From the Inside

by Collette Heather

  I tell him a gin and tonic, and he turns his back to me, trying to get the barman’s attention. I scan the pub, searching the place for a spare table. I still can’t make up my mind if this place is supposed to look like it’s falling down around everyone’s ears, or if it really is. The tables are rickety and paint-splattered, the random, somewhat eclectic mix of furniture shabby and mismatching, with faded, Chesterfield sofas and velvet-upholstered armchairs that are threadbare and shiny with age.

  I spy a table, and gently place a hand on Luke’s shoulder. Just that small touch has me shivering in a mix of fear and longing, and I snatch back my hand like he has burnt me.

  When he twists his head to look at me, my stomach does the loop the loop, and it takes great effort on my part to keep my voice normal:

  “I can see a table. I’ll just go grab it.”

  Then I am making my way over, my heart thumping and my legs trembling.

  *

  He joins me a few minutes later, carrying a pint of dark ale and a gin and tonic. I was lucky enough to nab a small, square table in a far corner of the vast room, so there is no danger of anyone looking for a seat gate-crashing our date.

  “I’m married,” he states as soon as we are settled.

  I don’t know how best to reply. He can’t possibly know that I already know this, and I’m just not sure how far to push my look of surprise.

  “I might have guessed,” I say after a suitably long pause. “I mean, why else would you want to meet me at half past five, instead of eight or nine?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, his dark eyes searching mine. Absently, he raises a hand to his face, where he pushes back the glossy dark hair that has flopped onto his forehead. My heart trips – I wish it was me that was raking my fingers through his hair.

  “I probably should’ve been straight with you from the start.”

  Once again, I am unsure as to how I should be reacting. Should I be angry? Upset? Indifferent? Should I crack a joke?

  “Yes. Perhaps you should’ve been.” But I say it with what I hope is a sweet, unassuming half-smile.

  “But then I ran the risk of you saying no to meeting me for a drink. It’s not like I normally go around asking random women out.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” I say, keeping my tone neutral.

  “I just wanted to be honest with you. You know, lay my cards out on the table from the start.”

  I almost laugh at that one, but bite it back in time. “Why don’t you wear a wedding band?”

  “My wife and I…” his voice trails off and he looks sheepishly down at his pint, twisting it this way and that in front of him on the table. “Well, for one thing, I don’t wear jewellery. I can’t stand the stuff, I don’t even like wearing a watch.”

  “And the second thing?” I ask.

  “My wife and I… That is, Tanya and I, we’ve been having problems.”

  I honestly don’t know if he is telling the truth. I mean, no one knows what really goes on behind closed doors, do they? Maybe they really did have marital problems. It’s just, his bitch of a wife paints such a perfect picture of them on Facebook, it’s hard to imagine them having any kind of problems.

  I sip my gin and tonic, regarding him thoughtfully, not sure if I should press him further, but doing so anyway. “What kind of problems are we talking about, here?”

  “We haven’t been getting on as well as we have been, lately. It’s a lot of small things, rather than any one big thing, you know?”

  “Do you have children?” I ask, wondering if he’ll be honest with me. Wondering what game he is playing. Does he see me as nothing more than a potential good time, as a glorified prostitute, or does he genuinely see something in me that he wants? And is his marriage really that much in trouble?

  “Yes, one. A little girl. She’s nearly one.”

  He’s being honest about that much, anyway. But I’m still confused. I can’t work him out.

  “They can be a handful at that age. Still the sleepless nights, the dirty nappies, the weening onto solid food and the teething. God, the teething.”

  “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

  I immediately realise my mistake, and hastily, I backtrack. “No. Just friends that have been through it.”

  He is looking at me with such intensity, it’s like he can see straight to my lie. Like he knows that I’ve had a child. That’s impossible, of course, I am being melodramatic. But still, I hate it when I am forced to think about my precious little girl.

  “It can be a challenge,” he says, his eyes never leaving mine. I admire the way the dark brown is flecked with gold, and the brown, near-black limbal rings that lend his gaze such searing intensity.

  “Why did you want to see me, Luke?”

  Because you’re beautiful,” he replies, not missing a beat. “Because you look so damn familiar. Because when I saw you in The King’s Head, I couldn’t bear to let you walk out that door and never see you again.”

  I still can’t work out if he’s being honest with me, or not. If he’s after a one-night stand, or even an affair. A feeling of disorientation washes over me. I feel like this is all happening too fast, even though I have been secretly planning this for so long.

  I am out of my depth, and I don’t like it.

  “Next you’ll be telling me that your wife doesn’t understand you.”

  He laughs softly at that. “Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe my marriage is cold and loveless.”

  “No offense, but it does rather sound like you’re spinning me line after line.”

  “No offense taken. Maybe I am that much of a walking, talking cliché. But clichés are usually clichés for a reason – because they’re invariably true.”

  “Is that so? So then what cliché does that make me? The typical city girl who seems to have a radar for picking the wrong type of guy? Here I am, having a drink with a man that I strongly suspected was married from the start. Yet here I am, anyway. Carrie Bradshaw has nothing on me.”

  Was I overplaying it? There was some truth to what I was saying – the best lies glimmer with half-truths. And my ex did cheat on me, so it’s not like I have the best track-record with men.

  “So, then why are you here?” he asks me.

  “Maybe I wanted you to be different.”

  Careful, I think. Don’t scare him away by being too full on.

  “Different, as in, not married different?”

  I panic that I’m coming across as needy. Appearing needy is worse than seeming like a complete whore. The last thing I want is for him to get any kind of Glenn Close vibe.

  “Well,” I say, picking my words carefully, aware that I am tiptoeing around a verbal minefield. “I’m not sure that it’s any girl’s dream to get entangled with a married man, no matter who that man is.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m still here, aren’t I? Why don’t we talk about something else? Stick to safer topics. Like, what are your views on Brexit and Metoo?

  He laughs at that, and I laugh right along with him. “Safer topics, huh?”

  “Absolutely,” I reply with mock gravity. “I think these questions should be mandatory when people first meet. Nothing reveals someone’s personality more than the answer to those questions. It would save a lot of time in the long run; get it all out there to start with.”

  “You may have a point. I was actually talking about this with someone at work, today. He was saying that some of his wife’s views had surprised him so much that he felt as if he no longer knew her.”

  “I can believe it. Everyone has an opinion nowadays, even those who previously didn’t seem to care one way or the other.”

  “And that, is an opinion in itself,” he laughs.

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  “So, come on. Shock me. Lay it on the table. So to speak,” I say with a giggle.

  It doesn’t matter if his views align with mine. Because whatever stance he takes, I’m
going to agree with him. Even if he empathises with Harvey Weinstein, if he believes that those women were asking for it, I will gravely and emphatically nod my head.

  The games have begun in earnest, and there’s no way that I’m going to screw this up now.

  This man is mine.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Excuse me one moment,” I say, once we are settled in my tiny living-room. I am perched on one end of the grey, blocky sofa, him on the other. I have been planning this moment for so long now, it has reached epic proportions in my mind. This, right here, is my pivotal moment. Everything rides on this one moment

  Or, should I say, rides on him.

  I stagger slightly as I lurch to my feet. I’m drunk, I realise. How did that happen? How many drinks have I had? Five? Six? Two glasses of wine since we hit my place. In hindsight, opening that bottle of red wasn’t such a hot idea. No matter. Dutch courage certainly wouldn’t go amiss right about now.

  I walk carefully, making a show of swinging my hips seductively as I walk towards the door. I suspect that I’m failing miserably in this objective, instead appearing drunk and cumbersome. Not good, I decide.

  I pass through the tiny hallway, into the bedroom. I have told him that I am just popping to the bathroom, which is half true, as my bladder is full to bursting point. I gently shut the bedroom door behind myself, then slump against it, finally giving in to the trembling that racks my body. I am as nervous as Hell, and I let out a shaky breath.

  I can’t do this.

  But I have to do this.

  Forcing myself to keep it together, I head straight on over to the laptop which is on the desk facing the bed.

  I press a button, and the recording begins. I now have three hours to get him into bed.

  I don’t see that this will be a problem.

  PART TWO

  TANYA

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Tanya

  June 18th

  (3 months later)

  I’ve had my suspicions that the cleaner is stealing from us – or from me, specifically – for weeks now. She only seems to take my beauty products, like my conditioner, for instance. It’s quite an expensive one, and I can only get it online. It’s lovely – I just adore how I catch a delicious waft of roses in my hair every time I turn my head. I always keep a few spare bottles in the en-suite bathroom cabinet, but one has mysteriously disappeared.

  I also seem to have misplaced a Chanel lipstick in a delicate shade of pink. What’s disturbing about this is that I wear this one most of the time – I feel that the pale, rose-petal pink perfectly compliments my strawberry blonde hair and pale complexion. Why would she steal my most-used lipstick? I’m also missing a bottle of my favourite Guerlain perfume, and, randomly, a near-full packet of Tampax.

  I’m positive it’s the cleaner, for it’s not like there are any other women in the house. Apart from Bella, but she’s only one year old. We do employ the services of a babysitter – the same girl we’ve used for three months now – around once a fortnight on the rare occasions that Luke and I venture out. Or, if we’re throwing a dinner party and I’m busy being charming for Luke’s friends, this girl will quietly take the reins.

  But I’m pretty sure it’s not her, not least because she’s lovely and comes highly recommended from people in our social circle. Or Luke’s social circle, if one wishes to be pedantic about these things. Besides, I only notice these little disappearances after the cleaner has been.

  Bella and I have just come back from our morning stroll in the park. She is fast asleep in her buggy, and before I enter the house, I lift her out of her seat, holding her sleeping form tight against me. She is dead to the world, just as she always is in that magical half hour of any given nap she has. I close my eyes for a second, pressing my nose to her silky, strawberry-blonde hair a shade or two lighter than my own, breathing in her delicious aroma of baby powder, lavender, and that indefinable baby-head smell that makes my heart sing in joy.

  Leaving the pushchair in the front garden for now, I make my way up the five, red steps that lead to the pillar-flanked porch and insert the key into the lock of the double-fronted door of our Georgian townhouse.

  Stepping inside the internal porch, I half expect to hear the distant hum of the vacuum cleaner, but all is quiet. I kick off my cream-coloured ballet pumps, padding barefoot through the porch and entering the vast hallway, where I make my way over the black and white tiled floor towards the nearest door which leads to the living-room.

  I enter the grand, opulent room, with its three, big sash-windows and crystal chandelier hanging from the high ceiling, and gently lay my sleeping daughter down in her living-room crib. As I am home alone so much, I spend a great deal of time in this room, and as such I have arranged it so that Bella can nap in here during the day, rather than upstairs in her room. There’s nothing I love more than curling up with a book and a cup of tea on the long leather Chesterfield sofa, watching over her as she sleeps.

  If it were up to me, I would have her sleeping in our marital bed, too. But Luke doesn’t like that. He says he’s scared of squashing her, and that our bed should be just for us, that we need our privacy.

  Thank God for baby monitors, that’s all I can say. I have them everywhere throughout this huge house so that I always have peace of mind when she is alone.

  With a final glance at Bella, I am back to creeping down the hallway, making my way to the equally large kitchen that is behind the far door.

  If the living-room has a classical vibe, with its dark-oak floor and traditional furniture, then the kitchen has more of an industrial vibe. It is ultra-sleek and modern with its chrome and metal fittings that wouldn’t look out of place in a modern art gallery. In fact, that was exactly the look I was going for when Luke gave me free rein with the kitchen’s overhaul. The floor is a highly polished, white concrete which I chose over the more traditional slate or tiles, and the walls have been stripped back to reveal the bricks. The wall that overlooks the large back garden is now entirely comprised of glass panels, the middle sections of which can slide open. I also have obscenely expensive, brightly coloured, frameless, abstract act hanging on the redbrick walls.

  The cleaner – Isobel – isn’t in here, either. I pad back down the hallway, checking each of the downstairs rooms in turn. She is not in either of the two dining-rooms, or drawing-rooms, as Luke calls call them. We very rarely use these two rooms – they just gather dust which Isobel religiously cleans five mornings a week. Neither is she cleaning the downstairs bathroom.

  My heart beats harder in my chest. Logic tells me that she’ll be cleaning upstairs – there is, after all, plenty up there to be getting on with. I find myself creeping up the winding staircase, taking care to keep to the edge nearest the curved, wrought-iron banister so that the creaking stairs will not announce my arrival.

  It’s not like I’ve planned to try and catch her out. And even if I had, the chances of me catching her in the act of shoving a shampoo bottle up her jumper are surely slim to none.

  It is deathly quiet on the upstairs landing. I creep down the hallway, avoiding the floorboards that I know creak, and glance in the first room that I pass, which is the upstairs bathroom – the only one of the three upstairs bathrooms that isn’t en-suite. She’s not in here, scrubbing the freestanding, claw-footed marble bath as she had promised to do today. I continue down the hallway, pausing when I come to mine and Luke’s bedroom. This is the one room of the house where she is not supposed to clean – at my request, rather than Luke’s. I’m simply not comfortable with a third party in our bedroom, unless it’s Bella, of course. It just feels invasive. Luke tends to roll his eyes at me and say that I’m overreacting, but I can’t help how I feel.

  If it were up to me, I wouldn’t employ a cleaner in the first place, for it’s not like I work. But Luke insists, and I grudgingly see the logic of it. Our girl comes for three hours a day, nine to twelve, Monday to Friday. It’s a big, five-bedroomed house, and it’s surely be
tter that I spend those three hours with Bella, rather than running around scrubbing and hoovering. Plus, the laundry and the cooking is my domain, which is something that I can easily do with Bella nearby.

  Luke also thinks it would be a good idea to get a nanny, but I point-blank refuse that much. I love my little girl – if I’m not working and I still can’t look after her, then I’m not entirely sure as to the point of my existence. The babysitter we use now and again is more than enough for me.

  The bedroom door is pulled to, and I slowly, gently, push it open…

  And there she is. Our cleaner, Isobel Stamford, in exactly the one place that she isn’t supposed to be. Even worse, she is standing before my wardrobe, holding up a knee-length, black cocktail dress and pressing it to her body, twirling this way and that in front of the long mirror on one of the wardrobe doors.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  She hasn’t seen me, and for a moment, all I can do is stand there, watching her incredulously. At last, I find my voice.

  “Isobel! What in God’s name are you doing?”

  She jerks around on the spot, and, as she does so, something small that has been tucked into the palm of her hand drops to the floor, landing with an almost comically loud clatter on the floorboards, where it rolls in my direction. I recognise it immediately – another Chanel lipstick of mine. It is a perfect admission of her guilt.

  Still clutching the dress, she frantically bends over and snatches up the lipstick, shoving it into the front pocket of her cheap, black trousers. Her eyes meet mine; they are wide with fear and shame. I can see that she can see that the game is up. That she has been caught red-handed. That I undoubtedly saw my lipstick, and she can no longer pretend it was something of hers that she has dropped.

  Her rosebud mouth is open in a perfect ‘O’ of surprise, and if it weren’t so disturbing to find her rootling through my stuff and stealing from me, I might’ve found this funny.