speeches from the school heads about the achievements of our year’s alumni group and the achievements of the school since we’d left, as we sat in rows like we had as kids – only this time on chairs not the floor or a bench.
My theory was we’d been brought back because we were of average child-bearing age and they hoped we’d send our kids here.
Kids. That was one mistake I’d not made with Sharon and I had a very firm condom rule in our sex games. A child wouldn’t want the sentence of a life with me as their parent, or Sharon acting as mother.
After the speeches, we were given time to wander about the ancient halls and rooms, re-familiarising ourselves with the place. It was weird. I could see myself at desks, talking to people in halls, kissing Victoria and some of the other girls after Victoria had left, up against the walls.
Victoria had been three rows in front of me in the hall, but if she’d sensed me behind her, she hadn’t looked back.
As I wandered around the halls alone, wondering how my pathway from here had ended up where it had, I saw her walk out of a room with a friend. When she saw me, she walked back in.
I carried on, walking past the room she was in, as she clearly didn’t want to speak to me. I ended up outside on the lawn on my own, walking about the rugby pitch, wishing for a joint again. I hadn’t ever smoked cigarettes. I only smoked when the tobacco contained something with more punch.
Hands in pockets, I walked along the recently re-marked white lines, viewing me then and me now in my mind’s eye. I suppose the two of us were not that different. I’d been a self-obsessed shit then too, only then I’d valued it as self-belief. But it had helped me create a successful business. It was not to be knocked too heavily.
It was that cocky attitude that had made me tell everyone else they were wrong about Sharon when I’d met her. My parents and Em had warned me I was taking a wrong path. I’d told them to fuck off out of my personal business. But it was the wrongness and forbidden nature of the life I led that had made me get involved in it. It held a sense of risk and that made my blood pump with adrenaline. And, of course, anything that had pissed my parents off, and got my adrenalin raging, I’d been into it when I was younger. My self-focused attitude had made me rebellious and I wouldn’t have let my parents set boundaries around me when I’d just made a million. In my eyes, then, I’d been a genius and they’d been beneath me.
I’d been a big-headed dick, and now—
‘Jack.’ I turned around to see Victoria walking towards me, in a pair of pale-pink stiletto heels that were sinking into the grass of the pitch. She had a light flowery summer dress on, one that covered her breasts entirely and fell down to her knees. One that showed the outline of her body as the sunlight shone through the cotton and made me want to guess what everything looked like beneath.
I was more used to women who wore tops that shoved their breasts up in your face, or showed you the first curved edge in a dress secured by tape. While their skirts were so high you had no leg left to imagine, and if they opened their legs, which they frequently did deliberately, you had nothing at all left to imagine.
Imagination was nice and Victoria’s simplicity and prim dress had me hornier than any of the half-naked women Sharon liked us to play with.
I was glad Victoria had come looking for me. Maybe she’d been waiting for a moment to speak quietly. Just the two of us. Maybe I would do what Sharon expected me to do tonight and share a bed with Victoria, for old times’ sake.
‘Hi,’ I said, as she came closer. ‘I got the vibe you didn’t want to talk to me, otherwise I’d have come over and said, hello, last night. How are you? Is life treating you alright?’
She gave me a faint smile and looked me in the eyes. The look wasn’t there. Her pupils didn’t flare. She just looked awkward. It didn’t look like she even fancied me.
I had another sleepless night to look forward to… My internal voice, which never fucking shut up, laughed.
‘Hi,’ she answered. ‘I do want to speak to you, but I’ve been building up courage.’ She swallowed as if she had a dry throat.
I held her arm and turned her away from the school towards the edge of the narrow river where there was a path her heels wouldn’t sink into. She didn’t try to shake my hand off.
Was she thinking about the times we’d lain out here and used the grass as a bed? I remembered. I could remember every element of what it had felt like because she’d been my first.
I let go of her when we reached the river path, but we kept walking, following the path further away from the school. My hands slipped back into my pockets. I looked ahead, not at her.
‘You’re married,’ she said. ‘I heard Edward tell one of the others when she was asking about you.’
A sound of amusement slipped out of the back of my throat. So Edward had been guarding me from propositions. He definitely would not agree with mine and Sharon’s open way of life. ‘Yes, I’m married. What about you?’
‘But you didn’t bring her.’
‘No, this type of do isn’t her thing. She’s high-maintenance.’ It was the only way I could describe Sharon to people. She was, though – I had to invest eighty per cent of my mind and money on her to keep her happy, or to make sure she was not up to something that would make me unhappy. It had got to the point that I only really took part in the orgies because the argument if I didn’t take part took too much energy, Sharon never backed down.
I’d rather be with someone quiet like Victoria. It would be like going away to Cumbria. The solitude and solidity of having sex with one woman was currently the best fantasy I had. ‘And you? You didn’t answer. Are you married, settled down, single… What?’
‘Married.’ She looked at me with the smile I remembered from our school days and lifted her left hand to show me the ring. On top of it was a beautiful white-gold engagement ring too, with a sapphire and a diamond entwined.
‘Is he here?’
‘No. I have a daughter…’ Her breath caught for a second, but then she carried on. ‘She’s at home with him.’
‘Are you happy?’
She smiled. ‘Yes. Very.’
It was weird, because if I took Sharon out of the equation, the two women who’d counted in my life were the complete opposite of me. The sensible part of me was drawn to level-headed women like Victoria and Em. The wild me…
Here was Victoria settled into a quiet life with a husband and a kid, in her below-the-knee length print dress that covered all of her breasts, and I’d bet she only went out to a restaurant for special occasions because her world was all wrapped up at home. It was nice. I was glad for her.
Then there was Em, with her accountant’s brain, and her black-and-white way of looking at life. She had everything in our business and her personal life sewn up tight; she never let anything slip. I liked to be all over every project at work, but I didn’t need to be, with Em, because she was always there before me. But even she did not know how I lived my life with Sharon, and I saw Em every day. What did that tell me?
Sharon loved trying to rock that relationship; she hated me being close to Em. She even sent girls into work to try and get Em riled up with me, so that Em and me would fall out. My wild side laughed it off, and in the early days I’d indulged with one or two of the really pretty ones, because my attitude then had been ‘why not?’.
Now it was – why?
‘Are you happy?’
I should have known I’d get the same question back.
‘Yes.’ No. The white lie was easier.
‘There’s something I need to tell you, Jack. It’s the only reason I really came here. But I was a coward last night. Can we sit down and talk?’
‘Sure,