by Carol Mason
Wrapping up early. See u back in room at 4?
Perfect, I reply.
When I return to the hotel, housekeeping has been and I throw myself on top of the freshly made bed. The sun has shifted but the room is pleasantly warm. I open a window, and the white noise of a nearby generator sends me into a short but satisfying sleep.
When Joe gets back, he’s in one of his very buoyant moods.
His meetings went well. He reels off his key achievements. Then, as I’m wandering towards the wardrobe, he grabs me by the hand and pulls me close, kissing me with the some of the raw hunger he exhibited last night. He’s on top of me, trying to wriggle off my knickers, when he suddenly stops. ‘You are still taking your pill, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I say. He goes to kiss me again but I press a hand into his chest. ‘Why would you think I wasn’t?’
He seems a little puzzled by my question. ‘I don’t think that. I just . . . maybe with travelling. I just wondered if you’d remembered to bring them.’
His hands go to my underwear again but I slither out from beneath him. ‘You didn’t seem to care last night.’
He sighs, rolls over into a sitting position. ‘Look, last night, I’d had a few to drink . . . I didn’t think. But it just occurred to me . . .’
‘So if I said no, actually, I forgot to bring them . . . ?’
He sighs, climbs off the bed. ‘Forget it,’ he says.
Later, we shower, I put on a nice dress, then we go out for dinner. Joe acts like the weirdness in the bedroom never happened.
‘We really need to get time to ourselves more often,’ he says brightly, as we walk hand in hand back to the hotel after a nightcap in a bar that sells more varieties of Scotch than I knew existed.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That would be nice.’ I picture some revised life. One in which we somehow manage to successfully negotiate all the hurdles that we haven’t done a very good job of negotiating up to now.
‘Maybe a few days or a weekend away every month?’ He glances at me fondly, eyes blazing with optimism.
Between my crazy shift work and his custody arrangement, the obvious question is How would that actually play out? But I don’t feel like asking it.
‘That would be fantastic,’ I say instead. I catch myself calculating that Grace might well be off to uni in four more years. But Toby not for fourteen. And what if we have children of our own? Where do they fit in?
But I think I already know the answer to that.
Back in the room he pulls me to him the moment we’re in the door. ‘Can we finish what we started earlier?’
His apology, I think.
‘Sure,’ I say.
But when his kiss travels down my neck, I don’t feel myself responding to it in quite the same way.
Back in Hampstead the fridge is looking a little bare and the kids will soon be here, so the first thing we do is make a trip to WholeFoods. Joe loves grocery shopping, loves selecting what we’re going to eat. I’ve never seen anyone get so excited about pushing a trolley up and down the aisles.
We are wandering over to the salad bar when I hear a voice call out, ‘Joe!’
We turn, almost in sync, and right behind us is someone I almost immediately recognise. The woman from the yoga class.
‘Luce!’ he says.
There’s an instant where her eyes slide from Joe to me and she looks confused. They exchange a few protracted pleasantries and then Joe seems to remember I’m here. He places his hand in the small of my back. ‘Luce, I’d like you to meet Lauren.’
‘We’ve met!’ she says, and tells him about the class.
‘Wow.’ Joe glances at me. ‘Small world.’
There are a stiff few seconds but then his phone rings. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Actually . . . I have to take this.’ He strides off to a less populated corner of the shop, placing a hand over his other ear to block out the background noise.
Lucy and I are left looking at each other. ‘Well,’ she says, after a beat. ‘I suppose he didn’t waste much time! Good for him.’ She inspects me with fresh interest. ‘So how long have you guys been going out? We never did go for that coffee . . .’
I clear my throat, feel my cheeks heat up. ‘Actually, we’re not exactly going out . . . we’re married.’
There is an instant where she appears thoroughly dumbfounded. ‘Oh! Okay . . .’ And then she adds, ‘Well, for what it’s worth I was never Meredith’s number one fan.’ She whips me up and down with her gaze again. ‘And it doesn’t surprise me that Joe has an eye for the younger pretty ladies . . . I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not judging . . . Life’s short. We owe it to ourselves to find happiness.’ She stares in Joe’s direction, a certain wistful look on her face. ‘Well, anyway . . . tell him it was nice to see him again, will you?’ And then she pushes her trolley towards the tills.
I have a very strange feeling that we’ll never go for that coffee.
‘Why did you introduce me as Lauren and not your wife?’
We are sitting up in bed. His eyes move away from his laptop and he looks across at me. ‘What?’
‘Lucy. You introduced me as Lauren.’
He appears to think, then he says, ‘No reason. It wasn’t conscious . . . I suppose maybe because I haven’t seen her in ages. I had no idea what she already knew.’
I contemplate that. Sounds plausible, I suppose. ‘So how do you know her?’ I ask.
There’s a slightly awkward hesitation then he says, ‘She’s sort of an old friend. Her husband worked with Meredith. He was a barrister. The four of us were friends. He died of pancreatic cancer. Very sudden.’
‘Oh.’ I vaguely recall Lucy saying something about beginning to date again after never really imagining she’d have to. ‘So you didn’t stay friends with her after her husband died?’
Something changes in his eyes. A wall seems to go up. ‘Not really. People drift away sometimes, don’t they?’
Would you drift from a bereaved friend? ‘So Meredith isn’t still in touch with her then? She clearly didn’t know you were divorced.’
He sends me a look. ‘God, no.’
Hmm . . . I study him out of the corner of my eye, weighing the uncharacteristic note of drama in his reaction.
Clearly thinking I’m done with my questions, he goes back to his work. I stare at his hand resting by his laptop, the curl of his fingers as he reads something on his screen.
‘She said it doesn’t surprise her that you’ve got an eye for the younger, pretty women.’
He moves sharply, almost like a reflex – or a hit nerve – and his laptop tips so he has to steady it. ‘What? She said that?’
‘She said that!’
There is a moment where he looks a little annoyed. Then he says, ‘Well, who cares what Lucy thinks . . . For the record, there’s only one woman I’ve got an eye for, and the fact that she’s younger and pretty is arguably just a bonus.’ He smiles, then returns his attention to his laptop.
TWENTY-FOUR
Joe is agitated when I climb in the car. He has Meredith on speakerphone. When she must hear me greet him, she says, ‘Joe, are you still there?’ And then, when he doesn’t instantly reply, ‘Look, are you too busy for this now?’
‘Hang on,’ he says to her, then takes her off speakerphone. ‘Sorry.’ He casts me a glance, switches off the engine. ‘Just give me a minute.’ Next he is out of the car, mobile in hand, and pacing up and down the path.
I sit there and watch him, wondering why he’d rather walk around jacketless in the rain than have me overhear his conversation.
After what feels like an unreasonable amount of time, he returns to the car.
‘Plan’s changed.’ He reaches over to kiss my cheek as though it’s only now that I’ve become properly visible. ‘I’m going to have to take you home, then I’m heading straight over to Meredith’s.’
‘What’s happened?’
He pulls out of the parking space. ‘Grace’s head teacher wants to meet w
ith us in the morning. Grace has been accused of stealing a girl’s AirPods Pro and then vlogging about them.’ He presses on the brake a little hard and I pitch forward. ‘It’s obviously a huge mistake . . . Or some sort of vendetta. I mean, of all the things Grace might be, she’s certainly not a thief.’
My brain scrambles to make its way around this information. Then I say, ‘Have you actually seen the vlog?’
‘No.’ He sends me a frown. ‘Would I need to?’
I sit there contemplating this, then pull out my phone and log on to Grace’s YouTube. Within a moment or two her face fills my screen. She’s got her silky hair pulled back in a ponytail and I can see the little wireless devices sticking out her ears. I turn up the volume and we hear her chattering away about silicone buds and active noise cancellation, like she has a PhD in the subject.
‘Aren’t those things pretty expensive?’ I’d considered buying myself some a while back until I made a trip to the Apple store and blanched.
‘She’s hardly strapped for cash.’
Hmm. True.
‘It’ll all blow over but it’s damned annoying. I’ve had to get out of a meeting, which took a bit of manoeuvring . . . Meredith says they’ve no evidence. It’s this girl’s word against Grace’s.’
I stare at my kneecaps peeping out below the hem of my skirt, wondering what I should say or do. ‘I don’t really feel like going home,’ I tell him. ‘Why don’t you just drop me off at the pub and I can have a glass of wine and wait for you? You’ll need to eat at some point. Even if it’s later.’
He shakes his head. ‘I’ve no idea how long this is going to take. I tried tracking Grace down but she isn’t answering her phone. I’ll probably just get something at Meredith’s. No sense in you waiting around.’ He sends me a plaintive, but vaguely dismissive, glance.
I have a mental picture of them sitting sharing one of Rosamie’s home-cooked lasagnes over a bottle of wine while they wait for their daughter to come home, the alcohol perhaps loosening Joe’s tongue. Meredith asking him, ‘So how is newly married life, then?’ And Joe prefacing his reply with a sigh and the word, Well . . .
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’ll make it up to you.’
He drops me off at our door.
When his white Lexus pulls up in front of the flat hours later, I am sitting on the sofa by the window, reading my Kindle. Mozart alerts me to the fact that Joe is here by leaping out of his bed and running to the door. I watch Joe walk the short distance up our path, none of the usual spring in his step.
‘God. What a day!’ he says the instant he sees me. ‘Do we have anything to eat? I’m ravenous.’ He plonks himself down in the armchair, arms and legs splayed, like someone just shot him.
‘I thought you said you’d get something at Meredith’s.’
‘Did I?’ he says, tiredly. ‘I don’t even really remember.’ His eyes go to the pizza box sitting on the coffee table next to the half-empty wine bottle.
‘Sorry. I ate the whole thing. There wasn’t much else for me to do but stuff my face with pizza . . . If only you’d texted.’
‘Was it good?’ he asks. ‘You can at least let me imagine.’
‘Awful. That’s why I ate all of it.’
He smiles, like the sight of me has suddenly brightened his day.
I smile back, recognising that his arrival home is actually a bright spot in mine. ‘So how are things? If I dare ask.’
‘Oh . . . it’s fine. This other girl – Sara – isn’t the most reliable person, I don’t think.’ He gets up, goes over to the drinks cabinet and pours himself a Scotch. ‘Maybe she was jealous. Or maybe she lost the earbuds, didn’t want to tell her parents and just looked for someone to blame.’
‘Wouldn’t there be an email receipt from the store? To prove Grace bought them?’
His hand with the Scotch bottle in it turns still. He meets my eyes. ‘The onus isn’t on Grace to prove she bought them. It’s on her accuser to prove she didn’t.’
I contemplate him. ‘But surely if Grace just presented her receipt, then that makes it all so much simpler, doesn’t it? Don’t you just want it dealt with?’
‘It will be dealt with,’ he says coldly, almost disapprovingly. ‘Tomorrow. When the girl admits she tried to frame Grace.’ He puts the bottle back in the cabinet.
Accuser. Frame. Perhaps that’s the language you pick up if you live for many years with a barrister but it all seems a little over the top to me.
He walks back to the armchair, sits, takes a sip of his drink. ‘Anyway, if you really want to know, she doesn’t have the receipt – I asked. She said she empties her inbox regularly and would never keep something like that.’
I try to see if anything about his expression indicates he’s thinking, Convenient!
‘I am sure the store would have a copy.’
‘What’s this about?’ he says sharply. ‘How is there time to be going to the store now? We’re meeting with the school at eight-thirty in the morning.’
‘I was just trying to be helpful.’
He sips in silence, stares across the room. I watch him: the contemplative Joe who is here in body but not fully in mind. Then he says, ‘Meredith expects the girl’s going to deeply regret bringing an allegation like this, when she has zero proof.’ He stares through his glass at the amber liquid. ‘And my guess is that once Meredith is done with her, she’ll wish she’d never been born.’
It bothers me all night. Joe and Meredith don’t know if Grace stole them, but either way, they’re not prepared to consider that she might have. I’m not sure what this teaches Grace – or what it says about my husband, whom I’ve always thought of as having practically written the book on integrity. But something else bothers me, too. By not telling them what I know about Grace’s shoplifting I feel complicit. And yet I can’t exactly put forward something for which I have no proof. Grace may have stolen the waistcoat, and other things, but that doesn’t mean she definitely took the earbuds.
‘There’s something you should know,’ I say to his back when I struggle out of bed, wander into the kitchen and find him making breakfast.
He glances over his shoulder, his hand freezing momentarily on the frying pan handle. ‘What’s up?’
The sun streaming in the kitchen window casts him in an attractive light, and for a moment I want to hold on to our cosy domesticity and keep this other reality of our lives at bay.
I hitch myself on to a stool at the breakfast bar. ‘Grace stole a waistcoat from Topshop. The one she was wearing when she was doing her Brian May act. And it’s not the first time she’s shoplifted either.’
‘What?’ He gives a single snort of laughter.
‘It’s true. I’m not making it up.’
He pulls the towel from his shoulder and wipes his hands. ‘I’m confused,’ he says, cautiously. ‘How do you know this?’
I tell him about our conversation.
‘A magnet?’ He throws me a doubting, almost defensive look. That fissure is there. The disaffection that makes itself apparent when he’s preparing for something he doesn’t want to hear. ‘You can’t seriously expect me . . . This is bullshit.’ He quickly seems to remember his pan, and turns around to pull it off the gas. ‘She must have been messing with you. I mean . . . how would she even know how to do something like remove security tags with giant magnets?’
‘YouTube? It’s not like she’s exactly a stranger to the medium.’
It occurs to me that the magnet might be in her room. But I can hardly go on a digging mission to incriminate her and wave it under his nose – Ta-dah! ‘Apparently she’s been shoplifting for years – it seems to have started around the time Meredith fell pregnant with Toby.’ I try to ignore the look of vexation in his eyes when I say this. ‘Only now it seems to have got more serious . . . She thinks she’s a brand ambassador. That vlogging about brands gives her the right to take things for free.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ He throws it back as though the problem i
s not the information – but me. ‘If this is true, why wouldn’t you have said anything to me before?’
‘Because – obviously – it put me in a very odd position. I didn’t think that snitching on her would exactly help our relationship and I thought that if we had a gentle talk about consequences, she might think twice about doing it again.’
His brows knit together. He wipes a palm across his mouth. ‘You didn’t think maybe it was up to me or Meredith to talk to Grace about consequences? Since when was that your job?’ The expression on his face is colder than his words and it takes me a second or two to recover.
‘What exactly is my job, Joe?’ I throw up my hands. ‘Because I really wonder sometimes!’
We lock eyes. He give me a hard, diagnostic stare and I do my best to return it. Finally he says, a mite less rattled, ‘Why would she admit it to you? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Maybe because I caught her. I don’t know,’ I say, watching him pour himself some water at the sink then gulp it down. ‘Maybe because she actually wants someone to know. She’d rather get into shit than feel ignored.’
‘That’s crazy! Grace isn’t starved of attention!’
‘Maybe not. But you have to admit her life changed when a new baby came along, after a decade of being an only child. And it’s changed again. Her parents get divorced. Her dad remarries. She’s got two homes. And now there’s . . . me. Another draw on your attention. Maybe she just wants someone to ask her how she’s feeling about all this.’
It suddenly just hits me. I don’t know why now – or how I didn’t see this before. But suddenly it all makes sense.
‘Oh my God . . . Does Grace know for sure you began seeing me after you and her mother split up?’
He looks puzzled by my question at first, and yet I can see a light going on. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I mean . . . I assume. It’s not like we’ve ever had the conversation.’
