Invisible Women

by Sarah Long

  He settled them in, and then leaned forward, chin cupped in his hand, head on one side.

  ‘So, tell me,’ he said, as Celia smoothed down her hair, slightly flustered by the attention. ‘How are you feeling? Honest answer.’

  Harriet admired his charm, the way Celia opened up beneath his questioning, so that as she was describing her symptoms, they became trivial details compared to the massive good fortune that her welfare was entrusted to this handsome, capable man.

  ‘So, we have a plan, don’t we?’ he said eventually, putting a conspiratorial hand on his patient’s shoulder. ‘We’ll see how that goes, and if that doesn’t do the trick, I’ve got plenty of other things up my sleeve.’

  He shook his shirt above his cufflinks to demonstrate just how many options he had up there.

  ‘He’s such a lovely man,’ said Celia, still basking in the glow of his charisma, as Harriet wheeled her into the lift, on the way back to the car.

  ‘Now, I’m not going to want to sit through those chemotherapy sessions on my own. I’ll need someone to be with me and I suppose it will have to be you. At least there’s one member of the family who’s not busy.’

  Don’t rub it in, thought Harriet, as she opened the car door to help Mrs Watson senior into the passenger seat. She folded up the wheelchair and packed it into the boot. Busy. If only. In a world where busyness was the measure of your worth, she was down there with the bottom feeders.

  The first time she’d driven away from this hospital, Sam was at the wheel and she’d sat in the back, fragile and strong at the same time, holding her precious boy wrapped in her grandmother’s knitted shawl. Sam had looked at her in the rear-view mirror and she could read the pride and happiness in his eyes.

  She glanced across at his mother now. Celia had dropped her flirtatious bravado, she looked pale beneath the make-up and was struggling with her seat belt.

  ‘It’ll be alright, Celia,’ she said, reaching over to attach it for her. ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll look after you.’

  Tessa was writing out the place names for her dinner party with a calligraphy pen, dipping it into a pot of deep-purple ink, when Sandra called to announce her distressing news.

  ‘You’ve got a JOB!!!’

  Tessa felt so betrayed that she knocked over the ink in shock and made Sandra wait until she’d cleared it up. As long as the three of them were in the same position, there’d always be someone to hang out doing nothing with while most of the world was at work. And now Sandra was threatening to end that cosy arrangement.

  ‘Chillax, let me explain.’

  By the time Sandra had finished outlining the exact nature of her employment, Tessa had calmed down.

  ‘So basically, you’re just doing what you always do. Buying lots of expensive stuff for the home, but in this case you’re spending someone else’s husband’s money.’

  ‘Exactly. Genius, isn’t it? And then I’m setting up my company so I can be properly businesslike about it. As I said to Megan, who’s my absolute new best friend by the way, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.’

  ‘Well, good for you, you need something to keep you occupied. And so do I, to be honest, which is why I may have overreacted just now. Although I’m just wondering whether interior design might be a a little less . . . cerebral than befits your mighty intellect.’

  ‘Don’t be a snob, and anyway my brilliant career in PR wasn’t exactly challenging. Design uses a different side of my brain, all that creativity, darling.’

  ‘It’s true you’ve got a flair for it, I could never have done my house without your help. You can talk about it with Alan’s boy bride tonight, just his cup of tea.’

  ‘Will do. Anyway, must fly, I’ve got mood boards to consult. Laters.’

  Tessa went back to her name cards, then carefully folded each one to stand at the head of the relevant place setting around the table, according to her seating plan. It was amazing how you could spend all day getting ready for a dinner party; it was a perfect example of Parkinson’s Law, where the task expands to fill the time available. When she had a job, she could rustle up dinner in twenty minutes on returning from the office. During the child-rearing years, she would prepare the food in stages, in between attending to Max and Lola, making sure they were in bed before the guests arrived. Now she had all day in the echoing silence of her home, to ensure that everything was just perfect. She’d swap this perfection any day for the messy rough and tumble of their old family life. Clearing away the children’s tea, sending them off upstairs to have a bath while she restored some kind of order to the kitchen before their friends arrived, although really who cared what it looked like, they’d have fun and that was what mattered, as she Matt would agree when they fell into the unmade bed at the end of the evening.

  When Matt arrived home, she was putting the final touches to her candle arrangements. Nigella said you couldn’t have too many of them, so she had dozens of nightlights dropped into coloured glass holders, displayed on the dining table and every surface around the room.

  ‘Blimey, Arabian Nights or what,’ said Matt, coming carefully down the stairs into the dining arena. ‘Don’t you think we should at least have one electric light on? Don’t want any gays falling to their death, they’re terribly litigious.’

  ‘Don’t say that, you sound like a raving old homophobe. Alan is very sensitive to ambience, last time they came he made us eat in the dark because he said it was killing to sit in unflattering direct light at our age. Do you mind putting the glasses out, while I go upstairs to get ready?’

  In the bathroom, Tessa stared critically in the mirror. Alan was quite right about harsh light, it was alright to see every line and wrinkle in private but you certainly wouldn’t want them accentuated over the dining table. She ran an exploratory finger along her jawline, stopping at a short, hard bristle. Unbelievable, how these beard hairs just appeared from nowhere, nasty reminders that time was running out, that she was a breath away from becoming an old witch. She administered the tweezers, expertly gripping the hair at the root and tweaking it out for inspection. A white one! That was a first. She flicked it into the basin and reached for her lipstick. Putting lipstick on the pig, that was the expression, wasn’t it, for disguising a bad thing with a glossy veneer.

  The doorbell rang. She ran down to open the door to Sandra, whippet-thin in suede trousers, and Nigel, two steps behind, arms folded in the stance of a man who would much rather not be there.

  ‘Come in!’

  ‘Chocs,’ said Sandra, handing over an extravagantly wrapped package. ‘L’Artisan du Chocolat, the box is made of rosewood so you can keep it. In fact, knowing you, I expect you’ll make your own homemade truffles and regift it.’

  ‘Excellent plan,’ said Tessa, ‘Oh look, here are the others, you’ve all arrived together.’

  Alan and his boy bride were climbing out of a taxi behind a large bunch of white flowers. Tessa and Sandra had been friends with Alan since schooldays, when he had been the stand-out intellectual, given to smoking a pipe and wearing knitted waistcoats. He was in the same year as John Ormonde but while John was keen on throwing himself around the football pitch, Alan could usually be found indoors reading Proust. He didn’t come out until he was at Oxford, where he had flourished in every sense. Tessa had been fond of his previous partner, a self-deprecating professor of linguistics, but Nathan had been ditched last year in favour of twenty-two-year-old Stefan, following a coup de foudre on a club dance floor. They were now married.

  ‘Hello, my darling. God, you’re looking gorgeous,’ said Alan, coming towards her in his heavy velvet suit.

  Tessa surrendered to his flattery as he crushed her to his bear-like chest.

  ‘You too,’ she said. ‘Though obviously not as gorgeous as Stefan.’

  Alan turned to admire his protégé, whose T-shirt was straining tightly over his biceps, jeans slung low beneath Calvin Klein underpants, hair whooshed up into an insolent tousled mop.

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nbsp; ‘Tessa, I am so happy to see you,’ said Stefan, ‘I say to Alan always I am happy to come to Tessa’s house because she is very good cook.’

  ‘And I thought it was my wit and sparkling conversation,’ said Tessa, ‘but thank you, that’s very nice of you. Come in, all of you.’

  It was a contract, of course, she thought as she led them down the stairs, a modern take on the trophy wife. The adoring older man with his boy-child, a delicious fusion of son and lover, the only child he’d never had. Alan was putting him through university, funding a lifestyle giddily beyond student expectations, and was rewarded by a dewy young thing installed in his bed, giving Alan the glow that comes with love and the joy of giving. Tessa found it enviably romantic.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ said Stefan gazing round the low-lit dining arena, ‘This is fantastic! Have you been featured? You MUST have been featured.’

  He had ambitions in interior design and had done marvellous things with Alan’s apartment, scoring a five-page accolade in House and Garden.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Tessa, ‘I can’t be bothered with all that.’

  ‘Oh but you should,’ said Sandra, tossing one suede-clad leg over the other as she perched on the edge of the sofa. ‘Get the publicity shots, put together in a portfolio, then you can sign up with a location agency, like I did. Don’t you remember, Tessa, when I had that film crew in, when we were still in Lonsdale Road? Never had such a rich supply of hunky men under my roof. Got paid a fortune, as well. Handy little earner, should our husbands ever get laid off.’

  ‘You don’t work either then?’ asked Stefan. He had only met Sandra briefly at his wedding.

  ‘Only on myself, love, and that’s a full-time job. No, hang on, I’ve just remembered! As of today, I actually run my own business. I’m an interior designer.’

  Stefan was delighted by this news and they immediately locked into an intense conversation about LED lighting and the relative merits of granite and limestone, as Matt popped the champagne cork and set the party underway.

  Three hours later and four courses heavier, Tessa was sitting in the garden watching Sandra smoke. Matt and Nigel were indoors, exchanging gloomy tales from the workplace, while Alan and Stefan had gone on to dance at the club where Princess Diana had once got in unnoticed, disguised as a police officer.

  ‘Well they couldn’t wait to get away,’ said Sandra. ‘I loved the story of Alan dislocating his leg while striking a sexual position. Do you remember when they used to call him Dartboard Doulton? Everyone had a pop at him apparently.’

  ‘He’s settled down now, though,’ said Tessa. ‘With that beautiful boy. Although I can’t help thinking that Nathan might have been a more comfortable companion for later life.’

  ‘Listen to you! You sound about ninety. I’m just sorry I didn’t take them up on the offer to go dancing, it’s been years since I went to a nightclub.’

  ‘They pack it in, don’t they?’ Tessa agreed. ‘How come gays have all the fun while we stay home with our husbands?’

  ‘Because we’re boring old breeders. You might get Matt on the dance floor though, he’s pretty lively. Not like Nigel.’

  ‘He did well this evening, I thought.’

  Sandra flicked ash on to a hosta.

  ‘Puts on a good show. He announced this morning that he didn’t think he was clinically depressed. Hold the front page.’

  ‘Well, that’s good news.’

  ‘Not really. If it was clinical he’d be carted off to the funny farm and I wouldn’t have to put up with him.’

  ‘Sandra! You don’t mean that.’

  ‘No, I don’t, I’m just being nasty. But I am sick of the sight of his SAD lightbox.’

  ‘He’ll get through it.’

  Sandra shrugged.

  ‘The awful thing is, I’m not sure I care. At least, I want him to get better, of course I do, but I’m not sure I’m interested in what comes out the other side. To be honest, I can’t remember why we’re still together. Apart from Poppy.’

  ‘They say the best gift you can give your child is to love her father.’

  ‘Staying together for the sake of the children? So fifties housewife, excuse me while I slip into my Playtex girdle and fix my husband’s suet pudding.’

  ‘Ginger Rogers said when two people love each other, they don’t look at each other, they look in the same direction.’

  ‘You’re full of homilies this evening. Nigel and I aren’t looking in the same direction, we’re standing back-to-back with our arms crossed.’

  ‘But you both want the best for Poppy. How’s his therapy going? Is he still having CBT?’

  Sandra pulled a face. ‘Talking therapy.’

  ‘But everyone says it’s really effective.’

  ‘They say that talking is cheap. Not when he’s talking to her, it’s not. Still, he can afford it. Money talks!’

  ‘Must admit I share your scepticism about shrinks,’ said Tessa. ‘At the end of the day, we’re all a bit mental, aren’t we? It’s called being human.’

  Sandra shook her head. ‘No, I’m being mean. I’m sure it’s helping him, and at least she’s qualified. At least she’s not a bloody life coach.’

  Tessa smirked. Life coaches were one of their bêtes noires.

  ‘Redefining his goals and boundaries. Bollocky bollocks.’

  They sat silent for a moment in the Italianate gardens and Sandra lit another cigarette.

  ‘It’s not big and it’s not clever,’ said Tessa.

  Sandra inhaled deeply. ‘Neither am I, so that’s OK. Anyway, what’s the latest from Donny heart-throb Ormonde?’

  At last. Tessa had been dying to talk about him. She made sure Matt wasn’t about to eavesdrop. No worries on that score; through the glass doors she could see him and Nigel facing each other across the table, like a couple of hanging judges.

  She leaned forward in confidential mode, pulling her cardigan tight against the evening chill.

  ‘We messaged last night and he told me I was his dream girl.’

  ‘Player! But seriously, he was crazy about you,’ said Sandra, ‘I never understood why it took you so long to get together.’

  ‘Oh you know, other fish to fry. I thought I was madly in love with Gavin Jones.’

  ‘Wasteman!’

  Tessa smiled.

  ‘I do love your teenspeak. He came back, you know, after his gap year. He went to Manchester, but never let me know. His family moved away from Orpington, so I was never going to bump into him in the holidays or anything.’

  She had never told Sandra how often she’d walked past his house in the hope of seeing him, until one day when there were new curtains at the window and a different car in the drive and she knew he was gone.

  ‘Weird he broke off contact like that. So are you going to see him?’

  ‘Of course not. Anyway, he lives in America.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, Utah. Along with his Osmond brothers and all the other Mormons.’

  ‘Haha! Wyoming, I think, wherever that is.’

  ‘You think, or you know? That sounds fairly precise to me.’

  ‘I was looking through his profile, of course I was.’

  They both looked up as Nigel stepped out on the terrace.

  ‘Sandra, we need to go. Some of us have to go to work in the morning.’

  *

  Tessa made herself wait until she had cleared the kitchen. She loaded the dishwasher, stored the leftovers into the fridge, lined up the empty bottles for recycling and blew out all the candles. Only then did she allow herself to open the laptop. There it was, the little red number 1 telling her she had a message. She knew it would be from him. She listened for a moment, making sure that all was quiet.

  He had sent a photo of the camping trip, five of them gathered round the fire, with Tessa stirring the pan. She was wearing her hair in a coupe sauvage, the shaggy mop favoured at the time, and was very slim. You never realise at the time, beset by teenage anxiety, how gorgeous you are, but she�
��d give anything to look like that now. He’d written a caption:

  hottie with a pot, look what I found in my memory chest x

  Bottles of Bulmers cider were scattered around them, and Sandra was raising one to her lips, striking a pose in a pair of tiny white shorts. Harriet was in the background, clearing up, nothing had changed there. Alan Doulton was stretched out, reading a French novel with an understated cream Gallimard cover, he had an entire collection of them which nobody was allowed to borrow. John was nowhere to be seen, he was behind the camera. She’d like to see a picture of him, she thought, as she typed her reply.

  Seems like yesterday! And would you believe it, I’ve just had Sandra and Alan to dinner. Didn’t drink cider though, only lots of WINE. But where are you? SHOW YOURSELF!

  His immediate response confirmed her suspicion that he spent his days crouched over his computer, watching and waiting for her.

  Nobody photographs the photographer! But I have found this one.

  There he was, lying on his back by the entrance to the tent. Bell-bottom jeans, a skimpy shirt, wavy dark hair, she’d forgotten how good-looking he was.

  Nice! You look really tasty. As we used to say.

  Let’s Skype, Tessa. You can check out the updated model!

  She’d never tried Skype, but Matt used it sometimes; she’d seen him wearing his business face, making assertive statements into the screen. It was all a bit conference-like.

  Not now, I’m going to bed.

  That’s OK, I’d love to see you in your nightie  xx

  No you wouldn’t. I’ve changed a bit since that photo.

  You haven’t, I’ve already checked you out. Come on!

  Maybe tomorrow. It’s late.

  It’s a date! Let’s say six o’clock, your time. I’m no good at typing and I want to hear your voice.