Foursome

by Jane Fallon

  ‘Mondays and Tuesdays really. The other days I have rehearsals or taping. Did she really say he sounded excited?’

  ‘She did. And he also said, “Tell Heather we love her.”’

  ‘Excellent.’ All of Heather’s former irritation seems to have dissipated with the news that she’s in demand.

  ‘So, we’ll find a Monday or Tuesday that Niall can do and I’ll call you back. You might not hear from Lorna for a few days because we’ve insisted she take to her bed and turn her phone off. If you need anything in the meantime, feel free to call me. Rebecca. In fact, let me give you my mobile number.’

  I spell it out for her and she seems to go off happy.

  Back in reception I tell Kay to put any calls from Niall Johnson’s office through to me, even if they ask for Lorna. I want to hug her when she just says, ‘OK,’ and doesn’t ask me why. I spend the whole afternoon willing Colette to call. I don’t think I could go through with pretending to be Lorna once she’s back and sitting in the room along the corridor.

  At about four thirty Kay finally tells me in a loud stage whisper that Niall Johnson’s office is calling.

  ‘For Lorna or Rebecca?’ I say.

  ‘Lorna.’

  I hadn’t really been conscious of making myself sound like Lorna when I spoke to Colette before, but now I make an effort to repeat the performance I gave for Niall earlier. Just in case she and Lorna ever meet. Although, if they do then what Lorna sounded like would be the least of their problems given that Lorna would have no memory of ever having spoken to her before. As soon as this is all arranged, I tell myself, as soon as Lorna is back at work, I’ll explain to her what I’ve done and why. Obviously I’m hoping that she will understand, even be grateful to me for the way I’ve covered her back. But, hey, this is Lorna we’re talking about here.

  Anyway, back to the task in hand.

  ‘Hi, Colette!’ I say. Think exclamation marks. ‘Thanks for calling me back so soon!’ Kay is looking at me strangely.

  ‘OK,’ Colette says. ‘I have Niall’s diary in front of me. What dates were you looking at?’

  So I explain that it has to be a Monday or a Tuesday and that really works in my favour because Niall doesn’t have one of those free for another couple of weeks. Surely Lorna will be back to her old self by then. ‘Let me just check my schedule too.’ I say the date out loud and look at Kay meaningfully. She seems to take the hint and quickly looks something up on her computer – hopefully Lorna’s diary because that’s what I was trying to communicate to her. A couple of clicks later she nods to me, which I take to mean that Lorna is free that day.

  ‘Where would Heather like to go?’ Colette says. ‘Niall says he’ll leave the choice to her.’

  How the hell do I know? ‘Oh, let’s say the Ivy,’ I say, naming somewhere I’ve always wanted to go myself. I can’t imagine either Lorna or Heather having a problem with that.

  ‘The Ivy it is,’ she says. ‘I’ll book it now and confirm with your office a few days before.’

  ‘Great!’ I say. ‘Tell Niall I’m looking forward to it!’

  ‘Rebecca,’ Kay says when I put the phone down, ‘I know I’m new here, but I’m assuming that what’s happening today isn’t normal.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kay,’ I say. ‘I’m putting you in a really awkward position. But I didn’t know what else to do. I need to be able to trust you to keep this to yourself. That’s all.’

  ‘You know I will,’ she says, and I believe her. ‘But it’s making me very uncomfortable to be really honest.’

  ‘Just know that I’m doing it for Lorna’s own good. And for the good of Mortimer and Sheedy. Hopefully she’ll be fine in a couple of days and that’ll be the end of it.’

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Jesus, what a day.’

  ‘I know.’ I nod and then I remember the earlier drama, the one that set this one in motion. In all the excitement about Lorna and Heather and Niall I’d completely forgotten about Alex and his drunken rantings.

  At home I find myself looking at Dan, searching for, what? Some four-year-old guilty secret that is etched on his face? I’m trying not to ask him about it. That’s exactly what Alex wants, for me to be suspicious and jealous. For Dan and I to argue and start to question one another. I’m hoping not to play my assigned role but I also know that if I don’t say anything there’s a danger it’ll start eating away at me and that could damage things between us even more. Plus, I feel like I have to tell Dan about Alex coming to the office. Keeping a secret from him definitely isn’t a good idea, I’ve learned that lesson. And, if I tell him any of it, then I should tell him all of it. I’m winning the argument with myself. I want an excuse to bring up what Alex said with Dan and I’ve found one. Dan asked me to be straight with him about all things concerning Alex and so I will. It won’t look like I’m accusing, I’ll just be reporting what Alex said to me and then waiting to see what Dan has to say about it. I won’t get worked up. I won’t show him that underneath it all I’m terrified that there might be some grain of truth behind Alex’s accusation. I’ll just put it out there and see what happens.

  I try to be extra nice to him over dinner. William is telling some interminable story about an experiment they did in physics to prove whether certain things are classed as solids, liquids or gases. He’s talking about particle vibration and thermal energy and God knows what else. I’m finding it hard to concentrate.

  ‘Take this ketchup,’ he says, waving his Heinz-covered knife at us. ‘What would you say it was?’

  I’m not sure what answer he requires so I say nothing while Dan says, ‘Tasty,’ which he knows is guaranteed to drive William crazy.

  ‘No!’ William says. ‘Is it a liquid or a solid?’

  I make an effort. ‘Oh, liquid, of course, anyone knows that,’ I say, knowing that he’s only asking this question because this answer, the obvious one, is clearly wrong.

  He’s triumphant as I knew he would be. ‘Not necessarily,’ he says smugly. ‘It may be an emulsion because it’s a mix of two unblendable liquids. Or some would say it’s actually a colloid, which is a chemical mixture where one substance is evenly spread through another.’

  ‘Wow,’ Dan says, feigning interest. I catch Dan’s eye. He smiles as if to say, ‘Isn’t our son amazing?’ I smile back but then the moment is broken by Zoe saying, ‘For God’s sake, William. I am literally going to slit my wrists if you don’t stop talking soon.’

  William, good natured as ever – he’s definitely his father’s son – simply says, ‘Sorry,’ and shuts up.

  Dan laughs. ‘So, let’s hear about Mum’s day.’ Zoe groans and I almost join in. I really don’t want to talk about the day I’ve had over dinner. I scrabble around for anything to say that doesn’t involve some kind of trauma but, between Alex and Lorna, there really isn’t anything.

  ‘Oh, you know. It was OK,’ is all I can come up with.

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘There must be something to tell us about your glamorous celebrity-filled life.

  ‘Well, I spoke to Heather Barclay.’ Thankfully this has the desired effect as Zoe suddenly comes to life and she and William demand to know what Heather was like.

  ‘I met her in person the other day too.’

  ‘No! Is she skinny?’ Zoe says. ‘How skinny is she?’

  ‘Too skinny,’ I say. ‘Don’t go getting any ideas.’

  ‘Is she pretty?’ William says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘In a too-skinny kind of way.’

  ‘Is she nice?’

  ‘She’s OK. I imagine she might be a nightmare if you got on the wrong side of her.’

  ‘Wow, Mum. That’s so cool,’ Zoe says. ‘No one else at school’s mum has a job where they get to meet famous people.’

  ‘Archie Samson’s dad is a famous person,’ William says, naming a boy in the year above him whose father hosts a current-affairs programme.

  ‘So?’ Zoe says. ‘Archie Samson’s dad does the news. This is Heather Barclay. Can you
get me her autograph?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Probably. Let me wait till she’s been with us a bit longer.’ It doesn’t feel like now is the time to be asking Heather Barclay for a signed photo.

  ‘And one for Kerrie.’

  ‘And one for me,’ William says.

  ‘And one for me. With kisses on,’ Dan says, which makes me laugh despite my nervousness.

  Once the kids have finally gone to bed, or at least, in Zoe’s case, her room, I say to Dan, ‘Do you really want to hear how my day was?’

  He realizes immediately that something’s wrong. ‘What? What happened?’

  So I tell him about Alex and his face goes pale. I don’t spare him any of the details; I don’t care how bad a light I paint Alex in any more. I never want him back in our lives in any capacity. I don’t exaggerate, but I want Dan to know exactly how badly he’s behaving.

  ‘And then,’ I say, trying to sound matter of fact, ‘he said something about Edinburgh. Ask you about Edinburgh. Said that I was wrong to be so certain my marriage was perfect.’

  I pause so I can take a good look at Dan. I’m hoping he’ll laugh or just look confused. He does neither. In fact, he looks panicked, caught out. I feel my heart pounding in my throat. I bite my top lip to stop me from saying anything, from screaming at him to tell me what it is. It’s up to him now.

  Dan sighs audibly and then takes my hand, which is never a good sign in this kind of situation.

  ‘Dan…’ I say, barely able to speak above a whisper. I realize now that I have to know. There’s no rewinding back to blissful ignorance. There’s no more convincing myself that Alex was lying. There’s no shutting the box now without looking at what’s inside. I have to hear what it is Dan might have to tell me. Because now I know for certain that he does have something to confess.

  ‘Just tell me. Whatever it is, get it over with.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Rebecca.’

  With these four words I feel the floor drop out of my world. My safe cocoon that I’ve spent years constructing around myself starts to unravel before my eyes. I want to take my hand back. but Dan holds on to it tightly. I wait to hear what he has to say next.

  ‘When Alex and I went to Edinburgh there was this woman…’

  ‘No, Dan…’ I can’t stop myself.

  ‘Nothing really happened,’ he says quickly. Now I’m confused.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She was staying in our hotel and we got talking to her in the bar. She was there for some conference with a load of work colleagues. She just… She made it really obvious she liked me. And I nearly went for it. I don’t know why. I’d never even thought of doing anything like that before, but we’d been having a bit of a rough time… I don’t know, there’s no excuse. Anyway, I talked to Alex about it. I told him I was thinking about it… I guess it was my mid-life crisis.’

  He stops and looks at me like a dog waiting to be punished.

  ‘And that’s it? That’s really it, that you thought about it?’

  He nods.

  ‘Nothing happened? You didn’t… kiss… or anything?’

  He looks at the floor. ‘Yes. We did. But only for a few seconds. In the lift. She invited me back to her room and I went. That’s the bit I’m really ashamed of. But as soon as I got there I knew it wasn’t what I wanted. I couldn’t have gone through with it. So I left. I didn’t even get her number and we left the next day. I’m sorry. I should have told you at the time, but I felt so bad and I was scared I would have ruined everything…’

  I can’t help myself. I laugh. It’s not even remotely funny and I know that when I have an off day I’ll probably torture myself with the details. (What did she look like? What was so special about her to make him even contemplate it? Did he tell her about me? How was our conversation on the phone that night? Normal, as if nothing had happened? Did he tell me that he was missing me? That he loved me?) But the truth is I am so relieved I could cry. And he’s right, we were having a bit of a rough patch. Nothing serious, nothing even tangible really, just one of those phases you go through from time to time when you’re crashing into each other rather than connecting, when for a few days or even weeks you suddenly find one another’s habits so mind-crushingly irritating that you have to hold yourself back from picking a fight. All couples have them. They blow over eventually, but I remember this one in particular because it started when we were on holiday. Just the two of us, without the kids, for the first time in years. Suddenly we were together twenty-four hours a day, but it was like we couldn’t remember how to be together. Everything was wrong. In fact, that was part of the reason why I was so keen for Dan to go to Scotland with Alex straight afterwards. I felt like we needed a few days apart from each other. He’s right, it’s definitely not an excuse, but it actually could have been so much worse. And I resolve never to give Dan a hard time about it. Ever.

  ‘That’s really it?’ I say, and he looks me right in the eyes and says that yes, that’s it, but that’s bad enough, isn’t it?

  ‘Dan, it’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine but it’s OK. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t upset me at all, you going to her room and… But, anyway, in the greater scheme of things it’s nothing. A tiny blip. And you’re right. Things weren’t going so well at the time.’

  ‘I still shouldn’t ever have got myself in that position.’

  ‘You made a mistake. Not only that but you stopped yourself from making a much bigger one. We’re all allowed a wobble. We’re all allowed to question our relationships once in a while.’

  ‘Except that you never do. Do you?’

  ‘I’ve had my moments,’ I say, although I can’t remember when I ever have. ‘I want us to forget about it,’ I say. ‘Let’s just put it in the past and move on. It’s fine, Dan, really.’

  ‘Really?’ he says, and he looks so relieved that I think he might cry.

  ‘Really.’

  Maybe if Dan had told me about this another time I wouldn’t have taken it so well. In fact, I know I wouldn’t. It would have felt like an enormous betrayal. I would have been confused that Dan could even start to behave in a way so unlike the Dan I thought I knew. (Dan flirting? It’s impossible to imagine. Don’t go there, I tell myself. Don’t allow yourself to blow it up into something bigger than it is.) My insecurity rating would have shot up (was she thinner stroke younger stroke prettier stroke funnier than me?) and I probably would have picked at it, beating myself up with the details, until I had driven Dan away completely. As it is I’m pretty sure I can lock it away and forget about it. Almost. I allow myself one tiny moment of neediness.

  ‘Dan? Since then… I mean, we’re OK, aren’t we?’

  ‘God, yes,’ he says, hugging me so hard I can barely breathe. ‘It gave me a wake-up call about what I nearly threw away. God, Rebecca, when I think that I could have lost you and the kids. You believe me, don’t you?’ He holds me at arm’s length so that he can look at me and I say yes, I do, of course I do, and I mean it. I know from his reaction, from his guilt and shame over what, in the end, was nothing, that there’s no danger of him being a repeat offender.

  ‘I’m just curious,’ I say a couple of minutes later, ‘but what did Alex say about it?’

  ‘He told me to go for it,’ Dan says, looking even more apologetic at having to hammer another nail into the coffin containing my friendship with Alex. ‘Actually,’ he adds, reluctantly, ‘he said that if she’d been coming on to him he definitely would have gone for it, no question.’

  I interrupt. ‘Even then?’

  Dan nods. ‘He said he felt trapped by having been in the same relationship for so long. That there was no harm in seeing what else was out there.’

  ‘Jesus, Dan, really?’

  ‘Obviously I know now that he was hoping we’d fall apart and then he could be free to pursue you. He’d been with other women too, before that.’

  Alex? Really? ‘And you knew?’

  ‘He knew I didn’t approve.�
��

  ‘And you didn’t tell me?’

  He shrugs, miserably. ‘He asked me not to. And to be honest I was afraid that if I did you would have either killed him or felt you had to tell Isabel.’

  ‘Too right I would. And don’t you think that it might have been better for her to have realized her marriage wasn’t perfect earlier? When she was younger and it might have been less daunting to go it alone?’ I can feel myself getting angry. It’s this boys’ club thing. This idea that friendships between blokes are more important than anything else.

  ‘Maybe. I’m just telling you how it was,’ he says, sensing that I’m losing it and no doubt afraid that if I lost my temper right now he wouldn’t get off so easily about Edinburgh. In fact, maybe that’s part of the reason why I’m feeling so angry about Alex. I was so determined not to kick off at Dan that I was suppressing all my hurt and anger about what he’d done. I have to remember what the real issue is here, though. Alex is trying to rock my marriage and I mustn’t let him. And, anyway, it’s not like Dan and Alex are going to be covering each other’s tracks in the future.

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘It just makes me so angry on Isabel’s behalf.’

  ‘And rightly so.’

  ‘We won’t tell her about… you know… the other women. Agreed?’

  He nods.

  ‘What a mess,’ I say, and Dan says, ‘I really am sorry,’ again. ‘For everything.’

  21

  There’s no sign of Lorna in the office next day. Neither does she ring in to tell anyone she won’t be there. I ask Kay to find an excuse to call her – ‘don’t let her think you’re checking up on her’ – which she does and she gets an earful in the process. We tell Joshua and Melanie that Lorna has called in sick and then I set about doing some damage limitation. Thank God Lorna has so few clients, but I still have no idea what half of them are up to and what crucial meetings or auditions they might be missing as we speak. I decide to ring them all to tell them that Lorna’s been unwell for a few days and to ask if there’s anything that needs doing. They’ll just think I’m being overly conscientious, which is fine by me. Before I do I ask Kay to run me through all the phone messages she’s taken for Lorna since she arrived, in case there is anything urgent that needs a response. It’s unlikely, I know, except that before Lorna keeled over she was on a roll, trying to breathe life into even the most comatose careers.