“They look great.” Anton was behind me. The spine of the fish and its head were still on the counter. One glassy eye stared at me above a grim down-turned mouth. I swept everything into the bin. My knife was smeared with blood and strings of slime. I rinsed it carefully before turning around to face him.
I expected him to look different, in the way that you viewed a puzzle differently after you knew its solution. But he looked like he always did, with his shock of gray curls reaching below his collar and the swell of his stomach under his jacket. There was the same feeling of homecoming when I finally met his eye. Maybe I’d got it all wrong. I always was prone to the odd spot of exaggeration. But then he glanced away and I knew I hadn’t made a mistake.
Behind Anton, everyone peered across at us, expecting shouts and tears. I was determined to disappoint them. “Thanks. The new fishmonger is really good.” I wanted to scream that I was the one who’d found him, who’d cajoled him to drive up from Devon and supply the restaurant exclusively. “I need a minute with you later,” I said. “Just need to go over a few things.” He blinked quickly. I’d read somewhere that excessive blinking was a sign of anxiety or lying. “Maybe later, when things are quiet?”
“Sure.”
“Shall I come upstairs?” It was the first time in two years that I’d asked that question. It was always understood that his flat was where we went after our work was finished. But I wanted him to know that something had changed and that I was aware of it. Anton laughed and blinked again. “Of course. That’s what we always do. I’ll look out a good bottle from the cellar.”
“Terrific.” I remembered to smile before wiping down my bench and moving over to the main counter to supervise the sauces.
“Everything OK?” asked one of the apprentices.
“Perfect,” I said, tightening the knot on my apron. “I just need more eggs and butter.”
The rhythm of cooking dulled the pain. I forced myself to concentrate on my work, not to allow anything else to enter my mind. After the dinner service ended, I waited until the locker room had emptied before going in to change. My apron and jacket were dirty and smeared, and I tossed them into the linen basket. I put on a clean shirt. I untied and brushed my hair before the mirror and rubbed in some lipstick. My unremarkable face stared back at me. The harsh fluorescent light accentuated the circles under my eyes and the lines beginning to form from my nose to my mouth. Now that I’d taken off the armor of my work uniform, I wanted nothing more than to slump on the floor and scream and sob. I thought of leaving without seeing Anton and sending him a savage text from the bus. But some part of me that I didn’t recognize, that needed to know the truth, held firm and propelled me up the stairs to his flat and through the open door.
I perched on one of his uncomfortable armchairs and accepted a glass of wine. A Saint-Estèphe, he announced with some pride, from one of the best vineyards. He sprawled on the sofa, lamplight playing along his smooth olive-skinned cheeks. I hadn’t eaten all day, and the smell of the wine almost, but not quite, undid me. I didn’t mess about.
“What’s going on?” My voice was shrill, stretched to breaking point. I sounded like someone else, an actor playing a role in my life.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. There it was again, that nervous blinking. “There’s nothing going on.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying—I don’t know where all this is coming from.”
“What’s her name?”
“There’s no one else.”
“I deserve to be told the truth.”
“Honestly, there’s no one.”
I drank the wine. It tasted like rotten fruit.
“Who is she?” I was determined not to cry, but my mind was a zone of chaos: structures collapsing, fires flaring, things sinking. I asked the same questions again and again. I made the same accusations. The high, tight pain somewhere in my center intensified, and my hands shook so much that I slopped some wine onto the floor. I had an overwhelming urge to leave but couldn’t manage to stand up.
“It’s just that I need a bit more freedom,” he said after a small silence. “It’s not you. I’m under so much stress right now. Please understand. It won’t be forever.”
“Tell me the truth and I’ll go.”
“All this worry about new investors. You know how it’s been.”
“The staff think you’ve already got the investors. How could you lie to me like that?”
Another silence. “It’s not signed yet, so it’s not certain.”
It was nearly midnight. Sounds of laughter and shouting drifted through the open window. I went to the window and looked out. A couple, arm in arm, bounced down the street. They stopped under a streetlight to kiss. I slammed the window shut and leaned against the glass. If I concentrated on the chill against my forehead, perhaps I wouldn’t have to feel anything else. Behind me, Anton said, “Maybe we need a break for a while. It’s hard working together and being with each other all the time. You must agree. It gets . . . well . . . a bit claustrophobic.”
I heard him stand and move towards the door. So this is it, I thought. This is my lover, the man who had slept naked next to me for two years, about to leave me. This is my life and my livelihood falling apart. It had taken less than fifteen minutes. There should be another language for words that wound more than others, that turn your world in the opposite direction. I managed to turn and face him.
Anton ran his hands through his hair, that gesture I knew so well. There was that familiar giddy feeling rising up, unwanted and unexpected. I never loved him more than at that moment. Mad as it was, I would have gone to bed with him right then and wiped from my mind everything that had gone before. I would have made it my life’s work to forget. But he began to talk in a low, determined voice that I’d never heard before.
“I’m sorry. Yes, I lied to you, but only because I didn’t want to hurt you. I care about you. I felt terrible lying to you.”
“Do you want me to feel sorry for you?” I asked, bewildered and then angry for the first time. “What about me? I was the one you lied to. All you can think about is how bad you feel?”
He turned away, but not before I could see the look of relief on his face. Now that I’d forced him to tell the truth, he was free. I’d done him a favor by confronting him. “Sometimes these things just happen,” he said. “They come out of nowhere. It wasn’t intended.”
There was nothing left to say. I managed to push past him and make my way downstairs and onto the street. An icy wind rushed through me. I was too stunned to cry or think about anything except getting back to my flat as quickly as possible. It began to rain at Shepherd’s Bush Roundabout, hard like needles. People boarding the bus brought with them the smell of wet clothes and stale food. In the window, my reflection dissolved into misted rivulets. This is what I am, I said to myself again and again. I am a woman whose lover has lied to her and left her, whose job is over. I shut my eyes, not wanting to look at myself.
“Hey lady!” It was the man sitting next to me, maybe twenty, with earbuds and a greasy topknot. I’d leaned against him, my head practically on his shoulder, without realizing, and he was trying to shrug me off.
“Sorry,” I said and drew back into my seat. Two stops away from home, my phone pinged and I grabbed it out of my pocket, almost dropping it on the floor in my haste. Anton. It had to be him, contacting me so late in the evening. It would be an apology, a misspelled text written in haste, begging me to come back, that he’d made a terrible mistake. I picked up my bag, ready to jump off the bus and hail a taxi for Mayfair even before I read the message. But when I scrolled down, I retched with disappointment. It was Emma Helmsley’s thought for the day. I flung the phone back into my bag.
In the off-license opposite the kebab shop, I bought as much wine as I could carry. I strode back to my flat and hurried up the stairs, unscrewing the top of a bottle as I went, swigging straight from it before I’d unlocked the door. I
t was cheap and harsh and smelled like varnish. I didn’t care. I needed something to stop the pain. I drank the whole bottle, slumped on the sofa and staring at the pictures on the wall until they multiplied into an alcoholic blur. I lurched into the bathroom and was violently ill, the smell of sour vomit all around me as it pooled on the floor in a murky stipple. I stared at the mess for some minutes, stood up, and left it. In the kitchen, I wiped my mouth and opened another bottle, crawled into bed. At four a.m., I woke with a dry, foul-tasting mouth and that sound of howling in my ears. It became clear, with another stab, that I had been only a part of Anton’s life, but he had been everything in mine. I lay on my back, imagining him with another woman, making love to her in that slow assured way of his.
I missed Gran and the gruff sympathy she would have given me, how her hand would have reached out and rubbed my shoulder. I should never have come to London. What a mess I had made of everything.
My friend Jude rang, as she did two or three times a week, either before or after dropping the twins, Charlie and Amelia, at their nursery. “Top of the morning to you, my darling bestie. I’m telling you, I need a new wardrobe to keep up with those style fascists at the nursery gate. I counted five Chanel jackets this morning. Dearie me.” Her friendly voice and her fake Irish accent over a background of cheery pop music made me burst into tears.
“It’s over,” I sobbed. There was a click. She’d switched off her radio. There was only the muted sound of sirens and traffic.
“Are you still there?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You knew, didn’t you?”
“No,” said Jude in her normal kind voice. “I didn’t know. Although I had a suspicion that something wasn’t right. You know I’d never lie to you, or keep anything from you. I didn’t want to upset you for no reason. It’s just that people have been talking. You know what a small town London is.”
I gulped back tears. I was going to be sick again.
“I’m so sorry, dear one. But I don’t know anything more. Anyway . . .” She paused. “. . . maybe it’s best to leave it. It’s over.”
“I need to know who it is.”
“What does it matter who it is now?”
“It does to me.”
Jude sighed. “OK. I’ll do my best. I’ll call you back. Where are you?”
“In bed, feeling sick. I think I’m still drunk. I’ve been drinking since it happened.”
“Stay there. Shut your eyes and keep breathing. Don’t drink anything more.”
She rang back half an hour later. “I put some pressure on some people I figured would know.” I closed my eyes and registered the rasp of my breath, the scratching of my fingernails against the phone.
“It’s the daughter of one of the new investors for the second restaurant. Everything about the money has been in place for a while now. It’s been going on for three, maybe four months. I’m sorry,” she repeated. “You don’t deserve this. I’ll book a babysitter for tonight. Let’s meet in Covent Garden and talk about it properly. You can’t stay in that flat on your own getting drunk. He’s not worth it.”
“He was worth it to me,” I said. “He was my life.” I hung up and rushed into the bathroom again. This time I managed to clean up my mess, wash my face, and brush my teeth before stumbling back to bed. The movement of the morning sun dancing on the ceiling made me giddy. I drew the curtains over the closed window, sealing off the outside world. Darkness was better, but I couldn’t stop shivering. I wrapped the quilt around me in a futile attempt at some kind of comfort, not moving until it was time to meet Jude.
* * *
We sat in the corner of our usual wine bar. Jude ordered me a hamburger with French fries and made me eat it before allowing me to drink anything. “Maybe it was just the stress of business,” I said, trying not to cry again. Anton. Anton. Would there ever be a moment in my life when what he thought or did, or what he might have thought or might have done, wasn’t my first point of reference? I couldn’t imagine a life without him. “Maybe now the restaurant thing is fixed, he’ll come back,” I said, wanting Jude to agree with me, to give me at least some illusion of hope.
Jude surveyed me from behind the rim of her glass. Under the choppy Knightsbridge haircut, and above the designer leather jacket, her eyes had the same appraising gaze as they’d had when we worked together in that Chiswick restaurant and began sharing all our secrets. “Sometimes you just have to accept that relationships are over. It’ll only hurt more if you keep pretending to yourself. And you’ve still got me. I may be busy, but you can talk to me anytime.” She leaned over and took my hand.
“It just hurts so much,” I said. We fell silent. Then, because there was nothing more to analyze or weep over, and because talking about Anton had begun to hurt more than not talking about Anton, I changed the subject. “Where’s Philip?” Philip was her rich property-developer husband, who usually liked to keep her close by his side.
“He’s in Berlin this week—that spa hotel,” said Jude. “It’s his new thing. He’s crazy for it. He gets to charge top whack to people who aren’t drinking and eat almost nothing.” She drained her glass. “I miss the way things were back in Chiswick. It wasn’t so bad, was it? At least no one broke your heart then. It was the other way around, as I recall.”
I had to agree with her on that. Back when we worked together, at the end of the dinner service we’d hunker down on the kitchen floor, swilling from the leftover bottles (we could never believe what people left behind, opened and often almost full) while we decided who we’d sleep with for what was left of the night. There were quite a few to choose from: American Stan from the Bay Area with his energetic speed habit, Henri from Lyon squinting behind his glasses with his crazy black curls drawn back in a plait, or Alex from Edinburgh, his arms puckered with livid burn scars.
These days Jude could afford the unopened bottles, whole crates of the stuff. It was all go-go gloss and cashmere up there on Primrose Hill. I heard the slight intake of breath most days when we spoke, the clacking of her Louboutins on the marble floors, as she talked for five minutes and then said she must fly. Lunch. Gym. School run. See you soon, love you.
I knew she did, but I missed the easy early days of our friendship, before Fat Wallet Phil, as we used to call him, took one look at Jude plating up a mille-feuille. He couldn’t stop staring at her tumble of blond hair and her pale skin, and began his dogged pursuit of her. We used to laugh at his extravagant presents, how he waited in his Porsche for her to finish her shift, then whisked her away to his fancy house. It was only a matter of time before she succumbed. Jude was the oldest of six children. There had been the alcoholic father, the hectoring mother. It had not been calm. Philip adored her and made her feel safe. It was so easy to return his love. Six months later, she moved in with him, and by some unspoken agreement we began to call him Philip. About the same time, she left the restaurant. Philip didn’t want her cooking for strangers when she could be at home doing the same thing for him.
Jude checked her watch, a Patek Philippe that she wore loosely strapped on the underside of her wrist. She saw me looking at it. “I know, it’s ridiculous for him to spend so much money. I liked my old Swatch, but Philip has this thing about showing off his cash.” She shrugged. “I guess we should call it a night.”
On the way out, she flung her arm around my shoulder. “You may not know it, but you’re strong. You’ll survive this and meet someone else. You’ll get another job, a better one. But you need to stop drinking and focus on something else other than bloody Anton.”
I hugged her goodbye and wept all the way home. In the sitting room, the green light of the answering machine winked at me. One message. “I feel bad,” Anton said over the bustle of the kitchen. “But in time you’ll see it’s for the best. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I hope you’ll understand one day.” The last bottle of wine was in the kitchen, a rough Rioja, half-empty. Not enough for total oblivion, but it would help. I had it to my mouth, just a
bout to swallow, when I remembered Jude’s advice. She was right. I emptied it down the sink before I could change my mind.
Anton continued to call every couple of days. I didn’t call back. It would hurt too much to speak to him, to hear the pity in his voice when all I longed for was a passionate declaration that he’d made a mistake and that he was coming back. I kept telling myself that it was over. You only felt sorry for someone after you’d shut the door in their face. It was so shaming to be pitied.
“I’ve sent you a reference and two months’ salary.” A sucking noise. He must have started smoking again. “I’ve been considering things and it’s the least I could do.”
Oh really. We had something in common then, even after he’d left me. I’d been considering a few things as well. Like how I supported him and loved him without asking for anything in return, because that love kept me going and because I thought he cared for me. Like how I worked all those extra hours and sought out those suppliers from all over England who brought their flowers and herbs and fish and meat to the restaurant, all the things that lifted Anton et Amis above the competition, that made the food critics rave and people book a table three months in advance. I thought we were that old-fashioned thing, a team of two. Apparently all that counted for nothing when things got a bit tough and he came across someone prettier and richer.
Yes, Anton, I had her face on my computer screen seconds after Jude told me her name. A party girl with a Notting Hill address, rippling black hair, and a color-coordinated poodle, as well as a father willing to invest a million or two in your restaurant business. I spat on her image and then I threw up again.
Jude rang each morning on her way home after dropping off the twins at nursery. She listened to me weep for a fortnight and then she adopted the practical approach.
The Housekeeper Page 3
