Name & Address Withheld

by Jane Sigaloff

  Clare had no idea what Ed was on about. Charlie’s Angel? Maybe he didn’t need another drink.

  Ed obviously spotted Clare’s confused expression. ‘You did say you were seeing Rachel Baker back there, didn’t you? Or am I imagining it all?’

  ‘Yes…I’ve got a meeting with her…’

  Clare racked the creative banks of her brain to try and come up with a professional reason for having an appointment with her at all.

  ‘She called me about organising a do at the restaurant. I don’t think she knows that I’m Joe’s ex-wife. I’m sure he’ll be over the moon if she proposes CDH have a party there.’

  Clare decided to quit while she was ahead on the tall story front. Ed didn’t seem to think there was anything amiss, which was a relief. It suddenly occurred to her vodka-sullied mind that Ed’s seemingly bizarre ‘Charlie’s Angel’ reference was in some way connected to Rachel. But how had Rachel become associated with the trio of seventies sirens? Maybe she had a secret penchant for tight jumpsuits, blonde layers or lipgloss?

  ‘When you said Charlie’s Angel…you meant Rachel, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yup. Sorry. I didn’t stop to think that an in-house nickname would mean diddly-squat to you. I used to work with her before she joined CDH. Rachel has always been known as Charlie’s Angel—or just Angel throughout her department.

  ‘Oh…’

  Clare thanked her lucky stars that she had nothing to do with the sort of industry where you had cliquey nicknames for people you worked with. The sort of industry where people still said things like diddly-squat… But on reflection that was probably just Ed.

  ‘So how did the Angel get her nickname?’

  Clare just had to ask. She just had to know if it was the jump-suit thing.

  ‘Filthy coke habit.’

  Clare nearly slid off her bar stool.

  Ed was so matter-of-fact about it. Maybe she had misheard? Obviously she had ‘shocked’ written across her forehead.

  Ed laughed.

  ‘Good to see that you’re just as innocent as you always were.’

  Clare made a rapid recovery and punched Ed playfully.

  ‘Listen, I’m not that naïve. I’m just a bit surprised, that’s all. Isn’t she masterminding the anti-drugs campaign at the moment?’

  Ed smiled at Clare’s well-intentioned concern.

  ‘She is—yes. I suppose it’s a little ironic, but then there aren’t too many people in the industry—and even fewer at her level—who haven’t dabbled once or twice. No one can afford to be judgmental, and to be honest no one really cares as long as the job gets done well or, better still, they get an award and some international recognition. From what I hear she’s got everything under control, and as long as she can handle it no one in the industry is going to bat an eyelid. Unless you are, in fact, an undercover tabloid hack and not a restaurateur at all, Rachel has nothing to worry about…’

  Clare laughed. She could do this innocent, carefree, take-everything-in-your-stride thing when she had to. But her mind had lurched into overdrive. It appeared there were no saints in this little love triangle. The question was, How to play it? What if Ed’s knowledge was just hearsay? Alternatively, Ed might just have earned himself ‘hero of the month’ status in Putney. Clare hated to admit it, but she was obviously a bit squarer than she had thought. The only coke habit she had was the diet variety…even if she was partial to a few rocks of ice with it.

  ‘She’s quite a character. She seems to get away with letting young, talented, good-looking men do most of her work for her. Or, what I should say, if I am being politically correct, is that she puts a good team together. She lives and loves the high life.’

  ‘Don’t you all?’

  ‘Well, I suppose there might be a small element of truth in that…’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Ed. Advertising is one big piss up. Launches, awards, lunches, team-building drinks. Don’t forget I was a Grosvenor House widow once…’

  ‘It’s quietened down in the last couple of years.’

  ‘Of course it has.’ Clare gave Ed her best and-of-course-I-was-born-yesterday look. He smiled to acknowledge it as he continued.

  ‘But all credit to her she’s made the system work for her. Rachel plays the game better than anyone I know. Watch this space. She’s going all the way to the top.’

  Ed picked up his glass and drank to Rachel’s success. Clare used the break in conversation to look at her watch as pointedly as she could without actually rolling up her sleeve and bringing her wrist up to her nose. She feigned shock at the time, even though she didn’t have an appointment per se.

  ‘Shit—sorry, Ed, but I’m going have to shoot off. Thank you so much. Fantastic to see you.’

  She leant over and gave him a kiss. He beamed at her.

  ‘Hey, no problem. It was only a drink.’

  Oh, but it wasn’t. ‘Seriously, it was great to see you.’

  Ed Wallace’s ego was responding well to its massage. He was beaming.

  ‘We should do it again. Maybe go the whole hog and do dinner too?’

  ‘Definitely. Why don’t you come over to Union Jack’s and I’ll give you the five-star treatment? On me, of course.’

  Clare had better watch herself. At the delighted expression on Ed’s face she suddenly panicked that in the excitement of the moment she might have been sending out the wrong vibes. She didn’t want Ed telling Joe that she’d gone and flung herself at him.

  ‘Deal.’

  ‘What’s your number? Just in case the hanging-around-an-ad-agency-lobby trick doesn’t work twice.’

  Ed laughed.

  They programmed each others numbers into their mobiles in true twenty-first century style and promised to call each other. Gone were the days of scribbling deliberately unintelligible phone numbers on scraps of paper and pretending you’d lost them should the other party track you down. But Clare promised herself that she would give Ed a call. He’d earned a dinner, even if he would never know why.

  chapter 24

  At 5:58 Clare entered Rachel Baker’s corner office for their second introduction in twenty-eight hours and closed the door behind her for maximum dramatic effect.

  ‘Rachel.’

  ‘Clare.’ If she was surprised to see her, it didn’t show. She glanced towards the desk where Kitty sat, ostensibly to protect her from flatmates of husband’s mistresses just marching in unannounced, and rapped on the window of her door. Startled, Kitty looked up for long enough to see her boss mouth ‘glasses’ at her.

  Clare didn’t wait to be offered a seat and sat down on the sofa. Beneath her carefully applied mask of make-up Rachel looked tired. The effect, Clare was sure, of an incredibly long week. Rachel perched on the edge of her desk. The last thing she needed was a do-gooder of a flatmate getting in her way. Where was Kitty with those glasses? She really needed a drink.

  ‘I don’t remember inviting you to my office?’

  ‘I invited myself.’

  ‘And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’

  Every one of Rachel’s words was intended to make Clare feel as unwelcome as possible. She was glad that she’d decided on her thickest skin under her suit. From the minute she had locked the front door she had known this was going to be a tough one. She decided to take the more softly-softly approach and at least see how far that got her.

  ‘Look, Rachel. You can guess why I’m here. Lizzie is so desperately sorry. She never meant for any of this to happen. By the time Matt told her that he was married she was already up to her eyeballs. She had no idea that you had anything to do with him until much later on, at which point she did everything in her power to get you two back together at the expense of her own happiness.’

  ‘My heart bleeds.’ How could she be expected to feel anything other than contempt for someone who couldn’t even fight their own battles?

  ‘Believe me, Rachel, Lizzie is very sorry.’

  ‘I don’t see her cluttering up my office,
begging for my forgiveness. Look, I appreciate your concern but I’m busy. I’ve got deadlines to meet. Lizzie should’ve thought about the consequences before she started sleeping with my husband.’ Boy, she needed a drink. Thank God for artificial stimulants. She owed her career to nicotine, coke, Diet Coke, espresso and Red Bull.

  Thankfully Kitty had finally located a couple of clean glasses and was now waving them at Rachel through the door. Why she couldn’t just knock and enter with them like a normal PA, she had no idea. It felt as if everyone was conspiring against her to make her week as difficult as possible. Grumpily, Rachel waved Kitty in.

  ‘Here you go. Wasn’t sure what sort you wanted, so I just brought tumblers. Harvey says you can drink anything out of this sort.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Rachel didn’t give a flying fuck what Harvey thought, but this was not the time to tell her PA to ditch her boyfriend and find someone with a proper name and a job that didn’t involve computer programs. Kitty was now hovering by the door, shifting her weight almost imperceptibly from foot to foot. She’d either just wet herself or she wanted to go home. It was, according to the clock on her computer, 6:06. Rachel wished she would just bloody go.

  ‘Um…if it’s all right with you, I think I’ll head off now. Have a good weekend. I’ll be in early Monday, so if you need anything typed up or filed before your ten o’clock just leave it for me and it shall be done.’ Kitty made it sound like a favour instead of it being what she was paid to do.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Kitty closed the door behind her and only stopped at her desk for a couple of seconds to pick up her bag and turn her computer off before practically sprinting out of the semi-deserted office. Rachel wasted no time in reaching into her most coveted piece of office furniture and liberating a bottle of white wine which had been chilling all afternoon. Her lunchtime intake had worn off a while ago. Rachel offered a glass to Clare out of courtesy—very generous, she thought, given the circumstances. To her surprise Clare accepted. Obviously Clare was a little bit less uptight than Rachel had thought.

  Confidence bolstered by a couple of sips, Clare stepped it up a gear. ‘For the record, Lizzie has no idea that I’m here and she’d be mortified if she found out. She knows she’s done wrong, and she’s confused. She can’t see any way forward. I just wanted to talk to you—career woman to career woman. I know how you must be feeling.’

  ‘The fuck you do. You can’t have the first idea. To know that your husband has been having an affair is devastating enough, without discovering that the person he was seeing was someone that you knew and trusted. Someone, I might just add, who in her professional capacity was supposed to be helping me.’

  Rachel was no less aggressive in her response, but at least sitting down with a glass in her hand she had stopped shouting.

  ‘Just give me a minute and listen to what I’ve got to say. We’ve got more in common than you think. I’ve been married.’

  Rachel softened a little at Clare’s use of the past tense. ‘What happened?’ Despite herself, Rachel was curious. She’d never have guessed that Clare had been married. She had single-woman-in-her-thirties written all over her.

  ‘He was in advertising too. He worked all hours and had an affair with a colleague less than six months after we got back from our honeymoon. I was setting up a restaurant business at the time and was totally wrapped up in what I was doing—only I thought he was right behind me, not running about behind my back. I only found out when a friend of mine showed me a picture in one of our trades. The photo was actually meant to show off the interior of a new gastrodome, but they’d taken it on the night of an agency party and there was my husband in glorious Technicolor, draped around her…’

  Up until now Clare had managed to be fairly matter-of-fact, but a hint of emotion entered her voice as she started to think about the details. The feelings that she’d buried for the last two years were starting to defrost. Their marriage had become a statistic. If only he hadn’t done it, they might even have had a child by now.

  ‘I know having your arm round someone is hardly grounds for divorce, but there was something about the way that she was looking at him. I got suspicious. After two days of telling myself to calm down I confronted him and he confessed. He told me it had all been a mistake and even tried to make me feel better by telling me that they’d only spent one night together. But I’ve never believed that you can sleep with someone “by accident” full stop…’

  She paused for dramatic effect.

  ‘…let alone four times in one night.’

  Clare smiled resignedly despite herself. It was tragic. Tragically funny. Rachel, she was pleased to see, was looking totally shocked. Everything was going according to plan.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘What choice did I have? I threw him out. He begged to come home and I told him to fuck off. It was over. I was devastated. I loved him…’

  Unsure of what to say next, Rachel poured more wine. She had to admit that she was impressed at Clare’s cut-throat attitude. He cheated, therefore he was ejected. Maybe she was turning into a softie in her old age. Clare was still in full flow. Rachel interrupted her self-questioning. She was genuinely interested in what Clare had to say.

  ‘I never thought I’d recover…but I did. I have. I don’t even hate him any more. I suppose I’m just sad it ended the way it did. I always believed that you got married and that was it. He ruined my fantasy of marriage and my Martha Stewart outlook on life.’

  Clare stole a glance and was relieved to see that Rachel couldn’t have looked any more sympathetic.

  ‘Did you ever find out who he had the affair with?’

  ‘Yes. It gets worse. I couldn’t tell from the picture in the magazine, but I later discovered that I’d met her before. She was at our wedding.’ Clare smiled again. She couldn’t help it. Objectively, in retrospect, despite her high hopes her marriage had been a complete farce. And if she couldn’t see the funny side at this point she would most certainly have cried.

  ‘Well, it sounds like you were very pragmatic about it all.’

  ‘Believe me, I was much less sorted at the time. Looking back on it, there are times when I think I might have shot myself in the foot. I was so proud. I told myself that I could never forgive him. Yet there are still mornings when I wake up wondering if I did the right thing. Life’s not perfect. I’m not perfect. So why should I have expected him to be? I sometimes wonder if we should have worked through it, or at least tried to. My anger was all-consuming. I wasn’t capable of thinking straight. Now I know lots of people whose marriages have survived an affair. Sure, it takes time, but there’s usually two sides to every story—and while everyone’s always quick to judge your relationship, only the two people at the heart of it know what they have had or could have again.’

  ‘Do you still see your ex?’

  ‘Never. I decided to cut all ties at the time. I was too hurt. All he seemed to care about was his work, and even when he was begging to come back it was only in between meetings. I know you advertising people have some crazy deadlines to meet, but it’s all about priorities and I felt I was coming second to his job. And to think that he’d made time to shag some other girl when we hadn’t even been married a year… I suppose now it might be different, but my life’s hectic enough without meeting ex-husbands for a drink from time to time. No, looking back on it, it was probably a lucky escape, a blessing in disguise…’

  Rachel wondered who Clare was convincing. Her or herself.

  ‘I guess I’ve become a bit of a fatalist. If we’d been meant to be together I think it would have worked out. He’s climbed his way to the top, and I haven’t been there getting in his way. I run a successful business. If you remove the emotions from the equation you could say that it was the best thing for both of us.’

  Clare was delighted when Rachel came over to join her on the sofa. This was much more promising than the locking of horns which had appeared inevitable when she�
�d first arrived. Rachel sat back, resting her head on the cushions. They there were, united in Chablis. One divorced. One debating what to do next. It was Rachel’s turn to share.

  ‘It’s interesting. I know what you mean, but I think I know what your husband was going through too. I love my job. I love the people. I love the challenges. Between you and me this campaign I’m working on is going really well. I don’t know whether…she—’ Rachel couldn’t bear to use Lizzie’s name at the moment ‘—told you, but it’s the new national anti-drugs campaign. It launches next week and it’s going to be huge. This could be my meal ticket to the top.’

  There was a momentary pause while Rachel admired the view from the heights to which she hoped to climb.

  ‘What’s your surname, Clare? If your ex is still in advertising, you never know I might know him. The industry is a small world.’

  ‘Oh, I think you’ll know him…’

  He was probably strutting around an enormous office a few floors up. Clare was looking forward to Rachel’s reaction to this piece of news. The build-up had gone perfectly. ‘My surname is Williamson, but that’s my maiden name; I took it back after the divorce. My married name was Dexter. My husband was—’

  ‘Joe?’ Rachel interrupted her straight away.

  Clare nodded.

  Rachel’s face was a picture of disbelief and admiration. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  Clare could tell that Rachel was impressed, even if she was doing her best to disguise it. Joe had been a great catch. She felt her credibility with Rachel had just leapt up a few hundred points. A small consolation for the pain he’d put her through, but it was something. His betrayal still hurt her more than she liked to admit even to herself. Why else would she have flown off the handle and treated Lizzie that way? Thinking about it now, she realised she couldn’t blame the woman he’d slept with—just as Rachel couldn’t blame Lizzie, if she thought about it. It was convenient for a wife not to have to blame her own husband for an affair but it wasn’t fair. And it wasn’t real. Clare owed Lizzie a little more understanding. Blind fury had left quite a trail of destruction in its wake.