Once again, she glanced around. ‘I didn’t… I… Look, Sloane, please, please believe me. There’s nothing going on between Myles and me. Nothing at all. And Myles never asked me for advice about you. I don’t have the faintest idea where you got this idea from.’
‘I saw!’ My voice rose to a shout. ‘I saw the messages you sent, on Slack, saying he needed to tell me – something.’
‘I really don’t think my private correspondence with Myles is any of your business, frankly. I’m sorry things are difficult between you. I did try to warn you. And clearly I was right. But to suggest that I’d betray my own husband, put my family at risk, is just insulting, Sloane, and I’m actually quite disgusted that you can even think of me in that way.’
Her defensiveness completely wrong-footed me. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected – denial, certainly, but followed by something – a confession, an explanation, something I could work with. Not this cold, outraged offence. I didn’t know what to say; not that it mattered, because Bianca wasn’t giving me a chance to say anything.
‘I tried to help you, and what do I get? Baseless accusations. I love my husband. We trust each other. I’ve never – and will never – do anything to jeopardise that. And that includes having relationships – business or personal – that call that trust into question. So I think it’s best if we terminate the arrangement we have here. I wish you every success in sorting out your personal life, Sloane. But I’m out.’
And she handed me her empty water glass, then rummaged in her bag and passed me the set of keys Myles had given her, before turning around and walking out, closing the front door behind her with a precise click.
I stood there, in the centre of the space that was going to be our kitchen, where I’d imagined cooking dinners and pureeing baby food and icing cakes. The room I’d imagined – eventually – being the heart of our home. And I looked around and saw it as it was: the pile of paint pots and power tools and ripped-up floorboards and ladders and buckets and chaos, and I thought, how did this happen? How exactly did my life come to this? It wasn’t just the house that was a mess – it was everything.
It was me. And I needed to fix it. Obviously, I couldn’t pour the concrete floor or fit the kitchen or even paint the walls. But I needed to fix things in other ways. I needed to take back control. I couldn’t control what Myles was thinking, or feeling, or doing. But I could control my reaction to it.
I sat down on the floor, not caring that I’d get sawdust all over my Chanel dress, and I tried to order my thoughts. I’d gone round to see Bianca that morning, determined to confront her, even if it meant doing so in front of her employee and her customers. Thinking about it now, it seemed crazy, reckless, the behaviour of a madwoman. I wasn’t mad. I was rational. I remembered what Vivienne had said – how her suspicions about her husband had chipped away at her sense of self until there was nothing left.
I wasn’t going to let that happen to me. I was worth more than that. And besides, unlike Vivienne, I wouldn’t be able to find solace in gardening – even houseplants carked it on me after a couple of weeks. I’d only had one plant thrive on me, staying green and lush for weeks as I watered it faithfully – until I realised it was plastic.
I took out my phone and clicked through to my message history with Myles. In the past twenty-four hours, I’d sent him an increasingly desperate, needy series.
What aren’t you answering your phone?
We need to talk. I want to make things right. I love you.
Myles, please just answer me.
I can’t deal with this.
Well, I could deal with it. I had to.
Choosing my words carefully, I typed another, longer message.
Myles, clearly you’re not sure about things. I’m not, either. I think we need to have some time apart. I don’t want to live with you right now and I think you feel the same. Please can you make other arrangements for a couple of months. S.
It wasn’t much; it was barely anything at all. But, having sent it, I felt like, finally, I’d clawed back a tiny piece of my self-esteem.
Seventeen
I got through the next two weeks. Somehow. It was a bit like when I was first at boarding school, after Mom left. I can barely remember the detail of those days, but I remember how every morning I woke up, thinking for a second that things were normal before reality snapped shut on me like a trap, and I knew I had the whole day to get through: the horrible food, the lessons I couldn’t focus on, the other girls in their little cliques, the humiliation of track and hockey and basketball, all of which I sucked equally at. And, worst of all, the free time, when we were supposed to enjoy ourselves but all I could do was plug into my Sony Walkman and play The Doors at full volume on the tapes Dad had given me to remind me of home.
And I remember how the thing that got me through it – the only thing, really – was the prospect of that brief moment in between sleep and waking when I forgot I was there: when I thought I was at home, waking up to go downstairs and somehow Mom would be there in the kitchen cooking eggs on the hob, dressed and smiling and coming over to fold me into a hug.
Hardly ideal, I know, but it was familiar. I’d had a degree of freedom then, an independence that boarding school had stripped me of. And now, as an adult, I had it again. I didn’t have to consider anyone’s needs but my own – well, not Myles’s, at any rate.
The discussion we’d had when he returned from Doha was awful. Literally every bit of me was longing to tell him I’d changed my mind, I wanted him to stay, I needed us to work through this. But I’d made my decision and, somehow, I managed to stay firm.
‘Where the hell do you want me to go, Sloane?’ he’d said. ‘This is my home. I live here, remember? This was your idea. If anyone moves out, it should be you.’
‘It was not my idea. It’s the only way I can see of finding a way forward. You said you need time to think – that’s what I’m proposing.’
‘I can think here.’
‘Maybe you can. But I can’t. And there are two of us in this situation, so something has to give.’
‘This is my home,’ he’d said again, stubbornly.
‘And that’s not going to change. If you decide you want us to give this our best shot – have counselling, whatever – we might live happily ever after here. And if we split permanently, we’ll work out the finances like adults and decide what to do. But, for now, we need some space, like you said.’
‘I can sleep in the spare room.’
‘That doesn’t work for me, Myles. Two of us in two rooms, sharing a bathroom, with downstairs a building site? We might as well be camping together.’
‘What do you want me to do, sleep on the street?’
‘Of course not. I’m sure you can find a solution. Stay with your mother for a bit. Rent an Airbnb.’
But, magically, a solution presented itself. I suspect it was the prospect of crashing on the sofa in his mother’s one-bedroom flat but, the next day, Myles proudly announced that an unsold flat in a luxury development designed by a business acquaintance of his could be made available for the time being.
‘I hope you appreciate the sacrifice I’m making here, Sloane. It’s going to be highly inconvenient.’
I opened my mouth to say I was sorry, this wasn’t what I wanted, either, and couldn’t we please just try again. But I was amazed to hear my voice say, quite calmly, ‘I’m sure you’ll cope just fine.’
Coping myself was a whole different ballgame. In a way, I was grateful for those long-ago schooldays, and the lessons I’d learned about shutting down my feelings, going through the motions, faking it until I could make it.
Every morning, I found myself wide awake at five o’clock. I’d never been an early riser but, without Myles there next to me, there was no reason to stay in bed, no warm body to curl up to. With only my thoughts for company, the time until I could legitimately get ready to go to work felt like an impassable chasm of dead loneliness. So I forced myself to get up, pull on yoga pants an
d a T-shirt, and go out for a walk. It was summer, at least – not like those icy mornings when I was a child. And after a few days, I began to recognise the rhythm of early morning in the streets around our house: the sinewy woman I saw each day on her morning run, presumably getting the miles in before work. The young dude on his bicycle delivering unpasteurised milk in glass bottles, presumably for a start-up of some kind. The guy feeding frozen peas to the birds on the pond, who explained to me that bread was bad for them and provided unasked-for snippets of intel about the life cycle of swans.
And, obviously, the homeless guys who hadn’t made it into a shelter the night before, the bedraggled working girl making her way home unsteadily on her wobbling high heels, the old bearded man drinking coffee outside the betting shop, anxious before it was due to open.
It sounds kind of crazy, I know, but it all made me feel connected to our neighbourhood in a way that I never had before. Home had always been a place to come after work, a bolthole where Myles and I had our lives together, and the world outside was just a sort of hinterland I passed through.
I found myself returning from those long, aimless walks feeling strangely serene, reminded that I was just another cog in the huge, whirring machine that was London, which would carry on whether I was happy or sad, married or not married, there or not there. My problems didn’t go away – far from it – but they felt less overwhelming than they did inside the four walls of our house.
Back at home, I showered and was dressed and ready for work by the time Wayne and Shane arrived. I found myself offering them tea or coffee quite cheerfully, and I realised that it wasn’t making their hot drinks that I’d resented – it was me making them, when Myles could just as easily have been the one to do it.
And once I stepped through the door of the Ripple Effect office, there was no time for navel-gazing. My to-do list ran to several pages, and it never seemed to get any shorter – for every item I ticked off, I seemed to add another three.
I’d signed two new clients: an Instagram influencer for whom I’d got a great deal as the face of a new electric smoothie maker, and a fitness YouTuber who brought the entire office to a standstill when he came in to meet me, such was the sizzling hotness of his ripped physique. Only Sam was unmoved, saying, ‘Bloke’s a plonker – anyone can see that,’ while Rosie and Isla practically got into a handbags-at-dawn stand-off for the privilege of making his Redbush tea.
Preparations for the Halloween party were well under way, and a venue had finally been booked. But the invitations still needed to be sent out, and in order for that to happen I had to sign off the guest list – a daunting spreadsheet that seemed to change every day. I remembered with horror the year an intern had accidentally deleted Glen Renton’s name from it, and we’d had to have an invitation couriered to him three days before the event, together with a cooked-up story about the original having been lost in the post.
Meanwhile, Charlie Berry was about to embark on a trip to South Korea, Singapore and Japan to promote his new skincare line. It would mean Rosie being out of the office for a week babysitting him – a job that would normally have been mine but, with Megan off, there was no way I could take such a chunk of time out of the office.
Somehow, I got through that week. I’d have been dreading the weekend, but work came to my rescue in the form of VlogCon, a two-day conference that kept me rushed off my feet all day and showing my face at various drinks parties long into the evening.
As was customary on Monday mornings, I gathered the Ripple Effect team around the meeting-room table over coffee. It was a ritual Megan and I had started back when I joined, when we were the only two members of staff; not a formal meeting – more a chance to bond, touch base, and sketch out a general plan for the week ahead.
I filled them in on the goings-on at VlogCon, then asked how my team’s weekends had gone.
‘I went to a festival,’ Isla said. ‘I thought it was going to be really chilled – it’s just a little local thing near where I live, but I ended up spending both days there and getting totally hammered, and look how sunburned I am. And I ate all the junk food. There were these pimped hot dogs that were off the scale. I thought I’d try one for lunch on Saturday and they were so good I legit had about six more. I didn’t eat anything else all weekend. And I’m really sorry guys, I’m going to be sweating tequila all over you all day.’
‘I was at a hen do,’ Rosie said. ‘It was so brilliant. We went for brunch at Shack-Fuyu and then we had spa treatments and then we did a cake-decorating class and then we went for cocktails and had dinner and went clubbing afterwards. I brought us cupcakes.’
She opened the shiny white cardboard box in front of her, and there were more oohs of appreciation at her frosting and sprinkle-arranging skills.
‘That one there’s chocolate fudge, the middle one’s red velvet, that one’s lemon, the violet one’s – well, violet, obviously – and the other one’s salted caramel. I’ll have that if no one else wants it – it’s a bit Marmite, to be honest. Literally. I overdid the salt a bit.’
Even though it was only nine thirty in the morning, we all launched enthusiastically into the cupcakes and agreed to split the remaining one between whoever was still in the office in the afternoon.
‘It won’t be me,’ Sam said, with a hint of pride. ‘Ruby-Grace wants me.’
‘Fnar, fnar,’ Rosie said. ‘Lucky boy.’
Sam turned absolutely scarlet. ‘Not like that! But seriously – she’s dead high-maintenance. On Saturday I had to go shopping at Westfield with her. We must have visited every single store in the whole mall and she bought an absolute fuck-ton of stuff and I had to wait outside the fitting rooms while she tried on, like, a million things and tell her if she looked good in them – she did, obviously; she’d look amazing in a spud sack – and carry all her bags. I thought my arms were going to fall off and my feet were legit killing by the end. And she did it all in heels, she’s hardcore.’
‘So what does she want you to do this afternoon, then?’ I asked.
‘Go with her to have her lip fillers done. Apparently she’s scared of needles and she needs someone to hold her hand.’
‘Wow, Sam, isn’t that above your pay grade?’ Isla teased.
‘I wish it was. I’m shit scared of needles, too. I’ll probably faint or something, and make a total arse of myself. But, you know, I’ll get to hold her hand.’
I wondered briefly whether I ought to remind Sam about not getting too close to our clients, but until we had some more work for Ruby-Grace, it was probably best to keep her sweet. And besides, I had a client of my own whose hand needed holding. I said, ‘Vivienne Sterling got a callback for that TV commercial she auditioned for, so I’m going to go along and give her some moral support. In fact, I should head off in, like, five minutes. They always keep you waiting around for ages.’
Sure enough, two hours later, I was sitting in an under-air-conditioned reception area next to Vivienne, who was growing increasingly jittery.
‘My God, I’m absolutely sweltering,’ she whispered to me, pulling her jumper away from her body. ‘And the itching!’
‘I know,’ I soothed. ‘Just endure it for a few more minutes, okay? I’m sure they’ll call you in soon. And they clearly loved your look in the first casting call, otherwise they wouldn’t have called you back.’
‘Glamorous granny.’ Vivienne sighed. ‘Is that what my life has come to? Still, I suppose it’s marginally better than auditioning to play some frumpy old dear in support stockings and a perm that makes your head look like a cauliflower.’
‘You look fabulous,’ I reassured her, and it was true. She was wearing black leather trousers, a scarlet woollen jumper, and over-the-knee suede boots – which, while totally inappropriate for a hot London afternoon in September, clearly chimed exactly with what the advertising agency had had in mind when they’d decided that their client, Timpson’s Turkeys, should feature an older woman in its Christmas advertising campaign.
I could see her glancing around at the other women, patiently waiting their turn on hard plastic chairs. One was wearing a full-on evening dress in sage-green velvet, teamed with gold stilettos, which I thought was taking the ‘glamorous’ idea a bit further than necessary. Another was wearing ripped jeans and a jumper with Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer on it, surrounded by flashing LEDs. I imagined her looking in the mirror, saying to herself, ‘Festive? Certainly. Too much? Oh God, it is, isn’t it?’ and then thinking, ‘Fuck it, it’ll be worth it if I get the gig,’ and determinedly covering the jumper with her coat. I noticed Vivienne glance at her, then glance away again, suppressing a smile, and wondered if she was imagining the same.
The door at the opposite end of the room opened and another middle-aged actress appeared, accompanied by a woman who might have been her daughter or might have been her agent. Wearing a cream jumper dress in a chunky knit and caramel-coloured suede boots, her hair an edgy silver pixie crop, she looked every inch the part. Again, Vivienne stole a glance at her then looked away, ducking her face to rummage in her handbag.
‘That’s Sheila Andrews,’ she whispered as soon as the two had left the room. ‘She was at drama school with me. An absolute bitch. I suppose it’s comforting in a way to know I’m not the only one to have fallen on hard times.’
‘This isn’t the end, you know,’ I said. ‘Think of it as a beginning – just a way of getting your performance and audition head back on, okay? It doesn’t matter if you don’t get it. There’ll be other opportunities. It’s only an ad for turkeys, right?’
No, We Can't Be Friends: A totally perfect romantic comedy Page 16