Becky decided to let Sarah bring up the subject of Bryan in her own time, but after twenty minutes of chatting about their children and the trials and tribulations of being a mother, she began to wonder whether Sarah was waiting for her to bring it up. Finally, there was a natural lull in the conversation and both women sat in companionable silence. Sarah cleared her throat.
‘Go on then,’ she said.
‘Go on then, what?’
‘Ask me about last night.’
‘Not if you don’t want to talk about it.’
Sarah looked sideways at Becky.
‘I thought you and Bryan had an arrangement?’ said Sarah. ‘No secrets?’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t extend to you,’ said Becky. ‘Besides, we made that agreement when we knew you as “Audrey” from Tara’s school, our fantasy lover. Knowing you as Sarah in the real world is a completely different ball game.’
Sarah turned away, pondering this. She looked into her empty coffee cup and her expression became sad.
‘You know, I had a fantasy,’ she said. ‘I was lying in Bryan’s arms after making love and it was time to go to sleep. But even as I lay there, feeling happier than I’d felt in god knows how many–‘
She stopped, her voice cracking. There were tears in her eyes. Becky wanted to put a comforting hand on Sarah’s shoulder, but some instinct warned her not to. She waited as Sarah pulled herself together.
‘But even as I lay there…’ she resumed. ‘I knew I had to let this man go. I had to find a way to say goodbye. So, in my fantasy, we wake up together spooning. And Bryan’s hand goes down my body, wanting to go between my legs… and I stop him. I turn around in bed, look him in the eye, and say, “Bryan, I love you very much. But it’s time for you to go back to your wife.” And his eyes become sad because he knows I’m right. And we kiss one last time and he quietly leaves. And I lie there in bed feeling unutterably sad, and yet also proud. Proud of how brave I am. Proud of my understanding. Proud of being a woman who keeps her promise, even though it breaks her heart to do so.’
Sarah was staring fixedly into space, her small hands bunched into fists on the table.
‘But then I wake up in the morning… and he’s gone. And his side of the bed is cold, and I realise that he must have got up in the middle of the night. And I wonder whether he even had sex with Becky after having sex with me, and this voice in my head says, “Of course he did! Becky is a goddess! She’s ten times the woman you’ll ever be!” ‘
‘Sarah…’
‘Let me finish!’
Sarah turned to Becky, her eyes full of pain and anger and anguish and despair.
‘You gave Bryan permission to spend one night with me,’ she said. ‘And he didn’t even want it! He didn’t even want it!’
Sarah’s face stretched, collapsed and opened up crying. She tried to disguise her weeping as coughs, but this made snot come out of her nose, adding humiliation onto despair. Becky grabbed the other woman, briskly wiped off the mucus with her hand the way she did with Tara, then she wiped it on the leg of her own jeans.
‘That’s gross, I’m sorry…’ wept Sarah.
‘Shut up, you silly woman, and let me hold you.’
That got a brief smile out of Sarah, then she collapsed into Becky’s arms, weeping like a child. Across the hall in the play-park, Tara and Max were leaping from one mini-trampoline to another. They didn’t even notice.
*************************
Sarah had a good cry and then went to the toilets to wash her face. Shortly afterwards, the children showed up, hair stuck to their foreheads, panting with thirst. Becky took the kids off to the refreshments kiosk while Sarah watched their stuff. When they got back, the four of them sat together, Tara and Max glugging their orangeade in between gasping accounts of what they were doing. Listening to them, it struck Becky that Max wasn’t the quiet little boy she had taken him for at first sight. He was holding his own pretty well with her own rumbunctious daughter.
After the children ran off to resume the serious business of playing, Becky shared her thoughts on Max with his mother. This led to a conversation about the differences between single mothers and married mothers which, perhaps inevitably, led to the subject of Max’s father.
‘I know he was violent,’ said Becky carefully. ‘But what are you going to do when Max starts asking about him?’
‘Oh, that began ages ago,’ said Sarah, with an undertone of bitterness. ‘Not long after he could talk.’
‘And?’
Sarah gave Becky a sideways look. She shifted on the bench so that one of her legs was out from under the table. Sarah was wearing jeans and she spread a hand over a specific area of her upper thigh.
‘I have here a patch of scar tissue instead of skin,’ she said, ‘where my beloved husband poured half a kettle of boiling water while I was in the bath.’
Becky was speechless. During that first dinner, Sarah had talked about her short, brutal marriage, but this was a new horror story. She shifted her leg back under the trestle table.
‘At present, I tell Max that Mummy spilt a pot of tea over herself by accident,’ she said. ‘But when I think he’s old enough to process the information without having nightmares, I’ll tell him the truth. Max is quite logical in the way he thinks. I’m pretty confident he’ll understand that a man who can do that doesn’t belong anywhere near a child.’
Sarah sat leaning on the table, her eyes searching for her son in the brightly coloured scaffolding of the play-park. There he was, waiting behind a couple of other kids to go down the twisty slide into a sea of plastic balls. She shook her head sadly, then looked at Becky.
‘Didn’t Bryan mention the scarring?’ asked Sarah.
‘No,’ said Becky.
‘Why does that not surprise me?’
Sarah turned her gaze back to the play-park and a tear ran down her face. Yet when she spoke, her voice was calm and matter-of-fact.
‘You’re married to a man who knows how to love,’ she said. ‘And I feel deeply grateful to you for last night and at the same time almost beside myself with envy. I want a Bryan of my own, and please don’t tell me “He’s out there, somewhere” because I’m not so sure that’s true.
‘Besides, I’m sick of hearing it. I’m sick of being alone, sick of longing for true love, sick of pining for my soulmate every goddamn day. And do you know what’s sickest of all? There are times when I actually miss being with my ex. Is that fucked up or what?’
Becky didn’t know what to say. None of the men in her past, no matter how disappointing, had ever crossed the line into abuse. Sarah gave a great sigh. She propped her cheek on her hand and looked at her companion.
‘All right, Becky,’ she said. ‘What happens next?’
‘What, when the kids are done playing?’
‘No, I mean with you, me and Bryan.’
‘Oh,’ said Becky. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you want to happen?’
‘I don’t know that either. I suppose I assumed…’
Becky stopped.
‘You assumed…?’ prompted Sarah.
‘Well, I assumed that last night would be a one-off,’ said Becky. ‘And to be honest, when you suggested we come here to talk and insisted on separate cars, I was expecting the I’ve-got-no-regrets-but-can-we-be-friends? speech.’