‘Isn’t a catch-22 just a shit situation?’ he asked.
‘Not really.’
‘OK, it was a shit situation.’ He smiled, and more lines than I remembered gathered around his eyes. I smiled back but without anything real behind it. He was simple. Not unintelligent – Dylan could probably build a space shuttle with a long weekend and a decent set of instructions, whereas I count on my fingers – but emotionally, he was simple. He didn’t ask questions, he wasn’t ashamed by his ignorance, he got by on a childlike level – I’m happy, I’m not so happy, I’m tired. At the end of a challenging day I didn’t want to hash it out with him; I wanted to burp him and put him to bed.
Dylan hugged me and then used the closeness to steer me back into the house. Chloe ran up to us and announced that the afternoon performance of her show would begin in ten minutes. Her face radiated excitement and that made me feel guilty about my lack of commitment that day. Wasn’t I hugely blessed to have all this love around me? To have so many who needed me? I decided my frustrations were down to a lack of rest, withdrawal from alcohol and shame, especially shame. I was making them responsible for pain that had been self-inflicted. My mother always excused her messes by claiming that it would be worse to live with regrets, but that morning made me think that a regret is far better than having something and then not being able to keep it.
I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. I gave myself three minutes to think about Frank, to remember how his words affected me, reached a part that had been asleep for what felt like a hundred years; to recall how strong he seemed and how much I enjoyed him taking control. I lingered on how it felt to pretend to be his new wife, and then I left the room and threw his book in with the recycling.
For the rest of the day I was an exceptional wife, mother, daughter and mate’s missus. Chloe performed her play and it was indeed dark, so dark I vowed to address her television-viewing habits, but I smiled during the rare light-hearted moments and applauded wildly at the end. After the show I made everyone hot chocolates with the Baileys Mickey had brought for the grown-ups. That night I gave Dylan ‘the signal’ and did my best to stay present the entire time. As we fell asleep I curled against my husband’s back and allowed him to grip my arm, even though it wasn’t very comfortable. But in the early hours of the morning I crept downstairs to retrieve Frank’s book and hide it under the sofa, just in case Dylan kept his promise about the bins and it was lost for ever.
9
ON MONDAY I TOOK Bettina’s blazer to work. I told her I would take it to the crazy-expensive, super-speedy dry cleaner’s in my lunch break. She took it from me and dismissed my assertions with a raise of her hand.
‘I’m sure it couldn’t have got that dirty in one night,’ she said. I nodded mutely. ‘How was it anyway?’ I pretended to busy myself with the post.
‘A bit of a let-down.’
‘I did try and warn you. Don’t worry – the pub was awful too. Marcus tried to get off with me.’ I clapped a hand over my mouth. Bettina switched on her computer.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘He was really going to town on the whole “no one will ever love me and my Star Wars figurines” diatribe and I felt for him, you know, in a stray-dog kind of way. Obviously I was too nice, because he mistook my kindness for flirtation and dived in. It was mortifying for all parties.’
Abruptly I questioned whether Frank had actually kissed me. I mean, we had kissed, but did I lean in and perhaps unconsciously offer myself to him, and had he been too gentlemanly to deny me? The possibility made the embarrassment I was still feeling pulsate. At the time I was sure things were mutual, but I questioned what I knew about sex in the modern world – technology had evolved, relationships were changing; perhaps flirtation had too. Or maybe it was simpler than that: perhaps we only see what we want to see?
‘Go easy on him,’ I said to Bettina. ‘He’s not that bad.’
‘You snog him then!’ she cried. She looked at me accusingly, oblivious to the stares we were garnering.
‘I don’t want to,’ I hissed.
‘Of course not, you’ve got your Diet-Coke-hunk husband. It’s easy for you married-off lot to tell the rest of us to be happy with the dregs.’
‘I’m not saying that, I’m just saying you should give him a break.’ What I was saying was she should be grateful. To have someone desire you, even if they themselves aren’t the most desirable, is a gift. Dylan liked me, he respected me, I think he even admired me – he’d stayed close to home most of his life, hadn’t taken risks or sought adventure. I had travelled a bit, studied, and at twenty-two I thought I had experienced a lot – but desire? That urgent, aggressive pull? I didn’t feel that from him; I wasn’t sure I ever had. His love had always been of the consistent but muted kind.
‘I’m trying to get a break. I don’t have the reserves to take on anyone else’s angst.’ There was no joviality in her voice.
‘Do we need a morning meeting?’ I asked. She nodded and picked up her bag.
‘Exes, meeting under the guise of friendship but he still wants to get in her pants.’ Using the shield of my sunglasses I examined the couple closely. The guy, a tall thin redhead, was offering a tiny brunette woman half of his croissant. She shook her head and kept her eyes focused on her coffee.
‘He screwed her over,’ I added. Bettina narrowed her eyes in their direction.
‘Think you’re right.’
‘What about them?’ I pointed to a couple sitting under a tree, sharing a fruit salad.
‘Third date,’ she said firmly, ‘too full of hope to care about grass stains.’ Bettina and I had only worked together closely on one project, and when going over the details in the park one morning we’d found ourselves more interested in pontificating on the relationship statuses of the couples around us. From then on, despite having no cause to, we had regular morning meetings. I can’t remember how they first came about, whether I had suggested it to her or she invited me, but we fell into a regular pattern of ducking out of the office for twenty minutes and putting our work personas to rest for a while. I was about to add my own commentary when I noticed that Bettina was no longer staring at the couple, but off into the distance.
‘I wasn’t trying to have a go at you about Marcus,’ I said. ‘I wanted to offer some perspective. He’s harmless.’
‘I know, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with him. I mean, there’s nothing right with him, but someone will want that. He’s not my type and that’s fine, but I’m scared my type don’t want me.’ I took off my glasses. I wanted to be sure that all my senses were working efficiently to take in the scene. Bettina, to me, represented the ultimate in womanhood – curves, confidence, career. The idea that she would have insecurities, let alone about her ability to attract a mate, was fascinating to me.
‘I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a type.’ Even if there was, how could you trust yourself to know? I thought Dylan was my type before I saw him eating peanuts – first sucking them clean of salt and then crunching them in a rabbity fashion between his front teeth. ‘Anyway, I thought you were seeing someone?’ Bettina was always seeing someone. I’d assumed that the fact it never progressed to a fully fledged relationship was an active decision, made by her. Her flat was an oasis of femininity. The first time I went over for drinks, she served me hard-boiled quail eggs with a little pile of salt for dipping; we shared a bottle of champagne ‘just because’ and gossiped our way through several episodes of Come Dine with Me – who would want a man in the way of all that?
‘I was – Ben. We saw each other on Saturday. He came over; I cooked for him! I cooked!’ I nodded my head to let her know I appreciated the significance of this. ‘That’s what gets to me: I let him in.’
‘What happened?’
‘He ate my sea bass, my grandmother’s recipe, and then he told me that he wanted to stop seeing me.’
‘No! He ate it first?!’
‘I know.’
‘Why did he call i
t off?’
‘He said he wants to have kids but not for a few years, and that will be too late for me.’
‘The bastard,’ I whispered. Bettina began to blink rapidly.
‘It’s OK – he offered me a consolation. I could keep sleeping with him until he found his younger model.’
‘The prick!’ I cried. Bettina’s blinking had not been effective and I watched tears collect in her eyes.
‘The worst thing is, I did sleep with him. I told myself I was saying goodbye, but I think I thought it might convince him to stay.’
‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ I said. I put my arm round her, and she let me rest it there for a second or two before she shrugged me off.
‘Don’t be. It’s my fault. I should have known better. It made the whole Marcus attack feel so much worse because I spent all weekend thinking that’s what I’m gonna be left with.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, you’re gorgeous. You’re bloody gorgeous.’
‘Sometimes that’s not enough. What if you only get one chance? Maybe I should have married Gianluca.’ Bettina was engaged to Gianluca for a year in her twenties. They had gone as far as sending out invites when, to the horror of her fiancé and family, she backed out and went on their honeymoon to the Maldives alone. Bettina sometimes used her parallel existence as an Italian housewife as a punchline to jokes, but this time she wasn’t laughing.
I told her, ‘Everything happens for a reason, honey,’ which isn’t the same as saying she was wrong. Whatever future we create, we can never escape our past.
My past was David. He was blond, rakish, and did everything with a take-it-or-leave-it air, although I didn’t know that on the night we met because he made it clear he wanted to take me. He was handsome and funny, but my favourite thing about him was the longing I saw in him that first evening. We met at a party, where he unabashedly followed me round the room and I pretended to hate it. It was the first term of my second year at university, and I was still smarting from the horror of the drama society disaster.
One of my housemates, Kathryn, was a fellow cast member, one who, despite the catastrophe of the play, was undeterred from her artistic pursuit. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, our friendship seemed based on an unspoken competitiveness. I always felt a need to demonstrate to her that I was cool enough, brave enough, just enough. One Friday I pitched what I thought was the perfect cosmopolitan night out, but nothing had gone as planned – the gig I got us on the guest list for turned out to be three middle-aged men playing in the upstairs room of a musty pub, and the cool bistro I booked seated us at a wobbly table wedged in next to the toilets. Waiting for the bus home, with Kathryn threatening to tell ‘the girls’ about how ‘wank’ our night had been, I pulled an ace out of my pocket. I remembered the location of a house party, and house parties were the official end of any night with potential to be the ‘best night ever’. Better still, the hosts were a house share of engineers, which meant it would be heavy on the male contingent. We both agreed that the one thing that might resuscitate the evening was attention from men.
The word was out: bodies spilled into the garden and we had to fight to get into the smoke-filled kitchen where David was leaning against the fridge, as if waiting.
‘Excuse me,’ I said.
‘You’ll need to ask me more nicely than that,’ he replied. His full lips curled into a sensual smile, and my focus on showing Kathryn a good time immediately began to wane.
For the next two hours I was always aware of where he was, and he was always in my eye line. When Kathryn, overwhelmed by the crowds and also by vodka jelly shots, asked to be taken home, I panicked. The party was yet to reach its peak and if I left, David was sure to be poached, but the attention he had shown me was so bewitching that I did something very out of character. I asked him to walk us home. He agreed and waited in our communal living room as I tucked Kathryn into her single bed. She hugged me round the neck. And slurred, ‘He’s so fit.’ Her approval was like a shot of caffeine. When I went back to him I felt in control and it was like he sensed it, sitting up straighter on the couch and looking unsure for the first time. We didn’t speak. I straddled him and we kissed. Despite the risk of intrusion, he started to take off my clothes.
That period was a time of many firsts and from his urgency and the way his hands were mapping my body, I could tell that this was the first time I was going to have sex. I told David this by saying, ‘I’ve never done this before.’ He froze as if cornered. ‘It’s OK,’ I said, replacing his hands, which he had held up as if I were his arresting officer. He eased me from his lap and on to the seat next to him. The lust that he had been directing at me like a laser immediately evaporated and I spent another four years trying to get it back.
We didn’t have sex that night. David accepted a cup of tea made with not-quite-turned milk and departed after some stilted small talk. Today I would view his actions as gallant, but at the time I could only see rejection. Months later, he told me that he had returned to the party and found a companion more suited to his needs. Although I had no claim to him at the time, it felt like a betrayal. I experienced his rejection all over again, like I was being slapped on top of bruises.
Remembering that hurt and seeing Bettina’s pain made me think of Dylan and specifically what I had sort of, almost but not quite, done to him. He had never been anything but good to me and I had repaid him with treachery, for the sake of an ego boost. Bettina was amazing, one of the most amazing women I knew. She didn’t need a man to show her that and neither did I. I took her hand.
‘If he can’t see how wonderful you are, it’s his loss.’
‘You wouldn’t think I was wonderful if you saw me last night, crying into a tiramisu and listening to Larry’s Late Evening Love Songs.’
‘Damn, girl,’ I said in an American accent. ‘The dessert I get, but late-evening love with Larry?’ Bettina squeezed my hand and laughed.
‘It’s so tragic, it’s my daily guilty pleasure. Usually it makes me feel better, but last night it hit home. I’m knackered today, I didn’t even straighten my hair.’ Bettina’s glossy locks sat in beautiful waves around her shoulders.
‘It’s working for you. You wanna come over tonight? I’ll keep you away from the radio.’
‘Thank you, but no. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t be around you and your beautiful family right now. I think I’m going to get really drunk, preferably alone.’ She was right. Being part of something as special as what Dylan and I had was beautiful, and I would die for the girls even though, at times, I felt like killing them. I wasn’t sure how I’d forgotten that.
I felt lighter as we returned to the office. Yes, I had steered off course for an evening, but we all have our down days. I let Bettina go ahead of me and called Dylan. It went to voicemail. I left a message telling him I would pick up something nice for dinner and for him to choose a new Netflix series. Sitting through ten hours of a war documentary – if that wasn’t commitment, what was?
10
I WAS STILL HOLDING the phone to my ear as I walked into Carter. I hung up quickly and tried to embody the spirit of capability and productivity. He regarded me as he always did: with a puzzled expression; as if trying to place me.
‘Any inspiration?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Yes, definitely. I mean, we’re not working on anything right this minute but we’ve got a great idea in the pipeline.’ Carter’s forehead creased.
‘We?’
‘We. Bettina and me. You were asking about our meeting this morning?’ Carter was silent for a few seconds; the clock in reception sounded incredibly loud.
‘No. However, I look forward to hearing your plans. I was asking about Friday. Did you get any interesting leads?’ I felt the internal warmth that signals the threat of blushing.
‘Oh. Yes. Thanks for sending me over. It was really interesting.’
‘Clients?’ I thought about the woman in the ladybird dress.
‘Probably not,
unfortunately.’ Carter rubbed his smooth, tanned chin.
‘That’s a shame. When you finish up with the Nature Tea launch, you’ll be needing a project.’ My throat felt dry and I had to make some effort to speak.
‘Yes. I’ll get on that,’ I said. Carter nodded and walked past me. I rushed to my desk. I cleaned out my drawers, emptying old, softening gum and abandoned receipts into the wastepaper basket. I was hoping that I would uncover some artefact that would lead me to a new client; perhaps a business card from an individual I had dismissed or a fantastic idea scribbled absentmindedly on a scrap of notepaper. When my desk was clean I had nine pounds in loose change, half a dozen kirby grips and an unopened bottle of grey nail varnish. At a loss for anything else to do, I started to apply it. As I was finishing my second hand, Annie interrupted me.
‘I thought you might want to get up to speed with the Emerge timeframes. I’ll need you to work with me the week of the event, so it would be useful if you could diarize your other projects around that.’ When she stopped speaking, she let her eyes settle on my hands.
‘I thought it was quite nice for the office.’ I held my fingers towards her.
‘Mmmm,’ she said. I glanced at her nails. Manicured but polish-free. The nails of a woman ready to work.
‘I could run through it with you now,’ she said.
‘You know, I’ve got something to finish off.’
‘Mmmm,’ she said again. I swore at her as she walked away. In my head, obviously – but violently. I’ve always been a hard worker. I had a paper round at twelve, even though the bag was almost as big as me and I took twice as long as the two older boys that also did my route. I felt so empowered when I could slip my earnings into my piggy bank and when I didn’t have to ask my mum for money to go to town on a Saturday afternoon. I’d have a hot bath when I got home from the round and I enjoyed my aching muscles, seeing them as a badge of achievement. I still felt that way; I wanted to throw myself into something and feel the strain. I just needed someone to tell me what that thing should be. Then my phone rang. I picked it up quickly and immediately regretted it; taking my time might demonstrate a lack of availability created by demand.
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