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3
Back at home the whole situation felt surreal. Simon was home and had made dinner. I felt otherly. Which isn’t even a word. I felt like I had secrets that I couldn’t tell him and I knew he would never ask. I felt different. Like a lesbian perhaps? I had no idea. We sat across the kitchen table from one another, cutting, chewing, swallowing. Fork to plate and then to mouth. The sound of the cutlery against crockery loud amongst the silences. Conversation polite and safe in its brevity.
“How was your day?” he asked.
“Fine,” I responded. “I had another surveillance shift on Daniel Lorenzo. He went to a couple of meetings but only with contacts we already know about. We are running this surveillance really covertly, I don’t think he knows we are tailing him yet. So fingers crossed we will actually see something useful soon. A new contact or a new location. Anything to tell us where the drugs are coming in from or where they are being stored.”
Oh and darling, I think I might be a lesbian. I’m not totally sure but I met a really hot woman and she asked me out and I can’t stop thinking about her. (Obviously I didn’t actually say this bit.)
He responded with a story about his own day. Some office drama that I just didn’t care about. And I looked at him as he spoke and ate, his handsome face looking plain to me now, and I thought what on earth am I doing here? How did my life end up like this? People live in marriages like this for 60 years sometimes. Live. Or survive. They get through one day, and then the next. They keep on breathing. Somehow they are still alive. But they aren’t truly living. I am not truly living.
But I felt guilty for this man who promised to love me forever. In sickness and in health. For richer, for poorer. For better, for worse. Until death us do part. And I made the same promises myself. Foolishly perhaps. Forever is a long time. How can we possibly know that we will love someone forever. What we really mean is, I love you now. And that should be enough.
Guilty for what? Something I had done? Agreeing to meet a woman for a drink? Or guilty perhaps for the thoughts running through my head? My sexuality that was suddenly in turmoil. My desires that had taken a life of their own.
We slept in our bed together as usual. Our regular marriage in a regular bed in a regular house on a regular street. I lay awake, my head racing with thoughts in the darkness. Tomorrow night was Friday. I would meet her then.
Lies.
I would tell lies to Simon and he would believe me.
I was nervous as I went to meet her.
I thought a hundred times of cancelling but my fingers couldn’t compose the text.
I was a lamb walking willingly into the lion’s den.
There she was at the bar, radiant in the warm light. She didn’t ask what I wanted to drink, she had chosen for me. An act I would have found presumptuous and misogynistic in a male date, I found disarmingly seductive in a female. I sipped a cocktail that was sharp, sweet and potent on my tongue and it wouldn’t have surprised me if the cocktail was named after Lyra.
We chatted lightly, easily. Words flowing as if I had known her my whole life. I wasn’t nearly as awkward as I felt. She told me she was an IT specialist who travels extensively fixing complex computer issues. She told me of the countries she had visited and the beautiful hotel rooms her clients had put her up in. She was exotic, fascinating, enigmatic. She asked me about my life and was unendingly interested in my stories from the job. She didn’t shy away from the darkness of human nature as some do when I speak about the criminals I have encountered. My stories intrigued her. My world intrigued her. Could it be that I intrigued her?
I didn’t mention my husband but I watched her eyes drift to the wedding band on my left hand. I had thought about taking it off but there’s this indentation in my finger now where it has been. The skin and flesh dented as if branded by his ring. My body changed by him. Somehow making me his. He doesn’t wear one. Again the double standard. It was me expected to take his ring and wear it always. I never took his name. Giving up my own identity was always one step too far.
Her eyes seemed darker tonight. A deep, dark blue. As dangerously inviting as the ocean in the moonlight. Her dark hair long and loose and her athletes body in tight jeans and a leather jacket. Everything about her enchanted me. I had never wanted anybody more.
Lyra wasn’t like me. I couldn’t nail what it was but there was something different about her. Something other. And it wasn’t the lesbian thing. In the toilets I gazed into the mirror at my own reflection. I look significantly better with mascara on and my hair in almost golden waves. My eyes looked different as I examined them. A little affected by the cocktail perhaps but they looked alive. For the first time in years, I was excited about something.
The pub we were in was out of town because I didn’t want to risk seeing anyone I knew. There’s always a risk in bars in town of seeing other police officers or even people I have arrested. Not that I wouldn’t be able to explain away my new ‘friend’ but I didn’t want to have to. I wanted to be alone with her. In the country pub we were in our own impenetrable bubble.
It was dark when we walked out to the car park. The moon and stars doing their best to throw us light. She suggested a walk in the woods to walk off the alcohol before driving. Two strong cocktails down and it seemed like a really good idea. But dangerous somehow. Walking in the woods in the middle of the night. Who does that? But there I was, a bold heat running through my veins from the alcohol and enchanted and excited by her. We walked together into the night. Still talking. Laughing about the rapists and murderers that probably lay in wait for us amongst the trees. The trees closed in around us and their branches stole the light. We were in another world of tall trees and twigs and earth crunching underfoot on a warmish late summer night. She said she used to play there as a child. She knew those woods so well. I imagined little Lyra, running, playing, climbing trees, her dark mane wild around her face. Lyra the adventurer.
“Race you to the clearing.” she said.
Before I could respond, she was running. For a second I was alone and scared of the dark. Then I was running too. Panting. Chasing her. I finally caught up with her as she stopped in the clearing and she pulled my body straight into hers and kissed me with an intensity I had never known. My heart beating a million times a minute. I have never wanted anyone more.
Lyra.
Who are you?
What are you doing to me?
“Do you want to come home with me?” Lyra asked.
4
At any point I could have gone home. Home to my loyal husband. Home to my suburban house and my ordinary life. I could have stopped all this at any point.
I didn’t.
