthony Newman, however, was in a league of his own. He wasn’t like any man she had ever met in her life before. Something about him had aroused a certain curiosity inside her, made her wonder for the first time what she had missed out on during all these years of self-imposed celibacy.

She had to remind herself that curiosity killed the cat.

She was sorely tempted to phone and cancel the dinner arrangement. She knew that he would not have objected. But that, she realised, would have amounted to running away, and it was ridiculous because she didn’t even know what she would have been running away from.

He was hardly going to pounce on her, was he? As it was, he had only suggested the arrangement with reluctance, and no doubt he would have been very happy never to clap eyes on her again.

On Thursday morning, just as Lucy was about to head off to school, and Jessica was busy in the kitchen, trying to do twelve things at once before she set out to work, she said, casually, ‘By the way, don’t arrange anything for this evening. We’re going out.’

She could tell from the silence behind her that she might as well have announced that they were departing for a last-minute trip to the moon.

‘Going out? Going out? Going out where?’

‘Going out for a meal, actually.’ She turned around, wiped her hands on the kitchen towel, and looked at her daughter. ‘People occasionally do things like that.’

‘People may do things like that, but we don’t!’

Lucy’s eyes were narrowed with suspicion. Her knapsack was half-open and slung over one shoulder, and her long hair was gathered over the other. At sixteen, she was already a couple of inches taller than her mother, and she didn’t look like a child. Sixteen. Jessica thought that she looked like an adult of twenty going on thirty something. It was frightening where all the time had gone.

‘I thought it might make a nice change,’ Jessica said, refusing to be provoked.

‘Why?’

Jessica could feel the familiar irritation gathering up inside her, and she swallowed it down and smiled.

‘Because it’s been a rough few months for us. You’ve got exams on the horizon. I thought it might be nice to eat out for a change.’

Lucy shrugged and looked suddenly bored with the conversation. ‘Okay.’

‘So please be home on time!’ Jessica told the departing back, a remark which didn’t even warrant a response. Lucy was already out of the door and on her way.