by Adele Parks
Stephanie’s fingers felt like lead weights and were having difficulty cooperating with the instructions her brain was sending, her head was pounding and her back and legs still felt like liquid. She wanted to get out of the car and stretch but wasn’t sure if she’d be able to stay upright. She knew what she had to do next but the thought was about as appealing as picking through the wardrobe of a recently deceased relative. She had to check the phone for text messages, incoming and outgoing. She screwed her eyes closed and then forced them open, she had to focus.
She opened the text inbox and discovered forty-two messages from one number, there were no messages from any other number. The number didn’t have a name attached to it, clearly only one person could reach Julian this way. The phone had been bought for the purpose of deception. It was a filthy adultery phone.
The messages read as she’d expected them to. No one reinvented the wheel when they had an affair, no matter how special they thought they were. Some were banal texts that just read, ‘Will be leaving work early and waiting for you! x’ or, ‘On my way! x.’ Julian’s mistress, it appeared, was fond of the exclamation mark and she always signed her texts with a kiss. Other texts were horribly explicit and left nothing to the imagination. The texts hurt Stephanie deep in the pit of her stomach and, deeper still, in the pit of her soul. The tone was confident, jaunty and upbeat. Stephanie tried to concentrate on reading the messages and not allow herself to start imagining the woman behind the jaunty, upbeat messages. Was she blonde? Steph thought she probably was. This was irrational and unfounded but history shows that blondes tend to be blamed by brunettes for all the world’s ills. Or maybe she had lashings of magnificent red hair, porcelain skin and sparkling green eyes. Julian had a thing for redheads. He could always be persuaded to go to see a romcom if Amy Adams or Isla Fisher were starring (he’d been devastated when Nicole Kidman had become a blonde). Stephanie thought the woman must be stupid. Of course she must be, because it was stupid to be so jaunty and upbeat when you were sleeping with another woman’s husband, screwing someone’s father, ripping apart a family. You’d have to be stupid not to know how wrong that was. How vile. Stupid or callous. A callous, vicious hellcat. That was possible. Probable.
Stephanie scrolled back to the first message. It was sent on 15 February, the day after Valentine’s Day. Had this woman bought Julian the phone as a gift? Was it a gift to himself so he could carry on this clandestine affair? He certainly wouldn’t want to risk sending this sort of message from his BlackBerry, as it often lay around their home within easy reach of their curious boys. Steph thought back to Valentine’s Day. She and Julian had exchanged cards and a perfunctory peck on the cheek as usual. A vicious shaft of pain and humiliation spilt through Steph’s body. She’d always been so smug that they still acknowledged Valentine’s Day at all, so many of their friends in ancient marriages didn’t bother. OK, long gone were the days when Steph would cut his toast into heart shapes or buy scanty panties, but then nor was Julian likely to come home with a huge bunch of flowers or book a table at a restaurant. This Valentine’s Day Steph’s most treasured gift had been the finger painting Freddie made at school. He’d used his thumbprint to make hearts in silver glitter paint, the picture was pinned to their fridge with a magnet that read, ‘If You Believe It You’ll Achieve It’. Steph had bought the magnet for Harry when he was taking his Common Entrance exams. He hadn’t been very impressed with her motivational gift, he would have preferred a video game.
Steph couldn’t even remember if she and Julian had spent the evening of Valentine’s night together. Perhaps he’d been with this other woman.
The receptionist at Highview Hotel had said that Julian had been visiting there for three months. It was late March. Did she mean January or December? Christmas? The thought was another vicious kick. Steph already felt as though she was lying, bloody, bruised and defeated, in the gutter, yet the blows kept coming, relentless and agonising. When had the affair started? At some gaudy, excessive Christmas party? Was this woman a colleague who had taken advantage of the fact that everyone behaved ridiculously at office parties? Had he had sex with this . . . this . . . Steph was stumped. She searched around every crevice in her mind but she didn’t have words that were vile enough to describe the woman, or fair enough, because she knew it wasn’t just the woman’s fault. Julian had betrayed her. Her pathetic prudery, even at a time like this, especially at a time like this, made her feel weak and ashamed. Of course there were words for people like Julian and his whore. See, there was one. Why couldn’t she stand up for herself more? She’d been such a mug. The archetypal mug.
The thought of Julian touching this woman, whoever she was, kissing her, caressing her, entering her, caused Steph’s heart to race dangerously, she could barely breathe. She laid her head against the cold glass window. ‘Oh dear God help me,’ she whispered. Julian might have done those things and then still sat in their sitting room on Christmas morning, watching the boys’ innocent and delighted faces as they opened their gifts. He’d still put himself in charge of the afternoon games and he’d still set fire to the Christmas pudding, as though everything was normal. How was that possible?
Maybe it started after that? In the dull, dark January afternoons? Had the constant rain and gloom sent Julian out on a search for something sparkling and shallow? Some callous, vicious hellcat.
Reading the texts would give her more information. Reading the texts would rip her heart out.
Many, many of the messages were sexy, uninhibited, candid messages. This woman liked to text about licking, sucking, fucking. She wrote those words down! Stephanie was shocked. Her shock made her feel like a ridiculous prude, a simpleton. She never said the f word to Julian. They didn’t fuck, they made love. Or at times, if she was honest with herself, they simply had sex because he wanted it and she just wanted it over with. Love-making required energy and occasionally she didn’t have the right amount of energy or she wasn’t in the right sort of mood, or whatever. Anyway, the truth was sometimes it was just sex.
Stephanie read every single one of the forty-two texts. Texts her husband valued so much that he hadn’t deleted them, although he must have known keeping them was a risk. Or was it? Did he think she was so stupid, so gullible, so naive that she’d never suspect him of having an affair?
Well, he’d be right. She did trust him. Had trusted him. It had never, ever entered her head that Julian would have an affair. His work demanded foreign travel. True, since they’d moved to Riverford he had stayed overnight in town if he’d had to work very late or if he’d attended a business dinner that had dragged on. The last train home ran at midnight and the bank had a corporate flat that all the senior employees were entitled to use so it made sense. Or it had seemed to. She hadn’t been suspicious, just pleased that he was getting a decent night’s sleep. She hadn’t thought it odd when those spasmodic nights in town became more frequent or that they nearly always occurred on a Tuesday. Although clearly, Julian wasn’t using the corporate flat (if such a thing existed!), he was staying in a five-star hotel. How was he paying for it? Steph had never noticed any irregularities in their bank account. Surely he wasn’t passing this off as a work expense and paying on his corporate card? Did he have a separate bank account? How deep was this deception?
Fathoms deep.
Bottomless.
Of course it happened, she knew that. Infidelity was depressingly commonplace, but Julian? No. He was better than that. They were better than that.
Yet the proof was incontrovertible.
Of course the worst was to come. She checked the sent box and discovered sixty-seven texts sent. Her stomach lurched. Did she have the strength to read them? Did she have the strength not to? Wouldn’t it be better to try and ram the lid on this particular Pandora’s box? Now, before any more havoc could be let loose. But it was impossible. She had to read them. She had to know.
8
‘Kirsten, can you come to this meeting and take notes, please,’
said Brian. He was standing at the doorway to the boardroom. He used his firm, deep, professional voice to fire the command across the office. Kirsten understood. You never knew who might be listening.
Kirsten rather liked Brian being masterful, it reminded her of the reason she was with him in the first place. In bed he liked baby talk! Who’d have guessed that? There was nothing about his serious, dark pinstripe suit or conservative blue striped tie that hinted at such a thing. But it was true, he liked her to talk with a lisp and he’d once asked her to dress up as a schoolgirl. She found that a bit odd, to be honest. She didn’t mind dressing up as a nurse, or a French maid or even wearing the usual slutty stuff, because that was all very adult, but a schoolgirl outfit was borderline weird. She’d said no. Admittedly it wasn’t a flat and absolutely non-negotiable no (like the one she’d issued when Mark Deally wanted anal sex), this no was more a ‘maybe one day’ sort of no. She’d said that if Brian did something really, really lovely for her, she might want to thank him by dressing up in a naughty Saint Trinian’s outfit. But it had to be something really, really lovely. Not just a new bag or a pair of earrings, she was thinking about something like a mini break, maybe Paris or Venice.
It would be nice to have something fun to do at the weekends because the thing with the way her social life was panning out was that she was often at a loose end at the weekend. She didn’t really like the dives her mates went to, not anymore. They were really tatty in comparison to what she’d got used to during the week and there was no point going shopping with her friends because there was no one to pay for anything. Her mates were pretty jealous of her clothes, she reckoned, because she’d noticed they didn’t call as much as they used to. But being on her own every weekend was a bit zeds-ville. What was the point of having three boyfriends if not one of them was available to so much as take her telephone calls on a wet Sunday afternoon, let alone take her to the movies? Thinking about her lonely, boring weekends made Kirsten reply in a tone that was significantly less pleasant or enticing than usual.
‘It’s not my job to take notes in a meeting,’ she replied grumpily. ‘I’ve a bunch of emails to answer and, besides, who will answer the phones?’
Kirsten noticed one or two of the other group PAs bristle. Most of them knew why Kirsten got away with being a bit cheeky with Brian and they didn’t like it. More jealousy, Kirsten reckoned, not her problem. One or two of them were really pretty and probably didn’t have to work as hard as they did, but some people chose to do everything the hard way – that was their lookout.
‘Divert your phone through to Rosie and get in here,’ said Brian firmly.
Kirsten sighed and made a big show of laboriously gathering up her bag and laptop. Brian sounded a little bit irritated with her, in fact he sounded horrifyingly like Daddy when he was ticking her off about borrowing the car without asking. But what could Brian be cross with her about? Nothing. He was probably appearing gruff just to try to throw everyone off their scent.
Kirsten briefly wondered if there really was a meeting in the boardroom or whether, when she got in there, the place would be deserted and Brian would throw her across the table and shag her senseless. As a rule, Brian wasn’t one for risks and thrills of that nature but you never knew for certain, her mother was always saying that still waters ran deep. Yes, it was the quiet ones you had to watch.
As she walked towards the boardroom she decided that if he wanted to fool around they could, as long as he was careful with her hair. She’d managed to squeeze in a quick visit to an Aveda hair salon at lunchtime and she’d treated herself to an expensive up-do, she didn’t want it tumbling down. Plus, she was going to have to make it clear that it was an either/or situation. If they had sex now in the boardroom, she wasn’t going to bother this evening, he could take her out for a yummy meal instead. She really wanted to try the Whitechapel Gallery. Some of the other girls in the office had gone there last Friday, they hadn’t invited Kirsten, not that she cared. They knew by now that she’d never dream of going to such an expensive place without a date to pick up the cheque at the end. Or, she and Brian could go to Orso in Covent Garden, she’d long since fancied trying there, or maybe The Avenue in St James – there were lots of lovely restaurants to choose from. Generally speaking, her boyfriends took her to hotel restaurants. She wasn’t complaining because the hotel restaurants were some of the very best, she adored Rhodes W1 Brasserie at the Cumberland Hotel and Windows at the Park Lane Hilton, but their motivation for picking these restaurants was transparent. It was fair to say they never let her linger over coffee.
Kirsten entered the boardroom and since she was now anticipating a seduction scene she was surprised that there were five guys and one woman sitting around the table, she was expected to take notes after all. She was unsure whether or not she was pleased about this. On the one hand, her hair was safe, on the other she’d have to do some real work. She sat at the end of the table, pulled out her laptop and greedily eyed the tray of sandwiches. They were totally untouched and because of the hair appointment she hadn’t had the chance to eat. Would it be bad form to help herself?
The managers started to talk. And talk. And talk. Tedious, tedious, tedious. It was a stiflingly hot room, the air conditioning didn’t seem to be doing anything other than humming which added to the sluggish atmosphere. Kirsten thought her eyes might actually close and she’d nod off to sleep if she had to listen to much more of this. She didn’t have a clue or any interest in what they were on about so it was tricky taking down the meeting’s minutes. As best she could she half-heartedly typed every word she picked up. She’d get Brian to have a look at it this evening, he’d help her to pull her messy notes into some semblance of coherence. Probably, he had a slant that he wanted to impose on the minutes anyway. That was what usually happened in business meetings, wasn’t it? Someone always had some fixed agenda, she’d seen that on loads of TV dramas. Brian had most likely called her in here because she could help him with achieving his particular agenda, whatever that might be.
Kirsten rather liked the idea of her helping Brian with his business dealings. She drifted off for a moment, thinking of a scenario where they shared an office (she was wearing a really cool grey suit from Calvin Klein, and Jimmy Choo shoes, plus an extremely wide belt that emphasised her tiny cinched waist. Would she carry a bag? If so it would be a relaxed slouchy number, maybe a Marc Jacobs). In her daydream she walked with real purpose and he asked her to countersign something. Other than her clearly imagining her outfit, the details of the fantasy were a bit blurred so she wasn’t sure what she might be asked to countersign or why she’d be working alongside Brian in his office in the first place. Kirsten emerged from her musings when she heard Brian say, ‘I think that about wraps it up.’
‘Yes, agreed. Let’s get the minutes out this afternoon,’ added one of the other grey guys who looked a bit like Brian. They dressed alike – expensively but what was the point of them wearing a tailored, made-to-measure suit if they were cut from the same fabric? Kirsten wondered how much a made-to-measure suit cost. She made a mental note to ask Brian later.
There was a chorus of agreement. ‘Absolutely, high priority. This afternoon.’
The woman added, ‘Extremely sensitive, can’t afford to fuck this up.’ Then she strode towards the door.
Kirsten had noticed that busy people rarely spoke in full sentences, it was as though they didn’t even have the time to say, ‘Extremely sensitive, we can’t afford to fuck this up,’ or, ‘Extremely sensitive, you can’t afford to fuck this up,’ or even, ‘Extremely sensitive, Kirsten can’t afford to fuck this up.’
Which was it?
Kirsten looked down at her laptop and reread some of her notes. The sentences merged into one another – well, they weren’t even sentences really, more an assortment of words loosely grouped together. The most unifying thing about them being the fact that they were all on her laptop and she must have typed them!
A wider range of investment a
nd trading activities. Risks inherent in their investments. Shares, debt and commodities. Notably short selling and derivatives. Limited range of professional. Regulations governing short selling, derivatives, leverage, fee structures and the liquidity of interests in the fund. The fund’s open-ended structure. Run into many billions of dollars. Dominate certain specialty markets.
It didn’t make sense. She recognised one or two names as well. She’d heard Jules mentioned and Mark but she didn’t understand the context. Crap, had that man said that she had to distribute these minutes this afternoon? Crap.
‘Kirsten, can you stay back a moment?’ said Brian.
Oh, thank God. Kirsten let out a big sigh of relief. He would help her write the minutes – that had been his plan after all. Once the others had left the boardroom, Brian went to the door, glanced outside into the office and then firmly closed the door so that they were alone in the room. Bloody hell, he was after sex, thought Kirsten. Would they have time if she had to get these minutes sorted this afternoon?
Brian turned to Kirsten and she saw at once that he wasn’t thinking about sex, he looked vexed and harassed.
‘OK, did you get all that? Are you clear?’ he barked.
‘Erm, well, not entirely,’ admitted Kirsten. ‘I couldn’t type quite as fast as they talked.’
‘Don’t you know shorthand?’ he asked, as he dug around his jacket pocket and then pulled out a cotton handkerchief.
‘No,’ replied Kirsten. She was offended. Did they even teach that nowadays? She didn’t know. She hadn’t gone to bloody secretarial school! She had a degree! Besides, no one had mentioned anything about shorthand at the interview.
‘Well, how fast can you type?’ asked Brian, as he blotted his forehead with his cotton handkerchief. He was very sweaty. Did he have a gland problem? Kirsten wondered. She’d never noticed him sweat before but now he looked like someone had turned a tap on. It was totally gross. Grey hair she could forgive, slightly balding, slightly paunchy or wearing glasses she’d come to expect. She’d accept two out of four. But profuse sweating was a deal-breaker. A girl had to have standards. Kirsten very much doubted that she and Brian would have sex tonight, or ever again, come to that. She couldn’t do it with a sweaty guy. No, she really couldn’t, she was certain of that. But she needed a gentle way of letting him down. She didn’t want to piss him off, he was one of her direct bosses after all.