Agent Provocateur

by Faith Bleasdale

  Step four: catching the man. If the man is in a large group, this can be tricky. Often men don’t mind being chatted up in front of their friends, but in order to take it further they want to be more discreet. (After all, if they are cheating, the fewer people who know, the better.) If this is the case, then sometimes Grace will give out a mobile number. She has pay as you go mobiles, which the client is billed for because they are discarded after each case.

  Step five: getting the evidence for the client. Sometimes it is enough for the client if the man calls Grace, but not always. A client will sometimes push for a date to be arranged, and then for a proposition before believing him a true cheat. Some women are so desperate to be wrong about their partners that they need to hear them asking for sex before they will admit they are rats.

  Nicole explains the seduction techniques to the client before they proceed. The women will wear clothes that are attractive but not overtly sexy, they will make eye contact with the man in question, they will laugh at his jokes and tease and tell jokes. They are not employing any new techniques; they go with the tried and tested. They go with what works.

  The client will get a verbal report or a recorded one, depending on what she wants. Some women want just to hear the conversation; others go so far as to want to see their men in action. Grace has small cameras and tape recorders that she can easily hide. Whichever, she always reports to Nicole, who reports to her client with total honesty. This, Nicole admits, is the hardest part of the job, and Grace agrees – breaking hearts, because that’s how they see it. But Grace tells herself that she is working for the greater good, because no woman wants to be with a man who is so willing to cheat on her. She is breaking hearts but in the process she is saving hearts. And she really does believe that.

  People might assume that a woman working at such a job hates men, but Grace doesn’t, she is really quite keen on them. And she cites Nicole as another example; she has been happily married for so long, she adores her husband, she certainly can’t be seen as a man hater. However, Grace has always believed in fidelity. She has never believed that men should be allowed to use weakness as an excuse for cheating, nor listened when told that men can’t help themselves. She has no respect for men who cheat, but she has even less respect for women who excuse them. Every man can resist and every man should. She would love to tell a woman that a man has resisted her. However, she has never been in that position.

  She thinks that perhaps her job has taken on new proportions. She now takes it personally; she needs to find him. She needs to find the man who will be faithful, the man who, when approached by the beautiful and sexy Grace, will say, no, no, because he has someone he loves already.

  She had many discussions with Nicole about it. She needed to put things into perspective and her boss helped her.

  ‘Why do you do this?’ Grace asked.

  ‘I’m a detective, and one thing you learn pretty quickly in my business is that most disputes are about relationships. I didn’t set out to specialise but God, the number of people that wanted their partners followed, or tested, was huge. Now, it’s pretty much all I do.’

  ‘But how does it make you feel?’

  ‘Grace, I’ll be honest with you. Sometimes it makes me feel shitty, and it’s not just about infidelity in men. I am also hired by a number of men who think their partners are cheating – not as many as women, but it’s growing. I see what other people do to each other and it makes me sick. No one deserves to be lied to, to be cheated on; no one deserves the inevitable broken heart. You can let it get to you, totally consume your being, or you can just get on with it and think that every time you save someone from a bad relationship you’re almost doing them a favour. They may not see it straight away but one day they will.’

  ‘Do you think all men are cheats?’ Grace still held some hope of romance in the days when she started working for Nicole. She wanted to think that men weren’t all bad.

  ‘I wouldn’t be married if I thought that, Grace. No, not all men are cheats, but most of them are. I sometimes wonder if Paul is faithful because he knows that I’d be able to catch him. I wonder if he thinks I have tested him or will test him so he’s terrified of talking to another woman, but at the end of the day I think he loves me enough. Also he sees what I do and the hurt that can occur, and he’s just a decent man. And if there is one decent man, then there will be more. It’s just a case of finding them.’

  At that moment, Nicole took a maternal interest in Grace, which she still has now.

  When she wakes the following morning, Grace goes straight to her fish. She smiles and chats to them while they wait for breakfast, and once they’re fed she goes to make coffee. She stares blankly at her percolator and only when she is satisfied that it is filling properly does she go to the shower. By the time she has pulled on a tracksuit (her working-from-home uniform), her coffee pot is full and ready. She pours a cup of black coffee into her large round breakfast cup, and takes it to the study. She isn’t wearing any make-up.

  She sits at her desk and looks at her notepad with messages from her machine last night. She switches on her computer, and while she waits for it to whirr away through the bits she doesn’t understand, she makes her first call of the day. It’s nine o’clock.

  ‘Oliver Williams, please,’ she asks the receptionist, and she types her password into her computer as she waits to be put through.

  ‘Oliver.’ He sounds so self-assured, but she knows he is not.

  ‘It’s me.’ She stares at her screen as she waits for him to say something. He always pauses whenever she calls him, as if he needs time to think about what he is going to say next. He never has that problem when he calls her. She finds it endearing and annoying at the same time.

  Grace met Oliver just over a year ago, while she was actually working. When the man she was testing went to the loo, Oliver came over and gave Grace his card. He didn’t say anything and Grace decided that she liked his style. She liked his cheek. And he was really quite sexy. She has been seeing him, casually, ever since.

  Oliver – or ‘Occasional Oliver’, as she calls him – has a busy lifestyle that should prevent him from making too many demands, although he still does. But because he isn’t the busy, businessman with a neglected wife and an indulged mistress cliché, Grace sees him whenever they both have time. It isn’t as often as he’d like. Oliver bizarrely wants to turn Grace into the neglected wife cliché, but she refuses. She likes Oliver; she likes that he likes her enough to want to neglect her on a permanent basis, although, of course, she will never agree to it.

  He works in the music business, but Grace couldn’t describe his job. They are lovers but only in the way that Grace will allow. When they first met, she told him all about her job, and he tried to make her quit, which is when she told him that if they were going to continue they would do it on her terms, not on his. Which is why she continues to see Eddie, her other lover. She does not have to answer a charge of-infidelity because she is totally honest. They both know about their non-exclusive status and even if they don’t like it, they accept it. They are her men who cannot cheat.

  Eddie, like Oliver, accepts the situation because he believes he is in love with Grace, and is convinced that one day she will wake up next to him and realise that he is the love of her life. Then she will quit her job. Neither of them is married, but Grace believes they see other women. She needs to believe this. There is nothing underhand about the arrangement: it suits her and, according to the men, it suits them as well. No one can cheat on her because she won’t put herself in that position. It’s as simple as that.

  Eddie is the man who has been in Grace’s life the longest. Eddie is a fashion buyer. She used to be his assistant, but they didn’t sleep together until she had long given up her job and started in her current role. He is single, in his early fifties, and is too much of a confirmed bachelor to settle down. He never pressures Grace because he enjoys his life and their arrangement too much. He thinks he might be
in love with her, but he is in love with his freedom more. They don’t see each other very often. With Grace having little social time anyway, and with two men to entertain, she neglects Eddie for long periods.

  Grace sometimes thinks of the time when she was working for Eddie, in a nine to five type of role, but it seems like another life. She didn’t enjoy the industry, the rigid hours, the confinement to an office full of people who were equally as fed up as she. However, sometimes she misses the normality, and sometimes she can barely remember it.

  Eddie and Occasional Oliver are not just her lovers, but they are also her friends. They are the ones she calls if she is having a bad day, or a bad night; they are the people she trusts. If someone analysed her relationships, they would probably say that she has to have more than one man because her rota of lovers is her protection, the armour she wears on her heart. They would also say that they stop her from being alone. Because without them, that is exactly what she is. A mad woman, alone with her fish.

  Grace doesn’t believe there is anything wrong in the way she has chosen to live her personal life. She is no longer sure that she is capable of falling in love, so she is doing what she needs to do to keep her happiness. She isn’t trying to hurt anyone, and she always says that if that were going to happen, she would walk away from him. Nevertheless, she is a young, single woman with an unusual career and lifestyle.

  Oliver finally decides what he wants to say. ‘You didn’t call me back last night.’

  ‘Sorry, but I was working and I got in late.’

  ‘So you nailed another bastard?’

  ‘I did. I need to call Nicole, who will have to tell his wife.’ Nicole has a golden rule: she doesn’t start work until ten every morning. She says she needs to exercise before work, and that is the earliest she can make it.

  ‘Poor cow.’

  ‘I know, and the thing is he was such a prat. He was this arrogant prick who carne on to me with hardly any encouragement. It makes me really sad that he has this lovely wife at home but he’d rather be in a bar chasing skirt.’

  ‘You even sound like a man.’

  ‘I’ve been around too many cheats.’

  ‘Anyway, tonight? My trip was cancelled at the last minute.’ He knows how Grace needs to keep things at arm’s length and acts accordingly.

  ‘Yeah, OK.’

  ‘Don’t sound too keen.’

  ‘Sorry, Olly, I’m just a bit tired.’ Grace thinks she slept well, but she is finding it hard to shake off the sleepy feeling she woke with.

  ‘If you didn’t spend half the night trying to trap men, you might not be tired.’ She detects disapproval in his voice, which always riles her.

  ‘I was not out half the night.’

  ‘Maybe, but you do have an amazingly tacky job.’ She should have known that he was dying to say that to her; he always needs to make one comment at least.

  ‘Olly! You know how I feel about what I do. Don’t start.’

  ‘Sorry. I’ll come round after work?’

  ‘Not before eight.’ Because he has annoyed her, she decides to annoy him.

  ‘But I was going to finish early.’

  ‘Shame. Bye.’ She puts the phone down with a smile.

  After another coffee, she types up a report of the previous evening to email to Nicole, and she listens to the tape. She shudders at his voice, dripping with – what is it? Desperation, lust, greediness. Then she removes the tape, puts it in a padded envelope and addresses it to Nicole, who will send a courier for it. At five minutes past ten she dials Nicole’s number.

  ‘It’s me,’ Grace says.

  ‘Morning, honey. So, the spider went for the trap.’ Nicole likes to use what she thinks is ’spy speak’. It always makes Grace want to laugh.

  ‘Yes, he did. Have you spoken to his wife?’

  ‘She called me last night; couldn’t wait until today. I told her that he went for it and I’d call her today to see if she wanted a copy of the tape and the report. Poor woman was beside herself. Kept me talking for hours. I didn’t get to sleep until gone two.’

  ‘Poor thing. I’ve emailed you a full report and the tape is sitting here waiting for you to send a bike.’

  ‘Well, she does want the report, obviously, but I think she’s made up her mind to throw him out. Apparently she doesn’t want her daughter growing up thinking all men are cheats. Anyway, you’re pure gold, Gracie. So, how are you?’

  ‘I’m OK. Tired, for some reason.’

  ‘Darling, chasing cheating men is a tiring business, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,’ Nicole laughs.

  ‘Don’t I know it. You know, I would just like one to tell me to bugger off.’

  ‘Well, one of my other girls did get turned down, if that’s any consolation.’

  ‘No, really?’

  ‘Yeah, but I think she went a bit wrong with the tactic. Anyway, I’m going to take you to lunch soon, because you sound thin.’

  ‘How can I sound thin?’ Grace tries not to be too attached to Nicole, because of the work connection, but she is.

  ‘You just do. And when we have lunch we’ll natter about your quest for a faithful man. Also I’ve got something else I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘OK, Nicole, I’ll look forward to it.’

  When Grace puts the phone down she feels sad, because she doesn’t want Mrs X’s daughter thinking all men are cheats, but she also doesn’t want to think that herself. But they are, aren’t they? Or is there still hope?

  A couple of hours later, after organising her files and her upcoming jobs, she breaks for lunch. She makes herself a salad and she eats it in the sitting room, where she sits on her sofa, facing her fish tank.

  ‘You guys might be a bit aggressive with each other but at least you aren’t lying cheating men.’ She smiles at them.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Johnny, stop it. I’ll be late,’ Betty Parkin begs unconvincingly, through her giggles.

  ‘OK, fine. Go to work.’ Johnny sits up in bed, and folds his arms, dropping Betty like a stone on to the mattress.

  ‘Well, maybe I can be a bit late …’

  Johnny turns to face her. ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, well, the buses were a nightmare and the tube was stuck in a tunnel for hours.’

  ‘Choo choo, here comes the train. Get the tunnel ready and switch on the green light.’

  Giggling hopelessly, Betty obliges.

  An hour and a half later she runs, breathless, into her office.

  ‘Sorry, Hannah,’ she says to her assistant. ‘It was the train.’ And at her private joke she bursts out laughing. Hannah looks at her oddly. Although she is used to her boss’s early morning euphoria, she still doesn’t understand it. Nor, she suspects, does she want to.

  ‘Betty, when you’ve composed yourself, Fiona wants to see you.’

  ‘Thanks, Hannah. Anything else?’

  ‘There’s some messages on your desk, but nothing much.’ Hannah turns back to her computer screen and Betty takes her coat off, flings her bag on her chair and goes to her boss’s office.

  Betty has been working at Modern Woman magazine for six years, and now she is a senior features writer. She climbed up from work experience girl, and now is enjoying her job almost as much as she enjoys her marriage. She also has a lot to be grateful for. After all, it was her job that gave her Johnny.

  She and Johnny have been together for four and a half years, and married for just under two. They are still honeymooners, which Betty thinks is unusual after so long. She fell in love with Johnny almost instantly when she went to interview him for a feature in the magazine about personal finance. She still laughs now when she thinks back.

  One of the topics chosen for features was the financial independence of young women. It was considered the short (and somewhat boring) straw. Then she met Johnny, an independent financial advisor with a lot more than just ISAs going for him. She managed to string the feature out long enough to get him to ask her out and sh
e has never looked back. Neither has he.

  From the word go, they were seen as the perfect couple. Friends envied the way they went so well together. Even now, that envy lives on. Betty and Johnny enjoy each other, and although they acknowledge they are sometimes a bit sickening, sometimes a bit smug and definitely far too happy, there isn’t a damn thing they can do about it. Nor anything they want to do about it.

  Everything has gone their way ever since their first meeting. Their relationship, although not without rows, has been relatively flawless. The proposal was perfect: he went down on one knee whilst they were on a weekend away in Barcelona. They bought a small but lovely house together and got a cat, Cyril, from the cats’ home. They had the wedding of the year: one hundred people, a church and a sumptuous sit down meal -and it didn’t rain, even though it was September.

  Betty, however, is not without her demons. She sometimes feels like two people: Betty at work, Mrs Parkin at home. Modern Woman is a magazine aimed at independent career women, and although there is room for husbands and boyfriends within that definition, Betty sometimes wonders if she still fits that mould. She loves her job and would mourn it if it went, but she is not as independent as she used to be. She doesn’t leave her husband at home and go for wild nights out with the girls, she hasn’t been to a club in years, and she is more interested in buying things for the house than clothes shopping. She dresses well, she looks the part, but she just doesn’t always feel it. She worries sometimes that she will be seen as a fraud: ‘You are too devoted to your man to fit the modern woman profile, off you go.’ But at other times she thinks she is a modern woman – just one who has landed on her feet and seems to have it all.

  She is good at her job; she is a good writer. Before Johnny she used to be the whole Modern Woman package. She tried out men, she discarded men, she speed dated, she two-timed, and she had longish relationships where she called the shots. She was an independent modern woman. Her career was more important to her than anything; she would cancel dates for work without a second thought. But then Johnny happened and everything changed. Betty admits that to herself. She cannot explain what happened, or why it happened. She fell in love and her life turned itself on its head. This she tries to keep from work. It is her secret, her terrible secret. When she is at work she will ogle male models, she will talk about sex, she will be the way she was. But she knows, deep down in her heart, that she isn’t that way anymore. Work Betty is a very different animal to home Betty.