Free Wishful Thinking by Jemma Harvey

office, even the prettiest temps passed unmolested, and although Cal’s flirtatious manner continued, it became more a matter of routine, with no real intention behind it. He began to discuss his work problems with Georgie, absorbing something of her attitudes, and colleagues declared he had mellowed. Lin and I watched with mixed feelings. ‘You’re going to get hurt,’ Lin asserted with unwonted stringency. ‘Married men are always a bad idea. Is he going to leave Christine?’
    â€˜I don’t want him to,’ Georgie said. ‘Anyway, it’s just casual.’
    â€˜What do you want?’ I asked, but she didn’t answer. Perhaps she didn’t really know.
    Georgie had been a femme mildly fatale for most of her adult life without ever doing any real damage. There was no trail in her wake of broken hearts and ruptured relationships; as she herself put it, no man ever died of unrequited lust. But when Cal assured her of his lack of intentions, when she set about unwinding the corkscrew – opening the oyster – coaxing from him the exposé of his most secret fears and feelings, a little demon at the back of her mind whispered: Go on. You can do it. Make him care . Whether born of vanity or devilry she didn’t know, but she was ashamed of it, and doubtful of her power, and unable to take it seriously. Georgie had survived her various trials and tribulations largely by never taking them seriously. She played the game because it was just a game, always forgetting the catch. To take, you have to give. And because Georgie is warm and generous by nature she gave without thinking, without prudence or restraint. ‘Of course I shan’t fall in love with him,’ she told us. ‘I’m over forty. I’m sensible. I’ve only ever been in love once, and that was more than enough. Anyway, he’s Cal .’
    The night came, after a week of tension at home, when he went out with the lads, got horrendously drunk, and turned up on her doorstep in the wee small hours. He told her he loved her and was promptly sick in a basin which she had had the forethought to provide: intelligent anticipation is one of Georgie’s many talents. Then he crashed out in her bed till morning. She looked down at him – he was lying on his stomach, his head half-turned, his profile very young and somehow vulnerable in sleep – and felt a sudden rush of tenderness, catching her off guard, an emotion so strong that it was physical, squeezing her insides, a wonderful deep twisty pain which scared her and made her happy both at once. ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she told Lin and me when she described it, long after. ‘You’re too young. You don’t know what it’s like to go through the years being so strong, and so independent, and all the while underneath there’s the fearing – the knowing – that you’ll never feel that way again. You’ll never be that alive again. Then it comes, when you don’t expect it, and you think that no price would be too high for that moment, that feel .’
    I don’t know about Lin but in my case she was right: I didn’t understand. Love hurts, so the songs say. Well, we all know that. Because of the rejection, and betrayal, and all that part of the package. But I couldn’t conceive of happiness hurting; I couldn’t get my head around that one. I thought that the hurt was because of his marriage, and the hopelessness of it all.
    â€˜So you do want him to divorce Christine,’ Lin said. ‘Divorce her and marry you . . .’
    â€˜No,’ said Georgie. ‘If I marry again it’s going to be to a millionaire. I’ve done romantic marriage; now I’m going to be practical. It’s just . . . until then . . . it’s wonderful to be a little in love. Just a little.’
    She should have known better. There’s no such thing as