Before you start, though, please do me a favour. Ask yourself whether you really love him or whether it’s just the thought of failing that you can’t deal with. If you do love him then make sure he knows. If you’re trying to save your marriage because of what other people might think then, hard as it may be, save yourself a lot of heartache and call a solicitor.
Keep me posted. If you want any more information, or the name of a good restaurant in Paris, please e-mail me at [email protected]
Good luck.
Lizzie typed the last sentence with a flourish before scanning the original letter in and e-mailing them both, along with her column, to her editor for the next edition. Time for a congratulatory tea and biscuit break.
She was still thinking about the letter as she waited for the kettle to boil, disappearing momentarily into a cloud of pore-cleansing steam as it wobbled and rattled its way towards boiling point. Worrying about her readers was an occupational hazard, and suspected infidelity was a tricky one. As a child Lizzie had daydreamed of her big white day on afternoons when she was bored and apparently had nothing else to do. But the older she got the less she could visualise herself walking down any aisle that wasn’t in a supermarket or a cinema.
Laughably, she was still waiting to be swept off her feet by an irresistible man who wouldn’t let her down, for days and nights of passion, a relationship of equals and perfect children. She wanted the happy and successful first marriage that had eluded her mother. Like many of the children of divorcees, she had grown up determined to get it right. Matt had been the first ray of hope in a long time, and while he’d been doing well before he left, she had secretly been hoping for a slurred Christmas greeting on her answer-phone. There had been nothing.
Lizzie was in pursuit of the perfect cup of tea when the phone rang. She rushed to answer it, only the phone wasn’t in its holder on the wall. It was in her study, where she had left it. Damn. Phone calls were the only proof that her life wasn’t being lived in a vacuum at the moment, and if 1471 couldn’t shed any light on the caller, missing one could lead to hours of speculation as to who’d phoned and why they hadn’t left a message. Taking the stairs two at a time, Lizzie legged it down to her study.
She made it just in time. ‘Hello? Hello?’ Lizzie felt quite light-headed after her burst of activity. Maybe it was time to resurrect ‘keep fit’—or, at least add ‘get fit’ to her rapidly growing list of New Year’s Resolutions, but she hated exercising in January. There were always about eight million mince-pie eaters swearing the New Year was all about the New Them. She’d wait until February, when the bulk had given up, having paid a large enough gym subscription to make themselves feel better.
‘Hello?’
It was a cautious overture. Whoever it was had obviously been shell-shocked by the frenzy of activity they’d overheard at Lizzie’s end. As long as they were shell-shocked and not shell-suited that was fine. The former wasn’t life threatening.
‘Mum?’
‘No need to sound so disappointed, darling.’
‘I’m not disappointed. I just thought—well, never mind. How are you…?’ Lizzie resisted the urge to add ‘today’ to the end of the sentence.
‘Have you heard from that chap again?’
‘I told you; he’s skiing.’
‘Yes. Of course he is. Silly me.’
God, between them, Clare and her mother were giving her a complex. And she didn’t need any help.
‘How are you, Mum?’
‘Oh, you know. Fine. House seems a bit empty after spending the week with Alex, Jonathan and the kids, but in some ways it’s good to be home. How about you?’
Since Lizzie’s stepfather had died, she knew how hard her mother found the festive period when for two weeks every year the minutiae that usually filled her every waking hour ground to a halt. Annie liked to pretend that she was the busiest, strongest, all-coping widow London had ever seen, but Lizzie knew that underneath her cardigans there was far more raw emotion than she ever revealed. Lizzie berated herself for not having had the sensitivity to call herself, but if there was one person who could wind her up in under twenty seconds it was her mother.
‘I’ve been working really hard. Clare gets back the day after tomorrow, and I’d really like to be up to date before next week kicks in and I get even busier.’
‘You do work very hard, darling. I know that you have to, but do try and make time to have a little fun from time to time. Maybe you and Clare could go out dancing one evening?’
‘Mum…’
‘I know you think I’m interfering, but I just want the best for you. Look at Jonathan and Alex. So happy. Such a team. Jess and Josh are such lovely children. You don’t want to end up on your own.’
‘It’s not a question of “ending up”…’ Her mother was doing it again. ‘If the right person comes along then we’ll see. But look at Clare. She’s much happier since she left Joe. She’s gone from strength to strength. Union Jack’s is doing really well.’
‘Clare’s still angry, though. She’ll calm down eventually, and then she’ll want to meet someone again.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
Her mother chose to ignore her. ‘It’s all nonsense. She’s got to let someone into her life again one day…’
‘She doesn’t have to do anything.’ Lizzie knew she was sounding clipped. But in light of the radio silence from the Alps she was feeling more than a little defensive. ‘Not everyone feels the need to have their 2.4 children. More and more women find that they are just too busy for all that.’
Annie sighed. ‘Darling, having you and Jonathan was the best thing I ever did. Life doesn’t have to stop just because you have children. Without you two, now my life would be empty.’
Lizzie didn’t want to talk about this. Of course she’d thought about children, but not unless she’d found the perfect relationship first.
‘Mum, you know I love you—very much. But, please. I’m thirty-two. I am quite capable of running my own life. Believe me, if I meet the right man I’m not averse to having a relationship. I’m just not interested in settling for second best.’ Lizzie wanted out. This was supposed to be her tea break, not a psychoanalysis session. ‘Look, I’d better get on. I’ll give you a call later on this evening, OK?’
‘Lovely. Great. Just not between eight and ten because I’ll be watching that drama.’
Lizzie sighed as, a little emotionally fragile, she returned to the kitchen only to discover that—as she had forgotten that the whole point of a portable phone was that you could walk, talk and even brew at the same time—her tea was unsalvageable: a horrendous combination of ‘jumble sale stewed’ and ‘cooling rapidly’. She threw it away and started again. Life was way too short to drink horrible cups of tea in your own home.
She was just taking a five-minute research break on the sofa with a magazine when the phone rang again. What now?
‘This is BT call-minder. You. have. one. new—’
Lizzie cut off the automaton and dialled the number for their message service. It was one of the Laws of Sod. She’d been in solitary for almost forty-eight hours and two people had rung at the same time.
‘You. have. one. new. message. message. received. today. at. four. forty. six. peee. emmmm.’
‘Hi, Lizzie…it’s only me.’
Lizzie could have jumped for joy. It wasn’t ‘only me’. It was bloody well him.
‘Just calling to say hello.’
He sounded drunk. Or was it just a bad line?
‘Hope Christmas Day was fun and that you’re enjoying the whole festive over-eating, over-drinking season. No doubt you’re out partying hard…or watching lots of extra-long festive episodes of soap operas…or both. Well, I’d better get going. There’s no point me just waffling into a machine for hours. Happy New Year for Thursday night from the mountains. See you soon.’
Life was so unfair. It was Sunday afternoon. Surely he should be slaloming down a mountain black run, or
whatever you do on skiing holidays? Yet he calls. Just like that. Rationale started to creep in. At least he’d rung. Lizzie listened to the message several times before wondering what exactly she was listening for and starting to question her sanity. Satisfied that she had committed it to memory, she deleted it before Clare found it—and transcribed it for her mother.
Mood improved, Lizzie hummed to herself as she returned to her study. She loved this first bit of relationships. The excitement of attraction and not knowing that he clipped his toenails into the bath and left them there. The time when everything was endearing, fun and never too much trouble.
Although she would never admit it to Clare or to her mother, after years of slating women for doing it, Lizzie too had started to imagine every man she met as the potential father of her children. Looking at Alex and Jonathan, she did occasionally have twinges of verdant-edged envy. And she definitely wasn’t interested in the freeze-your-eggs, find-a-sperm-donor approach to reproduction. Unlike Clare, who’d become a right old feminist since her divorce, Lizzie did want to try and create a family unit, and she reckoned she had four years left to find a playmate and a father for her children before investing in a couple of cats and embracing the whole spinster lifestyle—reading glasses, amber necklace, meal for one, cut flowers, padded slippers et al.
But one brief message and her subconscious was cluttered with images of her and Matt sitting in thick white bathrobes at sunny breakfast tables reading papers and sipping orange juice as their charming, wide-eyed, intelligent, clean and practically silent pre-school children, complete with juvenile bowl haircuts and freckles, arrived to join them. Lizzie forced herself to stop when she started to picture him wandering around ‘their’ garden in a cardigan because:
1) She didn’t have a garden
2) She hated men wearing cardigans
3) He was skiing
4) They had only seen each other twice…ever.
chapter 10
Making sure that nobody she recognised was in the vicinity, Rachel picked up the latest edition of Out Loud magazine and, as she flicked past the various articles, berated herself yet again for posting the sodding letter in the first place. She must have been a whole lot iller than she had felt. Practically certifiable.
Scanning the magazine every Thursday—often sandwiched between the conveniently outsize pages of Campaign—had now become a ritual, even though she had no idea how far ahead of herself this ‘Ask Lizzie’ person worked. She’d only popped out of the office to make the most of the last week of the January sales, yet here she was in Selfridges, a floor away from the nearest designer collections, just checking.
Finally she found the relevant double-page spread. And there she was. Well, it was. Her letter. Letter of the frigging week. Rachel felt instant colour closely followed by instant pallor hitting her cheeks, and her ice cool façade temporarily slipped as she instinctively clutched the magazine to her chest and her body locked. Regaining the use of her limbs several seconds later, she put the magazine back as discreetly as she had picked it up.
After completing a circuit of the department, and lingering a little in Cards to regain her composure, Rachel returned to make her purchase. She toyed with the idea of buying all the copies on the shelf before eschewing the hysterical approach and instead losing it amongst a few other titles in her basket. At the till, blasé was replaced by bashful, and she could barely look the salesgirl in the eye. Pathetic behaviour. No one knew it was her letter or her problem. Yet she left the store convinced that everyone was giving her sidelong glances. Instant paranoia had descended.
‘Hold all calls. I don’t want to be disturbed for the next ten minutes.’
Kitty looked up guiltily from her frenetic e-mailing and minimised the dialogue box on her screen instinctively. Rachel didn’t know why she bothered. She knew Kitty was doing something personal. She never typed that fast when it was work-related. Nevertheless, Kitty did her best to nod industriously at Rachel as she swept past, before returning to organising her social life electronically.
The office door firmly closed, and seated safely at her desk far away from the searching eyes of assistants, Rachel silently read and reread first her letter and then the answer. So they used real letters. A cynic, and well aware of the short-cuts that the media took when necessary, Rachel had often wondered how genuine the problems really were. But there was her feverish letter. In print. For all the world to see. To read. To judge.
Name and Address Withheld. She searched for any clues as to the identity of the author. Objectively, no one could possibly know it was from her. She wasn’t sure that she even knew anyone who read Out Loud. Everyone she knew seemed to be reading Vanity Fair, Vogue and Tattler on the days when they weren’t immersed in the aspirational lifestyle publications of Wallpaper and World of Interiors.
Lizzie was good. Most of her response was state-the-obvious without being patronising. Paris for lunch wasn’t out of the question either. They’d just have to co-ordinate diaries. She wondered if shopping for the new collections while they were out there would be allowed? Probably not.
She’d only just started on the third read-through when there was a knock at her office door. Luckily, in hanging her coat on the back of the door, she’d obscured the glass panel that usually enabled visitors to watch her check her make-up for imperfections before she waved them in. Flinging the magazine on the coffee table, she opened a new document on her screen before responding to the follow-up batch of knocking. What was it with people? No one had a divine right to see her, and since when had appointments been out of date? Rachel sometimes wondered what she paid her PA for. Next time she’d have to be a bit more specific. Do not disturb until the big hand is on the six…
‘Come in.’ It was more of a bark than a welcome.
‘If this is a bad time I’ll come back later. I just wanted a quick word.’
Her annoyance was rapidly evaporating because Will was currently standing at the entrance to her office. Boyishly good-looking—hell, he was only about twelve…or was it twenty-five? Now she was on the wrong side of thirty it was becoming increasingly difficult to tell. Still, despite his testosterone-filled, confident and cocksure approach, Rachel had to admit he was bloody good at his job. Unnervingly, as vile as she could be, he never appeared to be intimidated, and she had to admit that their flirtations gave her as much pleasure as anything these days.
Will headed straight for the couch, placing one state-of-the-art trainer on her coffee table as he lit up. Rachel’s office was one of the few places you could still smoke on the sixth floor, and he always used it to his advantage. She could sense her plastic-looking-but-genuinely-living office plant collection holding its breath. He held the packet out to her.
‘No, thanks.’
‘Not still pretending to be a non-smoker, are you?’
‘I haven’t had one since…’ Rachel didn’t have to think back very far. ‘Well, I haven’t had one during the day for over a month.’
‘Or a cigarette.’ Will tipped his head back as he exhaled and his smoke rose up towards the ceiling in a vertical column. Rachel, as a rule, hated people smoking in her office—especially when they were junior to her and hadn’t bothered to ask first—but she decided to wait and see what Will had to say before she started getting testy. She walked round the desk, carefully resting her bottom on the other side.
‘So, what can I do for you?’
‘Just wanted to run a few more ideas past you for the campaign…’
Rachel’s afternoon was rapidly improving. She loved their meetings. Will was brimming with initiative and his enthusiasm was infectious. Rachel pulled her shoulders back and thrust her chest out a little further. Power-flirting was one of her specialist disciplines. She was sure she must be one of the best in the business.
‘I’ve been brainstorming with the rest of the team over lunch and I thought it’d be better to catch you in the office face to face if I could. This way you can tell me what you think
and we can get on with it, or regroup and get our thinking caps back on. Just be honest. If you think any of the ideas are crap, just tell me.’
‘Believe me, I will.’
‘Yeah, well, you’re not known for beating round the bush, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Right.’
From Will’s demeanour, Rachel imagined this ideas session had involved a few drinks.
‘Do you want a coffee?’ Rachel was determined to send Kitty to the Italian place over the road as her penance for letting Will in early and creating a close call. The coffee there was legendary, if you could endure the hapless lecherous flirtation of the staff. It would’ve been classified as harassment if you didn’t actually choose to go in. ‘If you’re going to hi-jack the next half-hour I might as well also use it to top up my caffeine levels.’
‘Sure. A latte would be lovely.’
Rachel popped out to Kitty’s desk with her wallet and ordered two posh coffees and a nice bit of cake. To her horror, when she got back Will was reading the problem page, which unfortunately was where Out Loud had fallen open, even after its earlier flight from her desk to the coffee table. Rachel ordered herself to play it cool, despite the fact that Will was sitting there in his baggy trousers, youth personified, still tanned from his recent snowboarding trip and definitely smiling at what he was reading. Smiling out loud. A phenomenon which was more commonly known as laughing. And, to Rachel’s despair, the source of his amusement appeared to be on the page he was reading. Rachel pretended to join in with his sentiment in the hope that they could move on…swiftly. She took the initiative.
‘Some of it’s amazing, isn’t it? It makes you wonder who writes in to these magazines. I don’t know why people bother.’
‘I know. I mean, what sort of loser would write to an agony aunt in the first place?’
Name & Address Withheld Page 10