The One Before The One. Katy Regan

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СКАЧАТЬ I said, Steeley, perhaps we’ll have to de-camp.’ Toby puts one arm across my chest then pulls me on top of him.

      ‘Decamp what?’

      ‘The book club, of course.’ He cups my boobs in his hands and gives them a squeeze. ‘I can’t do without my book club, no way. I’d go crazy with lust.’

      ‘Really?’ I say, with more hope in my voice than I’d intended.

      ‘Er, yeah. Let’s see.’ He frowns up at the ceiling in mock concentration. ‘Firstly, with whom else would I get to discuss whether Pride and Prejudice is, in fact, the perfect novel?’

      He gives one of his infectious schoolboy giggles and I kiss him on the lips.

      ‘How would I get through the week without hearing what a genius – who’s that Japanese bloke you love?’

      ‘Murakami.’

      ‘Yeah, him. What a genius he is. Where would we be without having to make it through another fucking Joanna Trollope novel?’ We both burst out laughing. ‘Shit, I mean, seriously!’ We’re both snorting now. ‘Enough to make you want to open a vein. And then there’s that Houellebecq dude. What a barrel of laughs he was.’

      He assumes a deep, pompous voice. ‘“I found Atomised very nihilistic text.”’

      I bury my head in his chest and shake with laughter.

      ‘Don’t be mean! At least Charles was actually taking it seriously, unlike someone I know.’

      ‘Who was just there because he fancied the arse off a certain book club member? A member who, as well as exquisite taste in literature, also happens to have the best norks in London.’ He squeezes them again and we end up snogging.

      I guess this is how I manage to square all this in my head (which most of the time I don’t, meaning I spend my waking hours swinging between ridiculous excitement at the prospect of the ‘book club’ and feeling like a wanton whore who is destined for hell). There once was an actual book club. Once upon a time, that wasn’t a lie. It was Marta’s idea, Marta being the office martyr, arranging countless, thankless, work-bonding events. We needed a venue, so I volunteered. It had been two months since Martin moved out and I liked the idea of the house being full once a fortnight. I imagined we’d sit around a roaring fire, sipping vintage Merlot and discussing so-and-so’s use of personification and whether we identified with such-and-such protagonist. What actually happened was that we’d discuss the book for ten minutes, get slaughtered on Blossom Hill. Then have a row.

      What was supposed to be a bonding exercise ended up dividing the office. It was ‘us’: Me, Toby, Shona and Charles from marketing (‘The ones with degrees,’ Toby would comment with typical scathing humour) and ‘them’: Marta, Health and Safety Heather and Toupee Dom (‘the plebs’ – Toby, again). The plebs thought our book choices were pretentious. We thought theirs were lame. Everything came to a head when Toby said that Heather’s choice – admittedly it was Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews – had less literary merit than a McDonald’s menu, and she fled from the club in tears.

      And so, one by one, people fell away until it was just Toby and I who found ourselves in my lounge, books in hands. I knew immediately this was a bad idea. We were reading Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi (my choice). An account of the night before a man leaves his wife, charting the unravelling of a relationship; how you can look at someone you’ve known for ten years and feel nothing.

      ‘How can you be married to someone for ten years and feel nothing?’ I said. We were sitting at my dining table. I’d lit candles – something I’d never done when everybody else was here.

      ‘Oh, it’s possible, believe me,’ said Toby, those eyebrows smouldering, fixing me with his hypnotic blue eyes ‘And it doesn’t have to take ten years.’

      I read a passage aloud. The drunker we got, the more seriously we were taking it. Or perhaps it was because discussing the book meant we didn’t have to acknowledge the strangling sexual tension in the room. I could feel Toby’s eyes burn my eyelids as I read. I looked up from the book and he was still holding my gaze. I read on, my heart thumping. Then there was a line where the narrator says how he never found a way to be ‘pleasurably idle’ with his wife; how she was always so busy, wanted too much out of life.

      ‘I know that feeling,’ said Toby. His gaze was intense, penetrating. Gone was the usual, puppy-dog Toby; he was serious. ‘Feeling neglected, unimportant.’

      The room had gone deathly quiet and I pulled a face. No doubt wholly unattractive, but nerves do that to me.

      Then Toby said: ‘You know what, Caroline (he never called me Caroline, only Steeley)? I think you may be one of the few women who does understand me.’

      I downed a glass of red in one. Then Toby sat down next to me, moved his face millimetres from mine and kissed me, but I’d not had time to swallow the wine so a dribble ended up in his mouth.

      ‘Sorry!’ Another bit escaped down my chin, so I now resembled an incompetent vampire.

      ‘Don’t apologize,’ he said. ‘Red wine and Caroline Steele. Two of my favourite things.’

      Things went from nought to sixty in about ten minutes. We abandoned the books and my top and started on the vodka (the beginning of the end). The next thing I know, I’m lying on the lounge floor smoking Lucky Strikes whilst Toby showers my belly with kisses (the end of the end) and he’s telling me he thinks I’m ‘enigmatic’ and I’m telling him I find it hard not to touch him at work, that I think he looks like James Dean. At which point, I imagine, I ceased to be enigmatic.

      And then he says, giving me the most gorgeous, stubbly kiss, ‘Well, if I’m going to live fast and die young I’d better get the snogs in now …’ And a small explosion took place in my groin.

      Then we ended up in my bed.

      ‘We need condoms!’ I said as he pulled my tights off. ‘We need condoms and we need fags!’ That’s the last thing I remember. I woke up, with just my bra on, a Lucky Strike – you live, or you die, the in-joke of the evening – lodged between my cleavage.

      In this case, I died. Of utter embarrassment. Talk about out of character. Toby, on the other hand, thought it was hysterical.

      ‘And I thought you were stuck up,’ he said, laughing and laughing in the office kitchen the next day, as I stood, face in hands.

      ‘This can never, ever happen again,’ I hissed. ‘You are bloody well married and I … I want to be single.’

      He raised his James Dean eyebrows at me. My cheeks burned furiously.

      ‘Not that I was suggesting …’

      ‘Oh, Steeley,’ he said, with his sexy little lisp, taking my hand. ‘Take a chill pill. It’ll be our little secret.’ Then he sighed. ‘But yes, you’re right, we can’t do this again’. He grimaced in a way that told me he didn’t mean this at all. ‘You are, however, sexy as hell. Remember that.’

      I did. Oh, I did.

      I shuffled into work later after a horrifying, near-vomit experience on the tube where I heaved, but nothing came out, so that СКАЧАТЬ