Pascale, pt 2

‘Hellooooooo!’ She answered the door with characteristic enthusiasm, wearing a pale green top that was just on the conservative side of revealing, and a light summery skirt.

‘Hi! This is for you,’ giving her a nice robust bottle of Rioja that I’d been meaning to get around to drinking. ‘I wasn’t sure what you were making so I took a shot with red.’

‘Perfect! I’m making lamb tagine.’

Nice hearty meal – I was pleased. I knew it would be, somehow. Pascale just wasn’t the sort of girl to be faffing about with stuffed vineleaves and mushroom risotto. Would go well with the wine, too.

‘Come in - let’s have a glass of white. I’ve got some open.’

She ushered me into the house, which was pretty impressive. Whatever one said about her other half, he was obviously doing all right.

‘Pascale, this place is amazing. Are you sure you haven’t already been married for four years and had two kids?’

‘Hmm, good question. KIIIIIIIDS!’ No reply. ‘Nope, doesn’t seem like it. I can see why you’d wonder, though. I have moments myself. It is rather domestic, isn’t it… Would you like to see our conservatory?’

I looked at her in astonishment. ‘You have a conservatory? In the middle of London?’

She burst into peals of laughter – ‘of course not! You’re too easy… you should see your face.’

‘You’ll be telling me about your builder troubles with your loft conversion next,’ I told her, recovering.

‘Actually, funnily enough, we do have a loft conversion – ‘

‘No WA – oh.’ I caught myself just in time and laughed. ‘Well, this is all very amusing. Was offering me a glass of wine a joke as well?’

She grinned and found a couple of glasses, and retrieved the bottle from the fridge.

‘Can I help with anything? This all looks wonderful.’

‘No, I think it’s under control, thanks. Let me just stick this in the oven and then we can go and sit down. I want to talk to you about something.’

Sounds intriguing, I thought. I tasted the wine, which was nice – just off-dry and lots of character, perfect for an aperitif, probably Alsatian Riesling or similar – and waited for her to put the finishing touches to her culinary creation. A couple of minutes later we were sitting down on her extremely comfortable sofas.

‘So, Pascale, what’s the burning issue? I’m on the edge of my seat.’

‘You’re hiding it well,’ she replied, with a glance at my sprawling form, sinking into her luxurious furniture. ‘Weeeell. Hmm, where do I start? This is probably going to sound pretty weird.’

Whatever it was, I definitely wanted to hear it. It was unusual to see her stuck for the right words. Had to be something a bit out of the ordinary. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ I reassured her. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing I can’t handle.’

‘I hope not,’ she said, half in earnest. ‘Well, look, I’ll come to the point. You remember I said I’d just got engaged?’

‘I certainly do.’

‘Well, after Will proposed – and I accepted him straight away, of course – well, it was completely out of the blue. We’ve not been together all that long and I thought it was definitely going somewhere, but I didn’t think he would want to jump into getting married quite so quickly and I guess I never bothered to think about what I’d say because I was sure it would take at least another year or two. So there we were, and all of a sudden we’re getting married. Which is great! I’m so excited about it, don’t get me wrong. But… this sounds dreadfully clichéd, doesn’t it, but when you realise that’s it, forever, committing to just one person, you just start asking yourself… I mean, I wasn’t completely sure if I was really ready. I think I am, and I reckon everyone feels like this – ’

‘Definitely,’ I interjected.

‘ – sure, but it made me really want to sort of test it, just to see – I found myself really wanting to put myself in a position where I knew I’d be tempted to, you know, do something I shouldn’t, to see whether I did really want to. Isn’t that silly?’

‘No, not at all,’ I said, with a ‘why not?’ gesture. ‘It’s a natural enough thing to want to do. So what then?’

‘Well… oh God, I hope this isn’t the weirdest thing ever, but when I came round to your place last week, that was sort of it. I knew seeing you again would bring back… well, did you know I always thought you were quite tasty?’

I laughed, in a half-bashful sort of way. ‘Erm… well, that’s very sweet! I did wonder, yes. I wasn’t sure. Perfectly honestly, I always thought the same. I still do. I am quite tasty.’ She laughed. ‘No seriously,’ I went on, ‘I always had a bit of a crush. But I can’t tell you that! You’re engaged! You’re off the market!’

‘I know,’ she nodded, ‘that’s just the trouble. And I do feel a bit of a cow. Will’s such a sweetie and I’m sure he thinks I haven’t had a second’s doubt. And I mean I haven’t! Like I said… but, well, you know. But, Jon…’

I looked quizzically at her. It was pretty clear by now what she was getting at but I wanted to tread carefully. If she wanted to do this, I thought, much better let her take the initiative. Not let her feel later that she was talked round.

‘I mean, if you did feel the same way…’ She leaned towards me and put her hand on my thigh. ‘No pressure, of course.’ She smiled coquettishly. That was invitation enough. I leaned across and touched her lips with mine. She pushed back into my lips and parted hers slightly. It was a lovely, early evening kiss. When you’re just a tiny bit loosened up by the first few sips of wine, not wanting things to get too wild when there’s the whole evening ahead, savouring that first moment when everything changes – not heated, not urgent, just unhurried and gentle. After a couple of minutes I broke off for a second to put my wine down on the table, then pulled her into me and kissed her a bit more solidly. It felt just right. I could feel her relaxing into my arms, letting go of herself, feeling like if she was going to do this, she was at least doing it with someone she could trust.

Some minutes later the kiss dissolved into an embrace and she rested her head on my shoulder. ‘Jon?’ she murmured. ‘Mmm?’

‘Do you think I’m an awful person?’

‘Despicable.’

‘Jon, seriously. It’s not very nice, is it? Would you leave me if it was you?’

‘Not if I didn’t find out I wouldn’t.’

‘But I have to tell him, of course – how can I start a life with him and not tell him something like this?’

‘Pascale, you do whatever seems right to you, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. He hasn’t done anything wrong, so why should he be the one to get hurt? I think if you do something like that it’s fine so long as you keep it to yourself, but it’s a bit unfair on him if you tell him.’

‘That’s an odd way of looking at it,’ she said. ‘So you think cheating on your partner is less immoral if you lie about it?’

‘Basically, yes. Protect the innocent.’

She mulled that over silently for a second. ‘But I’ll feel so guilty. Do I have to live it with that as a secret for the rest of my life? That’s quite a punishment.’

‘Surely fairer than punishing him for something he didn’t do. But maybe you’d feel better about it later if you did something to atone for it.’

‘What, like give some money to charity? 10 quid for a kiss, 20 if I get my tits out… 50 quid a shag?’

‘Pascale! I can tell you right now that a shag with me would be worth much more than that.’

She hit me lazily on the arm. ‘Jon, you are impossible. All right, so what penitence should I do for my sins? 700 Hail Marys?’

‘Goodness, that sounds rather extreme. I’m not sure I’m worth that. No, much simpler. A good old-fashioned spanking would do the trick.’

She looked round at me slowly, eyebrows raised so high they seemed to be leaping off her forehead. ‘A spanking?’

‘Sure,’ I answered her confidently. ‘I’m not actually joking. I think it’s exactly what you need.’

‘Well, I think you’re crazy. That tagine will be ready, though. Let’s go and eat.’

She got up and walked into the kitchen, taking her still-half full glass of wine with her. I followed slowly, wondering what to make of the exchange we’d just had. She had been dismissive of the idea, on the face of it, and yet I felt that there was a little part of her that didn’t think it was completely crazy… or even if it was, maybe it was oh-god-well-go-on-then crazy rather than get-out-you-freak crazy… or at least you’ll-have-to-convince-me crazy. The latter I would settle for.