At lunchtime on the day she had gone to M & S in Moorgate and wandered up and down the aisles with an empty wire basket. Should she get the lamb hotpot with rosemary potatoes, which was £6.99, or the salmon with dill sauce, which was on special offer at £5.50, but then she’d also have to buy the new potatoes and they were £1.99? Or maybe it would be better to buy two steaks instead?
She picked up a packet of Thai chicken crisps but then took them out again and replaced them with Greek olives stuffed with anchovies, which she didn’t particularly like but thought would look more sophisticated. The trouble was that she had no idea what he liked and suspected that he really didn’t like anything much from M & S. Eventually she chose the salmon and a bottle of wine that was more expensive than she could afford, and two bunches of freesias.
All afternoon she had been in a state of anxiety. She had wanted this for so long but now that it was happening she was afraid. She could not imagine him sitting at her little table, let alone washing in her bathroom or sleeping in her bed.
Even less could she imagine him with her daughter. Often Millie asked her if she had a boyfriend, and when Bella said no, Millie always asked why not. Bella usually said that it was because she didn’t meet anyone she liked and anyway she didn’t need anyone, as she had Millie, to which her daughter always replied: I don’t want you to have a boyfriend. But then more recently she had started saying that she wouldn’t mind if Bella had a rich boyfriend so that she could have lots of nice things.
At least James looked rich. Unfortunately, he also looked married.
Bella had fixed a playdate for her daughter that day and persuaded the mother to drop her off just before bedtime, so that Millie and James would hardly see each other.
James had insisted that they did not leave the office at the same time, but met by his dark green BMW in the underground car park. Bella got there first, and stood by its side trying to look inconspicuous as George Stevens, her old boss, walked past her on the way to his car.
– What are you doing here? he asked.
– I’m being given a lift home with my shopping, she said.
He seemed quite satisfied by this entirely implausible explanation, which Bella decided was because she was so far beneath his radar of interest that she could have been standing there stark naked and he would not have registered anything amiss.
As soon as James came down and they got into the car together, Bella stopped feeling anxious. She put her shopping in the back and sat on the grey leather seat beside him as he skilfully manoeuvred the car out of its tight space. The simple business of sitting next to him in this car as they crawled up Goswell Road was thrilling to her. She didn’t want excitement from him – she wanted normality. She leant over and put her head on his shoulder, and he absently kissed her hair.
She turned the key in the front door, which opened on to a small, grubby hallway strewn with pizza fliers, and climbed the stairs. Her flat didn’t look clean and loved as it had looked when she left for work that morning, but tawdry, with its grubby beige carpet and magnolia walls with circular scars where Blu Tack had been. She hung his coat on the rail that was slightly coming out of the wall, and thought how outlandish it looked there.
– Your flat is lovely, he said, not looking at it but taking her in his arms.
She led him into the cramped kitchenette, poured him some wine and peeled the plastic wrapper off the fish.
– I hope you like salmon, she said.
– I love salmon, he replied.
Bella thought about doing this every day, making a meal for him, learning to cook and having him sit at the table and watch her while she did it.
The doorbell went, and Millie marched into the room. She looked warily at James.
– Who are you? she asked.
– I’m a friend of your mum’s – we work together, he said in the same soft voice that he used when he spoke to his own sons on the phone.
– Are you her boyfriend? Millie demanded, looking unblinkingly at him.
– Well – he said, I’m a man, so I can’t be her boyfriend.
Millie was unmoved by this semantic dodge and protested noisily about being put to bed. In the end Bella had to carry her daughter to her room and bribe her to stay there by promising that she would take her ice-skating at the Sobell Centre at the weekend. Millie had whined in a voice loud enough to have been heard by James next door, and when Bella had eventually prised the girl’s arms away from her neck and returned to the kitchen she feared his disapproval. Instead he said: She is sweet and beautiful, just like you.
The meal that she had thought so hard about didn’t get eaten at all in the end. They went to bed instead, and had sex quickly and then again more slowly. And then they got into her small bath with the black mould that Bella had failed to clean off the grout, and the noisy air extractor. He passed no comment on the state of the bathroom, but soaped her back, and looked at her with what she took to be real love.
At around 2 a.m. Millie woke and went into her mother’s bedroom. Bella was lying with James on top of her and did not hear the door open. Millie had stood at the open door observing the scene.
– Fuck off, she shouted, holding up her middle finger. Go home! I hate you.
Bella wriggled out from underneath him and Millie glowered at her mother’s naked body.
– I’m going to take you back to bed, said Bella, putting on her dressing-gown and taking her daughter in her arms.
She carried Millie to her bed and got in beside her, stroking her hair until she went to sleep.
When she returned James mumbled: I’m sorry. And then drifted off to sleep. Bella didn’t sleep. She lay awake feeling the unfairness of everything: that her happiness should come at the cost of her daughter, and that James, for all his noisy guilt about his family, should be sleeping easily in his lover’s bed while his sons in their comfortable home in Wimbledon slept easily in theirs.
Stella
The board appointment brought on the most violent argument yet between Stella and Rhys. The pattern was familiar to both of them: her established success versus his ambition. Her settled family versus his desire for a proper girlfriend. Her desire to have him properly and his desire to have her, and yet the certainty of that never coming to pass.
The difference this time was that the argument did not blow over quickly, as their earlier arguments always had.
Stella could not say sorry. Every time she considered apologizing she would think: he is using me for advancement. But then, as Friday came and the thought of a whole weekend of estrangement loomed, Stella waited until everyone else had gone home and went over to his desk. She smiled at him.
– I’m sorry, she said.
But he didn’t say sorry back.
– This is fucking killing me, he said. I don’t think I can go on doing this.
– Come, she said, and led him into her office.
– I don’t think I can go on like this, not having you.
– But you do have me, she said.
– That wasn’t what I meant. I don’t want to fuck you occasionally in a hotel room. I want you properly. Come to my flat.
– I can’t, she said. I’d love to but I can’t.
– You see, he said. It’s hopeless.
– We can have a quick drink, she said.
– I don’t want a quick drink. I want you. Please, he said.
– Where? she asked.
– Here. We can do it here.
– No, she said. You are out of your mind.
He flicked the switch that brought the blinds down between Stella’s office and the corridor. They’ve all gone home, he said.
Stella put her arms around Rhys. Over his shoulder she looked at the neighbouring office with its brightly lit windows and people working inside.
– They can see in, said Stella.
– So what? he said. They don’t know who we are, and couldn’t care less. We’ve taken bigger risks than this.
He h
ad his hands on her hips and was kissing her.
– We can’t turn the light off. They come back on every time you move. There’s a sensor in the corner.
And Rhys said: give me a hand, and he hauled Stella’s desk chair on to the table and climbed up on to it, wobbling wildly.
– Find the Sellotape, he said. And a thick envelope.
He stretched up and taped the envelope over the sensor, and within a few minutes, during which time they stood a few feet apart looking at each other bleakly, the room was dark.
A thin light came in from the blinds and from the lighted offices opposite.
Stella locked the door.
– I don’t know if I want to do this, she said.
– Come on, said Rhys. We’ve gone to all that trouble.
So Stella took off her dress and lay on the floor of her office still in her pop socks and her bra.
– Stella, he said. I love you. If I could have two years with you I would happily die.
Stella found this both exhilarating and frightening. No one had ever felt like this about her before.
– Why two years? What’s so special about that?
– It’s long enough to be worth dying for afterwards, he said.
The carpet was rough under her back but she didn’t mind. Her mind went completely blank. Everything else was chased away.
It was at about this moment that the door clicked. Someone was trying to come in. They froze.
From her vantage point on the ground, Stella could see a pair of black shoes and a pair of dark trousers in cheap material pausing on the threshold of her office. It was almost certainly a security guard, who must have had his own key. He took one step forward, but as the light did not come on, he did not venture into the office and in the darkness did not notice two half-naked bodies in frozen embrace on the floor behind the desk. He went out and locked the door again.
Afterwards Stella started to laugh. The risk and the relief together had made her light-headed. Rhys laughed too, and briefly they were united. So this is what happens, she thought. To maintain the thrill and to glue us together each time we fall apart we need to go on taking bigger and bigger risks.
She thought back to four months earlier when she had kissed him in the lift and how that seemed to be the most daring thing imaginable.
– We’ll get found out. It’s too dangerous, she said, as she struggled into her dress.
– We’ll be OK, he said.
– You’ll be OK. It won’t matter for you.
– What? he said, suddenly angry. I stand to lose my job, and my reputation, but I suppose that doesn’t count. And in the end it is all about you and your perfect life.
– Let’s not have this conversation again, said Stella.
She put her arms around him.
– Rhys, all I meant was that I am doing something mad, and increasingly madder. But I can’t stop and I don’t want to stop. I am doing it because I adore you. She kissed his eyes and his forehead and ran her hands over his face, as if committing its contours to memory. Then she put on her coat, got her briefcase, and the night security guard said goodnight to her just as he always did.
Life number four was gone.
At home that night Stella took off her dress for the second time in three hours. Charles was lying in bed reading, but as his wife got undressed he glanced up at her.
– What’s that red mark down your back? he asked.
– It’s a rash, she said. It hurts, I don’t know what it is – probably just stress.
The idea that stress had given her a vivid, smarting carpet burn on her back was so implausible that Stella wished the words back in her mouth.
– Hmm, he said. It looks nasty. You should get it looked at.
He spoke with the bored concern that husband and wife have for each other’s minor ailments after twenty years together, but Stella felt that this was another life slipping away. She only had four left.
– Come here, he said.
Stella moved across the bed towards her husband. He ran his hands over the burn on her back and she winced.
– What’s happening to you, Stel? You are getting so thin, he said.
– It’s this job, said Stella. It’s all too much.
– Don’t worry, he said. You’ll cope. You always do.
Her husband’s gentle concern was too much for Stella. She curled herself up against him and started to sob.
– What is it? he asked.
– I’m just exhausted, she said between sobs.
But what she was thinking was: Save me, Charles. Please save me.
Bella
– You’ve lost weight, you cow.
Karen kissed her friend on both cheeks, and together they went into the Moorgate branch of Pret.
– It’s love, Bella said. It’s the most effective diet in the world.
– Hmm, said Karen flatly. I’ve put on nearly a stone since the summer.
She took a Diet Coke from the fridge and a fruit salad and took them to the till.
Bella looked at her friend with affection. She had indeed gained weight, and the striped dress she was wearing was a mistake.
– Are you still seeing that guy? Bella asked, as they settled themselves at their table.
– Which guy? asked Karen.
– The one you told me about – the music producer.
– No, I dumped him, but mainly to get in first, as I suspected he was about to dump me. So how come you are looking so happy? You sent me an email saying this guy was an autistic, hypocritical cretin and you wished you’d never met him? Weren’t those your words?
– Yes, said Bella, laughing sheepishly. But that was last month and it’s got better since then. He came to stay at my flat a few days ago and since then things have felt different. There was a terrible scene when Millie walked in and found us in bed together –
– Jesus, that sounds heavy.
– It was, but in some weird way it has brought us closer, if that makes sense?
Bella knew it didn’t make sense, but in her current optimistic mood she didn’t care.
– When things are good between us they are very, very good. It’s like we’re in this bubble – the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
Karen sighed.
– Lucky you, she said. So is this the real thing? Is he going to leave his wife so you can live happily ever after?
– I don’t know, said Bella. I haven’t ever asked. I try not to put pressure on him. I think he’s got to work it out himself. A few weeks ago I would have said definitely not, but I have a feeling that things are beginning to shift. I want him to be mine more than anything else in the world. But at the same time I don’t want to break up his marriage.
Karen nodded and said: But I don’t think you should feel badly about it. It’s not you breaking up a marriage, is it? If he cheats on his wife, that’s his fault. Then she said:
– Did you hear about Ruthie Woodall?
Ruthie had been in their class at school, much disliked by both of them as she was too pretty and a show-off and always had the lead part in the school play.
– She’s just finished shooting a movie with Ricky Gervais. There was a nauseating piece about her in G2, saying that she’s the new comic talent of the moment.
Bella stuck her fingers into her mouth and made sick noises and Karen laughed.
Out of the corner of her eye Bella saw James walk past the window, enter the sandwich bar and walk up to the chilled cabinets. He did not seem to have seen her. All at once she saw him as Karen would – a fattish, baldish businessman – and her first feeling was shame. Love is not blind, she thought.
But then, as she watched him fish in his pocket for coins to pay for the large sandwich, packet of crisps and slab of chocolate cake that he had chosen, she felt a flood of tenderness for him. He’s not good-looking, she thought, but I don’t care. He is a lock to which only I know the combination code and I’m not going to share it with anyone.
&nbs
p; – What are you looking at? said Karen.
– Nothing, said Bella.
Stella
– I took the kids to see War Horse at the National last night, Emily was saying. I adore Michael Morpurgo but the play was even better than the book. The horses were quite amazing … I cried at the end, when the horse dies.
Stella looked with envy at her friend. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken her children to the theatre, or to anything at all. And the thought of crying over wooden horses from a children’s book struck her as belonging to an age of innocence that she could not imagine ever returning to.
– Maybe I should try to get some tickets, she said doubtfully.
And then Emily said: How are things with you? Are you still snowed under with work?
– I don’t know, said Stella. Things are crap –
Her voice cracked, and Emily, much surprised at this turn of events, put out a hand. And Stella, who had not planned to tell her friend, who had confided in no one about her affair with Rhys, started to tell her the whole story.
– I’m hopelessly stuck. I keep trying to stop but I can’t. But then I can’t go on. Last night, I couldn’t sleep and I woke at 4 a.m. and looked at my messages. There was a message from him, and I realized I was hoping that he would be calling it off. That he would have the strength that I lack to get us both out of this hell. But instead his text was a poem that said: ‘Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.’
It made me cry. I cried because it was so sweet, and because I’m completely helpless. If he wants me, I’m there. I’m barely holding on. I spend all my time with him or thinking about him. I am a ghost in the rest of my life. I give nothing to my work, and instead of being found out, they keep promoting me. I give nothing to Charles or to the children. Charles has noticed that I’m sometimes a bit stressed and tearful and he’s trying to be sweet, but has no idea what’s going on.
In Office Hours Page 23