Breakfast at Stephanie's

by Sue Margolis

  She had a shower and went downstairs to check the post, which had been piling up since she got ill. It was mostly bills. The only letter was a curt, two-line note from Eileen Griffin saying she was sorry to lose her and grudgingly wishing her well. It was pretty much as she’d expected. As she put it in the bin, she noticed that the kitchen phone was unplugged. Albert had disconnected it when the press started phoning incessantly. She pushed the plug back into the socket and dialed her voice mail. As she suspected, most of the messages were from newspapers offering her ludicrous amounts of money for her story. She still had absolutely no intention of taking any of them up, but a bit of her—the out-of-work, about-to-be-evicted, penniless bit—was tempted. There were also several messages from seedy-sounding men asking if she would be interested in doing glamour modeling. One bloke even wanted to know if she would consider giving hand relief. Then Frank’s voice came on.

  “Hi, Steph. I’ve been trying to get you for days and I’ve lost your mobile number. Where are you? Are you OK? Look, I just wanted to say I’ve been doing some thinking about us. There’s loads I want to say. Let’s talk when I get back. Should be home tomorrow.” He sounded so upbeat, so hopeful. She felt a momentary surge of joy, which instantly turned to sickness. She walked upstairs slowly, partly because her legs still felt weak and partly because she was dreading having to tell him about her decision to be with Albert.

  Unable to think of anything that didn’t sound clichéd and trite, she switched on the TV at the end of the bed. A couple of transsexuals were discussing whether it was OK to be bridesmaids if they still had penises. She never did find out whether or not it was, because the front doorbell rang. She pulled on her dressing gown, trekked downstairs again and opened the front door.

  “Frank! You said you weren’t getting back until tomorrow.”

  “This is tomorrow,” he said brightly. “I left that last message yesterday.”

  “Oh, God, yes. Sorry.” She stood back to let him in.

  “Listen,” he said, putting his arms around her, “I want to apologize. I overreacted when you told me about Albert. I should have trusted you when you said there was nothing going on.” Oh, God, why did he have to say he was sorry? Now telling him that she and Albert had decided to make a go of it would be doubly hard. She couldn’t work out if she was finding it hard to breathe because of all the guilt she was feeling or because he was holding her so tight. As he began kissing her on the lips, she turned her head away.

  “Steph? You all right?”

  “The thing is, I haven’t been well,” she said. He’d only just walked in. She couldn’t start telling him about Albert while he was practically still standing on the doorstep. He put his hand to her face.

  “God, you don’t look too good. And you’ve lost weight. What happened?”

  “Ah, so you haven’t seen the papers, then?”

  “No, I didn’t bother to get them when I was in Paris.”

  She took him into the kitchen, put the kettle on and told him the saga. “What a nightmare. So, how you feeling now?”

  “Still a bit feeble, but I’m getting there.”

  “Anyway, at least K-Mart and Doucette got what was coming to them. But what about you?”

  She shrugged and said the press had gone easy on her. “But Sidney’s buggered off to Brazil until the heat dies down and is refusing to pay any of us. I just hope Ossie can find me some more work soon.”

  Just then the doorbell rang. Convinced it was Albert, she turned white. Then she remembered that Albert had a key.

  “I think I know who that is,” Frank said. He was smiling a cryptic smile. He told her he had a surprise for her and that she should go and wait in the living room. “A surprise? What sort of a surprise?”

  “Just do as you’re told,” he said. She trotted off into the living room.

  A couple of minutes later two deliverymen in overalls appeared. Each of them was holding one side of what was clearly a canvas, a very large canvas covered in a white sheet. Frank asked them to prop it up against the wall. Then he thanked them, handed them a couple of quid each for their trouble and they took their leave.

  “Why don’t you see what it is?” Frank said.

  She looked at him, still perplexed. Then she began pulling at the sheet. “Oh, Frank. I don’t believe it. You bought this for me?” It was the Ed Blackwell Full English Breakfast painting she’d admired at the gallery in Shoreditch. She gazed at it, tears in her eyes, her fingers skimming the giant puddle of ketchup, the fried eggs, the brownish-purple rashers of streaky bacon. “I wrote you a note,” he said, handing her a small envelope. “Open it later, when you’re on your own.”

  “OK,” she nodded. “Frank, it’s beautiful. It’s the most wonderful present I’ve ever had.”

  “It’s my way of saying I love you.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course I do. It wasn’t until I went away that I realized just how much.”

  She began fiddling nervously with the envelope. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “ ‘I love you too’ would be a start.”

  She looked into his happy, expectant face. In a few seconds she would shatter every ounce of joy he was feeling. “I do love you …”

  “Blimey, do I hear a but coming on?”

  She slipped the envelope into her dressing gown pocket. “I can’t let you give me the painting,” she said.

  “Why on earth not?”

  She suggested they go and sit on the sofa. “The thing is,” she began, looking down at her hands and then up at him.

  “What?”

  “Oh, God, this is so difficult … The thing is, Albert and I have decided to try and make a go of it.”

  “What? You’re not serious. After everything you said?”

  “Frank, please try to understand. At the end of the day, he’s Jake’s father and I think Jake deserves a proper family.”

  “But you and I could be a proper family.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same.”

  He began rubbing his forehead. “Do you love Albert?”

  “I have feelings for him.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “No, I’m not in love with him, if that’s what you mean.”

  “So, you’re prepared to sacrifice your happiness—our happiness—in order to live with a man you’re not in love with.”

  “I want what’s best for Jake.”

  “What’s best for Jake is that he lives with two people who love each other. Do you think Jake wants a martyr for a mother?”

  She bridled. “I’m not being a martyr. I told you I have feelings for Albert. And you wouldn’t believe how he’s looked after me these last few days. He’s been wonderful.”

  “So, that’s it. Albert holds your head while you’re chucking up and you’re his.”

  “Stop it.” Her voice was raised now. “There’s more to it than that. Much more.”

  She watched his face start to soften. “So, when I do this …” Gently he pulled her dressing gown off her shoulder and started kissing the top of her breast. “It means nothing.” She ran her hand over the back of his head. The next moment he was cupping her face and kissing her, his tongue deep inside her. For a few delicious seconds she kissed him back.

  Somehow she found the strength to push him away. “I can’t do this.”

  He stood up. “So, that’s it?”

  “I’m so sorry.” She turned her head toward the canvas. “I’ll arrange for somebody to pick up the painting and deliver it to you.”

  “I don’t want it. Keep it.” His voice was icy. He began walking toward the door. Then he turned around briefly. “Say hi to Jake for me,” he said.

  “Frank …”

  She heard the front door open and close. Tears tumbling down her face, she pulled Frank’s envelope out of her dressing gown pocket. Her hands were shaking as she opened it. “ ‘When you put your arms around me, you give me fever that’s so hard to bear.’ All my love for
ever, Frank.” She fell onto the sofa and sobbed.

  Eventually, realizing that Albert and Jake would be back any minute, she pulled herself together. She went into the kitchen and put on some more coffee. The kettle had just boiled when Albert came in, Jake trotting behind him chomping on a Waitrose gingerbread man. Albert was loaded down with supermarket bags.

  “What’s with the painting in the living room?” Panicked and completely taken off guard, she said it was a get-well present from Cass.

  “Must have cost a fortune,” he said.

  “Oh, well. You know Cass. She saw it, the whole breakfast thing reminded her of me and she just had to buy it.” He said he wasn’t sure he liked it. “I do,” she said. “I love it. It’s bold and colorful.”

  “So is a freshly severed artery. That doesn’t mean I’d hang it on my wall. Personally, I’d have preferred a landscape.” His not liking the painting didn’t really matter, but at that moment it seemed to her to symbolize the gulf between them. He told her he’d bought bagels for breakfast. “I hope you’ve still got an appetite.”

  “You bet,” she said, wondering how she could possibly eat when the lump in her throat was so painful.

  Chapter 19

  Over the next few days Stephanie tried valiantly to put Frank out of her mind and focus on the three of them being a family. Even though she hadn’t completely regained her strength, she threw herself into domestic activity. She cooked shepherd’s pie and roast beef; she organized outings. One Sunday morning, bundled up in fleeces, hats and scarves, they went to see the deer in Richmond Park. There had been a heavy snowfall overnight, so they stopped off at a petrol station to buy a toboggan.

  The park was full of daddies and children having hysterics as they careened down the snowy slopes. The deer remained aloof, ignoring the commotion, while the mothers busied themselves with their camcorders or dusted off and comforted little ones who had taken a tumble in the snow. As Stephanie watched Albert and Jake come off the toboggan for the umpteenth time and roll gleefully in the thick white carpet, she threw back her head and laughed, but at the same time, she was fighting the great ball of sorrow in her chest.

  The next day they took Jake to see a puppet show on a barge at Camden Lock. Afterward they went out for pizza and Albert tried to teach Jake how to count in Italian. She watched Jake’s little face, frowning with concentration, as he struggled to get his tongue around the strange sounds. “Way to go,” Albert declared, beaming, when Jake finally made it to five without help. Stephanie was cheering him on, too, but as she took a sip of wine she found herself staring off into the distance. Even though she, Albert and Jake were finally a family, she couldn’t help feeling desperately alone. She had given Jake the father he needed, but like a fool, she had sacrificed her own needs. Loath as she was to admit it, Frank had been right. She was being a martyr.

  Letting Frank go had been a catastrophic mistake. All she could think in her defense was that her decision had been due in part to her having been ill, and as a result, her judgment had been wildly off. Every bit of her ached for Frank. No matter how much she wanted it to happen, it was never going to be possible to build a relationship with Albert based merely on affection and the love they shared for Jake. Deep down, she supposed she’d always known it.

  They hadn’t made love since Albert moved in. Stephanie convinced him that she still wasn’t feeling 100 percent better, and for the time being, at least, Albert, who was still fairly distant and withdrawn, seemed happy not to push her.

  “Oh, by the way,” he said one night, over dinner, “Sunnie is leaving Berlin tomorrow and stopping off in London on her way home. I thought I might ask her to stay for a few days if it’s all right with you.”

  “Sure,” Stephanie said. “She and Brad can stay as long as they like. They can have the spare room.”

  “Actually, she’ll be on her own. Brad has to stay on in Berlin.”

  Sunnie was her usual confused dippy self—going to the supermarket to seek out no-fat double cream, choosing what to wear each morning by dowsing, demanding to know why they built Windsor Castle so close to the airport. She was delighted to see Jake, whom she’d bought Tibetan prayer bells, which he went round the house tinging incessantly.

  It was obvious she made Albert laugh and the two of them still clicked. Stephanie didn’t see it, though. She was too lost in her thoughts about Frank to notice.

  “You know what, Albert?” Sunnie said one morning over her green tea. “I just found a chin hair. I feel so ancient suddenly.”

  “You should worry. A few months ago I found my first gray pubic hair.”

  “Oh, how awful.”

  “You’re telling me. It was in an egg roll.”

  The two of them roared. Stephanie barely reacted. Albert asked her if she was feeling OK.

  “Fine,” she said, aware she sounded vague and a bit off.

  “I thought I’d take Sunnie and Jake to Brighton for the day. Why don’t you come with us? The sea air will do you good.” She shook her head and said she’d rather stay at home.

  It wasn’t until the following weekend that she finally caught up with Lizzie and Cass. Lizzie phoned on Saturday morning to invite her over for morning coffee. She said Cass was coming. “And I’m sure Jake would love to see the new weaving looms we just got for the twins.”

  As she and Jake walked up the front path, Dom was coming toward them. He was wearing a baggy sweater and beaten-up jeans. His face seemed far less strained than usual and he was actually smiling. “Don’t tell me,” she said, “you’re on your way to the office, but it’s dress-down Saturday.”

  “Nope. As it happens, I’m on my way to the garden center to buy a couple of topiary bushes. Did you know that doing topiary can be very emotionally soothing?”

  “I can see that,” she said, watching Jake run up to Lizzie’s front door and start banging on it to be let in. “Listen, Dom, I don’t want to worry you, but I have this feeling that when the aliens abducted you, they severely messed with your head. The Dom I know definitely doesn’t do topiary.”

  “Ah, you knew the old Dom,” he said. “The new Dom is a changed man. You see, Lizzie and I talked. She made me realize that if I carried on working like I have been, I would make myself ill. But more than that, she showed me that I was missing the boys’ growing up. So, I bit the bullet. I went to my boss and said I would resign unless I got weekends off. You know, I never quite realized how much the firm valued me. He didn’t even argue.”

  “Good for you. That’s brilliant.”

  “By the way,” he said, “I’m sorry about what happened—you know, the show and everything, you getting ill. I hope it all works out.”

  “Yeah, so do I,” she said, managing a smile. By now Lizzie was standing at the door calling at her to come in because having the door open was letting out all the heat.

  As she and Jake stood in the hall taking their coats off, Stephanie’s mobile rang. Lizzie said she would take Jake into the living room to find the twins.

  “Hello, Miss Glassman?” It was a male voice. Youngish. Rather posh, she thought.

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Edward Windsor.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Prince Edward. I have been having a conversation with Lord Lloyd Webber and we are very interested …”

  “Hang on. You are His Royal Highness, Prince Edward?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah, right, and I’m the Duke of Edinburgh’s secret love child. Good-bye.” She flipped the phone shut, not before she’d muttered “fucking cranks” loud enough for the caller to hear.

  Lizzie came back into the hall and asked her who had been on the phone. “Oh, just another lunatic call. I’ve had two or three this week.” She told her about the hand-relief bloke.

  Lizzie and Cass both agreed that she was still looking a bit peaky. Lizzie said she needed fattening up and insisted on making hot buttered crumpets. “Don’t do that,” Cass said, “you’ll undo all the good th
e food poisoning did.”

  “The good?” Lizzie said, horrified. “Sorry, I’m not with you.”

  But Stephanie was. “I think she’s referring to me having lost a few pounds.”

  “Too right,” Cass said. “I mean, weight loss is definitely the upside of getting ill. Forget dieting. Just eat raw chicken, or even better, go to India for a week. That way the weight falls off and at the same time you gain a suntan.” Lizzie said that she hoped Cass never had daughters because she would set such a terrible example for them. Then Cass said at least no daughter of hers would ever own a weaving loom.

  Just as things looked like they were about to get heated, Stephanie noticed Cass’s braces had disappeared. “Cass, the braces are gone!”

  “Aha, there’s where you’re wrong. I found this new orthodontist and he’s fitted me with the latest type of brace that fits behind the teeth so you can’t see it. Look! Isn’t it incredible?”

  Stephanie and Lizzie peered into Cass’s wide-open, bleached-tooth mouth and agreed the hidden wires were indeed incredible.

  “And it’s not just the braces that are incredible. I have to say the orthodontist is severely cute. It’s partly the gloves. The smell of latex really turns me on. Anyway, I ended up giving him my card and asking him to call me if he felt like it.”

  “So, has he phoned?” Stephanie asked.

  “Not yet, but I just know he will.”

  It was Lizzie who finally got round to asking how things were going with Albert now that he’d moved in. “Not brilliant. Actually, I’m going to ask him to move out.” Lizzie and Cass exchanged shocked glances. Lizzie asked her what had gone wrong.

  “Well,” she said, after Stephanie had explained, “if you’re really sure you can’t make a go of it, I suppose you’ve got no option. When are you going to tell him?”

  Stephanie said as soon as she could find a time when Sunnie was out of the way. “The whole thing’s just such a mess. I’ve hurt Frank and now I’m going to hurt Albert. Then there’s Jake. I just can’t bear the thought of what it will do to him if Albert leaves. You know how much he adores him.”