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Sex, Lies Declassified
Eva Mazza
To Melinda Ferguson
&
Mom, Dad, Annette & Chris
Life’s dramas happen, but blood binds us
Prologue
Jen found an armchair in a corner of the Slow Lounge at Cape Town International Airport. She was too afraid to turn on her phone. Too afraid to deal with the messages she knew were pouring in. She wondered if Zinhle was coping, fielding the many phone calls. She hadn’t given her assistant much information, because she didn’t have much to give, except that she was landing at Charles De Gaulle Airport and would make her way to Monte Carlo in a week or two. She could do with the break. The way she felt right now, she wouldn’t mind the time to recharge, regroup and reflect.
Part of her healing this past year had been about forgiveness and, if she had to be honest, she had never forgiven Frankie. Maybe that’s why she felt so confused and so utterly guilty. After all, they had spent more time together as friends than they had estranged. But Frankie had hurt her badly and it was almost impossible for Jen to pretend she didn’t care.
She poured herself a glass of dry white – her second in a very short space of time – and took a long sip, savouring the crisp flavour, redolent of gooseberries. Her internal monologue continued, processing the enormity of what she’d just done and what she was about to do.
She could hear them all, especially her ex-book club friends. “Jen’s run away, again!”
“Left me when I needed her the most,” that would be Brigit, her daughter.
Her ex-husband, caught having the life sucked out of his dick just over a year ago, gloating that she wasn’t as together as she’d made out: “She’s just as fucked-up as I am!”
And Myron. She grimaced. He had been her ‘happy ending’.
Jen gulped the rest of her wine before making her way to the boarding gate. “Is there even such a thing as a happy ending?” she asked, too tipsy to care if anyone could hear.
“Why can’t anything just be fine?” Brigit had screamed at her when she told them she was leaving; that she had booked a flight to Paris.
“As if I haven’t wanted everything to be just fine,” she said aloud.
What she had learned in her fifty years, is that life offered you pockets of happiness; but not happy endings.
She had been so happy! At least for a while. She tried to pinpoint the precise moment her life had started to unravel again. Deep down she knew the day that WhatsApp message came through on her birthday, that’s when everything changed.
One
Sharon sat opposite Jen at Willoughby’s in the V&A Waterfront. It was Monday lunch and Jen knew Sharon didn’t have much time, but Jen had been anxious to chat to her. “I’ve made a mental note to make these escapes a priority,” Sharon said. “But you know that being a workaholic is difficult to undo, especially on the first day of the working week.”
“I know,” Jen perused the menu. “Thanks for meeting me. I promise I wouldn’t have called you and Claudy if I didn’t think it was urgent.” Jen’s hair had grown in the last year and now cascaded around her shoulders. She tucked a strand behind her ear as she spoke. Sharon noticed her friend’s glow since she and Myron had become an item. “You are looking quite beautiful, my friend. The change! I remember exactly how you looked when I first encountered you in my office after you’d found out about John and Frankie,” she smiled, “and his other sexual misdemeanours.”
Jen noticed Sharon’s eyes shift to her vibrating phone which she had placed face-down on the table to deter distraction.
“Do you need to check it?” Jen asked.
Sharon resisted the temptation by hailing a waiter. A young man of about nineteen who introduced himself as Derrick was by her side in no time. “I’m in a little bit of a rush,” Sharon told him. “So we’re going to order everything together, if possible.” She looked at Jen, “What are you going to drink, J?”
“I’ll have a spritzer. Claudy said to go ahead and order without her, she’s going to be late.”
“To hell with it!” Sharon said to herself more than to Jen, “I have to get back to work, but a little alcohol at midday on a Monday never killed anyone. Make that two, please,” she instructed Derrick. “We’ll share a bomb and edamame beans. Okay with you?”
Jen nodded. It was their usual order.
“What’s so urgent?” Sharon asked after Derrick had left.
“The strangest thing happened to me on Sunday morning after the party, and I can’t stop thinking about it,” she said, leaning her elbows on the table and clasping her hands.
Sharon’s interest piqued. For a moment she almost forgot the piles of files she had to go through in preparation for tomorrow’s mediation.
“I was woken up by my phone constantly vibrating.” Sharon looked down at her own phone which hadn’t stopped since she’d got there, “And, when I finally checked my messages, one in particular caught my attention.”
Derrick was back, faffing at their table. The two halted their conversation. A large carafe of white wine glistened invitingly. Jen poured the ice-cold contents into Sharon’s wine glass and topped up the rest with soda. He had left the beans and an empty bowl for the shells in the centre of the table before heading off to another group of customers. She watched him leave before she continued.
Then she leaned in closer, lowered her voice when she spoke. “One message was from an unfamiliar number. It read something like, ‘Happy birthday from beyond the grave’.” The wine didn’t make it down Sharon’s throat.
“What!”
Jen milked the drama, taking time to pour her wine, then clinked her glass up against Sharon’s. “Serves you right for drinking before clinking!”
“So, is there more?”
“Yes,” Jen said.
Sharon’s head tilted sideways as it always did in therapy sessions. Her friend took a huge glug of wine and swallowed before she went on.
“I struggled to bloody open it. Maybe if I had opened it sooner it wouldn’t have been deleted.”
“It was deleted?” Sharon slouched back in her chair.
Jen nodded. “I did manage to read most of it, I think.”
Sharon grabbed a bean and immersed it in soya sauce. She broke the shell between her teeth and sucked on it. “Well, what did it say, for God’s sake, J?”
Jen dipped hers in and out of the soya sauce. “It said ‘I hope you’ll be dancing beyond fifty’. No, ‘tangoing after you’re fifty’. Something like that.” She sucked off the salt and sauce before breaking it with her teeth and liberating the beans from their shell.
Sharon did the same then said, “But you still have the number, right?”
“Yes,” Jen answered as Derrick arrived carrying a portion of Willoughby’s speciality dish, the bomb, a sliced tempura prawn and seared tuna roll covered with delectable chilli-mayo sauce.
They acknowledged their waiter and grabbed their chopsticks, simultaneously splitting them into two.
Jen shoved a roll into her mouth and watched as Sharon did the same.
“So, did you text back?” Jen shook her head no. “Try phone back?” Again, no.
“No! Why?” Sharon asked.
Jen