Foy and Suzanna hadn’t spoken a word to one another since the night of the Travelodge.
There had been countless hours of porn fuelled bedroom dirty talk – “filth,” Foy gleefully called it – for weeks beforehand, more often than not followed by their most frenzied, heart-pounding, lovemaking since the energetic early days of their relationship.
Lovemaking? Maybe it was just fucking. Whatever. It was better than the long fallow period they had just about endured, but never actually discussed.
It seemed, for a time at least, that they had miraculously fallen madly in lust again, but, since the night of the Travelodge, not a single solitary
word, dirty or clean, in or out of their bedroom, had passed between them. Nada. Zilch.
Four days. They hadn’t exchanged so much as a text message in four days.
They hadn’t even seen each other. In or out of their bedroom. Which took a fair amount of effort on Foy’s behalf.
The Travelodge had happened on Sunday. They hadn’t chosen the hotel, but they hadn’t objected to it. Its budget seediness had somehow added to
the thrill.
Afterwards, when it was all over, they’d put their clothes back on, said their embarrassed farewells to John and Jill – almost certainly not their real names (for their part, Foy and Suzanna had been ‘Dave’ and ‘Vicky’) – and timidly departed Room 269.
The moment the door clicked closed behind them, their marriage set to mute. They’d fled st pickpocket pace down the garishly carpeted, harshly lit and impossibly lengthy hotel corridor;
Suzanna sore and slightly bowlegged, a stonyfaced Foy three or four paces ahead. On the way up, he had joked that the corridor resembled the one in The Shining, and chortled, childishly, at the room number. There was no joking on the return journey. Suzanna had been pissed. She didn’t normally drink, but had needed some Dutch courage. Or rather, Italian: seven or eight mini-bottles of tepid Pinot Grigio from the hotel bar. Foy had gripped her arm when she staggered out of the lift into the underground car park. He’d practically flung her into the Mondeo.
They lived just fifteen minutes away, but it was past 2am and the roads were deserted. Foy made it in ten, jaw clenched, knuckles white on the wheel, eyes fixed firmly on the road, the radio blaring inane techno on some late night show.
When Suzanna went to lower the volume, he’d aggressively slapped her hand away. He didn’t even like techno.
The tyres had screeched turning into their driveway, spraying chips of gravel all over the lawn.
He’d almost clipped her beloved Mini Cooper. “Jesus, Foy!”
Foy had stormed through the front door before a discombobulated Suzanna managed to untangle and unlock her seatbelt. By the time she got inside, he’d already vanished to one of the spare rooms. She heard the door slam and the key turn in the lock.
Silly behaviour.
Suzanna had sighed and examined her dishevelled reflection in the hallway mirror.
Stringy hair, deathly pallor, pothole eyes. She barely recognised herself. Then again, she’d barely recognised herself – totally tarted up – when they’d
left the house five hours earlier.
The upstairs window opened. She heard the electronic squelch of the Mondeo’s locking device, and the indicators winked through the frosted glass of the front door. The window slammed shut.
The blinds snapped down.
Suzanna had taken a long shower, sobbing softly under the scalding spray as she scrubbed Eau de John & Jill off her exhausted body.
In the morning, Foy was gone when she woke up. She felt nauseous, and not just from the hangover. She’d have to go for the morning-after pill. Just to be sure. She couldn’t fully remember everything that had happened. John – or ‘John’ – had definitely used a condom the first couple of times.
She was on nights at the hospital all week. Normally they’d snatch an hour together before she went to work, but Foy had been delaying his return from the office until after she’d left. He’d been gone before she returned every morning.
He’d even been putting his breakfast plates into the dishwasher.
She’d considered leaving a note or sending a text but didn’t want to make the first move. Foy had initiated hostilities so, as far as she was concerned, it was up to him.
Suzanna was four years older than Foy, but neither of them had any monopoly on maturity.
The silent treatment was a speciality of his, but he hadn’t deployed it in ages. The last time had been two years ago, after a ridiculous row at his thirtieth birthday party in the rugby club. But that silence had only lasted two days, and he’d been seriously hungover for both of them.
This was different. Very different.
The Travelodge had happened on Sunday.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday...
On Friday morning, as soon as she came home from work, Suzanna rang her sister and packed a bag. She told Camilla there had been a row. She couldn’t possibly tell her what about. The youngest of the family, Camilla still told their mother everything.
She slept for a few hours, their bedroom door locked, as it had been all week. Two could play that game.
She was drinking a cup of coffee at the kitchen table when the Mondeo pulled up outside.
Shuddering, she wondered if she would have been better off just leaving a note. Too late now.
She switched off the radio. She hadn’t been listening anyway. She could hear her heartbeat thudding.
The engine stopped, but she didn’t hear him get
out immediately. Her Mini had obviously alerted him. Eventually the car squelched. The front door opened and slammed closed, rattling the house. Foy walked into the kitchen, his back straight, his head held high. Ready for battle. They stared coldly at each other. There was something in his eyes she’d never seen before. At least not in such concentrated form.
Fear or hatred or disdain.
All of the above.
Everything can change forever in a single moment of clarity. Suzanna realised suddenly that she loathed him, irreparably, and that the feeling was almost certainly mutual. Their seven years together poured noiselessly into the void between them.
“Why aren’t you at work?” he eventually asked.
“Mags is gonna cover my shifts,” she said. “She owed me after her brother’s wedding. I’m gonna stay at Cam’s for a few days.”
He dropped his scuffed leather briefcase on the linoleum floor and shrugged. “Good.”
“Foy...what’s wrong with you?”
He snorted haughtily and imitated her. “Foy,
what’s wrong with you?”
“Look... I don’t know why you’re being like this,”
she said. “The whole thing was your idea in the first place.”
“You didn’t take much convincing,” he sneered. “What? You’ve been on and on at me for months!” “Hardly months.”
“Yes, Foy! Months! You never shut up about it!” “That’s not true...”
“Foy! All you could say was, ‘We need to experiment, baby! We need to try new things’.” Now she was imitating him.
He folded his arms over his chest and solemnly shook his head. “That was just fantasy, Suzanna.” “Just ‘fantasy’! I would have been happy to keep it at that! You wanted it to happen! You forced me
into it!”
“Bullshit!!”
“You put the bloody ad up on Craigslist!”
“That was just...”
“You asked me to choose! From all those replies.
From all those photos!”
“And of course you chose the guy with the biggest
cock!”
“Bullshit! I chose a different couple. Remember!
The Polish one! You were the one who chose them! You were the one who replied! You set it all up!”
“You never asked me to stop!”
“You wouldn’t have anyway!”
Foy leaned over the table and said right to her
face, “It’s a big surprise to learn that I married a slut!”
Defiantly, Suzanna stood up and hissed, “I-AM- NOT-A-SLUT!”
He laughed and took a step back. “Ha! You didn’t mind me putting those pictures of your tits and arse up on Amateurs Gone Wild.”
“No, I didn’t. You couldn’t see my face! Nobody knew it was me!”
“All those perverts jerking off over you! I bet you got off on that!”
“It was you who got off on that, Foy! You!”
“Oh – and I suppose you didn’t?”
“Well... of course I did,” she admitted. “That was
the whole idea, wasn’t it?”
Foy walked over to the fridge and took out a
bottle of Stella. When he twisted the cap off, white foam surged up his hand. Suzanna sniggered slightly and immediately regretted it.
His back turned to her, Foy wiped the foam off with a tea towel. “I didn’t know you were a fucking lesbian.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake! I’m not! That was her! That was... Jill!! Or whatever the hell her name was.”
“You didn’t try to stop her! And then you did it to her yourself!”
“Look, I was drunk, Foy. Really drunk! And... you know... sort of lost in the moment.”
“And that thing you did with him. Fucking disgusting!” He turned around, his eyes narrowing accusingly. “You never did that with me!”
“What thing?”
“You know... when you licked his...”
“What are you talking about?”
“You fucking know what I’m talking about!” “No, I don’t!” she protested. “I don’t know what
you’re talking about!”
“Yeah, right!”
“What did I do?”
“What didn’t you fucking do?”
“I don’t know what you’re on about!”
He screamed, “YOU STUCK YOUR FUCKING FINGER
UP HIM!! YOU FILTHY FUCKING WHORE!!!”
Suzanna fell back to the seat, shocked by Foy’s ferocity. He seemed slightly shocked himself, but it didn’t stop him. “You were fucking disgusting,”
he sneered accusingly, in a quieter voice. “I was watching you, going, ‘Who the hell is this person?’”
“Yeah. Well if I remember correctly, watching was about all you were good for on the night!”
“Bitch!”
“Admit it, Foy! You were like a useless fucking teenager! Pathetic! We were all laughing at you!”
His face went scarlet. “Shut the fuck up, you slut!”
“The only reason I went down on Jill was because you’d so obviously fucking failed to satisfy her!”
“BITCH!”
The Stella bottle shot past her left ear and bounced off the framed Dali print on the wall. It landed on the floor without shattering, spinning and spilling lager trails onto the lino in ever decreasing circles.
Truth or dare...
Foy was gone from the kitchen before it settled. She heard him stomping heavily up the stairs.
A door slammed.
A key turned.
Suzanna sat in stunned silence. With trembling
fingers, she removed her wedding ring and placed it on the table.
She sat there staring at it.
Zero.
Through a gap in their bedroom blinds, Foy watched the Mini Cooper reverse slowly out of the driveway and disappear down the road.
He went to the laundry hamper in the en suite and rummaged around. It didn’t take long to find the red silk panties she’d worn on the night. He’d bought them for her in Anne Summers, especially for the occasion.
He pressed them to his face and inhaled her faint musk.
Foy fumbled in his trouser pocket. He wanted to watch the Travelodge clip again, the one he’d shot on his mobile phone. The one he’d been watching all week.