‘Thank you, that would be great. Do you need a hand?’
‘Of course not. You stay out here and enjoy the garden.’
Once again, I had a flash of awareness of Vivienne’s own knowledge of what her life must look like through my eyes. I thought of the rolls of rubbish bags in my handbag, which I’d bought at a corner shop on the way, and how I’d been going to suggest diplomatically that we might as well have a bit of a clear-up. But this wasn’t the time for subtle hints about her housekeeping standards. At least there’d been enough gin in that drink to destroy all the disease-bearing microorganisms in south-east London. Who needed anti-bac wipes when you had Tanqueray Ten? Presumably that had been Vivienne’s approach over the past however many years, and if she was going to change it, it wouldn’t be today, that was for sure.
While I waited for her to return, I strolled along the pathway between the stone pots to explore the rest of the garden. There was a huge ash tree shadowing a circle of emerald-green lawn. There were raised stone flowerbeds crammed with blooms in all shades from white to pink, pink to crimson, crimson to violet. There were taller shrubs, too, one still bearing lush, fleshy flowers that I thought might be magnolias.
There was a cascading water feature like a miniature waterfall, which was making the soothing sound I’d noticed earlier. Looking up, I saw birds’ nests in the tree above, and butterflies flitted through the plants, sharing the work of the bees. Tucked away behind an immaculately trimmed hedge were a small, green-painted shed and a tiny greenhouse, empty now, because anything left there would have wilted and died in the heat.
I thought of the minimalist, low-maintenance garden Myles and I were planning and felt suddenly sad, contrasting it with this lovingly tended, life-filled work of love. Myles. Myles and Bianca. Saying his name in my mind didn’t fill me with happiness like it used to; now, I felt only a cold, sick churn of dread. Had he betrayed me? Him and Bianca both?
‘Are you there, darling?’
‘Sorry.’ I hurried back to the stone bench, trying to leave thoughts of Myles behind me. ‘I was just admiring your garden. It’s spectacular.’
‘Well, one does need to keep busy,’ Vivienne said, sitting back down and crossing her slender calves. ‘When you’ve been alone as long as I have, something has to fill the space where people would be. The robins keep me company out here. Britain’s favourite bird, officially. There was a poll. “Art thou the bird whom man loves best / The pious bird with the scarlet breast.” Wordsworth. But they’re nasty little bastards, really.’
Whether it was having had a good old cry or being two cocktails down I wasn’t sure, but my client seemed to have recovered her poise. I joined her on the bench and we clinked glasses again.
‘Now, darling, you must tell me all about yourself. Who is Sloane Cassidy – such a fabulous name; were you lucky enough to have been born with it? – and what makes her tick?’
‘I guess I kind of did luck out on the name front. My husband’s last name is Taylor.’ Saying those words brought a fresh surge of pain. ‘When we got married I think he expected I’d take his name, but I stuck to my feminist principles and, when that wasn’t enough, I pointed out that Sloane Taylor sounds like Lone Ranger and was pretty ridiculous, so I won.’
Vivienne laughed. ‘Good girl. And you and Mr Taylor – are you happy? Children?’
‘No kids yet. We started trying a few months back but it’s not happening, so far. I worry…’ I took a sip of my drink. Vivienne might have been literally crying on my shoulder just minutes before, but she was still my client. ‘I guess we all have our ups and downs.’
‘Do you trust him?’ Vivienne asked, reaching over and wrapping her left hand around my wrist. Her grip was tight, and surprisingly strong, and the two rings dug uncomfortably into my flesh.
‘Do I…’
‘Do you trust him to hold your heart in his hands and keep it safe?’
Suddenly, I felt tears welling up in my own eyes.
‘I don’t know. I hope so.’
‘When I met Max,’ Vivienne said, leaning in close to me so I could almost count the false lashes she’d glued – only slightly askew – above her remarkable eyes, ‘I thought he was The One. And he was, in a sense. I mean, the only one for me. My whole life, there’s only been him.’
‘Oh.’ I had no idea how to react to this. I could just about believe that Vivienne – if she’d met Max in her early twenties – might have been a virgin. Even in the late seventies. Maybe. But that she’d had a long and varied career as an actress and there’d never been another man in her life, not one? God.
‘I gave him my heart to hold in his hand,’ she went on, ‘and he held it carelessly. He didn’t care if he dropped it, or crushed it, or if it got squashed up against one of the other hearts women gave him to carry. He had so many, you see.’
‘Oh, Vivienne. I’m sorry.’
I put my hand over hers, where it pressed against my arm, and she placed her right hand over it and squeezed down hard.
‘He was never faithful to me. Not ever. Not even before we got married and certainly not after. I didn’t know, at first. And then I knew, but I preferred to pretend I didn’t. And then I got confronted by it, over and over again, so I couldn’t pretend any more.’
‘I understand,’ I said, although I didn’t really. ‘It must have been horrible.’
‘He kept saying I was the only one who mattered. That the others were just… nothing. Just a bit of fun. Just playthings. I should have realised that I was a plaything, too. But I didn’t. I buried my head in the sand. Ostriches don’t really do that, of course. Did you know? It’s just a myth. And why would they, anyway, poor birds? Like they don’t have enough problems, being made into hats and feather dusters. But I did. For thirty years, I just carried on, like everything was fine, like eventually it would stop and he’d come back to me properly, and stay.’
‘And did he?’ I asked, although I already knew what the answer would be.
But she carried on as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘I kept busy, with whatever work I could get. And Max was travelling a lot, of course. He was over in the States a lot of the time – most of the time, even. It made it easier for me to pretend that he wasn’t being unfaithful to me, or that if he was, it was because I wasn’t there and he was lonely. As if Max would ever be lonely! That man was surrounded by people from the moment he woke up in the morning until last thing at night. And after that, too, of course.’
She gave a mirthless little laugh that reminded me a bit of Bianca’s. It made me flinch, and I hoped she didn’t notice.
‘And then he stopped coming home. Stopped calling, stopped everything. I suppose he’d seen what I’d become, the state of me, and it disgusted him. I was what he’d made me, and he couldn’t bear it.’
Vivienne paused for a moment. She was gazing off into the distance, towards the wisteria plant that covered the garden wall in a haze of lilac flowers, but I wondered if she even saw them, or if she was just looking back, far into the past.
‘It was ten years ago when I last saw him. I didn’t know it was the last time, but I must’ve had some kind of premonition, because I gave up the lease on our flat in Covent Garden. I wasn’t earning enough to pay the rent, but I had some savings and I used them to buy this place. And I suppose, since then, I’ve just been hoping that he’d come back – find me here somehow. Just walk through the door like he used to. But he never will now.’
I said again, ‘I’m so sorry, Vivienne.’
She turned and fixed me with her enormous eyes. ‘Don’t be sorry. Just don’t let this be you. Don’t waste the best years of your life on a man who’ll only ever love himself. Don’t let it destroy you like it has me.’
There was not a lot more I could say, except come up with a few bracing platitudes about how this could be her chance for a new start, and she should rest and take care of herself and get over her grief and shock, and give me a call when she was ready to have a talk about working aga
in, and in the meantime I’d stay in touch.
And then I kissed her and left, passing through the dusty gloom of the house and back out into the sunlight as quickly as I could.
Eleven
Vivienne’s words made me more focused than ever on my plan to make my marriage work, whatever it took. If – and it was still a huge if, one that played on my mind all the time – my husband had been unfaithful, I’d need to find concrete evidence before I decided what to do about it. And if he hadn’t, I was resolved to make sure he never was. I’d be the perfect wife: attentive, loving and available.
So, for the next couple of weeks, I tried to create a kind of honeymoon for Myles and me. Well, if instead of a luxury suite in the Bahamas you’d decided to spend your romantic break on the top floor of a building site, that was. Wayne and Shane had disappeared off to Tenerife and Ibiza, respectively, for their summer holiday, so the work downstairs had ground to a halt. Even though the house was still in a state of chaos, a brief respite from constant noise and dust felt almost like a vacation for us, too. In fact, it felt as if the whole of London had gone into a kind of giddy holiday mode. Almost every email I sent came back with an auto-reply saying that the person I was trying to contact was away with limited access to emails.
Rosie and Sam and most of our clients were on vacation too, and Isla and I took long lunch breaks during which she went to the gym and I wandered round the shops, not finding anything I wanted to buy. We knocked off early most days, and I felt no guilt about allowing my intern to slack off.
Myles’s work was similarly quiet. The building trade had more or less shut down for the summer and his major projects were on ice, and as far as I could tell he was spending most of his time polishing the presentation he was due to give at a conference in the Middle East. He went into the office every day but was home by five and seemed happy to hang out with me. So we did: we went out to the pub together and ate fish and chips. We watched Vivienne’s movie in bed, our shoulders close together so we could see my laptop screen, and we agreed that she was breathtakingly talented. We went to museums and art galleries on the weekend, and strolled along the river hand in hand.
We had sex, like, a lot. Almost every night. And to my relief, it felt like it had before trying to conceive had stopped it being joyful and spontaneous and turned it into something loaded with hope, disappointment and fear.
I remembered what Vivienne had told me – of course I did. Her words of warning cast a shadow over my happiness, but it was one I was able to ignore, for the most part: a cloud passing over the sun on an otherwise perfect summer day.
I wanted my marriage to work, and last. I wanted people to think, Look at Sloane and Myles – they’re so successful as individuals but so united as a couple. And I wanted that to be true.
But, despite my optimism, I had to be sure that there was nothing untoward going on – nothing for me to worry about. I waited, patiently, for my chance to do just a little bit of digging, a few minutes’ research – okay, to have a massive snoop. It was surprisingly difficult. Even though he wasn’t busy, Myles’s phone was always by his side. Had it always been like that? I couldn’t remember, because I’d never felt the need – the compulsive, niggling urge – to check it. Until now.
At last, one Thursday evening, an opportunity came. Myles announced that he was going to have a bath, a palaver that involved scented candles, bubbles, jazz playing on the portable bathroom speaker, a wet shave with a cut-throat razor and hot towels, and even a face mask. My husband, the original metrosexual.
Normally, he’d have taken his phone into the bathroom with him – he’d destroyed more than one handset by dropping it into the bath. But this time, the battery was low and he’d left it to charge in the makeshift kitchen, plugged into my laptop. I waited, seething with impatience, until I heard him lower himself into the water and tell Alexa to open Spotify and play Scott Joplin.
And then I reached for his phone and tapped in the passcode.
It was horrible. I felt furtive, guilty and ashamed. There was no excitement, no thrill of the chase. I felt only hollow dread at what I might find, and a kind of grim resolve: the sooner I got this over with, the sooner I could put my suspicions behind me and move on – on to a future that would be like this week had been: relaxed, united, happy.
I looked at the screen, memorising what was there: an article from the Independent newspaper talking about a shake-up in building regulations. I’d make sure to restore it when I was done, like a guerrilla fighter covering his tracks. I pressed the home button.
Myles had eight unread text messages. I touched that icon first, my finger trembling slightly. One was from his mother, one was a notification that he had new voicemails, one was from his mobile provider telling him there were great new deals on the latest handsets, one was an appointment confirmation from his barber, one a notification that a delivery had arrived safely at his office… The others were equally innocuous. I scrolled quickly down through the messages he’d already read, but there was nothing to see there, either.
Okay. What next?
I tapped through to his personal email. Here, there were many, many more unread messages. Unlike me, Myles didn’t religiously check and clear his promotional items folder, or file away the stuff he wanted to read and reply to. His inbox was chaos – just looking at it made me anxious, and not just for fear of who might have been emailing him. It would take me ages to go through all of them, especially if I accidentally opened some and then had to go back and mark them as unread, covering my tracks.
So I returned to the home screen again and opened WhatsApp. It showed me a group chat between Myles and the friends he went to football with – message after message of banter, arrangements to meet in a pub before the next game, links to articles analysing the team’s performance. Nothing to concern me.
Apart from the fact that I was actually doing this. I could feel sweat trickling down my back, and my hands were slick and hot. Even my face was burning – whether with heat, shame or a mixture of the two, I wasn’t sure. I paused for a second and listened. Scott Joplin was still playing from the bathroom, and occasionally I could hear Myles singing tunelessly along, or a whoosh and splash of water.
The bathroom would look like a tidal wave had hit it once he was done, I knew, and he’d leave a ring of scum and stubble around the tub, and if I asked him to clean it he’d say he didn’t want to harsh his mellow and he’d do it later. ‘Later’, of course, meaning never, because I’d sit twitching with frustration, imagining the crud drying and hardening until it had to be scrubbed away with bathroom cleaner and a sponge, and eventually I’d snap and do it myself.
Emboldened by anticipation of my own annoyance, I tapped back to the main list of all his conversations in WhatsApp and scrolled swiftly down the list. There were chats with his brother and sister, who lived in Manchester and Geneva, respectively; with his old uni mates; with former and current colleagues. There were chats with mutual friends, which I was signed up to as well – the four couples we occasionally went to wine tastings with; Al and Sunita, who we’d met on holiday and still sometimes met for drinks; our neighbours Rafe and Devlin, who we kept up to date with the progress of our building project and supplied with regular bottles of wine by way of apology for all the noise.
And, of course, the group that included Myles, Bianca, Michael and me, on which our get-togethers were arranged. I was up to date with all the messages on it. I knew there was nothing there that Michael or I weren’t totally at liberty to see.
I’d drawn a blank with WhatsApp, too.
I should have felt reassured. Everything I’d seen in fifteen minutes of combing through Myles’s phone had been totally innocuous. No alarm bells rang, no red flags waved. So why did I still feel this sick, churning sense that there was something I needed to find?
Returning to the home screen, I swiped right, on to the apps Myles used less often. He didn’t have them grouped into folders, like I did. His MyFitnessPal icon
was right next to the YouTube one. The CAD app that he must use all the time for work was three screens over next to BBC Weather, as was the Slack app Bianca had made us install to track the progress of our own house renovation.
Shit. Slack.
I tapped the icon and up came the familiar screen: ‘Sloane and Myles Project’, with discussions about the delay to the kitchen being delivered, paint swatches, the list of contractors, and all the rest.
But Slack had another function, too. You could send direct, private messages to anyone in the group.
And there it was, with one easy inch-long movement of my finger: a series of messages between my husband and my friend. The most recent ones were displayed first.
12 August
Bianca: Ignoring me like this is not on. You know how I feel.
Bianca: Look, Myles, please. Let’s talk about this like adults and stop pretending nothing happened. Come on. We could talk to her together, if that would make it easier for you? xxxx
Myles: I’m just not comfortable doing that right now, okay? Can’t you trust me to deal with this in my own way, in my own time?
11 August
Bianca: Have you had a chance to think about what I said when we met today? I’m sorry if I came across a bit intense. But I *feel* intense.
Myles: I understand that, you know I do. I have feelings too. I just don’t want to rush into anything that could hurt us both and end two relationships.
Bianca: Don’t you think that’s a risk we have to take? Because I do. I’ve had enough of hiding it. It’s tearing me apart.
Myles: What do you think it’s doing to me? I can’t discuss this any more, sorry. Not now. X
9 August
Myles: I never loved her. It was just sexual attraction.
Bianca: That’s not relevant, really, is it? The point is, Sloane needs to know. We can’t carry on hiding this from her.
Myles: Do you really want to do that? Do you really want to tell her, and break her heart? Because I don’t. She’s my wife.
No, We Can't Be Friends: A totally perfect romantic comedy Page 10