About Last Night . . .

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘I don’t know how Caroline puts up with him,’ Silvia would say. ‘Even for a Frog – and don’t forget I worked there – he’s off the scale. If he doesn’t already indulge in cinq-à-sept he soon will, believe me.’

  ‘Cinq-à-sept?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘In France they start work early – well, eight-ish, hardly dawn – break for a proper lunch, go back to the office till five, when a Frenchman will call it a day and visit his mistress till seven.’

  ‘Blimey,’ I mused. ‘They even have a set time for it?’

  Silvia shrugged. ‘If you ask anyone now they laugh and say – what rubbish, that went out ages ago – but trust me, it still happens.’

  ‘But Henri’s not like that here, surely?’ Rosie objected. ‘Caroline would never put up with it.’

  ‘No, no,’ we all agreed, frowning and shaking our heads, outwardly loyal to our friend. Never. But wondering all the same. And we had no proof of even a flicker of infidelity. Nothing. And we all lived pretty much on top of each other, we’d probably know. It was just the way he was. Flirtatious. Suggestive. Funny. The first two risible. The last making it a fatal combination.

  And ridiculously – and I know it wasn’t just me – there was definitely an upping of our game around Henri. A sharpening of female wits, a flexing of argumentative muscle. He was clever, well read, and spoke three languages, but hey, so did Silvia, who’d worked for Dior, and Rosie, who’d read PPE at Oxford, was no dunce either. ‘So, Henri, what d’you think of Mitterrand’s Balkan treaty?’ she might toss at him as she went round to collect one of her brood, whereas she’d be more likely to ask David about his greenfly spray, them both being avid gardeners. I was also very aware that when Rosie and Silvia popped round to my house to drop off a child, remove another, return a lost book bag, borrow a recipe, it would be in tracky bottoms and not a scrap of make-up. But the moment we were dropping off Alice or Tatiana, Caroline’s pair, we scrubbed up. I’d go round to collect Lucy, who’d been at netball club with Alice, to find Rosie already in the Defois’ kitchen, in a pretty Agnès B top, lippy on, leaning against the huge slate island, flushed and giggling, having a glass of wine with Henri. Because Henri was something of a house husband. Unlike ours who mostly went off to the City in suits, Henri was an antiques dealer, a very successful one: Greek urns and busts were mostly his thing, and vast Trojan horses, but nothing, he’d once told me, dark eyes boring into mine, after the fifth century. ‘Nothing filthy modern,’ he’d snarled. I’d giggled.

  Encouraged that he cherished the old, I’d nevertheless pulled my polo neck up a bit further to cover the beginnings of a blotchy neck. And in my defence, I only ever reacted to Henri, never instigated; was just on the receiving end of his very direct gaze and innuendoes, but then the others would no doubt say sternly – Molly, we all were. And Caroline was so sure of him, it didn’t matter. Caroline. I shrank at her memory. A tall, willowy blonde with long legs, a ravishing smile and a heart of gold. One of those rare people one suspects is beautiful on the inside as well as out. Sick child at school needs collecting? Caroline’s your girl. No one around to let the dog out for a pee when you’re trapped in a late meeting? She’d be on it. When David’s parents had been killed on that terrible Boxing Day and we’d all completely gone to pieces, I’d find a lasagne or a chicken pie on my step most days. She was a brick. And these days – bored with polishing the teacups – she worked, too, helping Henri on Thursdays and Fridays in his shop, giving him time to see dealers, or to call them from home.

  Henri’s shop – or gallery, I’d decided, the one and only time I’d ventured inside, awed by the treasures, the rarefied atmosphere, the apparent lack of commercial transaction – was in Mount Street, in the heart of Mayfair. But he also had one in Paris, on the Rue Dauphine, in possibly the smartest arrondissement, the sixth. I hope you’re getting the picture. The Defois were a cool, smart – so smart that they didn’t drip around in Chanel or drive Ferraris – charming couple, much chicer than the rest of us. I was small, dark, with a slightly beaky nose – gamine on a good day – usually in an old jumper and jeans and sometimes a leather jacket.

  So why me? Why, when I went round to get Minna, did he break into a particularly winning smile, leave whatever he was doing, put the phone down on whichever dealer he was speaking to with an abrupt ‘Au revoir, Christophe!’, get to his feet and hasten across the kitchen to hold my shoulders, kiss me three times, smile right into my eyes, then say: ‘Molly. You’ve come. I am so pleased. A drink, chérie? You’ll join me in some Chablis?’ And why, on that particular afternoon, did he insist I also play doubles with him the following Thursday? He’d booked a court to play Giles and Susie, mutual friends of ours, and Caroline couldn’t make it. ‘Say you will?’ he demanded, both hands clasped to his heart. ‘Say now, or my whole week falls into decline!’ I laughed, and promised not to so destroy his week. But he could have asked Rosie, who was a much better tennis player than I was: prettier, too.

  ‘He obviously fancies you,’ Rosie said when I told her the following day. ‘I popped in later to get Max and he hardly addressed a word to me, was on the phone to some Christophe chappie. Just waved and pointed in the general direction of the playroom. And I had J’adore on, and I’d washed my hair.’

  I grinned. ‘I imagine even Henri has to be serious and talk to clients sometimes,’ I told her as we swung into the bookshop together. ‘And it’s just a game of tennis. No biggie.’

  But I was a bit elated, nonetheless. I cooked supper for the children that evening with a spring in my step, shimmied those sausages in the pan, singing along to the radio, so that teatime didn’t feel like such a chore, and even David noticed when he came home as he kissed me and handed me the Evening Standard.

  ‘You’re perky.’

  ‘Well I had a lovely day with Rosie. We went to that new restaurant next to the bookshop for lunch. You’d like it, we thought we’d all go.’

  And tennis was a blast that Thursday. Giles and Susie were good fun, and good players, but by some small freak of the balls landing well on our side and Henri pulling faces at Susie at the net, we won, and crowed madly as the four of us, in our whites, had coffee and croissants outside our favourite watering hole opposite the common in the sunshine.

  ‘You fluked it,’ complained Giles sulkily.

  ‘Au contraire, my friend, we’ve been practising for months. That backhand of mine has taken years of honing, courtesy of my personal friend Andre Agassi, and Molly’s secretly been slamming balls against her wall for ages.’

  ‘You definitely fluked it. But we should do it again, it was fun. Let’s do it every Thursday. It’s no good unless you have a regular slot, a commitment – you don’t play. You think you will, but you never do. Come on, Thursdays at ten, what d’you say?’ Giles was an ex-stockbroker, who’d made enough money just to consult these days, but he still had a way of firming things up. He also clearly wanted revenge.

  ‘OK, we’ll have a rematch, but trust me, we’ll win. Molly’s got some demon shots in her locker, haven’t you, chérie?’

  ‘I have,’ I agreed. ‘Possibly even demonic.’

  ‘Come on, every Thursday,’ persisted Giles.

  Laughing, we acquiesced, but even then, if I’m honest, I wondered if it was a good idea. I knew I liked Henri and was ridiculously flattered by the attention. I remember going home and saying to David that night, ever so casually, as I was stacking the dishwasher after supper, that I was going to play tennis with Giles and Henri and Susie on Thursdays. Mixed doubles.

  ‘Oh, right.’ He looked surprised. ‘I thought you didn’t like getting tied into anything regular?’

  I didn’t. On the whole. I shrugged. ‘Thought it might be good for me.’

  ‘Right. So who will you play with, Henri?’

  ‘Oh, I expect we’ll swap around.’

  We didn’t. As I knew we wouldn’t. Giles was fiercely competitive and wanted to win with his wife, who, hilariously, he sometimes got cross wi
th, although perhaps it wasn’t so hilarious for Susie when she repeatedly missed the tramlines and Giles threw his racket on the ground.

  ‘Susie. Concentrate.’

  ‘He takes it so seriously!’ Henri gasped to me in astonishment as we sat alone in the sunshine at the same café, Giles and Susie having declined a coffee and gone straight on to their next assignment, the gym. ‘It’s a game, surely?’

  ‘Ah, but that’s how come he’s retired at forty-five, Henri. Unlike us.’ I sipped my cappuccino.

  ‘Yes, but unlike us, he doesn’t know how to have fun, hmm?’ He’d sipped too and fixed me over his cup with those twinkling brown eyes, meaning absolutely nothing, but perhaps absolutely everything.

  The girls, of course, and by that I mean my girlfriends, not my daughters, were agog at this new sporting development, but I played it cool.

  ‘It forces me to take a bit of exercise,’ I explained. ‘I’m not as disciplined as the rest of you, don’t go for a jog before breakfast or stride round the common with dumb-bells in my hands.’

  ‘That’s only Susie because Giles makes her,’ Rosie reminded me. ‘Likes her to be match fit.’

  I leaned forward over our mint teas and told them about his appalling behaviour on court. We all agreed we could not be married to Giles, however rich and good-looking he was.

  ‘Anyway, as long as it doesn’t become more energetic than you thought!’ Silvia had joked as we left Rosie’s house together, already jogging on the spot in her running gear before she set off for the common, not thinking for one moment it was anything more than a jocular thing to say. No one imagined it was the beginning of anything. Did Henri? I don’t know.

  Some months later when I asked him in a restaurant in Paris, ‘Why me?’, he’d replied that he’d seen me as a challenge. A hard nut to crack. Not that he’d genuinely wanted to crack anything, he’d gone on to say – he was very happy with Caroline – but he had known he could bowl Rosie and Silvia over, but that I would be harder. Well, he’d got that wrong. Didn’t he know I’d been applying as much mascara as they had on the school runs? He clearly hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Why would you want to bowl any of us maidens over?’ I’d asked and he’d shrugged. ‘I told you, la chasse is a national sport. And not for anything extramarital—’

  ‘Oh yeah—’

  ‘No, chérie, I promise. It’s just amusing to see a hitherto completely disinterested, even chilly woman’ – he cast me a look – ‘thaw. Sit up a bit. For a light to appear in her eyes. To think – ah, gotcha.’

  ‘Like a fish.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Disgraceful,’ I’d told him, removing my foot from beside his under the table in La Coupole.

  ‘Harmless, though. Just filling in time between haircuts.’

  ‘You could play golf?’

  He made a face. ‘And be completely humiliated?’

  ‘You never think you’re playing with fire?’

  ‘I never expected to fall in love, if that’s what you mean. Particularly with you, Molly.’

  I knew he meant it. It was a backhanded compliment, so all the more sincere. He had fallen, as I had, and the coupling was most unlikely. I was a bit scruffy, as I’ve mentioned. Fancied myself as a bit edgy in my youth, with untamed locks and strange gear, a certain amount of attitude, perhaps, even a sharp tongue. I certainly didn’t suffer fools. I was the least likely woman on the planet to fall for a silver-tongued smoothie who wore cashmere jumpers slung artfully round his neck and handmade Italian shoes. And yet, here I was, four months after that first tennis match, at least a dozen more under our belts, on a business trip in Paris just as he was too, having dinner, and feeling out of control in a candlelit restaurant. And Caroline knew.

  ‘Oh, but Henri is going next week too!’ She’d turned in surprise in my kitchen. ‘You can keep him company, he hates being out there alone.’

  I’d paused as I doled out fish fingers, thinking, dear God, I even had permission. And she was right not to suspect a thing, because nothing had happened. Yes, we’d ditched Giles and Susie for coffee after the second or third match, or they had us, but Caroline didn’t think that was peculiar. Only David did.

  ‘You mean, it’s just the two of you at Carluccio’s every week? Isn’t that a bit odd? Why not come straight home?’ What he meant was, I think that’s a bit odd, but he was careful not to say it. He was pussyfooting around the idea that I might be attracted to Henri because it was too awful to contemplate. So awful it hadn’t even occurred to Caroline. No one, no friend, would even entertain the idea, surely? Except a glance through history tells us otherwise.

  This is no mitigation, but it sets out my stall so I’ll do it anyway: every Thursday, after tennis, I would tell myself I would cancel next week’s match. That the butterflies in my tummy and the quickening of my heart were too strong, too persistent. That it wasn’t appropriate to be in such a constant state of riotous good humour, whether I was walking Coco on the common and throwing sticks for her, buying new CDs instead of listening to Radio 4 and singing along to them in the car – particularly ones about thwarted love – or flipping pancakes in the kitchen, not caring if they landed on the ceiling or on the floor, to squeals of delight from the children. They didn’t recognize the change, but David must have wondered where the short-tempered, constantly stressed woman juggling work, children and a home had gone, and who this good-tempered, well-dressed charmer was who’d replaced her. I don’t think he got any further than that, though. I don’t think men do. He wouldn’t have thought: she’s in love.

  Paris had not been planned, I swear, but when it fell into place, we’d looked at each other over our cappuccinos on the common and blanched.

  ‘The sixteenth?’ Henri had said. ‘But that’s when the shop is re-opening. I’ll be there all week.’ It had been closed for refurbishment for ages, so I couldn’t have known.

  ‘Oh. Right. I’ve got a meeting with Hermès.’ I wondered if I should get Jessica, my assistant, to go instead; knew I was in trouble.

  ‘But I’ll be very busy,’ he’d said quickly, seeing me hesitate. ‘I may not even see you.’

  ‘Oh right,’ I’d agreed happily, snatching at that, our smokescreen. And it had been what I’d said to Caroline in my kitchen.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I’d said casually in response as I went round the table, spooning peas on to plates for our two sets of children. ‘But he says he’s going to be very tied up, and I’ve got wall-to-wall meetings.’

  ‘Oh, he’s so ridiculously precious. He’s hardly going to be rushed off his feet, he’s got Fabianne there. He can meet you for lunch if nothing else. I’ll tell him. I wish I could come, but Josie’s going back to Spain to see her parents that week.’ Josie was their nanny.

  ‘I wish you could come too,’ I said, almost meaning it.

  We had dinner, of course, not lunch. Three nights on the trot. And it was heaven. Walking along the Seine, Paris at its prettiest – though when is it not pretty, even in the rain? – just at the beginning of summer, sitting outside restaurants as the light faded over the pink and beige buildings, laughing and joking over our rosé, his knowledge of the best places to eat, the perfect menu, the only place with a secluded roof terrace, equally seductive. But he didn’t seduce me: at least, I didn’t let him, for the first two nights. Tuesday and Wednesday I went back to my hotel, where he kissed me chastely goodnight on both cheeks on the steps, both of us wanting like mad to push through the double doors and go upstairs, past the night porter, but resisting, not even voicing it.

  On the third evening, just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain, he asked me over dinner if I’d ever been unfaithful and I said no. I asked if he had and he said no, and I believed him. He said it was too serious a thing to contemplate lightly, that his father had been a terrible rake, that it had wrecked the family, which was why he only joked around with us girls in London. That was fun. A light-hearted distraction from the daily grind. This, though – he made a fist, pla
ced it on his heart and leaned forward over his escargots – was not a joke. This was so serious he thought he’d burst with the portent of how he felt, how he didn’t believe he’d felt for another human being. His eyes swam with tears.

  ‘Not even for Caroline when we got married.’

  ‘Don’t,’ I’d whispered, shocked, knowing this was the most dishonourable thing he could say, but knowing he spoke the truth, and that I felt it too. Knowing I’d felt nothing like this riot going on in my heart when I’d married David. Knowing I’d loved him, and that it definitely felt like the right thing to do, but this – this was something different. What was I supposed to do with it, this fever? What were we supposed to do with it?

  That evening, we did, what seemed to us, the only available thing. We paid the bill, walked silently through the Tuileries Gardens, then the Place de la Concorde to my hotel, no unbroken chatter, as there’d been on previous nights. We went up the stone steps, pushed through the double doors, past the sleeping night porter to the lift. I remember thinking, as the old-fashioned metal cage door concertinaed shut behind us, that there was no going back. Henri slid the door open on the third floor and we went down the corridor, hand in hand, to my room.

  7

  I know for a fact from extensive research since, that for many people, for many husbands or wives, this would not be a life-changing event. Not a deal-breaker, as they say. They’d carry on as usual, picking up where they left off, shimmying the sausages in the pan and singing on the school run as if nothing had happened, only a slightly larger smile playing on their lips, a jauntier spring in their step betraying the reality. And I can’t say I wasn’t incredibly energized and overexcited by my few days away too, but I was also a trifle breathless. And permanently fearful. I’d flush scarlet whenever Henri’s name was mentioned, even once dropping a chocolate soufflé on the kitchen floor. I wasn’t very good at deception. And David wasn’t stupid.