Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [89]
LAKE WINDERMERE
CUMBRIA
Freddie’s next Internet date had spent the night and while Manette always tried to think of herself as a with-it sort of woman, this did seem a bit much to her. Her ex-husband was no schoolboy, to be sure, and he certainly wasn’t asking for her opinion on the matter. But for the love of God, it had been their first date and where was the world going to— or more to the point, where was Freddie going to?— if men and women tried each other out in bed as a modern-day form of singing “Getting to Know You”? But that’s exactly what had happened, according to Freddie, and it had been her idea. The woman’s! According to Freddie, she’d said, “Really, there’d be no point in carrying on further if we’re not sexually compatible, Freddie, don’t you agree?”
Well, Freddie was a man, after all. Presented with the opportunity, what was he going to do, ask for six months of chastity to give them time to suss each other out on matters from politics to prestidigitation? Plus, it seemed reasonable enough to him. Times were changing, after all. So two glasses of wine at the local and home they came to take the plunge. Evidently, they’d found all their parts in working order and the experience pleasurable, so they’d done it two more times— again, this was according to Freddie— and she’d spent the rest of the night. There she’d been, having coffee with him in the kitchen when Manette came downstairs in the morning. She’d been wearing Freddie’s shirt and nothing else, which left her showing a lot of leg and not a small part of where the leg came from. And like a cat with canary feathers hanging from her mouth, she said to Manette, “Hello. You must be Freddie’s ex. I’m Holly.”
Holly? Holly! What sort of name was that? Her former husband was going for a shrub? Manette looked at Freddie— who at least had the grace to turn puce— and then poured herself a hasty cup of coffee, after which she retreated to her bathroom. There, Freddie came to apologise for the uneasiness of the situation— not, Manette noted, for having had the woman stay the night— and he said in best Freddie fashion that in the future he’d spend the night at their places instead of the reverse. “It all just happened between us rather quickly,” he told her. “I’d not intended it.”
But Manette homed in on their places, and this was how she learned that times had changed and that instantaneous copulation had become the new form of shaking hands. She’d sputtered, “You mean, you intend to try out every one of them?”
“Well, it does seem to be the way things are done these days.”
She’d tried to tell him that this was lunacy. She’d lectured him about STDs, unplanned pregnancies, entrapment, and everything else she could think of. What she didn’t say was that they had a very good situation, she and Freddie, living as roommates, because she didn’t want to hear him say that it was time they both moved on. At the end of it all, though, he’d kissed her forehead, told her not to worry about him, revealed he had another date that night, declared he might therefore not be home afterwards, and said he’d see her at work. He’d take his own car today, he told her, because this date lived in Barrow-in-Furness, and they were meeting at Scorpio nightclub so if she wanted to hook up seriously— Freddie actually said “hook up seriously”— they’d go to her place as it was apparently too far to drive to Great Urswick if their knickers were on fire.
Manette wailed, “But, Freddie …!” yet realised there was nothing else she could say. She could hardly accuse him of being unfaithful or destroying what she and he had or acting hastily. They weren’t married, they “had” next