Thank you to readers for the positive feedback for the 'London' series. Now that UK life is starting to thankfully look more positive, here is another instalment, set in the early months of 2021.
I'm trying not to watch the news. Every day is a bad news day here. In the high street, pubs and shops are boarded up. People wrapped in heavy coats and scarves hurry to and fro, wanting to escape the January cold and the ever-present threat of the virus. Nurses and doctors crawl home, exhausted, from desperately over-crowded hospitals. Behind a million suburban doors, children isolated from their friends struggle to work at cramped kitchen tables while parents, despairing, pour themselves another glass of red.
My phone pings. I look down. My best friend Sara.
If someone else tells me to go for a walk to cheer myself up I'll strangle them!
I snort and text back:
Tell me about it!
But I will walk. We all walk. It's pretty much all we've got right now.
Ah, yes. You already know all about this 2021 stuff, don't you? You probably came here to find out more about my affair with Kris. Well, reader. What can I say? You remember how it was. Our instant connection. The lingering glances over tea that quickly turned into forbidden, hungry, body-shaking sex. The best sex of my life.
Well, many things could have happened, after our last incredible, lust-drenched afternoon in June 2020. My husband could have found out about my affair and divorced me, storming out in a rage and instructing his solicitor to leave me penniless. Or Kris could have swept me away to a new life, claiming that he couldn't live without my love. Maybe the children worked out where I had been all those long afternoons and confronted me, angered and betrayed by their faithless mother.
But the truth is rarely so exciting or dramatic. In fact, towards the end of July Kris and I just ... fizzled out. Affairs often do. The summer of 2020 seems a world away now. In the heat, London had finally begun to open up again, tentatively, slowly, like a fragile poppy unfurling its scarlet tissue-paper petals to the sun. After our last encounter there were no emails from Kris, no invitations to come up for tea - or for anything stronger. I had expected a lull in our communications as life became more normal and neighbours started to meet again in gardens and parks, but I hadn't been prepared for total silence. Ghosting - isn't that what they call it now?
My pride was hurt, of course. But what could I do? Neither of us had made any promises. Several times I began drafting an email but somehow I couldn't find the right words, the right tone.
'Le petit mort' is how the belle époque French poets described an orgasm: 'The little death'. I would never quite get over the intensity of that day - our simultaneous ecstasy rocked my body to its very core. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before and yes, it was a kind of death; a climax unlike any other, which electrified for an instant every nerve-ending in my being. Afterwards there was an emotional blankness I couldn't process. And maybe Kris felt the same way. I suspected that, with so many women in his past, walking away came easily to him.
As July melted into August, I turned my attention outwards once more, accepting invitations to picnics in the park with friends, watching happily as the children laughed and ran in the sunshine, relishing the renewed freedom. We booked a family holiday in a tiny Sussex cottage miles from anywhere and for a whole week I felt safe, content, surrounded by nature. I nurtured the little garden in front of our house, planting fragrant lavender and purple hebe. Oh yes, I looked up at the flats opposite, of course. But I never expected to see so much as a glimpse of Kris. There was something about the blankness of the windows that told me he had gone long ago - maybe even a few days after the last time we had made love. The last time he had kissed me. The last time I had felt his hot mouth on my skin.
By early September I was feeling restored and in some ways, healed. My affair with Kris had given me a new sense of adventure, a new confidence in myself. The things I had done for him - the body-firming Pilates sessions; the make-up and flattering clothes - I now wanted to do for myself. I spent the last days of summer drowsing in long baths, watching the suds lap against my skin. I cleared out the bathroom cupboards and found long-forgotten oils and scented moisturisers that I carefully massaged into my breasts and thighs, enjoying the sensuality of self-care. I loved myself. I didn't need Kris. I didn't need to dwell on our heady afternoons of sexual pleasure. The spanking and swearing. The control in his blazing eyes. My eager submission. The glorious shame...
On the first day of the Autumn term, having dropped the kids at school, I marched unhesitatingly to the bin outside the house, lifted the lid and threw in the beautiful green lingerie.
+++
There's not much I can tell you about the autumn months that you won't already know. As the nights drew in, covid cases mounted once more. By mid-October, schools all over the country were sending students home, and my own children trudged wearily back to the kitchen table to carry on with their schooling. My husband, ever the workaholic, apparently found no hardship in transferring his punishing schedule to his study on the top floor. I had barely a glimpse of him through the week, while downstairs I cooked, cleaned and counselled, day after day.
"Mum, how do you multiply decimals?"
"Mum, what's for dinner?"
"I can't find any socks!"
The days congealed into a cloggy mass, like cold scrambled egg. Monday; Tuesday; Saturday - who cared? It was all the same. When the children were silent, the bathroom needed cleaning. When the bathroom was clean, my parents needed a call. When they had been reassured, someone was hungry. Someone was always hungry. The children, normally relatively self-sufficient, began to regress - wanting cuddles and bedtime stories like a pair of pre-schoolers. One day (who knows which day?) in October I was dusting the bookshelves and Virginia Woolf's
A Room of One's Own
caught my eye. I gave a hollow laugh and walked on by.
By November my self-care routine had crumbled. I stopped wearing make up, often not even bothering to brush my hair, which had become frizzy and was beginning to show grey at the temples. I wore nothing but jeans and tatty jumpers and stopped doing any exercise, swapping my workouts for constant tea and biscuits. The late autumn weather was as bleak as the daily news; nothing but bone-chilling winds and the spectre of death. And then, on 23rd November 2020, something happened that I could never have expected.
