by Jane Fallon
Matthew had told her that his marriage to Hannah was dead and had been for a long time. He'd stayed with her, he'd said, at first until his son Leo left home, in an effort to do the right thing, and since then from habit. Hannah knew, he'd added, that their relationship was over and in fact she wanted it that way just as much as he did. There hadn't been anyone else in all that time, but then he hadn't met anyone like Sophie. He couldn't pass up this chance for happiness just because—on paper—he had a wife. Hannah would be the first to say as much. He'd made it sound so plausible.
Sophie had often wondered, since then, what it was that made her give in to him. There was something about the fact that he was married that made the relationship less real, less scary. She had known from the off that she couldn't have the whole of him, and so it wasn't an issue. She'd had no expectations that he would turn out to be the love of her life and so she'd put no pressure on him to prove that he was. By the time he asked her to marry him, six months later, she was hooked. Hannah, he'd said, understood and indeed was delighted for him.
It was only after he'd moved his stuff into her two-bedroom flat in Muswell Hill and the wedding plans were well under way that she'd realized that this was a bit of an exaggeration. In fact, it was an out-and-out lie. Hannah was not delighted for him, and she didn't understand. Indeed, when Sophie had opened her front door one day and faced a hysterical, abuse-hurling, middle-aged woman, she'd realized that Hannah hadn't even known until a few days ago, when Matthew had walked out. She had tried to persuade Hannah to at least come inside and talk, but understandably, Hannah preferred to stand on the front doorstep, calling her a whore and a slut in front of all the neighbors. Matthew conveniently was out at the time, playing golf with a friend, oblivious to the havoc he had caused.
For some reason—Sophie could no longer remember why—she had forgiven him. It had taken a while, but he'd somehow proved he was serious by filing for divorce and throwing himself into his new life, in that way that Matthew had of making whatever he was doing at the time seem like the most exciting thing in the world. The wedding had had to be postponed of course, until he was officially a free man, but when it happened it was moving and beautiful and everything she'd ever dreamed of. She'd forced herself to forget all about his inability to be honest and Hannah's near breakdown on her doorstep. She'd thought she'd succeeded.
Now she was the one watching him walk away.
* * *
Matthew wouldn't tell her exactly how old Helen was. When she asked, as all women would, "Is she younger than me?", he'd blustered and wouldn't give her a straight answer. In fact, the only details she'd managed to wring out of him were these:
Her name was Helen.
He'd met her through work.
She had a flat in London.
She wasn't married.
They'd never had sex in Matthew and Sophie's house (for some reason, this had seemed of prime importance to her).
She was younger than Sophie—the blustering had given that away.
He'd been seeing her for "a while," although, when pressed, he wouldn't elaborate on exactly what "a while" meant.
* * *
Matthew and Sophie's courtship had been a whirlwind affair. She was the accountant in the office where he was then working—clearly Matthew could only look in a ten-meter radius when looking for a mistress. Six months of clandestine meetings in the conference room, then a proposal. Looking back, she could see now that this was his midlife crisis. His only child had left home, he was left alone with his wife to face up to getting older, just the two of them for probably another forty years, and he panicked.
Sophie had never believed in karma or fate. She was far too sensible to buy into anything so New Age. But even she had to admit that there was a certain poetic justice in what had just happened to her. She was paying for what she did to Hannah. She wondered what Hannah would think when she heard, whether all these years later it'd still feel like a small victory. Whether she, herself, would have stopped caring by the time Matthew—inevitably—did the same thing to Helen.
8
EVERY DAY HELEN WAS DISCOVERING things about Matthew she never knew before, and most of them weren't good.
He dyed his hair. Truthfully, she'd worked this out already, but seeing the bottle of Just For Men in the bathroom cabinet meant he had given up all pretense, at least to her.
He wore slippers. Not flip-flops, not an old pair of moccasins. Slippers. With a fur lining.
He made a roaring noise when he yawned. How had she never known this before? Had he never yawned in front of her in over four years or was he just keeping a lid on the sound, knowing how mind-numbingly irritating it was?
He laid out his clothes for the next day at work before he went to sleep at night. Helen didn't know why this was so annoying. In fact, it was probably quite sensible, but it just felt so…comfy…like something his wife used to do for him or something they taught him at boarding school. Helen had to resist the urge to rumple them up or to swap them for something different to confuse him. Once he'd picked out his outfit he wore it no matter what, so if he went to bed on a wintry night but woke up in the sunshine, he'd still put on the sweater that was hanging there waiting.
His car had a name. A name. His. Car. Had. A. Name. Helen knew this was probably down to his kids, the kind of cutesy thing that families did, but when, one day, he forgot where he was and said to her, "Let's go in Delia," she stared at him openmouthed for so long that it crossed his mind she might be having a stroke. She finally pulled herself together enough to ask him not to anthropomorphize inanimate objects in front of her ever again. Ever again.
"Sorry, Helly," he'd said, slightly sheepishly.
"And don't call me Helly. I hate it when you call me that."
"I always call you Helly," he'd replied, petulantly.
"Exactly."
It wasn't going unnoticed that Matthew was a little distracted at work. His shirts looked a bit, well, crumpled, for starters. And, at Wednesday's morning catch-up meeting, he'd looked panic-stricken when he'd realized that he had left a client's strategy, which he had drawn up over the Christmas break, on his computer at home.
"I'll ring Sophie and get her to e-mail it over," offered Jenny helpfully.
"NO! No…she's not there. No one's there at the moment. I can remember the key points."
His years of experience meant that he sailed through the meeting with the client, without giving away that he was making it up as he went along, but he knew Jenny had noticed that something was up, and his efforts to overcompensate by being extra nice to her for the rest of the day simply convinced her that she was right.
* * *
That night Helen looked around at the mess that used to be her living room.
"You forgot your laptop?"
She dug around in the nearest box.
"You remembered a…toy car…but you forgot your computer?"
"It's vintage. A collectible."
She rummaged about some more.
"There's hundreds of them in here. Are you eight years old?"
"They're worth a fortune."
"What are you going to do, open a shop? Jesus, Matthew."
He looked hurt and she felt bad, but irritation got the better of her and she turned on her heels and left the room. She had a long bath, and when she came back into the living room Matthew's stuff was tidied away neatly into a corner and he was in the kitchen rustling up something unspeakable-looking in a wok. He waved a spatula at her proudly when he saw her come in, as if to say, look how clever I am.
"It's nearly ready. Chinese, how does that sound?"
"Fantastic."
He had only been there a few days, but Helen was longing to be left on her own with a microwave curry. She wanted to loll about in her pajamas with no makeup on, eating and watching the TV. She wanted to neck back glasses of wine at her own pace, not go through the tortured niceties of "Do you want another glass?", "I don't know, do you?", "Well, I will if you
will." Her parents used to waste whole evenings that way. Politeness, that great substitute for passion.
She sat down to eat. The conversation was stilted. What did they ever used to talk about, for fuck's sake? Helen was reduced to making appreciative noises about the (disgusting) food, while Matthew valiantly tried to fill the silence with the kind of talk about work they had always successfully avoided.
Helen had had enough.
"Why don't I put the TV on?"
"While we're eating?" he said, as if she'd just suggested having a dump on the table.
"Just to help us unwind a bit. Something mindless, so we can forget about work. We don't have to."
"No, if you want to, then put it on."
"No, no, it's fine, not if you don't want it on." Oh, fuck, she thought, here we go. "You first," "No you," "No you," "No really you," for the next forty years.
"You're right," he said. "What's wrong with putting the TV on? It's just, Sophie and I never liked the kids watching…" He trailed off, as if he'd said too much, then got up and switched on the television in the corner. They finished their meal in front of Emmerdale, in silence. Helen hadn't had the heart to say, "Switch channels, there'll be something better on the other side."
Over the next couple of days Helen realized that, however much she was secretly starting to feel uneasy, Matthew was simply going to refuse to admit that he'd made the wrong decision. The only way for him to cope with the momentousness of what he'd done, not to mention the guilt, was for him to believe that it had all been for the sake of a great love he was powerless to ignore.
So, when she served up undercooked pink chicken with burned fries for dinner, he smiled and said, "I'm going to have to teach you to cook," like she was eight years old.
When she told him she quite fancied the eighteen-year-old boy who served in the deli down the road, he laughed so much she was afraid she'd need to resuscitate him.
When she shaved her legs in the bath and left the tiny hairs clinging around the rim, she caught him whistling to himself as he cleaned it out.
And the more he worked to show how much he loved her, the more she found herself perversely trying to put him off. Maybe it was a test—like an adolescent pushing the boundaries; maybe she was subconsciously trying to make herself as unattractive as possible to test the limits of his devotion. Or maybe, she thought, she was trying to push him away because she didn't want him anymore. It was a thought too harsh to indulge. She thought of herself as enough of a bitch already; this would push her over the edge, even in her own eyes—lure a man away from his loving family and then kick him back out again, as if the competition was all and the prize irrelevant. You love me the most, I win, now fuck off.
So she tried to play nice, but the stubborn child in her wasn't having any of it.
She stopped shaving her armpits altogether. And her bikini line.
She told him she'd once caught chlamydia from a man whose name she never got around to asking.
She told him she had a mustache she had to have waxed off every six weeks.
She told him she didn't feel like sex and he just said "Fine."
She picked holes in the way he dressed.
She stopped brushing her teeth.
And combing her hair.
And plucking the stray hag-whisker that grew out of her chin.
She bought a packet of incontinence pads for women and left them lying about in the bathroom.
And all the time, Matthew just kept telling her that he loved her and said, "Isn't it great that we're finally together" and "This is it now, you and me, forever," and other such Mills and Boon classics.
9
IT WAS FRIDAY MORNING and Helen was typing up a press release for Laura and trying to stop herself from altering the occasional word where she thought things could be improved. It concerned the rumors that ex–Northampton Park soap opera "babe" (just been sacked, in dire need of some column inches) Jennifer Spearman had just gotten engaged to reality show singer Paulo (gay, terrified of losing his fan base of eleven-year-old girls). There had, of course, been no rumors. This release, which denied the relationship vehemently, along with a few well-placed "unauthorized" pictures of the couple seemingly caught unawares, was designed to ensure there soon would be.
As a personal assistant, Helen didn't qualify for an office of her own; instead she shared a large open-plan space with two other P.A.s, black-haired, thin-lipped Jenny, and Jamie, who was harmless enough if a bit too easily influenced. It was the modern day equivalent of the secretaries' typing pool, although, of course, no one was called a secretary anymore, there were only P.A.s and, when they reached stellar status, executive P.A.s.
Jenny was poison. Only twenty-six, she considered herself the most senior among the P.A.s because she looked after Matthew. She spoke in a baby voice—a cartoon helium whine, with her r's pronounced as soft w's—which belied her fierce power-hungry streak. She fought tooth and nail to make sure that her name was the first on any general memo, that her chair cost five pounds more than Helen's or Jamie's, and that she had control of the stationery catalogue. Rumor had it that she had once been caught with a tape measure, measuring the length of the desks to make sure hers was the largest. She had a bully's mentality and, because Jamie was weak and Helen could not be bothered to fight, she was able to reign as the self-appointed queen of the office.
The open-plan area led directly off the company's main foyer and, at around eleven o'clock, just as she was beginning to wonder how to fill the long hours before lunchtime, Helen's eye was drawn to the reception desk, where a woman was waiting for Annie, Global's podgy-faced receptionist, to get off the phone. She was holding something that looked like a computer bag. Helen let her gaze move up to the woman's face and her heart nearly stopped beating. It was Sophie.
Helen ducked down behind her monitor, then peeped over the top of it again, like a private eye with a newspaper. What the fuck was she doing here? Panic made her thought processes cloudy, and she was convinced that Sophie was here for a showdown with her—husband-stealing, child-orphaning bitch that she was. It played out in her mind like a scene from Jerry Springer, the whole office looking on as the wronged wife shouted and cried, Helen having to defend herself, trying to put a spin on the situation that made taking a man away from his wife and young children seem like the acceptable thing to do. Her colleagues alternately openmouthed or smirking behind their hands. When she looked back again, she saw the bag over Sophie's shoulder. The computer, of course—she'd brought Matthew his computer. Calmer now, her brain allowed back in the memory of Matthew saying that he hadn't told Sophie the identity of the woman he was leaving her for. Helen breathed again. She was off the hook. For now.
Having gotten fear out of her system, curiosity took over. Picking up a file from her desk, she walked over to a filing cabinet close to the reception area just as Annie put down the phone and greeted Sophie. Pretending to riffle through random papers, she listened as Annie said she'd let Matthew know that Sophie was there. Sophie jumped in.
"No. I'm in a rush. I'll just leave the computer."
She had a nice voice. Friendly. Helen snuck a surreptitious look. She waited for the long-held feelings of loathing to overwhelm her. Here she was in the flesh, the enemy, the focus of so much negative energy over the last four years that you could plug lightbulbs into her. It felt almost a letdown that Sophie was just a woman—a woman who was shaking slightly with the effort involved in trying to hold it together. It was obvious she'd made an effort today, in case she bumped into her husband, but no amount of makeup could disguise the dark circles around her eyes. Where was Matthew, by the way? Helen considered ringing him to warn him to steer clear of reception, but Sophie was turning to leave, exchanging banal pleasantries with Annie. She'd nearly made it through the door when Matthew strode out of the conference room opposite and all but collided with her. Helen took a step back and engrossed herself in her papers again.
There was a toe-curling moment, which
probably only lasted ten seconds but seemed like a minute, when neither one spoke, followed by an awkward stuttered hello. Though she tried to pretend it wasn't happening, a tear sprung out of the corner of Sophie's eye and trickled down her cheek. Annie, who had a preternatural sense for identifying a potential source of gossip, didn't even try to pretend she wasn't listening in.
Sophie gave Matthew his laptop.
"I thought you might need this."
He lowered his voice, but not enough that he couldn't be heard by Annie.
"How are the girls?"
For fuck's sake, Matthew, thought Helen, take her into your office, don't make her have this conversation in public.
Sophie's voice was shaky and barely audible.
"Missing you, of course."
"Tell them I miss them, too," he was saying, and Helen was practically blushing at the humiliation Sophie must be feeling.
"Phone them and tell them yourself."
And Sophie left him standing there with her dignity (almost) intact.
It was all around the office in minutes. Helen kept her head down at her computer, but could practically feel a Mexican wave of whispering traveling around the room. Eventually, Jenny came and sat on her desk.
