The One That Got Away

by Annabel Kantaria

  ‘It’s not. I developed this one just for you, tonight. And thank you.’

  My phone buzzes. I look at it. What in God’s name does she want?

  ‘Maybe you should check it,’ Stell says. ‘Sounds like it might be important.’

  I look at her, sizing up whether or not she means it; whether she might be doing that thing of saying one thing and meaning the opposite.

  ‘If it’s going to bother us till you answer it,’ she says, ‘then get it over with. Please.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I stand up and walk over to the window to read the message and the bottom falls out of my stomach. I stifle a gasp.

  ‘What is it?’ Stell asks. ‘What’s happened?’

  I turn to her, turning the phone from her so she can’t see the text. ‘Oh my God. Nothing. Nothing like that. But I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s important. A crisis at work. I need to deal with it now. I need to make a call. How do you open this?’ I struggle to open the balcony door, my hands shaking. Stell opens it and lets me out.

  I wait till the door’s firmly closed before dialling Ness.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Stella

  I’m pissed off, to be honest. This dinner really isn’t panning out to be the fantasy of George and Stella. True, it’s probably the reality of life with George; it’s probably Ness’s reality – it kind of comes with the territory given his position and, for a minute, I feel a strange affinity with Ness; what it must be like to live with George’s unexplained absences and obsession with work.

  But tonight’s about fantasy not reality. I thought we both understood that.

  I sit back at the table and wait. Outside, I can see George running his hand through his hair as he paces up and down. Then he clicks off the call and stands still for a second. I see his hand move up to his eyes and I realise that he’s wiping away tears. He closes his eyes and draws in a deep breath and then another, his hands steadying himself on the railing, and I get up abruptly and go into the kitchen area, feeling like I’ve seen something I shouldn’t have. My back is to George when he steps back into the room.

  ‘Everything all right?’ I ask, my voice disappearing largely into the oven, where I’m pretending to check the dinner. There’s no answer. I close the oven door, stand up and turn around. George is standing just inside the balcony door. His face is impassive but he’s rubbing his chin. He’s ashen. I look at his eyes: he definitely shed tears out there.

  ‘What’s happened? Is everything OK?’

  George closes his eyes, draws in a deep breath, then releases it. ‘Major crisis with one of our key accounts,’ he says. He shakes his head. ‘Shit’s really hit the fan. Heads will roll over this. I can’t afford to lose this account, which may well happen if I don’t get in there and sort it out myself.’

  ‘If you want to leave…’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Look. I’ll finish dinner as you’ve made such an effort. But then, yes, I’m afraid we’re going to have to reschedule our sleepover – it’s going to be an all-nighter.’ He smiles as he says this, as if it’s in any way funny to compare ourselves to schoolchildren. Then he comes back over to the table, sits down and replaces his napkin on his lap. I stand still in the kitchen.

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s at least eat together. You’ve gone to so much trouble.’

  Slowly, I take my place opposite George but I can’t eat. I watch him chew a couple more mouthfuls of his starter, his mind clearly not on me, the food or the evening. His breathing’s shallow and he’s chewing too fast. Even the sound of him eating irritates me. The mood’s ruined.

  ‘Look, George,’ I say, ‘why don’t you just go now? If you have to go, surely the earlier the better…’

  He puts down his cutlery. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘Of course not. If you need to go: go. I don’t want half of you.’

  ‘Thanks, princess,’ he says, pushing his chair back. ‘I owe you.’

  I stand up, too, and he gives me an awkward hug and brushes his lips to mine, his mind not even on that. A handful of seconds and he’s gone with his bag, the apartment still reverberating from the bang of the front door. I turn and walk slowly back to the living area to clear the plates and turn off the oven, and that’s when I see it: his phone. On the dining table.

  It’s as if the breath is squeezed out of me; my heart’s suddenly running like a steam train. I know I don’t have long. He’ll be back as soon as he realises. I give him till he gets to the street. I stare at the phone. Should I trust him? Believe what he’s told me? I don’t need to think for long. This is self-preservation; that’s all it is. I pick up the phone with shaking fingers and type in George’s passcode – the year of our birth. Even as I tap the icon for Messages, I hear the lift ping as George arrives back at my floor. The top message is from Ness:

  Darling. I’m bleeding. I think I’m losing the baby. I need you. Please come.

  I stare at the screen, willing the words to form a different sentence, willing them to change, but they remain there in black on grey and, deep inside me, something shatters.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Stella

  Sorry, darling, it’s really messy. Bear with me. Could take a while. Love you. X

  This is the sum total of what I hear from George for nearly two weeks. I don’t know what he imagines I think about his absence, but he doesn’t bother to explain further; doesn’t try to make even a snatched phone call. I’m supposed to assume, I suppose, that the work is all-consuming; that he has time for nothing except his client. Several times I pick up the phone to call him myself: I want to catch him out; to catch him before he’s had time to prepare his lies. But every time I pick up the phone I put it back down: I need to see how he handles this.

  What will he tell me?

  So I wait and, as I wait, I’m haunted by the image of George standing on my balcony, brushing away his tears. Day and night, it pops into my head unbidden, causing me to catch my breath. Would you cry if the wife you planned to leave was losing a baby you didn’t want? Would you?

  I can’t bear to follow this thought to its logical conclusion.

  I think back to the school reunion. Was Ness pregnant then? I remember the glass of white wine in her hand; how George had swept in and taken it from her. Maybe she was pregnant even then; George not controlling her, but keeping an eye on her. Oh God, maybe they’d even been trying. Now I come to think about it, I’ve no idea why they haven’t had kids after fourteen years of marriage. Maybe they’d been having trouble for years and suddenly it clicked.

  There are things I need to hide from myself; thoughts that rear up in my head and I push back down before I can examine them.

  Maybe they’d been having fertility treatment.

  Don’t go there, Stella. Really, don’t go there.

  But the fact remains that she was pregnant even while George was wooing me with gifts. She was pregnant while he was sleeping with me; pregnant while he was telling me.

  She was pregnant when he told me he wants my baby.

  I jump up and pace my office, staring out at the street below. I’m on my fifth coffee of the day and my nerves are shot.

  Get a grip! I tell myself. He’s not sleeping with Ness. He told me that himself. They have separate bedrooms. I try to clutch at this, but my thoughts spread like a vine, snaking through my consciousness as they throw up more questions than they can answer: if it wasn’t planned, was their sex a drunken accident; the baby the unplanned result of a spontaneous, accidental shag? Did she seduce him to try and trap him? Is it even his? For a moment I feel a leap of hope, but then I’m back to the image imprinted on my retina of George brushing away his tears on the balcony. Who the father is is almost immaterial: what matters is that he cried when he thought she was losing his baby.

  And then there’s my birthday – the thought of this hits me in the solar plexus.

  Maybe she was sick that night: morning sickness, not cancer.

  The air goes out of me. I just know that h
e lied about her having a tumour.

  I can barely breathe. He told me the treatment would last about six months – he was planning to stay with her until the baby is born. The vile nature of his lie makes my knees buckle. I stop eating and, for the first time ever, take time off work, telling my assistant I’m sick. I lie, listless, on the sofa at home and do nothing but wait – I wait to see what George will finally tell me. Whether he’ll admit to the pregnancy; the miscarriage; the fact that he’s still sleeping with Ness.

  He doesn’t.

  What he does do is ask to see me again. The first message I get from George after I’ve learned that the wife he no longer sleeps with was pregnant with his baby is a request to meet him for a couple of hours in a hotel. Not even a request, really, just a note: 12 p.m. Wednesday? Same place? Can’t wait.

  I stare at the message in disbelief but then I catch myself: you can’t say these things over Messenger. Perhaps he’s going to do the decent thing and tell me everything in person. I pull myself up into a sitting position.

  Looking forward to it, I write.

  And I am.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  George

  I stare out of the hotel room window while I wait for Stell. Usually I have a Pavlovian reaction to this room – an instant hard-on – but today, for the first time, and quite understandably, it’s not happening. It’s been a completely shitty fortnight: one I’d never wish on my worst enemy. Aside from watching Ness go through the miscarriage and then a precautionary D and C, I’ve had mixed feelings: there’s sadness – of course there’s sadness – but there’s relief, too: relief that I’m off the hook. And the relief makes me feel guilty.

  I’ve left the door on the latch and I turn when I hear Stell push it open.

  ‘Hey,’ she says, standing on the threshold.

  ‘Hey.’ I cross the room and take her in my arms. The scent of her is like balm on my soul and I hold her longer and tighter than I usually would.

  ‘I’ve missed you.’ I kiss her softly for a second or two, but she pulls away and sits on the bed. I sit down next to her like a nervous teenager. It’s the first time I’ve felt awkward with her and I don’t know why.

  ‘How’s work?’ Stell says. ‘You got everything sorted?’

  For a second, I wonder how she can talk about work after the disaster of a fortnight I’ve had – then I remember she doesn’t know.

  ‘Oh that. Yes. All sorted. I’m sorry. I was dealing with it 24/7.’

  ‘It’s fine. Did you manage to keep the account?’

  ‘Yeah. By a whisker.’

  ‘The charm of George Wolsey!’ Stell gives a little laugh and I echo it.

  ‘Yes. The charm of George Wolsey!’

  ‘So,’ she says, ‘how’s Ness?’

  I don’t miss a beat. ‘Well! There’s good news, actually!’

  ‘Oh really?’ Stell looks up at me.

  ‘Yes. False alarm. The tumour was benign! Sorry I didn’t get a chance to tell you sooner. We found out while I was dealing with everything at work. Sod’s Law, eh? Like buses. Everything comes at once.’

  ‘Oh fantastic. I’m glad she’s OK.’ Stell traces the stripes on the silk throw with her finger. ‘But you had to go through all that worry… it must have been awful.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘You look tired.’

  ‘I am. There’s not a lot gets me down but, hand on heart, it was a difficult time.’

  Silence.

  ‘George. Can I ask you something?’ Stell goes over to the window then turns to face me.

  ‘Yes – yes of course.’ Something in her tone makes me nervous. I get up, too, and shuffle through the magazines on the coffee table. Thick magazines with stiff paper. Corporate stuff. Luxury travel. Luxury lifestyle.

  ‘Do you still sleep with Ness?’

  I look at her and our eyes lock. Stell’s got her poker face on but a tiny muscle in her jaw flickers and I know she’s clamped her teeth together.

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  Stell shrugs. ‘So, do you?’

  ‘Good God, no! You’ve nothing to worry about there, princess. I thought I explained all that.’

  ‘When was the last time?’

  ‘Last time what?’

  ‘That you slept with her.’

  I look up at the ceiling and frown. ‘I honestly don’t remember.’

  ‘Like, weeks, months? More?’

  ‘Oh God. A year or more.’

  ‘Really? No slip-ups? You know, bottle of wine and: oops – never mind, it doesn’t count anyway?’

  ‘No. It’s not like that. You have no idea!’

  ‘If you say so,’ says Stell – and I have no idea whether she believes me.

  We don’t have sex.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Stella

  So now it’s me on the receiving end of George’s lies. The knowledge makes me angry until, slowly, it recedes, making way for an older and wiser me to rise from the ashes of my ‘George ’n’ Stell’ dream. And, as I learn to live with what I now know, I start to think about that old saying, ‘knowledge is power’. I may look serene as I go about my business, as I run my company and continue to date George, I may look normal to everyone who crosses my path, but I know that, deep inside, I am damaged.

  I’m a damaged woman who has knowledge and power.

  Oh, George.

  And yes, I accept that, from the outside, this affair has train-crash written all over it; I accept that any sane woman would run away as fast as they could. But let’s not forget that, ultimately, this is George we’re talking about. My George. Yes, an older and wiser Stella may have emerged from the conversation in that hotel room, but a shadow of the teenage girl is still in my heart, too, and she’s still hoping that this imperfect version of the man with whom she’s supposed to be might somehow blossom into the man she knows he could be; the man he should be.

  And, ultimately, I want to see where this goes; to see how George lets it play out. Now that there’s a level playing field once more, is it me he’ll choose, or Ness – or will he mess us both about? Call it an experiment, if you like, but I can’t let it go. Just as people are drawn to car-crash TV and horror movies, I can’t turn away.

  I want to have a baby with you.

  We don’t see each other for a week or so, then, when George calls again, both nothing and everything has changed. To be fair, he makes an effort. If I didn’t know about the baby and the miscarriage, I’d quite possibly be blown away by the energy he puts into making our stolen moments together absolutely perfect. The sex is fantastic and – he doesn’t question it any more – always unprotected. The attention to detail on our dinner dates is touching: cars pick me up; reservations staff and maître d’s know to expect me; we visit a series of restaurants he’s hand-picked because he knows I’ll like them. Always, though, at the back of my mind lies the question of why he no longer speaks of leaving Ness. There’s no longer a baby. So what’s he waiting for? Actions, Stella. Actions speak louder than words.

  It’s around this time that I develop a pain deep in my jaw. After knocking back anti-inflammatories like Smarties for a fortnight, I go wearily to the dentist expecting the worst: root infection; a long course of invasive treatment.

  ‘Tell me,’ the dentist says after he’s examined my mouth. ‘How would you rate your stress level at the moment?’

  ‘Oh, the usual. About a five out of ten.’ It’s actually about a twelve out of ten, but I don’t see stress as a bad thing in the way that most people do. If it was a three, I’d be dead through boredom.

  ‘Hmm,’ says the dentist, straightening up and tilting the lamp so it’s no longer shining into my eyes. ‘I wonder. I can’t see any evidence of infection or any problem with your teeth per se.’ He pauses. ‘How are things at work? Going well?’

  ‘Oh, the usual – you know how it is.’

  ‘And, forgive me for asking – how are things in your personal life?’ He picks up my file and squints a
t it. ‘Are you married?’ Before I have time to ask why he’s asking, he points at me. ‘That’s it! You’re clenching your jaw. The moment I asked you that, your jaw clamped down. I suspect that that’s what’s causing your pain.’

  I’m speechless.

  ‘I don’t need to know the answer to the question, but I think we’ve found the problem,’ says the dentist.

  ‘No root canal?’ I clench my jaw experimentally. It feels familiar.

  ‘No root canal.’

  ‘So, if that’s what’s causing this pain, what can I do about it?’

  ‘Obviously, try to be aware. Stop yourself from doing it as soon as you realise what you’re doing. Massaging the area can help. And, ultimately, try to identify what it is that’s causing you to do it, and eliminate it. Though that’s not always possible!’ The dentist laughs.

  Eliminate it? I imagine myself toting a machine gun.

  ‘Sports,’ the dentist adds. ‘Anything that can help reduce stress and tension in your life. Yoga, maybe? They’re not for everyone, but meditation and deep-breathing techniques can help. Or just joining a gym, so you have some sort of physical release.’

  I take his advice. There’s a gym near my office. I try a few things before I discover kick-boxing and it’s like coming home. I don’t always go to class: sometimes I just get my gloves on after work and punch and kick the bag over and over, harder and harder, left, right, left, right, faster and faster. My jaw pain recedes. I’ve never been so fit in my life.

  One bright February day, a frost on the ground that morning yet the promise of daffodils in the air for the first time in what seems like a wet, grey for ever, George brings up the topic of us finally spending a night together. I sit at the bureau of our hotel room in my silk petticoat, looking out through the window at the teeming street below. Heat wafts up from the radiator making strands of my hair fly and, down below, cars in all colours sit in traffic alongside white vans, while motorcycles and cyclists weave in and out, seemingly oblivious to the laws that govern the rest of the traffic. My breath fogs the glass. I feel George’s hands on my bare shoulders. They’re big hands – strong – and his fingers instinctively find the dips that welcome pressure from his fingers. I lean back into his body, enjoying this little massage.