Faking It

by Portia MacIntosh

‘That’s eighteen, kiddo,’ I point out. ‘So, you might as well do what I told you to do and focus on your school work. After you pass your exams, you’ll have all the time in the world to party.’

  ‘It’s like you’re trying to ruin my life, just because yours is so bleak,’ she replies.

  This is the first time since I’ve been here that Millie has gone full teenager on me. I can’t say I’m a fan.

  ‘If you don’t let me go, I’ll tell people about the two of you dancing together – I’ll tell Dad,’ she threatens.

  ‘Tell Dad what?’ Rich asks as he walks in the room, dumping down his briefcase, shrugging off his coat.

  ‘I just caught Mum dancing with Josh’s weird uncle,’ Millie tells him smugly, as if she’s got me bang to rights.

  I look over at Marco, who looks incredibly amused by the identifier she used for him.

  ‘Millie, it’s 2021, your mum is a grown woman, she can dance with who she likes,’ he tells her. ‘Even Josh’s uncle.’

  ‘I am so glad I’m having dinner at Fay’s tonight,’ she says stroppily, turning on her heel. ‘I might never come back.’

  ‘OK, well, make sure you keep flossing,’ I call after her.

  ‘Oh, wow, look at this,’ Rich says as he admires our handiwork. ‘And the smell! Amazing! You’ve really pulled out all the stops – I can’t thank you enough.’

  I shrug.

  ‘All in a day’s work,’ I tell him. ‘Josh’s weird uncle deserves some credit too. He made the tiramisu, and he says he’ll babysit Henry this evening.’

  ‘Oi,’ Marco says with a laugh.

  ‘Mate, I can’t thank you enough,’ Rich says, slapping him on the back. ‘I’ll go get ready, then I’ll come down and do my bit while you get ready.’

  ‘OK, sure,’ I say with a smile. Ever the dutiful wife.

  Rich seems to have U-turned on Marco – he doesn’t seem worried by his presence at all now, although that might just be because he’s helped me save the day.

  ‘Do you think Millie really is going to Fay’s? ‘Marco asks me quietly once we’re alone.

  ‘God knows,’ I reply. ‘I guess I’ll just have to try talking to her again – unless you’re allowed to return kids to the hospital or something. Can you return the ones that turn out horrible?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Marco laughs. ‘But… wow, did you sound like a mum before! What a performance.’

  I smile to myself.

  ‘I did sound like a mum, didn’t I?’

  ‘And look at you here, wife-ing, doing an amazing job,’ he continues.

  ‘I’ve had a lot of help from you, but I will take that compliment, thank you,’ I reply.

  I really do feel I’m getting better and better at this every day. I might be having problems with Millie still, but so was Emma, so I’m not going to be too hard on myself about it. I am going to try and talk to her again but I’m not going to worry about it tonight. Tonight, I’m going to worry about whether or not this food is good enough for Rich’s bosses, and whether or not I can pass for the perfect wife in front of them.

  32

  The tiramisu is the only course I actually enjoy, not because the others were bad – the food was a roaring success – but because I was so nervous about the others.

  Once everything was ready and the table was set, I headed upstairs to get ready. I didn’t have to look through Emma’s wardrobe for long before I found an appropriate cocktail dress. I imagine this is one of the ones she always wears to stuff like this – a long black one that I can tell was expensive by the way it skims my hips, rather than clinging to them and making me look on the chunky side. Having said that, I think I might have lost a few pounds while I’ve been trying to keep up with Emma’s hectic life… at least people have stopped thinking I’m pregnant, anyway.

  ‘Well, Emma, I have to say,’ Piers starts, pausing to shovel in his last mouthful of dessert. ‘I knew you were a bloody good cook, but I don’t remember you being this good.’

  Ahh, 1-0 to Ella!

  Piers is one of Rich’s bosses. Martin is the other, and their wives are… Helen and Judy. I actually chanted their names to myself, in my head, while I prepped our starters, to make sure they stuck.

  ‘Absolutely delicious, dear,’ Judy adds. ‘And I’ve just realised you’ve changed your hair – that’s what looks different about you. You’re looking positively radiant.’

  If only you could see the smile on my face right now. That’s 2-0 to me – probably 3-0, if you count the whole prison thing, which we won’t, because if we’re scoring points based on our wider lives (rather than just how well we do dinner parties) then taking into account things like my finances and living situation probably gives Emma like a twelve-point lead.

  ‘That’s lovely of you to say, thank you,’ I reply. ‘Can I interest anyone in a coffee or something a little stronger? A shot of grappa perhaps?’

  ‘Oh, Helen, we haven’t had grappa since we visited Lago di Como – what do you say, shall we?’ Piers asks excitedly.

  ‘Why not?’ Helen practically laughs.

  Everyone apart from me and Rich must be in their late fifties/early sixties. I can feel how rich they are, just by being around them, hearing how they speak. They could not be lovelier people though. Not like the snobs that live in this village. I’m actually having a really nice time.

  Martin and Judy look at each other with mischievous smiles.

  ‘Go on then, count us in too,’ Martin says.

  ‘Coming right up,’ I reply.

  Rich smiles at me as I stand up to head to the kitchen. He looks bemused, as if he can’t believe this is going as well as it is, but he looks pleasantly surprised so I’ll take it.

  Now that I’m getting to grips with all the weird and wonderful contraptions in the kitchen, I’m starting to utilise them a lot more. Take, for example, what I thought was just a fancy bottle holder built into the worktop. I thought maybe you could drop ice in it or something, like a built-in ice bucket, but it seemed way too skinny for that. Turns out it’s a hi-tech built-in electric wine cooler, so you just place your bottle in and tell it what temperature you want it to be and boom – done.

  I grab some glasses before removing the grappa from the cooler, now that it’s reached the perfect temperature – which is somewhere between 16-18 °C.

  You weren’t expecting me to be a grappa expert, were you? First of all, how dare you… OK, no, on a serious note, of course I’m not a grappa expert. No prizes for guessing that Marco gave me this bottle to offer to my guests tonight, and it was he who told me what temperature to serve it at.

  ‘Here we are,’ I say as I carry the tray over to the dining table.

  I pour a little glass for everyone and hand them out.

  ‘OK, well… salute!’ Piers announces.

  We all join him in raising a glass.

  I take a cautious sip of my drink, because I’ve never tried it before and it smells pretty strong and – good God, my tongue feels as if I just licked the Aga!

  ‘Whoo! You could remove paint with that stuff,’ Martin announces.

  ‘Bloody good though,’ Piers joins in. ‘Emma, when did you get so fun?’

  And there’s the 3-0 I was hoping for.

  I shrug modestly.

  ‘I love this song,’ Judy announces as Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’ starts playing.

  ‘I danced to this song at my wedding,’ Rich tells them, smiling to himself as he looks down into his glass.

  ‘I imagine Emma did too,’ Judy says with a chuckle.

  ‘Oh, yeah, of course,’ Rich quickly adds, smiling over at me.

  ‘Let’s have a dance,’ Helen suggests. ‘All of us. To celebrate what a fantastic couple you are.’

  ‘Oh, no, we don’t have to do that,’ Rich insists.

  ‘Come on, you’ve got the floor space for it,’ Piers insists.

  I smile at Rich, to let him know I’m happy to do it.

  ‘OK, then,’ he says. He
springs to his feet with a smile I’ve not seen on his face the whole time I’ve been here. ‘May I have this dance?’

  Oh, man, Rich is being fun! Who knew Rich could be fun?

  ‘Thanks for doing this,’ he whispers into my ear as we slow-dance to the music.

  ‘Ah, it was nothing,’ I reply.

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ he insists quietly. ‘You’ve really pulled out all the stops. In fact, you’ve been doing such an amazing job of everything.’

  I just smile.

  There’s something about Rich today… I don’t know… he seems so different. He seems far less stressed, he seems happier – he literally seems lighter as he dances, slowly and gracefully moving me around the room.

  I’m going to call it – that’s 4-0 to me; I am officially the winner. I am the best wife at throwing dinner parties and it feels so good to be able to tell myself that I am fully capable of doing something that Emma probably thinks I could never do, and I’ve maybe even done it a little better.

  ‘Aww, don’t they make a gorgeous couple?’ Judy calls out.

  Rich leans forward and plants a kiss on my cheek.

  ‘You’ll never know what you’ve done for me,’ he whispers in my ear.

  Uh-oh!

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ I say quickly, because suddenly he seems different. I swear, he’s holding me closer, he’s looking at me differently… is he? There’s a happiness in his eyes that’s been missing until tonight.

  ‘It is a big deal,’ he replies. ‘I might actually be the most relaxed I’ve felt in a long time. So, thank you.’

  Marco’s words about Rich falling for me echo around my head.

  Suddenly I feel weird… I wanted tonight to go well, I wanted to be good at it, I wanted to beat my sister’s efforts. I so wanted to win at something… I just didn’t bargain on the prize being her husband.

  33

  I feel as though I’m doing a great job at being a wife, a mum, a homemaker – by regular standards and by Emma’s standards – and I’m so proud of myself… but…

  I turn on the hot tap and flood the bowl containing Herman the German friendship cake mix with water. I watch as the water makes the mixture thinner and thinner until eventually, I say ‘auf wiedersehen’ to Herman as I pour him down the drain.

  ‘Hi Mum me and Josh are going to play Animal Crossing,’ Henry says quickly, as though the whole sentence were made up of one word – as he and Josh charge towards the TV.

  ‘No worries,’ I call back. ‘Has Marco left?’

  He agreed to pick Henry up from school today, which I really appreciate.

  ‘Nope, I’m right behind you,’ he says. ‘Watching you euthanise poor Herman.’

  ‘Honestly, I just can’t be arsed,’ I reply under my breath. ‘Friendship cake, my arse. It requires more attention than the bloody kids.’

  ‘I chucked ours in the bin after a day,’ he admits with a cheeky smile. ‘So, how are you?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m good – thanks for picking Henry up,’ I reply.

  ‘It’s all good,’ he replies. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah, I… I kind of got distracted reading my mum’s book,’ I confess, as though it’s something to be ashamed of.

  ‘How’s that going?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s so weird,’ I admit. ‘I hear her voice in my head when I read her words, because I can imagine every single one coming out of her mouth. It’s all such Auntie Angela advice. I’ve just been reading the chapter about relationships and it got me thinking: either my mum had relationships that she kept from me and Emma, or… after my dad died, she genuinely never loved again. And while I might not agree with her advice about how to keep your husband happy – not like that,’ I quickly add, before Marco makes a Marco joke. ‘But parts about how important it is to have good relationships in your life – that spoke to me,’ I continue. ‘Of course, what it said to me was that I had no one.’

  ‘That’s not what it says on the Village Echo forum,’ Marco replies. ‘I thought that might be why you were in hiding.’

  ‘Oh God, go on…’ I say, bracing myself.

  ‘Well, the bad news is that someone on the message board has started a rumour that a teacher is having an affair with a parent, and you only need to know a few details to start putting the pieces of the puzzle together, to figure out who it is,’ he explains.

  ‘What’s the good news?’ I ask.

  ‘The good news is that everything we are doing for the site is working. All the new content is a hit – all those local guides you’ve been writing and stuff like that – and the ad revenue is up… It’s really up.’

  ‘So, the good news is that lots of people are reading the bad news,’ I point out.

  ‘That’s a terrible spin to put on it,’ Marco replies with a laugh. ‘Don’t worry, I can delete that stuff as and when it pops up – it’s potentially libellous. It won’t stay up long.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I reply. ‘I’m glad you’ve got my back.’

  ‘I do – and not just with this,’ he insists. ‘You might think you don’t have any real relationships, but you do. It might not seem like it, but you’re getting to know your niece and nephew, and Emma isn’t going to just send you packing when she gets back. This is your chance to be in their lives.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ I reply. ‘She wanted me as a stand-in, so that people didn’t know she was in prison. She can’t exactly come back and keep me around without people asking questions, can she? As soon as people see us together, they would know it had been me all this time. Me filling in for her only works because people either don’t know that I exist, or they never think of me any more, which means they just accept that I am Emma.’

  ‘Well, say all that’s true, and she tells you to hit the road the day before she comes back to reality… You’ll always have me. And life might seem a bit shit for us now, but it’s really just a race to see which one of us can get rich first,’ he jokes. ‘Either you’ll finally get your inheritance or I’ll finally hack the digital assistant we can’t say the name of…’

  I laugh.

  ‘Thanks,’ I tell him. ‘You’ll always have me too.’

  ‘So, day in the office tomorrow?’ Marco says. ‘Still down for it?’

  ‘So long as I have you there to protect me from John, then yes, absolutely,’ I reply. ‘It’s so satisfying, seeing all our hard work pay off.’

  ‘It’s a shame we can’t do this full-time,’ Marco replies. ‘It’s weirdly quite a lot of fun. Although that might just be because we have so much fun together.’

  He smiles.

  ‘Probably,’ I reply. ‘Sounds like the set-up was pretty odd until we took over.’

  ‘Sounds like it was a den of iniquity,’ he jokes.

  Millie saunters into the room, shooting us a look as she heads to the fridge.

  I resist pointing out that she decided not to run away forever in the end because I don’t think she’ll find it funny.

  ‘Are you two always together?’ she asks us as she grabs a drink.

  ‘I brought your brother home,’ Marco tells her. ‘I was just going, actually.’

  ‘OK, well, thanks again,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll see you at work.’

  ‘Yeah. Joshy boy, home time,’ he calls out.

  ‘He’s a good guy, you know,’ I tell Millie once Marco and Josh have gone. ‘You don’t have to put on such a hostile front.’

  ‘I’m not hostile towards him, I’m hostile towards you,’ she tells me. ‘You’re ruining my life – why can’t you just be cool?’

  ‘Is this because I told you that you can’t go to that stupid party?’ I reply. ‘Teenage house parties are rubbish anyway.’

  ‘OK, one – like you’d know, you didn’t do anything cool when you were my age,’ she claps back. ‘And two – I know it was you who got the party cancelled.’

  ‘What? Millie, that had nothing to do with me,’ I insist. Of course, I didn’t, but she doesn’t look as if she believes me. />
  ‘Whatever,’ she says.

  ‘Everything OK in here?’ Rich asks as he joins us.

  ‘Yeah – you’re home early,’ I point out.

  ‘I squeezed in a gym session,’ he says. ‘I need to go back to work but I always prefer to shower here.’

  ‘I’m going to my room and I don’t want disturbing,’ Millie announces as she leaves the room.

  ‘OK, darling – don’t forget to do your homework,’ Rich calls after her.

  He’s in such a good mood and it’s kind of freaking me out a little bit. He’s been so moody and so distant. This… this is new. This is for a reason.

  Rich dumps his gym bag on the floor.

  ‘The mood at work today was great,’ he tells me. ‘Last night scored me some major brownie points.’

  ‘It was fun,’ I admit.

  ‘And they were all quite taken with you,’ he continues. ‘I really can’t say thank you enough. Right, shower time. Back in a bit.’

  Is that why he’s in such a good mood – because work is going so well? Surely there’s only so much money you can make before it makes absolutely no difference? My mum used to joke that Rich’s parents called him Rich because that’s what he was the second he was born.

  I’m quite house-proud now, which is odd because, not only is this a big departure from the usual me, but also this is not my house.

  I pick up Rich’s gym bag and start sorting through his sweaty things – with that unflinching level of indifference you usually only get from being actually married to someone – to sort out what needs washing.

  I’m not snooping, I swear I’m not, but the receipt for the flowers practically jumps into my hand as I sort through the bag. He spent £52.80 on flowers today – who spends £52.80 on flowers? – but who is he buying expensive flowers for?

  My suspicions that Rich might be having an affair rush back to the forefront of my mind… Is that why he’s in such a good mood?

  As I stare at the receipt and go over all the evidence in my brain, I completely lose track of time – or maybe not all that much time goes by – but soon enough Rich is standing in front of me. He’s all smiles until he sees the receipt in my hand.