by Jane Fallon
And as soon as it’s ready to move into I’ll break the bad news to Josh. I don’t even want to think about that yet. I know I’m a horrible person, I know what I’m doing is cold and calculated but I really have never wanted to hurt him. None of this is about him. It’s about me. And Robbie.
And the future we’re going to have together.
31
Paula
Georgia is eighteen. It feels as if there should be bunting and a parade, it’s such a big day for me and Robert, but, as the youngest in her year, George has done nothing but celebrate eighteenth birthdays for months now. She has eighteenth-birthday ennui. Still, she lets us make a big fuss with Bucks Fizz at breakfast (Georgia: ‘Is there actually any alcohol in this, because it just tastes like orange juice?’) and puts up with us reminiscing about the day she was born – how she nearly arrived on the number 24 bus, because we didn’t have a car and we couldn’t afford a taxi – without ever once saying she’s heard this story a thousand times.
She loves her presents – both the sensible, practical stuff and the Tiffany necklace that has her birth date inscribed on the back of the heart. I’ve booked the three of us a table for lunch at the Oxo Tower, somewhere she has always wanted to go, and the weather perks up from humid and dull to humid and sunny just in time for us to take our table outside. Robert and I are on our best behaviour – him thinking he’s getting away with it, me comforted by the fact he definitely isn’t going to – and I silently congratulate myself on the fact that Georgia is seemingly unaware of any underlying tension.
I’m struck with a sudden thought. Is that going to make it worse for her, though? We’ve protected her to such an extent that she has no idea anything is wrong between us. When we break it to her that we’re going to go our separate ways, is it going to be ten times harder for her because she hasn’t had a chance to prepare herself? She might start thinking her whole happy childhood has been a lie and start questioning everything. But on the other hand, we could have messed up her future by adding worries about her parents’ happiness on to her A-level stress. Not to mention the fact that Robert and I have never even discussed the fact that anything might be wrong in our marriage with each other. He’s just done what he’s done and I’ve found out about it. There was nothing concrete we could have said to her anyway. The bottom line is that there’s no right or wrong way to tell a child her – supposedly happy – parents are splitting up. All we can do when it comes to it is try to handle it as best we can.
‘Are you OK, Mum?’ she says now, as we wait for our main courses. ‘You look miles away.’
‘I was just thinking about that time we went to Devon,’ I say, reaching for a happy family memory, ‘and you made friends with that statue of a cherub in the hotel garden. You didn’t want to leave its side.’
‘I was three!’
Robert laughs. ‘You told us it was called Tinky.’
‘You were obsessed with Teletubbies.’
‘That’s about the first thing I remember,’ Georgia says. ‘That holiday.’
‘What about the time we went to Scotland?’ Robert says, and we allow ourselves to be swept away by a sea of collective memories of her childhood. Whatever is happening to us, nothing can change those.
‘Want to watch this week’s show?’ Robert says, once George and Eliza have fallen into their taxi to go to her birthday dinner, dressed up to the nines for the club night that will follow. I mean, you have to admire his front. He’s still enough of a narcissist that his idea of a fun way to spend an evening is to watch himself (and his mistress, let’s not forget) on the telly.
‘Sure,’ I say, ever the compliant wife. Besides, it’ll be interesting to see the chemistry between him and Samantha, given their characters are heading towards an affair. (I remember with shame that the idea for that storyline came about because Josh and I – or was it just me? – thought Saskia would hate watching herself portrayed as the older woman usurped by a younger, more glamorous model. I wonder whether Josh ever put in motion the storyline that had Saskia’s character throw herself at a younger man only to be rejected, before he put the brakes on everything. I’m not proud of myself, just so you know.)
We settle down at opposite ends of the sofa as the familiar theme music starts. Pastoral scenes of rolling hills and winding country lanes. Farmer Giles and his cows, Mrs Giles walking their border collie across a field, Hargreaves standing proudly outside his little antiques shop, Melody riding a horse. The idea that someone got paid good money to come up with this hackneyed pile of crap is mind-blowing and more than a bit depressing. Neither Samantha’s nor Jez’s character is sufficiently important to make the credits yet, although their upcoming storylines might soon catapult them to the top.
‘Saskia really is stunning,’ I say when she first appears. I feel as if I want to say something nice about her. To make amends to her. And, let’s face it, he would never believe me if I complimented her acting.
He grunts, non-committal.
‘It’s hard to believe Hargreaves would cheat on her with anyone, let alone Marilyn.’
‘I told you,’ he says, pressing pause, because he hates to miss a second of the action. ‘I tried to argue that with Josh, but he wouldn’t have it.’
As usual, I doze off by the time the plot of the week kicks in (something to do with a tractor going missing and being spotted at a local auction among stuff put up for sale by Jez), but I do manage to see the first scene with a hint of what’s to come between Hargreaves and Marilyn. I try to decide if her real-life attraction to him is translating on to the screen and, actually, she does manage to make her flirtation fairly convincing.
‘She’s quite good, isn’t she?’ Robert says, and I can’t bring myself to answer.
32
Josh has just walked into the café.
Let me just say that again. Josh. Has. Just. Walked. Into. The. Café.
It’s hard to emphasize enough how momentous this is. Josh, who hasn’t spoken to me since he found out I had falsely accused his wife of having an affair, who lives on the other side of London and so couldn’t just have stopped by at random, who is supposed to be in the middle of a filming day in Acton, is standing in the doorway, looking around, as if he’s trying to spot someone. Me.
I’m about to finish for the day. I have one of my regular sessions with Chas in twenty minutes and Chas does not tolerate lateness. I’ve been looking forward to it, actually, as I often do these days. I’m already wearing my sweat-wicking finery under my ‘Myra’s’ uniform. The top is an aqua-coloured fitted thing from Lululemon that just skims my waist. There are a few lumps and bumps on display still, but I feel confident in it. Strong. I like the idea that it says, ‘I work out,’ although it could equally say, ‘I bought some clothes at Lululemon and put them on for work because they’re comfortable.’
I’m in the middle of telling Myra all about the rest of George’s birthday weekend (it mostly involves her moaning and saying she felt sick while I made her toast and mopped her brow, I won’t bore you) when I see him out of the corner of my eye. Something about him, some subconscious familiarity, makes me turn around to see who’s come in. I screech to a halt halfway through a sentence.
Josh half raises an arm at me. I catch Myra looking from me to him and back again. I compose myself and walk over towards him.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’
He waits for me to get close enough so he doesn’t have to shout. ‘I need to talk to you. It’s important. Is now OK?’
To say I am confused really doesn’t do my state of mind justice.
‘Um … sure … I mean, I was just leaving to meet my trainer …’
‘Oh God, sorry,’ Josh says, and everything about his body language tells me he hasn’t come to shout at me again for potentially ruining his marriage. ‘I didn’t even think you might be going somewhere else. I just remember you saying you finished at half two. I’ll come back. Or I can call you. It’s fine.’
; I’ve never been good with cliffhangers. I always want to know what’s going to happen. ‘No, it’s fine. Let me just ring him. My phone’s out the back.’
I’m loathe to leave him with Myra because she’s definitely picked up that there’s something going on here, but I have no choice. I can’t just leave Chas hanging. Out in the back room I chicken out of phoning his mobile and call the gym instead. I don’t feel up to feigning illness (putting on that sleepy, drugged voice, like I used to when I had a job I hated, temping in an insurance office, and I often phoned in ‘sick’) so I claim a family emergency and Justine the receptionist promises to let him know right away. I know they’ll still charge me for the session, because it’s so late in the day, but there’s nothing I can do about that now. I promise myself I’ll go for a run later.
Back in the café, Josh is sitting at a table being given the third degree, along with a slice of carrot cake, by Myra. I imagine she will have tortured it out of him that he’s Josh, the producer on Robert’s show, which means she’ll have worked out that he’s Saskia’s husband and that I had a bit of a thing for him. That we had a bit of a thing for each other, to be fair. I actually feel myself blush when I walk back over to join him.
‘Shall we go for a walk? You can bring your cake with you.’ No way am I hearing whatever it is he has to say with an audience.
Myra, thankfully, gets the hint and springs into action. ‘Oh yes, I’ll wrap it for you.’
I can tell he wants to say no, he’ll leave it, but he’s too polite. Or too scared. Myra is very protective of her cakes and he might have picked up on her Rottweiler-like tendencies.
As we leave, him clutching his bag of cake like a five-year-old leaving a birthday party, she raises her eyebrows at me, and I shrug.
‘See you tomorrow.’
I follow Josh out of the café and up the hill. He seems to know where he’s going and he’s not saying anything yet so I decide it’s pointless to badger him and, besides, I’m using all my breath trying to keep up. He rounds a corner away from the main road and stops at a bench by a little triangle of green.
‘This OK?’ he says.
‘Sure.’
We sit side by side, a foot and a half between us.
‘Sorry if I made you miss your appointment.’
‘That’s … Josh, tell me what’s going on …’
He inhales slowly and I have to stop myself from shouting at him to get on with it. A fat black and white cat wanders past, giving me an accusing look. I imagine this is usually his bench.
Finally, he speaks. ‘I think it’s Saskia after all. Who Robert’s been seeing. I think it’s been her all along and this Samantha thing is just a distraction.’
‘What? Why …’
He rubs his hand up over his forehead and back across his stubbly hair. He’s got an unshaven thing going on today. Despite what’s going on, I find myself thinking that I like it.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘I’m not proud of this.’
‘Don’t even get me started on things I’ve done I’ve not been proud of lately.’
‘She’s been acting strangely. I don’t know … I don’t think I ever would have picked up on it if it wasn’t for everything that went on before … nothing I could really put my finger on, but I would notice that, if Robert wasn’t around, she wasn’t around, that kind of thing.’
I’m starting to feel a bit queasy. I notice that Josh still has his carrot cake clutched in his hand. It’s almost funny.
‘And I’ve been watching him and Samantha ever since you told me about them. And there’s just no way. Unless the two of them are the best actors in the world, which … no disrespect …’
I pull a face that I hope means: don’t feel you can’t slag him off on my account.
‘There’s literally no chemistry between them at all. Not even in their love scenes. And she’s a really nice woman. I just don’t think she would … And then I started thinking about why you knew about them in the first place and, of course, it was Saskia. Saskia told you, right?’
I nod. I can see why that might look a bit incriminating. Shit. ‘Yes. That’s the only piece of evidence we have, Saskia’s word.’
Could she have been lying to me? I’ve felt so guilty ever since then that I’ve allowed myself to become close to her. I consider her my friend.
‘So then I started to think, why would she do that? And there was only one explanation I could think of.’
I stare at the ground, racking my brain for why else Saskia would make something like that up.
‘I don’t think we can assume she’s lying just because Robert and Samantha might be covering their tracks well.’
‘There’s more,’ he says. I knew there would be. Josh is too rational to come halfway across London to tell me this on a whim. ‘This is the bit I’m not proud of. I went through their dressing rooms. I’d get sacked, honestly, if anyone knew, but I waited till everyone had gone home one night – I’m quite often the last to leave; there’s a spare set of keys locked away in the main office safe that are only meant to be used in emergencies. It’s strictly forbidden to go in there without permission, unless it’s life or death. Not to mention how unethical …’
‘Don’t you have security guards on at night?’ I remember Robert once saying to me in the very early days that he’d had to accompany some burly man to the wall where all the cast photos were posted to prove to him that he wasn’t a burglar or a nutter when he went back to collect something after everyone else had left. I hadn’t even questioned why he might have been there so late at the time.
Josh nods. ‘Yes. Two. But they know me, obviously. And I knew I could have made up some plausible story about what I was doing there if they spotted me. I am the producer, after all. And so long as no one started claiming anything had been stolen, they would probably never give it another thought. As it turns out, I didn’t see either of them.’
‘So …?’
‘So I looked in Saskia’s first. In the bin, there was a note. Ripped into a few pieces but hardly difficult to put together again. Here.’
He produces a crumpled mess of paper from his pocket and hands it to me. There are five small pieces and I assemble them easily.
‘Five o’clock? Mine? Wait for me if I’m not done.’
There’s no name, no initial. The writing most definitely looks familiar. I get that feeling that hits you when you go backwards on a swing too fast. Not because of Robert. Him betraying me is old news. Because of Saskia.
‘Shit. It’s still not proof, though. Maybe they were going to go over lines for today.’
‘They “loathe each other”, remember. It seems unlikely. And, anyway, once I’d been through all Sas’s stuff, I went and had a look in Robert’s.’
I know I’m not going to like what’s coming. ‘Go on …’
He rewards me with a smile. ‘What would be the biggest cliché you could think of? Imagine this was an episode of Farmer Giles.’
That’s easy. ‘A pair of her knickers.’
‘Bingo!’
No way. ‘You cannot be serious? You found a pair of Saskia’s knickers in Robert’s dressing room?’
He nods. ‘It’s almost too good, isn’t it?’
‘But … I mean … not that I’m doubting you, but there are only so many brands … couldn’t they be Samantha’s?’
‘What size would you say Saskia is?’
‘I don’t know. Something stupid like an eight.’
‘Exactly. And … at a rough guess … how about Samantha?’
I think about Saskia’s skinny form and Samantha’s curves. That girl has hips.
‘OK, point taken. But someone else then? One of the crew? A cleaner?’
‘She has the exact same ones. In the exact same size. She’s been playing you. Both of us.’
I try to take it in. The cat is now rubbing his head against my legs, but I’m not in the mood. ‘That bitch. And I’m meant to be doing her stupid hot yoga with her next weekend.
’
Josh looks at me, confused. Of course, he has no idea Saskia and I are in touch. Why would she have told him? I always assumed it was out of respect for me not wanting Robert to know, but I now realize she had an agenda of her own too.
‘We’re friends now, if you can believe that. I felt bad for what I’d done to her. I’d got to like her.’
‘You’re still meeting up?’
I nod. ‘Sorry. It’s nothing sinister. Just a coffee now and then. Like I said, I thought we were friends.’
Josh sighs, and his silence says it all.
‘Oh,’ he says, after a few seconds where I take this in. ‘I forgot the pièce de résistance.’
‘How could anything beat the knickers? I mean, really, though …’
He rewards me with a sad smile. ‘Sas is looking at flats to rent.’
‘For the two of them?’
He nods. ‘I assume so. There was a pile of particulars in her room. All in Marylebone.’
‘Near West1 Hot Yoga! She loves that place. She can roll in there every morning and sweat to her heart’s content.’
‘I guess it’s neutral territory. Anyway, one of them had a big tick on it, so I photocopied it.’
He digs around in his work bag. Pulls out an estate agent’s sheet with a picture of a very fancy-looking living room, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a large balcony. Is this it? Robert and Saskia’s love nest to be?
‘It’s nice,’ I say, handing it back.
‘It’s expensive.’
I exhale. ‘God, wouldn’t it be great if you could just sack them both? See how long they last living in a bedsit.’
‘Don’t …’
‘Just indulge me for a minute. It would be funny.’
‘It would.’
‘So they’re really going to do it.’