by Celia Walden
‘Yes. Yes, he is. He’s all over the place.’
As furious as she was, Alex couldn’t help but smile at this. After all these months running his lucrative little business on the corner of her street and waking Katie up with his sodding scooter, that drug dealer had proved himself useful. Nicole, too, had unwittingly played her part. He might never have had a client with a baby strapped to her chest before, but when she’d asked for Ritalin – ‘the highest dose you have’ – he’d shown neither surprise nor judgement, reaching into his Fila bag and counting out fourteen anodyne-looking white pills. She’d crammed those pills into Jamie’s ‘days of the week’ vitamin box on her next visit to Maya’s house. Let him see how it feels to be up all night every night, heart and mind racing.
‘Bottom line,’ Nicole was saying, and her calmness made Alex want to scream, It’s not love making your man a mess, love, it’s a whopping dose of stimulants! ‘But this is none of your business. We’re going to try and do things right this time.’
Alex took a step back. ‘Meaning tell your husband, and Maya?’
A flash of something. Concern? Suspicion? Her reference to Jamie’s wife had been too easy, familiar.
‘You’ve not … you’ve never made contact with Maya, have you?’
‘I’ll leave that to you. And what a fun conversation that’ll be – if any of this actually happens.’
‘This is happening.’
‘When?’
‘Soon.’ Nicole looked towards the light streaming in at the end of the underpass, clearly desperate to get away. ‘I’m sorry for everything you’re going through, just as I’m sorry for keeping things from you. But like I say, this is no longer any of your business.’ Nicole swallowed. ‘I know you’ve been trying to get Jill worked up again, Alex. I know about the emails and the letters.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Stop it. I know it’s you – all of it. And it’s gone too far. Jamie has his faults, but he wouldn’t write that kind of thing without good reason.’
‘“Good reason”? I can’t believe this!’
‘Maybe he genuinely believes it would be right both for the company and Jill that she take a step back …’
‘And me? There was nothing “genuine” about my dismissal, was there?’
Nicole was scrutinising her in a way she didn’t like. At all. ‘Did you ever think that there might be valid reasons? Because as harsh as it sounds, from the way you’ve been behaving, I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable having you around, either. This obsession of yours …’
‘Obsession?’
‘Can’t you see that’s what it’s become? But nothing you do is going to change anything.’ Then, more softly: ‘It’s Katie you should be concentrating on now, not your ex-boss, me, or any of this.’
Not a clue. Nicole didn’t have the smallest clue.
‘Hey, I wasn’t just good at my job, I was the best. Ask anyone. And Jamie took that away from me to save his own skin. He …’
But all of a sudden, Alex gave up. She was tired and thirsty – so thirsty. And now that the shock of Nicole and Jamie’s affair was sinking in, Alex began to look at it in a whole new light. Jamie wouldn’t have the guts to end his marriage, but Maya might. And she would need a friend when she did. Alex could be that friend, help pick up the pieces, make herself indispensable.
Without so much as a last glance at Nicole, Alex began to walk away. ‘I’ve got to get this one home for her nap.’
‘Hey!’ Nicole trotted after her. ‘You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you? Alex? I know Jamie’s made mistakes, behaved badly – but so have I. So have you! It’s time for us to draw a line under all of it now.’
Emerging, blinking, into the bright expanse of the Great West Road, Alex turned to Nicole one last time: ‘You stupid woman.’
The sun lit up two white hairs on either side of Nicole’s parting, and Alex felt almost sorry for her. ‘Those emails I’ve been reading? I’ve gone back months, years – before I was even working for Jamie. They’re the first thing I read when I wake up and the last thing I read after Katie’s bedtime feed. Which is how I know that last Friday he and Maya put a deposit down on a five-bedroom place in Barnes. It’s Georgian. Maya’s always liked Georgian. And they needed more space, you know, in case she caved and had a third, as Jamie’s already begging her to do.’
As the traffic droned past them in sonorous waves, Alex realised that it wasn’t just an expression: colour could actually drain from a person’s face, sucked out by shock.
‘There’s a double driveway and “eaves storage”, whatever that is. But it was the patio that clinched it for Maya.’
‘You’d say anything, wouldn’t you? Well, I don’t believe you.’ Wrapped around the strap of her bag, Nicole’s knuckles were white.
‘You should.’
‘This is over.’
Nicole had started walking away, but Alex wasn’t having it. In two brisk steps she caught up with her. But this time she was careful to keep her tone measured.
‘If Jamie doesn’t turn out to be the man you think he is. If I’m right …’
Nicole gave an impatient head-toss.
‘Call me. That’s all I’m saying. Because I know what it would take to finish him. And it’s not much.’
‘Get some help, Alex. You need it.’ The traffic all but drowned out Nicole’s last sentence: ‘And don’t ever call me again.’
CHAPTER 24
JILL
‘Slow down, Harry. You’re not making any sense.’
Straightening herself up, Jill rubbed at the base of her spine, where the weeding was beginning to take its toll. Their neighbours had a gardener tend the tiny patch of greenery by their narrowboat, but Stan had always been too proud to do the same. Knowing how upsetting he was finding the overgrown hawthorn and accumulation of litter in the plant pots, Jill, who had never much cared for gardening, had started to spend a few hours dealing with the worst of it on Saturday mornings, while her husband read beside her.
‘No, no I haven’t spoken to Jamie.’
Up by the fence, the glint of a sweet wrapper caught her eye and she dipped back down to snatch it up. Why were people so disgusting?
‘Yes, last night – you and Trish went for supper there, didn’t you?’
To Stan’s questioning eyebrow, Jill mouthed, ‘Ainsley.’ Looking up from the hardback copy of Through the French Canals she’d given him last Christmas, her husband rolled his eyes.
‘That doesn’t sound … yes, I can quite imagine … I bet she was. I can’t imagine what he was thinking. Jamie’s been a bit … well, of course it’s not on. Harry, let me call him now, but I’m sure I speak for us all when I say how very sorry I am. Sounds like a total shambles and, if I know Jamie, he’ll be beside himself with embarrassment. Listen, I’m going to call you straight back. What? You are? Well can I at least … no? Right. OK. Well please don’t let this in any way affect our working relationship. Harry? Harry?’
‘What was that about?’
Jill sat down on the end of his lounger and took off her gloves.
‘Weirdest thing. Jamie had Ainsley and his wife over for supper last night. You know how long we’ve been trying to get him on side with us, but he’s a tricky bugger so we had a lot invested in this dinner with Jamie. I told you he’s been eyeing up the Minerva site, didn’t I? Anyway, Ainsley just called to say the dinner was a total shambles. Shambles! Maya served up pork …’
‘What? But she must have known that he and Trish are Jewish?’
‘How could she not? And not only that, but they’d sent over a whole list of allergies and preferences. I get the feeling Trish is pretty high maintenance, as you’d expect, and Maya basically seems to have ignored the lot.’
‘Doesn’t sound like her.’
‘Stan, she served up white wine with the pork, which apparently gives Harry “chronic ’eartburn”.’ Not liking the worry on her husband’s face, she smiled. ‘And just when it seemed like the whole thing couldn�
�t get any worse, Harry goes to the loo and …’ Jill put her hands to her face. ‘Christ, Stan, he said there was a nappy, a soiled nappy, just sitting there on the floor in the guest loo. Maya must have changed the little one at the last minute and just forgotten to bin it or something.’
At this Stan put down Through the French Canals and pulled himself up straighter. ‘That’s …’
‘Horrifying. I know.’
‘But also completely uncharacteristic. I mean, I’ve never seen Maya be sloppy about anything. She’s so together, isn’t she?’
‘She is … but Jamie’s been all over the place, as you know. The other day he was behaving to Ainsley in this manic way in our pitch meeting. I mean, really weird. And maybe this second baby has, I don’t know, thrown her – or both of them. Maybe they’re having real issues.’
‘Well, if he’s been harassing women in the office, I bet they are. But you’re sure that’s all been put to bed?’
‘Oh yes.’ Getting up, Jill put her gloves back on. ‘The woman – Nicole – she’s very clear she wants to put it all behind her. But I’m going to keep an eye on Jamie. And if he puts even a single toe wrong in that department … but right now I need to find out what really went on last night.’
‘Good idea. We really don’t want to be alienating Ainsley, do we?’ Stan made no move to pick his book back up, she noticed. And, again, Jill felt stupid to have told him about the call.
‘It’s all going to be fine, you know. Really.’
‘Once Jamie’s booted out?’
The surprise forced her back down beside him. She’d told her husband about the review she’d ordered once Spiro’s antics had come to light, but not about the email and letter, still not certain those weren’t somehow down to Alex. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well he can’t keep mucking up like this, can he? Look at what it’s doing to you, having to clean up his messes. To say nothing of what it’s costing the company. That business with Nicole … and then Spiro? Bad enough for it to be all over the Telegraph, but if it ever came out for certain that Jamie had encouraged him to destroy a listed building, that would be BWL’s reputation shot. Our company, Jill, our baby.’
‘Shhh …’ She kissed her husband on the forehead. ‘I don’t want you worrying about a thing. Now, you’ve taken your pills?’
‘Yes, Nurse Ratched.’
‘Good boy.’ She held her phone up. ‘You have a nap. I’ll only be a couple of minutes.’
She was a lot longer than that, pacing alongside the canal all the way down to the Puppet Theatre Barge, with her head down and Jamie’s furious voice in one ear. He’d planned the whole thing meticulously – even getting Harry’s PA to email over a list of his favourite wines and desserts so that Maya could get it all in for their supper. But things had started to go wrong from the start, he said, with the plates of Parma ham and the Montrachet. And Maya, who had been in ‘a weird mood’ from the moment he’d got back, late, from work, had reacted badly to being pulled aside and snapped at.
‘It’s not that much to ask, is it, Jill? I mean I’d given her a list of instructions, for God’s sake. And did Ainsley tell you –’ he was hoarse with disbelief ‘– what the woman managed to leave in the loo?’
‘Well, if that’s the way you spoke to her, I’m not surprised she took it badly. Maybe Maya had had enough, Jamie. Maybe she was sticking two fingers up at you.’
In her impatience to find out whether the dinner really had been as big a write-off as Harry had made out, Jill had forgotten about the opportunism, the belittlings and the letter. She’d set aside her loathing. But that contempt-filled word – ‘woman’ – had brought it all back. And when, in a sarcasm-sodden voice, he’d begged her ‘to put aside the “poor little woman” talk for a sec so that we can deal with this’, she’d stopped and taken five deep breaths, just as Stan’s stupid NHS support manual had urged them both to do in moments of heightened emotion.
‘We?’
When things weren’t going well, it was always ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’. Jamie was generous when it came to sharing his discomfort and spreading the responsibility for his cock-ups.
‘D’you know what? I think this one’s up to you to sort out. I think I’m done with covering for you.’
‘Covering? When have you ever had to cover for me?’
‘And how about you stop blaming your wife and take some of the responsibility?’
‘I didn’t do this!’
‘OK, well then at least accept the facts.’ Nimbly, Jill sidestepped a map-reading tourist squatting in the shade of Warwick Avenue bridge. ‘Harry will be mortally offended by the whole experience, and probably make a point of staying as far away from BWL as he possibly can moving forward. To be honest I’m not sure I can blame him. Which will mean not one but two massive deals scuppered – by you. So the idea that I’m the one not fit to work? Well, that’s pretty laughable, Jamie. Because right now I’d say your job is hanging by a thread.’
Elated to the point of drunkenness, Jill gave the little red button a tap and leaned against the railings, arms outstretched, face angled upwards towards the sun. Surely it couldn’t be this simple? But frisking herself down for anything resembling guilt or nostalgia, any pinch of the heart, however slight, Jill was relieved to find that the thought of getting Jamie out of her life for good gave her nothing but satisfaction.
CHAPTER 25
NICOLE
‘Any bags we can help you with?’
Nicole stared at the girl. She couldn’t be more than eighteen. This was certainly her first job. The white shirt looked like a school uniform relic and the tiny hole beneath her lip had recently held a stud.
‘No.’ She swung her Longchamp tote high enough above the reception desk to be seen. ‘Just this.’
She might as well have said, ‘I’m only here to fuck,’ and the girl acknowledged this with a flicker of her eyelids.
‘And your welcome glass of champagne?’
‘Perhaps we’ll have that after dinner, when my …’ Nicole struggled to find the right word, something she would welcome never having to do again after tonight. ‘When my partner gets here.’
The boutique hotel had been Nicole’s choice – ‘If I know you’ll be joining me there that night, it’ll make it bearable’ – and as she made her way up to the ‘superior suite’ she’d booked for them on the third floor, she tried to picture Jamie’s face when he pulled up outside the white stucco terraced house, partially hidden by its pendulous wisteria, in a South Kensington backstreet.
He’d be surprised, for sure. When, a few months into their affair, Jamie had suggested taking Nicole to Blakes, she’d groaned. Nothing killed sex quite like hotels designed for it, which was why she’d always preferred Hiltons and Best Westerns: beige cubes with strip lighting and humming air conditioners. That’s if they had to use anything as trite as a hotel room. Given the choice, Nicole would have opted for a toilet cubicle or an alleyway every time. Only, tonight was different: tonight was the start of their new life.
Fresh and pretty, with tiled mirrors and artfully clashing Ikat cushions strewn across the king-size bed, the room looked like something out of Elle Decoration, or the holiday home of the kind of status-obsessed stay-at-home mums who were able to measure how far they’d come by the brand of candle at the four corners of their bath tubs.
It was just past six and Nicole knew she had to shower and change before calling an Uber that would get her to Angelini’s for 7.15 p.m. – a full quarter of an hour before Ben. This would allow for any seating mistakes or table moves that needed to be made, although she hoped she had been precise enough over the phone. If she could just catch Jamie’s eye beforehand, it would give her the courage she needed.
Instead of undressing, however, she stood at the window, looking down at the tourists ‘taking tea’ in the little garden below and trying not to imagine Ben’s face and voice when she told him. Her lips moved as she rehearsed the words she’d decided to
use: ‘I still love you and I always will, but I don’t think I’ll ever really be able to make you happy.’
It was cowardly to twist it around, as though Ben’s well-being was all she cared about, but she and Jamie had to keep their affair out of it for now. A few months down the line their relationship could come out as something that had happened unexpectedly, organically, when they both found themselves single. ‘Remember it only ever has to be semi-plausible,’ she’d pointed out to Jamie. ‘It’s just kinder to give them both the option of believing it didn’t start sooner.’ But was there really any kindness in what they were about to do?
Having yearned for this moment for months, Nicole would now have given anything for an extra week, day or hour. The blue dress she’d picked late the night before felt wrong – too girly, too coquettish. But what did you wear to end a seventeen-year marriage? The trousers and blouse she’d originally gone for had felt cold, transactional. And the dress had the advantage of being relatively new, with no memories attached.
‘That’s a nice idea.’ Ben had smiled, looking up in surprise from his Guardian when she’d told him about the restaurant booking that morning. ‘Wish you’d said something earlier, though. Still, I’m sure I can find someone to watch Chlo.’ Only when Nicole told her husband that she’d already lined up Suzy from over the road to babysit had she felt her cheeks grow hot under his gaze. Ben had always been the one to sort out both childcare and restaurants. The whole thing was in danger of sounding a little too well orchestrated.
‘What’s this in aid of?’
‘Do I have to have a reason to take my husband out?’ was the obvious reply, but Nicole couldn’t bring herself to say anything so flippant, and she was grateful for her daughter’s whine.
‘I don’t like Suzy.’
‘Course you like Suzy, sweetie. You two always play your Counting Caterpillars game, remember?’
The whole thing was taking on too much weight, and Nicole had turned away from husband and child to make toast nobody wanted. The idea of Ben replaying her lies in his mind when he woke up without her the following morning was making her feel sick.