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M JANE COLETTE
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Copyright
Mischief
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.mischiefbooks.com
Copyright © M Jane Colette 2015
M Jane Colette asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EBook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008148737
Version: 2015–04–22
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Before
Day 1 – Maybe
Day 2 – Did she just?
Day 3 – Fuck Foreplay
Day 4 – Fatherhood
Day 5 – One night
Day 6 – Obsession
Interlude: She only belongs to those who take
Day 7 – I hate you
Day 8 – Too far
Day 9 – Jonesing
Day 10 – Thrice Broken Home
Day 11 – Unconditional
Day 12 – Depraved
Day 13 – Obligations
Day 14 – Do what you’re told
Day 15 – Spent
Day 16 – Perfect Trust
Day 17 – Interview for an affair
Interlude: Practice
Day 18 – I take good care of my possessions
Day 19 – Generous
Day 20 – Rage
Day 21 – Permission
Day 22 – Striptease
Interlude: I’ll let you play with her
Day 23 – Worst Christmas Ever
Day 24 – Six Hours
Day 25 – Evidence
Day 26 – Blame
Day 27 – Endurance
Day 28 – Utilitarian Sex
Day 29 – For you
Day 30 – Unresolutions
After
More from Mischief
About Mischief
About the Publisher
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Jane: protagonist-narrator. 38. Married. Four children. Works from home erratically as a financial analyst. Analytical, realistic, rational, almost detached…until she gets that text from Matt.
Matt: hero/anti-hero in one. 41. Married. Childless. A lover from Jane’s past who re-enters her life and shakes its foundations.
Marie: Jane’s best friend. 39. Married. Two children. As emotional and volatile in her expressions and search for passion and romance as Jane is controlled and restrained. Actively and constantly searching for affairs; failing to consummate any of them.
Alex: Jane’s husband. 40. Lawyer. Workaholic. Good father. Affectionate but perhaps unexciting. Except to his young associate, whose texts he reads in the bathroom…
Lacey: Jane’s next-door neighbour. 53. Gorgeous, sexy, confident and loving. The only person Jane comes close to confiding in. In a twelve-year-long, on-again-off-again relationship with Clint.
Clint: Lacey’s lover and father of her ten-year-old son. Player. Engaged to Lacey, but still involved sexually with the mother of his other son, who becomes pregnant (by him? Or her other lover?) while Clint is wedding planning with Lacey.
Nicola: Marie and Jane’s friend. 40. Two children. In the middle of an acrimonious divorce from Paul, her husband of twelve years. Angry, resentful. But also…hungry.
Jesse: Jane and Nicola’s personal trainer. 26. Eye candy. Not very bright. Taken for granted by Jane. Coveted by Nicola.
Jane’s mother and father: In their 60s, spry and attractive. The tensions in their 43-year-old relationship, a defining feature of Jane’s childhood, reach a breaking point as Jane begins her mindfuck with Matt.
JP: Marie’s husband. 45. Lawyer. Works with Alex. ‘King of foreplay’, but otherwise thoroughly unsatisfactory.
Paul: Nicola’s husband. Referred to by Nicola and her friends as cheating rat-fuck bastard so often, Jane forgets what his name is…until he starts sexting with Marie.
Colleen: Nicola’s best friend. Long divorced. Appears intermittently in role of ‘Greek chorus’ to offer unconditional support to Nicola and vent against all cheating spouses.
Melanie-Susan-Shelley: Alex’s associate, whose name Jane refuses to remember. 28. Has a huge crush on Alex. Not sure how to deal with the fact he has a wife and children.
Craig: Married. 45. Attractive, restless. Minor character who enters Jane’s life and is passed on to Marie.
Alex’s mother, father and assorted stepmothers: Alex’s mother was ‘the first wife’, and she’s still not quite over the divorce. Neither is the second wife. The third wife wants to have a baby. His son desperately wishes he didn’t have any of his genes.
Before
2001
Recovered from the exertions of your wedding night, lover? And the honeymoon?
—Fuck off.
Of course. Tell me next time you’re in Montreal.
—I will.
Good.
2002
Jane, what the fuck happened? What did I do? Tell me.
—Nothing. It’s not you. I have to be done.
Clarify.
—I can’t do this. I can’t be – his. Yours. And now the other. I can’t. I have to be done.
I don’t understand. But you know I won’t chase. I’m gone.
—Go. I’ll miss you. But please go.
Gone.
2002
Congratulations.
2004
Lover. Are you all right?
—I’m alive. Don’t fucking call me that.
2008
More new baby pics have made it my way. Congratulations, lover. You look happy.
—A) Don’t call me that. B) I am. C) Still an evolutionary dead end?
Is that an indirect way of telling me to fuck off?
—Yes.
Gone. I am happy for you. Truly.
2010
Love the new look. Hot.
—Yup.
Knowing you’re hot – also hot.
—Not for you.
Ouch.
2011
—Happy birthday and all that.
Thank you. Lover. How are you?
—Fine.
Will you come see me next time you’re in Montreal?
—I have four children. I don’t jet-set very much these days. Are you ever in YYC?
Rarely. But sometimes. Is that an invitation?
2012
I have a new client who will have me flying into YYC now and then. If that happens – will you see me?
—Maybe.
Maybe. That’s how it begins.
Day 1 Maybe
Monday, December 3
5 a.m.
Fuck. I close my eyes. Turn this way, that. Open them. 5.01 a.m. Well. This is productive. I get up – give the alarm clock a resentful stare. Go downstairs. Ponder making coffee – making that first pot is a sign of surrender to the morning, an admission that I will not go back to bed.
I make the coffee. Sullenly at first, then with just the slightest tinge of happiness as the grinder whirrs the beans. I breathe in its scent. And I listen to the quiet of the house – everyone’s still sleeping upstairs. I am awake and I am alone. I let go of the ‘why did I get up so early when I didn’t have to?’ resentment and relish the feeling of being. Awake. Alone.
Eight minutes later, I’m on the couch, curled up with a cup of coffee and my laptop. Check email…Seven minutes later, when Alex comes down the stairs, I’m working.
‘What are you doing up so early?’ we say simultaneously. Laugh.
‘One of my idiot partners in Toronto scheduled a conference call for eight a.m.,’ Alex says, stretching. ‘Eastern. I’ve got to be in the office in forty-five minutes. You?’
‘Just couldn’t sleep,’ I say. ‘As it turns out, some idiot in Toronto is having a panic attack and desperately needs me to review this business study. For nine a.m. Eastern. So you know – the insomnia was fortunate.’
He laughs. Kisses my forehead, grabs a cup of coffee, heads back up to shower. I read, think, type. I have three – less than three, really – hours until the little people start making their way down the stairs and claiming my attention. Focused. Fast.
Alex is back down the stairs in twenty minutes. ‘Bye, love,’ he calls as he rounds past me to the front door.
‘Bye, love you,’ I call back, without a break in the typing. ‘Going to be home in time for dinner tonight?’
‘Unless some idiot in Toronto screws it up,’ he says as he slips into his coat. ‘Will text you.’
Of course.
By the time I’ve made my way through most of the second pot of coffee, the kids are coming down. Cassandra, my ten-year-old, first – shocked to see me up and awake before her. And then as appreciative of the silence around us as I am. She curls up on the couch beside me, with a bowl of cereal and a book.
The peace and silence end when the boys stampede down. Henry’s seven. Eddie’s six. Together, they sound like a platoon of baboons. Even at 7.15 in the morning. Cereal. Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix. Annie, the four-year-old, bum-slides down the stairs at 7.45, and my day’s work is done – parenting begins as Annie starts her day by cuddling in my lap for half an hour.
You cannot be cuddled by a four-year-old and be as brutal as my clients need me to be. I hold her. Drink coffee. Check Facebook. New messages.
‘What are our plans for the day?’ Cassandra asks. ‘This is a weird school day, right?’
‘You’ve got that pioneer Christmas thing at the Farm, and then we’re watching Marie’s kids in the afternoon,’ I tell her. She whoops in delight and races upstairs to get dressed. Annie follows her. I have to holler at the boys to do likewise.
The first message is from Marie.
We still on for this afternoon? I’ll see you at the Farm, right?
The second.
Maybe. Never was a word so full of potential. I’m glad you wrote me back, I was worried there for a while.
For a decade.
My lips curl into an involuntary smile. I won’t write back. Not yet. I’ll just enjoy knowing he’s in my inbox.
‘Mom! Eddie’s wearing my favourite shirt!’
‘Am not!’
‘Mom! I have no socks!’
I climb the stairs slowly, cooling coffee cup still in hand. Mondays. Really, not that much different from Sundays.
‘And you’re of course welcome to participate if you like,’ the Laura Ingalls Wilder lookalike who checks us in at the Farm tells me. ‘Parents welcome!’ I look at her in horror. The thought of spending the morning churning butter, milking cows, making candles, splitting wood or whatever it is the pioneers did to prepare for Christmas is an experience I’m willing to forgo. Happily. If the four-year-old lets me…but she’s already gone, holding on to her sister’s hand. ‘We get to make candles!’ she calls out to me over her shoulder. I give her a thumbs-up. The boys have already found their friends. I beat a retreat to the cafeteria.
Marie’s already there, two coffee cups in hand.
‘I got your mocha for you,’ she says. ‘An advance thank you for this afternoon.’ I accept. ‘Thank God you’re here too – I was having an I’m-the-worst-mom-ever moment,’ she continues. ‘Look at all those women crowding around the gingerbread table. For Christ’s sake, don’t they do enough of that at home?’
‘Have you ever made gingerbread at home?’ I ask Marie.
‘No one likes gingerbread at my house, thank God,’ she says. ‘I’ve made chocolate chip cookies. You’ve even eaten them, bitch. Stop ragging me. Drink.’
That’s Marie-speak for ‘I need to talk’. I look at her and wait.
She makes an extravagant gesture with her hands, but before she says a word, she is interrupted. A chattering herd of women, mothers of our children’s friends and classmates, enters the cafeteria. We’re an incestuous community. They know us. We know them. Our kids go to the same alternative ‘private’ school. Too many of our husbands work together – for each other – against each other. For all its urban pretensions, this is a painfully small town. A subgroup of them meanders to our table. We exchange meaningless pleasantries.
The conversation flows down well-trodden tracks. Christmas. Field trips. Anyone doing the Christmas at Heritage Park day? No? Why not? Shopping. Someone’s got the flu. Someone else is just recovering. Someone else is getting divorced, have you heard? Another revealed affair. A sense of ennui, almost overpowering, envelops me. I’ve had this same conversation…last week. And the week before.
I pull out my phone. Email. Panicked client. Another emergency. Ah, not going to happen today. Maybe for tomorrow. Not acceptable. This is a real emergency. Please. Double my fee. Anything. Fine. Your inbox, tomorrow a.m. Ecstatic client. How I’m going to accomplish that, I’m not sure…
The women’s voices around me rise and fall. Marie and I exchange looks – ‘Later’, hers says – but she falls into the conversation enthusiastically. I haven’t the desire.
Ennui.
Maybe. Never was a word so full of potential.
I check Facebook. I’ll write back. Maybe.
There’s a new message. From him.
Breaking news. In town December 14/15. Would love to see you. Can we make that happen?
Oh.
The air around me vibrates and it has nothing to do with the speed at which my heart is beating. My pulse is not elevated and my breathing is not changed. Yes, I’m smiling. Fuck that, of course I am. Old friend. Oldest of friends. It’s been years. Pleasurable anticipation.
I lift my eyes from the face of the phone briefly, and realise that the mood of the conversation has now changed. Its topic is no longer kids, teachers, enrichment programmes and who’s reading what or buying what for whom. It is now Nicola’s rat-fuck bastard of a husband and their gong-show of a divorce. Or is it still a separation? Nicola’s talking in a slightly hysterical voice about their current fight over the line of credit, what to do with the mortgage, and his lack of co-operation on the co-parenting plan. ‘Step one is taking the Parenting After Divorce Seminar, how hard is it to just take a weekend and do it, God knows he doesn’t take the kids every weekend!’ she wails. Colleen, her own gong-show of a divorce story almost four years old now, is leading the offers of unconditional support. Everyone else is murmuring in assent, saying, ‘What an asshat’ or ‘Rat-fuck bastard’ every once in a while.
I take a moment to be, once again, astounded that Nicola’s rat-fuck bastard of a husband managed to be, first, attractive to Nicola, and then, attractive enough to his mildly skanky intern to get pursued, seduced, played. Proof there’s someone out there for everyone.
And I turn back to the phone. And type.
—Breaking news indeed. Message me when your schedule nails down. Coffee? Wine? Jägermeister?
There. Friendly, but not eager.
My pulse has not quickened. My lips are curling into that stupid smile, but that’s what he’s always done to me. But. There’s nothing wrong with smiling.
Ping. Fucking Facebook. Immediate response. He’s on.
I vote Jager shots.
I don’t have to respond. I look up from the phone at the women around me. ‘So there we are, on our first family holiday in two years, we’re about to go to Disneyland, fucking Disneyland! And he’s in the bathroom, sexting with the girlfriend!’ Nicola’s voice rises. ‘Sending her pictures of his erect cock, for fuck’s sake!’
‘What a bastard,’ Colleen says and shakes her head. The voices of the others rumble in the background, a continuing Greek chorus of indignation and support.
I’m perverse. And I’ve heard this story about six times in the last month.
I text Matt back immediately.
—Nice. I have almost two weeks to work up some level of resistance to Jager. Where? Are we bringing our significant others, or living dangerously?
I vote danger.
I let the lips do as they will. Type a smiley face. Delete it. Disclose the deletion. Type:
—(I’m looking for the right emoticon)
I’m looking for the elevated heart rate emoticon.
Fuck. Matt. No.
I should stop typing. Engaging. Turn off the fucking phone. Instead:
—I can’t find the right one. Jesus. How many years has it been? I hope we won’t be disappointed.
You couldn’t disappoint me if you tried.
—I won’t try. See you on the 14th.
I very much look forward to it.
I wish this was the kind of phone you could snap shut. That’s what I want to do: I want to terminate the conversation with Matt, because where he draws me, where he’s always drawn me, I am reluctant to go. Reluctant sometimes, anyway. Reluctant for the past ten years and still reluctant now, today, in this precise moment.
I turn off the phone – not nearly as satisfying as the sound made by clicking it shut would be – and turn my attention to the continued crucifixion of Nicola’s rat-fuck bastard of a husband and his clichéd affair, conducted primarily via texts on an un-password-protected phone he’d just leave lying around the house. ‘Who does that? How does a man with a fucking Masters degree from MIT do that?’ Nicola asks, and I’m uncertain if she’s talking about the carelessness or the betrayal.
‘At least it was easy to track, and you found out about it as quickly as you did,’ Colleen counsels her. ‘My ex was screwing around on me for years.’
Marie looks at me and taps her phone. She starts texting.
Fine. He’ll be gone by now anyway. I turn the phone back on. Marie’s text is short and to the point. ‘OMFG pls tell me you this bores you as much as it does me.’ I look at her and bite my lips.
Ping.
Did you find the emoticon that captures your feelings?
I don’t have to respond. But. I do.
—No. Maybe there isn’t one. I’ll have to express my emotions live.
Or we could go old school. Use adjectives. I’ll start.
Hopeful.
‘Jane?’ It’s Nicola. ‘What do you think?’
I have no fucking clue what she’s talking about. It’s possible my pulse rate is elevated and my breathing jagged. Fuck. And my eyes glassy. Marie jumps in.
‘Don’t bother her,’ she says. ‘She’s dealing with some client emergency.’ Nicola feels slighted, but I am saved. And grateful for my bizarre work-from-home job, so esoteric and complicated that no one really understands what I do – and, in this circle of stay-at-home-moms and ladies-who-lunch at least, I’m treated with cautious respect as a result.
When they’re not thinking I neglect my children and my husband’s career, that is.
‘Clients,’ I say. ‘And with these phones, we’re always on call.’
Fucking liar.
I type.
—Nervous.
Really? Pulse pounding.
—Not an adjective.
Hard.
I have to cover my mouth with my hand. Oh, my fucking God, Matt. Really? From hopeful to hard in two adjectives? Some things never change, I think. And I type:
—Some things never change.
Like your effect on me.
—Things slow at work today, are they?
Not at all. Give me an adjective.
—Titillated.
Hungry.
—Anticipating. (Is that an adjective?)
I’ll allow it.
Throbbing.
What will you wear?
—Clothes.
Not for long.
—public place
Good.
—overselling?
Ha.
‘Jane?’ It’s Marie. ‘Cassandra, waving at you madly.’
I drop the phone into my purse and leave the cafeteria. Behind me, Nicola is passing around her iPhone, showing screenshots of the rat-fuck bastard’s texts…and naked photos of the girlfriend. I choose not to think about what was involved in transferring these from his phone to hers – oh, fuck, I thought it: did he forward them during their brief ‘we must be open and honest about this if we are to save our marriage’ phase? Did she forward them to herself during the following, and still ongoing, ‘I must gather evidence if I am to skin his hide’ period? Why am I thinking about this? – and go to find out what’s up with my children.
Nothing much, as it turns out, but the candle-making isn’t as horridly uninteresting as I thought it might be, and the metal-ornamenting is actually really cool, and Henry and Eddie really want me to go with them to see the cows, so I stay with them for the rest of pioneer Christmas. And then back into our minivan. And home, with Marie and her crew of two on our heels.
Marie’s anxious.
‘Are you sure this is OK?’ she asks for the umpteenth time as she follows her kids into the house.
‘Jeezus, woman, if it wasn’t, I’d have said so when you asked me,’ I chastise. ‘Besides, four kids, six kids, not much difference. How much louder or messier can they be? I’m going to run them up the hill, get them to sled, and if I decide I want to kill them, I’ll make them watch Minecraft videos on YouTube. It’s all good. Go.’