‘But that’s just it,’ said Florence. ‘She’s so ground down by it all. She’s so completely knackered. She does what she can but –’ Her hand mimed something fluttering off into the distance. ‘It’s already gone.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Sarah, in her usual thoughtful way. ‘I really wanted to hate Samantha. I mean, obviously, she’s the villain. She’s supposed to be a real bitch. But I couldn’t hate her, in the end. Because she’s just as needy and insecure as the other women. I thought that was what was so clever about the writing.’
‘Yes, the person we should really get angry with is the husband,’ said Florence. ‘But he’s just weak and vain. Not a very interesting character at all.’
Ella stood up. Everyone seemed to look in her direction. ‘Sorry. Just going to put some more coffee on.’
She felt Florence’s eyes follow her as she went over to the cafe area, scooped coffee beans from the tin. She tried to shake off the effect of the words on her mood. The conversation was too close to the bone for her this morning. And for once, she found herself agreeing with Kate. She hadn’t liked the book much either, but she hadn’t quite been able to put her finger on why.
She turned. Florence’s steady gaze met hers. What was this? Did Florence know something?
She hit the button on the coffee grinder. Its familiar buzz calmed her nerves.
*
‘You look fantastic, El.’ Billy poured wine into her glass. ‘Really fantastic.’
‘Thanks.’ Despite herself, she felt that familiar flush starting at the base of her neck. ‘You don’t look so bad yourself.’
It was true. She was aware, as they’d got older, that women looked at Billy in a certain way.
‘He’s the kind of man that grows into his looks,’ Mamma had always said. And, sure enough, that tall, skinny boy with the long legs and bony wrists had become a stronger, more athletic-looking man. His hair was still thick and black, although he kept it cut much shorter now. But it was his eyes that you noticed first. Blue and full of mischief. They were twinkling at her now as she reached for her glass.
‘It’s weird, this, isn’t it?’ She looked around the room, a proper grown-up restaurant, with dimmed lighting and tealights on the tables and some kind of jazz on the speakers. Not a family in sight, just couples like them. ‘It feels like something – or should I say someone’s – missing.’
Billy nodded. ‘But we should have done this ages ago. We should make a regular thing of it, you and me. Mum was only too happy to help out.’
Ella thought of how much she missed Mamma. Billy’s mum was lovely, of course, but it didn’t feel quite the same, somehow, leaving Grace with her other granny for the evening. She’d Skyped Mamma just a couple of hours ago. The connection had been a bit crackly, dropping in and out, and she’d seemed particularly far away.
‘Mum, what can I wear?’ she’d said. ‘Nothing fits me anymore. Nothing. I don’t have stuff for a fancy restaurant.’
Mamma had laughed. ‘I never thought I’d hear this,’ she’d said. ‘Not ever.’
‘What? Me seeking fashion advice?’
‘Exactly. But the thing is, tesora, you’ve just got to be yourself. That’s what Billy wants, after all. You are the woman he fell in love with.’
Ella hadn’t said anything about her fears, about Selena and all the worries that were creeping in.
‘So, jeans, then?’ she’d said.
Mamma had looked doubtful. ‘Well, do you have nice ones? That you can wear with a little heel, perhaps?’
‘See? Exactly. That’s what I’m saying.’
‘OK. Well, maybe . . . No, you’ll get annoyed with me –’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, up in the wardrobe, there are still a few of Eustacia’s dresses . . .’
Ella had smiled. The wonderful Eustacia. The woman whose family had once gifted Mamma an entire wardrobe of beautiful vintage clothes, each carefully catalogued. That all seemed like a lifetime ago.
‘You mean the swirly patterned one, don’t you?’
It was perhaps the only dress that Ella had ever lusted after. She remembered sneaking up to the bedroom and holding it against herself in the mirror.
‘Yes. The Missoni. It’s so . . . well, you. And it’s different. Unique, in fact. And actually, you won’t want to hear this, tesora, but it’s actually very on trend. There’s a very bohemian vibe around at the moment. Folksy. Lots of embroidery and colour. You could wear it with ankle boots. Those nice black ones with the wedge. You’ll look adorable. And sexy.’
And, of course, Mamma had been right.
When Ella fished the dress from the back of the wardrobe and put it on, it was perfect. The colours were interesting but not garish in any way. The bold swirls of the silk chiffon skimmed her body in all the right places so that it was flattering and hung just so. It didn’t feel too tight; she didn’t have to keep pulling at it. She’d pinned her hair up in a kind of chignon thing, the way she’d seen Florence do sometimes, and in the bottom of a drawer, next to one of Grace’s old dummies and a Lego princess figure, she’d found a pair of earrings with jade beads that Mamma had once given her.
When she’d walked into the kitchen, all dressed and ready to go, Grace had clapped her hands excitedly and Billy had wolf-whistled.
‘You look bea-uuu-tiful, Mamma,’ Grace had said. And Billy’s mum had smiled.
So now here they were, she and Billy, looking at one another over a flickering flame and a blue glass vase containing a single gerbera. But Ella couldn’t think of anything to say. Except how the bathroom light needed fixing and should she order some new cups for the cafe corner – a few of them were chipped – and Grace had a new teacher at playgroup and a customer had ordered twelve copies of an obscure poetry collection for Christmas presents. My God. Her life was so thrilling.
‘So,’ Billy said. ‘Tell me more about this Miss Mary hunt. Your customer. The one who wants to track down her cottage. Shall we do it? Shall we go?’ He actually looked eager. ‘It might be something good for us all to do together as a family? What do you think?’
Something was nagging at the back of Ella’s mind, a thought like an aching tooth. She wanted to run her tongue over it. Instead, she nodded. ‘OK. That’s a good idea. I’ll suggest it. Next time she comes in.’
In the shower earlier, she’d thought that perhaps she could ask him about Selena, probe him, very casually, without alerting him to her concerns. But now she could feel the wine already making her head foggy.
And what was she supposed to say, anyway? Billy do you still fancy me? Do you find me the slightest bit interesting anymore? How embarrassing would that be?
Instead, she leaned back in her chair and tried to let the music flow over her.
Later, she lay next to him in their bed, the covers drawn up to her chin.
He rolled over and placed a hand on her stomach, nuzzled his nose into her neck. His breath smelled of wine. His hair tickled her ear.
She breathed in, tensing her stomach muscles.
‘Relax,’ he said. ‘Just relax.’
‘Billy.’ Her voice was barely a whisper in the darkness. ‘I’m soooo tired. And Grace will be up in less than five hours.’
‘OK, OK. Sorry.’ He rolled over and, within seconds, he was snoring.
13
To overpower an enemy: On a waxing moon, pluck a single hair from the person’s head and bury it under a hawthorn hedge.
– Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams
Ella reached into the pocket of Billy’s jacket, pushing her hand to the bottom. She drew out a balled-up tissue and the key to the office cycle lock-up.
Her heart beat loudly in her throat. She could hear the sound of Grace’s laughter in the next room, her voice raised in delighted protest. ‘Stop it, Daddy. Stop it.’
Billy was sprawled with her on the living room rug, playing Snakes and Ladders. He was probably cheating. It was only a matter of time before Grace came to find her.
Sh
e tried the other pocket. Her fingers closed over a thin slip of paper. Her heart missed a beat. But when she drew it out, it was only a receipt from the university library canteen. One coffee, one sandwich.
Even though she was standing alone in the cupboard under the stairs, Ella felt her face burn. How could it have come to this? This suspicious scrabbling in Billy’s pockets? The surreptitious checking of his phone, which he was always leaving on the kitchen table or on the floor by the bed? Hardly the behaviour of a man with something to hide. But then there had been a couple of texts recently. From this Selena person. She had memorised each of them:
Lovely to see you today. We shld have a drink some time. x
Sorry you couldn’t make it. We missed you. x
And the most recent, sent at 10.31 a.m. last Monday, which was right after the weekend of their date night:
Like the new haircut. xxx
Ella had felt sick when she’d read that one. So it hadn’t all been just her imagination. That was definitely flirting. No two ways about it. There had been no reply from Billy. At least, not one that she could see. But who’s to say that he hadn’t replied in person? Their offices were just down the hall from one another.
And the worst thing about it was that, when she’d checked Billy’s phone yesterday, the texts had disappeared. All of them. And why would he delete them if they were completely innocent?
She knew that she was probably being stupid. Her imagination was running away with her. The most likely explanation was that he’d got rid of them because he didn’t want Ella to be hurt by them or because he was embarrassed. Perhaps this woman was being inappropriate. Perhaps he’d told her to stop. Over the years that they’d been together, women had occasionally got the wrong idea. There’d been that woman who started to come into the shop, asking for Billy. She’d been mortified when she’d discovered that Ella was Billy’s wife. Billy was kind to people. He listened. He was interested in what they had to say. But she’d never seen him flirt. Not once. And he always told her everything. They didn’t have secrets from one another, did they?
This was Billy, after all. Kind, generous, reliable, totally sensible Billy. The one person she’d always trusted above all others, even Mamma. Mamma got emotional sometimes. She didn’t always see things clearly. But Billy – Billy was usually right about things.
However hard she tried, though, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Like the new haircut. xxx
She thought of last Sunday, how she’d spread the old sheet in the living room and cut Billy’s hair. She’d always done it for him, ever since they’d first moved in together, when Billy was still doing his PhD and they were just getting the shop going, when they’d been so hard up that they didn’t have seven pounds for the barber’s. And then the habit had just stuck. Once a month, on a Sunday night, when Grace was in bed, she’d unfold the sheet, spread it on the floor, bring a chair from the kitchen and Billy would sit patiently while she snipped. A few times, she’d suggested that they didn’t have to do it anymore, that he could try the Turkish place on Monkgate.
He’d just grinned. ‘Don’t spoil my fun, El. No one would ever do it as well as you,’ he’d said, taking the scissors from her hand, kissing her full on the mouth.
Now, thinking about how Billy’s hair felt in her fingers, her eyes blurred with tears. Seeing this Selena woman – and what kind of name was that, anyway? – talking about his hair like that made this precious thing, their thing, the thing they’d shared together for so long, feel cheap, silly.
Like the new haircut. xxx It was a come-on, an invitation. But maybe she was laughing at her, too? Ella couldn’t imagine that a woman like Selena would ever be caught giving a man a haircut. Maybe she was poking fun at Billy’s ridiculous wife who still cut his hair.
And maybe it was ridiculous.
Ella sighed. She’d tell him that she didn’t have time to do it anymore, that it would look better if he had a proper job made of it.
She slipped the jacket back onto its peg. What exactly had she been looking for, anyway?
‘Mamma, I need you!’ Grace’s voice cut in. ‘Daddy’s winning. Again. It’s not fair, Mamma. He’s got the dice and he won’t give it to me.’
*
‘Bottoms up.’ Florence handed Ella a glass, chinking her own against it with a flourish. ‘Here’s to us.’
Ella smiled. ‘Why do I always feel like a naughty schoolgirl when I’m with you?’
Florence took a slurp of Sauvignon and wagged her finger disapprovingly in Ella’s direction. ‘Precisely because you never were a naughty schoolgirl,’ she said. ‘Unlike me, of course.’
It was true, Ella thought. At school, Florence had been one of those effortlessly cool girls. She’d arrived after Ella, right before they were all about to start A-levels. She’d been an outsider too but, unlike Ella, she’d never seemed to care about not fitting in. Back then, at the beginning of Sixth Form, Katrina and Billy had been Ella’s only real friends. After all the stuff that had gone on with her mum, Katrina had been a changed person, kinder, less full of herself. It had been almost sad, in some ways, how she’d lost some of the attitude. Her Mum’s overdose, her parents eventually splitting up, it had all been a bit of a scandal, wiped that daft smile off her face, as Billy had put it. But she’d been a much nicer friend to Ella as a result.
And then Florence had arrived. Florence Barrault, all the way from Paris, with her French accent and her French way of dressing. Half the Sixth Form had fallen for her, boys and girls. She’d quickly acquired a following, her own in-crowd. They went clubbing in Leeds and hung about on the riverbank, and Florence started a band – Never the Never – in her dad’s garage and they got gigs in Manchester and even Camden. Ella wouldn’t have dared to speak to her in those days. She would never have risked Florence’s scathing sarcasm, for a start.
She could never have guessed, back then, that she and Flo would have ended up all these years later as such close friends.
They’d met at an antenatal class, each of them slightly appalled to find themselves there, glancing at each other, looking away. In the second week of the course, the teacher – a large woman in a voluminous cotton kaftan – had asked the roomful of cross-legged women to relax and close their eyes as she began to read a poem that she’d written herself, dedicated to ‘the unborn child’.
‘Dear Little One,’ she’d begun, in a high sing-song reading-a-poem voice and, in an effort to stifle a giggle, Ella had sneaked a glimpse through her eyelashes at the other mums-to-be, to see Florence sitting bolt upright, her mouth twitching, her chest silently heaving. She’d caught Ella’s eye and they’d both had to look away before they embarrassed themselves. But that was the moment that she and Flo became friends.
Since that time, they’d mapped out new motherhood together. The night feeds, Alfie’s colic, Grace’s projectile vomiting – all of it they’d discussed in minute detail, in one another’s living rooms or sometimes over the phone, a baby clamped to one hip. They’d compared notes on everything from baby monitors to breast pumps and complained to one another about leaky milk and sleep deprivation. Florence was the only person besides Billy to whom Ella had confided her feelings of failure after her C-section and her worries about being a completely inadequate mum.
Now Florence pushed aside a pile of ironing and flung herself onto the sofa. ‘So, come on,’ she said, wincing and removing a handful of Alfie’s Lego bricks from behind the cushions. ‘Out with it. What’s up?’
Despite the wine, which was going straight to her head, Ella felt the gap opening itself again in the pit of her stomach. She held out her glass for a top-up. ‘I don’t think I’ve had quite enough of this yet.’
Florence obliged, upending the bottle. ‘Come on. Tell Aunty Flo. You’ll feel better. You know you will.’
‘OK.’ Ella took a deep breath. She felt the black empty feeling rise up into her throat so that the words came out in a painful gasp. ‘OK. I’ll just say it. I think Billy’s havin
g an affair . . .’
The words – those sordid little words that she’d hardly dared to say even to herself inside her own mind – now hung in the room between them. To Ella, they looked like splashes of red and green, running down Florence’s white-painted walls and pooling stickily on the rug at their feet.
For a long moment, Ella watched Florence’s face register shock, then disbelief. Finally, she began to laugh.
‘Billy? Oh my God, El, darling. It just can’t be true. What makes you think –? I mean . . .’
‘I know, I know. Billy. Wonderful, devoted, bloody perfect, God-I’m-so-lucky-to-be-married-to-him Billy, right? No one would believe it, would they?’ Ella took another slurp of wine. ‘Not even you, Flo.’ She twisted the stem of the wine glass between her fingers. ‘But the truth is, you know, I’ve not exactly been a barrel of laughs, lately. I mean, living with me is never exactly easy and then, just recently . . . To be honest, I’ve been struggling a bit. I haven’t been there for him at all. You know, to listen to his stuff, ask him about his day, all the things I used to do before Grace came along. And we haven’t . . .’ She felt her face flush in that way that always betrayed her at the moments when it most mattered. ‘Well, we haven’t had sex in . . . in ages. I can’t even remember the last time.’
Florence grinned. ‘I’m terribly shocked, darling.’ She pulled her most sarcastic face. ‘God, I can’t even remember the last time Steve and I did it.’ Her eyebrows wiggled. ‘Come to think of it, that is quite awful, isn’t it? Hmmm. OK. Maybe I should be putting a bit more effort in too.’ She gulped her wine. ‘But so far, El, this is all just you convincing yourself that you’re doing something wrong. There must be more to it.’
‘There’s this woman at work.’ Ella frowned. ‘I know. It’s such a cliché. But he’s started talking about her. And I saw her once, just from the window. She’s beautiful and stylish. And she’s into everything that Billy’s into, I suppose. And she’s single. Available. And then, OK I’m going to tell you something really bad now – I’ve started checking his phone. And there were texts –’
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