Chapter 16: Just like Sue

I allowed myself to fall asleep next to Alicia knowing that sexual desire would awaken me in the small hours. When it did, instead of turning for relief to the gorgeous and compliant little creature next to me I went to the main bedroom where Wendy was sleeping. She was my wife, after all, and had been wonderfully understanding and supportive all evening. There are wives in this world, I reflected, that might object if their husband brought home a big-titted eighteen-year-old and shagged her senseless in the spare bedroom while the wife was busy in the kitchen. I wanted to show my appreciation in the best possible way so I slipped into bed and after gently waking her I slipped into Wendy.

We had our usual repeat in the morning, of course, and as we were getting over that there was a knock at the door and Alicia appeared with cups of tea.

Alicia had obviously had what must have been a desperately-needed shower and had found an old dressing-gown of Wendy's in the spare room wardrobe. She looked terrific. It was not just her sparkling eyes and radiant smile; there was a satisfaction and fulfilment about her that had not been there before and it seemed to convert her extreme prettiness into a glowing beauty.

"Why, thank you Alicia," said Wendy, taking her tea. "How very thoughtful of you."

"James asked me to do it," beamed Alicia, looking at me with frank adoration. (It was the night before, as we had been about to get down to our second bout, that it had occurred to me to suggest that morning tea in bed would be most welcome.)

I motioned Alicia to sit on the bed and the three of us made plans. Alicia said she would talk to her parents and the friends of theirs she was lodging with and somehow she would get clearance to move in with us. She hoped she would be able to move on Saturday.

"Would you like a hand moving?" I offered.

Alicia looked doubtful. So did Wendy: "Er, James darling, maybe that's not such a great idea," she advised. "Won't this couple Alicia's lodging with feel a bit uneasy if this bloke turns up to help her move?"

I was ahead of her. "No they won't," I replied, "because you're going to do it."

"Oh, very clever, darling," acknowledged Wendy appreciatively. "They won't be worried about a woman."

"Exactly, especially if you charm the socks off them the way I know you can. And Wendy, I'm not asking you to lie to them but unless they ask straight out there's no need for you to mention you've even got a husband. You too, Alicia," I added. "Tell them all about Wendy but don't mention me if you can help it."

Looking back on it now, I squirm with embarrassment about the smugness and self-congratulation I was displaying at this time. It seems incredible but I really thought that I had the measure of FUCK, that if I managed things carefully and avoided any more silly mistakes I was going to get on top of it. How little did I know.

Having been royally fucked Alicia was now, of course, safely under control and I could travel with her into town knowing that she would, however reluctantly, obey my instructions to ignore me on the tube. At work, still confidently arranging my ducks, I asked Fran and Connie to see me. I had to tell them that because of this wretched dinner party I could not see them tonight, and I ruled lunchtime out too because colleagues would notice if the same three people were always out for long lunches on the same days. But my main purpose in seeing them was to sort out future living arrangements. Fran, of course, instantly agreed that Connie would be a wonderful flatmate. It was comical watching her enthusiastic response to a suggestion that she would have treated as a bad joke until a few days ago.

I turned to Connie. "This means Tommy has to go, I'm afraid."

"Fine, James, I'll do it tonight but," she gave me a puzzled look, "I thought you weren't jealous."

I explained that it was not a matter of jealousy. It was simply that her living with a boyfriend meant she might not be available when I wanted her. But I stressed — "and this goes for you, too, Fran" — that there were bound to be times when she knew I would be otherwise occupied and on those occasions I was happy for her to enjoy herself elsewhere. I was, frankly, slightly taken aback to hear myself so unsentimentally explaining the logic of the situation but the girls seemed to accept it as a matter of course, although Fran, much the more empathetic of the two, did spare a thought for the innocent victim.

"Do what you have to with Tommy, Connie," she said, "but don't be too hard on him. He's bound to be upset."

Connie shrugged. "He's young. He's nice-looking. He's good in bed," she said matter-of-factly. "He'll get over it."

After that the day passed with nothing worthy of report except frequent reminders from Brian to suck up to George at dinner that night. Towards the end of the working day reception rang to tell me that Wendy had arrived.

A midweek evening commitment in Surrey was a bit of a logistical problem. We needed to drive because public transport would have got us home ridiculously late so Wendy left work early and drove in to meet me in the City. She welcomed the opportunity, in these new circumstances, to see Fran again and meet Connie, and we all gathered in my office. They both looked a bit nervous about seeing Wendy but she, of course, put them instantly at ease. "It reflects so well on me, don't you think," she asked them rhetorically, "that my husband has such lovely admirers?"

Wendy looked great in the outfit we had chosen but I thought it looked a little tight here and there. I mentioned this as we fought our way through the South London traffic towards George's place and she agreed she had put on a little weight lately: did it bother me? Not at all, I assured her.

To be honest I was more worried about Sue Marjoribanks. What if Wendy had been wrong? Suppose I still fancied her: what then? As we neared our destination my feeling grew that something was bound to go horribly wrong. Just as we found the turning my cellphone rang. Wendy took it: it was Alicia, reporting with great excitement that she had spent much of the day on the phone to her parents and had swung it; she would move in on Saturday.

George's house was reached by a long country lane and turned out to be even bigger than I had feared, with acres of grounds. It was not in the stately home category but it was a most handsome and imposing nineteenth-century pile, originally built for (here I am guessing) some prosperous mid-Victorian City gent and now occupied by his twenty-first century successor. We drove through the gateway and up the immense drive. Our hosts must have been watching for us, because before we reached the house the front door opened and George stepped forth proudly, very much the monarch of all he surveyed. I pulled up. "Sorry we're late, George; the traffic."

George shook my hand warmly and kissed Wendy's graciously as I introduced her. "And of course you know Sue," he said as his wife emerged from the house. I looked at her nervously. When I had last seen her we had been students together and I had yearned for her desperately. It was with huge relief that I saw that the intervening quarter century or more had not been kind; it is not that she was ugly or grotesque but she had acquired a fair amount of weight and a lot of wrinkles and overall everything just seemed to have, well, sagged a bit. The raving beauty I remembered from my youth had turned into a thoroughly unremarkable woman approaching fifty and I was delighted to find that she was not at all fanciable.

"It's all right," I muttered to Wendy as I followed George into the house, a weight lifted from my mind.

My relief lasted for as long as it took George to lead us across a vast hallway into a handsomely appointed sitting room where he announced, "And I don't think you know my daughters.

"James and Wendy Walker," I heard him say as if from a great distance; "Vicky and Simone." I did not take in which was Vicky and which Simone, nor would it have made much difference if I had, for no two peas in the proverbial pod could have been more alike. Only now did I faintly recall reading a few years ago in an article about this rising star of the banking world that he had twins at some posh girls' school or other. But it was not their unexpected presence at the house that unmanned me; nor was it their being so utterly alike down to the last detail of makeup and attire; nor even their startling beauty. It was the fact that they resembled not only each other but also, with uncanny precision, their mother as she had been at the same age.

It got worse. As I feebly kissed their politely proffered hands, I heard George say, "Of course you don't mind if Vicky and Simone join us this evening? They're just down from Cambridge for a few days. It's their twenty-first on Sunday — you appreciate they're twins?" he asked, as if anyone could have overlooked the fact, "— and I'm giving a bit of a garden party for the occasion. It's going to be quite a big do, and there's a lot of preparation."

"All our friends are coming down from Cambridge," smiled the gorgeous Vicky (or it may have been Simone). "It'll be such fun." Even her voice and the way she moved exactly recalled her mother.

I sidled up to Wendy. "We've got to get out of here," I whispered.