Executive Affair

by Ber Carroll

  Margaret expertly negotiated their way through the crowds, keeping an experienced eye out until some seats were available. Then she sent John, who was the office junior and too scared to question her authority, to get the drinks.

  ‘Jesus!’ Susan exclaimed.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Margaret.

  ‘He’s here, Claire. Wouldn’t you think that he’d at least have the grace to keep a low profile?’

  Claire felt her heart miss a beat. ‘I knew this was a bad idea. Where is he?’

  ‘Over by the back door.’

  ‘Is there a girl there?’

  ‘No. Just the usual work crowd.’

  Claire scanned the crowd. She only saw John as he returned with the drinks.

  ‘Michael is here,’ he said with the air of someone imparting life-or-death information.

  Claire drank quickly, anxious to get out of there and as far away from Michael as possible. But Margaret sent John to the bar again. And again.

  Claire began to feel the effects. ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ Susan was already pushing back her seat.

  ‘No. I’m fine. Honestly.’

  She pushed blindly through the crowd and straight into Michael.

  ‘Hi.’ His hair looked damp and more wavy than usual. He had a pint of Guinness in his hand ‘I saw you. I was going to come over.’

  His grey-green eyes lacked sincerity. So did his voice.

  ‘There was no need to bother,’ she said tartly.

  He shook his head and sighed. ‘I was hoping we could stay friends …’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t give me that “friends” bullshit!’ She was vaguely aware that she was shouting.

  ‘We still work for the same company. It would be easier for both of us if we were on speaking terms … but if this is how you want it …’

  ‘Don’t you try that … it’s the way you want it, not me.’ She glared at him. He stared back. There were a thousand things and yet nothing to say. She walked away.

  In the ladies’ she took some deep breaths in front of the mirror. Her dark blue eyes looked too big for her face. Her cheeks, normally pale, looked stung. She wet her hands and smoothed down the static from her dark hair. Then she realised it was pointless fixing herself up. Because she couldn’t go back in there.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ she muttered to her reflection.

  The corridor outside the ladies’ had an exit to the alley outside. Claire made her escape. She felt bad about Susan and Margaret and John. But she knew they’d understand.

  She collected her mail on the way into her flat. Her credit-card statement, her phone bill and a letter from her friend and ex-flatmate, Fiona. Fiona had left Ireland to go backpacking around Australia. After travelling for six months, she’d got a great job in Sydney, met a man, moved in with him, broke up with him, but still seemed to be enjoying herself too much to consider coming home.

  Claire flicked on the light inside the door. Her flat was tiny, the living area and kitchen compacted together, and one of the bedrooms more like a cupboard than a room. She sat on the side of the bed and opened Fiona’s letter. It wasn’t eloquent; it was basic and blunt, just like Fiona herself. There was a photograph enclosed, Fiona at Bondi Beach, wearing a bikini top and shorts, her freckled face sheened with sunscreen, her brown hair teased from its ponytail by the sea breeze. She seemed happy and carefree and far, far away from the small flat she’d shared with Claire in Dublin.

  Claire suddenly wished that she was there, on the other side of the world. Where she wouldn’t have to worry about when she’d next see Michael. Where her old friend and a new city would fill her Mondays to Sundays.

  Chapter 2

  Julia’s first marriage had been perfect. Until the day Josh announced he wanted out.

  It had been a Sunday morning. She had woken to find him lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘What are you thinking so hard about?’ She smiled sleepily at him, reaching over to touch his bare chest.

  ‘Just that I can’t do this any more …’ he answered, his eyes squinting slightly but still focused upwards.

  She leaned over him and kissed him lightly on his lips. ‘Can’t do what?’

  ‘Live this stale existence.’

  His voice was so grim that she instinctively moved away to put some distance between them.

  ‘Is something wrong at work?’ she asked, adjusting the pillows so she could sit upright.

  ‘I’m jacking it in. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘But you love your job …’

  ‘I’ve hated it for years – how observant of you to notice.’ He turned towards her. There was something akin to hatred in his eyes and it stunned her into silence for a few moments. ‘I want to go to Europe.’

  ‘Europe?’ He’d never mentioned anything about Europe until now, but his tone was implying it was something she should know. ‘Honey, if going to Europe is important to you, then we’ll do that,’ she said, her instincts to appease him. ‘We can rent the house out for a few months.’ She had never been outside California for more than a week. She loved their house in Palo Alto and would hate to leave it for an extended time.

  ‘No, Julia, I need to get away from you, too.’

  Blood rushed to her head. ‘You don’t mean that …’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I’m disappointed if you want a holiday without me, but I’ll support you in whatever you want to do,’ she said with difficulty.

  ‘You’re not getting it.’ He threw back the duvet to get out of bed. ‘It’s not a holiday. I’m going there permanently. Without you.’

  She turned her head from his nakedness. She heard the rattle of his belt as he pulled on his jeans. He opened the door and left her alone in their bedroom.

  He was in the kitchen when she came downstairs, making his breakfast. The kitchen faced the morning sun and the brightness stung her eyes.

  ‘You’re obviously stressed about something … this just isn’t like you … you should see a doctor,’ she said, putting a forgiving hand lightly on his arm.

  He pushed it away, his face angry. ‘Stop clinging to me … Sometimes I can hardly breathe with your clinging …’

  ‘Please, Josh, there’s something wrong with you,’ she begged, raising her voice in desperation.

  ‘Just shut up … shut up! You’re making it worse!’

  He slammed the door, and the calendar on the back jerked from its hook. She picked it up with shaking fingers and put it back in place.

  They didn’t speak for a few days. He moved into the bedroom downstairs. The only place she saw him was in the kitchen. His expression was so ferocious that she couldn’t find the courage to start a conversation of any kind. She convinced herself that the less said the better, until he came to his senses.

  He looked slightly more approachable when she got in from work on Friday. She smiled at him nervously.

  ‘We must put the house on the market.’

  Her smile froze on her face. ‘But I don’t want to leave here …’

  ‘Buy me out then,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘I don’t have the money … you know I don’t.’

  Was she still smiling? Her face was so numb that she couldn’t tell.

  ‘Well, then, there’s no other option but to sell.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem fair. It wasn’t my choice to end this relationship so why should I suffer?’

  He moved towards her, shaking with fury.

  ‘Look …’ He pointed his finger so it almost touched her face. She stepped back from him and he dropped his hand, clenching it by his side. ‘Look … I’m trying to be fair … I’ve worked my ass off for the last few years while you dabbled in your nice easy job … you don’t deserve half of the house so consider yourself lucky that I’m prepared to split the money with you!’

  She stared at him, totally bewildered about how this nightmare had started. Josh had been the one who wan
ted to get married straight after graduation. He had been the one who organised their mortgage and planned for their future. Now he wanted to unravel it all. Just like that. Ten years together. Gone.

  Julia would have moved out if she’d had somewhere to go. It was a harsh way to discover she had no friends she could turn to for help. Her school and college friends had fallen by the wayside after she got married. All her focus had been on Josh.

  It took three months to sell the house. At first she prayed for it to take as long as possible so Josh would have time to change his mind. At the end, when he started dating other women, each day was more humiliating than the one before. She forced herself to work every morning and didn’t venture outside her bedroom from the moment she got home. She found that she couldn’t sleep. She tried herbal remedies, aromatherapy oils and antihistamines without much success. She went to the doctor and got a prescription for sleeping tablets. They knocked her out, but she was sluggish and even more depressed the next day. Then she tried wine. She didn’t usually drink, and neither did Josh, but there were a few bottles in the house. The wine dulled the pain, mellowed her loneliness and eventually put her to sleep. It worked.

  The house didn’t sell for as much as Josh wanted, which gave him one more thing to be angry about. She was glad when a middle-aged man bought it. He was a small balding bachelor. She would have found it harder if it had been a couple. She was suddenly very conscious of being on her own. Everywhere she went she couldn’t help noticing couples holding hands, kissing. She searched for ones that were arguing or tense, but couldn’t find many. Passing strangers on the street, she obsessively scoured their hands for the taunting gleam of a wedding band. She discovered there were very few single people around. And that made her feel panicky.

  Josh didn’t show the same interest in the furniture as he did in the house. She kept most of it and squeezed it into her new home, a small overpriced apartment in an ordinary suburb of San Jose. Tall miserable trees overcrowded the minuscule yard and kept the unit in perpetual shade. The carpet and walls were in good condition but were a depressing deep green. They made the unit even darker. She missed her bright spacious house where the furniture really belonged. It looked ridiculous in the poky apartment. She wished she had sold it.

  San Jose was busy and impersonal next to the sophisticated pace of life in Palo Alto. She didn’t belong there. Thoughts of failure and inadequacy were dimmed by the wine but each night she had to drink more and more before she finally passed out. Wine made her cry. She often wondered if her neighbours could hear her hysterical sobbing in the early hours of the morning. There was a young couple living in the unit next to hers; the other side was vacant. Julia kept out of their way. The few times she had seen them, they looked as if they were happy together. She viciously resented their happiness.

  She never thanked them for calling for help the night she finally broke down.

  She saw him doing his rounds. She knew he was going to come and bother her with stupid questions.

  ‘My name’s Chris Duffy. I’m a psychiatrist here at the hospital.’

  He sat on her bed. His familiarity made her furious.

  ‘I want to have a little talk with you …’

  He paused for a moment to give her the opportunity to respond. She stared at him with as much hostility as she could muster. She didn’t intend to make it easy for him.

  ‘Right … Julia … how old are you?’

  She sighed, folding her arms. ‘Thirty-three, if that’s relevant.’

  ‘Who do you live with?’

  ‘Nobody … my husband has left me … Is that what you need to know?’

  ‘You think he’s the only reason you’re here today?’ His pale face was expressionless.

  ‘Of course it is,’ she answered impatiently.

  He checked his notes. ‘You mixed some pills with liquor …’

  She didn’t comment.

  ‘Do you do that often?’ His green eyes were magnified behind his spectacles as they studied her.

  ‘No … I was trying something new.’

  ‘How much alcohol do you usually drink?’

  ‘Just a few glasses of wine a day,’ she shrugged.

  ‘Is it ever more than a few?’

  ‘Yes, if I’m having a particularly difficult day,’ she snapped at him.

  ‘So on a bad day, would it be as much as ten drinks?’

  ‘I suppose it could.’

  ‘What’s the most you’ve ever had?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Do you ever have difficulty remembering what happened the night before?’

  ‘Yes, thankfully – I drink so I can forget.’ She gave him a sarcastic smile.

  ‘Do you drink alone?’ His voice was a monotone, his eyes hopping from his notes to her face.

  ‘Let me see … I live alone … I’m going to be divorced soon … how about you take a guess from that?’

  She was aware that she was riling him, that she was spoiling for a fight. It felt good to throw a punch and not to be so utterly powerless. She could half close her eyes and pretend that it was Josh at the end of the bed, not a stranger, and that she was finally getting her say.

  He adjusted his position, crossing his legs.

  ‘Has it ever occurred to you that you might have a problem with liquor?’ he said earnestly.

  ‘No, it hasn’t … because I don’t. I didn’t even drink before my husband left me. I only drink wine so I can get some sleep. If there were any decent sleeping pills available I wouldn’t need to drink.’

  ‘Judging by the alcohol we found in your blood, you must have had a lot of wine that night. We would normally associate that level of consumption with an alcoholic.’

  His accusation shocked her into a silence that only lasted a few moments.

  ‘I don’t really care what you think, Doctor. I don’t have any kind of dependency on alcohol. And to prove it, when I get out of here I’m going to give up drinking. Now, get off my bed. There are plenty of other people in this shit-hole that really do need a shrink. I’m not one of them.’

  ‘You look dreadful,’ Eleanor Newbury commented as she leaned across the bed to kiss Julia’s cheek.

  ‘Thanks, Mom, that makes me feel a lot better,’ Julia responded sharply, resisting the urge to tell her that the two-piece suit she was wearing was more suitable for a wedding than a hospital.

  Her mother looked well for her sixty-five years. She was fortunate enough to have an excess of both money and time to invest in her appearance. She would never admit to the two facelifts that kept her looking young.

  ‘I’m just telling you the truth.’ Eleanor pursed her lips and sat down with a long-suffering sigh, resting her large handbag on the tip of her knees.

  ‘Psychiatric hospitals don’t usually come with beauty parlours, Mom.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic! How can you expect to get your life back together if you don’t make an effort with your appearance?’ Indignation was written all over Eleanor’s perfectly made-up face.

  ‘I’ve had a nervous breakdown, Mom.’ Julia started to cry. ‘I think it’s pretty normal not to care about my appearance right now.’

  Eleanor moved uncomfortably in her seat. ‘Your psychiatrist says you may be an alcoholic.’

  ‘Don’t tell me he has been on at you as well!’

  ‘I’m only telling you what he said. I told him that you didn’t drink when you lived at home.’

  ‘I don’t want you talking to him. He’s the one that needs a shrink. He’s so off the mark with me that it’s alarming.’

  ‘He said that denial is common in alcoholics.’

  ‘Mom, drop it, okay? Just drop it.’

  Eleanor obediently changed the subject. ‘Have you heard anything from Josh?’

  ‘No … how would he know where to find me? Only you and Dad know that I’m here … Anyway, he’s probably left the country by now.’ Julia leaned over to get some tissues and blew her nose loud
ly to annoy Eleanor.

  ‘You got married too young …’ Eleanor sniffed, patting her styled hair in fear that a strand had strayed out of place as a result of the unpleasant conversation.

  ‘For God sakes, Mom. We had ten great years together – I can’t help it if he woke up one morning with a premature midlife crisis!’

  ‘People don’t just change overnight – I always knew he was unreliable.’

  ‘And how exactly did you know that?’ Julia asked with gritted teeth.

  ‘Because I did,’ Eleanor stated with conviction.

  Josh’s integrity was the one thing Julia had always been sure of. Now it was open to question, just like everything about their life together.

  ‘And you shouldn’t have let yourself get into a position like that,’ Eleanor continued tactlessly. ‘You sacrificed everything for him … you had a good degree and you never used it.’

  Julia couldn’t argue with her on that point. Her career had been making Josh happy, making his home life as undemanding and well organised as possible so he could succeed at work.

  ‘When I’m well again I’m going to look for a better job … something that has potential,’ she promised, her voice subdued.

  Finally, Eleanor was approving. ‘Yes, darling. And hopefully you’ll meet another man. Because it’s no good to be alone.’

  Chapter 3

  When Claire went into work the following Monday, she apologised profusely to everyone for her disappearing act on Friday night. To make it up, and to prove to them that she was okay, she had a longer chat than usual before starting work.

  When she finally went to her desk, she turned a blind eye to her brimming inbox and connected to the Amtech homepage. She was instantly surprised by the number of roles advertised in Vacant Positions, some in countries she barely recognised. But then Amtech was the fifth largest software company in the world; and at the end of the year when it released a new version of its main product, a human resources information system, it was expected to move up to fourth place.