One Step Too Far

by Tina Seskis

  “I don’t know,” I say moodily. I swing my legs round to get out of bed and this time Angel doesn’t try to stop me, she seems fine about me going out now.

  “You have a shower,” she says. “And let’s see how you feel later.” I grunt and stagger to the bathroom.

  33

  Emily stood staring into the cot at her sleeping baby, as if transfixed. She’d just opened the curtains and the little room was bright with late summer sunshine: it was time for him to wake up, they were off to see her in-laws in Buxton. She lowered the cot side so she could reach in and lift him out and as she did so the Winnie the Pooh characters on his mobile shook gently, as though they were awakening too. She hesitated before picking him up, examining him again, as if he was a miracle, which to her he was – perfectly rounded head with soft downy hair leant gently to one side, cheek so plump it was like a cushion for his shoulder; arms flung out as if in submission, elbows at right-angles so his little fists were level with his nose; belly moving up and down inside the plain white baby grow as his breath gently rasped (she’d never known babies snored); little fat legs splayed wide open, creased at the knees; the soles of his feet, in tiny white socks that were still too big for him, coming together and almost meeting. The cot was white, the sheet and blanket were white, he looked so clean and pure she wanted to stay in this moment, look at him forever.

  Emily was amazed at how motherhood had affected her, had made her see everything differently, more simply somehow. She hadn’t even wanted to get pregnant really, and although Ben had been keen for ages she’d put him off – she hadn’t wanted to upset Caroline, which she saw now was ridiculous. She loved everything about being a mother, the smells, the warmth, the unconditional nature of how she gave herself to her son, even when he’d driven her mad with his bawling, even when she was dog-tired from the day. She loved how having him had brought Ben and her closer, if that had been possible, and even Caroline had been wonderful about it. She didn’t deserve to be this happy.

  As the light gently woke him, he opened his eyes and blinked up at her and then instead of crying like he usually did his face split into a gummy smile and she leaned down and picked him up and held him as he cooed and gurgled. She thought then about how fast the time had passed, how she was meant to be going back to work in a couple of months, she’d booked the nursery place already. She’d probably have to wake him some mornings – she bet he wouldn’t be smiling then – and it would all be such a rush to get him fed and dressed and out the door. As it drew closer she found she was dreading, a little more each day, the thought of going back. It was probably in this moment, sat amongst his teddies on the couch in his bedroom, in that beautiful moment of stillness, that she realised, and she wondered just how she was going to tell Ben.

  In the end she just said it, later that night as they lay in bed, their feet kicking, pressing against each other’s.

  “Ben, I don’t want to go back to work,” she said.

  Her husband shifted then and propped himself up on his shoulder, so he could look at her properly in the dusky light. He took her hand.

  “I know I always said I wanted to, but now I can’t bear to think of leaving him in a nursery. He needs me, his mother.”

  “Wow, you’ve changed your tune,” said Ben and he leaned down and kissed her on the nose.

  “You don’t mind then?” she said.

  “Of course not.”

  “We’ll have way less money. What about our holidays, us getting a bigger house one day, running two fancy cars? We’ll probably have to sell one.”

  “Emily," said Ben. "I couldn’t care less. We have our family, that’s all that matters.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “You’re not just being bloody nice as usual?”

  “No,” he said. “I’d prefer it. I just never wanted to ask you, you didn’t seem like you’d want to give up your job. I really couldn’t give a shit about the money. We’ll cope.”

  “I’ll quote you on that when we’re eating bread and dripping and have holes in our shoes,” Emily said, but she felt so ridiculously happy she didn’t even care if that’s what they ended up doing.

  34

  I stand in the shower and wash the vomit from my hair. I feel strange still – empty, cleansed, I can’t explain it. Free at last? I wonder what kind of drugs Simon’s doctor gave me, why my legs are so wobbly and my mind is so still. I borrow some of Angel’s pineapple face scrub and it zings my face but still I can’t feel anything. Is it finally over?

  As I step out the shower my legs feel stronger and I think of the new jade satin dress in my wardrobe, split to the thigh, my silver stilettos – maybe I should go out after all, it might even be fun if Angel’s going.

  Fun? Who am I kidding?

  It’s still only 7.30, we could be there in an hour, and anyway I’m hungry now. I hardly ate anything of the seafood platter, I was a lousy ad for their chilli crab claws, and the thought makes me giggle, and the emotion punches through the fog in my mind.

  I swan back into my bedroom, where Angel is watching some terrible soap. I do a twirl in my towel. “Cinders, you shall go to the ball,” I shout and Angel looks at me oddly, pauses for a long while, as if she’s not sure what to do, and finally says, “OK, I’ll go and get ready.”

  35

  Until he tried to kill her, Angel lived with Anthony in a loft apartment at Tower Bridge. He’d met her playing poker with clients one night, and although Angel didn’t usually pick up punters from the casino, it wasn’t her style, Anthony was persistent. As he was leaving he persuaded her to give him her number, and then he called her every hour for the rest of the night, until she knocked off at six.

  The next day 40 red roses arrived and although Angel knew it all seemed far too good to be true, she went online and looked up the number’s significance and found it meant, “My love for you is genuine.” Angel was flattered, fluttery, and found she couldn’t say no when he begged her to call in sick the very next night. He picked her up in his Maserati and took her to dinner in a restaurant in the City with views across London. And then he took her back to his apartment to champagne on ice and floaty jazzy tunes she’d never heard, and when he led her onto the balcony overlooking the river to finally kiss her the perfection of the romance was complete. She stayed that night, dressed in one of his T-shirts, and he tucked her into his armpit like a precious doll, and she was the luckiest girl in the world.

  Anthony ran his own venture capital firm. He was wealthy certainly (but, as she realised afterwards, in that precarious way ostentatiously rich people often are) and he was handsome, charming. Angel was besotted, and after just a few weeks she stopped going home at all, and she gave up working at the casino, and she lived like a princess, except there was a pea under her bed, waiting to be discovered.

  Things started to change for Angel after the first blissful three or four months of living together. Anthony had already started taking her to client dinners, introducing her as “my little Cockney Angel,” and although she thought it was a bit disrespectful she didn’t take it too seriously, she was sure it was affectionate. She’d sit demurely with his guests in swanky restaurants and laugh in all the right places, throwing back her pretty head, exposing her slender neck, knowing the effect she had on these men, after all she was used to it. One night, when Anthony was outside taking a call, Angel had picked up from one of the guests that maybe things weren’t quite so rosy at Anthony’s firm, and so she'd asked him about it when they got home.

  “What the fuck do you mean?” he said.

  “Er, Richard was saying he was worried about the Fitzroy deal, I just wondered what he meant?”

  “What the fuck’s it got to do with you?”

  Angel decided two fucks were enough. She stood tall, all five feet two of her. “Don’t you talk to me like that,” she said. “Who do you think you are?”

  Anthony had given her a look of such pure hatred at this point that it turned her stomach even more than the swe
aring. He reined in his fury and got up from the depths of the sofa and walked steadily towards the spare bedroom. He paused for a while at the threshold, as if relenting, and then he changed his mind and went in anyway, and he slammed the door so hard behind him that one of his jazz portraits in the hallway fell off and smashed, right across the gleeful smile on Charlie Parker’s face.

  36

  Angel takes ten minutes to get ready, even though she’s the type of girl you’d imagine taking hours. She has rung in sick – which she hasn’t done in ages – and she looks stunning in nude floaty chiffon. Her blonde hair is swept into an off-centre bun at the nape of her neck and I don’t know how she does it herself, with just three or four Kirby grips. I feel big and gangly next to her, like a giant runner bean in my emerald dress, and I try not to hate her.

  Angel insists we order a cab, and when it turns up the seats are grimy and the car stinks of smoke and car freshener and I have to wind down the window and lean my head out to stop the nausea returning. It ruins my hair, but Angel just sits there, all chiselled cheekbones and slim silky legs and her chignon doesn’t move a centimetre. By the time we arrive I’m sure my face is the colour of my dress, and I think perhaps I should have stayed in bed after all.

  People are just starting their main courses and great armies of waiters and waitresses are descending on the tables like a culinary invasion, and Angel and I get in the way of the fillet steak in a cream and champagne sauce, or pumpkin and ricotta filo parcels for the vegetarians amongst us. I know this because Angel gets Luke’s dinner and he’d ordered the non-meat option, and I joke to her in a no-nonsense Northern way that that’s why he’s ill, he doesn’t eat meat, the big wuss. “Shush,” says Angel, smiling, and although it annoys me to be told off maybe I was a bit loud.

  Although Simon seems delighted to see me, alive, bathed, back on my feet, he seems even more keen to see Angel, and she sits down beside him and I get Nathalie. I’m sure it’s me who’s meant to be next to Simon – these things are usually boy girl boy girl and there are definitely name tags. I’m certain Angel’s meant to be Luke. I suspect that Simon has swapped the tags and the thought makes me cross.

  As I sit there moodily I feel like the world is wavy, not quite straight any more. I wonder what’s wrong with me, why I’m so jealous of Angel tonight. There are so much more important things to be upset about. I realise for a moment I’ve stopped thinking about it although it’s still the anniversary of it but the thought that I haven’t thought about it makes me think it and I turn abruptly to Nathalie.

  “You look nice Nat, love your dress.”

  “Thanks Cat, vintage – aka Oxfam!” She laughs, and then looks serious for a second. “You OK? Simon said you had a dodgy oyster at lunch – that must’ve gone through you quickly?”

  “Er, yes,” I say. “I’m feeling much better now though,” and I tuck into my steak as I’m bloody starving.

  The food’s average and I’m getting a bit fed up now – Simon’s monopolising Angel and although Nathalie’s lovely I’m too grumpy to talk about clothes or celebrities or ads, and in truth I can’t think of anything else to talk about today. Tiger is the other side of the table, looking fierce and phenomenal, and although we don’t speak she catches my eye and I know that Simon has confided in her and she gives a smile of such kindness I didn’t know she had it in her.

  Angel turns to me then, and I can tell she’s embarrassed by Simon’s attentiveness and doesn’t want to upset me, so she whispers, “I’m going to the ladies, you coming?” I know what that usually means, and I shake my head: I’m still being strong for my little boy, although what’s the point, he won’t ever know, I can’t go back to him now.

  So she gets up and goes on her own, and although she’s so tiny everyone notices her as she crosses the room, maybe it’s the way she walks, and she reminds me of Ruth, her mother.

  Simon shifts across to speak to me. “How are you doing Cat? I was so worried about you earlier.”

  “I feel better now,” I say, although the vacant feeling hasn’t quite gone. “You seem to have hit it off with Angel.”

  “She is gorgeous,” Simon concedes. “And anyway, you won’t have me.”

  I look at him then and see the longing in his eyes, not for me or for Angel in particular, but just for love, for genuine giving-accepting all-encompassing love, like I once had with my husband, before Caroline, or was it me, destroyed it. I take his hand.

  “Simon, I’m so sorry about earlier, I promise it won’t happen again. I hope I didn’t ruin your best suit, I’ll pay for the dry-cleaning of course.”

  Simon ignores my attempt at humour. He looks at me searingly. “You were about to tell me your secret earlier, weren’t you, Cat? What is it, you can still tell me. I’m sure I can help.”

  I look at him sadly then, as I know that he can’t help, no-one can, and I also know that I’m back from the brink, it belongs in my past life, and I will never ever tell now, as long as I live.

  37

  As time went on Anthony became more and more unreasonable. If Angel burnt the toast, or he didn’t like her outfit, or a girlfriend called her to have a chat, he’d go off on one, screaming and shouting, calling her names. Angel tried to stand up for herself, but it was hard, she was dependent on him now. She’d given up her job, her flat, her friends were drifting away, and what did she have? Beautiful clothes and expensive dinners, the most stunning view of the Thames, and a boyfriend who called her a cunt. She didn’t even feel she could tell her mother – Ruth seemed delighted that her Angela had found such a charming rich lover, it was embarrassing to confess the truth. So Angel did her best to not upset Anthony, it really wasn’t worth the trouble, and she rarely saw her friends anymore, made sure she only wore clothes she knew he approved of, never ever answered back, and when he started to tell her what she could and couldn’t order in restaurants she didn’t bother to try to assert her own opinion, she couldn’t face the row.

  Things may have carried on for a lot longer if Anthony hadn’t stepped it up a gear. Instead of just flying into a rage and screaming obscenities, he started saying things like, “If you forget to put the dishwasher on again, I’ll kill you, you fucking bitch.” And then when that didn’t fix her, he started ramming her up against the kitchen cabinets and spitting into her face as he said it.

  Angel worked really hard to make Anthony happy – she didn’t want to be like her mother, with a string of rubbish boyfriends and the occasional trip to A & E accompanied by a small scared child. Anthony was a lovely guy really, he’d treated her so well at first, hadn’t he? Surely she could bring that back if she tried hard enough. Yet the irony was that the more she tried to placate him, the more she invited the eventual physical attack, and when it came it was merciless. Afterwards he sobbed and held her tight and promised to never do it again, but when Angel suggested she find somewhere else to live while he sorted himself out, he turned nasty again and physically locked her in the apartment and took away her mobile. She thought about standing on her marble-tiled balcony and yelling it to the river, that she was held prisoner here, but Anthony seemed to get wind of that idea and locked the terrace door too.

  That first time he kept her prisoner for a week, until he was sure she’d learned her lesson. Although she was only locked up occasionally after that the fight had gone out of her – after all she must deserve it somehow. She lost weight and her hair became lank, and Anthony started telling her she was ugly and useless and that no-one else would want her and she even began to believe it. But when the beatings and threats to kill her became almost daily Angel knew enough was enough, it was time to act, and she hatched herself a plan.

  38

  Angel comes back from the toilet and she’s in a good mood, her eyes are sparkling and I almost wish I’d gone with her. She sits the other side of Simon and starts talking to the H of CSGH and I can tell it doesn’t take her long to realise that he’s the hanger-on of the four, the one with no talent who just got l
ucky. Angel is so bright and capable, it’s a shame all she does is work in a casino, she could do so much more, and then I remember the things she’s endured and I think it’s a miracle she’s survived at all.

  The waiting troops swoop again and deliver lemon tart with blueberries and crème fraiche, and for such a fancy affair they could have made a bit more of an effort with the menu. The awards bit of the evening is due to start soon and they’ve booked some chat show host from Channel 4, and he’s being briefed by a stressed looking woman with a clipboard and heels she can’t walk in. One of the waiters pours me more wine and he does it in a hurry, like I have no choice but to have it, and although I probably shouldn’t I’m bored and moody so I take a sip and then another, but still I can’t shake off the feeling that I’m only “almost here,” I’m just observing. Simon’s face looms large at me when I look at him, everything seems out of proportion, the lights that waltz around the stage as the presentation starts are screamingly bright, and I look down at my half-eaten lemon pie and feel bilious again. It must be the drugs the doctor gave me, they definitely haven’t agreed with me, and as I don’t know what else to do I raise my glass and drink.

  The compere makes a risqué joke about what a bunch of tossers people in advertising are, but as he’s in a room full of people in advertising it falls rather flat. Someone heckles him that at least they don’t visit massage parlours, referencing his recent tabloid scandal, and he goes to walk off stage until Clipboard Lady manages to placate him from the wings.

  The awards are interminable and I can’t believe I’d thought it was so important to come, on today of all days. Frank is up for best TV commercial and when it wins I get to go up with Simon to collect the award. As I stand in my long green dress gurning at the camera, holding a plaque for an ad about underarm no-go zones involving runaway ponies, I think how ridiculous this whole world is and wonder how it’s taken me so long to realise. I don’t know why I’ve become so self-important, it’s not as if I’ve been making movies or anything, we’re not at the Oscars, I’ve just been trying to sell stuff. It’s funny really.