Neither was she sure if she wanted to show Rhys a version of her that had changed a great deal, or one that hadn’t changed at all. She took off the suit and put on a black sweater. It was the same jumper that she had worn that day when she had the drink with him in the dismal pub. The jumper that was the first item of her clothing to bear his scent. She still wore it often, even though the personal shopper had warned her to avoid black, as it accentuated how pale and thin her skin was becoming.
She took the jumper off and put on a grey jacket, black trousers and flat shoes. She wasn’t trying to make any statement at all, she decided.
Rhys was already there when she arrived, sitting at a table at the front of the restaurant reading the Standard. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, his new job presumably not calling for suits. If anything, she thought, he looked even younger than last time she had seen him.
He smiled and waved when he saw her.
– Hello.
She bent down to kiss him but was aiming for the wrong cheek and they met in the middle. They both laughed, awkwardly. She wondered if he remembered that first, equally clumsy kiss after dinner at her house, before it had all begun.
– You look great, she said.
But she didn’t really mean it. What she meant was: where are you? Here was this person whose face had worn a groove in her mind, and here was the real thing, a year on, the same yet hopelessly different. The image in her mind and the real thing would not merge.
– So do you, he said.
– I spend more money on clothes now, she said. I am fighting the ravages of age.
– Crap, he said. You still look twenty-five.
She laughed at this lie, but it pleased her nevertheless.
They ordered some food, and Stella said that she would have a large glass of white wine. Rhys ordered water.
She asked him about his new job, and he said how much he was enjoying it and that he owned 5 per cent of the company and it was likely that in the next year they would either float it, or it would be taken over – in which case he would make a lot of money.
– And what about you, Stella? What are you up to? I know some of it, I’ve read about you in the papers. I’m not surprised. You are brilliant, you always were.
Stella smiled and told him a little bit about her work, about the bits that she liked and the bits she didn’t. As she spoke her spirits were sinking. This was awful. He was friendly, but not intimate.
There was a pause in the conversation.
– I heard that you are still with Charles, he said.
– Yes, Stella said. I am.
Rhys nodded. He is disappointed, Stella thought with a sudden lifting of the spirits. He wants me to have split up with Charles so that he can claim me.
But then he said:
– That’s good. I’m glad. How are the kids?
– Um, said Stella. They are fine. Finn has got into Westminster upper school and is in the football team. Clemmie is likely to do well in her GCSEs, and has decided she wants to be a doctor.
– Great, he said. And then, in a slightly softer voice:
– It’s good to see you, Stella.
Suddenly Stella changed tack. She didn’t want to tell him that all was well and that her children were fine. She didn’t want this wall of polite civility between them. She wanted to tell him how it was.
– Actually, she said, it’s been a year from hell. I very nearly had a breakdown, but I’m – as you see – now OK. Charles and I are damaged but march along broken. I think he forgives me for my affair with you. It was the public humiliation that he couldn’t bear. The stories in the papers, and the fact that young researchers at the BBC knew what his wife had done. And I suppose that was painful to me. I wanted him to mind more about the thing itself than the perception. I don’t think I care at all any more about how strangers perceive me. I don’t expect people to understand, but being so on one’s own has been terribly lonely.
Rhys nodded and said quietly:
– I know.
– But time does make things better, Stella went on. Work heals too, and the plodding through family life helps. So mostly I’m OK now, I think.
– After you left I went to Alaska for a bit. I suppose you know that.
Stella inclined her head.
– I wanted to die. I was miserable in an intense way and kept on ringing home. My mother was appalled and all my friends laughed at me. The only person who was really kind to me was Bella. She didn’t mind me telling her how miserable I was, as she was feeling shit too. But even in Alaska I was too close to you – I had to get away even from the fucking AE logo, and that was why I quit. I felt better when I started this job, but I didn’t stop loving you, Stella, or thinking about you. I never regretted what happened between us.
– No, said Stella. I never regretted it. Not for one single moment.
– That’s crap, said Rhys. What about that time when you shouted at me that I was a cancer in your life and if you had one wish it would be that we had never ever met?
– OK, said Stella, laughing. That was then. And if we are playing that game, you endlessly told me how I had put your life on hold and what a catastrophe that was. But never mind all that. I don’t wish I had never met you.
He shifted in his seat.
– Stella, he said. I told you I had something to tell you and something to ask of you. You have already given me the thing I was going to ask. It was forgiveness. You tell me that you didn’t regret it. I wanted to see that you were not bitter after all the damage that has been done to you.
Stella smiled at him, her heart lurching with happiness and quite blind – wilfully blind – to what was to come.
– And what I wanted to tell you is that three months ago I met someone. She is my age. She is not married. She is beautiful, and she is funny. She reminds me a bit of you.
Stella could hear the sounds in the restaurant. Her stomach contracted; she felt as if she was in a lift that was going down too fast. She must get away from here, and away from him. She must run away. She must get back to somewhere warm and safe and peaceful.
– Stella, he said. I wanted you to be the first to know: I am getting married.
Bella
Bella was back in the office, replaying what had happened in her mind and trying to make sense of it. When she had told James that no, she could not marry him, he had got up, carefully put his sandwich wrapper in the bin and said goodbye to her with stiff civility. He had got into a cab, glanced back at her and given a half smile. The look on his face had almost made her melt, and for a wild moment she had thought of getting into another cab to follow his, but the thought did not last.
Instead she had been filled with a sadness so thick that she could barely move. She had dragged her body back into the office and sat at her desk staring blankly at the work she was meant to be doing – a pitch for a new client. She started composing a message in her head. By the end of the day she knew exactly what she wanted to say. She opened a new email and began:
Dear James
Thank you for lunch. It was lovely to see you again. And thank you for asking me to marry you. No one has ever asked me to do that before.
I hope it won’t make it harder for you if I say that if you had asked me that a year ago I would certainly have said yes.
But if we had got married, I think we both know that it wouldn’t have worked out. You are a decent man. And you do love your wife and your sons. If you hadn’t you would not have broken up with me. And if you had stayed with me you wouldn’t have forgiven yourself.
You have given me a lot. You gave me the confidence that I needed to get this job, and you were the first person at work to believe in me, and for that I will always be incredibly grateful to you.
If I gave you something good – as you so sweetly said – then I’m really happy. I know I used to have a go at you about not loving me and tease you about being autistic, but I take it all back. It doesn’t matter now anyway. I will remem
ber you with real affection, and I hope you will me too.
Lots of love, Bella x
PS. I still think Van Morrison is crap.
PPS. Sorry if you think the tone of the PS too glib, but I thought you’d like to know!
PPS. I do really hope you will be happy, James. I did love you, you know.
Bella read it over, and cried as she did so. Her mobile bleeped – it was her new boyfriend texting her to say that he was in reception. She pulled herself together, and sent him a text saying: Sorry, just coming.
She looked at the message one last time, and took out the last line – not because it wasn’t true, but because there was no point in saying that any more.
She pressed ‘send’.
Stella
In the taxi on the way back from lunch Stella noticed a funny thing. The sobs that were convulsing her body were producing no tears. The vision in her mind of Rhys with a young woman whom he loved and was going to marry was agonizing. Yet because it was a certainty it held steady in her mind, and even though it was as bad as bad could be, the steadiness made it more bearable. There was no room for painful ebbing and flowing of hope and despair, no further scope for punishing herself with vain hopes of reconciliation. There had been so many ends, but this was the final one.
Back at her desk she pushed to one side the pile of papers she was meant to be reading. She got up and closed the door to her office and sat down at the computer.
Dearest Rhys she wrote. And then deleted it.
Dear Rhys
She looked at this and changed her mind again.
Dearest Rhys
He was her dearest for one last time.
At the side of her screen a little Microsoft prompt appeared. It looks like you’re writing a letter. Would you like help?
Despite herself, Stella almost laughed. She thought, no: for the first time in ages I don’t need help. I know exactly what I want to say.
First, I’m sorry to have made such a fool of myself just now.
I was shocked at your news. I hadn’t been expecting it, and so I behaved like an idiot. To walk out of the restaurant like that was pathetic and undignified and I’m ashamed of myself. Sorry.
Instead of having a fit, I should have tried to talk to you properly, one last time. There were lots of things that I wanted to say – I have been running a one-sided conversation with you in my head for a whole year – sometimes been angry, sometimes vengeful, often loving, sometimes just miserable. That conversation must end now, but rather than put it all in the bin – you know how I hate wasted effort – I hope you don’t mind if I put a little bit of it on paper.
As I type these words I’m not crying as I thought I would be. Instead I’m filled with a kind of euphoria that has taken me quite by surprise. It is as if by telling me that you are getting married (God, I hope she is good enough for you) you have seized a giant pair of scissors and cut loose the threads that still attached us. And now I’m free to find my life again.
Through knowing you I have learnt some important things about life, which – though obvious in a way – had not really occurred to me before. Happiness is not for ever and neither is despair. And although despair lasts the longer of the two – and my God, we had much more misery than joy out of knowing each other – it doesn’t make the happiness worth nothing.
You taught me other things, too, about love – and about obsession. And above all you taught me who the Arctic Monkeys are. And that Coldplay is good and Keane is bad.
But more than any of that, you taught me that I can’t always have what I want. We used to say that we were similar. We were both determined to get what we wanted at work and determined that everyone should love us.
When I pleaded with you to come back and you said no, I went into a panic that was partly the simple shock of losing you, but it was also the very first time that I had set my sights on something that I could not have. It threw me into a panic so intense I thought I would die.
But I didn’t die. And every day I did what I was supposed to do, and eventually the pain stopped. Or at least it didn’t stop, but it had reached a manageable throb that I was so used to I almost stopped noticing it.
But every time my mind returned to you the pain started up again. Now, I think and hope it will stop altogether.
At a low point I did have a one-night stand with some man I met at a conference, but he made me miss you even more. Right now I hope that I am through with this sort of love, though I suppose you never know.
You have found love, and I hope you are happy. I hope you have picked the right girl. Your record as a picker is truly awful: but she can’t be less suitable than a married middle-aged ferret with two children.
I am going home now. Charles has made a special supper as it is his mother’s 85th birthday. She is nuttier than ever, but still with us.
And I don’t want to be late.
Good luck, dearest Rhys. I wish you well from the bottom of my heart.
Stella xx
Stella read it through and took out the bit about the one-night stand, as the desire to wound him – which in the last year was so strong – had now gone. She took the kisses off too, as they looked babyish and sad. She read it through again, and pressed ‘send’.
In Office Hours Page 33