Strictly Between Us

by Jane Fallon

  ‘Walk with me then,’ Bea says. ‘You can tell me on the way.’

  I have nothing to say in response to this. I can’t say yes and abandon the objective. And if I say no she’s gone.

  ‘No. It’s fine. It’ll keep.’

  ‘Right, well, see you tomorrow,’ she says, turning towards the door again. I have no idea what to do. Without surprising Bea and Patrick in one place I have nothing. But if I’m any more unsubtle Michelle will never believe I didn’t know it was Bea all along. I need Adam to step up.

  He’s still lurking in the doorway. The doorman, thankfully, is outside. Probably hailing a cab for someone, unaware that his abandoned post is in chaos. Bea strides towards Adam.

  ‘Night everyone,’ she says as she goes. I can see she is already reaching into her bag for her phone.

  ‘Night, Bea. So lovely to meet you finally. I wish you could have stayed longer.’ He throws his arms out theatrically, going for a hug. Manages to knock the mobile that she’s holding in her left hand out of her grip. There’s a scrabble of ‘Oh Gods’ and ‘Shit, sorrys’. It’s almost comical watching him get in her way while she tries to pick it up. Pretending to help. I’m sure I see him ‘accidentally’ kick it further away at one point.

  ‘God, I’m such a klutz,’ I hear him say. He picks up her bag, which she’s dumped on the ground, as if to search under it. Holds on tight.

  Bea can no longer keep the hint of irritation and – I imagine – pure terror out of her voice. ‘Leave it. Just let me pick it up.’

  She practically pushes him out of the way, grabs her mobile from a dusty corner, snatches her bag away.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ she says to me, trying to reclaim some dignity. I have no idea what to do, how to stop her leaving and the whole plan falling apart.

  ‘Night,’ is all I can manage. I give Adam a pleading look. Do something.

  He steps between Bea and the door again. Puts his arm out to block her way. Oh God. I look at Michelle, and she’s just looking confused, flicking her eyes between the lift and the front door.

  ‘I know who you are,’ Adam says in a tone that wouldn’t go amiss in Midsomer Murders. You’re bang to rights.

  Bea looks panicked. Pushes his arm. I have a moment when I’m impressed that he is capable of resisting.

  ‘Will you get out of the way. Tamsin, I don’t mean to be rude but your mate is weird.’

  I see her looking over Adam’s shoulder, trying to catch the eye of the doorman.

  ‘What’s going on? I don’t understand,’ Michelle says quietly.

  ‘I saw you together,’ Adam is saying. ‘Here. A couple of weeks ago.’

  Bea ignores him. Makes another rush at the exit.

  ‘Excuse me!’ she shouts at the doorman, who is thankfully occupied helping a family into a cab. It’s a bit like an am dram farce. The timing’s a bit off and we could all do with some more rehearsal.

  ‘This is her,’ Adam says, eyebrows raised, to me. Help me out here.

  ‘Bea?’ I say for lack of any other inspiration. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘I’ve got no idea what he’s on about,’ Bea says. ‘But if he doesn’t let me pass I’m going to punch him in the face and then call the police.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Adam says and I almost laugh because he actually looks terrified.

  ‘Tamsin …?’ Michelle says. ‘What’s happening?’

  I open my mouth to say something, I have no idea what. Bea has one last shove at Adam and manages to dislodge him. Before we can do anything about it she is off down the road. We all stand there, unsure what to do next.

  ‘Bea is Patrick’s mistress?’ Michelle says eventually.

  ‘Adam?’ I say. I have to keep up the pretence of being in the dark.

  ‘That’s the woman I saw him with, so if that’s Bea … I’m sorry, Michelle.’

  ‘How do they even know each other?’ she says, and then I’m dimly aware of the ping of the lift.

  All our heads whip round again like hungry owls and then I hear, ‘Michelle?’

  We all stop what we’re doing. Patrick is standing white-faced, confronted with the sight of his wife in front of him. He spots me and there’s a moment when I almost lose my nerve.

  ‘What are you doing here? Michelle’s voice is shaky. She knows what she is supposed to say, but the revelation about Bea has thrown her. ‘Weren’t you supposed to be at football?’

  There’s a buzz from his pocket as his phone starts to ring. Bea, no doubt. Patrick looks thrown for a second. Decides he needs to deal with the problem standing in front of him.

  ‘It got cancelled. I just popped in for a quick drink,’ he says evenly. ‘More to the point, why are you all here?’

  ‘Upstairs?’ I say, and he looks at me with irritation.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Were you having a drink upstairs in one of the rooms? Only you just got out of the lift.’

  ‘What is this? A fucking inquisition. Don’t listen to anything she has to say to you, Mich.’

  ‘Why not? She’s our friend.’

  ‘I really don’t think she is any more.’

  Michelle ignores this. ‘So why were you upstairs?’

  ‘Michelle, Tamsin has some kind of a vendetta against me. She’s basically been accusing me of all sorts of stuff—’

  ‘So why is there a room booked in your name?’ Adam pipes up.

  Patrick looks at him for the first time. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘This is Adam,’ I say. ‘My friend.’

  ‘Is it Bea?’ Michelle is still staring blank-faced at Patrick. I see him gulp.

  ‘Who? I’ve got no idea what you’re on about.’

  ‘It’s Bea,’ Adam says, triumphant. Poirot in his big denouement. ‘Only, of course, I didn’t realize she was Bea before. But that was the woman I saw him with the other night.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I say, giving it my best.

  Patrick looks at Michelle intently. ‘Don’t listen. I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but this is some kind of bullshit. This bloke doesn’t even know me, so how can he claim he saw me with anyone?’

  ‘Bea is your mistress?’ Michelle says.

  I need to express my shock. ‘What the fuck? You’ve been seeing my assistant?’ OK, so I never said I was a scriptwriter.

  ‘Just tell me the truth?’ Michelle says. The only truly confused person in the room.

  ‘Of course not. I don’t even know Bea,’ Patrick says.

  ‘So how come you were leaving here together the other night?’ Adam asks.

  Patrick casts a furious glance at me. ‘Really, who is this bloke? Because I’m going to fucking flatten him in a minute.’

  People are starting to look now. One of the receptionists is casting slightly wary glances over in our direction and a couple of diners in the restaurant are openly gawping.

  ‘Is everything OK, Mr Mitchell?’ The curious receptionist is now on her way over, heels clicking on the wooden floor.

  ‘Fine. Thank you,’ Patrick says tersely.

  ‘OK.’ She smiles. ‘Oh, by the way, your watch wasn’t handed in.’

  ‘What?’ he says, confused and bordering on rude. I imagine he just wants her to go away. Fast. I look at Michelle. She’s watching him intently.

  ‘There was a note on the computer that you thought you might have left your watch in the room last time you stayed, but nothing’s been found.’

  ‘Last time?’ Michelle says, looking at P
atrick.

  ‘Let’s talk about this at home,’ he says, ignoring the receptionist and taking Michelle’s arm. She shrugs him off.

  ‘No. Let’s not. Let’s talk about it here. You’ve stayed here before?’

  Patrick looks round. The receptionist has slunk back behind the desk, aware that she has put her foot firmly in it. She’s making sure she stays in earshot, though. This must be too good to miss.

  ‘I come here all the time for meetings or drinks with colleagues in the bar. She’s obviously got me confused with someone else.’

  ‘Is that why she called you Mr Mitchell?’ Adam says.

  ‘Can we at least lose Inspector Fucking Clouseau? This has nothing at all to do with him. Or her for that matter.’ He indicates me with his thumb as he says this.

  ‘Actually, Pad, it does. If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t even know about it. I’d still be the stupid little cheated-on wife. The butt of everyone’s joke.’

  Patrick’s face crumples. Acting 101. ‘No … Mich … You have to believe me. I’d never cheat on you.’

  ‘You just book a room and sit in there on your own watching TV, do you?’

  ‘I love you. I’ve never been interested in anyone else.’

  ‘If you love me then you’ll explain. Do you have any idea how humiliating this is?’

  He breathes in deeply. Wipes away his crocodile tears. Or maybe they’re real. He can see his career prospects ebbing away after all.

  ‘Tamsin has some kind of vendetta against me. I told you. She’s been making up all kinds of stuff …’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s decided she hates me for some reason. Or that you could do better. She’s always been way too protective of you.’

  ‘She’s my best friend.’

  ‘How can she be if she’s been filling your head with all this shit?’

  ‘She’s the only person I can trust to tell me the truth.’

  Patrick snorts. ‘You think so?’

  ‘You’re going to have to keep your voice down a bit, Mr Mitchell.’ The doorman places a hand on his back. ‘Why don’t you take this conversation up to your room.’

  Patrick flinches.

  ‘Of course,’ Michelle says. ‘You have a room. Let’s go up there. I’m dying to see it.’

  There’s no point in him denying it. He knows she knows.

  ‘Just us,’ he says quietly.

  ‘No,’ Michelle says, and even though I’m terrified of what’s going to happen next, I’m proud of how strong she’s being. ‘We all go. If you really want to explain yourself then you do it in front of all of us.’

  ‘Not him.’

  ‘All of us. Or I’m leaving.’

  ‘Then let’s go home.’

  ‘I want to see it, Patrick.’

  ‘Michelle … no.’

  ‘Stop patronizing me. I want to see the room you booked.’

  ‘Fine,’ he says, turning on his heel.

  I have to fight the urge to run away. I know what he’s going to tell her and I know that I have to be there to make sure she doesn’t believe him. The dying man throwing grenades to take everyone else down with him. But I don’t know whether I can go through with it. Whether I can pull it off.

  Adam takes my hand and squeezes it.

  OK. Here goes.

  62

  Bea

  Shit. Fuck. Jesus. I have no idea what the fuck to do. Where to go. I’m just glad I’m out of there. But they know. Somehow that podgy twat Adam has worked it out. All I can hope is that Patrick does what he has always said he would do if cornered. Deny. Deny. Deny.

  I have no way of finding out what is going on. All I can do is wait for him to call me. Try his second phone tomorrow if I hear nothing.

  In the meantime I have to decide whether or not to go to work in the morning.

  Fuck.

  63

  Tamsin

  It’s impossible not to look at the unmade bed. The covers thrown aside by people who weren’t the slightest bit worried about covering themselves up. The room practically smells of sex. On either side of the bed a champagne flute sits on the night stand. The empty bottle is on the coffee table. It looks like the set for a bawdy bedroom farce.

  Michelle gasps and I put my arm around her shoulders.

  ‘OK, so now you know,’ Patrick says. ‘But it means nothing, OK? It was a mistake that got out of hand. I’m so sorry. I never meant for it to happen.’

  ‘How long?’ Michelle says.

  ‘Why not ask Tamsin. She’s the one who introduced us in the first place.’

  Michelle looks at me. This is my big moment.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d want to own up to your part in it.’

  OK, here goes. I try to blank out the fact that it’s Michelle I am really lying to.

  ‘If I had any idea what you were on about I would.’

  He turns to Michelle. ‘Tamsin sent Bea to try and honey trap me. Supposedly she’d heard rumours that I was sleeping around and she decided that somehow it was any of her business.’

  I let out a cross between a snort and a scoff. A snoff. ‘What? Michelle, I have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. Why would I ever do something like that?’

  ‘She’s obviously going to try and deny it. Anyway, it all went wrong because Bea told me what was going on.’

  ‘He’s delusional,’ I say. ‘He’ll say anything.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to lose now,’ he says, indicating the state of the room. ‘Why would I need to lie?’

  He’s got a point. ‘Because you think you can divert Michelle’s attention from what’s been going on by pulling me under the bus with you, I don’t know?’

  Michelle looks at me. ‘Is anything he says true?’

  I force myself to hold her gaze. ‘No. Of course not. Why would you believe anything that came out of his mouth now you know what he’s capable of?’

  ‘How long?’ she says to Patrick again. ‘Just tell me the truth.’

  ‘Not long. And what I said to you about the way we met is true.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. And even if I did, who cares? Even if Tam did do that, she was only trying to protect me.’

  ‘As if,’ I say, doing my best incredulous voice.

  ‘I know you didn’t. I’m just saying how they met isn’t the point.’

  ‘You’re a fucking bitch,’ Patrick spits at me.

  ‘And you’re a cheating bastard.’

  ‘Actually Tamsin always stood up for you. When I found that hotel receipt she was the one who said there must be an innocent explanation.’

  ‘There’s a reason for that,’ he says and my heart lurches. Is this it? Adam – who has been keeping a dignified silence – presses a hand into my back for support.

  I speak quickly. ‘Because there was an innocent explanation that time. I phoned his office pretending to be from the hotel about a bit of lost property, and whoever I spoke to said it hadn’t actually been him who’d stayed there, remember?’

  I have to blurt this out now because this is one piece of the puzzle Patrick shouldn’t know about, unless what he is trying to say was true. If he’d brought it up without my first having put it out there Michelle would eventually work out that something was off.

  ‘You didn’t really, though, did you?’ he says now. ‘You just told Michelle you did because I asked you to cover for me.’

  ‘Ha! Now you’re really clutching at
straws.’

  ‘You can ask Verity,’ he says to Michelle.

  ‘It wasn’t Verity she spoke to,’ Michelle says now and I want to hug her for remembering my lie so perfectly. ‘She told me at the time it was someone else.’

  ‘Who?’ he says accusingly.

  ‘I didn’t ask their name, funnily enough. Why would I?’

  ‘How convenient.’

  ‘You really think I’m going to believe Tamsin agreed to cover up for you? That she’d find out you were having an affair and she wouldn’t come straight and tell me?’

  ‘She couldn’t.’

  ‘Why are you doing this, Pad?’ Michelle says, tearful. ‘It’s not bad enough that I find out you’re having an … affair … but you want to try to destroy my friendship with Tam as well? How can you be so sadistic? You must really hate me.’

  ‘No! Mich, listen. I’m not saying this to be cruel. I just think you should know what kind of person she is.’

  ‘You think I should believe you like I believed you were really working late or playing football all those evenings you were out?’

  ‘I was for most of them, I swear. This thing with Bea has only been a few times. Which I know is still unforgivable. But don’t let Tamsin convince you I was having some big love affair.’

  ‘She’s not trying to convince me of anything. She just told me what Adam saw, that’s all.’

  Patrick turns a vitriolic gaze on Adam. ‘And what exactly did Adam – who doesn’t know either me or Bea – see?’

  ‘I saw you together,’ Adam says calmly. ‘Tamsin was with me, that’s how I knew it was you.’

  ‘Stroke of luck in a city of nine million people, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Not really,’ I pipe up. ‘I’d rather never have known.’

  ‘You’re a much better actress than I thought you’d be.’

  ‘Keep talking, Patrick. No one is listening. You’re a drowning man clutching at a life raft.’

  ‘I think we should go,’ Michelle says to Adam and me. ‘I think I’ve heard enough.’

  She turns to Patrick. ‘Please don’t come back to the house tonight. You can go in tomorrow when I’m at work and collect some stuff. I need to be on my own for a while.’