by Jane Fallon
"Where have you been?" she whined.
"Outside." Sophie sat down and whispered to her daughter. "Where's Helen?"
"Oh, she's not here," Claudia replied loudly, and Sophie colored, unable to look up and look Matthew in the eye. "She's got food poisoning."
Sophie felt overwhelmed with relief, disappointment, and embarrassment, all at once.
"Oh, what a shame," she said unconvincingly, forcing herself to smile at Matthew just as, luckily, the first strains of a hymn, mangled out of all recognition by the elderly organist, struck up. Within seconds, the whole room was in tears including Sophie, who had never been her mother-in-law's greatest fan.
* * *
As soon as the service was over, a long convoy—minus Leo, who made a noisy exit, having the perfect excuse to rush back to London to check that the restaurant was still in one piece—snaked its way to Amanda and Edwin's mock Tudor barn for "nibbles" and, Sophie was hoping, alcohol. Suzanne and Claudia, who had been inconsolable during the eulogy, had cheered up considerably the minute the final chord of the final tune had been played, and had begged to travel in Matthew's car, leaving Sophie to follow on her own. As she was doing up her seat belt, Leo ran over and leaned through the driver's window.
"So, do you think she even exists, or what?"
"Helen?"
Leo nodded, smiling.
"I think I'd feel even worse if he'd had to make up a girlfriend to get rid of me."
"Tell you what I think, I think she's scared to show her face. And so she should be."
"I appreciate it, Leo, but the truth is, she only did what I did to your mum. I'm as bad as her. I've been thinking about that a lot lately."
"Yeah, but you're lovely and she's a bitch, that's the difference." He kissed her on the cheek and Sophie couldn't help laughing.
"Maybe she really is ill."
"Maybe she's got another man on the side already and she just wants Dad out of the way for the night." He smiled wickedly.
"Or she's genuinely got food poisoning."
"Or she's so unattractive she can't bear the thought of us all seeing her."
Sophie squeezed his hand. "Bye, Leo."
* * *
In a stroke of extraordinary pretension, Amanda had hired in caterers to make canapés and sausage rolls for the guests. Two waiters in uniform wandered, bored, from group to group, trying to press duck pâté spread over hard little toasts onto old women whose teeth weren't their own and children who were complaining about the lack of cheese sandwiches and salt-and-vinegar crisps. Sophie bit her tongue when Amanda and then Louisa told her how delighted they were that she had come, and how brave she was being, and that she was, of course, still family because she was, after all, the mother of their nieces. She looked around desperately for anything that approximated a drink, but Amanda had clearly decided that Edwin and alcohol didn't mix, and the waiters seemed to be serving only coffee and orange juice. She looked at her watch; half past three, there was no way she could leave before six without being rude. She decided to kill ten minutes by walking around the garden, despite the weather, and immediately found Matthew at her side.
"Sneaking off to the pub? 'Cause if you are, I'm coming with you."
"Your sisters would come after me with a shotgun. It's almost worth risking it, though."
"Luckily I was anticipating this, so I've got a bottle of vodka in the car. Care to join me?"
"Lovely."
Once Matthew had reappeared with his liter of Absolut and gone around the mourners, adding it to their orange juices, things lightened up considerably. Edwin, after a couple of sips, decided that his wife was being unreasonable and broke the lock on the under-the-stairs cupboard where she had hidden his supplies. Amanda remained stony-faced as he doled out whiskey and red wine, drinking two for every one he poured. By four thirty, the afternoon felt like a proper wake, with Sheila's elderly bridge partner telling endless unfunny anecdotes, and Louisa at one point bursting into tears because she believed she had always been her mother's least favorite child (she was right, in fact, and Sheila had said so). The children, slightly tainted by memories of the last drunken family gathering they had attended, took themselves out into the garden before things got out of hand.
* * *
Helen had so far spent the day lounging around the flat. It was a glorious feeling to know she had the place to herself until tomorrow, no Matthew to get on her nerves. She wondered how he was coping down in Bath, still feeling bad that he'd left on such a sour note. Earlier in the afternoon, she had picked up the phone, tempted to call him on his mobile just to check that he was OK, but she'd decided that the resentment he was feeling, though unfortunate, might work in her favor. She was being cruel to be kind, as it were. He might think she was being heartless now, but if thinking that pushed him closer to Sophie, then he'd be grateful in the end. And, of course, the more unfeeling he thought she was being, the easier it would be for him to leave her. So they would both win. She allowed herself to feel optimistic for once—things were turning around. Slowly, more like a tanker than a speedboat, but changing direction nevertheless.
* * *
Sophie, Matthew, and the girls were eating dinner at the hotel, having finally escaped from Amanda and Edwin's at about seven o'clock, leaving behind an impending alcohol-fueled bust-up. The restaurant of the hotel was effectively someone's living room, with four tables nestled intimately in the middle. Ambitious three-course meals were cooked by the owner, and her husband waited the tables. Tonight it was just the four of them, and to Sophie, it felt bizarrely as if they were having a cozy evening at home. Matthew had driven them all over, because after three glasses of vodka she didn't feel she should be driving, and she had left her car in Amanda's driveway for collection tomorrow. Matthew's relief that the funeral was out of the way was palpable. He'd never been very comfortable at big family gatherings, and this one had been made much worse by Sheila's drunken old cronies giving him a hard time for splitting up his family. It was hard to conduct a fair argument with a half-cut eighty-year-old, especially when all you wanted to say was, "It's none of your fucking business, actually." Now that they were on safe ground, he had lightened up visibly and was knocking back big glasses of Pinot Grigio and telling stories to make the girls laugh.
"How's Helen feeling?" Sophie asked, when there was a lull in the conversation, assuming that Matthew would have called her when he went to dump his bag in his room.
"I haven't spoken to her," he said, and then seeing Sophie's puzzled expression he added hastily, "I don't want to disturb her if she's sleeping." Which, Sophie thought, was interesting.
* * *
By half past nine, Sophie had taken Suzanne and Claudia up to their room to bed, despite their protestations.
"Come back down and have another drink," Matthew had said to her and, because she was enjoying herself, she'd agreed, so now she was sitting back downstairs beside the open fire, swilling a large brandy around an even larger glass. Matthew's mood had shifted slightly somewhere during the last glass, from jolly to maudlin, and he had gone into quiet mode. Sophie looked up and caught him staring at her.
"Are you OK?"
"I might have made a mistake." Her expression said that she was unsure how to take this and he carried on.
"With Helen. I think I might have made the wrong decision." His voice was wavering.
Sophie sighed. "What's happened?"
"I should never have left you. I should have stayed. I miss you and the girls."
"If you're really not happy, then you have to do something about it. Now, before you get married or…" she struggled to say it "…have more kids that end up getting dragged into a breakup."
"You feel the same, don't you? You'd like us all to be a family again?"
"Matthew, if you want to leave Helen, then you have to leave Helen, but don't do it because you think I might take you back."
"But would you ever, do you think?"
"Is that really what y
ou want?"
He nodded miserably. "I think so."
Sophie wished her head wasn't so fogged with alcohol. Was he really saying this, that he wanted her back, that he wanted to start again? She had no idea how that made her feel: elated that she had won the battle against Helen; angry that he thought she would just drop everything and accept him back after everything he'd done to her; sad that it could never be the same again anyway; incensed that he would just land this on her when he knew they'd both had a few too many. She shook her head to try to clear her thoughts.
"We can't talk about this now. It's not fair. Do whatever you need to do with Helen, and then we'll see what happens."
"You're not saying 'no,' then?"
She almost laughed at the pitiful way he looked at her.
"I'm not saying anything. OK?"
"OK." He placed his hand over hers, and she was too tired and drained to move hers away.
"Matthew, can I ask you something—and I want you to be totally honest with me, OK? I want you to tell me the truth."
"I will."
"How long have you been seeing Helen? I just need to know."
Sophie didn't notice Matthew's brief hesitation or the slight panic that fluttered across his face.
"About six months before…you know…I moved out."
"So when we went on holiday to Italy, you were…"
"Yes, sorry."
She nodded sadly. "I enjoyed that holiday."
"So did I…It wasn't…you know…like I didn't want to be with you when I was with you. I wasn't sitting there thinking, 'I wish I was with Helen.'"
"Six months. That's the same as me and you…with Hannah." She sighed. "At least it wasn't years. I'd hate to think our marriage had been a sham for years."
Matthew gulped his brandy, looking down. "No, it wasn't years."
"Will you sleep in my room?" he asked, when they were in the corridor on their way to bed. "Not like that, you know. Not unless you want to, of course." He raised an eyebrow at her, smiling. "Actually, I'd just like to know you were there."
"I can't. I think I want to, but I can't. We'd regret it, even if we didn't do anything. At least I would."
"Can I kiss you good-night?"
"No, Matthew."
"I am your husband." He tried his best drunken twinkle. Sophie laughed.
"Night."
* * *
Despite the amount she'd drunk, Sophie barely slept. Her head was buzzing with everything that had happened. There was no way she could have seen this coming. She had thought they were edging their way toward a civilized split that would ensure that their children suffered the minimum of mental trauma. She didn't like it, but she was getting used to it. She didn't know if she could trust him, she didn't even know if she wanted him anymore, but when she really thought about what was troubling her most at the moment, it was the fear that he would wake up tomorrow and regret what he had said.
30
HELEN WOKE AT SIX with a dry mouth. She felt about on her bedside table for a glass of water and, not finding one, she dragged herself out of bed and through to the kitchen to get one. She threw back a whole glassful and then poured another. On the way back to the bedroom, she picked up her mobile and switched it on, sure there would be a message from Matthew. It was unlike him that he hadn't phoned the flat to see how she was, even though he was angry with her. Her voice-mail alert beeped—there he was—and she put the phone to her ear.
"You have seven new messages," the robotic voice told her. Oh, shit. He must've been trying and trying, getting more and more annoyed that she'd switched her phone off. Well, too bad, he should have tried the home number, it's not like he didn't know where she was. She pressed a key to listen to the first message. It was a woman, a voice she at first didn't recognize, because it was slurred and the woman was crying and babbling incoherently. And then she realized that it was Sandra.
"It's all shit," Helen could just make out. "My life's shit."
She pressed to move on to the next message. Sandra again. "Where are you?"
Three, four, and five were similar: "Where the fuck are you? I need you."
Helen was anxious. She moved on to number six.
"There's no point. There's absolutely no fucking point. I'm a big joke. A big fat ugly fucking joke. Well, fuck it."
Helen could just make out the rattle of what sounded like a bottle of pills underneath Sandra's crying. She scrabbled through a pile of papers on the desk in the living room, looking for a list of client addresses, while she listened to message number seven. Nothing but labored breathing and the occasional half-hearted sob. The message was timed at four ten a.m. Two hours ago.
Helen was out and in a taxi on her way to, where was it…she looked down at the list again, Sandra lived in Shepherd's Bush…within five minutes. She had called an ambulance, slightly hysterical, giving them far too much detail about the distressing phone messages, when all she should have been giving them was the address. She couldn't understand why Sandra would have chosen to unburden herself to her, of all people—they barely knew each other. Oh, God, she couldn't cope with this on her own. She knew Matthew would be asleep and that he was annoyed with her anyway, but she couldn't think who else to call—she needed someone.
Matthew was, indeed, asleep and managed to sound both sleepy and irritated at the same time when he answered his mobile.
"What time is it?"
"It's Sandra, she's taken an overdose. She left me all these messages. I'm going over there. Shit, I'm really scared." She was babbling.
Suddenly Matthew was wide awake. "Helen, calm down. Tell me what's happened."
Somehow she managed to find a coherent path through what had occurred so far, and she had barely finished when Matthew told her he was leaving straightaway to come back up to London. Despite the fact that it would take him two hours and, God knows, it'd probably all be over by then, the thought that he was on his way calmed her immediately. He'd know what to do.
"Did you give her real name to the emergency services?" he was saying, already in work mode.
"Of course," she replied, realizing immediately that that had been the wrong thing to do.
"OK, I need to think about how best we handle this. Meanwhile, Helen, if you get there before the ambulance, wait outside. Don't go in on your own."
"Really?"
"You can't do anything for her anyway. She's either OK or she's…not. I don't want you to have to go through that, OK?"
"OK."
"Call me when you get there."
Matthew thought about leaving a note for Sophie before he left, but he didn't know what to say. Truthfully, he was glad to have an excuse to leave before she was up. He could remember every word of their conversation last night. He was glad it had been said and he wouldn't take any of it back, but without the alcohol to give him courage, he felt embarrassed at the thought of seeing her—he wouldn't know how to act around her now that he'd put his cards on the table. He left a message with the receptionist to tell Mrs. Shallcross that he'd been called away for work. He'd deal with Sandra first and then sort out his personal life.
* * *
It would have been obvious which was Sandra's flat, even without the ambulance outside, because of the pink feathery curtains in the window and the twinkle of the fairy lights behind them. Helen threw a tenner at the driver and ran up the steps to the front door, just as it opened and two men in hospital uniforms came out. They seemed remarkably cheerful, considering, and Helen would have sworn that one of them was carrying a signed photograph. Helen stopped in front of them.
"Is she…?"
"False alarm," the man holding the picture said.
"False alarm?" Helen was incredulous.
"Was it you who called us?"
Helen nodded.
"Next time check your facts, love. She's fine."
* * *
Helen pushed the flat door open and wandered in confused. Sitting on the sofa in a pink dressing gown and fluffy m
ules was a very not-dead Sandra, and holding her hand was a man who looked vaguely familiar. Oh, yes, it was the waiter from the opening night of Verano. The one who had been pictured leaving with Sandra in the shot that had ruined her chances. Guido or Julio or something. Sandra blinked up at her.
"What are you doing here?"
"You called me, remember?" Helen was incredulous.
Sandra looked at Guido/Julio, who shrugged. "I called all sorts of people. Sorry. I was desperate."
Helen balanced on the arm of a chair. "So what happened? I don't understand."
"Well, I was very drunk and unhappy and I kind of remember taking the pills. Then the next thing I know, Giovanni was here and I was being sick, and then I felt fine. Sorry. I feel really stupid." She blinked up at Helen, her mascara streaked down under her eyes like a sad panda.
Giovanni smiled.
"I broke down the door. I must've got here just after she swallowed them 'cause I stuck my finger down her throat and they all came up. All of them."