Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

“And do you smack them when they misbehave, or let them run riot?”

“Since he’s autistic he wouldn’t understand why you were hitting him, so there wouldn’t be much point,” Ben said. “Unless you think I should beat him anyway as a matter of principle.”

The woman’s cheeks flooded with colour. She turned her head away sharply. The room was dreadfully silent.

Well, that’s one way to kill a party, he thought, and then Maggie was lurching to her feet.

“Coffee, anyone?” she asked with a cheerfulness that was almost hysterical. Ben saw the quiver in her smile and felt ashamed of himself. As relieved conversation began to spread once more, he left the dinner table and went upstairs to the bathroom.

He urinated, avoiding looking at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands. Time to go home. He hadn’t been in a party mood before, and he was even less so now. Apart from his guilt at making a scene, the mention of Jacob had stirred up all sorts of emotional silt. Which was his own fault, but that didn’t make it any better. He would quietly make his excuses and leave, he decided.

He didn’t think he’d be missed.

He opened the bathroom door and found Colin waiting outside. “I hoped it was you in there,” he said, straightening.

“Look, I’m sorry about what happened, I know I should have kept my mouth shut,” Ben began, but Colin wasn’t listening.

“I need to talk.” His voice was low and urgent. He took hold of Ben’s arm and led him away from the stairs. He opened the door to his study and turned on the light. Maggie’s heavy hand was apparent even in here, unless Colin’s taste in colours ran to mauve. The new computer monitor on the leather-topped desk seemed both anachronistically modern and honest in comparison to the expensive but chintzy reproduction furniture. Colin closed the door. His eyes had a glazed look, and with surprise Ben saw that his friend was drunk.

“What’s the matter?”

Beneath the alcohol blush his friend’s face was drawn. He glanced nervously at the door. “I’m having an affair.” The attempt at sounding casual failed. He gave a weak smile at Ben’s expression. “I know. I can’t believe it either.” Ben had the feeling that there must be a sort of etiquette for this kind of conversation, but he had no idea what it was.

“Who is she?”

Colin ran his hand along the edge of his computer keyboard, checking for non-existent dust. “She works for a management company. They represent one of our bands.”

There was a peculiar relief that at least it wasn’t anyone more glamorous. “How long has it being going on for?”

“Nearly a month. I’ve known her for longer than that, but not... it’s always been in a professional context before. Then a few weeks ago there was a party to celebrate the band’s new album release, and we got talking, and... it sort of happened.”

“Have you seen her since?”

“About half a dozen times. She doesn’t live far from the office, so we go to her flat at lunch-time. And once or twice I’ve told Maggie I’ve been working late.” He gave a humourless laugh. “That old chestnut.” He sat down. “I just can’t believe it’s happened. I never thought I was the affair type.”

Neither had Ben, but he didn’t say that. “Does Maggie know?”

“Oh, Christ, no !” Colin looked horrified. “She’s no idea. No, no one knows. I wasn’t even going to tell you, but...” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving one thin strand sticking up. “I just feel such a fucking shit. She wanted me to make a speech tonight.”

“So are you going to finish it? With the girl, I mean?”

Colin took a moment to answer. “I don’t think I can.” He sounded miserable.

“What about her? The girl. What does she think?”

“We haven’t really talked about it.” He gave Ben a peculiar look. “She’s only twenty-two.”

It was almost a boast, and Ben found himself on the verge of a grin, an automatic slide into male collusion. But both of them seemed to draw away from it at the same time. Ben thought of Maggie and her frumpy dresses, in competition without realising it with a girl ten years younger, and felt an unexpected pity for her.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I haven’t a fucking clue.”

There was a silence in which Ben wished he could think of something constructive to say. Colin stood up.

“Well, I suppose we’d better go back to the party.”

Ben stayed till the end. Not just for Colin’s sake, but also for Maggie’s. He felt that leaving early would be a slap in the face for her. One she might not actually notice, he admitted, but he still couldn’t bring himself to do it. As the two of them came to the door to say goodnight he wished Colin hadn’t told him about the affair. He didn’t want to feel sorry for Maggie but he couldn’t help it.

“Thanks, it’s been great,” he lied, leaning into the aura of her flowery, unerotic perfume to kiss an over-powdered cheek.

“Glad you’ve enjoyed it. Thank you for coming,” she said, and for a second, as they looked at each other, social smiles firmly in place, he felt that the insincerity was openly exposed between them. His smile became stiff as he broke the contact and said goodnight to Colin, trying to make it seem as natural as he could. Feeling shoddy and two-faced, he hurried down the steps to the waiting taxi before he gave anything else away.

He shared the cab with a couple from the party who lived on the same side of town. The polite conversation petered out before the first mile, and they rode in the silence of people who have nothing in common, masking the awkwardness by staring through the windows.

After they had been dropped off, Ben spread himself out on the taxi seat and realised that he didn’t feel remotely tired. Or drunk. Since his brief clash with the woman and Colin’s revelation, he had stuck to coffee.

The cab trolled through the dark streets, the meter clicking softly in the background. He couldn’t make up his mind whether the affair showed that Colin wasn’t as staid as he was beginning to look, or if it was part of a premature mid-life crisis, a last kick against the social and family shackles that were tightening around him. Ben felt relieved that he wasn’t in that situation, until the barrenness of his own came back to him. What the fuck did he have to feel smug about? He tried telling himself that at least he and Sarah had had a good relationship, that they’d been faithful to each other, but the irony was too obvious for him to draw any comfort. Looked at in another way, their entire marriage had been a sham, built around the illusion that Jacob was Sarah’s real son.

He knew that wasn’t true, but the guilt he felt for thinking it fed his growing mood of self-disgust. And self-pity, if he was going to be honest. He stared morosely through the window.

The taxi was coming to a commercial area, darkened shops with neon signs, and pubs with the last of the night’s customers still spilling from them. He looked at his watch. It wasn’t even midnight. It just felt as if the evening had gone on for ever.

The cab turned down a side street. It was quieter than the main road and badly lit. Two girls were standing under one of the few working streetlamps. They were heavily made up, with short, tight dresses showing fleshy thighs. One of them gave Ben a smile as they watched the taxi go past. It was a professional invitation, but in his loneliness even that seemed to offer comfort. There was a hot constriction in the pit of his stomach. He leaned forward to tell the driver to stop, then sank back in his seat without speaking. He hadn’t sunk that low. Not yet.

Besides, I’d only be wasting my money. He wondered who he was to have felt even briefly smug about Colin’s infidelity. At least Colin could still get it up.