A Twist of the Knife

Just two clicks

Just two clicks and Michael’s face appeared. Margaret pressed her fingers against the screen, feeling a longing to stroke his slender, pre-Raphaelite face and to touch that long, wavy hair that lay tantalizingly beyond the glass.

Joe was downstairs watching a football match on Sky. What she was doing was naughty. Wicked temptation! But didn’t Socrates say “the unexamined life is not worth living”? The kids were gone. Empty nesters now, her and Joe. Joe was like a rock to which her life was moored. Safe, strong, but dull. And right now she didn’t want a rock, she wanted a knight on a white charger. The knight who was just two clicks away.

Just two clicks and Margaret’s face would be in front of him. Michael’s fingers danced lightly across the keys of his laptop, caressing them sensually.

They had been emailing each other for over a year — in fact, as Margaret had reminded Michael this afternoon, for exactly one year, two months, three days and nineteen hours.

And now, at half past seven tomorrow evening, in just over twenty-two hours’ time, they were finally going to meet. Their first real date.

Both of them had had a few obstacles to deal with first. Like Margaret’s husband, Joe. During the course of a thousand increasingly passionate emails (actually, one thousand, one hundred and eighty-seven, as Margaret had informed him this afternoon) Michael had built up a mental picture of Joe: a tall, mean, brainless bully, who had once punched a front door down with his bare fists. He’d built up a mental picture of Margaret, too, that was far more elaborate than the single photograph he had downloaded so long ago of a pretty redhead, who looked a little like Scully from the X-Files. In fact, quite a lot like the heavenly Scully.

‘We shouldn’t really meet, should we?’ She had emailed him this afternoon. ‘It might spoil everything between us.’

Michael’s wife, Karen, had walked out on him two months ago, blaming the time he spent on the Internet, telling him he was more in love with his computer than her.

Well, actually, sweetheart, with someone on my computer... he had nearly said, but hadn’t quite plucked up the courage. That had always been his problem. Lack of courage. And, of course, right now this was fuelled by an image of Joe who could punch a front door down with his bare fists.

A new email from Margaret lay in his inbox. ‘Twenty-two hours and seven minutes! I’m so excited, I can’t wait to meet you, my darling. Have you decided where? M. xxxx’

‘Me neither!’ he typed. ‘Do you know the Red Lion in Handcross? It has deep booths, very discreet. Went to a real-ale tasting there recently. Midway between us. I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight! All my love, Michael. xxxx’

Margaret opened the email eagerly, and then, as she read it, for the first time in one year, two months and three days she felt the presence of clouds in her heart. Real Ale? He’d never mentioned an interest in real ale before. Real ale was a bit of an anoraks’ thing, wasn’t it? Midway between us? Did he mean he couldn’t be bothered to drive to somewhere close to her? But, worst of all...

A pub???

She typed her reply. ‘I don’t do pubs, my darling. I do weekends in Paris at the George V, or maybe the Ritz-Carlton or the Bristol.’

Then she deleted it. I’m being stupid, dreaming, all shot to hell by my nerves... From downstairs there came a whoop from Joe, and then she could hear tumultuous roaring. A goal. Great. Big. Deal. Wow, Joe, I’m so happy for you.

Deleting her words, she replaced them with ‘Darling, the Red Lion sounds wickedly romantic. 7.30. I’m not going to sleep either! All my love, M. xxxx.’

What if Joe had been reading her emails and was going to tail her to the Red Lion tonight, Michael thought as he pulled up in the farthest, darkest corner of the car park? He climbed out of his pea-green Astra (Karen had taken the BMW) and walked nervously towards the front entrance of the pub, freshly showered and shaven, his breath minted, his body marinated in a Boss cologne Karen had once said made him smell manly, his belly feeling like it was filled with deranged moths.

He stopped just outside and checked his macho diver’s watch. Seven thirty-two. Taking a deep breath, he went in.

And saw her right away.

Oh no.

His heart did not so much sink as burrow its way down to the bottom of his brand new Docksider yachting loafers.

She was sitting at the bar, in full public display — OK, the place was pretty empty — but worse than that, a packet of cigarettes and a lighter lay on the counter in front of her. She’d never told him that she smoked. But far, far, far worse than that, the bitch looked nothing like the photograph she had sent him. Nothing at all!

True, she had the same red hair colour — well, henna-dyed red at any rate — but there were no long tresses to caress; it had been cropped short and gelled into spikes that looked sharp enough to prick your fingers on. You never told me you’d cut your hair. Why not??? Her face was plain, and she was a good three or four stone heavier than in the photograph, with cellulite-pocked thighs bared by a vulgar skirt. She hadn’t lied about her age, but that was just about the only thing. And she’d caught his eye and was now smiling at him...

No. Absolutely not. No which way. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Michael turned, without looking back, and fled.

Roaring out of the parking lot, haemorrhaging perspiration in anger and embarrassment, switching off his mobile phone in case she tried to ring, he had to swerve to avoid some idiot driving in far too fast.

‘Dickhead!’ he shouted.

Margaret was relieved to see the car park was almost empty. Pulling into the farthest corner, she turned on the interior light, checked her face and her hair in the mirror, then climbed out and locked the car. Seven thirty-seven. Just late enough, hopefully, for Michael to have arrived first. Despite her nerves, she walked on air through the front entrance.

To her disappointment, there was no sign of him. A couple of young salesmen types at a table. A solitary elderly man. And on the barstools, a plump, middle-aged woman with spiky red hair and a tarty skirt, who was joined by a tattooed, denim-clad gorilla who emerged from the gents’, nuzzled her neck greedily, making her giggle, then retrieved a smouldering cigarette from the ashtray.

Michael, in his den, stared at the screen. ‘Bitch,’ he said. ‘What a bitch!’ With one click he dragged all Margaret’s emails to his trash bin. With another, he dragged her photograph to the same place. Then he emptied the trash.

Back home just before ten, Joe glanced up from a football game that looked like all the other football games Margaret had ever seen. ‘What happened to your night out with the girls?’ he asked.

‘I decided I’d been neglecting my husband too much recently.’ She put her arm around him, around her rock, and kissed his cheek. ‘I love you,’ she said.

He actually took his eyes off the game to look at her, and then kissed her back. ‘I love you, too,’ he said.

Then she went upstairs to her room, and checked her mailbox. There was nothing. ‘Michael, I waited two hours,’ she began typing.

Then she stopped. It was cold in her den. Downstairs the television had given a cosy glow. And her rock had felt warm.

Sod you, Michael.

Just two clicks and he was gone from her life.