by Daniel Hurst
But then I see my phone screen and learn that it isn’t Craig who is calling.
I don’t recognise the number, but it is not my husband because if it was then there would be an image of his face on my screen right now. I have saved my favourite photo of him on our wedding day, so it always flashes up whenever he calls. But there is no photo of Craig smiling in his suit. Just a random number, still trying to get through to me.
Picking up my phone, I put my thumb over the green button to answer it. The call connects and the ringing stops, returning the silence to my quiet suburban home.
“Hello?”
14
CRAIG
I know that Megan sent the email to the recruiter to turn down the offer of an interview. What I don’t know is why the recruiter then phoned her shortly afterwards.
I can see that Megan received a phone call on her mobile at 09:16 this morning, and a quick Google check of the number in question tells me that it belongs to Sally Hargreaves, a recruitment officer at Red Royal Recruiters in London. The only thing I don’t know is what was said during the conversation.
The spyware that I installed on Megan’s mobile only allows me to keep track of her keystrokes and incoming calls and messages, but I cannot hear what is actually said on any of those calls. That has never been a problem before because my wife doesn’t receive phone calls. Her lack of friends has seen to that. But today she got a call from a recruiter, and it has been troubling me ever since.
Megan did as she was told. She turned down the interview. That should have been the end of the matter. So why did the recruiter phone her? And what did they discuss?
I want to phone my wife and ask her, but that would give away the fact that I have been spying on her phone. Instead, I send her a short text message, asking her how her day is going. If she has any news, then she won’t be able to resist telling me about it in her reply.
I sign off a couple of documents as I wait for Megan’s reply, not expecting too much time to pass until my wife responds. The mysterious phone call lasted almost ten minutes, which is long enough to make me suspect that the recruiter wasn’t calling to ask why Megan had turned down the interview. That could have been dealt with in two or three minutes at most. If I had to guess, I would say that the recruiter phoned my wife to pitch her some other job vacancies, because recruiters are simply salespeople after all.
But I don’t like to guess. I like to know the facts.
So where is Megan’s reply?
Picking up my phone, I go into the app that allows me to see a mirror image of her phone screen, and it’s there that I see that my text message is still unread.
What is Megan doing that she is so busy to text me back?
Screw this. I’m phoning her.
It’s better this way anyway.
This way I will be able to tell by her voice if she is lying to me.
15
MEGAN
I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting that. Barely two minutes after sending the email to the recruiter in which I turned down the invitation of an interview and that same recruiter was calling me back to try and persuade me to change my mind.
Sally was the person on the other end of the line, and her voice suggested she was a similar age to me. I have to admit that it had been good to hear another female voice. It has been so long since I spoke to another woman, so I felt a little thrill to chat with her, even if she was ringing me for purely professional purposes.
She had asked me my reason for turning down the interview, and I had repeated back to her what I had said in my email.
“I’m very sorry, but I am actually unable to attend the interview due to a change in my circumstances. But thank you for considering my application, and I trust you will find the right candidate soon.”
But then Sally had pressed me for more details, wanting to know more. The question had caught me off guard because I really hadn’t been planning to go into any more detail other than “a change in my circumstances.” I’ve never been good at thinking on my feet, and my stuttered response as I tried to improvise an excuse must have telegraphed my uncertainty to the woman on the other end of the line because Sally tried to change my mind.
She told me how she felt my CV made me perfect for the role and that I really should attend the interview because there was a good chance that I would be successful. At first, I had presumed she was giving me a sales pitch, saying whatever she could to get me to do what she wanted me to do. I know my CV isn’t perfect, after all. But Sally had then asked me more questions about my circumstances, wanting to get to know more and trying to understand my present situation, and I had found myself answering honestly.
I told her that I was bored without work and missed having purpose and structure to my day, as well as the fact that I missed the buzz of being in London. Sally had listened as I had told her about my situation, and I found myself being even more honest with her than I had been with my husband last night. Whether it was her pleasant telephone demeanour, or simply my excitement at having another woman to chat to, I had found myself pouring out my life story to the recruiter at the other end of the line.
Sally had not been put off by my spiel and had reiterated her belief that I really should attend the interview next week. But despite my exuberance in the conversation up to that point, I had kept my word to Craig and said no to the interview again. I had expected that to be the end of the call. But then Sally had surprised me.
Firstly, she had asked me where I was from. She must have picked up on my northern accent and I was flattered that she felt interested enough to ask. I told her that I was born in Macclesfield, which I’m happy to admit, even though it is a far cry from the place where I live now. But Sally seemed interested in my answer, or at least pretended to be. Then she said the thing that really took me by surprise. She said that she was so confident that I would get the job that she would do anything to get me to attend that interview. She even promised to take me out for a drink afterwards if only I would say I would go.
I know I should have stood firm. I know I should have still said no. But in my lonely, bored state, the offer of having another woman to go for a drink with in London next week was too appealing.
I had found myself saying yes before I had even thought about it.
Sally had been thrilled and told me that she would let the client know that I would be attending the interview after all. Then she promised to be in touch regarding the address of the wine bar where we would go for the drink afterwards. Finally, she had ended the call, leaving me feeling surprised but excited about what had just happened.
Okay, so maybe the offer of a drink was just a tactic that recruiters use when they are trying to convince a candidate to go to an interview. After all, Sally would get a commission if she was successful in placing me in the role at Papier Projects. But even so, the invitation to go for a drink was not something to be taken lightly, at least not by me. I can’t remember the last time that I went to a wine bar with a female companion. I know it’s silly, but my mind is already running away with thoughts about how Sally and I are going to become friends now and meet up on regular occasions to share a bottle or two and gossip about our lives while the rest of London flows around us.
God, I really am sad and desperate, aren’t I?
But I’ve said yes now, and I can’t go back on it. I don’t want to let Sally down, and I don’t want to let myself down either. The only problem is, I told Craig that I wouldn’t be going to the interview. How is he going to react to the news that I changed my mind?
Oh god, he’s phoning me now.
What am I going to say to him?
16
CRAIG
Megan is lying to me. I can tell by the tone of her voice. She hasn’t lied to me much during our marriage and certainly not about anything important. But she has told white lies before, and I have always been able to see straight through them.
There’s this thing that she does with her voice
when she is fibbing. Her sentences become shorter, and her voice rises at the end of them as if she has adopted some strange twang. God knows why she does it, and she probably isn’t even aware of it, but I am. It is a subtle tell, but a tell all the same.
That’s how I know she is lying to me now.
“I thanked her and told her that I was flattered. But I said the answer was still no.”
I allow Megan’s lie to wash over me as easily as if I was lying on a beach with the waves rolling in. But there’s no need to voice my suspicions now. I have access to her phone and all the emails and messages that are sent to it. I will find out what is really going on soon enough.
“That was nice of her to call you anyway,” I say, playing the role of the naïve husband well. “But like you said this morning, you don’t want to go back to the nine to five life.”
“Yeah...” Megan says, clearly feeling bad about whatever is going on, but still not choosing to let me in on the full story. I do wonder what it could be.
“How’s your day?” she asks me, changing the subject a little too quickly.
“Same old, snowed under as usual.”
“Don’t work too hard. They take you for granted there, but I don’t want you overdoing it.”
Aww, she cares. Not enough to tell me the truth, but she cares, nonetheless.
“What have you got planned for the rest of the day?” I ask her, switching the topic of conversation back on to her.
“Not much. I thought I might have a run on the treadmill later.”
“That sounds good,” I say, surprised at her enthusiasm to exercise on the piece of equipment I know she has barely used since I bought it for her.
“Yeah, I want to get fit again. I’ve noticed the pounds creeping back on.”
I have noticed them too, but I would never dream of saying it to her.
“I think exercise is just as important for your mental health as well as your physical health,” I say, though really I am glad that she might be losing a little of the jiggle that has built up around her belly recently.
“Yeah. Well, I better let you get back to it. I don’t want you to have to work late tonight,” she says, drawing our little chat to a close.
“I’ll be home on time, don’t worry about that. Have a good day.”
“I love you,” she says, and I know she means it.
“I love you too,” I say, and I don’t.
17
MEGAN
I hate lying to Craig. I feel like I’m so bad at it that he can tell when I am doing it. No matter what I try and do, my voice has this annoying habit of going up at the end of the sentence when I am fibbing, and I feel like it gives me away. It’s a strange little quirk I developed as a child when I was pretending to my parents that I was too sick to go to school or trying to explain why I hadn’t done my homework again. I guess some people are natural-born liars and others aren’t, and I am certainly not.
But I just told a lie to my husband. I told him that Sally had phoned me and begged me to change my mind about the interview, but I said that I had stood firm and refused to be swayed. In reality, I am not only attending the interview next week but meeting Sally for a drink afterwards. I probably should have been honest with him, but I feel bad having gone back on what I told him I would do this morning.
Not only that but I don’t want him to think that I’m silly for agreeing to go for a drink with a recruiter who is just saying whatever I want to hear in order to get me to that interview and increase her chances at receiving a bonus. He will probably feel sorry for me for being so lonely and desperate that I am willing to go all the way into London to meet a stranger just to have a drink with them. And in a way, he would be right. But I’ve done it now, and it’s too late to change any of it.
I will attend the interview, and I will meet up with Sally afterwards.
And I will do my best not to let Craig know what I’ve got planned.
There’s no point. I won’t get the job, so he never has to know that I attended the interview. Likewise, I’ll probably only ever see Sally this once, so he doesn’t have to know that I met her either. She will likely lose interest in me as soon as her chance at a juicy commission has gone and will not be asking to meet up with me again. That will be okay because it will make it easier to keep it secret from Craig, but I don’t want to give up what promises to be my first drink with a girlfriend in years. Even if it only lasts an hour and we only have one glass of wine. It will still feel good to sit with another woman and put the world to rights. Yes, she will probably smell the desperation on me and pity my loneliness, but so what, I’ll never have to see her again anyway.
Unless I’m so much fun that she wants to meet me again.
I have to admit that I’m way more excited about the thought of meeting Sally than I am about attending the interview. The whole point of getting a job was so I could make some new friends, but maybe I don’t even need to if things go well with Sally. We might just click and find ourselves gossiping about all sorts of things, sipping our wine and laughing hysterically at each other’s sense of humour. We might become friends. We might even become best friends.
Oh god, I really want her to like me.
I take a deep breath and mentally instruct myself to take a chill pill. I’m way too enthusiastic about this meeting, and it’s going to show if I’m not careful. I need to keep calm. I need to play it cool.
But really, I just need Sally to like me.
It’s silly, but I know that having a friend would make a world of difference in my life. No longer would I feel like a bored housewife, stuck at home with only my husband to talk to on a daily basis. Instead, I would be a fun and thriving young woman again, texting and phoning my new friend and setting up fun dates for the diary.
Dinners. Wines. Cheeseboards. Movies. Adventures.
I love my husband to bits but being married is not the same as having a good girlfriend in your life who you can really confide in. Also, I miss hearing about another woman’s love life.
The boyfriends. The dramas. The sex.
Of course, I will open up to my new friend about Craig too. I will tell her what a wonderful husband he is and how he works so that I don’t have to. But to keep things balanced, I will tell her about some of his annoying habits, like leaving his socks on the bedroom floor instead of putting them in the wash basket, or how he always forgets to charge his electric toothbrush and ends up using all the battery on mine as well.
She could show me photos of the man, or men, in her life, and I will show her pictures of Craig. I will tell her about how we met on a night out when I was twenty-eight, and about how amazing his speech was on our wedding day, and the fantastic two weeks we spent on our honeymoon in the south of Italy.
She could tell me about her lovers and I will internally compare them all to Craig. I will tell her how he is loyal, honest and trusting and would never cheat on me or do anything to hurt me. Then she could maybe suggest a double date, and I will gladly accept, excited to show off my wonderful husband to her while also getting to show Craig the exciting new friend who I have made.
The only problem with that is I would have to make up a story about how I met Sally. Not only would it be cringeworthy to admit we met because I was looking for a job and she begged me to attend the interview, but it would also contradict the story I had just told my husband. As far as he knows, I am not going into London next week. Not for an interview.
And not to meet a potential friend.
I’ll keep it quiet for now and see how it goes next week. If nothing comes of it, then he never has to know. I feel bad for lying, but it’s not as if it’s about anything serious. And it’s not as if there is any chance of him finding out.
Is there?
18
CRAIG
Well, well, well, what do we have here?
An email confirming a job interview scheduled for 16:30 next Wednesday sent to the inbox of my darling wife. My wife who told me that she
had turned down that interview over the phone only a couple of hours ago.
Not only that but there is another email too, from Sally, saying that she has booked a table for the two of them at Paulo’s Wine Bar in Covent Garden at 17:30 that same day. It seems that Megan has quite the afternoon planned next week.
It seems that she has been lying to me all along.
Closing the app on my phone that allows me to see into my wife’s device, I drop my mobile onto my desk and let out a deep sigh. I don’t understand why she has to be this way. I don’t know why she can’t just do what I say.
Three years of marriage and this is what I get for my loyalty. A dishonest wife, unhappy with the luxury I have given her and choosing to run around behind my back, setting up meetings with strangers as if she needs more from her life than what I have worked so hard to give her. Is that what I deserve?
I think not.
Now it’s time to give her what she deserves.
She is the bad guy in all of this, not me, which is why I intend to let things play out that way next Wednesday. I will let her go into London for the interview and the meeting in the wine bar, and I will let her think that I have no idea about any of it.
But what I will not let her do is get away with it.
By the time next Wednesday is over, Megan is going to wish that she never applied for that job. She is also going to wish that she never lied to me.
But most of all, she is going to wish that she had never set foot outside our front door.
19
MEGAN
It’s Wednesday. The day of my interview. And the day I get to go for a drink with Sally.