‘Which is best? To marry a man who has married three times or a man who has never married?’
‘I didn’t think it was serious with Terry?’
‘It’s not but—’
‘Maybe you should find someone closer to your—’
‘My what?’ Eva sounded offended. ‘My own age?’ she finished the sentence for Rachel. ‘I’d love to – don’t you think I’ve tried? I’m forty-six-years old and I look great for it. So I should, I work hard to look this way. But do you know what?’ Eva left no space for Rachel to answer. ‘I’m on tablets that regulate the hormone levels in my body. All they do is stimulate a constant state of horniness. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going, no pun intended. So when a thirty-three-year-old fireman finds me attractive, who am I to disagree?’ Eva’s eyes were fierce. ‘Because do you know what men my age want? To shag twenty-five-year-olds. No offence, but it’s what your husband is doing!’ She looked at her watch. ‘He’s probably having a post-fuck shower as we speak.’ Eva stood up. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’ She collected her notebook and left Rachel’s office.
Rachel was shell-shocked. Now that Eva had gone she could think of any number of retorts that would have been better than standing there with her mouth agape. And what she’d meant to say was that it didn’t sound like the toyboy fireman was fulfilling all of Eva’s wants and needs.
Rachel was smarting from Eva’s verbal attack on David’s fidelity, or lack of it. She wanted to remind Eva who was the boss. She also wanted to hug her and tell her she was sorry. Rachel’s phone rang then. Saved by the bell. Until she saw the caller ID: David. She didn’t have the energy to listen to more lies, so let the call go to voicemail. She looked back towards Eva’s desk; it was empty. Eva had left the building.
‘Lyds, do you know where Eva went?’
Lydia pulled out her earphones and glanced up from her colour-coordinated spreadsheet and looked around – she hadn’t heard Eva leave.
Rachel drafted a dozen text messages to Eva before she deleted them; none of them could convey how she really felt. Her life was such a mess. Normally Rachel hated confrontation but this was different: Eva had become her rock. She couldn’t bear to lose her now. Rachel’s phone buzzed. It was David, letting her know that he was playing squash, and then a second message arrived to say it made sense for him to get dinner at the Country Club. Since when did David play squash? He was useless with a racquet. She tried his number to catch him out in what she expected was a lie, but the call went straight to voicemail. She left a message for her never-husband to call her back. She was surprised she still cared. She reread the message and wondered if she should pop into the Country Club to surprise him. But then Rachel remembered Stefan Stratos’s instructions which were to allow enough time for evidence-gathering and, importantly, not to give David any pre-warning advantage of their pending split.
Later that night in bed, Rachel thought about Eva; how she had managed to bounce back and move on after all of her dating disappointments. Rachel doubted that she was as robust. She didn’t know how to go about being Rachel Keatley. She had been Mrs David Chatsworth for so long she couldn’t remember who she was before him. And she couldn’t even imagine being with another man. She’d had opportunities to cheat on many an occasion, but hadn’t. There was the time that a very handsome client asked to hold her hand and then suggested they celebrate their new working partnership in his hotel suite. He had a lovely smile but she’d admonished him for being naughty and he had taken the brush-off in his stride. It had been easy to say no. And then there had been David’s friend Aaron, who had kissed her on the mouth when he was drunk. He’d told her she was beautiful and that he had always wanted to kiss her. That had been bad, but it hadn’t been her fault, and although she liked and cared about Aaron, she didn’t think of him like that – first and foremost he was David’s friend. She tallied up the extramarital sex she could have had over the years. There were more instances than she had fingers, but she hadn’t because she valued the sacred vows she had made. Was it short-sighted not to have bonked all and sundry? They were right – the films and the magazines – David had taken her best years.
Rachel heard the front door open and imagined David trying to creep in quietly. She heard a pause as he tried to avoid the noisy step at the bottom of the stairs and failed. She was, for once, glad the annoying squeak hadn’t been fixed.
It was late. He joined her in bed.
‘I tried calling earlier,’ she mumbled.
‘Sorry, I got caught up in something.’
Rachel could only assume he was delayed in the bedroom of a nubile young woman. She added it to her internal tally of David’s lies. Somehow these hurt more than the infidelity itself – or so she told herself. She struggled not to express her anger.
‘Night,’ she slurred. Her eyelids were pharmaceutically heavy. She pulled down her silk eye mask and turned away from him. The waves of slumber washed over her. She heard her husband gulp down his glass of water in one go. Rachel smiled as she remembered the two caffeine tablets she had crushed into it and then gave in to sleep.
15
Rachel awoke feeling hazy and groggy, a residual fog from the sleeping tablet. She was in no state to go to work, and messaged Eva to say she’d be working from home. David was already up and about. She ignored the temptation to press her face into his pillow and inhale his musk. She splashed cold water on her cheeks and moved a cotton wool pad of rejuvenating toner around her features. She didn’t look revived.
She was at the age where she was told by every magazine, every television advert, every reality star’s Instagram, that she should be ‘keeping it tight’. She should be moisturising her face at forty-five-minute intervals, to compensate for the inevitable ageing of her skin. There was probably an app she could download to remind her. She should post to Facebook a public apology for the effects of gravity upon her and then wait for an acquaintance to mansplain the science behind it. The media constantly reproached her for being the wrong side of twenty.
Downstairs David sat at the dining table with his iPad. looking wild-eyed and manic. God, he was a gorgeous mess. He was rabbiting on about something; she squeezed his shoulder in support and made herself a coffee. David was still waffling. He announced he didn’t sleep well and repeatedly prodded his touchscreen. Something was wrong with a financial report. The numbers didn’t convey the expected results. Rachel tried to add sympathetic sounds and nods in the gaps between his bursts of prattling. His eyes were red and his hair askew. Rachel suspected this was the knock-on effect from messing with his sleep patterns. Evidently, it had had the desired effect; he was wrecked. David eventually left for work, having to return three times to pick up his phone, his wallet and then finally his car keys.
She picked up the magazine that was loitering on the side. She flicked through the pages until she found the article 10 Reasons Your Man Cheats. As she could have predicted, it was all her fault.
She didn’t fuck him enough.
She certainly didn’t blow him enough.
She had become too independent
She had allowed herself to age.
Rachel had paid £2.50 to be informed she was a selfish, past-her-prime, bad wife. The print consolidated all the doubts and suspicions in her head. It was quite simply her fault. She flicked through the other articles and noted the few tips on which foods make semen taste disgusting (suggesting that it is delicious the rest of the time?) and how natural foods (grapefruit, kale, milk, black liquorice) can affect medicines (Sildenafil, Warfarin, antibiotics, Digoxin). Overall, not a complete waste of money then.
Truthfully, though, she had no clue when it came to what men did or didn’t want. She had married at nineteen and had no real point of reference when it came to sex before her relationship with David. She’d had a few flings and one proper boyfriend before she met him, but they could all be classified as teenage fumblings. Rachel and David were at it twice a day at first, four t
imes a week when they moved in together, and then more recently regular as clockwork on Sunday nights. Was that normal? She thought they were doing okay. She recalled friends saying they didn’t have sex for months or in some cases years after having their first child. Was that an exaggeration? The seven-year itch, was that a real thing? She had read an article that said research had found that no couple (straight, gay, old, young) could uphold sexual attraction past ten years, could that also be true? For Rachel, honestly, none of these thoughts had crossed her mind during her non-marriage. She still fancied David. She still loved him. She still wanted him.
She took the magazine upstairs and drew a hot bath. Lying in it, she descended into a state of oblivion. David’s philandering mouth crowded her thoughts. David’s good shape and increased ‘gym activity’ (read: extramarital shenanigans) had caused him not to notice the inch taken in from his clothes. She imagined the Olympic bonks keeping him trim.
Rachel couldn’t stay relaxed in the bath. She skimmed magazine articles that concentrated on how to coast through life. Pills for feeling better, exercises for feeling better, food for feeling better. The whole world was against women. Too fat, too old. If not too fat, then needing to lose even more weight for a thigh gap. If not old, then too inexperienced, too stupid. Together with the having-it-all yummy mummy advice: put on your Cath Kidston apron and bake cookies for neighbours you secretly resent while your baby sleeps during the day and all through the night. Their Stepford smiles haunted her. Maybe that was the problem; while everyone was trying to be better there was a big looming omnipresent voice with a million reasons why YOU should feel like shit. She threw the magazine against the bathroom wall and enjoyed watching it fall into a heap in the corner.
She’d finished rinsing the bath when an evil thought blurred her judgement. She picked up David’s electric toothbrush and used the double pulse feature to scrub the toilet bowl. It was satisfying. When the euphoria subsided she was disgusted with herself. She looked for replacement heads but was unable to find them.
Rachel:Where are the new toothbrush heads?
Rachel:X.
David:Must have forgotten them. X
The reply infuriated her. She wanted to scream. David needed to get his lies in order. He’d said he was going to buy some, and it was obvious to her now that it was a cover to bonk his young girlfriend.
‘DAVID, YOU FUCKING WANKER!’ The words and the volume exorcised her stored anger.
Rachel fed Neville and Oscar rabbit-flavoured treats before she popped to the shops to buy replacement toothbrush heads. How she hated David at that moment. The depths she had descended to unnerved her. She walked to the shops in an attempt to calm her nerves. Rachel had started to relax after the two-mile round trip. She almost returned with a spring in her step. When she attempted to open the front door, she discovered that the Chubb was unlocked though she was sure she’d double turned the key on her way out. She spied David’s jacket draped over the banister and could hear water running. She ran up the stairs.
‘What are you doing home?’ she asked through the closed bathroom door. It sounded accusatory but she couldn’t help herself. She banged on the door when an answer wasn’t forthcoming. She tried the door; it was locked.
‘I came home to have a quick shower,’ he shouted.
Rachel almost laughed that David was asking her to believe he would have a shower before playing squash. His lies were piling up. David opened the bathroom door, allowing a mass of steam to escape. He had a towel wrapped around his waist and showed more of the weight he had put on. Ha!
David started to dry himself. Rachel tried not to look at his body. She felt herself blush as she followed the abdominal strip of hair from his navel to his pubic mane. Had he trimmed his cockbush? He was practically bald down there. She looked away as she realised she couldn’t remember when she’d last seen his penis. Even shrivelled from the shower, she missed the contact. She missed the intimacy. She felt a blush burning her cheeks as she tried to avert her gaze.
‘Wait, have you brushed your teeth?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’
‘When?’
‘Earlier.’
‘Earlier this morning or earlier since you got back?’
‘Earlier.’ David was distracted. She wondered if he was trying to conjure more lies.
Please no, please no, no. Please don’t have used the toothbrush.
She didn’t question that David wasn’t dressed in his gym gear. She didn’t know why she was avoiding confrontation. Was she still in denial? She wished for it to be a big joke so that she could forget all about the beautiful redhead. Then she and David could live happily ever after, as they had vowed to once on an exotic Indonesian island fifteen years ago. She was naïve to think then that she would only marry once and it would be for life.
‘I bought some new heads for the toothbrushes.’
‘Great. Thanks, love, I’ll see you later.’ David went to kiss her goodbye. Rachel violently jerked her head away from his mouth. He caught her right earlobe. After he left, she rushed to check David’s toothbrush, it felt damp-ish but not dripping wet. She hoped the moisture was condensation from the hot shower. She hoped to God that’s all it was.
Rachel didn’t get a wink of sleep. Her head was filled with dental nightmares. Huge crumbling teeth the size of the cliffs at Dover threatened to bury her. She arrived in the office early and was immediately overwhelmed by her ever-increasing to-do list, and her acute lack of impetus and inability to complete a single task.
Rachel was looking at the coffee machine, internally debating whether to make a third coffee, and panicked when she saw Eva sashay through the door. All Rachel wanted was to talk to her but they hadn’t spoken properly since their argument. Eva sat poised to start work as she waited for her computer to fire up. Eva was a real-life goddess; she had great posture, her hair was perfectly coiffed and Rachel could see a small flick of flawless eyeliner. Rachel pulled at her own blouse and pinched her cheeks for natural blush.
She stopped by Eva’s chair and took a deep breath. ‘I want to say how sorry—’
‘Please. Don’t be.’ Eva quietly added that she was embarrassed by her own recent outburst.
‘I’m the one who should be sorry.’
‘But I want you to know that I am sorry. And that I’ve missed you. And thank you for putting up with all my crazy …’
‘Please let’s not mention it again.’ Eva swatted the conversation away with her hand. She tried to keep a poker face before abandoning it and giving Rachel a bear hug. She drank in Eva’s smell. She always wore classic Chanel No. 5, but Eva, as with everything else, made it her own. ‘I need to explain—’
‘Eva, you have nothing—’
‘I have a confession to make. You’ve only known me … what? Eighteen months – two years, at most? This isn’t me. The hormones are driving me potty. I used to like nothing more than gardening and Zumba. Then early menopause hit. I’m waiting for it to end so I can get my real life back.’
Eva let out a huge sigh. Rachel waited for more. It was hardly the revelation of the century. What was wrong with gardening and Zumba? She presented Eva with a packet of milk chocolate digestives.
‘Anyway, I need to tell you something,’ Eva said, in between mouthfuls. ‘I was having drinks last night and Lydia …’ She left the conversation hanging as she filled two mugs with hot water.
Stop! Rachel thought. Eva and Lydia aren’t friends; they have nothing in common. Nevertheless she felt a pang of jealousy at the thought of them out together. Were they having drinks without her? And then she suspected that if they had got together, it was almost certainly to discuss Rachel’s insane behaviour. Were they going to leave and set up their own brand new marketing consultancy and take all her clients with them? Further rejection to contend with. God, she was a paranoid wreck.
‘When I say drinks,’ Eva continued, ‘we were in that new cocktail bar Happy Hour separately waiting for our friends and—�
�
Rachel felt better about the short-lived drinks. She wouldn’t have to fire either of them now. Ten minutes earlier she was admittedly inundated but had at least passed for sane.
‘Look, I can see how much you’re still hurting. Now you have no purpose in life and you’re turning into a miserable spinster. By the way – seeing as you’ll no longer be needing it, have you booked your fanny in for cremation or burial?’
Rachel hid her smile and tried to interrupt with protestations of innocence. Eva held up her hand. Rachel pulled a faux-sulky face.
‘It’s no use, I know too much. I have seen your mad twin; it’s too late to try and sweep her under the crazy carpet. Anyway, guess who walked in?’
‘I give up.’
‘Your husband.’
‘David? Did you have drinks with him too?’
‘Put that forked tongue away. Don’t be horrid.’
Eva was right. Rachel used to be a lovely person. She used to do fun runs and sponsored walks. She used to volunteer at the local charity shop, collecting bags of donated clothes from the posh roads in town. That reminded her – in the boot of her car she had the coats and blankets for the homeless shelter. Since the discovery of David’s infidelity, Rachel’s exuberance was altered beyond recognition. She used to laugh and smile – ALL THE TIME! And in its place resided a petty spitefulness that could give the Wicked Witch of the West a run for her money.
‘I’m horrid?’ Rachel whispered.
‘No, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t do that. Stop your bottom lip going …’
Rachel placed a finger on her mouth to steady the wobble.
‘Think nice thoughts and try to be less … horrible?’
‘You think I’m a horrible person?’ Rachel hid her face in her hands.
How to Marry Your Husband Page 9