Dream Ticket - 5

FIVE

The lavender-scented steam and hot water did their usual trick of relaxing her aching muscles. Emma usually had the water as hot as she could stand, so that her skin turned rosy pink after ten minutes of soaking. This gave her the longest time possible in the tub, lying as she did until the water turned tepid and she gave in to the inevitable and clambered out. Quite often she nodded off in her peaceful aquatic haven with only soft flickering candlelight playing on the ceiling and blinking from the steamy tilework. Not tonight though. Her body may be relaxed but her mind remained tense and active. 

‘What a crazy end to the day’ she spoke out loud to the candles. Simon wasn’t due home for another couple of hours at least so she was quite free to chatter to herself. She just couldn’t get over the change in Lewis’s demeanour – from über cool and unflappable to.. well he’d just turned to a blabbering wreck.

‘I did that!’ she exclaimed with amazement, feeling a glow even through the hot water. Could she really begin to think the unthinkable and hope for a development in her new relationship with Lewis? It certainly hadn’t started off like it might be an affair to remember, in fact she wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t a bit crazy, despite what he’d said. Didn’t crazy people always think they weren’t crazy? She knew she wouldn’t get much sleep tonight if she kept running these questions through her head but she couldn’t help herself.

With a sigh she pulled herself up out of the tub, curtailing her lengthy soak. She was just too keyed up to relax and needed to be as active as her mind was. She stepped out and stood for a minute watching the water run down her curves. Like all women, she believed her body was not 100% right. In her case, she didn’t have a very good relationship with her legs (too short and calves too fat) and her nose (slightly crooked), but overall she was content. She turned sideways and admired her breasts and bottom. Perfectly counterbalancing her profile, they pertly jutted out and she smiled, remembering Lewis’s touch just below her waist earlier.

She closed her eyes and ran her hands down her body, feeling a tingle as she caressed the wet skin beneath, catching her nipples with her nails and drawing a sharp breath of pleasure. She let her imagination wander with her hands to thoughts of her favourite underwear. Maybe only half of the matched set, she grinned, maybe none of it. Her freshly bathed body hidden, temptingly under her best black dress, the one that hugged her like cling film and made a gorgeous low vee of cleavage. She knew she looked good in a short dress and had loved playing the flirtatious girlfriend when she’d first met Simon a million years ago.. Now.. well, now there was no need to try was there? She was a five year-old wife. And with that thought she effectively ended her relaxing and intimate private moment. She swore, as the delicious, low throbbing ebbed from between her legs and her fantasy thoughts disappeared with the steam from the bath.

‘Bastard! I can’t even get horny without you ruining it!’ she said under her breath and then stopped. Standing in the cooling bathroom, she had surprised herself at the venom with which she had spoken and also the speed at which Simon had became a you. A nameless object. A thing of loathing. She knew they were in a rut and she was mentally cheating on him but now it seemed, with the events of the day that she’d elevated their complacent marriage to near divorce. She didn’t really hate Simon, though... did she? Running the question round her head she found she couldn’t answer. But she did love him, right? She gave it some thought and then raised her head to meet her eyes in the mirror. With a mixture of sadness and relief she said ‘I don’t think I can answer that one anymore either’.

* * *

Ten minutes later, with her hair in a towel and wearing a nice warm fluffy gown she was busy bobbing round the kitchen preparing tea. Keeping herself busy kept all the conflicting thoughts she had from clogging her brain up and stopping it working.

Nice and quick, tonight – chicken salad, as she brushed the meat with oil and put it under the grill. There was no telling what time Simon would be home from Sale – his arrival times had been getting as erratic as they were late. Salad was her standby for his late arrival, food that wouldn’t spoil and a little silent protest; her way of saying that she wasn’t prepared to cook for two but eat alone.

She crossed to the fridge and withdrew a bottle of Pinot Grigio that she’d placed there the moment she came through the door – she’d had a feeling she might need something to drink before the end of the evening. As the chicken started to cook she uncorked the bottle, picked the largest glass she could find and wandered into the lounge, lighting some more candles and putting on a chillout CD. She had just curled her legs under her and taken a sip of her drink when, with unerring and unscheduled timing the front door opened.

‘Em! I’m back. Is me tea ready?! If not, why not, woman?!’ Simon boomed in a heavy Northern character accent.

Usually she smiled. Usually she’d shout something derogatory back. She had said from the outset she’d never be the kept wife and have a meal on the table the minute her husband walked through the door. He had agreed and said he’d never come home demanding it and threatening consequences otherwise.

Today was different though; something inside her had changed – a new feeling was emerging and she wasn’t quite sure what that meant just yet. She knew it was something to do with Lewis – hell it was a lot to do with Lewis, but she also knew that it had been bubbling under the surface for a while and that the events of the afternoon were just the excuse she needed to admit it.

‘In here’ she shouted back.

He came into the lounge, tossing his keys onto the table. ‘What’s up with you? I normally get “the dinner’s in the bin you cheeky bastard!” ’

‘Simon do you love me?’ Her directness startled her but she wanted to get to the bottom of this quickly.

‘What?’ he replied, frowning and taking a step back.

‘Do you love me? It’s easy to answer. Well, it used to be.’

‘What’s all this about? Of course I love you, what kind of question’s that?’ he replied, shrugging out of his jacket and turning to the drinks cabinet.

‘Maybe the sort of question a woman asks when she hasn’t heard the answer for a long time?’

He came and sat next to her with a Scotch in his hand. ‘Have you been drinking?’

She rubbed her face. ‘Bloody hell, why do I have to be pissed to be emotional? I just want to know if you still feel the same way about me now as when you said “I do” five years ago.’

‘Have I forgotten a date? It’s not our anniversary I know that much, but is it a birthday or something? Your mum’s birthday? Was I supposed to do something’ He looked puzzled.

‘Jesus, Simon!’ she exploded, frustrated. ‘Can’t you see what I’m asking here? Can’t you see how different things have been since you got that damned promotion? I never see you, you’re always home late, we live separate lives..’ she let the sentence hang and took a large gulp of wine. ‘It’s just not the same as it was’.

He reeled from her outburst and stood up. He downed his Scotch and headed back for the bottle.

‘I’m sorry love, you know how it is – it’s work. I’m so tied up with it that I can’t get away these days.’ He poured himself a bigger measure this time.

‘I know it’s bloody work – that’s all it’s ever been since October last, but there’s more to life than work, Si. What about us? Am I more important to you than a new contract?’

‘Us? We’re fine aren’t we? We have all weekends together, isn’t that what working couples like us are supposed to have?’ He grinned and returned to the sofa.

She took his glass and held his hands in hers. They were cold and slightly damp. Looking into his eyes she said ‘Are we fine, Simon? Really? Can you even answer that question yourself? Have you not noticed how unhappy I’ve been this past six months?’

His eyes flicked away from her to the television.

‘Of course you haven’t,’ she continued bitterly, ‘you’re never here to see me are you?’

‘Oh come on, that’s crap!’ he said, his tone sharpening.

‘Is it? Is it crap? It may be crap to you Simon but it’s how I feel. Alone and unloved.’

‘I love you for God’s sake!’ he cried, standing again. ‘Didn’t I just tell you so?’

‘I had to ask!’

He buried his face in his hands and made a growling sound. ‘Bloody hell why do you have to be so obtuse?! You women are all the same; moaning that I’m never here, moaning when I am here, making my life a misery, asking damn silly questions you know the answers to. You aren’t moaning when you’re spending my extra cash are you?’

Simon’s face was purple now as he snatched his Scotch back up from the coffee table.

Emma was no mouse, she could argue when she had to and wasn’t going to take this when she’d done nothing wrong. She stood up, wrenching the towel from her head and throwing it at him.

‘You what?! YOUR extra cash?’ She adopted a mocking tone. “There you go angel, you can spend, spend spend now”. You said that to me in there, the day you got the Stockport job’. She jabbed a finger towards the kitchen, from where smoke was starting to drift in through the door.

‘Shit! The bloody chicken!’ she cried and pushed passed him.

‘You see what you’ve done now?’ he yelled after her.

She yanked the grill pan from under the flame and clattered it onto the worktop. Grey smoke billowed from two blackened lumps. She picked them up with the tongs and threw them in the sink, dousing them with water.

She turned to face him as he marched through the door. ‘All I ask for is a little consideration, Simon. You used to be so considerate!’

He regarded her with hard eyes. ‘Everyone’s changed.’ he countered. ‘Even you. You used to love the attention, Laura.’

She felt a chill like ice water down her spine. Staring hard and annunciating each word, she half-whispered. ‘Who. The fuck. Is Laura?’

If he realised he’d made an error he never showed it. His face never slipped and to her amazement, he laughed out loud. He flapped his hands, exasperated.

‘You see? Now I’m getting flustered. I’ve just spent all day with that silly cow Laura from the Bid Team and finished off with a big row with her too. Been here five minutes and thinks she knows everything - that’s one of the reasons I was late. So that’s two of you in one day. Lucky old me. Look, can we drop this now?’

She suddenly realised that she was very tired, emotionally and mentally – this silly spat had been the final end to a very stressful day. She’d burned the tea – burned salad for God’s sake – fought with Simon and still had a whirlwind of feelings inside. She sat down on the breakfast stool and burst into tears. Too tired to fight him off, and at some inexplicable level still wanting him, she let him wrap his arms around her and coo and fuss and apologise.

‘We’ll be ok, babe he said,’ stroking her hair, ‘I know I’ve been neglecting you but I do still love you, you know.’

She nodded against him and he hugged her. She wished she could have seen his eyes as he said this, but she was buried in his chest, soaking the front of his shirt with hot tears. She wanted to believe him, too – about everything; not believing meant all manner things, some of which involved Lewis. If he had told her that he loved her then her failure to answer that same question earlier in the bathroom wouldn’t have mattered. If she was still loved then she would learn to love again. She would make him want her. But instead, he found the words as hard to say as she had and that was the main reason for the tears.

He pulled her off him and kissed her blotchy face. ‘Now, how about a Chinese? I don’t fancy barbecued chicken’.

She tried to smile, to pretend but she was more confused than ever.

Chapter 6