The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books)

Lisa Tuttle

When she got Rachel’s text suggesting lunch, Imogen was thrilled into immediate agreement, although the short notice, and her friend’s choice of venue, meant a rush, and her colleagues’ displeasure that she was taking the full hour for the second time that week.

For once, Rachel wasn’t late; eye-catching as ever with her long, red hair and dramatic style, she waved from a booth at the back and announced that she’d already ordered for them both.

“You’re going to love the cauliflower cheese soup. And it gives us more time to talk if we don’t have to faff around with menus.” She was glowing, radiant, bubbling in a way Imogen had not seen in months. It reminded her of the old days, when they’d shared a flat, before Rachel married Andrew.

Marriage changed everything. Everybody knew how it was: married couples had different priorities, and when they weren’t alone together, liked to be with other marrieds. Add to their new status a starter house in a distant suburb and two demanding jobs, and there wasn’t much left for their singleton friends. Imogen had thought she might be the exception: after all, the three of them had lived together for nearly a year, so comfortable a threesome that they joked about their Mormon marriage, if too conventional to go farther than flirting with the idea of a sexual menage a trois. Andy’s undemanding yet undeniably masculine presence had added a bit of spice to Imogen’s life, which she missed. She recalled the pleasures of lazy Sunday morning fry-ups over three different newspapers, late-night take-aways and horror movies viewed from the sagging, second-hand couch – even a boring, stupid thing like doing the laundry was almost fun as a threesome. But maybe that was only her. Maybe they would always have been happier without a third person in their life.

She looked at her friend through the steam of soup too hot to touch. “What’s up? I can see you’re dying to tell me something.”

Rachel compressed her lips. “I need you to promise you won’t tell anyone.”

She was stung by this distrust. “Who would I tell?”

“Not anyone. If it ever got back to Andrew—”

“Oh my God.”

“Promise?”

Imogen scowled. “Asking me to promise now is a bit stable-doors. You’re having an affair?”

Rachel grimaced. She could not deny it, only quibbled over the wording. It was nothing so definite as an “affair”. Love didn’t enter into it. It was just sex.

“But . . . why? Why take the risk?”

“Oh, Immy.” She shook her head and looked chiding. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t go looking for this. It just happened.”

“Yeah? Where, on the bus to work? Oh, I’m sorry, sir, it’s so crowded, I seem to have impaled myself upon your manly tool. As we’ve started, may as well continue.”

Rachel nearly choked on her soup, giggling. “OK, OK. I am a weak and horny woman who cannot resist temptation. I was feeling frustrated and half-dead – Andrew, bless him, is just not up for it that often. He’s less . . . driven by sexual needs than I am. I always knew it might be a problem someday; I just didn’t expect it to be so soon. But when Mr Hotbody came along and woke me up—” She gave a fatalistic shrug.

“Who is this Mr Hotbody?”

“You don’t know him,” she said quickly. “Nobody does.”

“That sounds spooky.”

“Nobody we know. There’s no reason Andrew would ever hear anything. He’s a total stranger I met in a pub.”

Imogen shivered, and took a careful sip of her soup.

“It wasn’t a pub I’d ever been in, either. A client had suggested it, and after she left, he came over and offered to buy me a drink. I’d noticed him watching me, and gave him the look . . . it was just like the old days, picking out the sexiest guy in the room, to see if I could pull.”

“So you can still pull. Amazing. Did you tell him you were married?”

“After he put his hand on my leg. He just smiled and said he liked married women the best, because they didn’t confuse sex with love, and he sort of walked his hand up my leg, right up to my crotch, and started to rub me there, through my pants, looking me in the eye the whole time while he brought me off.”

It was not the heat of the soup that brought Imogen out in a sweat as Rachel continued to describe what followed. “Sex in the toilet! I don’t know what possessed me – I hadn’t done anything like that since I was eighteen. And this was much, much dirtier.”

“And that wasn’t the end of it?”

She shook her head, eyes glazed over. “I didn’t even know his name. I told Andrew I had to go away overnight, on business, and booked a room in a Travelodge. He met me there. We were at it all night. Never slept. I did things I’d never done before. He made me do things—”

Imogen pushed her bowl to one side, her appetite gone. “That does not sound good.”

“Are you kidding? It was the best I’ve ever had.”

“Not good for your marriage.”

“Oh, no, there you’re wrong, my friend. Sometimes a bit of danger, the risk of another lover, is just what a couple needs. I went home and bonked the living daylights out of Andrew. He loved it! For a little while, I had my Randy Andy back. Plus, I’m so much nicer when I’m not feeling frustrated. I’ve stopped being such a bitch at home. What’s good for me is good for him.”

“Good for you. You’ve saved your marriage. End of story.”

“It’s not the end.”

“You can’t go on sleeping with this guy.”

“I have no intention of sleeping with him, or going out to dinner with him, or knitting little booties, or falling in love. This is just sex. So much spicier than I can get at home. A bit on the side. That’s all I want from him.”

“So what do you want from me? A seal of approval?”

“We need a place to go.”

“Oh, no.” Imogen’s stomach clenched. “You can’t go to his?”

“He lives with someone. And anyway, I don’t want to get involved with his life.”

“So rent a room . . . Travelodge was good enough before.”

“It would be good enough again, if I could afford it . . . or if he could. Please? It won’t be very often, I’m sure. Just a few more times, ’til I get him out of my system.”

“Or out of your pubic hair. Where am I supposed to go while this . . . delousing . . . is taking place?”

Rachel’s face tightened. “Don’t be nasty.”

“You’re the one talking about how wonderfully dirty it is.” Before Rachel’s hurt, angry glare, she caved. “I’m sorry. I just don’t understand why you need to do this thing.”

Imogen’s hand was seized and held in a warm, strong grip. “Of course you don’t, my sweetheart, because you’re normal. This is some kind of madness, but I can’t get over it without going through it. And you are the one and only person who can help me, who I can talk to. I don’t want to put you out. But you go to the gym and out for a meal with your friends from work every Thursday, am I right? What time do you get home?”

“About nine-thirty,” she said, although ten was closer to the mark.

“I’d want to be on the nine-forty-seven for home anyway,” said Rachel. “We’d be out by nine-thirty. I promise you, Imogen, you won’t know we were there. One evening a week, a time when you wouldn’t be there anyway – is that really too much to ask?”

She understood she could not refuse; not unless she was prepared to lose their friendship.

Rachel came by that evening to pick up the spare key, and Imogen was a little stiff with her at first, feeling she had been bullied into abetting a crime, but instead of hurrying away like a guilty thing, Rachel hung around, diffident and awkward, until Imogen thawed and suggested she stay for dinner.

“There’s a kebab shop just around the corner. I could run down for something—”

Rachel checked the contents of the fridge. “I’ll cook,” she said. “Spaghetti carbonara sound all right?”

“I don’t have any cream.”