Read Online Wishful Thinking by Jemma Harvey - Free Book Online Page A

‘If you’re so married, why all the extra-curricular activity?’
    â€˜Christy and I don’t have sex. I thought everyone knew that. We’re going through a bad patch.’ He sounded slightly defensive. ‘Lots of married couples do. We’ll get over it, and when we do I’ll go back on the straight and narrow. Until then . . . I’m a man, I like women, I need sex. I suppose I ought to control it, but I’ve never been good at abstention. In any case, you’ve only got one life and you have to make the most of it. Someone or other once said it isn’t the things you’ve done that you regret, it’s the things you haven’t done.’
    â€˜You wouldn’t believe how often I’ve heard that one,’ Georgie sighed. ‘And you were getting points for honesty till then. How long has this bad patch lasted?’
    â€˜Since Jamie was born. My younger son.’
    â€˜And he is—?’
    â€˜Eight.’
    Georgie didn’t say anything more, not then. She was thinking: Eight years? That’s more than a marital blip. Poor Cal. I wonder why? He’s really very attractive . . .
    She said: ‘So you want us to have a little commitment-free sex? A quick roll in the hay – or the metropolitan equivalent? Even though we work for the same company, in the same building, so it’s a really bad idea?’ He shrugged, then grinned, an irrepressible sparkle of hope in his face. ‘Why me?’
    â€˜I told you, I’ve been lusting after you for months. You’re stunning, you could have any man, and I’m nothing special, but – I’m an optimist. I thought it was worth trying my luck. Nothing ventured and all that.’
    â€˜Try it, don’t push it,’ Georgie said with sudden hauteur. ‘Take off your glasses. No – put them on again.’
    â€˜You wouldn’t believe how often I’ve heard that one . . .’
    She laughed, meeting smile with smile. ‘No, really, take them off again. I want to see your eyes properly.’ She saw they were grey, with a fleck of hazel at the centre. How can eyes be expressive? she wondered. It’s lines and wrinkles, colour-change and muscle-movement, that create expression. Eyes are just balls of jelly with variegated circles on one side. How can a ball of jelly look sad? ‘They’re . . . sort of tweedy. Unusual.’
    â€˜ Your eyes are lovely,’ Cal said. ‘Huge and deep and soft. I could fall into them.’
    â€˜That would be poetic,’ said Georgie, ‘if it was my eyes you were looking at.’
    As the party fizzled out, Lin and I joined them and talked pointedly of departure. Cal bade us a cheerful goodbye and headed home first, leaving Georgie to wander along with us. Outside, she said: ‘I can’t be bothered with the tube. I’m going to look for a cab. Goodnight, guys.’ She didn’t tell us until some days later that the cab in question was waiting round the corner, by prearrangement, with Cal McGregor inside.
    Lin and I wormed the truth out of her pretty quickly, but they managed to keep the affair secret from the rest of the company for quite some time. ‘We’re just having a little quiet fun,’ Georgie said. ‘It won’t last more than a month or two. He’s got a lovely body. I haven’t been close to that much muscle in a long while. That’s the trouble with this job: all the men I hang out with are middle-aged media types going flabby round the middle.’
    â€˜You should get yourself a toyboy,’ I said. ‘That’s better than a married man.’
    â€˜I’ve never fancied very young guys,’ Georgie responded. ‘I don’t want to wake up next to anyone prettier than me.’ She extricated a small silver mobile phone from her handbag. ‘Cal gave me this. He’s taught me text-messaging. He says you