Tom had described his own childhood with less enthusiasm but he recognized it could have been a lot worse and in their own way his parents had also done their best for him. When explaining why he travelled so much with the army, his father had taught him that you couldn’t just ignore people in trouble, whether it was a country or an individual. That had stayed with him and was probably subconsciously the reason why he intervened to help Melanie, when he knew many others would simply have called the police and stayed hidden behind that car.
At some point, Melanie admitted to never having really been very close to getting married but was still hopeful, as she did want to have kids. That, as it always did, had struck a bit of a raw nerve with Tom and he’d explained about Alex. They had married in their early twenties and been madly in love but by the time they reached thirty they had drifted apart. She was a thrusting barrister working all hours and committed to her career. Alex worried about how to win her next case. He worried who was going to win the three thirty at Ascot.
Tom wanted children but it was never the right time for Alex. One day, in the face of his pleading that it was the only hope for their marriage, she had agreed to stop taking the pill. She wasn’t desperate to have a child but was willing, for his sake, to accept pregnancy if it happened naturally. Their lovemaking had lost its spontaneity years before and usually occurred after a couple of bottles of wine but he’d made a concentrated effort for a few months and their sex life improved although she didn’t conceive. He wasn’t too concerned as he knew it could easily take a year or more but when he found the packet of pills in her bedside draw, he didn’t even bother saying anything. He presumed she wanted him to find them, so he took the hint and their sex life gradually went back to the old routine. Alex began having to stay more nights in London for important cases and less than twelve months later she announced she was leaving him. He wasn’t surprised to later find that she had been having an affair with someone at work for a considerable time.
Despite Tom’s initial protestations there were no tears. It had all been terribly civilized and they quickly reached an amicable agreement on sharing what they’d accumulated together over ten years. A sad indictment of two people living separate lives under the same roof. They had little in common and thus nothing to dispute the ownership of, not even their CD collection. Their music tastes were completely different. He was a fan of heavy rock and opera. She liked everything else.
Ten years on from Alex and there was still no sign of anyone special on the horizon. In fact the longer he went without a serious relationship the less important having one seemed to be. He enjoyed female company and there had been a succession of brief affairs but nothing serious.
He and a friend had tried speed dating in a hotel in Brighton one time. Actually they more stumbled across it when out for a drink. A woman approached them in the hotel bar and asked if they would like to join in as there had been a shortage of men turn up to the event. The woman who was organizing the event saw they were uncertain so offered to buy them a drink if they would take part and never the types to refuse a free drink they had accepted. The woman buying the drinks had been quite attractive and so Tom had made the incorrect assumption the women looking for dates would be the same. He had found it very strange that you had just three minutes with each girl. After explaining for the fourth time what he did to an uninterested female sitting across the table, he had realized speed dating wasn’t something he would try again anytime soon. He announced he was going to the toilet but instead headed straight for the exit. His friend had seen him leave and quickly followed. He recounted the story to Melanie which made her laugh.
Melanie told Tom how quite early on in her career she recognised that she was in an industry where relationships are notoriously difficult to maintain given that you could spend months apart on film sets. Her famous friends had consistently proved her right. As she was an old fashioned girl at heart and only wanted to walk down the aisle once, she admitted she couldn’t see herself ever marrying an actor, preferring to go out with someone sane as she put it! The problem was that she spent ninety per cent of her time with actors and rarely met anyone remotely normal.
There was no shortage of dates however, and when challenged she coyly admitted that flings with her leading men were not entirely uncommon, although not as frequent as reported in the press. After all what was a woman to do by herself for weeks on end on a film set in the middle of nowhere. Then she’d added that someone needed to invent batteries that lasted a lot longer and they’d both laughed noisily enough to attract the attention of nearby diners. He was pleasantly surprised by how at ease Melanie seemed to be in his company. She seemed most unlike a Hollywood star. There was no arrogance and no hint of being a diva. She was pleasant to all the staff and smiled warmly in response to the couple who approached the table and asked for her autograph. She seemed a very nice human being and he felt a tinge of guilt that he had ever thought she might be anything less.
The subject had changed to work although Tom refused at first to recognise that
