As I was packing my inflight tote, I automatically reached inside my bedside cabinet for Paeanies, but after studying the cover for a moment I put it back. It had become a bit of a routine to read it on planes, but I decided not to take it this time, because it was starting to get a little dog-eared. I decided I would get hold of another copy for reading and save the inscribed one. It was too special to spoil.
Then, on an impulse, I took it through to the sitting room, where Ollie was watching TV. I hadn’t shown it to him before and it just seemed like the right time to do it. I hadn’t told him about her asking for me – I hadn’t told anyone – but this was my way of acknowledging her, without actually having to go and see her. Ollie made all the right noises and was suitably complimentary about my mother’s photograph and the poem she had written about me, so I left the book with him to look at.
When I went back into the sitting room later I saw he had left it lying on the sofa, so I picked it up and placed it on the kilim-covered ottoman that was our book display area. It looked very nice sitting between a copy of Derek Jarman’s Garden and a new book about Yves Saint Laurent. I didn’t think any more of it until I went to bed that night and found it sitting on my bedside table.
‘Did you bring this back through here?’ I said to Ollie, although it was obvious he had.
‘Yes, darling,’ he said.
‘Why?’ I asked him.
‘Well, it’s not something we should prominently dispaly, is it? I’ll probably have a Sunday salon while you’re away and we don’t want to prompt any questions about your mother, do we?’
I just stood there stunned, as he carried on getting ready for bed, like nothing had happened. A geyser of red-hot anger shot through me. How dare he insult her like that? I wanted to kill him. I wanted to run at him like a shrieking banshee and tear his limbs off. But Ollie and I never rowed.
Right from the start of our relationship we had always found a way of dissipating tension through a joke, or just by silently fuming for a while, until we got over it. We might have a few cross words, but we never had slanging matches. People like Ollie simply didn’t, and up until then I had been perfectly happy to avoid anything that reminded me of the heavy mortar fire that used to go on between my parents when they were drunk. Anger frightened me.
I stood there feeling gagged, shaking with fury, and starting to feel sick from the adrenaline rush, but still I couldn’t let it out. I wanted to scream and shout and claw him to death, but I just couldn’t. I felt the rage within me turn from fire into cold steel.
‘What?’ he said, finally noticing something was wrong. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘You cunt,’ I said slowly. ‘You self-satisfied, judgemental, superficial cunt.’
Before he could reply, I grabbed the book from my bedside table and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind me. By the look I saw on Ollie’s face as I turned, I knew those words had done the trick more effectively than any pyrotechnic display could have. Fuck him.
24
Tunisia was really beautiful. Bloody hot, but really beautiful. And although it was a bit like shooting fashion in a pizza oven, we were doing great pictures.
Since our session in New York, Nivek and I had rubbed along pretty well together; he knew how important these tear sheets were for building his name, and appearing in the first issue of a high-profile new magazine was the perfect platform to get his work seen internationally. But he was still no breeze to work with.
Even after our conversation about his attitude, he was still capable of throwing a foul tantrum if he didn’t feel a shoot was going exactly as he wanted it, but I put up with him because his photographs were so damn good. I still had enough pride in my work to want to make sure that my pages in the launch issue of Surface would be brilliant.
And it was worth putting up with ironing in the heat and a sulky photographer to be away from all the things that were going on at home. I was still furious with Ollie for what he had said about my mother’s book. And he wasn’t talking to me at all because of those – and I quote – ‘unacceptable’ words I had said to him.
‘Frankly, I’m astonished,’ he’d said, in a message he’d left on my mobile voicemail the next day, after leaving for work while I was still asleep in the spare room. ‘I’m deeply hurt and speechless,’ he’d said. ‘That you could speak to me like that. It’s completely unacceptable. I don’t know what’s happened to you, but any woman who could use that kind of gutter language is not the Emily I married. God, if my parents knew… Anyway, I am really not inclined to speak to you again until you apologize. So perhaps you will have some opportunity to think about that while you are away. Until then, don’t bother to call me. Good bye.’
I’d given my phone the finger after getting that message. If he thought I was from the gutter, that’s the way I would behave. Because until he apologized to me for what he had said about my mother, I didn’t really want to speak to him either.
So there was all that, the disaster that was Surface, and, of course, the ongoing anxiety about all the credit-card bills I couldn’t pay. And then there was the not inconsiderable issue of the pressure on me to visit the woman who that whole fracas with Ollie had been about. But while I couldn’t allow him to insult her, I still didn’t want to go and see her. That’s just the way it was.
But as I looked out of my hotel-room window, over the cubic shapes of the Tunisian townscape, blindingly white in the African sun, I felt perfectly happy. Somehow, just having three jet hours between me and home made all those worries dissolve like the vitamin C tablet I had for breakfast each morning. Until Peter Potter called me.
It was the second to last day of the trip. I had just gone down to the market to buy some bottled water for the day’s shooting when my mobile rang.
‘Hi, Emily,’ said his familiar snide voice. ‘Peter Potter here.’
I was surprised to hear from him, although it wasn’t unknown for us to speak and he didn’t know I was away. My mobile calls just came through as though I was in London, so he probably thought I was in Westbourne Grove.
‘Hi, Peter,’ I said enthusiastically, slipping into our usual faux best friends mode. He didn’t even bother. He went straight for the jugular.
‘I just wondered how you felt about your husband having an affair with your former colleague, Felicity Aldous?’
I laughed. It was the only possible reaction.
‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. ‘Come off it. Anyway what did you really ring about?’
‘I’m calling about the affair your husband is having with the editor of Chic Interiors.’
I began to feel a little uneasy, but it was so ridiculous. Ollie was so looks-ist, he would never have an affair with someone as plain as her.
‘Come off it, Peter. Spitty Felicity? Now what’s the real goss?’
Oh, my big mouth.
‘Spitty Felicity?’ said Peter sounding thrilled. ‘Is that what you call her? Well, you may find it hard to believe but your darling Ollie has been shagging “Spitty”, as you call her, for nearly a year. He clearly doesn’t find her spitty at all, or maybe it’s just all her famous friends he likes, because he keeps a toothbrush, underwear and a whole set of duplicate shirts at her place, for all these times when you’re out of town, isn’t that cosy? Quite the little Brick Lane love nest apparently.’
Duplicate shirts. It all started to seem hideously possible. I felt dizzy.
‘But he can’t be…’ I spluttered.
‘But he is, darling, and you can read all about it in my column tomorrow.’ He paused. ‘Peter’s gonads never wrong, Emily.’
And with a bitter laugh he put the phone down. I just sat down where I was, in the middle of the street. So this was what shock felt like. I still didn’t really believe it, but at the same time I felt a dawning possibility that it could be true. Ollie’s sudden fascination with Brick Lane and its just as sudden end – Felicity had first come over to our place around that time. He
had put her next to him at our table. All the stupid decorators suddenly at our salons.
Then it hit me, like a poleaxe – the trip to the Milan Furniture Fair and all his excitement about that stupid shoot. It was true. My handsome, successful, secure husband was schtupping a human lawn-sprinkler.
My brain went into overdrive. Ollie was being unfaithful to me – but could I really complain when I was being unfaithful to him too? And frankly, the way he’d been behaving recently, did I really care? I didn’t know, I didn’t know what to think about anything, so I did the only thing I could do. I rang him. I didn’t care if he was talking to me or not, I wanted some answers.
I was quite surprised when he picked up – he was in so many ‘phone off’ meetings these days, I rarely got him live. Oh no, I thought simultaneously, more evidence. And there was more, when I heard his voice. I’d never heard him sound like that before. He kept clearing his throat.
‘Ollie, it’s Emily.’
‘Ah, ahem, yeah, Emily.’
‘Emily,’ I said. ‘Your wife.’
‘Ahem, yeah.’
‘“Ahem, yeah?” Is that all you can say? Am I to take it that this ridiculous story is true then?’
Ollie regained hold of his usual smoothie tactics.
‘Now what story would that be?’
‘The story that you have been shagging Spitty Felicity for over a year and that you even keep shirts – duplicate shirts, Ollie, I’ve seen them – in her Spitalfields house.’
There was a pause. I could just imagine his calculating brain trying to work out the best damage limitation strategy.
‘Who told you that?’ he finally responded, with a new coldness in his voice.
I had to admire him. The man should be in politics. Never admit anything, was the way he worked.
‘Peter Potter told me. He also told me it’s going to be in his column tomorrow and judging by your tone of voice, he’s told you that too, so you’d better tell me – is it true, Ollie? Really, I find it hard to believe that you could be unfaithful to me for someone quite so unattractive and humourless – and frankly, I’m not even sure how much I care – but I would like to know one way or the other.’
Actually, I didn’t want to know, but it just seemed like the thing I had to say.
‘OK,’ said Ollie. ‘It is true. I am involved with Felicity and for your information, she is not unattractive and humourless. She’s wonderful. She’s a very striking and creative woman – and I’m leaving you for her.’
I had already started to believe it, but hearing Ollie actually say those words knocked me down all over again. I couldn’t breathe. I’d be single. I’d have to leave the flat. Where would I go?
‘Is that it?’ I said, when I could speak again. ‘Is that all you have to say after all our years together? That you’re shagging someone else and you’re just dumping me? Is that how gentlemen behave, Ollie? What will your parents say?’
‘I wouldn’t get too much on my moral high horse, if I were you, Emily,’ he replied, in a tone of pure ice. ‘I know what you got up to in Sydney.’
Another wave of shock crashed over me. I felt like someone was holding my head down a loo and repeatedly flushing it. I tried to speak, but it just came out like a strangled gurgle.
‘I heard all about you practically humping some Australian oik in full public view at a party. Unbelievable.’
‘Who told you that?’ I finally managed to squeak out.
‘The chief fashion buyer from Storridges told Maeve – you remember Maeve, the Storridges cosmetics buyer who came to our salon, that time? And Maeve told one of my Slap people and I overheard her telling the entire office and tomorrow the whole of London will know, because I’m going to tell Peter Potter.’
My head was down the loo again. Of course he would tell Rotter. He wouldn’t look nearly so bad in print, if I’d been unfaithful to him too. But Ollie hadn’t finished.
‘Really, Emily,’ he said, sounding like he was starting to enjoy himself. ‘What a way to behave. At least Felicity and I have been discreet and adult about our affair, but to do that in public like a common little tart…’
It was then – when he said her name – that another really horrible thought struck me.
‘That’s why you made me leave Chic,’ I said, the whole situation suddenly becoming clear. He’d wanted me out of the offices where she worked. ‘You made me leave Chic, to get me out of the way.’
‘Now Emily…’ he started, but I knew I was right. OK, so I was as bad as him in the adultery department, but making me leave my job like that was pure treachery.
‘You know what, Ollie?’ I said, fury suddenly rising in me. ‘I stand by what I said the other night. You really are a cunt – and you can tell your fascist fucking parents I said that.’
And I threw my phone down on to the cobbled street.
After that I just sat there panting, on the hot, hard stones. I sat there, until people were starting to stop and stare. Then I stood up and started to stumble back to the hotel, but in my confusion and the heat and noise of the busy market quarter I got all turned around and lost my way.
The labyrinthine streets of the old town were bewildering at the best of times and in my traumatized state I just couldn’t find my way. I seemed to be turning into narrower and narrower back lanes, but then I saw a blue filigree door I thought I recognized. I made for it, then turned left, fairly certain it would bring me out on to the main market square, but I was wrong. Horribly wrong.
Instead I found myself looking straight into a yard behind what must have been a butcher’s shop. There was a small goat hanging up by its back legs making horrible squealing noises and as I looked, the butcher picked up a large steel knife and cut its throat.
Blood spurted out in a great scarlet arc and as I saw it another image flashed into my head. It was my father, with blood pumping out of his neck. The two images kept flashing on and off in my head, like a strobe light. The dying goat and my father, lying on the floor of his studio with a knife in his hand and blood pouring out of his throat. And me, ten years old, standing in the doorway, watching.
I heard myself scream as I stumbled and fell forward to the ground. I felt the impact of my head against the cobbles and that was the end of it.
I woke up in a dark room, which I took a while to realize was a hospital, or some kind of clinic. I just lay there for a few moments trying to work out where I was and then it all flooded back like a tidal wave crashing over my head. Peter Potter’s call. My conversation with Ollie. And then the goat and the blood and the memory of my father, dying in front of me. I started to shake and before I was even fully aware of it, I was calling out.
A nurse came into the room. She couldn’t speak any English, but she calmed me with soothing tones and made me drink some water. As I sat up to sip it, I realized my head was splitting with pain. I tentatively put my hand up and found I had a big dressing on my forehead, where I must have hit the hard ground.
I closed my eyes to try and make it all go away, but it wouldn’t. It just went round and round in my head like some kind of psychedelic light show. My father killing himself, not knowing I was watching. How had I managed to convince myself for so many years it was a brain haemorrhage? Had I really believed that?
Then the rest of it came back. My husband was leaving me, after tricking me into leaving my job. I’d alienated the man who really did care about me – Miles. I was alone in a Tunisian hospital. My mother was alone in a mental hospital. Nobody knew where I was.
I knew I was semi-delirious, but I couldn’t stop myself jabbering on, holding on to the nurse’s sleeve and pleading with her to get Ursula for me. Eventually she went out and came back a few minutes later with a man in a white coat, who I assumed was a doctor. He spoke English and he knew my name. I grabbed his hand and wouldn’t let go.
‘Miss Pointer,’ he said, kindly. ‘You have had a serious concussion. You have a lesion to your forehead and I have had to use stitches. You h
ave been here for two days under sedation. You will have another skull X-ray later and if it is satisfactory you will be able to leave.’
‘Does anyone know I’m here?’ I asked him.
‘Your passport was in your bag and we have informed the British Embassy in Tunis. We have also contacted the people you were travelling with, as your hotel key was also in your bag. They know where you are.’
But no one came to see me. I was taken for the X-ray, but apart from that I just lay in that bed for another day and still no one came. I kept asking for my mobile, until I remembered I had smashed it down on to the stony ground, and eventually a nurse took pity on me and let me use the telephone in the doctor’s office. I rang Ursula and told her what had happened. At first I just sobbed down the phone until I could get the story out.
‘Oh, my poor girl,’ she said. ‘My poor baby. You must come here immediately. God, I wish I could come and get you, but I can’t, Emily. I can’t do that flight, you know I can’t.’
She paused for a moment, clearly thinking it through. I just sobbed a bit more, mainly from relief at hearing her voice.
‘OK, kiddo,’ she said. ‘Here’s what we’ll do. I will call the British Embassy and arrange for someone to take you to the airport and I will make sure you are looked after on the flight, OK? Just tell me the name of your hotel and I will call back with the details. Above all, don’t worry. I will look after you.’
And I knew she would.
After another day, when the doctor had seen the X-ray and said I was OK to leave, they put me in a taxi to the hotel. When I got there the receptionist handed me an envelope.
It was a note from Nivek saying he hoped I would be OK and to call him when I got back, but he was afraid he’d had to leave for another job. He also said he’d taken the film and would deliver it to Rosie, which pretty much summed up his priorities. And that was it, they’d all just gone, leaving me there with a cracked head in a Tunisian hospital.
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