The Secretary

by Zoe Lea

  ‘I work here,’ I hissed back at him. ‘I thought you were in Edinburgh, you told me—’

  He waved his hands, stopping me and looked back to the school. ‘It was what you wanted to hear.’

  ‘What do you mean, what I wanted to hear? You came over to me, you got me drunk, you said—’

  ‘Oh please.’ He checked his watch, suddenly overcome with a business-like attitude. ‘You’re all the same. Sad, lonely divorcees. All up for it after a few glasses of prosecco and then clingy and desperate again the next morning. You knew the score that night, so don’t give me all this “promising to call” shit. Now be a good girl and piss off.’

  Rage roared in my ears. I heard a shocked gasp and realised it was me. ‘You’re unbelievable,’ I whispered, ‘what you did, those lies you told me. You’re a complete monster.’

  ‘Yeah? Well you wanted it that night, love, don’t pretend you didn’t, so if that makes me a monster then it makes you a slag.’

  He slammed his car door.

  I was rooted to the spot, unable to catch up with what had just happened. He reversed his car angrily and then screeched off, swerving around me.

  The air was still. I stood frozen, watching the back of his car.

  ‘Can I help?’

  I turned and she was suddenly at the side of me. His wife.

  Stood next to me, a confused smile playing on her lips, that familiar look about her, like we’d met before.

  ‘It’s Miss Clarkson, isn’t it? You’re the school secretary here.’ She nodded. ‘I’m so sorry we parked there, we were late. I know it’s strictly forbidden but … ’ Her words trailed off as she looked at my face. ‘He didn’t shout at you, did he?’ She put her hand to my sleeve, a light touch of her fingers on my elbow. I could smell her perfume, flowery and strong. ‘He’s late for work, we were all late this morning and he can be irritable, insensitive. If he raised his voice—’

  ‘He called her a slag.’

  We all turned at the words; they came from a small boy with a pale face.

  ‘He said she wanted it and called her a slag.’

  ‘Ryan!’ It was the woman who had been stood at the side of us, there throughout the whole thing. She put her hand over her son’s mouth, as if to make him swallow his words back up. ‘Stop that.’

  I looked to his wife, who was staring at the woman and her boy, her face quizzical as she took in what the boy had said and then she turned back to me. I wasn’t sure what expression my features were holding, what my face told her, but something in her eyes grasped the situation.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I found myself whispering to her. ‘I didn’t know he was married.’

  The school bell rang. Slicing through the air.

  It was the second ring, the one that meant the doors are closing, and it was only then that I got the first sense of what I’d just done by saying that to her, what I’d admitted to.

  My arms went goosefleshy, a prickling panic crept up my body. There was silence. And for a moment it was just me and her. Her eyes locked on mine. And she was me, four years ago, learning it from one of Will’s friends. He’d been poking fun about my love of fish and then realised he was talking to the wrong woman and a canyon of horror opened up before me. I could see her canyon open up before her, her life sliding into it, tumbling down.

  ‘He’s ill,’ the woman with the boy said. ‘I’m taking him back home, we only came to drop off his sister. I’m just waiting for my mother, she’s taken Zara in. Ryan here’s got a fever.’ She put her hand on the boy’s head. ‘I thought some fresh air might do him good, but he doesn’t know what he’s saying.’

  I recognised her. Eve, was it? She was chubby, fat cheeks, the kind that are always red. Her boy with the pale face was in the same class as Sam, I was sure. Ryan Trebank. A nice kid, I wanted Sam to make friends with him. I silently pleaded with her, tried to convey that I needed help here, that our boys were in the same class, and please, please, take the heat out of this situation.

  ‘He doesn’t know what he heard,’ she offered, but it was useless. His wife had taken hold of my arm, her fingers tight around it.

  ‘What do you mean, you didn’t know he was married?’

  There were two women a little way up the street, near the railings leading off from the main entrance, car keys in hands, laughing, but they’d stopped at her voice and were watching us.

  A woman dressed in gym gear with a high ponytail came out of the school gates and joined us.

  ‘Janine?’ she asked, taking in the situation. ‘What’s going on?’

  I realised that within minutes, all the other parents would soon be leaving. This moment of quiet would be over, the street would be full of people going back to their cars, back to their days. I needed to be in my office and off the street. I needed to speak to Sam’s teacher and tell her of the gold stars. I went to pull away but his wife held me tight.

  ‘Janine?’ The woman in gym gear prompted. I thought she was one of those that didn’t work, but I would later learn her name was Ashley, and she was a solicitor.

  ‘What did you mean?’ his wife asked me again.

  ‘I didn’t know … ’ I began, but she dug her nails in, stopping me.

  ‘You didn’t know what?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I was stuttering now, my words tripping over themselves.

  ‘You’re sorry for what?’

  I swallowed, my throat dry. Everything I said was making it worse, I couldn’t find words that wouldn’t incriminate me further.

  ‘Why would he call you a slag?’ she asked.

  ‘He called her a slag?’

  Janine nodded at Ashley and then they both turned to me.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ I said, pulling my arm free and trying to move past them. ‘It wasn’t who I thought it was. Wrong person. He got the wrong person. I don’t even know Rob.’

  ‘You know his name,’ Ashley said, and I flinched.

  No one moved.

  I stepped out into the road. Like the parents earlier who’d been forced to walk around his illegally parked car, I was forced to walk around his wife.

  And then I paused, right beside her, so only she could hear. ‘He lied,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know who he was. I’m so, so sorry.’

  My legs were unstable as I walked back up to the main building. I felt weak, like I’d just sprinted up a steep hill. Why did I even talk to him? So I could tell him what a prick he was? Why talk to her? Why apologise?

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  My heart was racing. The two ladies by the main entrance had started to walk over to Janine and Ashley, to hear the gossip. They’d been watching the whole episode but now they needed details. I could hear them ask what was going on as they reached them.

  And then it hit me.

  My head snapped forward as a sharp pain shot down my neck.

  I felt at my collar and then looked at my fingers. They were covered in blood.

  Something had been thrown at me. I looked down and realised it was a mobile phone. The screen shattered from where it had hit my head. I turned around, and there Janine was. Crying, her face distorted into an angry, wet mess. Her mouth open in anguish, her arm still outstretched from where she had launched her phone.

  The two women had joined Janine and Ashley, and they stood in a huddle. Arms going around Janine’s shoulders, reassuring words spoken and shocked faces looking at her thrown mobile phone, at my fingers covered in blood.

  Ryan, the boy who had heard it all, who told it like it was, looked at me from his mother’s side, his pale face shining out at me like a moon.

  ‘Ruth?’ It was Becca, she was by the school entrance, holding open the main door and I almost ran to her.

  I went inside the building and into my office, grabbing a tissue and holding it to my head. I was shaking. My head was pounding.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Becca said, as I shut the door and closed the blinds to the office window, and for the first time since working there, the gla
ss partition.

  ‘Did I see Janine Walker just throw her phone at you?’

  I looked at the tissue – it was bright red. ‘It’s fine,’ I told her. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Let me see.’ I tried to move away but Becca held me tight. ‘Ruth, let me see.’ She breathed in sharply. ‘That might need a stitch.’

  I put the tissue back over it, sitting down on the chair.

  ‘Walker.’ My words came out thinly. ‘Sally Walker’s mum from year five?’

  ‘Orla Walker in year two,’ Becca agreed. ‘Head of the PTA and runs that private tutoring company, Top Marks.’

  How could I have not placed her? Of course, that’s who she was. Janine Walker. Always sending in emails, asking for appointments, teachers nodding in recognition at her name. That was his wife? Head of the PTA? I closed my eyes.

  ‘What happened?’ Becca almost whispered. ‘What happened out there?’

  I looked up slowly. ‘You remember the Valentine’s dinner at your gym?’

  Becca thought for a moment. ‘The one with the terrible DJ?’

  ‘That man –’ I swallowed, my throat tight ‘– Rob. The one who was sending drinks over to us all night?’

  She nodded again. ‘The bastard who never called?’

  ‘That’s her husband,’ I told her, and Becca opened her mouth in disbelief.

  ‘He’s Janine Walker’s husband? That slimy bastard who never called, is her husband?’

  I nodded. ‘And Janine just found out what I did with him.’

  FOUR

  It was Becca’s idea. She’d fallen prey to one of those daft adverts that the gyms put out every January involving reduced membership fees and vague aspirational slogans. Discover yourself. Join now and be the best you can be! And Becca, in her post-Christmas slump, had signed up. I thought it was a massive waste of money, but three weeks in she’d been proving me wrong, she was loving it. A new sense of purpose, she’d said, which really meant a new group of men. She told me I needed to go, and I started getting the monologue in earnest of how I should be meeting someone new, and wasn’t three years long enough being single.

  I was used to that, used to smiling and shaking my head. Used to explaining that, after what happened with Will, I was steering well clear of men. Used to saying that Sam was enough, that I was still raw, but then she’d done the unthinkable. She got my mother involved.

  They’d bumped into each other at Tesco, Becca told her of the Valentine’s dance, the fresh group of suitable men, and dates were swapped. Babysitting was agreed and an impossible situation arose.

  My mother said it would be good for my mental health, Becca said it would be good for her so she didn’t have to go alone, and after two days of a losing argument I found myself sat at a round table with seven other women eating carrot soup and wondering what the hell I was doing there.

  It was in a function room at one of the big hotels in town that was more suited to holding wedding events than it was intimate dinners. The chairs were backed in white linen, a chiffon red bow tied around each one. Small glittery love hearts were strewn across the table, a menu with overly sentimental prose was displayed on each setting as well as a small tube of Love Hearts sweets.

  ‘Be mine,’ Becca had said, showing me hers before popping it in her mouth, and I was overcome with a great feeling of dread before the night had even properly begun. Because what Becca omitted to tell me before we got there, what she failed to say in all the pleading and cajoling, was that the Valentine’s dinner at her new gym was a strictly ‘singles’ event. Meaning that there were no couples, no people companionably sat together without an agenda, and so the whole event had the air of a school disco. And even worse, there were ‘games’ to be played of writing notes of who you liked on a whiteboard, sending drinks to people by waiter service and, worst of all, a name badge should you want to wear one.

  Giddy anticipation filled the air and, ridiculously, all the men seemed to be at one end of the room while all the women were at the other. Whole tables of single sexes, me and Becca sat among a pottery group who debated endlessly whether certain celebrities were homosexual.

  After the meal, a DJ set up playing a series of annoying songs and it was at this point that I decided to go home.

  ‘I’m done,’ I remember saying to Becca as the introduction to ‘It’s Raining Men’ blared out and the ladies at our table started singing along at top volume. ‘My feet are killing me and I want my bed and I need to get home to Sam.’

  Becca’s eyes worked the room as I talked.

  ‘You don’t need me here,’ I told her, ‘you know everyone. I don’t. And I’m tired, Sam’ll be up early and I need my sleep.’

  She grabbed hold of my hand. ‘One drink,’ she said, ‘just have one more drink and then you can go.’

  I was already slightly fuzzy. I’d had too much of the wine at the meal. I yawned and nodded; one more drink wouldn’t hurt. I got out my phone and started dialling a cab while she was at the bar. I hadn’t finished punching in the numbers when she came back carrying a bottle of champagne.

  ‘Becca … ’ I began, but she shook her head.

  ‘I didn’t buy it,’ she told me. ‘They did!’

  I followed her gaze and saw two men by the bar. They were slightly older than us and looked out of place. Most of the men were wearing ill-fitting suits, bellies hanging out, shirts pulling, buttons gaping. But the two men Becca was pointing to were dressed casually and expensively. Smart shirts, open at the collar, no tie. They had an air of confidence, looked like they were at an elite function, not in a room full of sweaty individuals, faces filled with desperate hope. They looked out of place because they were. They raised their glasses as I looked, toasting us, and Becca giggled.

  ‘Mark and Rob,’ she said, pouring our drinks, ‘they seem ever so nice.’ She held up the champagne bottle for me to look at before putting it back in the ice bucket. It was expensive.

  ‘Becca, I’m going home,’ I told her. ‘I don’t want champagne, it gives me a headache.’

  ‘Don’t be so miserable.’ She handed me a full glass. ‘Get that down you and you’ll perk right up. Besides –’ she flicked her hair, picked up the ice bucket and gave a wide smile to the men at the bar ‘– you need to come and say thank you.’

  It was apparent when we got to the bar that Becca had her eye on Mark, leaving me with Rob. I wasn’t interested. I told him I wasn’t staying as he poured me a second drink. He smiled, he was charming, told me to leave whenever I wanted to, no pressure.

  He asked me the right questions to get me talking, told a few jokes and we finished the champagne and ordered another.

  Halfway into the second bottle, I found myself telling him about Will, about how he’d been having an affair. He confided that he’d had the same thing done to him, he hadn’t been married but they’d been together seven years. I remember getting hold of his hand when I heard that. I was drunk by that stage and had that deceptive feeling of connection that too much alcohol induces. I gave him my sympathy, I asked about his girlfriend and how he found out about her infidelity. We swapped sob stories. I think I may have been crying a little.

  ‘You’re not going, are you?’ he asked when I got my jacket. Becca was nowhere to be found and I was very drunk. I stumbled. ‘Here.’ He helped me get my coat on, I swayed and found it funny. ‘I’ve a room,’ he said, ‘come and get a coffee and sober up a little before you go home.’ He held up his hands. ‘Just coffee,’ he insisted. ‘No funny business.’

  It was the oldest trick in the book. I genuinely went to his room thinking that coffee would be good, that I could sober up before facing my mother. That she would be waiting for me, and I needed to be a little more in control before I told her how dire the night was and how she was never to force me out again. A hot cup of coffee and a moment away from the DJ and his overbearing music sounded ideal.

  I didn’t even like him that much. I remember thinking that as I followed him into the lift and
then down the corridor to his room. I was safe because I didn’t even fancy him. He wasn’t my type, too thick set, too much muscle and girth. He wore slip-on shoes and his hair was too neat, his clothes too pristine.

  I did not go up to his room to have sex. But after kicking off my shoes, lying on the bed, hearing more about his breakup and seeing how sensitive he was, thinking we’d made that connection, when he kissed me I didn’t push him away. When he unzipped my dress and held me, I didn’t say no. I didn’t fancy him but, after three years of nothing, it felt good to be close to someone. It felt nice to have flesh on flesh and that bodily warmth and, as I let him undress me, as I surrendered to the sensations, I believed I was doing it with a man who was single. Who had recently undergone a serious break-up, a man who was a kindred spirit. Someone just like me.

  It was over quickly. I dressed laughing at what had taken place. It was so out of character, so unusual. I cried a little, too much alcohol mixed with old sensations and the fact that it was the first man I’d slept with since Will. He held me, reassured and comforted me, told me he felt the same way, that we were two lonely souls who had comforted each other. I gave him my number, watched him add it to his contacts. He gave me his and we made brief arrangements to meet the following weekend.

  It was justified in my head that night, but in the morning, hungover and slightly ashamed at my behaviour, I couldn’t get on with myself. I’m not the kind of woman who meets a man in a bar and lets him have intercourse with her after an evening of light flirting. And so, I rang him. Now I was sober, I wanted to let him know who I really was. I wanted to apologise for all that talk about Will, about my divorce. I wanted to tell him that I never cry about it, that I’d been far too maudlin and it was the combination of the Valentine’s dinner, too much champagne and his sympathy. I wanted to thank him for listening to me, for his company. I wanted to introduce myself properly.

  Number not recognised.

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt like a bigger idiot than I did that morning. I waited for him to call me, convincing myself that I’d got one of his numbers wrong, that he was sincere. That what we’d talked about hadn’t all been hot air, but when his call never came, slow realisation and humiliation dawned. He’d said it all, done it all, just to get me into bed, and I’d let him. He must’ve thought I was the biggest, saddest pushover going, and what was worse was that I didn’t even fancy him.