Contracted: corporate wife

by Hart, Jessica

  Holly wasn't quite his usual type, but she was obviously intelligent, beautiful, and ambitious. She hadn't struck him as a woman who would be much bothered with emotional commitment, or the fact that he was married. After a sleepless night trying to convince himself that he had made the right decision in choosing his freedom over Lou, Patrick thought that Holly might be just the kind of woman he needed right then.

  'Great.' Lou gave him a brilliant smile, determined to show him that she would be sticking to her side of the deal from now on. Ts she nice?'

  'She seems nice,' said Patrick, but he couldn't help remembering what Lou had said about wanting a relationship with someone prepared to sleep with a married man. 'Her name's Holly,' he blurted out, pushing the memory aside.

  'Pretty name,' said Lou, attacking a rogue dandelion.

  Her dark head was bent and Patrick watched her, wishing that he knew what she was thinking. 'I thought I'd take her to dinner,' he said. 'Are you OK with that?'

  'Of course.' Lou shook back her hair and smiled again as she tossed the dandelion onto the pile of weeds. 'It's what we agreed, isn't it? Don't worry about me. I'm more than happy with the way things have worked out, Patrick. We made a deal and I'm happy to stick to it. You go. Enjoy yourself.'

  He didn't, of course. Holly was smart, attractive, successful and clearly up for a no-strings relationship. Exactly

  the kind of woman Patrick had had in mind when he'd first made his deal with Lou. She had no intention of settling down until she had made a name for herself. Holly was going far, and she couldn't be bothered with emotional entanglements that might slow her down.

  He should have dated women like her before, Patrick told himself, but the more Holly talked about her need for independence, the more he caught echoes of things he had said himself in the past, and he shifted uncomfortably. There w^s a ruthless quality to her, an utter lack of sentiment or any real warmth that appalled him. Was that how he seemed to other people?

  He took Holly to the latest restaurant, where she picked at the wonderful food and he thought about Lou. She would have eaten with the kids. Patrick wondered how Grace had got on with her maths test while Holly talked about the glittering career she had mapped out for herself. Tom had been playing in a football match that afternoon, he remembered. Lou had gone to watch him. Patrick would have liked to have gone with her.

  The evening seemed endless. He drove Holly back to her trendy apartment, but made an excuse when she invited him up for a nightcap. He wanted to go home.

  Lou was already in bed when he got in, but she had left some lights on for him. Patrick wandered through the house, noticing how much warmer and more welcoming it was these days. The kitchen table was covered with school books. He picked up Tom's French exercise book and grinned at the excruciating errors. Tom was a mechanic, not a linguist.

  There was a jug of flowers on the window sill, and the kitchen smelled appetising. Patrick sniffed. They must have had something cheesy for supper. He wished he had been

  there instead of eating his way through the elaborate and expensive meal he had shared with Holly.

  He walked softly upstairs. Lou's door was closed. Hesitating outside it, Patrick wished that he could go in and sit on the edge of her bed. They could talk the way they had used to talk and he could tell her about his awful evening and the feeling he had that he had got everything very wrong.

  But he couldn't do that, not after last night. He had made his choice, and now he would have to stick with it.

  'Mum, can we go away at half-term?'

  Lou was wrapping sandwiches in cling film and trying not to be too aware of Patrick, reading the Financial Times at the end of the kitchen table.

  The atmosphere between them had been strained ever since he had started dating Holly. Lou didn't know what he saw in the woman, but the relationship certainly didn't seem to be making him particularly happy. He was brusque and irritable a lot of the time, rather the way he had been when she'd first met him, Lou thought. It made it difficult to maintain the friendship that had been so easy that summer.

  It was partly her fault, Lou knew. She was trying to be pleasant about it, but the effort of appearing not to mind that he was seeing another woman had left her tense and the only way she could cope was to withdraw into herself. She was spending a lot of time in the garden these days, but it wasn't having the same restorative effect it used to have. She was snappy with the kids, too, which wasn't fair on them, and the guilt only made her worse.

  T thought we'd go and see Fenny,' she told Grace, packing the sandwiches neatly into their lunchboxes. 'We haven't seen her since the wedding.'

  'Oh, Mii-urn...' Grace moaned. 'Not Yorkshire againV

  'Yes, can't we go somewhere different?' Tom chimed in between mouthfuls of cereal.

  Lou kept her voice even with difficulty. 'You love Fenny,' she reminded them.

  'Yes, but she could come here, couldn't she?' said Grace. 'We don't have to spend a whole week there. It's so boring:

  Lou thought of the green hills and the river, of walking in the wind and the rain and coming in to a roaring fire and Fenny's scones. Of clean air and simple needs and no Patrick twisting her entrails into knots and making it hard to breathe. No trying to convince herself that she had been right to walk away from him that night, that it was better to just be friends. Suddenly she yearned to be there.

  'It's not boring, Grace,' she said tightly. 'If you're bored there, that's your problem, not Yorkshire's.'

  Grace looked mutinous. 'India's going to Majorca. And Marina's dad says he'll take her to New York!'

  'You've got a dad, too,' said Lou with an edge to her voice. She found two apples in the fruit bowl and polished them on her sleeve before wedging them in next to the sandwiches. 'Ask him to take you.'

  'I did, and he said it would be better if we went with you.'

  That sounded like Lawrie, thought Lou bitterly.

  'He said you could afford it more than him now,' Tom offered helpfully.

  Lou sucked in her breath and bit back an angry rejoinder. She tried so hard not to criticise Lawrie in front of the children, but when she thought about the money he must have spent on his new sports car, a fraction of which would have enabled him to take Grace and Tom on the holiday

  they craved, she wanted to scream and shout and hit something.

  She vented her fury on the lunchboxes instead, slamming them both shut.

  Tm sorry, but I've already told Fenny we'd go and see her.'

  The children immediately set up a chorus of moans. 'It's not fairV

  'If you're not careful, we won't go anywhere,' she said, warning in her voice. 'It's not as if you'd miss out on much. You've got your own pool here, for heaven's sake! What else do you need?'

  Tom and Grace exchanged martyred looks. 'It's not the same as going away,' Tom said. 'And you can afford it, Mum. I mean, that's why you married Patrick, isn't it?'

  Sensing that Lou was at the end of her tether, Patrick put down his newspaper. 'That's enough,' he said sternly.

  'But, Patrick, you want to go away somewhere, don't you?' Grace tried to cajole him.

  'Patrick has a job to do,' said Lou quickly, not wanting him to get any more involved. 'He'll probably be busy at the end of October.'

  And there was always Holly to keep him at home now.

  T could probably take some time off,' said Patrick. He glanced at Lou, who was at the sink, the set of her shoulders tense. She hadn't said anything to him about half-term, he realised. Perhaps she didn't want him to go with them?

  'Lou?' he said tentatively. 'Maybe we can work something out here.'

  She turned, wiping her hands on a tea towel. 'What sort of something?'

  'Why don't you go and see Fenny on your own? There's no reason why you shouldn't go next week if you want.

  I'll look after the kids. And then perhaps we could all go away together at half-term?'

  'Oh, yes! Yes! Please !' Grace and Tom were ecstatic, but Patrick h
eld up a hand to check their exuberance.

  'I want to know what your mother thinks first.'

  Lou was torn. Part of her longed to go away on her own, but there had been nothing in their agreement about Patrick looking after the children. He hadn't wanted anything to do with them at all, but now he was offering, not only to care for them, but also take them away for a week for a holiday she was pretty sure he wouldn't enjoy.

  'That seems to be asking a lot of you,' she prevaricated.

  'Not really.' He shrugged. 'I'm quite happy to do that. I just don't want to undermine your authority. If you think Grace and Tom should go to Yorkshire with you at half-term, then that's what will happen, and there'll be no more arguing. I was simply suggesting a compromise.'

  He was offering her a way out of what would otherwise turn into an entrenched battle of wills, Lou realised. This was not the time to stand on her dignity. That would just make things worse.

  'It sounds a good compromise to me,' she said.

  Grace and Tom were delighted and immediately set up a clamour of conflicting demands about the holiday.

  'OK, here's the deal,' said Patrick, shouting them down at last. 'You two go away and agree on the kind of holiday you want. You choose a country that's within three hours' flying time from London, and what you want to do when you're there, and we'll all go there for a week.'

  'We can chooseT They couldn't believe their luck.

  'Only if you stop hassling your mother,' he warned them, and they nodded eagerly as they scrambled off their chairs and gathered up their school bags.

  'OK, Patrick.'

  That was very kind of you,' Lou said quietly when they had gone.

  Patrick made a big deal of folding up his newspaper. 'Anything for a quiet life/ he said.

  'Still...'

  He looked up and their eyes met for what seemed the first time in weeks. 'You look tired,' he said roughly, not liking the drawn look she had.

  'I haven't been sleeping well recently,' she admitted. 'I don't know why.'

  Although it probably had a lot to do with the fact that he was seeing another woman and she was supposed not to care.

  'You could probably do with a break,' said Patrick, and the warm concern in his eyes made her want to cry.

  'It sounds wonderful,' she admitted. 'But I don't feel I deserve it. It's not as if I have a hard life here.'

  'Go and have a holiday anyway. I expect Fenny would like to see you on your own.'

  'But I can't leave the kids,' she said, fighting temptation. 'Someone really has to be here when they get in from school.'

  'I can do that for a few days. I've got a computer here. There's plenty I can do from home if I need to.'

  'What about meals, though?' Lou fretted and Patrick pushed back his chair.

  'I'm not entirely helpless. I can peel a potato and use a microwave. They won't get the kind of meals you cook for them, but it won't kill them for a few days. We'll manage.'

  Lou thought Tom and Grace would probably love a week of not being made to eat fresh fruit and vegetables the whole time.

  'What about Holly?' she blurted out and Patrick stilled for a moment as he shrugged on his jacket.

  He had taken Holly out once more. They had gone to the opera one night, but the evening hadn't been any more of a success than the first one, and he had found himself repelled by her ruthlessness and unconcern about the fact that he was married. When he had made another excuse to leave her at her door, she had laughed mockingly.

  'Funny, I didn't have you down as the hen-pecked type. Is she very fierce, your wife?'

  Patrick was furious that Holly would dare mention Lou. 'She's worth a thousand of you,' he said coldly.

  Holly smiled with calculated allure and stepped closer to run a suggestive hand down his lapel. 'Then why are you here?'

  Patrick detached her hand with distaste. T don't know,' he said.

  Now he looked across at Lou, still sitting at the kitchen table with tired eyes and a worried expression. She would look washed out next to Holly today. Holly was cleverer, smarter, prettier.

  And Lou was warmer and kinder and more loving.

  'You don't need to worry about Holly,' he told her.

  Lou left for Yorkshire two days later. Patrick missed her horribly. He kept looking for her, expecting to turn round and see her, dark and warm. He felt restless and uneasy, forever fidgeting and unable to concentrate on work. It was as if he were waiting and waiting for something, but he didn't know what it was.

  Whatever it was, he wished it would just hurry up. He hated feeling like this. Patrick was proud of his ability to focus. It was the secret of his success, after all. Always he had been able to identify what he wanted, and go for it.

  Now he didn't even know what he wanted.

  Unless it was for Lou to come home.

  The house was empty without her, even though Grace and Tom were there. They seemed to accept their mother's absence more readily than he did, and were full of plans for the half-term holiday, heatedly arguing over which resort was likely to have the most attractions for them.

  Patrick made sure they rang Lou every night. He thought she would want to hear from them, but deep down he knew his reminders were purely selfish. He could always think of an excuse to take the phone when the kids had finished and hear her voice.

  She was having a great time, she told him. She and Fenny pottered around the garden, and she had been for some long walks on her own. She felt much better. The weather was beautiful. If it weren't for the kids, she would be tempted to stay for ever.

  'I think they'd miss you,' said Patrick. I'd miss you.

  They sound absolutely fine,' said Lou, and he could hear the smile in her voice. 'But I supposed I'd better come home and let you get back to work. I'll see you on Friday.'

  Patrick couldn't wait. He caught himself looking at the clock and calculating how many hours until he would see her. Pathetic. He rolled his eyes at himself. Anyone would think he was in love with her.

  Anyone would think he was in love with her.

  He rewound mentally and played the same thought over more slowly while the truth of it sank into his mind. Of course anyone would think that. They would think it because it was true. He was in love with Lou.

  How had that happened?

  Falling in love with Lou hadn't been the idea at all. Patrick sat stunned at his own obtuseness. Oh, he could appreciate the irony. After all those years avoiding love, avoiding commitment, running away from the beautiful

  girls who tried to get too close, it turned out that the only woman he wanted was a middle-aged mother of two.

  A middle-aged mother who had insensibly become the centre of his existence, whose dark eyes lit with laughter, and whose presence calmed and consoled him in a way nothing else could.

  A middle-aged mother who only wanted to be his friend.

  I'll never fall in love again, she had said. Lawrie had hurt her too much, she had said. She didn't want to love again. It would take a lot for her to trust enough to love him the way he loved her, Patrick realised, especially given the deal they had made.

  So he wouldn't tell her yet. He would try first to get back the easy friendship they had lost since that kiss in the back of the limousine. They had both been trying since then, but it hadn't been the same, and they both knew it. That could change, though. And when they were friends again, he would tell her that he didn't want his precious freedom any more. He only wanted her.

  Lou was his wife, after all. Surely he could tell her that?

  Together with Grace and Tom, Patrick planned a special meal to welcome Lou back that Friday. Most of it was pre-prepared, it was true, but they had chosen each dish carefully, laid the table and lit candles.

  'We even got salad for you, Mum,' said Tom, wanting to make sure that she appreciated the lengths they had gone to for her.

  Lou looked at the three of them and her throat felt so tight she was afraid she might cry. 'It all looks lovely. Thank y
ou.'

  'We missed you,' Grace said. 'Didn't we, Patrick?'

  'Yes, we did.' Patrick was amazed at how calm his voice sounded. Inside he felt like a stammering schoolboy. His

  160 CONTRACTED: CORPORATE WIFE

  chest hurt at the sight of her smile, and he was so pleased to see her again he could hardly speak.

  Lou was glad to be home. She had enjoyed her time with Fenny, and was restored by her week away. She had been doing a lot of thinking on her long walks in the hills, and she knew now how close she had come to falling in love with Patrick.

  Patrick had never pretended that he loved her, or that there was any chance of him loving her. She had been a fool to forget how much it had hurt when she'd realised that Lawrie didn't love her any more. Her world had fallen apart, and she wasn't going to let herself get hurt like that again. The dull ache she had felt when he had told her about Holly was a mere foretaste of what would be to come, and Lou couldn't face it.

  She hadn't fallen too far, she convinced herself. She could stop now, seal off her heart, and not let herself feel any more for him than tepid friendship. It was merely a matter of mind over matter as in the old calypso song that her mother used to play.

  And so it was. Lou didn't think it would be easy, but she knew she could do it. Living with Patrick would complicate matters, but she couldn't leave him. Grace and Tom were so happy. They didn't just accept Patrick, they liked him, and he liked them. Lou wouldn't do anything to jeopardise that relationship. Her children had had enough upheaval in their lives.

  But she had to protect herself, too, so she would go back and be a friend to Patrick, just as she had promised. No more lying awake when he was out, wondering what he and Holly were doing. No more yearning for the impossible. No more would her heart pound when he walked into the room, Lou vowed to herself. She wouldn't even think about touching him, holding him, kissing him.

  That way lay heartache, and her heart was scarred enough as it was.

  Tm sorry I was so tense before I went away,' she told Patrick that night after Grace and Tom had gone to bed.