by Celia Walden
‘You OK?’
Jamie followed, his mouth falling open at the sight that greeted them.
From their position inside this glass lookout post on the roof, was the 360-degree view across north-west London she’d taken in the other day, with the green slab of Queen’s Park ahead of them and the thigh-shaped curve of Kensal Green Cemetery to the left. As neatly plotted as a child’s toy village, the city extended out into the Persil-blue spring skies, marred only by a fritter of clouds.
‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Jamie could only shake his head in wonder as Nicole spoke. ‘And it gets better.’
Reaching for a hatch at the base of the glass dome, Nicole opened wide a panel of curved window, motioning at Jamie to follow her out onto a small flat expanse of slate roof.
‘Come.’
For a moment they sat out there – knees hugged into their chests – lost in quiet contemplation of a soundless London that from this hallowed, secret position seemed to be theirs alone.
‘What is this? Where are we?’ Jamie spluttered through laughter.
‘Told you it was worth it,’ she said, watching his smile widen at her detailed description of the structure’s mechanics.
‘Nerd,’ Jamie whispered, reaching for her hand. ‘You love this stuff.’
‘Don’t you?’ She turned to him. ‘Isn’t that what makes us different to those soulless brokers who couldn’t care less what they flog, or whether it’ll even still be standing a year later?’
‘Sure.’
Not wanting to think too deeply about his professional motivations, Nicole turned back to the view. ‘All looks so small, so unimportant from here.’ She curled her fingers around his.
‘Maybe it is.’ Jamie leant in to kiss her neck, but the slickness of his comeback brought Nicole back down to earth with a jolt.
Did he think he could spin lines to her, just as he’d done with the new girl, Sophia? After what he’d done to her at the end of last year, she wasn’t going to let him think he could have her on any terms. However weak she’d been today, that was no longer the case. Exhausted by the constant push and pull she felt around Jamie, Nicole angled her face firmly away.
‘Don’t.’ Even to herself she sounded unconvincing. ‘We can’t just go back to how things were. And the way you spoke to me earlier? Accusing me of things? What was that?’
‘I know. Christ, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to think.’
‘You never even explained what I was supposed to have done: this email I’m supposed to have sent?’
Jamie groaned. ‘Forget I said anything. I get that it wasn’t you.’
‘So talk to me.’
Hesitantly, he told her about the email Jill had forwarded him and the internal review she’d ordered after the Telegraph had turned the ‘Spiro scandal’ into a full-page story.
‘This could be serious. But I swear I never wrote the words in that email, Nic. Did I have concerns about Jill? Sure. And I still do. Because she’s not all there right now. She hasn’t been since Stan got ill.’
‘Her husband’s got cancer. How focused would you be if Maya had cancer?’
‘Listen.’ Jamie exhaled deeply. ‘I’ve known Stan and Jill for years. They brought me in, remember? And don’t … don’t talk about Maya.’
She bristled. ‘God. Sorry.’
‘But I wouldn’t be stupid enough to write those kinds of things in an email. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. But do I think Jill should take more than … well, a temporary step back? Yeah. She’s of retirement age.’
Nicole pulled a face. ‘My dad worked until he was seventy-two. I don’t remember anyone questioning it.’
Jamie tried to slip a hand around her waist. ‘So, what … this is some feminist thing?’
The most basic suggestions of equality tended to get ‘eye-rolled’ by Jamie; it had become an in-joke when they were together. Only right now Nicole’s mood felt as precarious as their position on that rooftop, a hundred feet up, and she couldn’t bring herself to laugh.
‘Come on, I’ve got to get going.’
‘Why do you care so much about this? You don’t even know Jill.’
‘I really do have to go.’ Nicole crawled towards the trapdoor. ‘But I suppose I care about Jill because I’ve had enough to do with her to know that she’s very good at her job. And for you of all people to be talking about her the way you are behind her back just seems … then again, maybe loyalty’s not your thing.’
They came down that Jacob’s ladder in a very different mood, and shoulder to shoulder but in silence headed through the auditorium towards the door. Outside in the stymied fury of London rush hour, Jamie turned back towards her.
‘I didn’t write that email.’
‘I believe you.’ Nicole sighed, relieved to discover as she said it that it was true. ‘Guess I just thought you might be a liar as well as a cheat.’
‘Right,’ Jamie said flatly, exhausted now by all this judgement. ‘And maybe I deserve that from you. But if you didn’t do this, Nic, who did?’
‘I have no idea,’ she threw back as she turned on her heels and, with a half-hearted wave, walked off down Kilburn Lane. Nicole wasn’t about to tell him that this had Alex written all over it, much less the part she’d played in prompting his ex-PA to move ahead with ‘the plan’. Everything she’d said that night at the pub had been true – of the preamble to their affair. Only she’d left out her encouragement of Jamie’s ‘inappropriate’ gestures and words. She’d omitted to mention that the day he’d called her ‘fuckable’, she’d gone home and replayed it over and over while Ben slept beside her, stifling her final shuddering moan with a pillow.
Not one word of what she’d told Alex at her flat that night had been a lie, either. Spurred on by her discovery that Jamie had tried to embark on similar games with Sophia, she’d dredged back that one time – and it had just been one – when Jamie had taken things too far. Whether he’d misread her signals or got off on watching her flail and splutter, Nicole would never know. It had been so close to their split that she’d buried it along with everything else – until that night in the pub. Hearing Alex and Jill talk about their own humiliations at the hands of Jamie, and understanding for the first time just how much he enjoyed power play with women in every area of his life, had awakened the memory. A hotel-room floor: her head painfully angled against a radiator valve; his right hand squeezing her neck harder, harder. As he’d ignored her gasps – ‘Stop it’ – she’d forced a strangled laugh, hoping it might diffuse whatever aggression they’d worked up together. ‘OK. Please. Stop.’ They’d never had a ‘safe word’, never even discussed the idea of one. Would it have made a difference? Remembering the blankness of Jamie’s pupils and the slackness of his jaw as his rhythm speeded into angry jerks – then the slump – she couldn’t be sure. But the shock on his face when she finally managed to push his dead weight off her and, kicking and cursing, got to her feet – that had seemed so genuine.
‘Christ, I really did hurt you!’ Jamie had whimpered.
She’d felt grateful that his ongoing apologies and pleas for forgiveness had kept drowning out the question running on a loop inside her head: But you didn’t stop. Why didn’t you stop, Jamie, when I asked you to?
Nicole had never, even to herself, used the word her brain had rejected as inaccurate – impossible? – at the time. And that night with Alex, she hadn’t needed to. Because in the madness that seized her after seeing those pictures of Jamie’s blissed-out family life and hearing about his fresh office prey, Nicole had gone from wanting to call off the Rottweiler PA sinking her incisors into Jamie’s heels to willing that dog to tear him apart.
Only not for a second had Nicole imagined she might find herself back with Jamie. Those wheels she’d set in motion – what if it was too late to stop them?
CHAPTER 20
ALEX
‘Don’t you dare take your shoes off! Put them back on.’ ‘Really?’
Alex was leaning against Ma
ya’s hall wall, pushing down on the heel of her right trainer.
‘Lexie,’ said Maya, laughing, ‘we went through this last week. We’re not Swiss. Plus I just convinced my husband to get us one of those new Dyson Cyclones or whatever they’re called. Looks like a lightsaber, which I know he secretly loves, as all aged Star Wars nerds would. Now come through – we’ll have some lunch.’
When she’d walked in there the previous week, exhilarated by the risk she was taking even once assured her former boss was at work until late, her first thought had been that Jamie’s social media hadn’t done their house justice. A semidetached Victorian townhouse, the place had somehow been cleverly reconfigured into an open-plan modern family home, with minimalist furniture and edgy contemporary art lining the walls. Inside, it looked like it was worth a hell of a lot more than the £3,250,000 Zoopla had it valued at.
‘Wow. This place is gorgeous, Maya. Doesn’t feel like we’re in London, somehow?’
‘Yeah? It’s taken us ages to get it the way we want it. And now I’m already getting itchy feet and thinking of moving further out – but not too far. Richmond or Barnes, maybe.’
After lifting Elsa out of the red scarf carrier she always seemed to have slung around her neck in readiness for her daughter, Maya had set the girls down in the play gym in the far corner of the room, where the kitchen adjoined a trellised conservatory-cum-dining room. There the two girls had gurgled contentedly while their mothers had enjoyed the kind of leisurely afternoon Alex had started to think she’d never be allowed again.
Today, instead of seating her at the kitchen table, Maya led Alex out to the conservatory that looked out onto their garden. In between the two cascading magnolia trees at either end of the lawn stood a swing set and slide: not the ugly plastic kind you found in public playgrounds but a retro, hand-painted wooden set Jamie would have painstakingly put together himself.
The overhead sun was streaming through the glass onto the broad beech table and a heady scent of orchids and baked wood filled the room.
‘I’d spend all day in here if I could, but at this time of year the kids find it too hot.’
‘Oh Maya, it’s amazing. Christel’s at nursery?’
‘Yes. Our nanny’s picking her up. Which means I don’t have to drive, and we can have a glass of rosé.’
‘Great.’ Alex smiled. Only the fantasy she’d been living ever since she’d arrived at Bumps & Babies that morning had just imploded. Because a memory was drifting back: of a cheerful-faced Filipina dropping Christel off with her father at the office at the end of the day, months back. Alex was heavily pregnant at the time, and the two women had had a conversation. What it had been about and whether it had been long enough for her to place Alex today, she didn’t know. But suddenly the risk she was running, the madness of being here as ‘Lexie the Chiswick mum’ in her former boss’s house hit her with such force that she stood up fast, catching her wine glass with the back of her hand and sending it crashing down onto the flagstones.
‘Oh! Maya, I’m so sorry. Let me … have you got any kitchen roll?’
‘Please – I’ll do it.’
In an instant she was back from the kitchen with a dustpan and brush. ‘Here I am plying you with wine and you need food, don’t you?’
‘You know, on second thoughts maybe we should do lunch another day.’ Alex’s throat was dry and her eyes darting from Katie on the play mat to her bag on the sofa, as she assessed how quickly an exit could be made without it seeming odd. ‘You’ve got little Christel back any moment and …’
Maya looked up from her crouched position on the floor, where she’d almost finished clearing up Alex’s mess. They’re going to the park after school, so they won’t be back until four-ish – relax!’
And as Alex checked the clock on the wall out of the corner of her eye and saw to her relief that it wasn’t yet two, she felt the relief course through her body.
‘Now, I’ll put us together a quick chicken Caesar – that OK? It won’t take two minutes.’ Then, from the kitchen: ‘I get those blood sugar slumps too – it’s the breastfeeding. Doesn’t it wipe you out?’
‘That and being up five times a night,’ Alex called back.
‘I don’t think men will ever understand what that level of tiredness does to you. And yet we carry on. Jamie’s one of the most energetic men you’ll ever meet, but he’s fetishistic about sleep. Can’t survive without it. Anything less than eight hours and the man’s a wreck.’
I know – I remember. I was the one who used to have to fix all the work blunders he made when he was jetlagged or had been drinking late.
‘My husband’s the same,’ laughed Alex, calmer now. And it was lovely in this airy, white house with this bright, blonde woman. Yes, Maya was pampered and inhabited another world, but the two women seemed to share many of the same concerns, and there was something soothing about her physical presence: everything from her soft-focus skin and symmetrical Scandinavian features to the flatness of her vowels drowning out Alex’s ceaseless inner chatter. Even Katie seemed more peaceable in her company. And as the two women had ambled lazily along Chiswick High Road after their Little Gym class, their conversation jumping from silly (‘those plate-sized nipples you’ve got right now? Don’t panic – they’ll go back’) to serious (‘the isolation of those first few months: no one tells you about that’), Alex had felt happier and more relaxed than she had in months.
But it was Maya’s kindness that she had found most startling in the woman who had chosen to marry Jamie Lawrence. Did she have any idea what kind of a monster she was living with? ‘I hope you don’t mind that I called,’ she’d whispered at the start of the class. ‘To be honest, I felt a bit worried about you. Like you –’ she looked embarrassed ‘– I don’t know … could do with a gal pal. I know I could.’
Alex could tell that Maya had chosen the cheesiest expression she could in order to lighten the statement. And that in itself was sweet. She hadn’t wanted to assume or imply that Alex didn’t have friends, but the frustration both of them clearly felt as working-women-turned-mothers wasn’t something many admitted to in the easy and immediate way they had the first day they’d met. And however different their lifestyles were, it bonded them. So when Maya had again suggested lunch at hers, this time Alex hadn’t resisted.
The curiosity, malevolent in the midst of such a carefree day, had only kicked in once inside Jamie’s house. Because until Alex was confronted by those photos of her former boss on the shelves again, it had somehow been easy to forget that there was any link between Jamie and this woman she was reluctantly starting to like. And as she glanced from a picture of her ex-boss and Maya laughing into falling confetti on their wedding day to one of the pair in ironic Christmas jumpers somewhere rich and snowy, Alex was forced to suppress a shudder at the thought of what that gregarious-faced family man had done to Nicole.
Maya had just served up the salad when the slam of the front door made them both jump.
‘Hellooo,’ came a singsong Filipina’s voice from the hall. ‘We’re back early! Christel not feeling so good.’
‘Oh, my sweetheart.’ When Maya rushed out to greet her daughter, Alex, the blood pulsing in her ears, forced herself to think. There had to be a way out of this.
‘Are you hungry, my love?’ Scooping up her daughter from the play gym and hoping Maya wouldn’t remember how recently she’d last given Katie a bottle, Alex ducked out into the conservatory, angling her body towards the wall in the way a breast-feeding mother might.
‘Take the bottle!’ she whispered, dipping her head in a silent thank you when her daughter did.
There was nothing as distracting as one’s own children, and as she heard Maya’s maternal murmurings in the next room, she felt reassured that both women might be consumed enough by little Christel to ignore her.
‘Did she have a snack on the way home?’ she heard Maya ask the nanny, in between nuzzles.
‘Just those breadsticks – and some
raisins.’
‘Do you think she’s still hungry?’
‘I can make her something?’
Say no. No thanks. Do head off for the day. We’re all sorted here. Because Katie had decided she’d had enough formula, and her cheeks were turning pink and blotchy in the magnified heat of the conservatory. Any minute now she would kick off, and alert the nanny to their presence.
Alex was still working out a game plan when she heard Maya tell the nanny that no: they would be fine. And why didn’t she head off for the day? Closing her eyes, Alex let out a long, controlled breath: someone was looking out for her.
When she opened them again, a small, sleek-haired woman was standing in the conservatory doorway holding out a glass of iced water.
‘Thought you might need this? So hot in here!’
Her smile was as broad and straightforward as it had been that afternoon at the office, but as Alex took the glass from her hand, the nanny’s eyes moved from Katie to Alex’s face where they lingered, a question mark implicit.
‘Thank you. I … I’m Lexie.’
‘Maria.’
But the woman didn’t move.
‘I’m sweltering,’ Alex mumbled into Katie’s muslin, anxious not to lift her face. ‘But I’ll just finish off her feed.’
A frown. ‘You and … Mr Lawrence?’
It was part statement, part question, and before Alex could think of a reply, Maya poked her head around the door and laughed. ‘No, this is my friend Lexie. She’s a Bumps & Babies girl. Katie here is only a month older than Elsa.’
Alex squirmed as she saw this fact chime again in Maria’s consciousness. They would have compared due dates that day in the office; in fact she could remember doing just that.
‘Do head off.’ Maya was saving her, and she didn’t even know it. ‘Christel can watch a bit of telly, can’t you, my love? Get some rest while Mummy and Lexie finish their lunch? And Katie and Elsa might be ready for their nap.’