by Jane Fallon
She looked at him and he seemed to have pulled himself together a bit, but then his face contorted and he let out a noise that sounded like a police siren starting up.
"I miss them so much."
Sophie patted his arm comfortingly, but at the same time she was filled with irritation. This situation was all of his own making.
"That was the choice you made," she said, trying to make her voice sound as unjudgmental as she possibly could. She waited for him to snap back at her, but all of the fight seemed to have left him.
"They hate coming over at the weekends, I can tell. And Helen hates it, too. I mean, she tolerates it, but I know she'd rather I took them somewhere else."
Sophie was stung by this—how dare that woman not welcome her children—but she wasn't going to let him off too lightly.
"You didn't have to leave, that's the bottom line. And however much we try to protect them from it, the girls will always think you chose her over them." (And me, she thought, but she forced herself not to say it.)
"I've fucked it up again, haven't I? I've fucked up being a father again?" He was sobbing now, and parents who were crossing the field on their way to their cars were looking over to see what the drama was. Sophie didn't want to kick him when he was down, but she couldn't help herself.
"Like I said, that was your choice. You had a family who loved you, but it wasn't enough. You can't have it all, Matthew, no one can."
"I'll make it up to them," he was saying.
"Just don't try and buy them, OK? No more cats and makeup and God knows what. What they want is your time and attention and approval. And, to be honest, Helen's probably right, you probably should take them somewhere else because you can't force them into a relationship with her yet, it's too soon."
He nodded pitifully, wiping his eyes on his sleeve like a toddler. "OK."
"Where's your car?" Sophie said. "You should get home."
21
SO…SANDRA HEPBURN," Laura was saying at the weekly ideas meeting. "Any thoughts?"
"How about a few opportunistic shots of her out shopping with the girls, but she's forgotten to put her knickers on," Alan offered up. "You know the sort of thing, short skirt, windy day…"
"Are you offering to be the photographer?" asked Helen, who was there taking notes. Alan glared at her.
"Let's face it," Laura was saying, "it wouldn't be anything we haven't all seen before. No, I think we have to try and show a different side to her."
"High-profile date?" someone else chipped in. "Simon Fair-brother's got a new series coming out, he could use the publicity."
"Or Annabel Da Souza? Lesbian's very big right now."
Fucking hell, thought Helen, these people are paid three times as much as me and their best suggestions are the ones I rejected straight off. She nearly jumped as she realized Laura was saying her name.
"Mmm?"
"I just wondered if you'd had a chance to come up with anything?"
Helen realized that six pairs of critical eyes had turned on her. The people who thought of themselves as the most creative in the company, in fact that was what they were paid for, tried to disguise their complete lack of interest in anything she might have to say. She had completely forgotten about Sandra Hepburn.
"Erm…"
Oh, shit—think, quick.
"No…sorry."
She blushed a furious red, but the spotlight had gone off her as quickly as it had arrived and Laura was asking everyone to keep thinking. Fuck, she thought. Fuck.
But the worst wasn't over. Moving on to another topic, Laura announced to the meeting that they had a new client. Leo Shallcross, Matthew's son, was opening a new restaurant and needed a publicity drive and a launch organizing. Matthew, Laura explained, felt it would be more appropriate for someone other than himself to handle Leo's business, which would be short-term and low-paying (Matthew had insisted he be given a special rate), but was one of those favors they all had to pull every now and then.
"I'll get Helen to collate all the information and get it to you this afternoon. Is that OK, Helen?" she asked.
But Helen was staring fixedly at the table, all the color draining from her face. She felt sick; this couldn't be happening. What would this mean? That he would be coming to the office for meetings? That as Laura's P.A., she would be expected to set up those meetings and, oh, fuck, attend them and take notes? And then what? It was too awful to contemplate the way her life would fall apart if Leo found out who she really was. Fuck, she wished she had holiday she could take. Or maybe she should just walk out now—what could they do except not pay her? Or give her a reference? She'd never be able to explain it to Matthew. OK, she'd just have to keep one step ahead of the game, call in sick whenever she knew he was due to come in. She felt exhausted just thinking about it. This was too much.
"Are you all right?" Laura was saying to her.
"Yes. Fine," she said quietly.
Outside the meeting, once it was over, Laura touched her arm, thinking she was still upset about the Sandra Hepburn thing.
"Sorry," she said, "I didn't mean to put you on the spot like that."
"It's OK," Helen said miserably. "I should've had something ready."
"Why? You saw everyone else's ideas—none of them had an original thought, and that's their job."
Helen went through to the company's tiny kitchen to make herself some toast and to hide for five minutes while she calmed down, and found Matthew in there hovering around the kettle. He liked to appear egalitarian and make tea for himself and Jenny once in a while, and this morning was making a particular deal of being in an all's-right-with-the-world mood, because he and Helen had had a blazing row last night when he got home from parents' evening. He was whistling to himself, one of Helen's pet peeves, and as she banged her bread into the toaster she convinced herself that he was just doing it to annoy her.
* * *
He had returned from the school early the previous evening, in a very odd mood. He was sullen and quiet, and when Helen had tried to push him as to what was wrong, he told her he didn't want her to be there when Suzanne and Claudia came at the weekend. "But this is my flat," she'd said, and he'd gotten angry and loud and accused her of not caring about his relationship with his children. They'd gone to bed, gotten up, and driven to work not speaking, and she still hadn't gotten to the bottom of what it had all been about. Now she was furious that he hadn't mentioned Leo and his restaurant to her, although she honestly couldn't think of a good reason why he should have or, truthfully, what she could have done if he had.
* * *
"Can you stop doing that," she said, tight-lipped, as he whistled an approximation of the M*A*S*H theme. She decided to go back to her desk and wait, despite the many notices on the wall warning people that unwatched toasters caused fires. Helen had often wondered who made these signs which appeared overnight—"Your mother doesn't work here, so please clear up after yourself"; "Please do not leave dirty dishes in the sink"; and her personal favorite, "The cleaners are not paid to do your washing up." She'd always hoped to catch someone in the act of putting one up, just so she could ask them exactly what the cleaners were paid for, given that they came in every day and the place always seemed to be a mess. She sat down and pushed some papers around her desk, then got up again and headed back to where Matthew was.
"Why didn't you tell me we were taking on Leo's PR?" she asked him accusingly. Matthew looked taken aback.
"Because we weren't speaking to each other," he said calmly. "He only called me this morning. Can I ask why you're so bothered?"
She hated him when he was like this, super calm and rational.
"Because…I felt stupid in the ideas meeting not knowing anything about it, when everyone knows, you know, about you and me."
"Well, I hardly felt it was important, given the circumstances."
"Well…it was," Helen said sulkily.
"Your toast is burning," Matthew said infuriatingly, looking over her shoulder
.
"Oh, fuck the toast." Helen turned and stomped out of the kitchen.
"Grow up, Helen," Matthew called after her, loudly enough for anyone passing to hear.
* * *
Back at her computer, she found another e-mail from Helen-from-Accounts. She read the first line, which seemed to be the beginning of a blow-by-blow account of her phone call to Geoff the previous evening. Helen closed it again, too…what?…tired, preoccupied, uninterested to read the whole thing. Jenny and Annie were finding themselves hilarious, loudly offering each other a bag of peanuts so that Helen-from-Accounts could hear through the glass partition.
"Peanut, Annie?"
"No, thank you, I'd prefer a carrot. Ha, ha."
"Really, I would have thought you'd like a bit of dry roasting."
They fell about, laughing at their own wittiness. That's not even a joke, thought Helen, you might as well just say, "Clitoris? No, I prefer penises, thanks. Really, I thought you'd like to be shagged up both ends by a gang of footballers." It made no sense, but Jenny and Annie were helpless with laughter.
I am going to go insane in this place, Helen thought. I'm going to get an AK-47 and mow them all down, and laugh while I'm doing it. She noticed a pile of papers Laura had put on her desk. There was a note on the front which read: HERE ARE THE RELEVANT DETAILS FOR THE LEO SHALLCROSS LAUNCH. CAN YOU ORGANIZE THEM INTO A DOCUMENT AND DISTRIBUTE TO THE TEAM. ALSO, COULD YOU CALL LEO AND ARRANGE FOR HIM TO COME IN? THANKS. She'd known it was coming, but this was the final straw. It was too much, this fucking ridiculous situation she'd gotten herself into. I can't cope with this, she thought, I just can't. She tried to breathe deeply to calm herself down, but she could feel her mouth trembling, and before she could get up and escape to the toilets for some privacy, tears started to well up in the corners of her eyes. Helen dabbed at her cheeks, trying to stop the flow before anyone noticed. The last thing she wanted was to let this lot see that she was crying, it would be like an antelope telling a pride of lions about its broken leg. Asking them to sign its cast. It was no good, though—tears were falling, and her nose was starting to run. She didn't even have a tissue to hide behind. There was nothing she could do except get up and rush through the office, head down, in the hope that no one would see her.
"Oh, no," she heard Jenny calling as she left, "Matthew hasn't dumped you, has he?"
"Maybe he's found someone even younger," Annie was saying, and they both cracked up.
Once in the toilets, she locked herself in a cubicle, sat down on the lid, and gave in to crying—proper big, shoulder-heaving sobs that she had no control over. Helen rarely cried. Almost never, in fact, and it was invariably out of frustration rather than sadness. Now she couldn't stop.
She heard the outer door squeaking open and she held her breath so as to make no noise. The last thing she wanted was anyone trying to comfort her, and she knew without a doubt that Helen-from-Accounts was the only person who would bother to try. Sure enough, she heard the other Helen's voice saying her name. She stayed absolutely silent. Helen-from-Accounts was playing exactly the "I'm not leaving till you come out" card that she had played herself. Trying hard to remain quiet, she slowly lifted her feet up off the floor and balanced with her knees held in her arms. She sat perfectly still, till her back started to ache and then, just as she'd had enough, she heard the outer door open and close again. Poor old Helen-from-Accounts, at least she'd tried. Helen realized gratefully that in concentrating all her efforts on remaining hidden, she'd stopped crying.
She sat there for a moment or two until she was sure she wasn't going to start again, then she gingerly opened the door and peeked around to make sure she was alone. While she washed her face in cold water, she tried to decide what to do. She could sneak home sick, but all that would do would be to delay the inevitable. She decided to try to appeal to Laura's sympathetic side—she'd explain that it was too awkward for her to get in touch with Leo herself, given that she was the woman who was shagging his dad. She'd happily type up his stuff and take the minutes at the ideas meeting, but she didn't want to have to meet him or attend any events where he was likely to be.
* * *
"But you've got to meet him sometime," Laura said when Helen had said her piece, after reapplying her makeup and walking through the general office with her head held high, ignoring Jenny's raised eyebrows and Annie's fake smile. "Maybe that's why Matthew suggested I handle it, so that the two of you could spend some time together."
"He just wasn't thinking, more like," Helen said nervously. She wondered if she should try to turn on the tears, but she felt all cried out and, anyway, Laura would most likely respect her more if she stayed calm.
"The thing is, Laura," she said, "Matthew wants to rush things and I want to do everything properly, give his family a chance to meet me on their own terms whenever they feel the time is right. Honestly, it just feels really wrong…"
"OK, OK," Laura said eventually. "Just do that document and I'll get Jenny to call him."
"Thank you, thank you, thank you." Helen felt like hugging her. "Honestly, I really appreciate this."
"Maybe you should tell Matthew how you feel, though, it'll save arguments down the line."
"Yes, I know, I will. And thanks again. And sorry for, you know, being a pain."
* * *
"We need to talk," Helen said to Matthew as they banged pots around in the kitchen, barely speaking except to say "Can you pass me the frying pan" or "Have you got the bread knife?" She had thought about it all afternoon and she knew what she had to say.
"Matthew," she said.
Matthew, still sulking, scarcely acknowledged her and carried on chopping up vegetables. Helen put down the cloth she was holding.
"This just isn't working."
He didn't look around, but she could see that he'd frozen, knife in hand, waiting for whatever was going to come next. She took a deep breath. Here goes.
"I want us to split up."
He still didn't say anything, just stood there rooted to the spot.
"Did you hear what I said? I want us to split up. I'm not happy, you're not happy, your kids aren't happy. I'm sorry, I wish it could have been different, but it's doing my head in…"
He turned toward her slowly. He looked devastated.
"What? Because we have one little row, you want to end it? Just like that?"
"It's nothing to do with us having an argument," she said. "I just can't handle it all, everyone's disapproval, feeling like a home wrecker."
"I'm sorry, OK, for what I said about you not being here on Sunday when the girls come. I didn't mean it, I was just worried about Suzanne…"
"I've just said, this is nothing to do with that. It's a much bigger problem than one disagreement. It's just not how I ever imagined it, I'm not happy."
"We both have to make sacrifices, we always knew that. You can't expect things to be perfect right away. We both have to adjust."
Helen resisted the temptation to say, "But I didn't choose to adjust, you just showed up out of the blue one night and I had to go along with it." Instead, she said, "I want my life back."
"What life?" said Matthew, not aggressively, but genuinely curious. "We've been together more than four years, I am your life."
"OK, then, I want a new life. One that doesn't involve other people's ex-wives and children and people laughing behind my back…"
"Oh, so that's it," he said, entirely missing the point. "You're ashamed of me because I'm so much older than you, you think people are taking the piss…"
"That's so not the point, but now you mention it, yes, they are."
Helen looked at his crestfallen face.
"Sorry. Sorry. Forget I said that. Like I say, that's not the point."
"So what is the point? That you don't like the fact that I have an ex-wife—who, I should say, is being incredibly accommodating and mature about this whole thing and who you have had to have absolutely no dealings with whatsoever—or children who you
see once a week for three hours and who, as I said last night, you don't have to see at all if you don't want to. At least not for a while."
"Matthew, there's no point us fighting about it. It's over. That's it, end of story."
"You don't love me?"
"I don't think I do, no. Sorry."
"But you said you did. All those times. You begged me to leave her and move in with you. Do you really think I would have done that if I hadn't been absolutely sure it was what you wanted?"
"I know. I'm sorry."
Matthew was working himself up.
"Jesus Christ, Helen, I ruined my kids' childhood so that I could be with you because I thought that was what you wanted."
"It was. Once. But it isn't anymore."
"You can't just change your mind like that. We're not children, this is real life, serious stuff. We've messed up people's lives. You can't just go 'Actually, I made a mistake.'"
"I'm sorry, I have to."
"No, Helen, no. Please don't do this to me. Please."
She had known, of course, that he would do this, that he'd fall apart, whether because he really loved her or because he couldn't face the humiliation of having to admit that he'd been deluded. She had told herself that she had to remain resolute and just get through it without wavering. But the sight of him begging, the fact that this was so clearly the last thing he ever expected, the tears on his face, unsettled her.
