Adultery for Beginners

by Sarah Duncan

  'Sure,' Isabel said, and smiled at his surprise.

  She wandered around with a wire basket over her arm, dropping in chocolate cake and wine and a pot of winter cyclamen and anything else that took her fancy - tea lights and ice cream, mango-scented shampoo and estate-bottled olive oil. When the children asked again for sweets, she doled out a pound each, and they scampered off, chattering excitedly. At the till she realised that she'd forgotten the eggs and had to dash up and down the aisles searching for them, unused to the store layout.

  Neither the obvious boredom of the shop assistant nor the surprisingly large bill could dampen Isabel's spirits.

  I've got a job, I've got a job. She could see herself telling Neil, imagining his delighted surprise. 'Good for you,' he'd say. 'Well done.' She replayed the interview in her head, the dreadful moment when Mr Sherwin asked about her CV, the sagging sofa, the mounds of paper everywhere. She giggled inwardly. She'd never seen anyone so messy, no wonder he needed someone to sort him out. In her mind's eye she pictured the living room without the layer of paper, the office tidy, everything filed away alphabetically with herself at the centre, a Miss Moneypenny figure with striped shirt neatly tucked into a slim waistband, unchewed biro in hand. Her vision expanded and she was running a vast office, an office where pot plants grew in lush profusion on the desks of the happy workers clicking at their computer keyboards. Phones rang with a pleasant chime and were answered courteously with sweet voices saying - Her daydream stopped suddenly as she realised that she'd forgotten to ask Mr Sherwin the name of his company. Neil wouldn't be impressed.

  - ooo -

  Neil wasn't.

  'I don't understand why you didn't ask,' he kept saying. 'What's the big secret?'

  'I didn't think to ask,' Isabel said, feeling stupid and wishing she hadn't told him, had kept it quiet. Neil had been in such a bad mood when he'd got back from work that she'd avoided telling him about the interview. On Saturday afternoon they had driven into town to buy a sofa. Sitting in the passenger seat, waiting to get into the central car park, she'd been lulled into thinking it wouldn't matter, that he'd have forgotten his objections. But no such luck. Neil couldn't leave the subject alone. He worried at it, picking away at the edges of Isabel's pride in her success.

  'Look, I'll find out on Tuesday. What about this one?' Isabel sat on a sofa at random, ignoring the children who were bouncing on and off leather armchairs further down the aisle. 'It's very comfortable.'

  'I think it's hideous,' Neil said, the corners of his moustache drooping down.

  'We wouldn't have to have the same cover. Try it for comfort.' She patted the sofa beside her. Neil sat down, and leant back, his eyes closed as if about to go to sleep.

  'Aren't you pleased I've got a job?' she tried.

  'Of course I am, darling.' Neil sat up with a sigh. 'It just seems very dodgy to me. It's in this man's house, you don't know the name of the company, there's no job description -'

  'I know what I'm supposed to be doing. Personal assistant things.'

  'Such as?'

  'Filing. Sorting. Organising. That sort of thing. Nothing I can't do.'

  Neil rubbed the back of his head with his hand and stood up. 'It's not a question of what you can or can't do. It's a question of safety.'

  Isabel stood up too. 'You didn't want me to go to the interview because of safety but it was fine. Not everybody is a mad axe murderer or serial rapist you know.'

  'But you didn't know, that's the point. He could have been. You went to meet this man at a private address. No one knew where you were or who you were with.'

  'But it was fine.' Isabel felt as if she were back at school and being told off for something she hadn't done, the injustice of it burning inside. 'And you knew where it was, I told you, those Georgian cottages you said were too small for us. And that wardrobe woman from the school, Justine, she knows him.'

  'Great. Well that's all right then. The wardrobe woman knows him. Whoopee.' He set off down the aisle. Isabel watched him peering at the sales tags and then letting them drop with a sniff. He straightened up and looked around the sales floor as if, of all the sofas lined up, none of them could possibly be worthy of him.

  Isabel marched up to him and pulled at his sleeve to get his attention.

  'Why are you being so unpleasant?' she hissed, keeping her voice low so no one else would hear.

  Neil looked past her left ear. 'I'm sorry. I don't mean to be unpleasant,' he said in the reasonable voice that always drove her mad. 'I'm concerned that you're being -'

  'What? Stupid?'

  'No, not stupid. Naive. Inexperienced.'

  'Neil, I'm a grown woman. I'm not a child who needs looking after. I've spent all these years trailing after you, going from one country to the next, and that's been fine. I've accepted that there are certain constraints living in a different culture. It was the life we chose.' She bit her lip, concentrating on sounding as reasonable as Neil, not over-emotional and out of control. 'But we're not there now, and I'm not going to live as if I'm in purdah. This is my home.'

  'I'm only concerned for you.'

  'You don't need to be.'

  There was a short silence. Isabel found the combination of flat neon lighting, low ceilings and no windows on the shop floor was giving her a headache. And the "Buy now for Christmas" signs so prominently displayed in September were depressing reminders of passing time.

  'I don't like these square ones,' Neil said, touching the arm of the nearest sofa with his fingertips. 'I'd rather get something with cushions.'

  'You mean more traditional.'

  He shrugged, then moved along towards the children on the far side of the shop floor. They'd found a garden swing seat and were rocking backwards and forwards, eyes shut, feet dangling in complete relaxation. For once they weren't bickering and squabbling, but swung gently in perfect accord.

  Why are we always arguing? Isabel thought. Since we've been back it's been one thing after another. Neil used to be my closest friend, but now we're always fighting. Perhaps we shouldn't have come back.

  She trailed after Neil, who had settled on a large sofa with scrolled arms. She sat on the other side, very conscious of the space between them.

  'D'you like this one?' she said finally.

  'It's not bad,' he said. 'I like this stuff.' He stroked the sofa arm, his fingers lingering on the soft fabric.

  'Chenille,' Isabel said. 'I was thinking that loose covers would be more practical.'

  'It's a nice colour too.'

  It was a dreary in-between brown, not cream, not chocolate, but a nothing colour. 'You can choose whatever colour you like,' Isabel said.

  'I like this one.'

  'Don't you think it's a bit, well, dull? I mean, we could have something like this.' She pulled out the book of fabric swatches and handed it to him, open at a vibrant terracotta. He took it as if the swatch might surge up and swamp him, like being attacked by a vat of tomato soup.

  'I know this is a silly job,' she said. 'I know it's not important, or clever, or anything really. It's not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life, or even for more than six months. But it's a start, and I have to start from the bottom.'

  'Why do you have to start at all?' he said, thumbing through the swatches.

  'Neil, we've been through this so many times. I want to work, I want to be useful. The children are at school all day, so what else am I supposed to do with my time?'

  'It didn't matter in Syria.'

  'The children were younger then. And it was different. I had to shop every day, and make everybody's lunch, and there weren't opportunities to do anything else. It's not like that here. And everything's so expensive here, we could do with the money.'

  'It's hard to imagine what they'd look like from such a little piece,' he said, frowning at the swatches. 'I think the one it's got on is the best.'

  Isabel said nothing as she looked at the sofa. Sludge would be the most apt description. She took the book of swatch
es from him and flicked wistfully through the squares of jewel-bright colours - sapphire, emerald and ruby. Still, she supposed that sludge would go with almost any other colour. And she had insisted that he come with her to choose; it would be unfair to then ignore his choice.

  'So you'd like this one?'

  'Yeah, why not?'

  'Don't you think we should look at some others?'

  'No, this'll do.' He paused. 'Look, I accept you want to work. I don't see why it has to be this job.'

  'Because I've not been offered anything else,' Isabel wailed in exasperation. 'I can't pick and choose. I've no experience, no qualifications. I probably couldn't even get a job selling sofas.'

  'You can sell me a sofa any day. Come here and give me a kiss.' So that was the end of the discussion. Isabel thought about pushing harder for a different colour, but as he had relented about her working she shuffled along the seat to him. He put his arm round her. 'That's better. Now, how much do they want for this? You're sitting on the label.'

  'Sorry.' Isabel shuffled away and pulled the tags out from behind her. 'It's quite a lot.' She tried to work out how many hours of working it represented, but got confused with the maths. Could it really be as much as five months' pay?

  'C'mon, let's grab the kids and go and pay.'

  Isabel scanned the room at all the sofas they hadn't looked at. 'But we haven't looked at everything.'

  'I thought we'd decided.' Neil stood up and waved at the children. 'By the way, how much are you getting for this job?'

  'Four pounds an hour.'

  He looked at her then. 'You're kidding. That's less than the minimum wage, you know.'

  'I didn't,' Isabel said, rubbing the chenille up the wrong way and then smoothing it down with her fingertips. 'I didn't know there was a minimum wage.'

  'Oh, Isabel. What shall I do with you?' Neil stared down at her. 'You really are hopeless.'

  How was I supposed to know there's a minimum wage? There wasn't one when I last lived here, she thought, as the children charged over and bounced on the sofa Neil had chosen. At least I got the job. Mr Sherwin didn't think I was hopeless. The idea that he might have thought her a mug skittered across her mind. After all, he had originally offered her three pounds fifty an hour. But then, remembering the chaos, she thought it more likely that Mr Sherwin hadn't heard of the minimum wage either. And I don't care anyway, she told herself. It doesn't matter how much I get, it's the experience that counts. After a few months I can look around for something that pays better.

  She followed Neil and the children to the sales desk where Neil negotiated a price reduction for the sofa in the showroom. The sales assistant's probably relieved to get rid of such a boring colour, Isabel thought, and then felt disloyal.

  'We could deliver on a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday,' the sales assistant said.

  'It'll have to be a Friday,' Isabel said, feeling immensely proud. 'I work on Wednesdays and Thursdays.' It was wonderful to be able to say that. Neil snorted into his moustache but said nothing to her as he got out his wallet and paid for the sofa. Perhaps she could think of the colour as being baby donkey. She could team it with speedwell blue.

  As they walked back to the car, Isabel tucked her hand into Neil's arm. 'It's only for a trial period,' she said. 'Just to see how things work out. No strings on either side.'

  Neil patted her hand. 'If it's what you want,' he said. 'Though it beats me why.'

  Isabel squeezed his arm. 'It'll be fine,' she said. 'You'll see.'

  Chapter 4

  Isabel stood on the doorstep and examined the door, currently painted a cheery parrot-green but with enough chips to show other layers of colour underneath, like a half-sucked gobstopper. She rang the doorbell. Nothing. She knocked, a sharp series of raps. Still nothing. She looked up and down the street, feeling conspicuous and uncertain what to do next. She wanted to shout out, I'm supposed to be here. She knocked again then tried to peer in through the window, trying to avoid the startling pink froth of the nerines that were sunning themselves at the base of the house wall. It seemed very dark inside. She'd hassled the children to get to school early, turfing them out of bed and into the car, letting Michael get away with unbrushed hair because it would waste five minutes while he argued against it. She felt cheated. She'd come all this way and now there was no one here.

  She took two paces back and stared up at the windows. The curtains were drawn and she wondered if Mr Sherwin lived there as well as using the house as an office. Perhaps he was still in bed, despite the fresh morning sunshine. She remembered him saying something about not being an early riser. But she couldn't believe he'd forgotten she was coming. She walked to the gate, reluctant to leave, frequently turning back as if the door might have opened in her absence. The front garden needed weeding, couch grass pushing up through the herringbone bricks of the path. A few palest pink buds, stained cappuccino-brown around the petal edges, clung onto a straggly rose bush that might, once upon a time, have been a standard.

  She hovered at the gate, unwilling to let it clang shut behind her, wondering what to do next. Then she realised that a man was strolling down the street, a newspaper tucked under his arm and a pint of milk dangling from his hand, and in the next second recognised him. Mr Sherwin gave no appearance of hurry as he sauntered along the pavement towards her. Halfway down he stopped, pulled out a mobile phone and started talking into it. He was still talking when he registered Isabel. With his free hand he brushed the palm of his hand against his forehead, universal sign of forgetfulness - or stupidity - and grinned at her, still chatting into the phone. He walked past her to the house and unlocked the door, handing her the newspaper and milk so he could dig out his keys from the depths of his trouser pockets, phone clamped between ear and shoulder.

  He had to duck his head to get through the doorway, then beckoned her in. Isabel obediently entered, trying not to eavesdrop on his jargon-filled conversation. The room looked even worse than it had done the previous week. Obviously any thoughts he may have had of sorting through his papers had vanished over the weekend. She hesitated then carefully stacked some of the papers into a ragged pile and sat down carefully on the sofa. The springs had mainly given up the struggle, leaving her the alternatives of lolling back in abandonment against the soft feather cushions or sitting bolt upright as if tightly corseted. She sat with knees together, back straight and newspaper and milk in her lap, watching him stride around the room talking, as if oblivious to her presence.

  After a few minutes she realised she must look like a presidential candidate's wife listening avidly to her husband making a speech. She pretended to look for something in her bag instead, while she tried not to listen to a voice in her head that said, what are you doing here? As Mr Sherwin talked on, the voice of reason got louder. She stood up.

  'Look, I must go,' he said. 'Ciao.' He turned the phone off and looked at Isabel, who was inwardly seething. He could obviously have stopped talking any time he wanted.

  'Isabel. Is it Tuesday already? I'd quite forgotten about you. Never mind, it's good you're here. I'm up to my eyeballs at the moment.' He gestured vaguely at the room. 'What would be great is, if you could tidy all these into some sort of order, and then make us a couple of coffees - the kitchen's through there - and then I can run through what I want you to do today. I've got a few calls to make, but I'll do them in the garden. You can bring the coffee out there. Got to make the most of the sunshine, right?' And with that he left the room, already dialling on his mobile.

  Isabel stood blinking in the empty room. Well, that's put me in my place, she thought. How Neil would laugh at this. But I'm here, and here to work. She put the newspaper and milk on the stairs then started to collect up all the printed matter ready to sort into piles - newspapers, brochures, letters. She wasn't sure how else to sort them, not knowing what they were about. As she went through she registered certain names and made new piles for them. Invoices, bills - an alarming amount of red reminders - glossy advertisement
s for computers, bits torn from newspapers. Some were written in what she recognised as being Italian. The telephone rang and her hand hovered over it, uncertain if she should answer or not, but it stopped ringing before she could decide. Bank statements, financial reports, cuttings from the Financial Times. Official-looking letters from Customs and Excise and Companies House. By the end she had lined up the material into eight rough piles along the top of the old oak dresser and not a paper lay on the floor. And she now knew the business was called Patrick Sherwin Associates.

  She followed where he had gone and found herself in the kitchen, a large room almost entirely filled with a huge pine farmhouse table, big enough for a family of twelve. There were dirty plates and mugs in the sink, and foil dishes indicated that Mr Sherwin had been eating a lot of takeaways over the weekend. She filled up the kettle with water and switched it on. While she waited for the water to boil she did the washing-up and chucked the takeaway containers into the bin, hoping she wasn't setting a precedent. It was bad enough clearing up after two children and a husband without adding an employer as well.

  Having finished, she looked around for something else to do. The kitchen now looked functional but impersonal so she went back out to the front garden and picked some of the nerines. The fragile pink flowers were unscented but beautiful as she put them in a jam jar on the kitchen table, long petals arching away from the carmine centres, edges frilled like underwear. She started to explore the cupboards. Mr Sherwin appeared to have only real coffee, not instant, so she made a cafetière-full. She fetched the milk, poured some into a jug, then put the rest back into a fridge that was empty except for two bottles of Pinot Grigio, a wizened piece of cheddar and four plastic canisters containing camera film. She added two mugs to the tray along with the cafetière and milk, and went out to the back garden, screwing her eyes up against the sunshine.