He exhales loudly. ‘Oh God! How could I be so careless?’ There’s a pause as the inevitability of being caught, and of Ness’s reaction, sinks in. ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’
George’s voice breaks, and there’s nothing much I can say to comfort him. He’s probably right – he’ll have to leave Ness now. I examine my new bracelet, turning it this way and that. He made a promise last night; I really can’t understand why he’s quite so panicky.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘But look at it this way: you were going to leave her anyway, weren’t you? It’s just perhaps more sudden than you imagined.’
‘Oh God!’
‘I’m really sorry it happened like this.’ I pause, noting that not a single part of me feels sorry for him. ‘Look, if I can do anything, if you need somewhere to stay…’
‘I may have to take you up on that,’ George says. Then, ‘Shit. She’s back,’ and the line goes dead.
I sit for a minute on the sofa, my breathing faster than usual. Could this be it? The day I finally get George back. February 15, 2015. I like it.
*
While George faces Ness, I pace around the apartment, fiddling with things, till I realise that the only way I’m going to burn off my nervous energy is by throwing some punches at the gym. Nothing beats the release of lashing out. There’s no class on but my trainer’s there.
‘Whoah, you’re on fire today,’ he says, as I let the punch-bag absorb my energy. The gym resounds with the whack of glove on bag. ‘You want to try a little sparring?’
‘Really?’ I’m bouncing on my toes, sweat dripping off me.
He slips on his gloves, passes me the headgear, and holds his hands up. ‘Give it to me!’
Jab, jab, straight right; jab, straight right, left hook. I’m dancing around him, unleashing myself, my arms flipping out, straight and strong as I dodge his blows. It feels amazing when my fist connects with his body. I think about nothing except where the next punch will land: George and Ness are out of my mind; my focus is on the feel of my heart pounding; the blood pumping through my veins; my muscles, tendons and ligaments working in perfect unity. This is my escape. My sanity.
I’m out for about an hour and a half, I suppose. Then I walk home, the motion seeming too slow, too easy, after the high-octane pace of the boxing ring. It’s a gentle wind-down, and only then does the thought of George seep back into my mind like a toxic gas. I start imagining what might be going on at his house; that posh house on the hill in Richmond. I see Ness showing George the iPad; watching him scroll through the pictures. George, grey in the face, stopping before he reaches that picture; handing the iPad back to her. Ness scrolling and tapping, handing it back to him, her face icy. Would there be tears? Shouting? Recriminations? Does he tell her everything? Or just that he’s leaving?
I dip into a newsagent and buy a hard copy of the newspaper. Posterity and all that.
*
After I step out of the shower, I see a missed call. Ness. I’m standing looking at her name on my phone when it rings again. I pick up.
‘Stella?’
I wait.
‘I know it wasn’t your fault,’ she says in a monotone hung with defeat. ‘It’s who he is. He’s never been faithful to me. Never. He’s a shit.’ There’s a static silence. ‘Good luck.’
The line goes dead.
*
It’s late when I hear a tap on the door. I’m on the sofa, reading: How To Tell Toledo From the Night Sky. It’s a brilliant book, the symmetries of its plot about predestined lovers not lost on me, and I resent having to put it down.
I open the door. There’s something hollow about George, and he’s carrying an overnight bag. As I lock the front door behind him, he drops his bag in the hall, goes straight into the living room and collapses onto the sofa. It feels strange to see him sitting on my sofa. It’s as if the space in the apartment has shrunk; as if a George-sized chunk has been taken out of it. Furthermore, he’s sitting where I usually sit, and I’m now not sure where I should sit myself. George doesn’t make any move to hug me or kiss me, so I perch one cushion along from him on my cream sofa and wait for him to speak.
‘Do you mind if I…?’ he says eventually, waving a hand feebly at the apartment.
‘If you stay? Of course not.’
There’s a silence. I see muscles working in George’s jaw.
‘Sod’s Law, isn’t it?’ The words burst out of him.
‘What’s Sod’s Law?’
‘Random shot, and we’re in it.’
George groans, head in hands. I fuss around in the living room, straightening things that don’t need straightening. Then George sits abruptly upright again. ‘I bet it was Bunny Larsen.’
‘What?’
‘Bunny Larsen. She’s got it in for me.’
‘Who?’
‘Photographer I used to know. Oh God. It was her. I’d put money on it.’
‘Umm – why?’
George shakes his head. ‘Oh God. Bunny bloody Larsen. We have a little history, put it like that.’
‘While you were with Ness?’
‘Oof.’ Delivered with an eye-roll, it’s an admission. ‘Just a night. She’s hated me since.’
‘Hated you after a one-night stand? When she knew you were married? That’s a bit extreme. What was she expecting? Marriage and kids?’As I say it, the irony of my own situation isn’t lost on me.
‘Maybe it was a bit more than one night. Few weeks, maybe. I honestly don’t remember. It wasn’t anything major.’
‘Were you unfaithful to Ness a lot?’
George looks at me sideways, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. ‘I bet it was Bun,’ he says. ‘She’d have known it was me. I’m sure she works as a freelancer these days. You know, selling society pics to the highest bidder.’
‘So – if it was “Bun”…’ I can’t say the name without putting the quote marks in my voice ‘. . . if it was her, why wouldn’t she have named you in the caption? Made sure she twisted the knife?’
‘Not her style. She’s clever. Subtle. She’d know that this would get back to Ness, but there’s no dirt on her for naming and shaming.’ He shakes his head. ‘Clever girl. Touché, babe.’
I take his words like a punch in the stomach.
‘Anyway,’ George continues. ‘The damage is done. Ness knows it was you. She recognised you.’ George closes his eyes. ‘I really stuffed up, didn’t I?’
I get up and walk over to the window. Yes, I think. You stuffed up the moment you slammed that door on me when I was eighteen and pregnant. You stuffed up again when you got Ness pregnant while promising me a future. But not today – today is not a stuff-up. Today’s a correction, not a mistake.
‘That’s why she threw me out. I think if it had been anyone else,’ George says, unaware of the bombshell he’s just dropped, ‘we might have been able to get through this – write it off as a moment of madness, a mistake – but the moment she realised it was you, she knew. She just knew.’ George makes puppy-dog eyes at me. I think he thinks he’s flattering me; trying to make me feel like he wouldn’t have wrecked his marriage for anyone else – Bunny Larsen, for example.
‘She knew what she was up against,’ George says. ‘Is it that obvious I’m in love with you?’
I give him a tight smile. George jumps up and paces the living room. It looks wrong; he’s too tall, too big in my space. I think about the last time he was here; the time I found out Ness was pregnant. He stops and puts his head in his hands.
‘What have I done?’
‘Well, if you play with fire…’ I get up suddenly and head towards the kitchen. ‘Drink?’
‘Got any whisky? Single malt?’
‘Wine or vodka.’
‘Wine.’
I pour two large glasses and take them back into the living room, where George is once more on my spot on the sofa. I sit down next to him and we both take a sip. George slumps into the back of the sofa. His eyes close. I lean forward.
/>
‘Can I ask you something?’ I say.
‘Sure.’ He doesn’t even open his eyes. Suddenly I’m furious that he’s come here, assumed I’ll be sympathetic and not even kissed me hello. Subconsciously, my hands curl into fists, itching to punch again.
‘If you hadn’t got caught,’ I say, choosing my words carefully, ‘when were you planning to tell Ness?’
George opens his eyes slowly and says something I don’t hear. I don’t need to: the look on his face says it all and I finally realise, once and for all, that it was a game to him.
Nothing more than a game.
PART II
ONE
Stella
10 months later
The wedding is perfect. Seventeen years after I planned it, my wedding to George Wolsey finally takes place, exactly as it always should have done.
Yes, I said exactly as it always should have done.
All day there’s a smile on my face. People assume it’s because I’m so happy to be getting married ‘at last’ – spare me the pity – and, of course I’m happy, but it’s more than that: it’s a smile of satisfaction that things are finally working out how they always should have done. It’s a sense of things finally coming full circle.
‘I don’t get why you want a church wedding when you don’t go to church,’ George tells me when I let him in on some of the plans. ‘You’re not usually such a hypocrite. And, trust me, church weddings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Been there, got that T-shirt. Ha!’ He rubs his hands together and laughs in a way that makes me all the more determined to do it.
‘I just do,’ I say. ‘I can’t explain it.’
And I can’t. How can I explain the notebook? The hours spent alone in my bedroom as a teenager imagining what my wedding to George would be like? True, I’ve updated the dress and the cake’s now in another league, but George gazing into my eyes as we say our vows at the altar is an image I’ve held close to my heart for the best part of two decades and I’m not going to miss out on it for the sake of being called a hypocrite. By George of all people.
It’s a big wedding, but many of the guests are George’s work acquaintances: clients and hangers-on. People, I presume, he wants to butter up with a free feed and the suggestion of intimacy. There’s not many from my side. Sitting with notepad and pen, I can’t think of many people I care to share the day with. Neither of us have much in the way of family, and George’s brother, Harry, doesn’t come.
‘He’s on holiday,’ George says when I ask why. ‘In the Lake District. Camping.’
I shrug. ‘Priorities, eh.’
It’s not me who invites the press, though. I’d never be that cruel to Ness.
‘Oh,’ George says to me a week before the wedding, ‘my PRs have managed to get Hello! to come and take some pics of you before the wedding. Is that OK?’
‘What do you mean by “before”? You mean like a week before, or literally on the day?’
‘Oh, on the day. You know the type: luscious photos – big single-page images. You in your dressing room, doing up your dress, drinking a glass of champagne, having your hair done. Staged shots, of course. Paid. You don’t mind, do you?’
I raise one eyebrow.
‘Please, Stell? It would go a long way to…’
And I know exactly what he’s getting at: he got a fair bit of bad press when he left Ness. The cheating husband abandoning his long-standing wife: the red tops had a field day, and would it be cynical for me to say that Ness milked it? Her brave, ‘coping’ face was plastered on almost every weekly as she talked about George’s favourite recipes and how she’s moving on, making pot dinners for one or some such crap. We both know that George’s PRs will be desperate to turn that bad press around.
‘What about Ness?’ I ask. ‘Isn’t that rubbing her face in it?’
George shrugs. ‘I’ll give her a call. Square it with her. She knows the drill. She’ll understand.’
It’s my turn to shrug. ‘Personally, I wouldn’t do it. But it’s your ex-wife and your business. Do what you like. Just ask them not to send “Bunny Larsen” to take the pictures.’ I make rabbit ears with my hands and a Bugs Bunny face as I say this.
And so the day is perfect. From the moment I step over the threshold of the church and see George running his hand through his hair at the altar to the moment we fall into bed together that night as Mr and Mrs, I know everything’s going to be all right. George and me, we may have had an unconventional route to the altar, we may have had our ups and downs, but I don’t regret a thing and who was it who said ‘all’s fair in love and war’?
It was George, wasn’t it? All that time ago. It was George who said that.
TWO
George
The first disagreement Stell and I have after our wedding is the old chestnut about where we’re going to live. Ness’s fleeced me in the divorce, so I’m keen to stay at Stell’s but, after a few months of dancing around each other, even I have to admit her place is too small for the two of us and we start talking about where we might move to. I want to stay in Hampstead. It’s a great spot, and I’d assumed she was happy there too, but suddenly, out of nowhere, Stell starts banging on about moving to the country.
‘Really?’ I say, searching her face for clues that she’s joking. We both run companies in the heart of London. Why would we want to move to the country? ‘We’re not going to start growing our own veg and keeping chickens, are we?’ I ask, as a picture of her feeding chickens in a pair of wellies with an anorak over her nightie comes to mind.
She tuts. ‘Not the “real” country. I don’t mean cut-off-in-the-winter country. Just somewhere where I can see more than a patch of sky at a time but we can still get into London easily.’
‘We live next door to Hampstead Heath!’
‘Yes, but… it’s the sirens, too. And the pollution. The noise. The city. The people!’ She shudders and starts typing into the search engine. ‘Look, just don’t argue with me. OK? You’ll love the country. I’m going to take a step back from work, stick around at home more and finally start writing my novel. We’ll have more space, fresh air…I want it for us, and for our children.’ She looks up and smiles at me as she says that, and I see that I’ve lost already.
‘Okaay,’ I say slowly. ‘Country it is.’ But, even as I’m saying the words, I’m feeling like I’ve just been pushed into a corner. Is this what life with Stell’s going to be like? Note to self: pick your battles.
Stell smiles again. ‘Let’s start looking around the end of the Tube lines. How about here?’ She taps the screen. ‘Look at all that green on the map, and you could be in the West End in under an hour.’
‘Well, it’s closer to Harry,’ I say, leaning in to see better and imagining a life where I get to see a bit more of my brother. Stell’s eyes narrow. She swipes across London and taps another area.
‘Or how about here?’
‘What’s wrong with being closer to Harry?’
Stell looks up and gives her head a little shake. ‘It’s nothing to do with Harry. I just want us to have the best country experience we can with easy access to central London and this Tube line is more reliable than the other. You always hear there are delays on that line on the travel news, don’t you?’
She searches the new area a little, but it fast becomes apparent the houses there are not ticking her boxes. She moves back to the original search area.
I play along for a bit, thinking she might run out of steam when she realises that the type of house she’d like simply doesn’t exist in a country setting. But, as the days go by, instead of diminishing, her dream gathers momentum like a runaway train and I start to realise I’ve underestimated what Stell’s like when she wants something. She’s a dog with a bone. She starts talking about the both of us working from home more and I know she’s imagining us locked away together in some sort of country idyll, just the two of us and, later, the kids. And, as we go through house listing after house listing every eveni
ng after work, I see her compare the reality with the dream and I see that there are no matches, but still she doesn’t give up. She’s tenacious when she wants something. I give her that.
‘What about this one?’ I ask, pointing at a place called The Lodge. ‘Look! It ticks every box.’ On your rather long list, I want to add. I admit it, I’m feeling smug with The Lodge. A Grade II listed nineteenth-century house, it’s within a stone’s throw of the end of the Metropolitan Line; it’s got enough bedrooms for the non-existent kids as well as an office for us (her? I can’t picture me working from home). It’s got a garden. And it’s gorgeously higgledy-piggledy – all nooks, crannies and beams. It’s even got a big, black Aga. More than anything, it looks homely.
Stell closes her eyes and I know she’s comparing the image of the house to the image she carries in her head.
‘Nope,’ she says, screwing up her nose.
I sit back. ‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’
‘It’s too old.’
‘We can do it up a bit. Look, the kitchen’s new – they’ve just done it in keeping with the style of the house.’ We both look at the terracotta tiles on the kitchen floor and the exposed red-brick wall and I think about Stell’s colour palette of neutrals. Okay, maybe it’s a little garish.
‘It’s vile.’ Stell shudders and continues scrolling.
‘I think we should go and see it.’
Stell glowers at me, but I scroll back up and jot down the number of the estate agent, give them a buzz and arrange a viewing.
*
Stell comes with me but it’s apparent from the moment we get in the car that she’s not going to give The Lodge a fair chance. She scowls her way around it, wincing and even pretending to gag at one point.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ I hiss at her behind the estate agent’s back.
‘It reeks of dogs. Centuries of old, wet dogs. Can’t you smell it?’
‘It just hasn’t been lived in for a bit. It’s a little musty, but nothing opening the windows wouldn’t cure. Try to look at the bigger picture. Please?’ I catch her by the shoulders and give her a little kiss. She shakes me off.
The One That Got Away Page 10