The Other Woman

by Jane Green

  Oh, thank you, God. Thank you, thank you, thank you. So he hasn’t come out of this unscathed; it’s not as painless as it appears. For the first time since seeing him that night in Belsize Park, I begin to feel a glimmer of hope.

  “You do think he’s hurting, then?” I need to hear it from his mother, particularly after my recent imaginings.

  “Of course he’s hurting,” she snorts. “He doesn’t know what to do with himself, but his pride has been hurt too, which is why he won’t go to you first, even though he wants to. You’ll have to go to him. Trust me, I know you know him well, but I’ve known him a lot longer.”

  “He hasn’t been out partying every night? I assumed he’d fall straight back into the life he had before he met me.”

  “Good Lord, no!” Linda says. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “What about Lola? Isn’t he seeing her?”

  “Lola? You mean the girl who presents his new show?” Linda looks at me as if that’s the most ridiculous thing in the whole world.

  “But I saw them together,” I protest. “And she was all over him.”

  Linda shakes her head. “You can’t have seen what you thought you saw. I promise you. She just got married and is pregnant with their first child, and deliriously happy, from what Dan says. He took her out for dinner to talk about work while the husband was working in Leicester, but I can promise you there’s nothing going on there. First of all, she isn’t the type, and second, Dan isn’t interested in anyone other than you.”

  She isn’t the type? I remember Linda talking about another type, the type that would sweep away with a man who belonged to someone else, and I shift uncomfortably on my chair as Linda appears to read my mind.

  She signals the waitress for the bill, then turns back to me. “So how are your friends?” she says. “Trish and…Lisa?”

  Is it my imagination or did she pause; did she say her name with more meaning, does she know? Does she know? What do I do if she asks me? Can I deny it? Can I lie?

  “They’re fine,” I say, unable to quite meet her eye. “I still see a lot of them.”

  There’s an awkward silence that I try to fill by sipping my Perrier, although once the glass reaches my lips I realize it’s all gone.

  “I was right about Lisa, you know,” Linda says quietly, and I gasp and look at her. Oh, God. She does know. How does she know?

  “How do you know?” My eyes are wide with horror, my voice almost a whisper.

  “I’m not stupid.” She smiles sadly. “I could see what was happening in France.”

  I sit staring at her, mute. I don’t know what to say. What does this mean? Is she leaving Michael? Is she able to forgive him?

  “What are you going to do?” I say finally.

  “Do?” She looks at me and laughs. “Nothing! I could see she was coming on to Michael, flirting with him when she thought we were all engrossed in other conversations, giving him long meaningful looks. Happily my husband isn’t the type to have an affair,” she laughs lightly, “otherwise I would have been seriously worried.”

  She doesn’t know. How could she not know? How could she have put two and two together and come up with three and a half?

  “So nothing happened between them?” I can’t help it—I can’t believe she doesn’t know. I want to hear just what he told her.

  “Not for lack of her trying,” Linda snorts. “Do you know she even had the audacity to invite him out for lunch?”

  I attempt an innocent look. “Really?”

  Linda laughs. “I know. What a young girl like her is thinking of, going after a middle-aged married man, I just can’t think.”

  There’s nothing I can say.

  “I never thought she was your type,” Linda sniffs. “And I certainly never trusted her. Anyway, Michael and I are happier than we’ve ever been. Last night he came home with tickets to Florence for the weekend! As a surprise!” She giggles girlishly. “So your friend definitely picked the wrong couple!”

  I nod and look away. Enough has been said. The fact that she was right about Lisa doesn’t mean she ever has to know any more than she already does. God knows how she knows about Lisa’s lunch invitation—maybe Michael really didn’t mean for it to go as far as it did back then—but she looks happy, and I believed Michael on the phone. It is over, and hopefully Linda will never know.

  I change the subject deftly, and we chitchat as we prepare to leave. I think how much I have enjoyed this lunch, now that Linda has relaxed, now that we seem to have found a way forward.

  I had thought that we might get everything out in the open. I thought the lunch might be full of recriminations, talking about who has been hurt, and how we’ve been hurt, and how we felt, and how we feel now.

  I was ready for an emotional onslaught, and I am so grateful that we didn’t have to do that, that Linda doesn’t want me to bare my soul. Nor does she want to list every grievance she has ever had against me.

  We have found a way forward, without having to go back over all of the pain, and this time I really can see how we can forge a relationship, how we can be part of each other’s lives.

  “So you really think I should go to Dan first?” I say, as we put on our coats and get ready to leave, Linda having treated me to lunch as she always did, too immersed in her role as mother supreme to do anything differently.

  “I really do,” she says with a smile, and she hesitates before putting her arm around my shoulder and squeezing me, just like the loving, affectionate Linda of old.

  “Call him tonight, and tell him you want to talk.”

  Epilogue

  Oh, my God! You have to be kidding!” Dan and I let out whoops of delight as we put our hand luggage down on the marble floor and walk quickly over to the huge glass window to see the ocean views.

  “This is amazing!” I turn to Dan and grin as he puts his arm around me and kisses me on the lips.

  “And who didn’t want to come on a family holiday?” he says, shoving me gently.

  “Yes, well. This isn’t exactly a family holiday. It’s your mother’s sixtieth birthday, not to mention the fact that your father’s paying for everything. Trust me, if it were up to us, we’d never be here.”

  “Trust me,” Dan laughs, “if it were up to us, we’d never be able to afford to be here.”

  “True.” I nod in acquiescence.

  Sandy Lane. The hotel of hotels. The destination of choice for the rich and famous. A place I never thought I would be able to go to in my wildest dreams.

  Michael announced two months ago that he was bringing the whole family here as a surprise for Linda’s sixtieth. They arrived yesterday, and she has no idea that the rest of us will be turning up tonight for her birthday dinner at The Cliff.

  Tom gazes in awe at the giant plasma TV screen that faces the sofa in our suite; then he runs into the bedroom.

  “Mum!” he calls excitedly. “Dad! There’s another ginormous TV screen in here too. Can we watch it now? Can we, Dad? Please?”

  “No, darling,” Dan says, following him into the bedroom. “No TV today.” He turns to me and rolls his eyes. “He’s not even four years old and already he’s obsessed with television. What’s he going to be like as a teenager?”

  I grin. “Distract him with a giant sand castle. They sell buckets and spades in the gift shop.”

  “For about a hundred quid.” Dan shakes his head.

  “But it’s for your darling son,” I say. “Go on. Buy a bucket and spade and take him down to the beach.”

  Dan picks up Tom and puts him on his shoulders. “Come on, Mr. T. How about we go down to the beach and build a sand castle?”

  “Yeah!” Tom shouts. “Great idea, Dad!” And he drags his suitcase into his bedroom to dig out his swimming trunks and get changed.

  The boys go off to the beach as I place a sleepy Millie in the cot they’ve brought up for us.

  She missed her nap, and even though she was wonderful on the plane, her thumb is in her mouth and
she’s leaning her head on my chest, a sure sign she’s ready for bed.

  I sneak back into her darkened bedroom after five minutes, and she’s already asleep, her eyelashes curling softly above the curve of her cheek, still sucking gently on her thumb, and I resist the urge to lean down and cover her with kisses, knowing it will wake her up, knowing she’s not yet in a deep-enough sleep.

  It is so very different having a daughter. I was so scared, for so long, that I would somehow repeat the patterns of my own mother, that I wasn’t ready for a daughter, that I may never be ready for a daughter.

  And yet the minute she was born I fell completely in love with her. Even now, at nine months old, she is so very different from Tom. Softer, quieter, happier. Where Tom was serious, Millie never stops smiling. Where Tom, being a boy, was always slightly alien to me, I know exactly who Millie is, what she’s thinking, what she’s about.

  I leave her in her room—oh the joys of having a two-bedroom suite—and unpack our clothes before grabbing an apple from the fruit basket and going to sit on the terrace outside.

  I can’t stop smiling at how luxurious this place is. Even on the terrace there’s a sofa. A sofa! Outside! It must be costing Michael a fortune, but if this is the price he has to pay for that long-ago indiscretion, then this is the price he has to pay.

  I try not to think about those days very often. Two years after Dan and I got back together, we have come so far, all of us, and I feel like a completely different person. When I do think back to those dark days when Tom had the accident, when Dan and I were separated and Michael was having an affair with Lisa, I think how extraordinary it is that I can be so happy now, when I was so unbelievably, excruciatingly unhappy then.

  I see Dan holding Tom’s hand, scanning the rows of balconies on the Orchid Wing until he sees me, and then they both wave and blow me kisses, and I blow kisses back until they disappear.

  We have become the family I always dreamed of having. Not that it was instant, or easy. Those first few weeks when Dan and I got back together it was often awkward at times, but we worked through it, with the help of a marriage counselor, knowing that we were together for the right reasons and that we both wanted it to succeed—not just for Tom’s sake but also for our own.

  Looking back, I remember it as happening overnight, although I’m sure that’s just a trick of memory, that nothing was ever that simple. But I remember it being slightly awkward between us for a while, and then one day it was suddenly fine. No, better than fine. One day it was suddenly wonderful.

  Then, quickly, I was pregnant with Millie, and somehow I knew that it would be impossible for me to repeat the mistakes of my parents. Tom was never going to be the awkward, lonely single child that I had been; Tom would have a sibling, maybe two, maybe more.

  We would be a proper family.

  And my happiness and sense of contentment grow with every new day. Dan truly is my best friend now. My husband, my lover, my confidant. He is, as Sally put it—poor Sally, who is still single and desperately looking—the perfect husband.

  Who would have thought?

  And while Linda and Michael may not be the perfect in-laws, we’ve come a long way since those dark days of old.

  It took me a long time to forgive Michael. Actually, it took me a long time even to be able to look him in the eye. Not that he seemed to find it any easier. But as time went on I saw how much warmer he and Linda were to each other. It was as if his affair, or perhaps the ending of it, served to remind him of better days. Whether that made him more loving, or whether Linda started to appreciate him more, either way they, too, are far happier than they were a few years ago.

  In those early days I never saw any affection between them. Michael barely spoke, and Linda spoke to him mostly to put him down. But now they talk, and smile at one another, and I have even seen Linda spontaneously kiss Michael. Oh, sure, it doesn’t happen all that often, but even Dan has commented that his parents are happier than he has ever seen them.

  Perhaps our happiness is contagious.

  Linda is certainly softer than she used to be. She is more cautious with me, more careful than in the days before Tom had the accident, but, as I have said to Dan, that is no bad thing. I would rather she is careful with me than overwhelm me as she used to do, trying to turn me into her daughter, then resenting and occasionally hating me for not playing along.

  We have found a way to make it work.

  She is not, nor ever will be, the mother I never had, and I have no intention of being her daughter. What we are is mother-and daughter-in-law, and as such we have become friends. I do not confide in her, or turn to her for advice, much as I know she would like to give it.

  But we meet for lunch, usually once a week, and talk about inconsequential things—like books, and news, and people we know. We chat, and we laugh. We never talk about the important things, like Michael, or Dan, or the children, other than to relay stories of how adorable they are, or of funny things they have said.

  I always used to feel that Linda disapproved of me, that she thought she knew better, was better at everything, including motherhood. Now she tells me I am a wonderful mother, and instead of thinking she has an agenda, I choose to believe her. And we get along just fine.

  There’s a knock on the door and I look through the spy hole to see Emma standing there. I open the door and she throws her arms around me and gives me a huge hug.

  “Can you believe this place?” she says, walking into the suite and grabbing a pear before collapsing on the sofa. “Isn’t this the most incredible place you’ve ever seen? Makes Calden look like a cheap motel,” she laughs, taking a big bite.

  “Oh, thanks!” But she’s not wrong.

  “And, guess what? I swear I just saw one of the Gallaghers downstairs at the bar. And apparently last week Beyoncé was here. I’m dying to get down there and do some serious celeb spotting, although with my bloody luck I’ll only see Michael Winner.”

  I splutter with laughter. “So you’ve been warned to stay away from the beach too?” I remember Michael’s typed instructions of what to do on arrival to ensure Linda doesn’t spot any of us. “You know we’re allowed this end. Michael said as long as we stay up by the boats we’ll be okay. He and your mum are apparently up by the restaurant.”

  “I know, but Jake isn’t exactly inconspicuous.”

  “Ah, yes. Good point.”

  Jake Motrin. The latest celebrity chef that London has fallen in love with, not to mention Emma, who is, for the first time, saying this is finally it. Jake is The One. He is conspicuous for his fame (his last TV series had huge ratings and firmly established him as one of the top five, with his restaurant in Notting Hill currently the hottest and hippest in West London) and for his height (at six foot five he’s definitely a person you look at), so I take Emma’s point about not parading him on the beach, even if it is on the end that is away from Linda.

  I am not surprised that Emma is with someone like Jake. His fame, quite apart from his looks, is an obvious attraction for a girl like her, a girl who likes to see and be seen by all the right people. What does surprise me is that it truly does seem to be a good match. That Emma took it slowly, which she has never done before. That she moved into his bachelor flat in Marylebone and transformed it into a home. That she is now as happy staying in watching television as she is going out to a party.

  Richard is the only one who doesn’t seem to have moved on that much. Still Linda’s baby, still searching for the next hare-brained scheme, still as irresponsible as ever. I do often wonder whether he will ever be able to grow up, whether Linda has babied him just that little bit too much, whether his inability to settle down will stop him from ever finding happiness.

  But talk to Richard and he will say he is happy. He will tell you about his new idea for a series of videos with Jake—poor Jake getting roped into this barmy family—he will tell you that this idea is great, that he’s already had approaches from several production companies, that this i
s going to make him a fortune.

  And then he may or may not try to hit you up for money, depending on whether he sees you as a potential investor, but I would still say the same thing about him as I said all those years ago when I first met him. Lovely, but be very, very careful. If you’re single, and you quite like the look of him, like hearing him talk the talk, I would advise you to walk away now, before you get your heart broken like all of the others.

  But still. Emma is happy, and Dan is happy, and, as I always say, two out of three ain’t bad, and if you factor Linda and Michael into the equation, that surely cancels out Richard.

  You’re probably wondering about Lisa at this point. Unsurprisingly we are no longer best friends. The affair with Michael was just too hard a knock for us, and it hasn’t ever really been the same since.

  I have forgiven her. Absolutely and unequivocally, but we have both moved on. I think it was incredibly hard for her when Dan came back to me, and once Millie came along and cemented our family, Lisa’s life—still clubbing and partying and mixing with the beautiful people—seemed a world away from mine.

  We still see each other. Still have lunch from time to time, still meet up in the playground, but it’s not the same; we both just try to pretend that it is.

  Trish, on the other hand, is as great a friend as she always was. Greater perhaps, and undoubtedly my best friend, the best friend, in fact, I’ve ever had.

  I think we’ve all come a long way.

  The last time I saw Lisa she said she had met someone new. In the old days I would have wanted to hear all the details. Who he was, where they met, what their relationship was like, but now I don’t feel close enough to ask these things, or interested enough to know.

  I’m glad she’s happy, I wish her well, and I think that’s enough.

  Charlie Dutton is very famous now. He married one of his leading ladies, an English girl who managed that rare feat of making it big in Hollywood, joining the ranks of Catherine Zeta Jones and Minnie Driver, although, frankly, I’ll bet she’s not nearly as beautiful first thing in the morning without any makeup on.