Girl Friday

by Unknown

  What she is dreading, when she gets back home.

  Tracy thought Jed had disappeared. And as the years passed, the bad memories faded, and she started to remember some of the good. She remembered that she had never felt so attracted to anyone as she had to Jed. She remembered that when it was good, it was the best ever.

  A fatal attraction.

  She would Google him from time to time, see if she could find out what he was doing, where he was, whether he was married, had children, whether it would now seem that there was hope.

  And then there he was, on Facebook. She sent him a message, telling herself she was just curious, that she wouldn’t give him any information about herself, wouldn’t let herself get sucked in.

  She got sucked in.

  He had changed. This time he had. He had been in therapy for years. Had conquered his demons. Did she remember the early days? How wonderful it had been? How it had never been like that with anyone else, before or since?

  He was flying in for business, he said. He’d love to see her. Just a quick drink.

  For old times’ sake.

  He moved in with her two weeks later, in her dream little house in Highfield. Same old pattern. As fatally attractive as he always had been, he was loving, attentive, kind.

  Until he wasn’t.

  When he strikes her these days, her mind goes somewhere else. She has a sanctuary in her head, a beach, a place she imagines to try to block out the pain.

  He has learned his craft better, since the last time. He doesn’t leave bruises where people can see. Not often. Vicious pinches. Twisted limbs. Slow and painful. There are no weeping apologies. Not any more. No promises that things will be different.

  If she tells anyone, he says he will kill her.

  And she knows this is true.

  Robert McClore was Jed’s idea. His grand scheme to get money. Seduce him into marriage, and over to California, where she will, on their divorce, be entitled to fifty per cent of his worth. In the beginning she complied because she was too frightened to say no.

  But two things have changed. The first is that she is realizing Robert McClore is her ticket out. When she is with Robert, Jed can’t touch her, and Robert is not some weakling that would be powerless over Jed. He’s Robert McClore. Jed would be no match for him. So now she has her own agenda, which is to work slowly towards getting away from Jed for good. She just hasn’t figured out how and, for now, she needs to pretend to Jed that she is doing all this for him.

  And the second is that slowly, quietly and without planning, she is starting to fall for Robert McClore.

  She has seen him many times since they met at the book reading. Quick cups of tea that have stretched into hours. Dinners at quiet restaurants in neighbouring towns. Walks on the beach where they have shared their stories and bared their souls.

  It is not the dangerous passion she once felt for Jed, but a feeling of warmth and safety when she is with him. A feeling of peace. When she looks up and sees him walk in the room, she finds herself smiling. It is entirely unexpected, and is throwing her.

  And here he is, being so sweet, so solicitous, so caring when Jed’s plan B didn’t go… well, didn’t go according to plan. This isn’t about Jed, she reminds herself. Forget about Jed. This is about Robert. And me.

  Om Namah Shivaya, she says to herself in her head, over and over. Om Namah Shivaya.

  ‘How about,’ she says, turning to Robert, the blaze still in her eyes, but her voice soft and seductive now, ‘how about going back to yours?’

  Robert McClore doesn’t remember the last time he was with a woman. He doesn’t remember the last time he was as turned on by a woman as he is by this Tracy. There is something about her, and tonight, with jarring clarity, he realizes she reminds him of Penelope.

  It was her anger that did it. The flash of fire in her eyes when she thought she was being dismissed by her friends. An anger that should have sent him running, particularly after the marriage he had; but it was an anger that was oh so familiar.

  There are no coincidences in life. No coincidence that he should have been so drawn to Penelope, and no coincidence that tonight, when he saw Tracy’s fury, he should have found himself more attracted than he had been, to anyone, in years.

  For anger feels like home.

  The son of a rageaholic, a mother who regularly saw red, screamed, shouted, threw things, Robert grew up in a permanent state of anxiety, trying to disappear, for fear of inadvertently setting her off.

  And anything could set her off.

  His conscious self would do anything to avoid people with a temper, but his subconscious kept trying to recreate home, kept bringing him back to people who recreated his childhood.

  Tracy didn’t expect it to be this easy. Robert is pouring her a Scotch, and she walks up behind him and puts her arms around his waist, leaning her head against his back. She feels the muscles in his back tense, then relax, and he turns slowly, crystal glass in one hand, decanter in the other, as she snakes her arms around his neck and pulls him close to kiss him.

  Robert closes his eyes, every nerve on fire. He has forgotten it could be like this, and he picks her up, and carries her to the sofa, all thoughts forgotten, aware of nothing other than the woman in his arms.

  An hour later, Robert is snoring softly on the sofa. Tracy covers him with a cashmere throw draped over a chair, and, very quietly, takes her mobile phone out of her bag. She types, quickly and silently.

  am at rmc’s. part 1 done. Spk Itr. X

  She slips the phone back in her bag, and sits down on the sofa, gently shaking Robert awake.

  ‘I should go,’ she whispers as he opens his eyes, then she leans down and kisses him on the lips. She would rather stay. Would rather wake up in a huge soft king-size bed, watching the morning sun glint off the waters of Long Island Sound.

  The anxiety and dread start to build as she approaches her house. She tries to breathe deeply, but it is always the same. Like playing Russian roulette, she never knows what awaits her.

  Will Jed be in a good mood, will he be out, at some other woman’s house, or will he be furious, waiting to take it out on her?

  Tracy can no longer remember how it used to be during the good times with Jed, right at the beginning; she had forgotten, until Robert, that there is another way to be in a relationship, and she reminds herself that dealing with Jed is only for a short time, that soon she will get out of his clasp, and this time she will never go back.

  *

  ‘Just how bad is it?’ Charlie perches on a stool at the kitchen counter as Keith opens the cupboard next to the fridge, pulls out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and pours himself a large glass.

  Amanda, in sprayed-on navel-baring jeans and plunging glittery top, chooses that moment to totter in.

  ‘Oh hi, Amanda.’ Charlie smiles. ‘Thanks for babysitting. I take it you’re going out.’

  ‘Yes. A bunch of us are meeting in town at the Tavern,’ she says.

  ‘At eleven o’clock?’ Keith sits down next to Charlie.

  ‘Why? That’s early!’ Amanda is surprised. ‘Do you mind if you pay me now?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Charlie looks at Keith who pulls out his wallet, flicks through and grimaces. ‘Charlie? Can you get this?’

  But a look through Charlie’s wallet reveals she is also out of cash.

  ‘Can I give you a cheque?’ Keith offers, seeing the disappointment in Amanda’s eyes.

  ‘No. I need the money for tonight. It was to pay for going out.’

  ‘Keith, you’ll have to go to the ATM,’ Charlie says.

  Keith looks hopefully at Amanda, willing her to tell him not to worry, that it can wait until tomorrow, but she doesn’t. She thanks him, then sits down on the third stool, letting him know that she isn’t going anywhere until she gets paid.

  It isn’t just that Keith doesn’t want to go out again, on a night that is suddenly filled with winter chill, but that it has taken him days to work up the
courage to be honest with Charlie about what’s going on, and now that he’s told her the beginning, he has to tell her the rest.

  He wants to get it over with. Wants to ease his burden, because these last few days he has been sick with fear, trying to find a way to make it all okay; but there isn’t a way, there just isn’t a way to make this problem disappear.

  Keith has lost his job. It hasn’t been officially announced, but he has been pulled aside and warned that his group will be the next to go. When he was flush with cash, he would sit with friends and joke that most of the ‘financial wizards’ in this town were three pay cheques away from bankruptcy.

  That included him, but he never thought of that at the time.

  His pay cheques seemed so large, yet their lifestyle was so much larger. Their huge dream house, their large black SUVs, their kids being at Highfield Academy rather than at the public schools that most of their friends’ kids went to.

  But they have always had enough. Enough to pay the giant mortgage and the Home Equity Line. Enough to pay the $2,000 a month for the leases of the three cars – the Range Rover, the BMW and the Porsche Carrera.

  They have had enough to take themselves to Pink Sands on Harbor Island for Christmas last year, and the Four Seasons at Palm Beach the year before.

  They have had enough to shop at Rakers and, God knows, Charlie likes to shop. She needs the clothes for their dinners around town with friends, for their charity galas. And the charity galas are necessary for her work – half the time she does the flowers, and even if she doesn’t, they are great opportunities to network.

  So they have never quite managed to put anything away. They are only forty, after all, and his financial advisor said he has plenty of time to worry about that. They have small SEP IRAs, and of course he has had his stock over all these years.

  The stock is their true retirement fund. The stock that has always been a large part of his annual bonus; the stock that can’t yet be vested, but that is one day to carry them through.

  Today that stock is worth almost nothing.

  When panic threatens to overtake him, he tells himself that it will be okay, they still have the house. They bought it at the height of the market, for two and a half million dollars.

  They have a mortgage of two million, and last year took out a Home Equity Line for four hundred thousand. Their neighbours, who live in an exact replica of their house, have had their house on the market for two years. It went on at three point two million – which everyone agreed was insane – and has been reduced, and reduced, and is now being offered at one point nine. There hasn’t been an offer.

  He has felt, these last few months, as if he were treading water. Surviving, but only just. And now he is almost certain he has lost his job – it is just a question of working out the leaving package – and there just isn’t a way to keep funding this lifestyle.

  He doesn’t know how to tell Charlie. Doesn’t know what words to use. He has always prided himself on his work, loves working in finance, has never known any professional world other than Wall Street.

  Half the hedge funds he dealt with on a daily basis have disappeared and, with them, the men who ran them. Just dropped out of sight. A few are attempting day-trading, and he has heard horror stories of men losing everything. He never thought he would be one of them. Or perhaps he did. He just refused to give those thoughts the room to breathe.

  A failure, he thinks, as he pulls in the driveway, Amanda’s babysitting money safely in hand. I am a failure. And feeling those familiar waves of nausea again, he trudges up the path to sit down with his wife and tell her exactly how bad it is.

  Kit sees Adam through the sidelights of the front door. She never knows how she feels about him standing on the doorstep when he drops the kids off. Often, when she sees he is there, she is irritated. It feels like an intrusion. Often the kids call him inside, wanting to show him something in their room, or some homework they did, and he walks in, vaguely apologetic, leaving Kit simmering with resentment.

  Other times, when he is not there, when he waves from the car as he reverses out of the driveway, she is saddened and wistful, wishing he had come in, wishing they had been able to have a chat.

  Tonight she is happy to see him standing there. Her world suddenly seems upside down, and Adam’s familiar face is like a port in a storm so as soon as she catches sight of him she feels a warmth, a feeling of safety, a sense of calm knowing that Adam will look after her.

  ‘Hey, Mom!’ Buckley rushes past her, ignoring her outstretched arms, and Tory flashes her a peace sign as she saunters up the stairs, her iPod plugged in.

  ‘Good weekend?’ Adam asks with a smile, dumping the backpacks and sweatshirts on the chair in the hallway.

  ‘Hi.’ They both turn to see Annabel, in jeans and one of Kit’s old shirts, walking out of the kitchen, munching on an apple. ‘You must be Adam.’

  ‘I am.’ Adam is cautious. ‘And you are?’

  ‘I’m Annabel.’ She extends a hand. ‘How do you do?’

  Adam grins, shooting a look at Kit, and she knows he is wondering who the hell this posh English girl is, and what the hell she is doing here.

  ‘I’m just great, thank you,’ he says. ‘Are you… a friend from England?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Annabel raises her eyebrows. ‘Kit? How do we explain?’

  Kit smiles back. ‘It’s totally weird, and you won’t believe me.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Annabel’s my sister.’

  ‘You haven’t got a sister.’

  ‘Wrong. I didn’t know I had a sister.’

  ‘You’re shitting me.’

  ‘I shit you not.’

  ‘She shits you not,’ Annabel adds, smiling.

  ‘Wow. I mean, that’s awesome! You know what? I see it. Jesus. I do. You look like Ginny, but with Kit’s mouth. You really are sisters. How in the hell did this happen?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Kit says. ‘Yet another one of my mother’s dark secrets from her mysterious past.’

  ‘Not so much of the dark, please,’ says Annabel.

  ‘Do you want to come in? Somehow, I’ve got to explain it to the children.’

  ‘Do you want me to stay?’

  ‘If you want to.’

  ‘I will if you want me to.’

  ‘Only if you want to.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ Annabel steps forward to grab Adam by the arm and drag him into the living room. ‘Will you just stay?’

  It has been a crazy day. Crazy and wonderful, in equal measure. Kit couldn’t let Annabel stay at the Highfield Inn. Not only is the place a dump, as she explained, she wanted to get to know her. God knows they had enough to talk about, and she has a perfectly good sofa bed in her study at home.

  They talked long into the night on Saturday. Annabel was honest and funny and charming. She talked of the pain of not having a mother, of her insecurities, her neediness, her tendencies to get involved in bad relationships, because she didn’t think she deserved better.

  Which explained the drugs and alcohol. ‘I was trying to make it all go away,’ she told Kit. ‘Those feelings of worthlessness, of not being good enough.’

  ‘I feel that too.’ Kit had listened, shocked at how similar they were, even though she has never felt the need to turn to the same substances. Perhaps because she married so young… perhaps Adam had been her saviour. Possibly, had she not met him, had her first child by the time she was the same age as Annabel is now, she would have gone down a very different path.

  ‘I wish I had this,’ Annabel said, gesturing around her.

  ‘What?’ Kit laughed. ‘You wish you had a tiny little house and were a single mother to two kids, struggling to keep your head above water?’

  ‘That’s not how I see it,’ Annabel said. ‘Your house is beautiful. Small, but perfect. When you talk about your family I can see how much you love them. Your kids sound great. You even have an ex-husband who sounds really nice. You have a fam
ily. That’s what I meant.’

  ‘I’m not sure my ex counts as my family any more.’

  ‘I think he does. I think once you’re family, you’re always family. But this is what I always wanted. Kids. A home that feels like this. Hopefully, a husband.’

  Kit smiled indulgently. ‘You’re only twenty-eight. You have plenty of time. I think one of my greatest mistakes was marrying too young. Neither of us had lived. Neither of us knew what we wanted, or who we were going to become.’

  ‘And who did you become?’

  Kit laughed. ‘He became a big-shot banker, and I became a mom who didn’t want to have this marriage where I never saw my husband, who was lonelier in my marriage than I have ever been since.’

  ‘That’s hard. I understand the loneliness. I’ve been lonely my entire life.’ Annabel’s voice softened as her eyes welled up.

  ‘You don’t have to be lonely any more.’ Kit reached over and lay a hand gently on her arm. ‘You have a family now.’

  Kit had been drinking; Annabel had not, sticking to cranberry juice and soda. Some time around midnight the two of them found themselves riffling through Kit’s closet, with Annabel trying on Kit’s clothes, Kit trying on her own clothes, showing off her wedding dress (still kept just in case Tory should ever decide to wear it for her own wedding day).

  They got the giggles at one point, both of them laughing in exactly the same way, doubled over as if in pain, eyes scrunched shut while tears poured down their faces; and realizing they both laughed in exactly the same way only made them laugh more.

  ‘This is what I always wanted,’ Annabel said, lying on Kit’s bed long after midnight, next to a pile of clothes Kit insisted on giving her, both of them still chattering away, so excited to have found one another. ‘A sister.’

  ‘I know.’ Kit smiled, as emotion threatened to overwhelm her. ‘Me too.’

  They stayed up until the early hours of the morning. Kit couldn’t remember the last time she had done that. Maybe an election night one time? But she remembered it hadn’t been fun. This was fun. More than fun. Exciting. Exhilarating. It felt as if she had found a limb she never realized was missing.