Invisible Women

by Sarah Long

‘Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Air, water and food.’

  ‘Closely followed by a set of Robert Welch knives, though I suppose he’s been rather overtaken by the Japanese, and we’ve got the top of the range Global set already . . .’

  His brow furrowed as he tried to think of something they might need, then he brightened.

  ‘I know what we could do with! Cheese knives! We’ll check it out in the morning. You need something to cheer you up.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You’ve been a right misery the last few days. It’s like living with one of those depressed menopausal women you hear about. Those sad cases who go to pieces when the kids fly the nest. I don’t know what’s got into you!’

  She didn’t tell him that what had got into her was John Ormonde.

  ‘You’re supposed to be the cheerful one,’ he continued. ‘I’m the one who’s prone to misery.’

  ‘And a set of cheese knives will put that right, will it?’

  ‘Worth a try! We must seek our consolations where we can. Speaking of which, I’m glad we got the en suite bathroom. I’m too old to share a toilet with people I don’t sleep with.’

  He jumped up from the bed and took his copy of The Times out of his bag, and went into the bathroom, leaving the door open.

  ‘Can you remember,’ he shouted through to her, ‘how far into our relationship we were before we started sitting on the lav in front of each other?’

  ‘Couldn’t say,’ said Tessa. ‘But I’m happy to reverse it. To be honest, I’d really rather you closed the door.’

  ‘Spoilsport. Did you know that a high percentage of people die on the bog? So there’s a health benefit as well as a social advantage to leaving the door open. Imagine if I was dying on the toilet and you didn’t realise, because you were sealed off in another room.’

  ‘I’m tearing up at the thought.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  The bathroom at Dursdale Hall had offered towels hanging in rigid symmetry, soft tissues in a dispensing box and hand lotion that smelled of almonds. She had closed the door behind her and worn the bathrobe to preserve her modesty. As you did in the beginning.

  Matt’s voice again.

  ‘Damn! Tessa?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s no toilet paper. Do you mind?’

  ‘I’ll go and find some.’

  Downstairs, Harriet was reading in front of the fire, her feet tucked up beside her. She looked up as Tessa came in.

  ‘Settled in alright?’

  ‘Lovely. Just after some loo roll.’

  ‘In the kitchen.’

  ‘Thanks. You’re looking very relaxed.’

  Harriet put her book down.

  ‘I can’t tell you how good it feels, to know I can sit and read a book without any risk of Celia interrupting me.’

  ‘Is the carer working out alright?’

  ‘Apparently they’ve really hit it off. She’s everything Celia disapproves of. Romanian single mother, prone to hysteria, but it’s a love match. Sounds like she can counteract every one of Celia’s endless stories with one of her own. Very chatty, which is the main thing.’

  ‘You should get her to come regularly. Make more use of this place, you could try and spend more time here with Sam.’

  ‘I will, though it’s often difficult for Sam to get away. I hope Matt’s not too disappointed.’

  ‘He’s quite happy with the ladies, and there’s Nigel, of course. What time are they coming, do you know?’

  ‘Couple of hours,’ she said. ‘Which just gives us time . . .’

  She pulled out a Scrabble set from the pile of boxes on the coffee table.

  ‘Shall we?’

  ‘Oh yes!’

  Tessa sat down on the opposite sofa as Harriet went through the ritual of opening the board and shaking the letters into the bag. They each took seven letters, then drew lots to see who should start.

  ‘L,’ said Harriet.

  ‘T.’

  They moved their tiles around in companionable silence, looking at possible word formations until Matt’s voice carried down the stairs to disturb their concentration.

  ‘TESSA!’

  Tessa jumped up.

  ‘Oh God, the bog roll! Back in two minutes, don’t look at my letters.’

  Upstairs, Matt was reading the paper, boxer shorts round his ankles, forming a little skirt above his Hogan shoes.

  ‘Here’s something to make you sick,’ he said. ‘This CEO who says he’s retiring at fifty because he couldn’t find an answer for his wife who asked, at the top of Kilimanjaro, when would be the right time for them to go travelling together. What a smug bastard. I tell you what, if I had thirty million in the bank, I’d do the same, but I wouldn’t expect to be admired for my courage or held up as a role model. What are these people on?’

  ‘I know, I saw that. They live in their own silly bubble, don’t they, the very rich? Here, catch.’

  She threw the toilet roll to him and laughed as he caught it with one hand.

  ‘Thanks, wifey.’

  ‘You’re welcome. I’m going downstairs to play Scrabble with Harriet.’

  ‘On your own. I’m waiting for Nigel to take me to the pub for a couple of pints. Something to numb the pain of Harriet’s boring brown stew.’

  ‘Hypocrite! You told her you were looking forward to it, Sick of my over-elaboration, I think you said.’

  ‘Only being polite. Your sophistication in the kitchen is obviously the reason we’re still married.’

  Tessa left the room.

  ‘One of them,’ he shouted after her.

  On her way down, she switched her phone on to read John’s text.

  Missing you like crazy. Can’t wait for our new life together!!

  A knot of anxiety twisted in her stomach. Not the missing you like crazy bit, that was fine, she missed him too, she longed to see him again. But the new life together bit was something else. As she was contemplating this, another text pinged in.

  Have you got WhatsApp? Now you’ve finally got a proper phone?

  That was easier to answer.

  Yes, Lola installed it for me.

  Let’s move over to that. More versatile. I’ll demonstrate now.

  Tessa sat on the stairs, safely out of view, and stared at the screen of her iPhone, with its colourful display of childish icons, like modern hieroglyphics. A message was showing on WhatsApp and she clicked to open it.

  See what I mean? This is how much I miss you.

  But it wasn’t his words that grabbed her attention, it was the photo that accompanied them. A close-up of what she could only bring herself to describe as his naked loins.

  She stared at it in disbelief, then covered the phone with her hand and looked guiltily over her shoulder, half expecting to find Matt there, sharing her outrage at this pornographic intrusion. Mercifully, the staircase was empty, just her and her shame. Fumbling over the screen, she deleted the message then stood up, regained her composure and walked downstairs, back to normality and Scrabble and good old Harriet.

  ‘You’re going to hate me,’ said Harriet, turning the board so Tessa could admire her triumph.

  ‘Undergo. Seven letters. Seventy-two.’

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘Still, that’s Scrabble.’

  ‘Indeed it is.’

  They were nearing the end of the game when Nigel and Sandra arrived, clattering into the stone-flagged hallway with their luggage and stories of Friday-night travel hell.

  ‘I swear we nearly ran over Samantha Cameron,’ said Sandra. ‘It smells of rich people out here. If we ever had to leave London, it would have to be the Cotswolds.’

  ‘Orpington not good enough for you?’ asked Matt with a grin. ‘You’re as bad as Tessa, jumped-up suburbanites the pair of you.’

  ‘The three of us, actually,’ said Harriet.

  ‘I don’t count you, Harriet, you’ve got a naturally patrician air,’ said Matt. ‘I’m sur
e you’re from old Orpington stock, before it became common.’

  ‘Leave it out, Matt,’ said Sandra. ‘You and your minor public school snobbery and your dreams of country squirearchy.’

  ‘Not my fault I was given a scholarship. And I’m hardly dressed like a country squire!’

  He ran his hands over his usual black and grey ensemble.

  ‘No brown in town,’ said Sandra, ‘but you’re such a chameleon, you’d soon settle into your modern tweeds. I can just see you out with the hounds and your guns, once you’ve given up the urban pretension thing.’

  ‘You’ll be wanting a pint then, Nigel,’ said Matt, escorting him back out of the door, ‘we’ll leave you to it, girls.’

  ‘What a monumental waste of time,’ said Sandra, sitting down on the sofa and inspecting the board. ‘Scrabble is about as pointless as Sudoku.’

  ‘Keeps the brain working,’ said Harriet.

  ‘So does learning Cantonese, doesn’t mean you’re going to do it. Anyway, now the coast is clear, let’s talk about the ONLY topic we’re interested in right now.’

  ‘World poverty?’ asked Harriet, fiddling around with the letters on her rack. ‘Global warming? The so-called Islamic State?’

  ‘I refer, of course, to Tessa’s weekend of shame with former teenage heart-throb Donny Ormonde.’

  Harriet looked up, shocked.

  ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘I did. I can’t really believe it, but I did.’

  It still seemed unreal to her. The four-poster bed where he’d kissed her like a teenager and ripped off her clothes like they do in the movies. She wanted to be the good wife, enjoying a weekend away with her old school friends where the extent of her bad behaviour would be an overly indulgent dinner. Instead of which, she had landed herself with a situation.

  ‘I knew you were meeting him for lunch,’ said Harriet, ‘but I didn’t realise it would go any further.’

  ‘Neither did I. I didn’t plan it, it just happened.’

  Which wasn’t exactly true.

  Harriet raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I can’t explain. It was all so exciting. I’m used to Matt moaning about everything and letting me know what a disappointment I am. Then suddenly, John turns up and tells me I’m fantastic and gorgeous, and how we’re made for each other . . .’

  Her voice faltered and she paused to compose herself.

  ‘You just don’t expect that to happen at our age. You think you’ve made your life, that all the passionate stuff is in the past. Then this happens. And it’s fantastically thrilling and he makes you believe we really can pick up where we left off and have the charmed life we should have started all those years ago . . .’

  She picked up the bag of letters and worked them like worry beads.

  ‘And then you realise it’s not that easy, the complications come rushing in and my head’s spinning with it all. I just want to play Scrabble and have life go back to normal.’

  ‘Scrabble may be your normal, it’s not mine,’ said Sandra. ‘But hats off for going for it, I honestly didn’t think you’d have the balls.’

  Harriet frowned at her.

  ‘Can you stop using that terrible male language, you sound like you’re in the locker room.’

  ‘I’m just saying,’ said Sandra, ‘that she won’t regret it when she’s on her death bed. She had one final bite of the cherry before passing into an invisible and respectable old age.’

  ‘But that’s just it,’ said Tessa. ‘It’s not the final bite of the cherry, not at all! If you believe John, it’s the start of a new life together. We’re going to walk off holding hands into the sunset in Wyoming, or wherever.’

  ‘Please not Wyoming,’ said Sandra, ‘you needn’t think I’ll come and see you there.’

  ‘Scotland, then. Or the Bahamas.’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ said Sandra. ‘Handy for winter sun visits.’

  ‘So that’s what he wants,’ said Harriet, ‘but what do you want? I’m still trying to get my head round this.’

  ‘I don’t know. I want to keep that excitement going. I’d forgotten what it’s like to really look forward to something again. Remember when you were a child how you couldn’t wait for Christmas; that pure joy of anticipation? He’s coming back in a couple of weeks and I can put that in a box as my secret treat and count the days down. But it doesn’t mean I want to leave my life behind, because I don’t.’

  ‘Well thank you for that,’ said Sandra.

  ‘But I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing him again.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Harriet, ‘you poor thing, you’ve got yourself into a bit of a pickle.’

  ‘Bit of a pickle? More like a juicy pot of jam if you ask me,’ said Sandra. ‘Keep your options open and enjoy it while you can. That’s my philosophy.’

  ‘Philosophy, is that what you call it?’ said Harriet. ‘You and the builder.’

  ‘Don’t judge me, Harriet,’ said Sandra, ‘we all do what we can to make sense of our lives.’

  ‘And then there’s Matt,’ said Tessa. ‘He’s been so lovely the last few days, I feel like I’ve got the old version back, instead of the grumpy old bastard.’

  ‘Can’t say I’ve noticed the difference,’ said Sandra. ‘They’re all the same, boring and miserable. It’s like they reach a stage in their lives and a light goes off. Middle-aged and disappointed and incapable of waking up and smelling the roses.’

  ‘It’s been a Good Year for the Roses,’ said Tessa.

  Sandra was straight back.

  ‘Elvis Costello and the Attractions. 1981.’

  ‘You bloke. You even know the year.’

  Sandra laughed but Harriet looked confused.

  ‘Now you’ve lost me,’ she said. ‘Still, it’s obvious to me, Tessa, that you’ve suffered some sort of midlife crisis. What you have to do is just keep calm and carry on.’

  ‘Like it says on your bloody cushion,’ said Tessa. ‘Except we’re not in the Blitz, are we? We’re at the settled, comfortable time of our lives, on a weekend break in a country cottage, looking forward to growing old gracefully with our husbands and waiting for our grandchildren.’

  ‘Bleak,’ said Sandra. ‘You’ll be wanting us to join a golf club next. Finding hobbies for an active retirement.’

  She reached into her bag and took out her iPad.

  ‘Your problem, Tessa, is that you haven’t got a focus. You need a brilliant career like mine, to keep things in perspective. I’m looking for something to cover a wall, money no object, three metres by two. Quite tempted by this Higgins Rondelay glass screen, classic mid mod, what do you think?’

  She passed them the tablet to show a photo of coloured glass discs, strung together in a cheerful patchwork.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Tessa, ‘reminds me of a crochet waistcoat I once made. But I fail to see how that helps me.’

  ‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. I’ll acquire this for my client and it will hang there, an unchanging source of comfort, no matter what traumas she has in her life. Like all of us, she’s got a boring husband, but this is the payback for all those years of putting up with him. Plus, I get paid for finding it.’

  ‘Good for you. So you think I could solve my dilemma by sourcing an artwork?’

  ‘Why not? You’d have the thrill of the chase and then the reward of seeing it every day on your wall.’

  ‘I’m not as aesthetic as you, though. I prefer people to things.’

  ‘Especially John Ormonde. Let’s look him up on Facebook, see what he’s up to, apart from pining for you of course.’

  ‘I checked, there’s nothing there, except—’

  She was interrupted by a scream of excitement from Sandra.

  ‘YES! I’ve been waiting for this! Poppy’s been using my iPad and has forgotten to log out of Facebook. At last I get to snoop!’

  Harriet frowned.

  ‘I really don’t think you should do that, Sandra, it’s a terrible invasion
of privacy.’

  ‘She’s my daughter, it’s my responsibility to check up on her, by any means I can.’

  ‘It’s like reading someone’s diary, I don’t think it’s right.’

  ‘That’s the difference between us, I would read anyone’s diary, given the chance. Especially one belonging to my child.’

  ‘I thought I was bad enough,’ said Tessa, ‘I’m always stalking Lola’s profile. But I’d never actually try to hack into her account.’

  ‘Who’s talking about hacking? She’s left it wide open, obviously secretly wants me to look. Right, straight into the messages, I really can’t believe my luck . . .’

  She fell silent as she scrolled through the inbox, most of them were disappointingly banal, confirming arrangements or sending links to dreary songs performed by unsmiling young men. She didn’t know what she had been hoping for exactly, but it wasn’t this series of trite exchanges about who was going to wear what at the gathering hosted by whoever had a free house.

  ‘Are you familiar with that term?’ she asked her friends. ‘“Free house.” Not a pub without affinity to a particular brewery, but a home where the parents are away, no doubt so they can get up to all kinds of . . .’

  Then she came across what she had been subconsciously looking for.

  ‘OH NO! Oh my God, look at that!’

  She passed the tablet to Tessa, who recognised the blonde boy first, grinning into the camera. Poppy was beneath him, her face upside down, her bare limbs wrapped around her lover. Both of them were giving the thumbs-up sign.

  ‘Naked selfie,’ said Tessa.

  ‘Disgusting!’ said Sandra, taking the iPad back, ‘I mean, I know they’re having sex, but they don’t need to rub it in my face!’

  ‘They’re not rubbing it in your face, that’s a private message you just looked at,’ said Tessa.

  Sandra sat back on the sofa, still in shock.

  ‘My little girl. It was only yesterday I was buying her vests and she was snuggling into bed with me. I can still smell her baby hair. And now she’s making amateur porno flicks with that boy!’

  ‘It’s not a porno flick, it’s a naked selfie,’ said Tessa. ‘They all do it.’