The One Read online

The One

  Tony Spencer

  Copyright © 2012 Tony Spencer

  "Alan? Alan Palmer?"

  I was miles away daydreaming over a cup of coffee in the hotel lounge, I guess. I had just closed my laptop and was thinking about my wife of twelve years, the mother of my three children, making love upstairs in her lover's usual room, early afternoon on a Wednesday. Same ole, same ole, apparently. I found it difficult to think of anything else.

  My ears pricked up at the sound of my name and I slowly reacted and turned my head to the speaker. She was tall and slim, an attractive redhead, with a rather hesitant smile on her flawless face, dressed in a crisp sleek blue pin-striped business suit which emphasised the nicest pair of knees and legs I had seen in a long while. Both her hands were occupied with a smart thin briefcase and an expensive-looking black leather handbag. I think I smiled back at her, more in embarrassment than welcome, while desperately trying to place her from recent acquaintances, former work colleagues, wives of friends, mums from the school run or customers of the gym I had recently joined. She'd look better than good in running shorts, I thought, without a doubt.

  No, nothing, complete blank, didn't know her from Eve. She apparently knew me, that much was obvious. Perhaps she was a messenger from the solicitors who had been shown my photo?

  "Sorry?" I said dumbly. There was something intangibly familiar about her, but it escaped me. I tried to work out where I might have seen her before. I guessed her age was about 35 or 36, some ten to twelve years younger than me. I lost all my hair long ago and have shaved my head for about ten years, so she must have known me from sometime in the last decade. I suppose my eyes were still moist from thinking about my wife and it was almost impossible to get this stranger's face fully in focus through the tears. That's my excuse, anyway. One thing I was certain of, she was a class act, well out of my league. Damn it, at my age, looks and current circumstances, they all were.

  Her smile froze at my lack of recognition and rapidly turned into a frown. Her mouth pouted and she looked, well, hurt. That was crazy. Nobody looked hurt around me; upset, angry, frustrated, pissed-off, especially disappointed, but never hurt. After all I was the number one stupid dolt of all time. Who cared what I thought? Where was my life at anyway?

  My lovely bitch of a wife was ten years younger than me, she was a successful editor of a high-circulation women's magazine and I had sacrificed my career to be a stay-at-home husband and ... this was a laugh on me ... I was reduced to just being a caring father to my two sons aged eleven and three and daughter age seven. Meanwhile my wife had been running around with her boss at work, well ... presumably for years. My children's recent DNA tests showed that I wasn't even remotely related to any one of my children; I had lost the few good looks I may have started out with and my body had run to fat and I was now at the lowest ebb of self confidence ever and I'd never been even vaguely self-confident to begin with. I even doubted my sanity, nothing was going right for me and I was presently as miserable as sin.

  Even knowing what I had to do and what I had already set in train hardly empowered me, my actions only confirmed how completely clueless and hopeless I had been. I was only sitting in the coffee lounge of this smart hotel watching the lift doors and waiting for my wife and her lover to emerge before confronting them both.

  However, short of killing them I was pretty well powerless to do anything about it.

  Now on top of everything else there was this beautiful redhead virtually snarling at me because I couldn't remember who the bloody hell she was. So I scowled back at her. Who was she to be critical of my underdeveloped cognitive skills? Didn't she know I'd had a lot on my plate of late and had had it up to here, well up to my scrawny neck anyway?

  She set her jaw squarely, leaned into me and punched me quite hard in the chest, bared her perfect white teeth and said in a low voice:

  "Just cos you dumped me as your girlfriend twenty years ago, doesn't mean you can treat me like a complete stranger after all this time. We lived together for five years for crying out loud! You once even asked me to marry you!

  “You. Complete. Arsehole!"

  She jabbed my bruised chest with a pointed finger to emphasise each of the last three words.

  Then she threw herself into a padded leather chair opposite me, slung her briefcase and handbag to the side of the table between us, rattling my coffee cup in its saucer, and continued to glare at me.

  Waiting.

  With folded arms.

  Continued waiting while I ran through my remembered images of ... of her. None of them matched, not really.

  "Lesley?" I said, not believing it possible even for a moment. "Lesley ... Collins?"

  "Who did you think I was, Florence bloody Nightingale?" she snapped.

  "But, you can't be," I spluttered, "You, you are young and ... beautiful."

  Her frown softened and her once-oh-so-familiar brilliant smile returned to stab me in the heart, immediately under my fresh bruises, I didn't think my pain could get any worse than it already was but it did. I really, really truthfully didn't need this. Please, God, I never ask for anything as You well know, but don't let me have my two worst nightmares together at the same time.

  "Lesley, my God! I cannot believe it" I said, putting in as much effort as my weak knees could muster by getting up out of that deep leather chair and pulling her up from hers to hug her tightly. I daren't kiss her. I had already noticed the wedding band and huge-rocked engagement or eternity ring on her left hand. You couldn't bloody miss them.

  "Wow! Muscles," she said approvingly, her arms running over my shoulders and upper arms as we separated. "Been working out, Alan? I'm impressed."

  I must have gone bright red, my face certainly felt very hot. I jabbered back "Been going down to the new suite at the school gym five mornings a week for a month, now," I explained, "I got a week's free trial as an introductory offer, enjoyed focussing my anger on the machinery and punch bag so much that I signed on for six months about three weeks ago. I still haven't got any abs to speak of yet, though!" I grinned.

  Oh dear, I thought. When I'm nervous, a talk a lot of rubbish. Stick around, you'll get used to me.

  We both sat down, holding hands across the table. Damn, I thought as I inadvertently ran my thumb over her diamond ring, it was huge. It made the yellow-tinged diamond-chip ring I had bought for her, and lost a fortune over when I sold it back to the jewellers all those years ago, look absolutely pathetic. I moved my thumb away and stroked the knuckles of her index and middle fingers instead.

  "Anyway," I added as brightly as my tortured ego could manage, maintaining my first smile today since dropping Nat off at the play school and greeting my fellow friendly house-fraus, "What happened to you? You must have lost fifty pounds since I saw you last, you look absolutely amazing and ... no wonder I never recognised you ... you are no longer blond!"

  She laughed. "I only looked blond, thanks to bleach, back then. I have light mousey brown hair and I now prefer this dark redhead look. I changed it and joined a gym, funnily enough, just after you bloody well dumped me."

  "I never dumped you, you dumped me after I asked you to marry me!"

  I remembered it only too clearly. I'd had nightmares about it for years afterwards. Five years and two bloody months together and she turned me down flat and admitted wanting to see other men ... men, not man or just “someone else”, but men, plural.

  God! I am so pathetic, always in love with the wrong bloody woman at the wrong time. No, make that every bloody woman, every bloody time!

  We let go of each other’s hands and returned to glaring at one another again. I think we both clenched fists, I know I did. I couldn't see hers: I was rigidly maintaining eye contact, like I imagined I would when faced with
a rearing spitting cobra.

  "I never dumped you," she insisted, then she continued, in a more considered tone of voice, "I just said that we should see other people before we got married. And then I never saw you again ... until now."

  Her steely grey-blue eyes blazed as she spat those last few words back at me. Her new hair colour suited her, she was certainly fiery and I was clearly not in her good books, probably never had been.

  To be honest, I didn't have any positive entry in anyone's book right now. Only my kids loved me and they weren't even my kids, I had recently discovered.

  Hang on a mo, she's actually trying to wriggle out of dumping me, to justify her cruel actions all those years ago. Does she still think I'm a bloody wimp? Well she's picked the wrong sodding day for that!

  "No, that's not right," I asserted, firmly, struggling to