by Rosie Fiore
That would mean leaving my own office by four at the latest, and staking out Stratford for up to three hours. And if I spotted her, what then? Would I follow her? I didn’t know yet. All I knew was that I needed time, and that was what I didn’t have. I needed a way to get the girls cared for that would allow me to be absent without a real reason until around eight, for several consecutive nights.
It took a while to construct a plan, but I got there. I made a phone call, and within minutes I had bought myself the hours I needed. I felt a little guilty about lying to Mum and Dad, but it was for the greater good. Every step in this plan was one closer to having our family back together again. I knew Mum and Dad might not get that now, but they would in the long run.
I’d told them that I had to undertake an urgent training programme at work – I made up something about social media metrics, which I knew would flummox them – but that doing it would hopefully earn me a promotion and more money. They agreed to pick up the girls every day, take them back to the flat, supervise homework and give them dinner.
Then I took a deep breath and rang Chris at work. He’s clearly sick to death of me. He didn’t even bother to sound happy to hear my voice.
‘Sam,’ he said shortly. I could hear he was still typing at top speed while he talked to me. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Pretty rough, if I’m honest. It was a nasty bug. I’ve only just shaken it.’
‘Mm,’ he said. He didn’t sound like he believed me. I didn’t blame him. ‘Did the girls get sick?’
‘No, thank God. They’re. . . okay.’ I left the smallest pause between my words. He stopped typing.
‘Okay?’
‘Well, they’ve had some trouble at school. Fighting, and. . . you know.’ I kept the explanation deliberately vague.
‘Man, that’s tough,’ said Chris, and I knew I’d won him over. ‘Anything I can do?’
Chris really is a nice guy. I felt bad, but I kept thinking to myself that this was for a greater good.
‘Well, if I could possibly work flexibly for a few days, a week maybe. . . You know, leave early, so I can be with the girls in the afternoon, give them support. . . and then do some hours in the evening from home to catch up—’
‘Of course!’ Chris cut in. ‘Whatever you need. Just make things okay for your girls.’ He and his girlfriend have a new baby, named Arthur. He’s besotted, and as a result, big on the rights of children.
I thanked him profusely, promised I would be at work bright and early the next morning, and rang off. I sat back in my chair and checked my watch. Nearly time to collect the girls.
I did my best to look industrious all of the next day at work. I typed furiously, answering emails and writing up reports, and I ate my lunch at my desk. My mind was buzzing with plans for later. At 3.30, Chris came over and touched my shoulder.
‘Hey, man, you’re going to set that keyboard on fire. Shouldn’t you get going for your girls?’
I glanced at my watch and faked surprise. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Thanks. Look, I’ve still got to finish the report on the test campaign for Robert and Roberts. I’ll get back on it as soon as the girls are in bed.’
‘Of course,’ said Chris.
I thanked him and packed up my things. As soon as I was out of the building, I set off at a jog for Waterloo station. It was a good fifteen minutes from my office, but it would get me on the Jubilee Line, and I could be in Stratford in fifteen minutes or so. I also reasoned that going to a station away from my office would make it less likely that I’d bump into a colleague who might wonder why I was heading in the opposite direction to where I lived. I was impatient on the journey, worried that I might somehow miss Helen, that she wasn’t in the office anyway. I tried to relax by telling myself I had a few days to get this right, but the jitters prevailed.
When I got to Stratford, I went into the Starbucks and bought a bottle of water. I was definitely too tense for several hours of coffee. There was a long counter by the window which looked out on to the concourse and offered a clear view of the entrance that Helen would have to come through. I’d planned ahead this time and bought a baseball cap, which I put on and pulled down over my face. She wouldn’t be looking out for me, but if by chance she looked through the window, the cap might stop her recognizing me. I glanced at my watch. Just after four. I’d probably erred on the side of caution by several hours. Still, there was nothing to do but sit and wait. I didn’t want to read or work, risking missing her. She’d only be in view for a matter of seconds before she disappeared into the station.
We’ve come to expect constant entertainment in the twenty-first century. It’s incredibly hard to sit and wait. All around me, people were on their phones, scrolling and texting. The few that weren’t were typing on tablets or computers or reading books or newspapers. It felt odd indeed to sit, and I was worried that I was conspicuous through my lack of electronic activity. I grabbed a discarded paper from a nearby table and put it on the counter in front of me. After ten minutes or so, my phone buzzed with a text, and with great relief, I took it out. It was from Lara.
‘Hey. How are you doing?’ If it’s possible for a text to sound tentative, this one did. I felt a twinge of guilt. She’d barely crossed my mind since I’d seen her in the street with her ex on Sunday. I had no idea what to say. I still owed her an apology, but the night I’d seen Helen felt like a lifetime ago. So much had happened in between.
‘Hey,’ I typed. ‘A little better than last week. I’m so sorry about. . .’
I’ll never know what made me look up at that second. A flash of blonde hair, maybe? I glanced up just in time to see Helen walking briskly into the station. Until that moment, there had been the possibility that I’d got it wrong, that Helen Day was someone else altogether. But here she was. I felt a flash of exhilaration so powerful I stood involuntarily.
She was dressed in another severe business suit. This one was red, a colour she had never worn when we were together. She was carrying a portfolio case of the type that artists use for artwork, and she had a black backpack on her back. Seeing her in motion, I couldn’t believe I’d ever doubted my first sight of her. The hair and clothes might be different, and she may have gained weight, but that bouncy, positive walk, as if she was being propelled forward, was unmistakeable. I dropped my phone into my pocket, grabbed my bag and rushed out of the coffee shop, just in time to see her pass through the ticket gates and into the station. There was one heart-stopping moment when I couldn’t get my own card out of my pocket to get through the gates, but I made it in time to see her head off down a long corridor towards the Jubilee Line platforms. I jogged along until I was about ten yards behind her and then fell into step, keeping her bright blonde hair in sight. A train pulled into the platform as we got to it, and I watched which carriage she got into. I ran down the platform (it was too early to be properly busy) and hopped into the next one. I walked to the end of the carriage so I could stand by the door and look through the small window to watch her. I knew it was unlikely she’d glance up and see me, but I kept my cap on and turned sideways to be less obvious.
She’d got a seat about halfway down the carriage, and I saw her put her backpack on her lap. She drew out a Filofax diary, like the one she’d always used when we were together. She read through some notes and made a couple of quick, decisive annotations. My heart ached with love. I missed her so much. I wanted to slip into the seat next to her and put my face in the curve of her neck to smell her skin. She checked her watch, and again the familiarity of the gesture made me sigh. I noticed she was wearing a different watch, not the elegant one with the brown strap I had bought for her. This one looked big and chunky, almost masculine. She’d chosen it to suit the new Helen.
The Tube sped into Canary Wharf and I braced myself, expecting her to get off, but she didn’t even look up. She was focused on her notes. I watched her for a few more stops, drinking in the chance to study her face for an extended period of time. I think I was almost hypnotized, so t
hat when we got to Green Park and she stood abruptly, I was caught off guard. I managed to throw myself off the train too, and to my enormous relief, her route towards the exit took her away from me, rather than towards me. If it had been the other way, she would have bumped straight into me, and it would have been Canary Wharf all over again. I followed her through the corridors and up out of the station.
She turned decisively as soon as she was outside, and walked briskly through the streets of Mayfair. It was clear that she was going to a client meeting. I followed, a discreet distance behind, and saw her turn into a Georgian townhouse in an expensive mews. When I was sure she’d gone inside and the door was shut, I approached and checked the nameplates beside the door. It was an exclusive area, so there were no brash logos, just company names engraved on small brass plaques, three of them beside three polished brass bell pushes. The names were all acronyms, and I had heard of none of them. I had no way of knowing which of the offices Helen had gone into. It was irrelevant – one of the companies was obviously a client of SSA’s. She’d gone for a meeting and would emerge sooner or later. I checked the time: 5.15. Late to be starting a meeting, I thought. She probably wouldn’t be too long, and I had a few hours before I needed to be back to see to the girls. There was a lovely old-fashioned pub at the end of the block. Helen would have to pass it on her way back to the station. I went inside and found myself a window table, ordering a beer.
Forty-five minutes later, she emerged from the building. She no longer had the portfolio bag. She stopped outside and took her mobile phone out of her rucksack. She checked her messages, and then I saw her dial and begin to talk as she walked. I shrank back from the window as she passed, then gulped the last mouthful of my drink and followed.
There was no risk of her turning back and seeing me. She was entirely immersed in her phone call. Who was she talking to? I wanted to believe she had rung her boss at SSA to report back on the meeting. But what if it wasn’t him? What if she was ringing a boyfriend to say she was on her way over to his place? I felt a hot rush of jealousy. I wanted to rush up behind her and snatch the phone out of her hand.
She got to Green Park and marched through the barriers, cutting off the call as she went through. I found I had to run to keep up as she strode briskly down the escalator and turned confidently towards the eastbound Jubilee Line platform. There was no train at the platform when I reached it, so I hung back, out of sight in the main concourse, until I heard one pulling in, then again made my way on to the carriage adjoining Helen’s. It was past six o’clock and I was running short of time if I was to be back home by eight, as I had promised my parents. She had to be on her way home now though. I didn’t want to let her go.
I watched her through the window. On this journey, she left her Filofax in her bag and instead took out a set of headphones and connected them to her phone. I knew she wasn’t listening to music – she’d never had any time for idle entertainment. She’d have some improving book or an informative podcast playing. She also seemed settled, and showed no sign of getting off. I’d expected her to change at Canary Wharf, or possibly one of the other stops, but she relaxed back in her seat and didn’t seem ready to get off. My nerves became more and more frayed with every passing stop. The train rattled on, and it became clear that she was going all the way to Stratford. Was she going back to the office at this hour? Or did she live in the area too? I thought it unlikely but not impossible. Time was ticking and I was getting further and further from my own home.
She got off at Stratford, the end of the line, and I followed her only far enough to see that she was indeed going back to the office. At 6.30 p.m. That was some hard-core dedication to the job. There was no way I could wait for her to emerge, and no possible way of knowing what time that might happen. I was forced to admit defeat, return to the station and hope I could make it back to north London in time to put the girls to bed.
I was back in the Starbucks at 4.30 the following afternoon, but this time the wait was much longer. No late-afternoon meetings for Helen today. Time ticked, I drank juice, water and coffee, and developed such an urgent need to go for a pee that I had to abandon my post for three nerve-wracking minutes. I worried constantly that I might have missed her, or that she wasn’t in the office at all, but just when I was considering giving up, at about 6.15, she came into the concourse wearing black jeans and boots, a tailored pink shirt and a cropped black jacket. It was more casual than the outfits I’d seen her wearing before, more what a woman might wear if she knew she had a day in the office with no client meetings. She looked sexy, in a slightly intimidating way – kind of biker-chick chic.
I followed her into the station again, but instead of heading for the Jubilee Line, she swerved off towards the Docklands Light Railway. My heart leapt. Did that mean she was actually on her way home? Would I be able to find out where she lived?
Again, she plugged in her headphones, which made me a little bolder. She’d be immersed in what she was listening to, not paying much attention to her environment. The DLR didn’t have separate carriages, so I sat a few rows behind her, watching the nape of her neck as she looked out of the window. She changed trains at Canary Wharf and so did I, and it was soon clear that we were heading south-east. There was something about her more relaxed demeanour that made me sure she was on her way home. Southeast? What was in the south-east? What had made her choose this corner of London? I thought I understood. London is so big, and people generally move only in the areas in which they live and work. The girls and I live in north-west London and I work in the West End. By choosing to live and work in the south-east, she may as well have moved to Timbuktu.
As the train was about to pull into Greenwich, she took off her headphones and put her things away in her bag. This was obviously her destination. I got up quickly and moved further down the carriage, so that if she turned back to walk to the door, she wouldn’t see me sitting behind her.
She walked to the door in front of her seat, reaching into her pocket for her Oyster card. The train stopped and we stepped out. My heart pounded as she turned towards me, walking towards the exit. I dropped my wallet on the ground and bent to pick it up as she passed, keeping my head down and hoping the baseball cap concealed my face. She didn’t appear to notice me, and when I dared to look up, she was a few yards further along the platform and I was free to stand up and follow her. We left the station, and I walked behind her as she meandered down the street, clearly not in a hurry. She went into a Sainsbury’s, and I crossed to the opposite side of the road and waited until she emerged, carrying a bag of shopping. Then we continued down the street until she took a right turn and then another, into a small side street. She stopped outside a door between two neglected-looking shops. She put the shopping bag at her feet and reached into her backpack for her keys.
Now.
I stepped up beside her and said, ‘Helen.’
PART FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY
Helen
Simon was out of the office the afternoon she was due to go to QVA. It made things much easier. She liked Simon and didn’t want to lie to him. She told Sophie something vague about going to check out a possible venue for an event they were planning for a client. The next day, she would just say the venue hadn’t been right at all.
She’d calculated her journey time carefully – half an hour to get to Mayfair, and fifteen minutes to find QVA and get inside. She had her big artwork folder with her, which made sense if she was meeting a client at an event venue; they might well look at designs together when they were there. But instead of set designs, the case contained her portfolio – boards of the campaigns she had done for SSA, and some from her previous working life. She’d had them mounted at considerable expense, and the portfolio looked sleek and professional.
She hadn’t been looking to move jobs, not quite yet, anyway. But while working on the kinetic tape campaign, she’d met the two brothers who ran QVA, Bruce and Jaego Chertsey. They were twins – burly, blo
nde men who looked like they’d rowed and played a lot of rugby in their teenage years and had the unmistakeable sheen and confidence of an expensive public school and lots of inherited money. When they’d launched the agency, they’d been a joke in the marketing industry; everyone had assumed they were a pair of dilettante posh boys with no real substance. But they were smart. They set up an elegant office in the best part of town, used their considerable contacts book (and that of their parents) to bring in initial business, and then went about hiring the best account managers, marketers and creative teams. In short, they delivered, and the business continued to roll in.
Bruce was the more charismatic of the two, the agency’s front man and new-business-development whizz. He had extravagant waves of bright golden hair and the demeanour of a well-bred but boisterous golden retriever. People adored him. Jaego was quieter, slimmer and darker, and his eagle eye and ruthless efficiency kept the company’s finances on track.
When Helen met them both at a big round table of agencies involved in the kinetic tape campaign, she felt immediately drawn to them. Their energy was infectious, and their confidence irresistible. She went home and spent some time looking at their website and the coverage they’d got in the marketing press. She looked up every employee of the company that she could find on LinkedIn and examined their CVs, matching them to current and past work on the company website. Then she set about writing Bruce and Jaego a letter, explaining why they should hire her as the new marketing manager they didn’t yet know they needed.
They were surprised but arranged a telephone interview with her the following week. She’d gone to sit in the Starbucks in the station at Stratford and talked to them for half an hour. A few days later, they called and asked her to come and meet them. They thought they had a position for her. The job at QVA would be a big step up: another 50 per cent on her salary, a small team to manage, and the real possibility of winning some awards. They also talked about the likelihood of an international secondment. This was what swung it for her. Travel was a vital component in her medium-term plan.
