The Perfectly Imperfect Woman

by Milly Johnson

  Chapter 8

  There was a pin-drop silence to end all pin-drop silences, only broken by an eventual snigger that had Vicky’s stamp all over it.

  ‘What?’ asked Marnie, hardly hearing the words above the sound of her heartbeat which had both transferred itself to her ears and acquired the speed of a bullet train.

  ‘Oh, don’t play the innocent you . . . you . . . bitch.’

  ‘I knew it. Didn’t I say?’ Vicky’s voice again, in a delighted, barely covered whisper.

  Marnie noticed how tight that swinging frock looked around the woman’s middle. She wasn’t fat, she was pregnant. Heavily pregnant. Her brain started spinning in stark contrast to everything around her which had frozen into stock-still mannequin mode. Even Dennis looked like a waxwork of himself.

  ‘But . . .’ Inside Marnie’s head, some clear, no-nonsense part tried to take command of the situation and find some logic in this surrealism.

  Suranna? Is this Suranna? Or a stray nutter who didn’t like the look of her. The first option seemed more viable on quick reflection.

  ‘Suranna?’ Marnie asked.

  ‘Don’t you dare use my bloody name.’ There were four jagged red stripes raising on her cheek.

  ‘Is that a baby?’ Marnie’s finger stretched forward.

  Suranna gave a bitter hoot of laughter. ‘What do you think it is – blocked wind? I’m pregnant with my husband’s child, you . . . you . . .’

  More names ensued. A whole thesaurus-worth of insults. Many of the older ones in the department probably didn’t realise there were so many words for a tart.

  Marnie’s brain switched into calculator mode. She heard Justin’s voice in her head: I haven’t had sex in fourteen months, but whatever was in Suranna Fox’s belly had got there during the last nine.

  ‘You’re not with him any more,’ said Marnie, blood hissing and pounding in her ears.

  Suranna indicated her stomach. ‘Er, I obviously am.’

  ‘Someone fetch Justin,’ Roisean said.

  ‘You’ve split up,’ said Marnie.

  ‘No we haven’t,’ countered Suranna, pulling a face.

  ‘Stupid bitch.’ A voice to her right. Elena. Marnie turned her head and saw the Olympic gold medal of smirks gracing her mouth.

  ‘Apparently Justin’s not in the building,’ someone else said.

  Marnie was in shock. Nausea gripped her stomach with hard bony fingers and squeezed. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know.’

  ‘Course you didn’t,’ Suranna sneered, her teeth bared. Her cheek looked terrible, as if she’d been clawed by a tiger. Then suddenly she seemed to deflate between the two men holding her and started to cry.

  ‘Come on, love,’ said Arthur, pulling a chair over and pushing Suranna Fox down onto it. Someone else handed her a tissue so she could dab at the blood peeping from the scratches; someone else dropped to their knees at her side, took her hand and began talking softly to her. She was enclosed in a circle of warmth and sympathy whereas Marnie stood alone, banished to a hinterland of coldness and disgust.

  Burned by her shame and with a compulsion to get out of the building before she was poisoned by the air in it, Marnie reached down to the side of her desk, grabbed her handbag, snatched the coat from the back of her chair and cut through the assembled crowd, conscious of the attention on her, aware of their sniggers and chatting and judgements firing into her back like Robin Hood’s arrows. Eyes fixed forward, she was glad that her legs worked independently of her brain because she would have fallen to the floor like a marionette without a puppet master if she’d had to consciously move them.

  She felt as if she couldn’t breathe, as if Suranna Fox and her compassionate entourage had sucked all the oxygen out of the immediate area. Shame powered her stride. She stole a glance into Justin’s office but it was empty, his chair pushed backwards against the wall as if he’d vacated it in a hurry. All sorts of horrible thoughts were crowding her brain, demanding further examination and answers and she was afraid to let them sharpen into focus. As she approached the door which led out onto the upper floor of the atrium, it swung back in her face too quickly for her to avoid it hitting her squarely on the cheekbone. The man on the other side started to apologise profusely but she raced past him, down the escalator, past the reception desk, through the door and out into the car park, tears stinging her eyes. For a second or two she couldn’t remember where she had parked her car. Left, or was it right? Think, Marnie, think. Right. It was right. It’s there. Her hands were shaking as they fumbled in her bag for her key. She unzapped the car, threw herself inside, fired up the engine and willed herself to calm down, uttering words of self-comfort because on top of everything else she didn’t want to bloody crash. You’re okay, Marnie. You didn’t know. It’s not your fault. Keep calm. Breathe.

  She pulled down the visor above her head and looked at herself in the vanity mirror to find that her own cheek was swelling up thanks to clumsy door man. She nosed the car carefully out of the car park and felt a wash of blessed relief as it blended with the anonymity of the city traffic. As she waited for a red light to change, Marnie scrolled through the names on her Bluetooth car phone directory until she came to JF. She rang him, for the first time ever, and it went straight through to voicemail. She disconnected the call. Should she leave a message, she asked herself. The answer came flying back at her, Yes of course she bloody should.

  Straight to voicemail again. ‘It’s me, Marnie. Can you please ring me back. I need to speak to you. It’s urgent.’ She tried to keep the emotion out of her voice but failed as a fat hiccupping sob broke out of her throat just before she quit the call. The lights changed, she pressed down on the accelerator and stalled. The BMW behind gave an impatient beep on his horn which set Marnie’s nerves jangling. Pull yourself together and ignore that swanky wanker, she told herself sternly and set off as smoothly and calmly as she was able, homeward bound. Except it wasn’t her home, it was a rented semi because she had sold her lovely flat last year so she could move in with another luggage-laden twat.

  She rang Justin again to find that his line was engaged. Three minutes later his line was free but he didn’t pick up. She suspected he wasn’t going to ring her back after all. She parked the car securely in the garage, rather than leave it on the street as she usually did, just in case she woke up in the morning to find SLUT written all over it in red paint.

  Once inside the house, she locked the door behind her, closed the vertical blinds at the front window until they were mere slits and finally felt her nerves begin to stand down. She made herself a coffee, aware that her hands were shaking and then slumped onto a chair at the kitchen table. Her brain felt as if it was a multiplex cinema. On screen one, IMAX, 3D with Dolby surround sound was Suranna Fox holding on to her hair with her limpet grip. On screen two, Vicky and Elena standing like two old fishwives, arms crossed over their bosoms, lapping the spectacle up. On screen three Justin, a pastiche of all his best convincing lines flowing out of his lying gob. He hadn’t had sex in well over a year. Details of the painstakingly slow conscious uncoupling. How could she have been so stupid? Sorry, amend that – how could she have been so stupid again? Why didn’t she ever learn? Why was she so bloody selective with what she believed? Why hadn’t she seen that the only real reason why they screwed in her car, why he never stayed over, why they couldn’t be seen in public together was because he was still very much married to a woman he was still sleeping with. Her mother was up there on screen four: You have no one but yourself to blame, you stupid, unthinking, unfeeling girl.

  What the hell was she going to do? She couldn’t go back to Café Caramba. Ever. She couldn’t walk into the office, shrugging off the judgements and opinions of everyone around her and carry on as if nothing had happened. She wasn’t Sharon in the canteen who had been caught having sex in the lift with a temp during a drunken office party (Laurence had outlawed them since) only to walk back into work the next day as if shagging in a moving box was a
standard part of the job description. If anyone new joined the company, Shagger Sharon was always pointed out as an interesting feature: Those are the toilets, that’s the coffee machine, there’s Shagger Sharon who was caught flattening the lift floor buttons. Until today, Marnie had never appreciated how much of ballsy – or barmy – woman Sharon was. But Marnie’s misdemeanours wouldn’t be treated so casually. She would get all the blame, she knew. She was the scarlet woman, the seductress. All claims that she had no idea Justin’s wife was pregnant would be greeted with disbelief and scorn. People like Elena and Vicky would fuel the fires of her fornication.

  She didn’t know she was crying until she felt a wet drop on her hand. Followed by more, much more. She began to think that the flow might never stop.

  Chapter 9

  Marnie didn’t sleep. Those four cinema screens were all playing on a loop in her head and she contemplated getting up and going out to the supermarket to buy some Nytol, but decided that would be a worse ordeal than staying in with insomnia. Mr Sandman might have been keeping his distance but Mrs Agoraphobia had paid her a visit, it seemed. Every noise outside the window, every car that passed made her heart delay its beat and then kick hard. She’d hoped that Justin would arrive at her door with an explanation. Maybe Suranna wasn’t pregnant and she’d just shoved a cushion up her dress – after all if she was deranged enough to storm into the office creating holy hell, then she was nuts enough to try that stunt. But what if she really was pregnant? And if Justin had lied about sleeping with her, what else had he said that wasn’t the truth? She suspected the answer to that lay between ‘most of it’ and ‘everything’. She’d not only been reeled in by him but she’d put the hook through her own lip.

  She had more chance of Leonardo DiCaprio dressed all in black, shinning up her drainpipe with a box of Milk Tray than she had of falling unconscious. She tossed from side to side in bed with her mind torturing her until she was forced to get up and make herself a hot chocolate. She usually walked around the block, breathed in some night air, reset her body clock but that wasn’t going to happen tonight. She added the last of the cheap brandy that she used for cooking to the mug and glugged it back in large throatfuls.

  Eventually, due to sheer mental exhaustion, she dropped off on the sofa and was woken by a persistent knocking early the next morning. She flew straight into panic mode and was shaking as she peeped through the blind to see a man with a parcel. He caught her looking and waved and she felt obliged to go to the door. It wasn’t for her though, but for Melissa next door at 34; she was 34A. Postmen and delivery drivers were always getting it wrong. It didn’t help that her door didn’t have a number on it and she’d told the landlord when she first moved in. He’d said he’d sort it but he never had and she didn’t see why she should.

  She caught sight of the clock in the kitchen as she went to put on the kettle. It was ten past nine and ordinarily she would have been at work an hour now. She could imagine the whole building gossiping about her. Vicky and Elena in particular, spreading their venom and she wondered if Justin was being discussed with the same malice. She should ring HR and say she was ill but when she picked up the phone and started dialling the number, she couldn’t do it. She burst into tears and allowed herself to dissolve helplessly into them, battered down further by the stick of her mother’s words telling her what a trouble-causer she was, a selfish little tart who couldn’t keep her legs shut.

  After half an hour of wallowing, she knew that she had to do something more constructive than use up a load of tissues. She couldn’t just sit in the house for ever and pretend none of this had happened, she had to get herself out of this mess. It wasn’t as if it was the first time she’d wished she had sunk into the earth and it had closed over her head. She could run courses on it: How to land yourself in the shit and then find a way out of it until it happens again. Ten pounds, including light refreshment. She took a pad and a pen out of the drawer and began to scribble down a plan of action. Justin was the first word that came to mind. She wrote down his name followed by a large question mark. What was the likelihood that she and he would run off into the sunset together? Given that he hadn’t as much as sent her a text to see if she was okay, the answer was zero. However, the soft, deluded lobe in her brain began to fire ‘what ifs’ at her. What if his wife damaged his phone and he hadn’t got her messages? What if his wife had trapped him by saying that she would kill herself if he attempted to contact her? What if . . .

  Oh shut up. A weary sigh resonated from some pissed-off part of her that usually couldn’t get a word in but was now claiming centre stage. A part that said things she didn’t want to hear so she pressed it down until it couldn’t speak. Justin Fox is a gutless twat and if he’d been anything like a real man he would have been in touch. He hasn’t, because he doesn’t care. There is NO OTHER EXPLANATION so wake up and smell the bloody coffee, you daft cow.

  The truth hurt as surely as that door swinging back in her face had, more if she were honest with herself. Justin was not going to ride up to her front door on a white charger to declare her his one true love. She had just written the word ‘wanker’ next to Justin’s name when she heard the sound of broken glass and shouting. Horribly familiar shouting.

  ‘COME OUT, YOU SLAG, I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!’

  It was Suranna Fox again; that angry, vicious squawk was unmistakable.

  Marnie ran upstairs to peep through the blinds at the front bedroom window and saw Justin’s wife smashing Melissa’s car up with a mallet. Melissa’s car with the personalised MS reg plate. She’d obviously traced the address but not quite got it right. She’d seen the very girly Beetle parked outside (red with black ladybird spots and eyelashes on the headlamps). the row of fairy ornaments in the flowery borders, the pink curtains and the dream-catchers at the windows – as opposed to the very plain numberless house next door.

  ‘You didn’t think I could find out where you lived, did you . . .’ Marnie watched as Suranna picked up one of the stone toadstools from Melissa’s garden and lobbed it at her window, scoring a bullseye if the sound of more glass breaking was anything to go by.

  Marnie looked at the little fat woman, face red with fury, stomping up and down Melissa’s path and a wave of unexpected pity hit her from left field. She was going to be horrified when she realised she’d targeted a poor innocent hairdresser. There would be no points scored for her when the police arrived, as they would very soon, because nothing got past nosey Mrs Barlow in the house opposite, or the Neighbourhood Witch as she was better known.

  Marnie went downstairs, picked up her mobile and sent a text message to Justin telling him that his wife was getting herself into all sorts of trouble in Redbrook Row and needed him. Then she deleted his number.

  The police arrived in record time and took a very distressed Suranna Fox away. Marnie had no idea if Justin turned up or not because she stayed in the kitchen and set up her laptop on the table there. Suranna’s arrival on the street had made her mind up for her: she couldn’t remain here where the neighbours would know soon enough why there was a pregnant woman lobbing fairytale bric-a-brac at windows. She was five months into her tenancy and had only recently filled in the forms to continue the agreement. They’d been sealed up in an envelope ready to send, although she kept forgetting to buy stamps. Thank goodness for her shit memory.

  Marnie emailed the estate agency and said that she had changed her mind and would be vacating the property as soon as possible. She hadn’t a clue where she was going to go instead but she’d find somewhere, though that somewhere depended on where her new job would be because she wouldn’t be working at Café Caramba any more.

  She drove around to the walk-in doctor’s surgery. She thought she might have had a struggle convincing the doctor she needed some time off work with stress because she was a rubbish liar, but she burst into tears as soon as she sat down. The doctor gave her a sick note for a month and prescribed some tablets to lift her mood and help her to sleep. Try som
e mindfulness too, suggested Dr Singh. Marnie promised that she would although her mind was already full and she wanted it emptying instead.

  She emailed HR a succinct message to tell them that she had been signed off for a month and sent them a photo of the note, promising to post it as well. When she got back to Redbrook Row, she saw that a window fitter’s van was parked up and a man was busy mending Melissa’s front bay. She was a quiet young woman and Marnie felt so dreadfully guilty. She wouldn’t have known what to say to her – how would that conversation go? Hi, Melissa, sorry that my lover’s pregnant wife turned up and smashed up your house and car instead of mine. She slipped into the house thankful that Melissa wasn’t outside.

  Marnie cancelled the hotel in Derbyshire. She contemplated going there alone rather than wasting the money but sleeping in a four-poster by herself would have been sadder than sad. She lost the hundred-pounds deposit, but she’d just have to write it off against her own stupidity.

  At six o’clock, after scraping away a microwave meal for one that she couldn’t eat, her text alert rang and she leapt on it.

  Are you in?

  It was Caitlin. She couldn’t deny she wanted to see Justin’s name more on the screen but seeing her friend would be a very close second.

  YES !!! x

  Have your bday present. Ok to pop round? x

  OF COURSE XXXXX

  Marnie had planned not to leap on Caitlin as she walked in through the door but she couldn’t help herself. She needed to hug someone so badly. She needed someone to hug her even more.

  Chapter 10

  The Caitlin of old would have brought wine with her, kicked off her shoes and curled up on the sofa. ‘Okay, tell me everything, all details, leave nothing out,’ that Caitlin would have insisted. She would have listened intently, made all the right noises (even if she thought Marnie had been an arse) and then leapt over to give her a hug. Only then would that Caitlin have kindly and softly offered her true opinion as she had done in the past: Marnie, do you think that maybe you scared him off a little by falling too fast? Marnie, didn’t you think that he might have been lying about driving an Aston Martin when he’d forgotten his wallet three dates on the trot? But that Caitlin wasn’t around any more. She’d got a little colder and more distant with every passing year. That Caitlin didn’t bear much resemblance to this one who had rolled up in a Vivien Westwood suit with expertly microbladed eyebrows and an immobile forehead.