My Sweet Revenge

by Jane Fallon

  They’re talking about Saskia’s frozen shoulder and how it doesn’t seem to be getting better, no matter what. Saskia has a voice that I imagine a chihuahua might use if it could speak. Or a Pekingese. Yap, yap, yap. Or a fly. An annoying little gnat, nipping at your heels.

  ‘And the worst thing is you lose your independence so completely. You have to ask for help with everything. The other day I had to get Sarah to drive me home because it was hurting so much I couldn’t change gear! I mean, it makes me think what it’s going to be like when I get old and helpless, haha!’

  She actually says the word ‘haha!’

  I manage to catch the other woman’s eye and smile. Thank God for manners. She now feels obliged to smile back, and I’m sure she’s going to think she has to include me in the conversation too. Unfortunately, she apparently missed the advanced etiquette class because she turns back to Saskia and freezes me out.

  Their conversation moves on to exercise. Saskia is working hard to stay in shape despite her niggling injury. I discover that her passion is Bikram yoga. The one you basically do in a sauna.

  ‘Sounds like torture to me,’ the friend says when she manages to get a word in, and I warm to her a bit, despite her ignoring me.

  ‘It’s addictive,’ Saskia says. ‘I go every Saturday morning and it sets me up for the whole weekend. It’s that feeling of purging everything from the week, starting afresh. It’s really energizing …’

  ‘I consider the weekend a rip-roaring success if I ever change out of my pyjamas,’ the other woman interrupts, clearly desperate to be able to contribute to the conversation. ‘Where do you go? I’ve got a friend swears by the one on Regent’s Park Road.’

  ‘Marylebone. West One Hot Yoga. It’s more low key. Less crowded.’

  ‘Well, it obviously suits you. Which reminds me, I must go and stock up at the buffet before all the really fattening stuff gets snapped up. Do you want me to get you anything?’

  ‘No, thanks. I ate earlier.’ Liar. I bet she’s one of those nibble on a celery stick and call it dinner kind of people.

  ‘Back in a sec.’

  The other woman moves off. I don’t really have time for subtleties. Saskia is looking around for someone else to chat to. I can’t just follow her to her next conversation and hope she decides to befriend me. A quick glance assures me no one is looking our way. The room has filled out and I can’t even see across to where, I assume, Robert is still waiting for my return. Here goes nothing. I lob my half-glass of Prosecco at Saskia’s scarlet-clad back. She squeaks and turns accusingly.

  ‘Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry.’ I reach for a tissue in my bag and start to pat her down. ‘I tripped over the hearth.’

  Face to face, Saskia is well put together but not drop-dead gorgeous. For some reason this gives me renewed courage.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘If you come to the bathroom I can wash it off. Otherwise, you’re going to reek of alcohol.’

  ‘Won’t be the first time,’ she says, and smiles. She has a lovely smile, damn her.

  ‘Please let me help clean it off. I don’t know anyone here and I don’t want to be remembered as the woman who ruined someone’s top.’

  ‘It’s nothing special,’ she says, ‘Nicole Farhi. And I’ve had it for years. At least three, I just fell for the shade. Don’t you think there’s something about red? It’s such a happy colour …’

  Has she finished talking? I take a chance. ‘Even so …’

  ‘OK, I suppose it won’t hurt.’

  I lead her in the direction of the bathroom. ‘God, I really am so sorry. I’m Paula, by the way.’

  If she registers the name she doesn’t show it, although I’m sure Robert must have warned her I’d be here. ‘Saskia. And stop apologizing. It was an accident. It could have happened to anyone. I once fell over the kerb and dropped an ice cream on a baby! Can you imagine!’

  Once we’re in the tasteful traditional bathroom – roll-top bath, floral tiles that are just the right side of kitsch, original, I would guess, porcelain sink – I start to pat down her back with toilet paper and then use my glass, which I still have in my hand for some reason, to dribble water down the stain. ‘It’s going to get wetter, I’m afraid. Then I can dry it off a bit more again.’

  I work diligently for a moment, racking my brain for what to say. The whole point of this exercise is that Saskia will find out who I am and, maybe, be struck by a pang of guilt that I can build on somehow later. I’m rendered speechless by the ridiculousness of what I’m trying to do. Thankfully, Saskia feels the need to chat her way through the awkwardness.

  ‘So why are you here if you don’t know anyone? Just for the free food, haha? I can’t imagine it’s the scintillating company.’

  Here’s my in.

  ‘Oh … because my husband works on the show. Robert Westmore.’

  I try to avoid looking at her as I say his name, I don’t want to give myself away. I can sense a change in the air, though. Almost imperceptible, but it’s there.

  ‘Oh! You’re Robert’s wife! Of course.’ And I think I see the briefest flicker of her eyes up and down as she appraises the competition.

  ‘I give her my brightest, most disingenuous smile. Open, friendly. Definitely not suspicious. I need to get her attention. Confide. Be vulnerable.

  ‘We met once before actually … years ago …’

  ‘Oh yes, at that dinner, wasn’t it?’

  It wasn’t. It was at the wrap party for the first series, but I let it go.

  ‘I don’t know why I came, really. Usually, I say no. I’m not very good with big groups of people I don’t know.’ Careful. Don’t cross over into pathetic. ‘I mean, who is? I can’t imagine that’s on anyone’s list of favourite situations.’

  I’ve made her top way damper than I needed to in an effort to keep our conversation going. Now I’m flapping it back and forth as if that might dry it.

  ‘Don’t bother too much.’ She peers over her shoulder at her back view in the mirror.

  ‘A couple more minutes will make all the difference. I should pay for you to get it dry cleaned, really. Just to be sure.’

  ‘Absolutely no need,’ Saskia says, and I find myself thinking she seems nice enough. I would probably make much more of a fuss if someone drenched me in pungent liquid at a party. But then I remember she knows who I am, she knows she is sleeping with my husband. Not so nice after all.

  I know that I can’t keep this going forever. Saskia will start to get irritated with me if I don’t let her go soon. I have one last flash of inspiration.

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘That’s about as good as I can get it.’ I want her to relax, just to give me one more opening.

  ‘Thanks. It’s so warm out there it’ll dry in a second anyway.’

  She turns to go.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing you talking about your shoulder. I know the best physio. A friend of mine had seen everyone for hers and she went to him and he cured her in a few weeks. She said she started seeing the difference right away.’

  Saskia’s eyes light up. How can she not bite? ‘Do you have his number? Or even just his name …?’

  ‘I’ll have to ask my friend. But I’ll get it to you.’

  I expect she thinks I’ll give the details to Robert for him to pass on. No such luck.

  ‘Thanks. That’d be great. I feel as if it needs a miracle worker at this point.’

  ‘Well, from what I hear, that’s what he is.’

  Now I just have to research the best physiotherapist in London.

  Saskia and I say a friendly goodbye and I fight my way through the crowds to where I left Robert. He’s chatting to a man and a woman, but I can see he’s also flicking nervous glances around, trying to locate me.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he says as I appear at his side. I could almost believe he’s missed me.

  ‘Long story. I spilt a drink on someone
.’

  ‘I think we should make a move soon,’ he half-whispers into my ear.

  ‘Fine,’ I say. My work here is done.

  5

  Robert claims the need for a lie-in in the morning so I leave him to it. I strap on Georgia’s trainers and walk around the block, buying two coffees on the home stretch as an alibi. Robert always used to sneak out and get me a latte if he got up first at the weekends. I can’t remember when he stopped.

  Back home I have a shower (nb: if walking four hundred metres makes you sweat, you should probably do something about it) and then potter about trying to decide what I can suggest we do with the rest of the day. Shopping? Too much like hard work. Robert is enough of a face now that he gets stopped for photos every few minutes by people who then want to engage him in their life stories. Art gallery? Ditto. We could drive out to a reclamation yard, or some kind of non-posh antiques place. We used to spend hours pottering around, picking up curios. At first fantasizing about what we would buy if we had any money to spare and, later, once Robert’s career started to take off, purchasing the odd thing. A carved wooden box, a pair of vintage green glass bottles, an old variety poster. It was one of our favourite things to do.

  ‘Fancy heading out to the Swan?’ I say as I hand him his warmed-up latte when he surfaces.

  ‘God, no. I intend to have a lazy day, doing nothing. The last thing I want to do is sit in the car for hours.’

  So that’s that then.

  Later, I Google frozen shoulders. It seems London is awash with physios who claim to have the answer. There’s just no way to work out who is telling the truth and who isn’t. I send a quick text to Myra: ‘Know anyone who’s had a frozen shoulder who could rec a good physio?’ As a second thought, I add: ‘Round here ideally?’ Myra knows everyone locally and all their business. She discusses it all loudly with them in front of the other customers. Their divorces, their wayward children, their haemorroids.

  Three minutes later I get a reply: ‘Are you OK? What did you do?’ So I have to fire off another message telling her I’m not asking for myself.

  ‘Do you want to run lines later?’ I ask when I take Robert in a chicken salad at lunchtime. He’s propped up on the sofa in front of Sky Sports, watching the pre-match build-up. I’ve killed time clearing out cupboards in the kitchen. We are the embodiment of a 1960s gender-typical couple.

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet.’

  ‘OK, well, if you do …’

  ‘Thanks, though.’

  He turns his attention to his salad. This is hopeless.

  ‘FA Cup today, isn’t it?’ I nod at the TV. Watching sport together used to be one of our ‘things’. Any sport, it didn’t matter what, so long as we could pick a side to back.

  ‘First semi.’

  I fetch my own salad – forgoing the new potatoes and big slice of bread I would usually have with it – and join him on the sofa. But not before I Google who’s playing and check out a couple of forums to see what the contentious issues of the day are. I feel him tense up as if he thinks I’ve come to rain on his parade. So I keep quiet. Make the odd – I think insightful – comment once the match starts, and by ten minutes into the first half he’s relaxed and we’re discussing the team selection, as if either of us knows what we’re talking about. At half-time he goes off and makes us both a cup of tea and brings in two biscuits on a plate, which I take as a friendly gesture. I take one and put it on the arm of the sofa beside me, although I have no intention of eating it (my body is also a temple, don’cha know). I know he won’t eat the other one because he never does, but it’s the thought that counts. When he’s absorbed in the second half I stuff mine into the pocket of my cardigan. If he thought I was refusing a sweet treat he would definitely know something was up. It sits there, burning a sugary hole in my pocket, just demanding to be eaten, but I crush it between my fingers so I can’t give in to temptation.

  By the end of the match I’m feeling like we’ve had a pretty successful afternoon. And, actually, I’d forgotten just how much I used to enjoy mindlessly watching anything competitive.

  ‘Second one tomorrow,’ I say, clearing away the tea things.

  ‘It’s a date,’ he says, and I think yes, I’ve made a breakthrough. And then his phone buzzes to tell him he has a message and I remember the reason I’m doing this. I wonder if it’s Saskia. If she’s texted him to tell him she spent fifteen minutes shut in a toilet with me last night. That’ll scare the crap out of him. I can’t help but watch his face as he looks at the message. Then he holds his phone up to me as if to show me what it says.

  ‘Mart,’ the name of the sender says, one of the first assistants. ‘They’ve changed the schedule for Monday. Just as well we didn’t do lines.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, remembering to smile. Everything’s normal. You don’t suspect a thing.

  By Monday afternoon Myra has a name for me. I know that when I call Saskia to give her the info I need to seize the moment. There’s no point just giving her the physio’s details, saying goodbye and hoping that’s enough. It’s completely outside my personality to try to force my friendship on to someone but on this occasion that’s exactly what I need to do. Hopefully, Saskia will be curious enough about her rival to take me up on my offer.

  Thanks to the internet, I now know the main number for the production offices. My heart is pounding in my chest as I dial.

  ‘Hello, Farmer Giles,’ a woman’s voice trills at me.

  ‘Um …’ I almost hang up. Tell myself to breathe. ‘Could I speak to Saskia Sherbourne, please?’

  There’s a pause. Of course, it hadn’t even occurred to me that they probably get all manner of crazies calling night and day to try to talk to the actors. I know that people send wreaths and condolence cards if a character dies. I curse myself for not having taken Saskia’s mobile number.

  ‘It’s Paula Westmore, Robert’s wife.’ I wait for an intake of breath that tells me my name is infamous as the scorned wife, but there’s nothing.

  ‘Of course. Hi, Paula. Let me just see if she’s in her dressing room.’

  I hear the tone as it rings through. Then a click.

  ‘Paula! Hey!’

  I jump and almost drop my phone. ‘Hi. I just … how was your weekend?’

  ‘Great, thanks. Up to my eyes in lines to learn, you know how it is. Or you probably don’t, lucky for you. Did you enjoy Friday? You didn’t stay long.’

  Bitch.

  ‘Robert had a migraine. But, yes, it was fun. I want to apologize again for drenching you. I don’t usually go around throwing drinks on people!’

  ‘You should. It’s very therapeutic. Anyway, the top came out fine. Good as new. No problem.’

  ‘So …’ I say. ‘I have the name of the shoulder guy for you.’

  ‘You’re a lifesaver. It’s got so bad I can hardly even undo my own bra at the moment.’ She laughs. Well, she doesn’t, she says, ‘Haha.’ I try to block out the image that her comment has created in my head and rattle off the details.

  ‘I’m going to ring him now.’

  ‘He’s near where I work,’ I say, which is, strictly speaking, true, although not that near. A five-minute bus ride rather than a walk. But she doesn’t have to know that. ‘Let me know when you’re seeing him and we could meet up for a coffee or something. If you fancy it …’

  I feel like an adolescent boy asking a girl out on a date for the first time. Why on earth would she say yes? What’s in it for her? She hesitates for a moment. Probably trying to answer that question herself.

  ‘OK … great. What’s your number?’

  There’s no way of telling if she’s just being polite. I leave it with her. There’s nothing else I can do.

  I’m late for work. Robert is away for a couple of nights shooting locations, as he is pretty much every other week. Episodes shoot over two weeks, ten days a pop, of which two are spent in Oxfordshire doing the exterior scenes. Depending on whether Robert’s character
is in any of those scenes, and how many, he can be away one or both of those nights.

  I’ve always rather enjoyed those evenings when it’s just me and Georgia, or even me on my own. Now I have mixed feelings. It’s a relief to have time off from my new relentlessly upbeat and interested self (example: this morning over breakfast: Me (after some frantic Googling): ‘Did you hear about that guy who’s developing a head transplant?’ Robert loves crazy science stories), but it’s also agony to imagine what might be happening in the country hotel they all call home for the duration. Georgia was out last night, revising at Eliza’s, so I tried to distract myself with the new series of House of Cards that had just popped up on Netflix, and ended up watching four episodes back to back, going to bed far too late and oversleeping.

  I hear the bus rumbling along behind me as I head for the stop. I have no choice but to run for it as it overtakes me. I huff along in Georgia’s trainers, flapping my arms at the people waiting in the hope one of them might hold it up for me. Of course, they just assume I’m the local lunatic and all make a point of looking away. I’m still trotting along as the last person climbs aboard and the door closes. Bugger.

  I sit down heavily on one of the narrow, sheltered seats, trying to get my breath back. And then it hits me. I have just run further than I can ever remember running in my adult life. OK, so it was probably only a hundred metres, a hundred and fifty at the outside. And I am panting way more heavily than I have ever seen Paula Radcliffe pant after twenty-six miles. But I did it. A week of walking part of my journey has resulted in this gargantuan achievement.

  Actually, it’s not strictly true that I haven’t run as an adult. A couple of years ago, shamed by a shopping trip to buy an outfit for a friend’s wedding, I decided I needed to take myself in hand. I borrowed yet another pair of George’s trainers and announced that I was going to go for a jog. Robert’s reaction (‘What? You??’) didn’t put me off. I left the house, walking at first. As I turned the corner into Prince of Wales Road I broke into some kind of shuffling trot. I was exhausted immediately. My lungs felt as if they were going to explode. I didn’t own a sports bra (why would I?) so my boobs were flinging themselves up and down like they might detach from my chest altogether. But that wasn’t what put me off. It was the shouts of ‘Earthquake warning!’ from a gang of lads and the peals of laughter afterwards. I saw a passer-by snigger as one of the boys mimicked my undulating gait. I turned the first corner I came to and walked home, tail between my legs. Robert didn’t ask me what had happened and I was grateful.