In the way that lying, or, at least, sieving the truth, becomes my default position with girlfriends, I tell Mel that I am going to London for a gig, and that two of my daughters and my middle one's girlfriend will be there, and I'll be staying in a little back street airbnb in Hammersmith.
All of which is true. What else is true is that I'm going with Trina, and sharing a double bed with her. Neither of us have any interest in "muddying the waters" as Wendy calls congress, but I thought it best if I skipped over that detail away.
Before I kept a night time distance from Trina's arse, I met up with my two daughters and the gf in a pub in somewhere near Victoria. They were all stylishly dressed, the eldest especially, looking a bit Weimar, in a long green shirt over wide trousers and brown strappy flatties, all charity shop. I liked being with my girls; they're sunny and pisstaking. We didn't seem to be able to radiate the mood though. The pub was lonely and atomised. An elderly woman was going up to tables and pointing to the cricket on the tv and getting rebuffed with silence or a few polite translations of "do fuck off, there's a good pisshead." I've lived in London, and have felt lonely like her.
I met Trina at Hammersmith; we settled in and stripped and reclothed, then went out, to find our part of the Tube was closed due to maintenance work. I was relieved when she suggested a taxi.
We got to Ronnie Scott's and were shown to our seats. We nodded to our neighbours along the banquette. The singer was Miles Sanko, who has an attractive but standard black male voice. I liked the piano solos from Tom O'Grady and the way the band were tight in their endings. But Sanko's repartee - like asking us if we want to make "a circle of love in the room tonight" - was toe-curling and self-admiring. The bloke sitting next to us said "this round" (for three of them) "has cost me hundred-and-twenty quid, but we're having another, fuck it."
The following morning we went for breakfast in Wethers, where the resident loony welcomed two couples who were sitting down at a nearby table by saying in their direction "sit down you cunts. Shit heads." I was blathering with Trina over the whole weekend, not thinking about what to say, and was sorry to see her leave for a train two hours earlier than mine. I told her in a text afterwards that "I do love you in a funny way." She doesn't love me "in a funny way," with a qualification. She loves me.
I have this calculator in my head where: Trina, long distance away, effortless unthinking talking, bit of a fear of sex on both sides -- she finds the whole thing a bit ridiculous and despite all these years I'm not sure what she likes -- but I know that she loves me.
Mel, half an hour away on the scooter, laughing a lot, her Greek cooking, and an understanding that this is a practical sexual relationship, where "I love you too," -- thankfully not that often said -- I think more means, "this works, let's keep it going."
Actually, now that Trina has calmed down a bit – nearly ten years in – I wish we lived a bit nearer. When I see her now, I get the best of her, the bits I’ve always liked about her. I often wonder, if we lived in the same town now, what would happen.