Love Will Tear Us Apart

by Holly Seddon

  I don’t know who else she’d told her secrets to but she had told those secrets to me, back in the first flush of our friendship years before. And when those secrets were papered all over the boardroom and the kitchen and the lift and both sets of toilets, it didn’t look great. Worst of all, it happened just after a spat between us. The regrettable pictures had been stuck up with angry lengths of thick brown parcel tape. Eye level everywhere you looked. Not that she’d have believed me, you always mentally imbue ‘enemies’ with extra cunning abilities, but I wouldn’t have known where to find them. I guess the internet, but I’ve never been inclined to check.

  She’d posed for them when she was still at university, briefly hoping to be an actress. She’d been paid £20, cash in hand. She and another friend from college had gone in to the back room in Denmark Street to pay for head-and-shoulder shots but they’d come out with cash in their pockets and a sinking feeling.

  When she told me one night over vodka and orange, confessing our worst secrets, I’d consoled her and joked about it. Reassuring her that any copies must be long-lost by now. ‘Oh, I still have them,’ she said. But I didn’t ask to see them.

  The worst part of it all was seeing her young face in the shots, beaming down from our office walls. Her eager smile and her eyes wide open like a doll. The girl in the pictures looked like my Lucy from back then. My fun, trusting Lucy. With her hair glossy and full the way she wore it when we first met.

  There were only three pictures, but they had been copied and printed out many times. Lucy as a schoolgirl in stockings, her bright red underwear showing through her blouse. Lucy in a black nylon lace teddy, the type that had been considered risqué and fashionable in the late eighties. And, finally, Lucy lying on a sheet, in black silk knickers and nothing else.

  Despite everything, my heart broke for her.

  Our spat before the photos-on-the-wall incident had been so outwardly minor that it probably would have been forgotten had it not been for the pictures. We had both found ourselves in the office kitchen at the same time. I smiled at her. I didn’t mean to, not after her snubbing of me, but I couldn’t help myself. And she rolled her eyes. It was a step too far, impossible to ignore.

  ‘There’s no need to be rude, Lucy, I’ve not done anything wrong here,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, sure you haven’t.’ She cocked her hip in a way that I thought was studied and deliberate.

  ‘Excuse me?’ my voice had been haughty, more shrill than I’d intended.

  She rolled her eyes again and tried to push her way out of the small room.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, catching her arm as she tried to wriggle away from me. ‘I really haven’t done anything wrong. And you may not want to be my friend, but here at work, I’m your fucking superior and I deserve some damn respect.’

  ‘And there it is!’ she hissed at me.

  I leaned down so we were nose to nose. ‘Go fuck yourself,’ I growled.

  Then I marched into the toilet, heart thumping. I splashed water on my pink cheeks and rubbed my eyes until they were black with mascara. It took so long to clean myself up and reapply my make-up afterwards that I was late to a meeting.

  What I should have said to her, then and long before then, was that I missed her and I was sorry. That I just wanted to be friends again.

  So the next day, when the pictures were papered everywhere, it was all too clear why she thought it was me. And why she came and threw a scrunched-up pile of the photocopies on my desk and stormed out of the office for the last time.

  A few days later, I and two other account directors had been called into a meeting with the head of human resources and the head of client services. Lucy’s performance had been stagnant for a while, and no-one but me seemed upset at the loss but there needed to be a post-mortem to make sure everyone’s arse was covered and nobody had done anything ‘non-compliant’ that could have left TMC exposed to a lawsuit of any kind.

  ‘Could you just get us a top up on these coffees, please, Marian?’ Deborah, our head of HR had asked her PA about half an hour into the meeting. Marian had stopped taking the minutes for a moment and walked out holding the empty coffee jug.

  ‘Okay,’ Deborah had said quietly. ‘We should be alright here. Yes, she hadn’t been given any warnings and she wasn’t the subject of any current reviews, but on the other hand, she left us without fulfilling her obligation of notice. As a nod to her long service, we’re going to pay her an extra month’s salary and call it gardening leave, but if there is anything else we need to know, make it known now.’

  Maybe I was paranoid, I’d certainly not had enough sleep for weeks, but I could swear Deborah looked at me a little longer than the others.

  After silent consideration, a murmur of acceptance spread around the table.

  That creeping feeling of paranoia grew. I started to notice little lingering looks from Lucy’s old team, especially from the juniors who had followed her around like little ducklings.

  There was something combative about a three-second-too-long stare from someone on a fraction of your wage, but if I’d actually drawn attention to it or questioned it, I would have sounded mental. ‘I’m sorry, Kate? She what? She looked at you for a little bit longer than you think she needed to? Okay, yeah, that’s definitely grounds for dismissal.’

  If I didn’t have client lunches, I stayed in my office and drank coffee all day. I drank so much coffee that I started to feel nauseous.

  ‘You’re going to waste away,’ my PA Janet said one day as she placed a tuna sandwich in front of me that I hadn’t asked for. Before I could thank her, the smell caught my throat and I threw up in my waste-paper bin.

  ‘Oh God, Kate, are you okay?’

  I wiped my mouth and stared at the bin in horror and surprise.

  ‘I don’t know, I think so. I’m just feeling a bit peaky.’

  Janet fetched me a tall glass of water, whisked the sandwich and the bin away and did God knows what with them. She didn’t bring me any more unwanted sandwiches.

  If you’d asked me then, I would have guessed that the Lucy situation had hit me harder than I thought.

  ———

  I was supposed to be going down to the company bar a few nights after Lucy left. I was supposed to toast a new childrenswear account and give a little rousing speech to the troops at seven o’clock. When I walked into the bar after the quiet calm of my corner office, the noise and laughter hit me like a swinging door.

  I heard my name bubbling up from several corners. As I walked further into the basement room, I heard hyena-like laughing screeching to a halt. And then silence. I looked around wildly until I saw Paul gesturing me over. As I reached him, winding through other people’s shoulders as they looked away, he hooked his hand around my arm and pulled me close. ‘You should go,’ he said, his eyebrows knitted together in a frown.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, let’s go together.’ He tugged me lightly but I stayed rooted.

  ‘What are you talking about, Paul? I need to get up in a sec and talk about winning George & Lili.’

  Chatter started up again, a slower rumble than before. Bemused, I struggled to release my arm from Paul’s grip just as one of the grad-schemers came staggering up to me. This new crop really couldn’t handle their drink. She was nearly a foot shorter than me. Looking up, little nose pointing in the air, she said, ‘I didn’t know that’s how we get ahead here.’

  ‘Huh?’ I looked down at her in shock. Lingering looks and raised eyebrows were one thing, but a grad-schemer talking to a director like that would have been unconscionable in my day. I felt so harassed that I didn’t really take in what she was saying.

  ‘I really looked up to you,’ she said, suddenly seeming on the brink of tears. ‘All of the girls thought you deserved respect for climbing so far up the ladder so young.’

  ‘Okay, thanks,’ I said, confused.

  ‘We didn’t know you’d got there by shagging the boss. What a total fucking disappointm
ent.’

  My mouth had dropped open slightly and the silence that had descended felt like a darkness wrapping itself around my head, seeping into my eyes and down my throat.

  ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ Paul said to her, while I stood open-mouthed. ‘We’ll have your fucking job for this,’ he said. ‘And good luck getting another one.’

  The girl’s bravado slipped away and she sagged on the spot, just as another group of grad-schemers had come to sweep her away. One of the guys called back over his shoulder, ‘She’s really sorry, she’s just had too much to drink.’

  ‘Get her out of here,’ Paul hissed after him.

  ‘Don’t pay any attention,’ he added. ‘It’s bollocks, isn’t it? I don’t know where this has come from.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I puffed, mind whirring. ‘Lucy must have made up something spiteful before she left.’

  My knees were shaking slightly as I made my way to the bar and stood up on a chair, the standard makeshift speaker’s corner.

  ‘If I could have a bit of hush,’ I started, trying to smooth the quiver out of my voice.

  The silence was instant. Another collective held breath.

  ‘I just wanted to say a big well done to the team that worked on the George & Lili pitch. It took a lot of hard, hard work –’ a titter went through the crowd ‘– plenty of early mornings and late nights but the grind paid off.’

  A grunting, sleazy murmur rose through the rabble and burped itself out at me.

  ‘Well,’ I said, forgetting everything else I’d planned to say. ‘Enjoy your celebration drinks.’

  A few polite hands clapped arhythmically and I walked towards the door as fast as I could without running, Paul struggling to keep up. As I pushed out of the bar and into the stairwell, I saw John’s familiar shoes tapping down the stairs, light gleaming off them.

  ‘Kate!’ he said with matey swagger. ‘Great news on G an’ L, eh?’

  Paul was standing next to me, our shoulders touching.

  ‘It’s great,’ I said, forcing a flat smile. ‘I’ve congratulated the team but I’ve got a migraine coming so I need to go.’

  I started up the stairs but thought again and grabbed John’s arm. He flinched and looked down at my hand. ‘Could I have a quick word, actually?’ I said. He dipped his brow.

  ‘I’ll wait outside,’ Paul said quietly and jogged up the steps.

  I waited to hear the click of the upstairs door.

  ‘I don’t know how but I think it’s got out,’ I whispered.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘About us. One of the grad-schemers was drunk and she made some crack about sleeping with the boss.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah, and then there were giggles and double-entendres when I was talking. I think maybe Lucy guessed and said something.’

  He frowned for a moment and then shook his head. ‘Nah, you’re being paranoid. That’s what it’s always like in there. It’s just high spirits.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Forget it. Anyway, it’s not like there’s anything happening anyway, is it? It’s old news.’ I stared.

  ‘Okay, but if it’s just high spirits—’ I started.

  He didn’t wait to hear any more and walked into the bar without saying goodbye. I stood there in the stairwell until Paul started to come back down, his steps tentative.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he said, poking his head down. ‘I’ll make you some dinner.’

  The altercation in the bar had stayed with me all the next day. Not just the feeling of being undermined, but the feeling of being less than. I was rocked by the idea that maybe I didn’t deserve to sit on the pedestal I’d built for myself. As if John had lifted me up and held me there like he’d done against hotel room walls so many times. As soon as his hands moved, I slumped to the floor.

  I look back now and I know this wasn’t the case. I’d proven myself and climbed steadily before anything happened with him. And my rise, I’m sure, was on merit but also buoyed by the fiery ambition that can only be sustained by twenty-something energy. If anything, I’d plateaued by the time I first slept with John.

  But at the time, I kicked myself for everything: trying to stand out, trying to climb, thinking I could separate emotion from sex and ambition. I kicked myself for that most 1990s of crimes: claiming all the boom and not seeing the potential for bust.

  For the first time in my career I felt jaded with advertising. Jaded with the person advertising had turned me into. And more than that, I felt tired, disillusioned and paranoid. I thought John and I were a cast-iron secret, but if people knew about that, what must they really have thought of me? A flicker of fear grew into a flame: was I finished?

  I spent that weekend snapping at Paul or pulling him into endless circles of scrutiny about who was spreading rumours and whether I should grab that loose-lipped junior and find out why she’d said what she had.

  But Paul was advising me blind because, without knowing the truth about John, he didn’t know I had any real reason to worry. Until the Sunday night when I told him about everything that had happened. The whole sordid mess.

  It was probably a mistake. No, it was definitely a mistake, but it didn’t feel like it then. It felt like opening a blister and letting all the badness soak into a tissue.

  Paul poured me my wine with the same steady concern with which Viv used to hand out tea. He put his hands on mine as I held the chunky stem of the glass and he smiled ever so slightly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘they’ll all have moved on soon.’

  The wine finally slowed the endless chatter of my brain. That night, after a weekend of fitful sleeping, I lay down on the sofa and passed into a deep burgundy-assisted sleep.

  I woke up suddenly some hours later with a blinding pain in my shoulder. Cramps radiated from the pit of my belly and across my abdomen, taking my breath away. I swung my legs around, panting to cope with the pain, and staggered into the bathroom, dragging my hand along the wall for support. In the dim light, I could see a thin line trailing behind me.

  When I got into the bathroom and fumbled for the light switch, I must have cried out because suddenly Paul was there, the landline in his hand, calling for a cab to the hospital. As he gave out the address for our building, I looked down to see my legs were covered in purple blood. Fresh pain hit me like a tidal wave.

  Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, during my pregnancy with Harry fresh flashes of what happened that night started coming back to me, unwanted and unshakeable.

  Flashes of the pain and the apologies from the doctor as I writhed on the bed in the scanning room while they scanned me internally and pointed at things on the screen. I found the picture indecipherable but it seemed clear as a bell to them.

  ‘Where’s the blood coming from?’ I eventually asked, feebly. ‘Is it my stomach?’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ said one of the nurses, picking up my hand in hers. ‘I’ll let the doctor explain.’

  The doctor was a no-nonsense-looking woman with clipped grey hair and small glasses but when she spoke, the gentle reassurance of her voice buckled me.

  ‘Did you know you were pregnant, Kate?’ she asked.

  ‘Pregnant? Oh God,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘No.’

  She reached to hold my hand, waited for the penny to drop.

  ‘Am I having a miscarriage?’ I said, trying to sit up, to crawl away from the shock and pain. ‘Is this a miscarriage?’

  She shook her head briefly. ‘Please lie down, Kate,’ she said and squeezed my hand. ‘The foetus has implanted in one of your fallopian tubes,’ she said, and pointed to a white blurry lump on the screen. ‘It’s called an ectopic pregnancy and it’s very serious. The tube has ruptured and we need to get it all out as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Get it all out of where? All of what?’

  ‘The pregnancy tissues and the tube, I’m afraid.’

  ‘My tube?’ I sobbed, suddenly very protective of all these components of my body, el
ements I’d barely considered before.

  ‘I’m afraid so. If we’d found out before the tube ruptured, we might have been able to make an incision to remove the blockage but it really is too late—’

  ‘The blockage,’ I repeated. A tiny little blockage. Did the blockage have toes yet?

  Babies had been theoretical until this point, something other women were having, women like John’s wife. Something that waited the other side of a hill I’d not started to climb.

  And pregnancy was just something to avoid, something we briefly covered in biology in school. I’d been a B-grade pupil then, now I’d flunked the class entirely.

  ‘If we leave a ruptured tube in place,’ the doctor carried on, as I put one hand on my stomach and tried to understand how it related to the shape on the screen, ‘the damage could cause big problems for you in the future.’

  ‘Will removing it cause her any problems in the future though?’ I heard Paul’s voice from behind the pleated blue curtain that wrapped around the bed on which I was lying.

  ‘Paul?’ I said, embarrassed and comforted that he hadn’t stayed in the waiting room.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Removing one of Kate’s tubes won’t affect the other one detrimentally,’ the doctor said, almost certainly assuming Paul was my boyfriend. ‘But a rupture like this is life-threatening so we really need to get her into surgery.’ She turned back to me and softened her voice until it sounded like honey. ‘I know it’s frightening but the other tube will do more of the heavy lifting in future, so it’s not as bad as it might sound right now.’ A pulse of pain made my leg involuntarily kick. ‘We do need to get you into theatre, though,’ she said.

  Between the scan and the theatre doors, time was a blur. There were painful attempts to get drips in, sickening strip-lighting whizzing overhead as the trolley was rushed along corridors, two anaesthetists chatting chirpily over me. My countdown from a hundred only got to ninety-seven before all was black.