‘The thing is I didn’t follow your husband for that long, but I was lucky in the sense that I hit pay dirt early.’
‘Pay dirt?’
‘Sorry. I mean this could have dragged on but I lucked out, is all I’m saying.’ He looked pained – either because he knew he was crap at talking to clients or it was his face of choice for imparting bad news – and opened the envelope. Was he going to produce large glossy pictures and spread them on the table, like in the films? But no, he tantalizingly stopped when the envelope had been opened and looked at her.
‘Your husband visited a woman two nights ago and went to her flat. He took flowers. About twenty minutes later they came out of the flat and got into his BMW. She had a small case with her. He drove her to a hotel in town, where they both entered and he was there for fifty-six minutes. He then came out alone and drove home. He paid for a double room.’ Rupert paused and recovered his already wet tissue to mop his brow. She hadn’t heard him get back that night, she recalled. ‘There is every indication of affection between the two of them. They seem quite, erm, close.’
Those words, ‘affection’, and ‘close’, seemed to suck all life out of her as well as dim the natural light coming into the room. She could see the investigator mouth something but she had to ask him to repeat himself.
‘I was just saying I could carry on, if you like, and establish how, erm, established this relationship is?’
‘Who is it?’
He took out a sheet of paper from the envelope, put on some reading glasses and scanned the paper.
‘Her name is Naomi Evans. She works at your husband’s firm.’
Sheila laughed with relief. ‘Are you sure?’ He must be mistaken. Naomi, as far as Sheila could recall, was older than she was. Why would he go with an older woman? She could understand, in the way one tried to understand men, that he might be tempted by a younger woman, but this implied something more profound, more than a fling resulting from a mid-life crisis. She couldn’t help but think of Naomi’s skin colour: was he attracted to her because of it? She watched Rupert check his report and shrug. He looked up, but all she could see was his broken nose.
‘It’s not unusual for these things to happen in the workplace. Do you know her?’ he asked.
‘We’ve met at a couple of company functions, that’s all. She’s a secretary or something …’
Rupert had flipped over the paper to reveal some photos printed on the back. She grabbed it from him and turned it the right way round, holding it away from her face to get focus. The photos were like the photographic story boards she remembered from girlhood magazines, but without the speech balloons and cheesy dialogue. Yes, that was definitely Naomi and Julian in front of a building entrance. He seemed to be opening the door, holding flowers. She looked tearful. A lovers’ tiff? Naomi had been off work the day she’d visited Hadfish. Had they fallen out? Maybe she’d broken it off and he was trying to make things up to her, or maybe it was the other way round. In the next one they were emerging from the same doorway, she in a different outfit, looking more composed. He was carrying her case and in the next photo he was opening the car door for her. He’d never opened the car door for Sheila. It was laughable, fucking pathetic. Then, in the next photo, her arm in his, walking into the entrance of a bijou hotel in Covent Garden. A hotel she recognized immediately. There was a shot of them inside, him registering at the desk, she standing to one side, looking nervous. She watched the man opposite talking but her ears were buzzing. She looked unbelieving at the photo of the hotel: it was the same place she’d spent the night a couple of years ago with Rami.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Julian let himself in a few minutes after ten. He put his case in the hall and trudged wearily into the dark kitchen.
‘Hello,’ said Sheila’s disembodied voice, scaring him out of his tiredness. He could see her outline as she moved past the window to the fridge.
‘Fuck, Sheila. Why are you in the dark?’ His question was answered by the light from the fridge flooding the kitchen and outlining Sheila’s form. After days of not even thinking about sex, seeing her like that sparked something in his brain which shot to his groin.
‘Do you want something to eat?’ she said, addressing the inside of the fridge. ‘Or have you already eaten with your girlfriend?’
‘What? What the hell are you talking about?’ He went to the wall, carnal thoughts banished, and switched on the spotlights recessed into the ceiling. They provided distinct pools of light on the wooden floor, all part of a ‘look’ they were trying to achieve. Sheila closed the fridge door and leant back against it. She was clutching an open bottle of white wine and had a determined expression on her face.
‘What’s going on, Sheila? What’s this about a girlfriend?’
She walked to the island in the middle of the kitchen, where they used to have breakfast together, and put the bottle down very carefully next to an empty glass already wet with condensation. A large white envelope lay ominously next to the glass.
‘Have you been seeing someone else or not?’ she asked, pouring wine very deliberately, and it occurred to him that she’d been rehearsing this set-up all evening.
‘No, of course not. What’s going on?’ He went to the cupboard and fetched himself a glass; food would have to wait. He stood on the other side of the island and half-filled his glass from the bottle.
‘So can you explain why you’ve been late every day this week, why you’ve been so tired’ – shaking her head angrily – ‘and why you’ve lost all interest in me?’
‘Babe, I’ve told you, I’ve been busy at work. I’ve got this job on that I need to get done.’
‘Ah, yes, the so-called drone job.’
‘So-called?’
‘So there is a drone job?’
‘Oh my god. What the hell is this about?’
‘Why not just answer the question, Mr Secrets? You love your secrets, don’t you? I suppose they give you a feeling of power.’
He sighed and she got herself on to a stool.
‘I’m not seeing anyone else,’ he said, but she didn’t seem to have heard him.
‘You’re not the only one with secrets, you know.’
‘Hurrah, so we all have secrets. I’m not forcing you to reveal any of yours, am I? Are you going to tell me what this is about? Because I’d like to make a sandwich and go to bed. I haven’t eaten, with or without my phantom girlfriend.’
‘I thought you had ideological objections to working on this kind of thing. I’ve been looking drones up and it’s not pleasant, what they’re used for.’
‘We’re on that again, are we? Yes, I know you’ve been looking them up, you keep leaving stuff all over the place, as if it’s going to make any fucking difference.’
‘So just how did you overcome your qualms? Was it the money?’
‘We’ve already had this conversation – the company needs the contract. Times are hard, in case you haven’t noticed. We’re talking about people’s jobs, about keeping this house.’
‘Don’t fucking patronize me. Really.’ She glared at him and gulped some wine. He waited for her to resume; she needed to get something off her chest, and best to let her do it in her own time. When was the last time they’d had sex? She was right in that he’d had no interest in it recently – since meeting Boris, in fact, who was somehow managing to hold Julian’s libido hostage until he completed the work.
‘So has Naomi been helping you work late?’ She was staring at him intently.
‘Naomi from the office?’
‘Yes. How many Naomis do you know?’
‘No. She’s no coder. Besides, she’s off sick. You saw her replacement, remember.’
‘So you haven’t seen her outside the office.’ He couldn’t help but look away, picking up his drink to cover the fact. At least he now knew what this was about.
‘No, I haven’t.’ How could she know? He’d told nobody about about Naomi. Had Sheila happened to see them that night?
‘OK, if you’re going to lie then there’s no point in trying to have an adult conversation really.’
Julian weighed up the consequences of telling her the truth and for a moment it seemed like the ideal solution to everything, an opportunity to set the record straight. But then he’d have to go back to the beginning, to what he’d kept from her all along.
‘Listen, babe, you have to believe me when I say nothing has happened between me and Naomi. Nothing. I went to see her because I was worried about her, that’s all. In fact, this is extremely silly and unlike you.’
It was her turn to sigh and she got off the stool and downed her drink. ‘Maybe you can explain this, then.’ She slid the envelope across the polished marble top a little too forcefully and it slid right off and glided to the floor, landing too dramatically for Julian’s liking in a pool of light. He took a step, bending down to pick it up, a lead weight in his stomach. When he stood up with it Sheila had left the kitchen and he heard her stomping upstairs. He opened the envelope and took out the contents. Details of his movements that night, photos on the back that looked like …
This was fucking bullshit. She’d had him followed and thought he was having an affair with Naomi. He called out to Sheila; he had no choice but to explain.
‘No need to shout.’ She was standing in the hall as he came out of the kitchen. She was clutching a small suitcase and taking a summer coat from the coat hanger in the hall. She must have pre-packed.
‘This isn’t what it looks like, Sheila,’ he said, realizing how utterly hackneyed it sounded.
Sheila hesitated and raised her eyebrows questioningly. ‘Tell me what your relationship with her is, then.’
‘I don’t have a relationship with her.’
‘So what were you doing in the photos? You spent nearly an hour in the hotel with her when you’d promised to be home.’
‘I was just comforting her.’
Sheila laughed, and it wasn’t a joyful sound. ‘Really? And you could only do this in a hotel room. A double room. A very expensive hotel, I might add.’
‘Look, she’s suffering from depression, if you must know. I only discovered that when I went to see her.’
‘So you visit all your employees that are off sick and take them to hotels?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘So why her?’
Julian was stumped. What could he say? That he’d gone to see if she was all right because he was suspicious about the temp who’d taken her place because he’d been warned by his old KGB handler (who by the way was blackmailing him into taking on this drone work) that someone was keeping an eye on him at the office?
‘I felt sorry for her, that’s all. Come on, Sheila, she’s hardly the “younger woman”, is she?’
‘Who the fuck knows what you need, Jules? Maybe you need a mother figure, someone post-menopausal who’ll run you a bath and stroke your head at night. Sex isn’t the only way you can be unfaithful – you know that, right?’ Sheila opened the front door.
‘It’s not like that,’ he said in a low voice, aware of the neighbours across the way seeing people off. ‘Just come in and we can talk about it.’
‘Do you confide in her, is that it? Do you put your head in her lap while you unburden yourself? I’d prefer it if you’d just fucked her, to be honest. Do you prefer black women? Am I too pale for you, is that it?’
‘Shame on you, Sheila.’
She stepped outside, then paused and turned. ‘Why that hotel, out of interest?’
‘What?’
‘Why did you take her to that specific hotel, of all the hotels in London?’
‘I don’t know. Rami told me about it. He took Cassie there apparently and said I should take you there, that you’d like it, the treatments …’ As the words – a simple statement of fact, nothing more – left his mouth, he knew from her face that they were the wrong ones.
She pulled the door gently until it clicked shut. It sounded more terminal to Julian than if she’d slammed it in his face.
TWENTY-NINE
To feel betrayed by two men at the same moment was a cruel stroke of fate and good reason for self-pity. Of course, it was hypocritical of her, but for Rami to take Sheila to a hotel that he subsequently used with the pneumatic Cassie, and then for Jules to take his mother-substitute to the same place, betrayal was exactly what it was. Recalling what she’d said to Julian about him preferring black women made her blush. It wasn’t like her. She wheeled her small case down the Fulham Road, gradually becoming conscious that it was quite late, that she was alone on the street, and that she didn’t know where she was going. She hailed the next taxi and told him to drive south of the river, just so he had somewhere to go. In the back of the cab she took out her phone and thought about who she could call. Which of her friends would take her in at this hour? They all had kids or were in relationships. Her finger hovered over Cassie’s stored mobile number. She looked out at the empty streets and pressed the button. It went straight to voicemail and she hung up, somewhat relieved. On the one hand she felt Cassie bore some responsibility for this mess. Had she not suggested hiring that strange little man she would be blissfully unaware of any of this. She now had some sympathy with the ‘turn a blind eye’ attitude some women she knew resorted to, but then she was not one of those women who was financially dependent on her husband and having to make life choices based on economic circumstances. Nor was she defined by who she was married to. She and Jules weren’t even married, she reminded herself, and at this point she was glad they weren’t. The taxi travelled over Chelsea Bridge and she wanted to ask the driver to stop so she could look out over the water, like a forlorn actor in a romantic film, the likes of which Jules was sometimes inexplicably drawn to watching on TV on a Sunday evening. In this scene the taxi driver would wait while she gazed wistfully at the black water and then he would ask her if she was all right and she would pull herself away. She knew full well she was feeling sorry for herself, and besides, the pavement wasn’t accessible from the road on this bridge.
She briefly thought about whether she had any right to be upset at Julian’s infidelity, when she herself had done the same, in the same fucking hotel. She laughed.
‘You all right, miss?’ the taxi driver said over his intercom thing.
‘Sorry, can we go back north, please.’ With a shrug he slowed and swung the cab round in one go to face the other way. She would stay in a hotel for the night, treat herself to somewhere nice but somewhere big and anonymous, like the Marriott on Park Lane, which she recommended to her Russian clients when they were in the UK looking at properties. That meant being back north of the river.
Had Rami meant anything to her? Not really. She could see him now and wonder what it was that ever drew her to him. Embarrassment was the overriding emotion she felt if she ever thought about it. At the time, of course, it was exciting, and she’d fallen for his charm and attention, his interest in her. He’d seemed, she was now ashamed to admit, exotic, foreign, and even two years later, when alone, imagining his brown hands on her white skin created a frisson she used when alone, indulging in her own private fantasy. He’d been a good lover, she’d give him that. Now, though, he seemed a bit of a fool, his exoticism dispelled by his ordinariness. Could she blame Julian for her lapse? She could, if she tried, construct some elaborate pop-psychology rationalization that would pin her actions squarely on his behaviour: his lack of engagement, his constant unexplained symptoms (illness was never attractive in a man), his refusal to have children. But ultimately it was about her. No one person could provide another with everything they thought they needed, and Rami had inadvertently, due to a technical lapse on her part – over and above the lapse of judgement she had made checking into that hotel – given her the one thing that she had wanted with Julian, and the one thing she couldn’t keep afterwards, the thing she’d had to cut short. Something she’d kept from both men.
She’d picked up her phone to call the Marriott and
see if they had a room when it started to ring. Sheila smiled with relief when she saw the caller ID and swiped the screen to answer it.
‘Cassie.’
‘Sheila, I’m sorry I missed your call just now. I’ve been worried about you but didn’t want to call.’
‘It was horrible, Cassie.’ Her voice cracking, she could say no more.
‘Where are you?’
‘Taxi,’ she managed to say.
‘Then you must come to me at once.’
THIRTY
‘So, as a fast track into this, Julian, just so we can get the ball rolling, what would you say your greatest fear was?’
Julian shook his head. He’d assumed this meeting would just be a getting-to-know-you session but Dr Truby, or Natasha as she insisted he call her, had got straight to it. Maybe it was a psychological test.
‘We’re not looking for an answer right now. I’d like you to work on it for next time.’ She shifted on the park bench, trying to get more comfortable, and took a slurp through a straw from her small carton of orange juice. They were sitting in Gordon Square, where she’d insisted they meet, since it was, technically speaking, her lunch break and this was supposedly just an explora-tory meeting. She’d warned him that her approach was unusual and here she was, asking a question he’d asked himself many times before, albeit unsatisfactorily.
‘It helps if you write it down. Draw a triangle on a page and divide it horizontally into five sections. Work your way up from the bottom and rank your fears, with the worst at the pointy end.’
‘That’s it?’ Julian asked, feeling a little disappointed. He was tired after his sleepless night alone, and hungover. He’d been tempted to call Sheila this morning but decided it was best to give her twenty-four hours to cool off, as well as giving himself some time to think of a way to explain everything, or, more accurately, how he might get away with not explaining everything. He’d almost cancelled this meeting with the therapist (or was she an analyst?) but then he’d realized it was an opportunity to get some expert input.
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