by Jane Fallon
‘I …’ I start to say, but I don’t know how to continue. ‘I need to talk to him, Georgie. I’ll call you straight back, I promise.’
I hang up before she can say anything else, which I know is rude, but I have to find out if she’s telling the truth and I’ll know as soon as I hear his voice.
‘Hey,’ he says when he answers, pleased to hear from me. Clearly, Georgie hasn’t shared her suspicions with him yet. Maybe, like me, she wanted to know if it was true before blowing everything up. ‘How did it go?’
I can’t think what he’s talking about for a moment, and then I remember. The audition. It feels like a lifetime ago.
‘Fine. Simon, who’s Georgie?’
I hold my breath so I don’t miss a millisecond of his reaction. I wait for him to say, ‘Georgie?’ or ‘Who?’, in genuine confusion, to laugh and say, ‘What are you on about?’ But none of those things happen. Instead, he pauses. And that gives away everything.
‘Amy …’ he says after a second, his tone serious.
‘I don’t want to speak to you,’ I say, and I cut him off.
I sit there on the bench, shaking. My teeth knocking together as if I’m freezing, as if it’s not seventy-five degrees and a beautiful day. How could he do this to me? How could he do this to the woman he’s married to? And their kid? Suddenly, the fact that he’s only stayed the night once makes sense. And that I’ve never been to his place.
Georgie answers on the first ring this time. I speak before she has a chance.
‘I am so, so sorry. I had no idea – you have to believe me. I would never … I mean, I wouldn’t even have given him the time of day …’
‘I believe you,’ she says quietly.
‘I’m ending it, obviously. Immediately. I don’t want you to worry that, you know, we’re going to be sneaking around meeting up behind your back, because it’s over. Completely. I only wish I could undo the last few months. Not put you through this …’
‘Thank you,’ she says, with a resigned sadness that makes me want to cry.
‘He’s a bastard,’ I say loudly. A woman passing with a tiny dog on a lead starts and crosses the road abruptly to get away from the crazy woman. ‘You’d be better off without him.’
To be fair to her, she doesn’t say, ‘You don’t even know me’ or ‘Who do you think you are, telling me what I should and shouldn’t do?’ She just says, ‘No. I can’t …’
‘I really am sorry,’ I say again, because I have no idea what else there is to say.
‘Your friend said you knew,’ Georgie says. ‘She made it sound as if you didn’t care –’
I interrupt her, already knowing the answer. ‘What friend?’
‘Alison Butler. She’s the one who came to the house and told me.’
I don’t even bother saying that I don’t know and have never met, in so far as I’m aware, anyone by that name. Georgie has enough to worry about without having to factor in my crazed ex-best friend. I just say, ‘Red hair, skinny?’ And she says yes. And that tells me all I need to know.
52
Ten minutes after I get home, my doorbell starts ringing over and over again, insistently. I don’t even have to look out of the window to see who it is. I know. Then my phone starts, too, and I pick it up and see Simon’s name. He must be using one hand for each. Either that, or there’s a very angry postman on my doorstep who won’t take no for an answer.
I open the window and hurl the keys down to him/at him. I see him flinch so, hopefully, I hit my target. By the time he’s reached my top-floor flat, I’ve made myself take a few deep breaths and checked I haven’t left any sharp objects lying around.
‘Amy, I can explain,’ he says, as he half falls through the door. The familiar sight of him – the kind eyes, the rogue piece of hair that flops across his forehead, the stubble – almost makes me lose my resolve.
‘You can explain being married? You can explain having a wife?’
‘I should have told you.’
He reaches out a hand towards me and I take a step back.
‘Yes, that might have been an idea. Somewhere between the first time we met and when we slept together maybe?’
‘I was going to. I knew I had to. But I was scared I wouldn’t stand a chance if I did –’
‘You wouldn’t have!’ I yell over him. ‘Of course you wouldn’t have, and that’s exactly why you should have been truthful.’
‘I know. It was just, it was too late by then. I didn’t want to risk losing you.’
He gives me an intense stare. I turn away, not wanting to get drawn in. It would be so easy to go along with what he’s saying, to believe that, when we met, he was so besotted by me that, more than anything, he couldn’t bear not to follow his heart. But it doesn’t change the facts.
‘That’s bollocks, and you know it. You pursued me right from the beginning, when you didn’t even know me. You engineered that whole trip up with the rug and then us being left on our own together. If you’d mentioned then that you had a wife, it would just have been a failed pick-up attempt, hardly the greatest love story ever told.’
He exhales loudly, changes tack. ‘I fucked up not telling you. I know that. Maybe it was just a temporary madness, I don’t know. Maybe I had the world’s shortest mid-life crisis. But I accept there was a moment at the beginning when I should have been honest and I wasn’t. You must see that, then, it was too late, though? That I had too much to lose if you found out?’
‘The point is that it shouldn’t have been about you. It should have been about me being armed with all the facts before I threw myself headlong into something. And about Georgie. Mostly about her, let’s face it. If this is bad for me, imagine what it’s doing to her.’
‘How did you find out, by the way?’
‘From her. From Georgie.’
‘Shit. Who told her?’
‘Does it really matter?’ It’s not that I don’t want to tell him it was Mel, I just don’t think we need to get sidetracked by that at the moment. It’s not how Georgie and I know what we know, it’s the fact that we do.
‘You knew how I felt about cheaters,’ I say. ‘You knew how upset I was about what had happened to me.’
‘You didn’t tell me Jack thought you were still together, though, did you? Not for weeks, anyway.’
Really? ‘Jesus, Simon, there’s no comparison. I should have been more honest with you, too, yes. But it was over with Jack.’
‘He didn’t know that, though, did he?’
Now it must be dawning on Simon that he’s fighting a losing battle, he’s clearly decided that belligerence is the way to go. It won’t work. Devastated as I am, there’s no going back, so we just have to move forward.
‘This is ridiculous. I don’t know why I’m even arguing with you. Obviously, we can’t carry on. Let’s just end it like adults. Go and try and sort things out with your wife.’
‘I’ll leave her,’ he says, reaching out for me again and putting a hand on my arm. ‘It’s been over for years, anyway.’
‘I don’t think she’s sees it like that.’ I sidestep his hand and it falls to his side as if he has no control over it.
‘We just stayed together for Ruby.’
‘So Ruby is real.’ I say. ‘What else? How about Amanda, your ex?’
He looks at the floor. ‘No. That was just –’
I interrupt. ‘And do you really have a sister? Did she come and stay that night I wanted to come to yours? In fact, do you even live in Barnes?’
He sighs. ‘No. And no. Amy –’
‘Go home and talk to Georgie.’
‘Please …’
I make the mistake of looking right at him and, for a moment, I almost falter. I feel so comfortable with him. So safe. I’d never have got through these last few months without him. I know who I am, though, and who I am is not a woman who is okay about shacking up with someone else’s husband.
‘No. That’s it, okay? Done.’
All the wind
seems to go out of his sails. He slumps. ‘Fine.’
Only when the flat door bangs shut behind him do I finally burst into tears.
You could argue that I should thank Mel for exposing the truth about Simon. That it was far better for me to find out now than further down the line. And you’d be right. Well, about the second part, anyway. For the record, if you ever see me out with a married man again, assume I definitely have no idea that he is married and that you should tell me asap so I can extricate myself before too many lives are ruined. Don’t, though, go to his unsuspecting wife and blow her world apart. She’s in for enough heartache and trauma already, without her having to deal with some vengeful bitch who probably thinks the whole thing is funny.
And if you decide to do it anyway, to drag an innocent party into your petty rivalry, then you’d better be prepared for what comes next.
53
Mel
Mondays always drag. For everyone, obviously. I firmly believe that, even if you’re doing your dream job and every night you lie in bed thanking all the gods that you can think of for making you so lucky, you still have a little bit of a feeling on a Monday afternoon that the day will never end.
And I am not doing my dream job. Not by any stretch of anyone’s imagination.
What I am doing is a job that is bearable, with mostly okay people, some of whom have become casual friends, and which allows me to pretend I have a purpose in life while being mindless enough that I never have to think about it outside the hours of nine thirty to five thirty. The plan always was that I’d hang on until Sam and I got pregnant, get paid maternity leave and then quit as soon as I was allowed. Sam thought that, as I’d been there so long, I might as well get that out of them. But it never happened. And now, of course, with him and his big old City boy salary gone, I need to stay here to get by.
It’s hardly the life I had planned out for myself.
I don’t think Jack is going to be able to keep me in the style I think I deserve to be kept in. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I think that’s the man’s role, it’s just that I’ve not managed to organize myself well enough that I can pay for my own glamorous existence so I need someone else to step in. I need someone to come and take me away from all this.
And, just when I’m thinking that, my mobile rings. Unknown. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t answer. I hate not knowing who’s going to be on the other end when I pick up the phone. But any distraction from the boredom of work seems like a good idea at the moment.
‘Hello.’
‘Is that Annabel Phillips?’ a man’s voice says. Shit. ‘Or is it Alison Butler? Oh, wait, isn’t it Mel?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say. I know I should hang up but I’m too curious about what Simon Rigby has to say to me.
‘You must be really proud of yourself.’
‘I am,’ I say facetiously. ‘I mean, you had no idea who I was, right? And if you hadn’t brought up your wife, then I would probably never have found out about her.’
‘Not that it’s any of your business, but I really liked her. Amy. I was going to tell her –’
‘Yeah, right. That would have gone down well.’
‘– once I’d told Georgie. I wanted to try and make it as painless for my wife as possible.’
‘For God’s sake, Simon!’ I realize at least two of my colleagues are listening in, doing that thing where they look as if they’re reading something but really they’re just staring at a piece of paper with their ears cocked in your direction, so I stand up and walk out into the corridor. ‘You really think I believe that crap?’
‘I don’t really care if you do or you don’t. I just wanted you to hear it. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, and it’ll be the last.’
‘Of course it will. Hey, we should go for a drink. Compare notes.’ It strikes me that Simon Rigby is attractive and has a very good job. I could do worse.
He laughs, but it’s not a nice, friendly laugh. ‘I don’t think so. I’m not like you, Mel, that’s the thing. I fucked up, but I’ve learned from it. I’m going to try and make it up to my wife.’
‘Well, good for you,’ I say. ‘Be happy up there on the moral high ground.’
Back at my desk, I count slowly in my head and, when I get to three hundred, I look at my watch. I swear only two minutes have gone past, which proves to me that this place operates in some kind of weird time warp. I put my head down on the desk for a second, will the day to be over.
I’m aware of one of my colleagues laughing. I can’t be bothered to look up and see what the joke is. Then there’s a flurry of muttering voices, followed by more laughter. Clearly, I’m missing something hilarious. I lift my head up and look over just as someone – Adrian, I think – says, ‘Oh, my days!’ in that annoying patois he puts on, despite being from Windsor. They’re all sitting at their own computers so I can only assume someone’s sent round one of those viral videos of people falling over or getting some kind of almost lethal prank played on them. Anything that helps pass the time is welcome.
‘What’s so funny?’ I say. And, to a man, they all fall silent and stare at their desks as if I’ve caught them watching porn.
I check my inbox but whatever it is doesn’t seem to have come through yet.
‘What?’ I say. I can’t bear to be left out of a joke.
No one says anything, but I catch Adrian sharing a furtive smirk with Martin. Just as I’m about to tell them to all go fuck themselves, Shaz breezes in, comes over, takes me by the arm and says:
‘I need you for a minute.’
I get up and follow her out and along the corridor towards the accounts office she shares with two others. A loud burst of laughter follows us.
‘That lot are driving me mental,’ I say, struggling to keep up. She’s motoring along, which is very unlike Shaz, and I’m wearing wedges that are a bit too big and therefore not very stable.
Neither of her roommates is there, which is odd, as it’s past lunchtime. Shaz pushes the door shut.
‘Don’t freak out,’ she says, words guaranteed to make even the most stable person do just that.
‘What?’
She hauls me over to her desk, sits me down, then leans over me and brings up her email. She clicks on one from someone called [email protected]. As she does, I see it’s titled ‘Melissa Moynahan Urgent. Watch immediately’.
‘What the fuck?’ I look around at Shaz. There’s no text in the email, just what looks to be a movie clip. It’s called ‘Melissa Moynahan, This Is Your Life’.
54
Amy
Kat, Greg and I all sit staring at my computer, waiting for the clock to tick over to two and the noise that tells us the email has been delivered to the forty-odd appointed recipients.
I stand up, walk to the window. ‘Shit.’
‘Nothing we can do about it now,’ Greg says, and he leans over and switches on the kettle.
On Friday night, Chris and Lew drove all the way up after I finally filled them in on everything from Blood Ties to my bombshell about Simon. They tried to pretend they just fancied a weekend in London, but I knew it was a mercy mission. A moral-support intervention. They arrived tired and crotchety (they always argue on long drives, whoever isn’t driving providing a running commentary on the other’s shortcomings. It brings out the worst in both of them) at about eleven and we sat up half the night picking over the ashes of my life.
And that’s when operation Humiliate Melissa was born.
I’d had enough. That was the gist. I wanted it all to end. And her dragging an innocent party into our very personal fight was the final straw. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad thing that Georgie now knew what Simon was capable of. Or maybe it was. Maybe her life would have been much happier keeping her head buried in the sand, believing that her husband loved her. It wasn’t for Mel to decide.
I needed to do something that would hit her where it hurt. A final death blow.
&nb
sp; After Chris and Lew had passed out (they were in my bed and I was on the sofa), I dug out my box of old photos and newspaper cuttings, which I’d retrieved from Jack’s flat (as I now thought of it), and flicked through them, trying not to get distracted. I knew what I was looking for but pictures of me and Jack in matching ironic Christmas sweaters, or arms draped around each other on a weekend to Prague, kept getting in the way. I put them to one side, not sure what the etiquette was with the remnants of a failed relationship. I had no photographs of me and Simon, I realized. None. I remember taking a selfie of us one night and he laughingly deleted it because he said he looked like a gnome. Which he didn’t, obviously. Either look like one or think he did, that is. He just wanted to destroy the evidence, I realize now.
Chris’s job involves making (hopefully) viral videos for an Exeter-based radio station. He’s in charge of ‘extra content’, whatever that means. It mostly seems to require him to film wacky scenes with unfunny DJs, which the station then puts online and boasts about a lot. It’s destroying his soul one hard-fought-for ‘like’ at a time but it means he knows his way around a computer, so on Saturday morning I arm him with everything he needs and leave him to play around while Lew and I take their car to the nearest big Sainsbury’s and push a trolley around, squabbling about what we should all have for dinner like an old married couple.
If both Shaz’s and Mel’s email addresses are anything to go by, the company they work for has a standard format for contacting employees. First initial, last name @safeguardinsurance.co.uk. All we need is a list of all the people who work there, which proves easy to find when we spend a few moments online.
By mid-afternoon, we have something we all think is about as good as it can be. I email it over to Kat and Greg and, two minutes later, receive a reply: Perfect.
All that needs to happen now is for Chris to set up a group email via some program called Boomerang that he’s installed, timed to send at 2 p.m. on Monday. We picked two o’clock because we decided that was prime slump time. The hour everyone would welcome a distraction.