– You have no idea, he said, how much I have been longing to do this.
She laughed, and felt flooded with happiness. She kissed him and touched his hair and ears and cheeks. As she moved backwards towards the bed, Bella tripped over the case.
– What’s that for? she asked, laughing.
He said he didn’t feel able to arrive at a hotel with no luggage and so had gone to M & S to buy one, which was why he’d been late. Then he had worried about the case being empty and so had bought some things to put in it. Bella laughed delightedly. A man who bought an empty suitcase in order to commit adultery clearly did not do this all the time.
She bent down and unzipped the case. Inside was a sack of potatoes, a bag of apples, two sandwiches and a bottle of wine.
– I thought you might be hungry, he said.
– Raw potatoes are my favourite, Bella replied. You’re so funny – and so respectable.
– Bella, he said. Come here.
Bella lay in the luxurious bubbles of the hotel bath while James bustled around, patting himself dry after his shower and checking his BlackBerry.
– What time do you need to be home? he asked.
His voice was now flat and businesslike; quite different from the way he had whispered into her ear just half an hour earlier.
– I’m fine, she said. I don’t need to get to the childminder’s till six. So I’ve got another twenty minutes.
She got out of the bath and came towards him, wrapped in the thick white towel. He made no move to kiss her, and instead said: Here’s money for a taxi.
He held out a twenty-pound note. Bella recoiled as if she had been hit.
– I don’t want your money. I’m not a hooker.
– Listen, he said, softening slightly. That was lovely. Thank you. Thank you for everything.
But he wasn’t looking at her, and since when did one say ‘thank you’ for sex? It was something that two people did because they both wanted to. Bella went down in the lift and walked back through the lobby, past the orange tree and the smirking receptionist, and got on to the tube feeling, after such intense joy, quite empty and spent.
Stella
– Beate has performed pretty much in line with my expectations, Stella was saying to Russell.
She had called a meeting in her office to discuss the performance of the trainees, and Russell was sitting with a checklist on a clipboard putting ticks in boxes.
– She scores highly on finishing and initiative, she went on. However, she has difficulty interacting with others and I have found her to be short on emotional intelligence. Clearly it is not my call on where to post her next, but I think she might benefit from a spell in HR. There is a lot that you could teach her, Russell.
Russell nodded sagely.
– And Rhys Williams?
– He’s matured a good deal in the past few months, Stella said. But as he is not an economist I really don’t see there is much point in keeping him in the department. He now needs to be given a chance to show what he can do. I would suggest an offsite posting. Something in Alaska –?
Later, at her desk, Stella was fighting to keep her resolve. It was right to give up Rhys, she kept telling herself. It was right for her mother. It was right for Charles and the children. It was also right for her work. It was even, she reasoned, right for Rhys. He would get a good new assignment.
For her, it was going to be hard, she thought, but the hardest bit had already been done. She had spoken to Russell, and they had agreed that Rhys would have only a couple more days working for her, and then she would not see him for months, after which the two of them could just be friends.
This line of thought, which seemed so very sensible – responsible and cool-headed – to Stella at the time, later struck her as laughably delusional. She had not done the hard bit; she had done the easy bit. Taking a decision to stop and talk to HR was a doddle. Actually stopping was another matter altogether.
Three hours later Stella was sitting at her desk feeling despairing. She looked up to find Beate hovering outside her door, blinking at her angrily through her jazzy glasses.
– Have you got a minute? she asked.
Stella nodded, but didn’t ask her to sit down.
– I have just been told I am to be posted to Human Resources, she said. Were you aware of this?
Stella nodded uncertainly.
– I knew it was a possibility, she said.
– I have done exceptional work in this department. I have been in the top decile of all measurements of leadership performance, and so to put me into HR is illogical. The only possible reason for it is that this is gender-based stereotyping.
– Listen, said Stella soothingly. You are on a three-year training programme. You will stay in HR for a short stint, probably only six months, and then move on to something else. For what it’s worth, I feel that although your grasp of forecasting is strong, you could benefit from assistance with the softer side.
Over Beate’s shoulder Stella could see Rhys approaching.
He was looking straight at her, his eyes wide open and accusing, his shoulders slightly hunched, his face dark.
Stella frowned slightly, a silent warning to him to look more professional. This signal had no effect on him, but made Beate turn around.
Rhys went on staring at Stella, who found her spirits strangely lifted by the blackness of his expression. He would not look like that unless he really minded.
– Are you staying in Economics?
– No, he said. They are sending me to Alaska to manage a community project there.
Stella smiled tightly and looked at her watch.
– I have a meeting now with the CEO, she said.
She gathered up her papers and walked along the corridor, leaving Beate and Rhys looking after her. As she sat down with Stephen to discuss a possible joint venture in Canada, she stole a look at her BlackBerry.
????????? I DON’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS
She messaged back:
Sorry. I can explain. Let’s have tea later x
They sat in Moorgate Starbucks, which seemed to Stella even dirtier than usual. Her mug of Earl Grey tea was weak and tepid.
– It’s hard to explain, Stella was saying. But when Mum fell yesterday, I made a deal with myself that if she was OK, I’d let you go.
– Let me go?
Rhys looked at her with fury.
– And why? he went on. Because your mother is OK, so you thought it would be a nice idea to destroy my life as a result. That makes a lot of sense.
– Don’t be so hysterical. I’m not destroying your life.
– Don’t be so fucking cold.
– I’m not cold. I’m just trying really hard to do what is right. And this is dreadful for me.
– Oh fine, well that’s all right then. I don’t suppose you have any interest in whether it might be dreadful for me?
He got up, leaving his tea undrunk, and walked out.
Stella took her bag and followed him into the street. She caught his sleeve and pulled at it.
– Rhys, she said. This is tearing me in two. I can’t cope with it. Of course I don’t want you to go to Alaska, but you can’t stay here either. I can’t do this. I love you – I really love you. But it’s all impossible.
Stella had not planned to tell him that she loved him; not then and not ever. But Rhys, on hearing the words, put his arms around her. They were standing in the middle of Moorgate. It was five in the afternoon and broad daylight.
The two of them staggered into a side street and into a doorway. It was the back of a restaurant and out of the air vent hot, greasy air was pouring.
Stella stood in the stinking air and let herself be kissed. She kissed him back, giddy with relief.
And now she walked back into the building, three-quarters of an hour later, slightly dishevelled, with the lightest heart in the world. The oil barrel blinked at her. Brent crude: $120.56 down $20.80, it said.
All night Stell
a had been worrying about how best to accomplish her mission. James was the answer, she had decided. It was going to be difficult, but she would try her best.
In the end it wasn’t difficult at all. She had barely sat down on James’s sofa before he had started to complain about headcount and how the collapse in the oil price had greatly increased his impossible workload. And so Stella had been able to say casually: Why don’t you take one of my trainees? Rhys Williams has just done a stint with me, and he’s a bit older than the others, and I think you could train him up to be quite useful. I found him a bit prickly at first, but I’ve been increasingly impressed. I think Russell may have other plans for him, but if I were you, I’d get in first and grab him.
James had grumbled a bit at this, saying that his shortfall was much more serious than anything a trainee could sort out, but he shouted through to his PA to get Russell on the line.
– Strike while the iron is hot, he said.
Charles was sitting on the sofa reading the New Statesman and didn’t look up when Stella came in. She walked over and sat down beside him, put her head on his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek, feeling the peculiarity of her situation. She wasn’t pretending to be pleased to see him: she was pleased. The storm that was raging through her life at work had not hardened her heart at home. It was quite wrong to think, she reasoned, that Charles and Rhys were rivals for her love. The happier she was with Rhys, the more she had left for Charles.
The odd thing was, she told herself, that an affair with Rhys was making her a better wife, a better mother and a better daughter.
She punched her mother’s number into the phone.
– Hello, Mum, she said.
– I can’t talk to you now, darling. A frightfully nice young man is just completing the paperwork, and then I can go home.
Her mother was going to be OK. Everything was going to be OK.
Bella
Bella had felt dejected the previous evening. She had sat on the sofa with Millie and let her watch EastEnders followed by Hollyoaks, in which a young woman was being pursued by a man twenty years older.
– That’s disgusting, Millie had volunteered.
Bella had laughed uneasily, and stroked her daughter’s fair hair.
There had been no word from James. For those four hours in the hotel room she had felt beautiful and desirable. She had also felt something that she could not remember ever feeling before – a sense of being in a little bubble with him in which the rest of her life didn’t exist. Inside the bubble she wasn’t his most junior researcher; she felt that the power balance between them was reversed – that he wanted and needed her more than she wanted and needed him. It was a thrilling position to be in.
But now the bubble had burst, and she was back in her life and desperate for something – anything – from him. It was not so much that she no longer felt he needed her: she felt that she didn’t exist.
She placed her mobile on the arm of the sofa, and kept looking at it instead of at the television, willing a message to arrive. At about 9.30 she could bear it no longer and sent him a text that said:
Hello.
And at 9.56 he replied:
Hello.
It wasn’t what she had wanted, but it was better than nothing.
The next morning when she got to work James was in his office with the door closed, talking to Stella. As Bella walked past he caught her eye and gave a complicit smile. Her distress the previous night was absurd, she decided: he was there and looking at her.
After a while Stella left and James came out.
– Have you got a minute?
Bella went into his office.
– There are three things I’d like to say to you, he said. First, I would like to kiss you, though I fear that would be ill-advised.
Through the slatted blinds they had a view of a dozen desks, most of which were occupied by people getting on with their work.
– Second, your text nearly caused a major incident at home. I had taken the precaution of saving your name under ‘Bill’, but when it bleeped last night my younger son was fiddling with it, and wanted to know who Bill was and why I had a text from him that just said hello.
– God, said Bella, sorry. It was just that I was worried not to have heard from you …
– It’s fine, he said. Though better not to text me at home in future.
Bella agreed to this and he went on.
– The third thing is that we are going to have a new member of the team – a trainee who has been working for Stella. I think his name is Bryn, and she speaks very highly of him.
– He’s called Rhys.
– Oh, do you know him? he asked.
– Yes, he’s nice, I think.
James frowned.
– I made the error of asking her if he was good-looking, as I was concerned that you might fall for him. She gave me the strangest look and said oh no, terribly emphatically. It was all rather awkward and now she doubtless thinks I’m gay.
Bella laughed at this, amused at the way that straight men of his age cling to a stupid, schoolboyish fascination with homosexuality.
– I hate to break it to you, she said, but he is good-looking. Sort of.
– Damn, said James. I had planned to put him in the empty desk next to yours. I thought you could look after him – you’d better not get too friendly.
Bella was delighted by his jealousy, though she knew there was little chance of getting too friendly with Rhys. Since their lunch in Roast she had barely seen him, and when she had he had behaved oddly. Sometimes he greeted her with great cheer, at other times he was morose and moody. Still, it would be nice having him sitting there, so long as he wasn’t going to be too clever and show her up.
Given that Rhys had only been with the company for six months, he seemed to Bella to have amassed a lot of stuff. He had several different gym kits that he stowed under his desk, and a towel that didn’t look especially clean, which he draped over the coatstand next to Bella’s jacket. He had a set of headphones and numerous chargers for various bits of electronic kit.
His screensaver was a picture of Girls Aloud clad in hotpants, aiming their bottoms at the camera, and then looking around over their shoulders to pout.
– I can’t believe you like Girls Aloud, Bella said. My daughter loves them, but she’s seven.
– They’re crap, he said.
– They why have them as your screensaver?
– Dunno. I just think they’re funny. It’s so un-AE, and I also think Kimberly is quite cute in those hotpants.
Bella laughed, and thought what fun it was going to be sitting with him.
– What are you doing for lunch? he asked.
Just as Bella was about to say that she had no plans, his mobile went, and he answered, turning his back on her and whispering into the phone. Bella decided that he must be talking to his girlfriend, though why he was doing it in quite such a gauche manner, she had no idea.
He talked for a bit more in the same stilted way, and then, just before he hung up, he said what sounded like ‘woof’.
– Sorry, he said to Bella, something’s come up. We can’t have lunch, but can we do it later in the week?
Bella went down to the canteen on her own. She took her tray to where a group of PAs were sitting discussing how much they liked the credit crunch as the prices in the shops had come down. Nathalie was proudly telling everyone how she haggled at Dorothy Perkins and persuaded the shop assistant to knock 10 per cent off a pair of gloves.
As they were talking, Bella looked up to see Rhys saunter into the canteen, take two sandwiches and two bottles of water, pay for them and disappear.
This struck her as odd. Wasn’t he meant to be having lunch with his girlfriend?
Stella
Rhys had been gone for precisely one morning, but Stella was already missing him. Every time she looked up from her work, she no longer saw his back and the mess of his things, but an empty desk, with its chair pulled in nea
tly. That day she was supposed to be having lunch with an economist from Harvard, who she found pompous and patronizing. He had proposed lunch some six months earlier, and Stella had chosen the furthest of the dates offered in the hope that somehow it would never arrive.
Then, just as she was about to leave to meet him at the Avenue in St James’s, she’d had a call from his PA. He was coming in from the airport and his flight had been delayed due to fog and he wasn’t going to make it.
– Oh dear, said Stella, passing off her delight as disappointment. I’m so sorry that his day has been disrupted.
She put down the phone without making any attempt to arrange a new date, and dialled Rhys’s number. Rhys answered, sounding peculiar and stiff.
– Are you overheard? she asked.
– Yes, he said.
– Listen, she said. My lunch has been cancelled. What are you doing right now?
– I’ve just fixed up something but I can cancel it.
– Shall we go to your flat?
– There’s no time, he said. I have a meeting at 2.45 and I have to get back by then.
Stella felt a prickle of irritation. But then he said: Roof?
And she said: See you by the fire doors in ten minutes.
Rhys was waiting for her by the half flight of stairs leading up from the fourteenth floor.
They pushed through the fire door that said ‘Zone C – Emergency Exit Only’, climbed the fire stairs to the top and stepped out on to a flat roof covered in pebbles, in which a few buddleias had seeded themselves.
There was a low parapet around the edge that Stella made a move to sit on, but Rhys pulled her back, saying he was afraid of heights, and steered them towards the sloping edge by the side of the building. They squatted down together.
In Office Hours Page 18