by Jane Fallon
Whip. Two heads turn in Lorna’s direction. I look at her too. She looks shaken, but this isn’t news to her any more so she’s holding it together.
‘… and what I’ve come to realize is that actually it’s you I love. I’ve loved you all along. I just went crazy for a bit, that’s all. Call it a mid-life crisis. Whatever. It’s over. And I want to say that if you’ll have me back then I want to come back. We can get over this, Isabel, please…’
He finally shuts up and we all look at Isabel. I can tell that she’s moved, that she’s thinking about it. Her whole experience with Luke has left her vulnerable and the devil-you-know security of her marriage probably looks pretty inviting to her at the moment.
‘Alex…’ she says quietly. ‘I don’t know what to think.’
I know it’s none of my business. I know I should keep out of it. But what kind of a friend am I if I let her fall back in love with him without knowing the full picture. If, once she knows the extent of Alex’s betrayal of her, she still wants to take him back, then that’s her funeral. She’s a grown woman; she can make up her own mind. But at the moment he’s not playing fair.
Before I can say anything the door opens and in walks Natalie, looking cute in her SpongeBob pyjamas and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. We all sit there in silence, some of us – me included – even plaster smiles on our faces as if to say, ‘Look, Nat, we’re all having a great time.’ She’s too tired and disorientated to notice the tension and she folds herself on to Isabel’s lap like a cat.
‘I can’t sleep.’
‘Do you want me to tuck you back in?’ Alex says, and Natalie is suddenly wide awake, flicking her head round to find the source of the voice.
‘Dad!’ She flings herself at him as if he’s been found at sea after a five-year absence. ‘You didn’t tell me Dad was coming,’ she says to Isabel, accusing.
Isabel tries to make light of it. ‘I knew he was going to get here late. I didn’t want you refusing to go to bed because you wanted to see him.’
‘I’ll get Nicola,’ Natalie says, her first instinct always being to share everything with her twin.
‘No,’ Isabel says, and she leans over and gently takes hold of her arm to stop her running out of the room. ‘Dad’s got to go in a minute and you’ll see him again soon, both of you.’
Natalie sighs, a loud theatrical sigh. ‘When are you coming home?’
‘Sooner than you think, maybe,’ Alex says, and Isabel says, ‘Alex…’ a warning shot across his bows.
Natalie’s face lights up. ‘Really?’
‘Well, it’s up to Mummy,’ Alex says, and the rest of us swap looks, open-mouthed. It’s unthinkable that he would give Natalie hope like this and then put Isabel in the firing line if it doesn’t work out.
Isabel picks Natalie off his lap. ‘It’s up to both of us,’ she says. ‘Daddy and I. We have lots to talk about, but either way you’ll see him soon. Whatever happens he’ll still be coming over to visit. And, who knows, maybe one day…’ She tails off and whisks her daughter out of the room before Alex can say any more.
We sit in stony silence for a moment and then Dan says, ‘Fucking hell, Alex, that was a bit much.’
Alex ignores him, helps himself to a glass of wine in somebody’s empty glass, smiles at the blank faces round the table. I want him to leave, of course I do, but I don’t actually know how to achieve that. Asking him to go isn’t likely to work. I don’t want a fuss, a noise, disturbing the neighbours and, more importantly, the kids. Plus, deep down, there’s something in me that wants to see this played out once and for all. And it can never be a bad thing for Isabel to be reminded how manipulative he is, how scheming and fucked up and insincere.
She comes back in, looking pleadingly at Alex. ‘Don’t ever do that again, bringing the girls into it, giving them false hope.’
‘But it’s not false, is it? Not necessarily, anyway. You’re thinking about it, aren’t you, Izz?’
Isabel looks around at us all. ‘I’m not having this conversation here. It’s so… inappropriate.’
‘Actually, we should probably get going,’ Rose says, raising her eyebrows at Simon.
‘No…’ I say. I don’t want the evening to end like this, our guests bullied out of our home.
Dan says, ‘I think it’s Alex who should leave.’
Alex ignores him, looks at Isabel. Rose reluctantly sits back down.
‘You won’t talk when I pick the kids up; you won’t talk on the phone. It might be inappropriate, but I don’t know how else to get you to listen to the fact that I’m sincere. I want to come back.’
‘Alex, I’m still trying to work out where our marriage went wrong. You left without me ever having realized you were unhappy. What does that say about us? You made a pass at Rebecca, for God’s sake, my best friend.’
‘I’ve told you,’ he says, ‘that was a mistake. A tiny, momentary blip. I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was so confused. I regretted it immediately.’
OK, that’s my cue. I can’t sit here and watch him spin her this line. I take a deep breath, cough, here goes. I’m about to speak up when Dan gets there first.
‘A momentary blip? Except that you told her you’d been in love with her for years. And you repeated it the next day. You begged her to leave me.’ He looks at Isabel apologetically. ‘That’s the real reason we fell out.’
Isabel looks confused.
‘I didn’t want you to know that. Ever,’ I say. ‘But Dan’s right. If you’re going to get back with him, then you have to know exactly who he is, what he’s capable of.’
‘OK,’ Alex says. ‘Like I said, I was confused. I said all sorts of things.’
‘And you told me that your marriage had been dead for years.’ We all look at Lorna who has piped up from the other side of the table. ‘You told me that you’d never really been faithful to Isabel anyway. Sorry, Isabel…’
Alex interrupts. ‘Hold on. Don’t you join in. Half of these people hate you, remember. They’ve been laughing at you behind your back for years.’
‘You’re a user, Alex,’ she says. ‘It took me a while to see it, but it’s true.’
‘Isabel,’ he says. ‘Don’t listen to them.’
She looks at him, a slight frown on her face. ‘Is that true, what Lorna just said?’
‘Of course not. They’re all jealous or they’ve got a grudge against me. They’d rather get back at me than see you happy…’
‘So, it’s not true?’
Dan speaks. ‘Alex, if you really want Isabel back, now’s the time to come clean…’
Alex says nothing.
‘So, it is,’ Isabel says.
Dan looks at the table, not wanting to say any more.
‘I’m so sorry, Isabel,’ Lorna says again.
‘You haven’t got anything to apologize for,’ Izz says. ‘In fact I should thank you, all of you, for preventing me from making the same mistake twice. You think you want me back, Alex, maybe you do or maybe it would just be convenient – you’d be back in the fold; life would eventually go back to how it was. But how am I ever going to trust you again? You had the chance then to say, “Actually, it’s all true, everything they’re saying, but I’m different now,” but you didn’t take it. You lied to me all the way through our marriage and you’re still lying to me.’
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘Sorry, Alex. I was wavering because I missed you and it’s scary being on your own. But you’ve just made up my mind for me. You can still see the girls, I won’t ever be difficult about that. But we’ll go back to our fixed arrangement, no turning up out of the blue or calling me on the off chance. We’re never going to get back together. Not ever.’
I lean over and give Isabel a hug. She’s shaking.
‘Oh, and, Alex,’ she says. ‘Get a job.’
‘Definitely time to go now, mate,’ Dan says.
Alex stands up. ‘You all fucking deserve each other,
you know that?’ he spits as he leaves.
We sit in stunned silence for a moment.
‘Blimey,’ Simon says eventually. ‘This is better than a night in front of the TV,’ and we all laugh nervously, despite everything.
‘Are you OK?’ I say to Isabel, and she says, ‘Do you know what? I feel absolutely fine. I don’t have to pine for him any more because I’ve realized I never really knew him.’
‘How about you?’ I say to Lorna, and she smiles and says, ‘Ditto.’
Kay goes off to the kitchen and comes back with another bottle of wine. ‘Fuck it, let’s all get drunk,’ she says, so we do and we laugh a bit too loudly at things like we’re trying to prove we’re all OK, and then we sing carols and turn the iPod speakers up way too loud and this time the neighbour really does come up to tell us off.
31
I wake up next morning fully clothed, sprawled across the bed. I have a hazy memory of phoning taxis at about four in the morning and swearing undying love for all my guests as the night drew to an end. The clock says nine thirty so I am already late for work. I try to call out for Dan, but my furry tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth so I peel myself off the bed and sway towards the door. It hits me like a speeding truck that we have a house full of other people’s kids and a responsibility to get them off to school on time (too late) and well fed. It might be the last day of term but that doesn’t mean they can roll in any time they (or their parents) can be bothered. The flat seems very quiet. I make it to the kitchen in one piece. It’s surprisingly clean considering the carnage that went on. In the middle of the table is a note. It seems that Dan got up early and, with the help of Zoe, got all the kids washed, dressed and breakfasted and out of the door on time. He (Dan) has already called Melanie on her mobile to say she probably shouldn’t expect either me, Kay or Lorna to show up until very late today because we were all downing shots until the small hours and she, the note tells me, laughed and said they’d cope.
‘Don’t forget to look in the living room before you leave,’ the note says, enigmatically. Even though there’s no prospect of me feeling up to going out any time soon, I can’t resist a mystery so I shuffle over to the living-room door and open it. The smell hits me first, heavy with alcohol like an empty pub. The room is dark, but I can just about make out two comatose figures, one on either sofa. Of course. Kay and Lorna opted to sleep where they were, in their clothes, rather than even attempt to go home. It’s all coming back to me now. Isabel spent the night on the spare bunk in William’s room. (All the girls, of course, stayed with Zoe. ‘Stay in a boy’s room? No way! That’s gross.’) Only Rose and Simon actually made it through the front door.
I tiptoe to William’s room. The beds are made, no sign of Isabel. She always was good at getting up the morning after a night before while I would lie in bed moaning for hours. So I put some coffee on, open the living-room curtains and then the windows even though it’s four degrees out there. Mumblings from under the two quilts.
Kay surfaces first. Groans, looks at her watch, panics.
‘It’s OK,’ I say, laughing. ‘They know we’re going to be late in.’
She crawls out from under the cover, make-up all over her face, hair standing on end.
‘Oh God,’ she says. ‘Oh God. What did I do? No, don’t tell me.’
There’s something about seeing someone suffering even worse than you that takes the edge off a hangover. Maybe it punctures the psychological dark cloud that hangs just above your head. ‘I wasn’t the only one’ or even just ‘I wasn’t the drunkest’. Anyway, seeing Kay looking so rough seems to perk me up.
‘You were fine,’ I say, as if I even remember. ‘We were all as bad.’
Lorna is still out cold, head back, mouth open, breath rattling in her throat.
‘Lorna,’ I say. Nothing.
‘Lorna.’
‘Lorna.’
Kay laughs. ‘Lorna.’
‘Lorna.’ I raise my voice slightly.
‘Lorna,’ Kay says.
I start laughing. I can’t stop, deep in out-of-control hangover hysteria. ‘Lorna.’
A couple of minutes of this and we’re both crying with laughter. We clutch on to each other like two giggly thirteen-year-olds. Every few seconds one or other of us says, ‘Lorna,’ she doesn’t react and that sets us off again. I realize that I could keep doing this all day and then I remember that we do all have jobs to go to so, reluctantly, I walk over and shake Lorna gently.
‘Lorna,’ I say, and she opens her eyes and says, ‘What?’ which Kay and I find hilarious for some reason. Lorna looks around confused, takes in where she is.
‘What’s so funny?’ she says in a groggy voice.
I start a little production line. Shower, coffee, toast, make-up. None of us is capable of moving very fast and even the most routine of jobs feels like climbing a mountain. We have a ten-minute detour when I try to lend them some clean clothes and the sight of size-eight Lorna in one of my size-eighteen tops nearly finishes us off. By ten forty, though, we’re ready to go, although we all look like we haven’t slept in a week and the other two look like they’ve been dressed by goodwill. As we stagger to the tube station I call Isabel to check she’s still in one piece. She’s at work already, although when she got there she realized she was wearing odd socks under her jeans. One of them, she thinks, might be William’s.
‘I’m trying to pretend it’s a quirk,’ she says. ‘But no one’s buying it.’
‘It was fun, wasn’t it?’ she adds. ‘Apart from Alex.’
‘It was,’ I say. ‘It really was.’
And I mean it. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much.
‘Ask Kay and Lorna if they want to come on Christmas Eve,’ she says rashly. ‘And Rose and Simon.’
‘Great,’ I say. And I mean that too.
It’s the last day at work before the Christmas break, which always means a little drinks party in the office in the afternoon. I have never felt less like anything in my life. All of the clients are invited and there’s usually a pretty good turnout as there always is when there’s free drink on offer. Melanie and Joshua were a little surprised to see the three of us crawl in together. Lorna’s and my antagonism has never been a very well-kept secret in the office and, despite our dishevelled and unprofessional appearance nearly two hours late, their smiling faces give away how pleased they are to see that their children are playing nicely.
Nothing much happens at this time of year anyway. Half of the businesses in London have already packed up for the holidays. The phone barely rings all day. I sleep sitting up in my chair for most of the rest of the morning and then Joshua and Melanie take us out for the traditional Mortimer and Sheedy Christmas lunch at Rowleys over the road.
The three of us are terrible company, grunting monosyllabic answers and guzzling bottle after bottle of sparkling water. Eventually Joshua insists that we all have a glass of champagne. The idea of it turns my stomach but after a couple of sips I perk up. Great, so now I’m becoming an alcoholic. Everyone toasts my promotion and then Lorna’s success with Heather and finally Kay for fitting in so beautifully. The three of us toast the two of them for being the best bosses in the world. A bit of an exaggeration maybe, but who cares? Joshua makes the same little speech he always makes at our Christmas lunch, basically telling us we’re all wonderful and that Mortimer and Sheedy is going to take over the world next year and then we walk the fifty yards or so back to the office cosseted in a cloud of mutual respect and affection.
The drinks party is from four thirty till six thirty. It’s a very informal affair, cheap champagne and beer in coolers on my desk and a few bowls of Pringles dotted about the place. No one dresses up. Clients and selected friends of the company like Marilyn Carson stop by on their way home from work or Christmas shopping or on their way to the theatre, have a quick drink, wish us all a happy holiday and go on their way again. There’s always one person – generally a client who hasn’t worked for a w
hile – who arrives at four thirty on the dot and has to be forced into a taxi at half past six, a bit worse for wear. This year, Kathryn arrives first so I wonder if it’s going to be her. She hugs me so hard I start coughing and Kay hands her a glass of champagne as she tells us how much fun Nurses is, even though all she’s done so far is have a costume fitting, and how she’s having the time of her life.
‘And it’s all thanks to Rebecca,’ she keeps saying. I sneak a look at Lorna to see if she’s irritated by this apparent snub, but she’s smiling along with the rest of us, so I relax and accept the compliment. Kathryn does look fantastic, animated and glowing, more alive than I’ve ever seen her, and I allow myself a little pride in her transformation.
By five fifteen the room is buzzing. Gary McPherson has been and gone, arriving with one of last year’s X Factor runners up on his arm and announcing that they’re getting married. There are loud congratulations all round. Kay, who reads the gossip magazines, whispers to me that she had no idea Gary and Anastasia were going out and I explain to her that they’ve probably only just met, but both know their stars are waning and they need to cash in on the big magazine deals before the offers slip away. I tell her too that Gary will without doubt invite all his ex-co-stars from Reddington Road, even the ones he has always professed to hate, to the wedding and Anastasia will be hastily renewing contact with all the other X Factor contestants she ditched as losers as soon as the show finished, because they will be paid big bonuses for each famous face who attends the ceremony and agrees to be photographed. They may even get the cover if she can persuade the winner to come along. Gary tells us we’ll all, of course, be invited, and I tell Kay not to get too excited. He’ll never remember, not unless one of us makes the papers in the meantime and could therefore make him a few quid more.
‘God,’ she says. ‘It’s an education working here.’
My other new charges come by to wish us Happy Christmas – Jasmine, with a new boyfriend in tow, and Samuel who has already finished his second little stint on Nottingham General and tells me he needs a job.