Busy Woman Seeks Wife

by Annie Sanders

  “You could work in that cinema, like I did. You’d be perfect for it—you never fall asleep in films, do you? Always staying on to see the last boring credit, that’s you! Just change your surname, perhaps, if you do apply. Anyway, look on the bright side. You’ve got more free time. You don’t have to do that woman’s ironing anymore. And you don’t have to hang out with that weird old lady. Yes, I know you liked her. That’s ’cos you’re weird too. But in a good way. See you later. Off to work, tra la la!”

  Frankie sat down and tried to read the paper. He’d gone out to get it earlier as a way of trying to get the phone to ring but not even that had worked. Unemployment figures up! Great, even more people to compete with. Frankie thought again about the other actors who had been at the rehearsal rooms in St. John’s Wood going up for the part of the angst-ridden Joel. They’d clearly all had more experience, even after applying the bullshit formula. Frankie knew, because he’d done it himself, you could discount around thirty percent of what anyone said, rising to forty percent before an audition, and as much as sixty percent if it was film or telly. He should just have left there and then, and not bothered to have humiliated himself. But after such an awful confrontation with Alex, everything the Bean had taught him had gone out the window when it came to reading for the part.

  Frankie pushed Alex out of his mind. He had his own problems and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to apologize. He’d left three answerphone messages and had even written a letter. If she was too pigheaded to see that everyone had just been trying to help her and her precious career, that was certainly not his problem. But the Bean. Frankie stood up and started to pace again. He really had to go and see her, but he’d let her down too, and after she’d pulled so many strings to get the producer to see him. He caught sight of himself in the mirror. He looked bloody awful. Like a wanted man. If only he were! That decided him. He couldn’t hide out here anymore like a housework-obsessed desperado, cleaning and polishing while the world passed him by. He’d go out, take the bike and go to see the Bean. Perhaps she could cheer him up. Maybe, if he came clean and told her just how badly he’d messed up at the audition, they could go over it together. It would be painful, of course, but he might at least learn something.

  Chapter 22

  Ella sipped her coffee and resumed typing. She was definitely getting faster, although it would probably be physically impossible for her to type any slower. Was it possible to type backward? She still couldn’t do it, however, without her tongue sticking out ever so slightly—a fact that Mike, the boss, had teased her about mercilessly. She heard him stirring in his lair. He had seemed grumpier than ever this morning, and she didn’t want to draw any more of his fire than she absolutely had to. Although she had learned by now that he was largely benign, at least to her. Even so, if he thought she looked in need of something to do, he might pull her off to go and do some photocopying or filing—both of which she hated. She quickly tucked her tongue back in and returned to the keyboard.

  Of course, it really wasn’t difficult for Ella to stay occupied in this job. She was loving it. She had always had a good memory for things people told her, and now she found she could fit seemingly random facts together and turn them into a story—or at least the germ of a story—that she could chase up. And the fact that she was so small and young-looking made it easy for her to get talking to people, to hang around unnoticed and watch what was going on. People weren’t careful about what they said when she was around. Like yesterday, when she’d stood watching that big four-wheel drive with the tinted windows parked on the pavement, engine running, a handwritten note on the dash reading we’ll unlock your mobile phone while-u-wait.

  And now here she was, writing it up as part of her story about the increase in street crime in the area, and the irony of how criminals are providing a stolen mobile phone unlocking service for street thieves. Ella sat back and stretched, glancing around at the other desks in the room. Kerry had just arrived and treated Ella to a glare before sitting at her computer and checking through her e-mails. “Oh! Now that’s interesting!” Kerry did this a lot—making statements in the hope someone would ask her to expand. Ella gave her a scornful glance and shuffled through her sketchy handwritten notes to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.

  Luke came in, checking his watch against the clock on the wall as he did every morning. God, he was tedious. Kerry spun around in her chair and greeted Luke with surprising warmth. “Hi! Good morning and how are you today?”

  “Er, all right, thanks,” he stammered, his Adam’s apple wobbling up and down as he swallowed nervously.

  “Check your e-mail. I’ve just had one from Lindsay. Bet she’s copied it to you.”

  Luke switched on his screen. “Oh, do you think so? Let’s have a look.”

  Ella kept her eyes squarely on the screen, but was now listening to the conversation going on behind her. Lindsay was the woman she’d been called in to replace, all that time ago, when she’d just started that stupid job looking after the Bean. It seemed a lifetime ago now. She shook her head wryly. How long would she have been able to stick that out? God bless Lindsay and her bad back!

  She jumped when her phone buzzed. “Hello, Mike! And what can I do for you?”

  “Ella? In here now. We need to have a talk.”

  Ella scowled as she replaced the phone. That didn’t sound good. He hadn’t called her Lois, his usual nickname for her. This could mean only one thing. She sighed, picked up her notes and went through to his cave. “Please, God, no more photocopying. I’m better than that!” she groaned as she perched on the chair in front of his desk. “By the way, when I said God just then, I didn’t mean you. Whatever it is, can we be quick, ’cos I want to get back out on this story. Any chance I could borrow your mobile?”

  Mike hadn’t looked up from the papers he was shuffling on his desk. When at last she trailed off, he raised his eyes and stared at her for a moment. “Sorry, kid. I’m going to have to let you go. I’ve just heard from Lindsay. She’s been given the all clear to come back.” Ella felt a sudden sharp pain in her stomach. He shrugged. “Well, you knew it was only going to be for a while, eh?”

  Her notes slipped from her hands and she dropped to the floor to gather them up. “Oh well. Yes of course,” she jabbered. “I’ll be off then. I wanted to go, er, shopping anyway and I’ve got loads of things to do.” Her mind was racing. She stood up without looking at him, concentrating so hard on the pages crumpled in her hands that she didn’t even hear him call her name as she rushed headlong from the room to gather up her jacket and backpack.

  Chapter 23

  Saff dropped the clothes in the washing basket and opened the bathroom window. The heat today was stifling, with a humidity that wasn’t even relieved by opening all the windows. Lucky Max would be sitting in an air-conditioned office. He’d been so busy these past couple of weeks they’d barely had time to speak, and when he was home he was holed up in his study on some new investigative documentary project about benefit fraud. Or something.

  Saff wiped some storm bugs off the windowsill and looked out at the dry patch of garden. How lovely it would be to have a view of fields and to keep chickens, and to have a dog to walk in the woods. At least that would give her something interesting to do. Some friends had mentioned meeting for coffee at Starbucks, but she couldn’t face the inane chatter about holidays and children and men.

  Slowly she walked into Oscar’s room, the remnants of the morning discarded all over the floor, his pajama bottoms lying in a pool on top of his slippers, where they’d dropped as if he’d been propelled out of them. She sighed and leaned down to pick them up. So dull, so boring to do this every morning. So stultifyingly tedious that each day was a landscape of the same tasks, broken only by the occasional highlight, and the other night playing poker had been one of them. They had laughed so much, the three of them, and the Bean had been in her element teaching them both how to bluff. Then Alex had walked in.

  Saff slumped
on Oscar’s unmade bed, her stomach clenching again as it had almost constantly since she’d seen Alex standing there in her flat doorway, her face so drawn and her eyes so questioning. They had done a terrible thing. They may have convinced themselves that the Frankie deception was to “help Alex out” but it had gone too far—she winced as she remembered the dinner party. She realized now they should have let on that Ella couldn’t do the job and given Alex the chance to replace her. Frankie stepping in was only meant to be temporary, but instead he had stayed and it had become a sort of bonding joke. So much so they had actually forgotten about the feelings of the person they were deceiving. Shame on them.

  Saff threw the pajama bottoms onto the floor again. How could they have done such a thing? Alex was the most honest person she knew. She despised artifice, which explained why she found her mother’s expansive gestures and exaggeration so irritating. Knowing all that, how could Saff have put her oldest friendship in such jeopardy? She’d tried calling Alex at home but had gotten the answering machine. She hadn’t bothered with the mobile because she knew her number would come up and Alex would ignore it. Even at the office her calls had been diverted to her assistant, who kept saying she was “away from her desk,” a phrase Saff loathed.

  Turning her back on Oscar’s mess, Saff made her way downstairs and, making herself a cup of coffee, went out to sit on the garden bench, surrounded by her flowering tubs, an urban apology for a garden. With a surge, she realized how lonely she was. The children were at school, too excited and busy to bother with irrelevancies like being tidy; Max was being important and needed; Alex didn’t want to speak to her and she deserved that. Saff could hear her mother’s voice in her ear telling her to pull herself together. Do some charity work. Visit the elderly. Join a committee. But Saff knew she couldn’t find the energy or the enthusiasm. The phone rang in the kitchen.

  “Hi, Saff? It’s Ella. Frankie got your number from the Bean for me. I hope you don’t mind me calling?”

  Saff smiled in surprise. She’d liked Ella when they’d met at the famous dinner party and despite everything was pleased to hear from her. “No, no, not at all.”

  “Only I heard about the Alex thing and wanted to say… well, I’m sorry. It’s probably all my fault.”

  “It was all our faults,” Saff sighed. “Mine most of all. Don’t blame yourself.”

  There was a pause. “I wondered, if you’re not too busy, are you free for a coffee?”

  Saff laughed drily. “I’m never busy.”

  An hour later they were both sitting on the garden bench. “Oh, this house is so lovely, Saff. It’s a real home.”

  “Is it?” Saff could hear the bitterness in her own voice. “It’s not much of an achievement just being a housewife.”

  Ella nudged her. “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that, you know. People need lovely homes to come back to and people to look after them.”

  Saff looked down at the cup in her hands. “It’s not so great when you are stuck in it all the time.” She looked at the girl beside her, envious of her youthful energy and optimism. For all the girl’s flightiness, she was surprisingly thoughtful. It was she who’d noticed how condescending Todd had been at the dinner party, and any relation of Frankie’s couldn’t be all bad. “I’m bored rigid,” she blurted out, surprising herself. “What I need is something to do. A job, but one that I can do and look after the children ’cos I’d never earn enough to pay for child care, not with my lack of skills. Besides…” She looked down again. “I want to be here for them or what’s the point?”

  Ella tutted. “Yeah, jobs. They’re not all they are cracked up to be.”

  “That sounds heartfelt. Yours not going well? I thought Frankie said you were enjoying it?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not so much going as gone.” Ella too studied the contents of her coffee cup. “The position I was covering—well, the girl had a bad back and now she’s recovered and is coming back. Why couldn’t she have had something serious, or at least something lingering?” Saff smiled at Ella’s directness. “For once I was really enjoying myself. Making calls, chasing stories, meeting people. I’ve had so many lousy jobs—really dead-end stuff like waitressing, flipping burgers, working in the sodding cinema—but I think they really helped. They seemed like preparation for the radio station because they made me able to talk to people. But more than that, I know what it feels like to be at the bottom of the pile, to have to sign on and justify yourself all the time. For the first time it was something I really thought I could do. I thought I could make a difference by covering stories that aired people’s grievances.” She paused. “And now he doesn’t want me.”

  “Who?”

  “Mike. My boss. He’s quite cute actually, in an old kind of way. No offense!”

  There was silence between them for a while as they listened to a lawnmower in the distance, then Ella said: “That’s the best you can hope for, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “You know, that you can end up doing something you enjoy doing, even if it doesn’t make a fortune. I mean, look at Frankie. All he wants is to act—and he’ll put up with all sorts of rejection on the off chance he might find his dream, land the perfect role.”

  Saff thought about the passion he put into his audition practice with the Bean. “He could always cook if all else failed. He’s brilliant at that.”

  There was a pause, then Ella turned to Saff. “That’s it! That’s what you should do. For money, I mean. Properly like. You’d love that!”

  “What?”

  “Cooking. Catering. Whatever they call it.”

  Saff smiled at the excitement in the girl’s eyes. “That, Ella, is the crappiest idea I’ve ever heard!”

  Chapter 24

  Over in Chelsea, things weren’t looking much better. If anything, they were worse. The Bean had buzzed Frankie into her little mews house and had greeted him distractedly, but she was still in her peignoir, evidence of a scanty breakfast still at her elbow as she avidly watched on TV the efforts of two over-enthusiastic real estate agents to interest a smart Asian couple in a house with three shower rooms and no bath. She barely took her eyes off it as he started to clear up around her. In the three days since Alex had sent them all packing, she seemed to have physically shrunk and was looking tired, rather the way she had that first day he’d met her. Until now, Frankie hadn’t realized how much she had come on while she had been staying with Alex. The last time they had been there, she had been wisecracking, cheating wildly at poker, doing ludicrous impersonations of various actors and directors—until Alex walked in.

  Frankie felt another wave of guilt. He’d spent the days since then fretting about that stupid audition when all the time the Bean had been at home, sinking back into her old, insular ways, bored out of her skull, missing her daughter, watching mindless daytime television programs and neglecting herself. What had he been thinking? Suddenly the audition and his own miserable career seemed very insignificant. It wasn’t just that he needed the Bean. The Bean needed him. But, independent as a cat, she would rather suffer on her own than admit she needed anyone or anything. An image of Alex came into his mind again, standing there furious, white and trembling. “Get out, all of you!” He wondered, briefly, if she regretted what she had said. Probably not. And who could blame her?

  Frankie shook himself. Alex was not his problem anymore, but the Bean… right! Time for some acting. He took the remote from her hand and knelt down in front of her, looking seriously into her still-lovely face. “Bean, let me be frank, as opposed to Frankie, for a moment.” She smiled sadly and refocused her eyes on his. “This is not good. I know it’s going to be more difficult for us to see each other, now you’re back home, but I still need your help. I’m pretty sure I messed up the audition, big-time. And, to be honest, I’ve been too embarrassed to tell you. But do you think we could talk it through, so you can help me work out what went wrong and how I can put it right next time?”

  The Bean leane
d forward in her chair. “Messed it up? You can’t have. With your talent? You’d better tell me all about it.”

  Frankie hid a smile. Okay, so it was going to be painful to dredge up his humiliation, but the Bean was hooked. “Well, I will, but could we go for a walk? I’ll find it easier to talk, and maybe we can get a bite to eat? There’s that nice café in St James’s Park. Or perhaps we could go to the Royal Academy. There’s that exhibition on you wanted to see.”

  The Bean unfolded herself from her chair and stretched. “Yes,” she purred. “That would be lovely. Tell you what, I’ll have a shower and get dressed and you make me a cup of tea. What do you say?”

  Frankie grinned. “Your wish is my command!”

  She disappeared into the bathroom and Frankie tidied the old-fashioned little kitchen, which looked no more lived in than when he’d dropped her back the night Alex found them all. Even though the little flat was crammed with things—every inch of the wall covered in pictures from Spotlight and framed cast lists, every table littered with beautiful ornaments, oil paintings in ornate frames leaning up against the walls—none of it seemed used. A museum to a better past. It was obvious to him now: the Bean needed people around her. All that had been wrong with her when she first moved in with Alex was that she had been starved of company, and preferably admiring company. With even a little attention, she had blossomed. Sitting there with no makeup, watching crap TV, she had atrophied again. All his good work during the past few weeks had been for nothing. He could hear her high-pitched warble as she washed, and he looked around again at the small, unused pans, the single-cup teapot and the mug turned upside down in the drainer. This was too sad, and even if he was the last person she wanted to see, he had to speak to Alex. If that work-obsessed, career-driven woman couldn’t see how lonely her mother was, then maybe Frankie would have to tell her.