The Model Wife

by Julia Llewellyn

  In the meantime, she wasn’t a nun. There were no serious boyfriends. All the travelling her job entailed made relationships hard to maintain, as the divorce statistics for journalists showed. Besides, whenever Thea was free she wanted to catch up with friends, not wander hand in hand round a farmers’ market discussing what to cook for the next dinner party. When she had an itch, it was never hard to find a guy to scratch it.

  She never discussed her private life with Luke and if one of her men rang when they were together she’d snap: ‘I’ll call you back, I’m busy.’ As for Luke, he rarely mentioned his family except to complain: about how much they cost him, how infuriated he was that even now the kids were all at school Hannah said she was ‘too busy’ to return to work. When he was speaking to Hannah, it was invariably to argue: about the fact he was going to miss Jonty’s sports day or Tilly’s end of term concert or the church bazaar. Thea listened in astonishment. Hannah obviously didn’t understand him at all, saddling him with this mundane, domestic nonsense. Thea genuinely didn’t understand how people got bogged down with such boring stuff. If she was with Luke, he would be her number one and nothing would get in the way.

  She stepped off the train at Green Park. With Bob crooning his ode to Corrina in her ears she followed the arrows pointing to the Jubilee line, harrumphing loudly as she found herself stuck in the narrow corridor behind an elderly couple holding hands and walking at the speed of a disabled tortoise. Obviously tourists. Londoners didn’t amble on the Underground, or anywhere for that matter, they strode and shoved and overtook on the inside. Sighing loudly, Thea squeezed past them. As she hurried down the stairs to the platform she heard the sound of a train departing. Two minutes later the country bumpkins sat on the bench beside her. Thea glared at them. It was all their fault she was having to wait. Though, she reminded herself, she didn’t want to get to the dinner too nerdily early. But not too late either, or Dean’s wife would get in a strop about her soup going cold.

  Slowly rolling a red Skittle round her mouth, savouring its artificial redness, before crunching into it, she thought back to the last proper night she’d seen Luke. BAFTA night. The Seven Thirty News had been nominated for an award in the current-affairs category (which no longer existed now, so dumbed-down had this country become) for their reporting of an Al-Qaeda bombing of a train in Italy.

  Thea hadn’t had particularly high hopes for the evening, knowing Luke would be accompanied by Hannah, in some safe but boring Phase Eight dress. But Hannah, it turned out, had caught the flu from Isabelle, so Luke arrived alone. Thea sat next to him at the dinner, and they won the award and both went up on stage and made a witty and gracious acceptance speech and after that everyone at the table had got very drunk and they’d all ended up in Soho House with Luke and Thea squeezed up next to each other on a leather sofa, legs brushing against each other. She sensed there was something different about Luke that night. He seemed nervier than usual, strangely unrelaxed for someone who’d just received an award. Still, they’d ended up back at her place and she’d given what she considered the best sexual performance of her life. Afterwards they lay in dazed silence.

  ‘Shit.’

  Thea decided to take that as praise. ‘Yeah. That was good,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said.

  He’d been more eloquent. She waited.

  ‘Christ, Thea, I don’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘Maybe Hannah and I… I don’t know… Maybe I’ll have to leave her. Leave them…’

  He was asleep. Thea, however, felt as buzzy as her electric toothbrush after a day’s charging. She lay beside him, heart hammering, absorbing this unexpected triumph. He was going to dump Hannah. He’d realized.

  9°

  She’d won. No wonder he’d been so edgy all night, he’d been coming to this momentous realization.

  ‘You’ve done the right thing, Luke,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll be so happy together.’

  By the time he woke up, she had very quietly slipped into a Janet Reger silk robe, retouched her make-up and perfume and fetchingly mussed her hair. As he opened his eyes, she smiled at him sexily and breathed, ‘Good morning.’

  He sat bolt upright. ‘Shit! What time is it?’

  ‘Nearly nine,’ she purred.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ he yelped. ‘What’s Hannah going to think? I’ve got to go.’

  Before Thea could open her mouth, he was out of bed and pulling on his clothes. ‘Oh my God,’ he said, ‘she’s going to kill me.’ He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and stared at it despairingly. ‘Battery dead. Help! I’m going to have to get Gerry to give me an alibi.’

  Thea still couldn’t speak.

  ‘What’s the best taxi number? Oh no, don’t bother. How do I get to the Tube? It’ll be quicker.’

  ‘Turn right out of the front door, then left and straight up the road. It’s about ten minutes.’

  ‘OK.’ He stopped for a second and looked down at her, so prettily arranged in her white satin. A wry smile crossed his features.

  ‘That was great,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ He bent and kissed her briskly on the lips. ‘Take care, Thea.’

  She stared at him in confusion. A few hours earlier he’d been about to leave Hannah. What the hell had changed? There was no way she was going to ask.

  91

  ‘You too.’ She smiled bravely.

  ‘You’re very sweet,’ he said and hurried out of the door.

  Standing on the Tube, surrounded by the raucous Saturday-evening crowd so different from the weary commuters in the week, her cheeks still burnt at the memory of what happened next. Thea had Monday off work. Luke was off on Tuesday and Wednesday. She waited for a call, a text, an email, but nothing. When she finally saw him on Thursday morning in conference, he studiously avoided eye contact. When she later contrived to bump into him by the water cooler, he smiled in the nervous way you do when a wild-eyed stranger starts making conversation with you in the street.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, hello.’

  ‘Was everything OK with Hannah?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, it was fine. Look. I’ve got a meeting with Chris now.’ And he hurried off.

  Thea felt as if she’d been slapped. It wasn’t as if she and Luke had never been to bed before, so why was he treating her like a stalker? Back at her desk, her head buzzed and she found it impossible to concentrate on pulling together an interview with the Minister of Agriculture. On the other side of the room, she could see Luke sitting at his desk. He looked pale, drawn, stressed. Had Hannah found out? Thea sort of hoped she had and sort of hoped she hadn’t. She watched him frown at his screen, sit back in his chair, then get up and head toward the gents.

  She knew she shouldn’t do it, but something seized her.

  92

  Glancing round to make sure no one was looking, she tapped out of her email account and then tapped in luke.norton@sevenoclock.com. Years of working with him meant she knew his password – Matilda – and Thea was always reading his emails to check who he was fooling around with, although annoyingly Luke tended to double-delete everything as soon as he read it, so she rarely got much joy there.

  She was in his email account. She searched for some angry missive from Hannah, but there was nothing. A load of guff from PRs wanting to meet him. Something from Gerry entitled, Let’s have a beer. And then one from PoppyPrice. Nothing in the subject field.

  Heart staccato, Thea opened it.

  Darling Luke

  I’m emailing u becoz ur not returning my calls or texts and I’m desprat. I’m sorry u had such a shock about the baby but we need 2 talk. I’m going to keep it whatever and I understand if u don’t want 2 b involved but we just need to talk some more. I love u, I love u so much and I thought u loved me 2. Please, please, please get in touch.

  Again, I love u with all my heart

  Your, Poppy xxxxx00000

  The Tube pulled in to West Hampstead. Stepping out through the doors, Thea recalled the murderous
, white-hot rage that had enveloped her as she read it. And she remembered how she, Thea Mackharven, who prided herself on her cool and collected approach to life had clicked on the forward button, then rapidly tapped Ha into the address field. HannahNorton@Norton.com flashed up. An icy calm descended on Thea as she clicked on send. ‘Ding! Your email has been sent.’

  Rapidly, she logged out of Luke’s account. Seconds later he returned to his desk.

  Thea wasn’t sure now what she’d intended by sending the email. She wondered about this, as she turned right out of the station. There were other, simpler ways of taking revenge, like organizing a secret online account to deliver monthly packets of Viagra to his home address. That was what Thea did when she heard Luke had left Hannah and was living with the illiterate Poppy Price. But it was poor compensation for the havoc she’d wreaked.

  When she discovered Luke was going to marry Poppy, Thea had gone to Chris Stevens and asked if she could spend a couple of months in the New York office, filling in for the producer David Bright, who had just announced his wife was pregnant with twins and wanted them all to come back to Britain for the birth.

  ‘Really?’ Chris had said incredulously. ‘But you’re doing great work here, Thea.’

  ‘I need to be challenged,’ she’d said.

  Chris’s eyebrows wiggled in an uncomfortably knowing way. ‘Well, for you I’m sure we can arrange anything. Because one thing’s sure, we don’t want to lose you.’

  Within a fortnight Thea had packed up her life and was on a plane to New York. The Brights decided not to return to the US and Thea acquitted herself so well that she was a shoe-in to take the job permanently. Beyond the odd word with Luke in a work context, she had not spoken to him again. To her pain, he had not spoken to her.

  Now she was tapping up the tiled pathway that led to Dean Cutler’s redbrick terraced house and within minutes she was going to see him again.

  She took a purple Skittle out of the bag, crunched on it fast, took a deep breath and rang Dean’s doorbell.

  9

  A skinny man in jeans and a lumberjack shirt opened the door.

  ‘Oh-ho,’ he said, ‘you must be Thea! We meet at last. Great to put a face to a voice.’

  ‘Dean.’ She smiled her most winning smile and held out her hand but he was already kissing her on both cheeks, in a way that would have given Chris Stevens a heart attack.

  ‘It’s great to meet you.’ He examined the bottle she offered him. ‘Hey, Cloudy Bay. My kind of woman. Come in, come in.’

  Thea followed him into a living room which had a beech floor, grey Farrow & Ball walls decorated with huge black-and-white pictures of unattractive babies. Bebel Gilberto crooned from hidden speakers. A group that included that irritating twerp Marco Jensen and Roxanne Fox in one of her trademark dull little skirt suits, was standing by the window, another by the fireplace. No sign of Luke. A blonde woman in black leather jeans and a diaphanous grey top approached.

  ‘Thea, meet my wife, Farrah. Farrah, remember I told you about Thea? She’s one of our best producers and I’ve just lured her back from New York to be part of my crack team.’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember.’ Farrah smiled. ‘Dean’s so chuffed to have got you back.’

  96

  ‘That’s nice,’ purred Thea, as the doorbell chimed.

  ‘I’ll get that,’ Dean exclaimed and hurried out into the hall, leaving the two women together. Thea’s heart sank. She hated wives. But one of the many things that made her brilliant at her job was knowing they were the people you absolutely had to get on side. So she smiled in her friendliest fashion.

  ‘And what do you do, Farrah?’

  ‘What an interesting question. I’m mainly a mother, of course, but now the kids are both at school I’m retraining as a colour therapist. It’s just amazing. When you get a person’s colour right you can totally change their lives.’

  ‘Oh.’ Thea nodded.

  ‘You would not believe how many people’s energy is being sapped by disastrous colour choices. Some people are cool and some are warm and they should never mix it up. But you’d be amazed how often they do. It’s shocking.’

  ‘Oh yes, it must be.’ Thea tutted, listening to male voices laughing in the hall. Luke’s. She didn’t care, she told herself. It was ancient history. She was long over him.

  ‘I saw one client recently, who was head to toe in browns and oranges and I said, “Sweetheart, I’m telling you this for your sake, you should be in spring-colours with that pale skin” and she said, “But surely I should wear the opposite of my colouring.” I mean, I was speechless. Speech. Less.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Now you, Freya, you would look stunning in orange. That green does not do a thing for your colouring.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Thea smiled, wondering if she should set Farrah straight about her name.

  ‘I’d be very happy to give you a consultation, Freya. Mates’ rates, of course. I’ll make sure to give you one of my cards.’ She looked Thea up and down. ‘You’re a Gemini, am I right?’ Before Thea could reply, ‘No, but you are an idiot’, she continued, ‘Now there is a lady who knows what colours are right for her.’

  Turning round, Thea felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Standing in the doorway was Luke, looking even more charismatic than she remembered him. Like a double espresso he sent a jolt through you.

  And holding tightly to his arm was a girl, no one could reasonably call her a woman, looking absolutely petrified. Fuck, though, she was pretty with her fine blonde hair and tiny feet in gold ballet slippers. Jealousy crackled off Thea’s body in green lightning forks as all the insecurities she nursed about her appearance: that she was too dark, too shapeless, needed to trowel on make-up to look even halfway presentable, danced for attention in her head. Her vision narrowed as if she was about to faint. With superhuman effort she smiled.

  ‘Luke.’

  ‘Thea.’

  Kiss. Kiss. Soft, newly shaved cheek. Smell of Imperial Leather. Once Thea had discovered it was his soap (he didn’t believe in aftershaves) she’d gone out and bought a bumper pack and slept with it under her pillow.

  ‘It’s great to have you back,’ he said warmly. ‘Now, I don’t believe you’ve met Poppy. My wife.’

  ‘So, Poppy, what have you done with your incredibly short life? How have you filled it in the ten seconds since you were a child? Do you want to see the tattoo on my spine I had done when I was backpacking in Laos? Do you want to hear about the awards I’ve won? Do you want to know how often I’ve fucked your husband? Or that you’re only married to him because of an email I was stupid enough to send?’ That was what she wanted to say. What came out of Thea’s mouth was: ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Thea. I used to work a lot with Luke as a producer. But I’ve been in America for the past couple of years. Just got back.’

  She waited to see if her name would bring a flicker of recognition, but Poppy just smiled politely.

  ‘Where were you in America?’ Her voice was so soft Thea had to strain to hear her.

  ‘Thea, hi! How are you?’ It was Emma Waters, one of the chief reporters and Luke’s regular female co-presenter. Emma was in her forties, pretty, if a bit haggard. She had three kids she never spoke about and was a very good friend of Hannah Norton’s.

  ‘Emma, hi! How are you? You look great.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Emma said somewhat less gushingly. Too late, Thea remembered how huffy Emma got about compliments on her appearance rather than her journalistic skills. She nodded brusquely at Poppy. ‘Hello, you must be Poppy.’

  ‘Yes,’ Poppy said. ‘Hi.’

  Emma ignored the hand that was offered. There was an ugly silence, then Poppy hastily turned back towards Thea. ‘Have you been anywhere especially interesting recently, Thea?’

  ‘I was in Cuba not that long ago.’

  ‘Oh? I did a modelling job there once. In Varadero. The beach was beautiful. Did you go swimming with dolphins?’

 
Thea knew she was trying to be friendly, but she couldn’t help the bitchiness that rushed over her. ‘Hardly,’ she said, catching Emma’s eye in a we-are-women-of-the-world way. ‘I was researching an item about the effect the revolution has had on the Cuban health system, so I spent most of my time in one-horse towns deep inland not tourist resorts.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Poppy.

  ‘You’re not modelling now, though, are you, Poppy?’ Emma asked. There was no mistaking the hint of mischief in her voice.

  ‘I… Well, no. My daughter’s very young still, so—’

  Luke interrupted. ‘We’ve agreed to look for an au pair or a nanny or something so Poppy can get out and about a bit more.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be nice.’ Emma smirked. ‘Give you more time for the health club and shopping.’

  Poppy flinched as if she’d been hit. To her astonishment, Thea felt a moment’s pity for Luke’s very young wife. But only a moment’s.

  ‘It’s very fashionable to be a stay-at-home mum these days,’ Emma continued. ‘You should see my local branch of Fresh and Wild. You can hardly get into it with all the yummy mummies sitting around decoratively with their designer prams. It wasn’t like that when my kids were born; then it was just assumed you’d be going back to work otherwise you’d be letting the side down.’

  ‘So you’re looking for a nanny, are you, Poppy?’ said Farrah, who’d been hovering on the sidelines.

  ‘Well, I hadn’t really thought…’

  ‘Because mine is up for grabs,’ she said. ‘Now my youngest is at prep school, we don’t need her any more. She really is fabulous. You should snatch her while you can. Shall I give you her number?’