The Graft by Martina Cole Page A

at the ceiling in amazement.
     
    They all wished Nick was theirs, while wondering if they could be woman enough to keep him as faithful as Tammy did.
     
    And that was exactly what she wanted them to think.
     
    In fact, Nick had not come near her in that way for years. He cuddled her, and he hugged her, and the other night they had fallen asleep together. She had felt his need for closeness and had responded to it. But the truth was, he had no sexual interest in her whatsoever. Thankfully, he had no interest in anyone else either.
     
    Impotence he called it, and it was that very thing that kept Tammy in gold cards and Mercedes sports. Kept her kids in private school and gave her licence to do whatever she wanted.
     
    But she would never let on to anyone.
     
    If he managed to get it up now and again with someone else as she suspected from the occasional absence on unspecified ‘business’ then that was OK as far as she was concerned. As long as it wasn’t serious, she couldn’t give the proverbial flying fuck. At least that was what she told herself.
     
    Tammy pushed the thoughts from her mind once more. Her biggest fear was that her husband would fall in love with someone else, one of his one-night stands. But Tammy being Tammy had already worked out a nice little earner for herself should that befall her and hers.
     
    Nick Leary would pay, and pay big-time.
     
    Her macho husband’s biggest fear was that his reluctance in the marital bed would be broadcast to the world, or more specifically, to their circle of friends. He had always had trouble keeping it up, as she so nicely put it, now he couldn’t even raise a smile as he so nicely put it.
     
    But she played the game, pretended that they were at it morning, noon and night, and even though she would shag a table leg if it bought her a drink, her friends all thought Nick didn’t know about her affairs and she kept the pretence up. It was part of her street cred now and she knew that and she used it.
     
    Even though her husband had the reputation of a womaniser, she could honestly say that even in her most jealous rages she had never been able to find out anything concrete to throw at him. But that was Nick all over, if he was using brasses again, she would never know about it and, in a way, she respected him for that, even as the thought drove her mad.
     
    She had found a pack of condoms in his jacket pocket and it had thrown her whole world off-kilter. When she had confronted him, he had told her he was trying out brasses to see if he could sort himself out.
     
    Her jealousy, as usual, had got the better of her. That a nameless, faceless tart could get her leg over with her husband when she could not even raise his interest made her self-esteem hit the floor once more. It had taken an affair with a young guy who cleaned their pool to get her over that one.
     
    Yet her sensible side told her to be pleased that at least Nick wasn’t sleeping with someone he cared about, it wasn’t with an actual bird . Most of her friends’ husbands had birds that were an open secret. At least Nick had never humiliated her in that way. If he had a bird, she would have heard about it from one of her so-called friends. They would have enjoyed telling her about it.
     
    She had often been out with Nick and seen her friends’ husbands with their birds. Younger women, far beneath their wives in the food chain, but with full breasts and firm skin that no matter how much money you acquired you couldn’t emulate. They were all too stupid to see that they would be traded-in eventually for younger versions of themselves even if they gave the men kids, which was often the mistake their wives had made. A belly full of stretch marks and a crying baby turned them from sex objects to mother figures overnight. It was how their world worked, and even when the men hit their fifties there would always be someone new to step into the girlfriend’s shoes and, in some cases, even the flat