Hell Hath No Fury

by Michelle Morgan

  Again.

  I’m so sick of her sarcastic comments and snappy little remarks recently. The other day she even told me off for padding around the reception in my stockinged feet. Okay, so it might be unorthodox to slip your shoes off under the desk, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who does it. It was just bad luck that I happened to need something from the filing cabinet, when Margaret appeared, and questioned where my shoes were. When I explained that I’d left them temporarily under my desk, I received a lecture on my recent unprofessional attitude to my work. I had no idea what she was talking about – except maybe lopping my son off the newsletter photo – but in any case, she carried on, telling me how terrible it would look if a guest or a parent arrived in reception and saw me barefoot.

  Oh, the horror of seeing a shoeless woman in the workplace!

  I shake my head at the thought of it, and then get back to my list of events to raise money for the school funds. I have four things so far… Cake sale, pop quiz, parents’-and-kids’ bingo, and a sponsored walk around the school field. It’s not the most original fundraiser in the world, but it’s the best I can come up with just hours before my meeting with Simon.

  ‘Charlotte, how far have you got with the events list?’

  Margaret appears from her office; a bundle of files under her arm. I try to hide my inadequate notes, but it’s too late. The principal plonks the folders on the desk, and reads the paper over my shoulder.

  ‘Cake sale? Didn’t we do one of those last week? Pop quiz? Definitely not. Parents’-and-kids’ bingo? How exactly are you planning to run that, without the parents being in the building?’

  ‘I… erm… It was really just an idea. I hadn’t got round to the logistics yet.’

  Margaret prods her finger onto my note about the sponsored walk around the field, and scowls.

  ‘Have you seen the field recently? It’s like a swamp out there, since it is autumn after all. So, unless you’re offering to clean all the muddy shoes, trainers and trousers afterwards, I suggest you delete it. The last thing I need in this school is a trail of footprints, and crying children because they’ve caught a chill, traipsing round the field in minus degrees.’

  ‘Of course. Sorry, I didn’t think.’

  I try to stop my hand from shaking, as I score the walk off my list, and then I end up deleting the rest of my ideas too.

  ‘I’ll look forward to seeing more ideas, later,’ Margaret says, and then stomps off down the corridor. If I wasn’t so uptight about my meeting with Simon, I might take offence at the way I’ve just been treated, but right now I can’t give it a second thought. Margaret will get her stupid list soon enough, but for now, I’m on a Simon countdown.

  God help me.

  The Mistletoe Inn is a sixteenth-century building, perched on the corner of Bromfield High Street. It’s kind of funny to describe it as a high street, since the only shops on there are a butcher, a gift shop, a too-expensive clothes store, a café and a newsagent. But anyway, for us villagers, it’s the centre of everything. Our version of Times Square, if Times Square was fifty feet long and made up of crumbling old buildings.

  It’s not even Halloween yet, but there is already a Christmas tree standing in the tiny window of the inn. It’s covered in bright-red baubles and silver lights, and there is a massive star perched on the top. I’m sure it’s there to get us in the mood for seasonal dinners and celebratory events, but it just makes me even more nervous. It’s the same with those fish tanks that they have in dental surgeries. The fish are supposed to give off an aura of calm and peace, but seeing them dart around like that, does nothing but bring on my anxieties.

  As weird as that may be.

  I catch my reflection in one of the windowpanes, and try to study it without anyone realising. It took me ages to get ready today, though goodness knows why I have gone to so much trouble. What do I want Simon to think? That I’m still pretty? That I’m still interested in him? That I still think about him, even now after all these years?

  Yes.

  No.

  I don’t know.

  It’s three minutes before Simon is due to meet me, so I push the heavy door, and go inside. The heat hits me with so much force that my glasses steam up. Thank goodness I’m a mother and always have a tissue in my pocket. I give them a quick wipe, order a lemonade from the bar, and then take it to a table in the corner. It’s far enough from the door that I won’t get a draft, but it’ll be close enough to see Simon as soon as he enters the room. The varnished table is sticky beneath my touch, and I wonder when it was last cleaned, but there is no time to dwell on that, because within seconds of me sitting down, the door swings open, and Simon walks in.

  He’s wearing a heavy overcoat, gloves and a flat cap, giving him the look of a country gentlemen, even though he is originally from London. He stares at me from across the almost empty lounge, gives me a wave and then orders a cider from the bar. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, and a minute later, he stands across from me.

  ‘Hi, Charlotte,’ he says. I’m surprised that he called me by my real name, instead of Lottie, which he knows pisses me right off.

  ‘Hey.’

  There is no question of him greeting me with a hug or a kiss or even a handshake, and I’m happy with that. He takes off his outerwear, settles them onto the wide, low windowsill and then sits opposite me.

  ‘I can’t believe they have their Christmas tree up already.’ He laughs. ‘Is it me, or does that event get earlier and earlier, and more commercial every year?’

  I nod in agreement, but all I can think about is how my parents say that kind of thing all the time. God, I used to think he was so cool, but now he’s middle-aged. I guess time catches up with all of us eventually, but I always imagined that Simon would stay cool. He takes a gulp of cider, and eyes me over the top of the glass. When he’s finished, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, but a thin strand of liquid still glints on the top of his lip. I can’t take my eyes off it.

  ‘So, how’ve you been?’

  Actually, I’ve been raising your son for the past ten years. How’ve you been?

  ‘I’ve been okay. You?’

  He nods and takes another mouthful of cider.

  ‘Good, good. Can’t complain as they say. You married? Kids?’

  His nonchalant questioning makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and I pray that my face doesn’t give away the answer.

  ‘No, not married. I see you are though.’

  He laughs.

  ‘Yeah. In name anyway, if nothing else.’

  This again. A decade later and he’s still saying the same thing; still desperate for people to think he’s a misunderstood husband, rather than a serial philanderer. I pity him. I pity him and his stupid wife.

  ‘So, what can I do for you?’ He smiles and reveals those perfect, white teeth of his, and it puts me on edge.

  I have no bloody idea what he can do for me. Have I ever known?

  ‘Well, I… I don’t know to be honest. I just… I just… I thought… Well… I wanted…’

  ‘Christ, Charlotte, have you developed a stutter since I last saw you? Do you think you can spit it out before closing time?’

  ‘Okay, I want to know what you’re doing here.’

  There, I said it.

  ‘What I’m doing here in the pub, or what I’m doing in Bromfield?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  The pub door swings open, and a blast of cold air whooshes down the lounge and straight to our table. So much for the corner protecting me from the elements. I cross my arms around my chest, but I’m still freezing.

  ‘Monica and I decided to move back to Bromfield about six months ago. We’d both had enough of London. It makes me sound like an old geezer, but it’s a place for youngsters, not middle-aged cronies like myself. Besides that, I wanted to expand my business, so now I have an office in London and another in Northampton.’

  I have to bite my tongue t
o stop myself admitting that I already knew about the company expansion. Christ, if Simon knew my friend had investigated him, his ego would be out of control.

  ‘Okay, I understand you wanting to get out of London, but why did you come here? Bromfield has a population of what? A couple of thousand? Maybe not even that. It’s not the centre of the universe, is it? If you wanted to open an office in Northampton, you could have moved there.’

  Simon rubs the corner of his eye. His fingers are immaculate. They’ve always been immaculate.

  ‘No, Bromfield isn’t the centre of the universe, but we wanted to avoid living in a big town again. Besides, Monica’s parents are just down the road in one of the villages, so it seemed like a perfect choice. Plus… I kind of hoped I’d bump into you one day. I felt like I needed to apologise to you.’

  ‘To me?’

  ‘For the way I treated you, ten years ago. It was unforgivable.’

  I take a sharp breath and the air hits me at the back of my throat. I was hoping that the conversation would go nowhere near the events of a decade ago, but I guess that just makes me naïve. He was bound to mention it. Why wouldn’t he?

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ I pick at the corner of my beer mat, and try to restrain myself from tearing it into a thousand pieces. Simon grabs my hands and I jerk and pull them back. He notices the inappropriateness of his behaviour, retreats, scratches his head and makes a weird sucking sound with his lips.

  ‘Look, I need you to know that I never meant to leave you at the clinic that day. It was always my intention to come back and collect you.’

  ‘It’s okay…’

  ‘No, it isn’t. You see, as soon as I got back to the office, my wife messaged me.’ He lowers his voice and tilts his head towards me. ‘She had taken a fucking overdose.’

  ‘She what?’

  His words rattle around my brain. An overdose? An overdose just after she had seen me walk out of the clinic, still pregnant with her husband’s baby? More guilt. More ever-increasing guilt.

  ‘She had found out that I was seeing someone.’ He waves his hands in the air. ‘Don’t worry, she didn’t know it was you. Anyway, she was devastated that there was somebody else in my life, so took an overdose and then rang me. I had to race home, get her to the hospital and by the time all that had happened, it was too late to pick you up.’

  I take a sip of my lemonade, to try and cleanse myself of this information; of this conversation; of this whole fucking episode. I have no idea what I’m supposed to say now, but my mouth just snaps out the first stupid thing that enters my head.

  ‘That’s such bullshit.’

  The words come out louder than I expect them to, and an old man in a green waxed jacket looks up from his beer and scowls. Simon straightens up, surprised at my defiance. I don’t think I ever dared speak to him like that when we were together.

  ‘It’s true, Charlotte! When I got home, she had already vomited all over the couch, but I still took her to hospital, and they pumped what was left of her stomach. It was awful.’

  It’s horrifying to think that my actions caused another woman so much pain, but in my defence, I was just a teenager, with no ties, and no responsibilities. That can’t be said for Simon, however. He told me the marriage was over, that he had had enough and was leaving. If the overdose is anyone’s fault, it’s his… And hers for staying with the wanker.

  I just need to keep telling myself that.

  ‘Look,’ I say. ‘I can’t make any judgements on what your wife did that day. If I was in her position, I’m sure I’d have felt the same way. But why didn’t you contact me after that? Couldn’t you even send me a text? Let me know what was happening? You owed me an explanation after what you’d put me through. Even a simple goodbye would have been better than silence. Ten years of silence!’

  Simon grabs my hands again, and this time I don’t take them away. I’m too angry, and upset, and yet I have no idea why I feel this way. Is it because he chose to stay with his wife, or because he saved her from death? Perhaps if she’d died, we’d have been able to make a go of things.

  Shit! I can’t think this way. It’s cruel and it’s selfish, and yet I can’t help but wonder.

  ‘Don’t you think I’ve regretted that day ever since it happened? I have! I’m not a monster, Lottie. I had feelings for you. Real feelings, and I know that what I did makes me look like an asshole, but you need to know that if I could have called, I would have. The reality is, my phone corrupted and I lost all of my contacts. Then I moved to London and had no way of getting hold of you. That’s just the way it was. I’m sorry. For everything. I’m sorry.’

  It takes me all my time not to laugh out loud. His phone deleted his contacts? How old is that story? And he had no way of contacting me, and yet he knew where my acting college was, and he knew where I’d be rehearsing every day until the play opened. It’s all crap, and while his charm might have worked on that little nineteen-year-old girl who fell in love with him all those years ago, it’s not going to work on me now.

  And yet I want to believe that it’s true.

  The voices in my broken heart still wonder if there’s a chance of us living happily ever after with our son, while my mind screams back in despair. For fuck’s sake! Of course there isn’t. But isn’t it weird that no matter how old you get, all it takes is a loving look or a few choice words to turn you back into a giddy, loved-up, gullible teenager? I saw it with my aunt. Her husband cheated on her, and then the moment he apologised and told her he’d change, she reverted back to the young girl who had fallen in love with him in sixth form. Until it happened again, just three weeks later.

  ‘So, that day aside, are you really in Bromfield for your own interests, or are you looking for something from me?’

  Simon laughs, rubs his neck and leaves red scratches in his wake.

  ‘Lottie, as much as I enjoyed our relationship back in the day, that’s all in the past now. I know I’m a bit of a flirt, but in spite of what I say, I love Monica, and would never do anything to hurt her.’ I open my mouth to remind him that he did plenty to hurt her ten years ago, but he keeps on speaking. ‘I’ve moved on, and it’s time that you did, too.’

  A snort-cum-laugh shoots out of my mouth and the old man on the next table looks up again. He’s pretending to do the crossword in the local newspaper, but I suspect this is the juiciest conversation he’s heard in many years. His pencil hovers over the paper, but I can guarantee that his eyes are not seeing any of the words in front of him.

  ‘Move on? Oh, believe me I moved on many years ago, so don’t even go there.’

  I hold my hand like a shield in front of me, and Simon sits back in his chair and smiles.

  ‘Okay, I believe you. But in answer to your question, no I’m not in town to get anything from you. I’ve had enough drama in my life, and don’t have any room for more. Let’s change the subject.’

  ‘Fine. How are your children?’

  Simon’s eyebrows knit together and he rubs the stubble on his chin. It used to be all black when I knew him, but now it’s speckled with grey.

  ‘My children? What are you talking about? I don’t have any children.’

  What? My mind goes all the way back to ten years ago, when we sat in his car and he showed me photos of his kids. Was I dreaming that? No, definitely not. I remember him telling me – wrongly – that he couldn’t have kids naturally, and his family had been conceived through IVF. What’s going on?

  ‘You do have children,’ I say. ‘You showed me pics of them when we were alone in your car, remember?’

  My hands are shaking, and I rip at the corners of the beer mat, in an effort to steady myself.

  ‘I think I’d remember if I had children, Charlotte! You must be getting me mixed up with somebody else. It can happen. It was a long time ago.’

  Simon seems confused. In reality, he’s told so many lies over the years that he can’t keep up with himself. He probably does have children, but has just fo
rgotten about them.

  ‘But when I saw you in Waterstones, Monica said you had to go and pick up Betty. I presumed that was your daughter.’

  ‘No, that’s our dog. She’d been at the groomers.’ He throws his hands up, as though in a western movie. ‘I can assure you I have no kids. Godchildren, yes, though they’re hardly children anymore. I’d show you a pic of them, but it’s in my other wallet.’

  His godchildren. So that’s who was in the photo he showed to me all those years ago. It hits me that the only reason he told me he had kids, was an excuse for why he couldn’t leave his stupid wife. That’s what men do, isn’t it? They can’t possibly hurt the children’s feelings by leaving when they’re so young… Maybe when they’re older, maybe when they understand what goes on in the world, maybe when they’re actually real. Ugh! This man makes me sick and I can’t believe I fell for his patter, back in the day. What an asshole.

  Before Simon can say anything else, his phone vibrates against the table. He picks it up, studies it for a second and then stuffs it into his pocket.

  ‘I’m so sorry, but I’ve got to go.’

  My ex-lover gets up from the chair, and it makes a grinding noise against the wooden floor. He throws his arms into his coat, and then sticks his cap on his head.

  ‘It was nice talking to you, Lottie,’ he says. ‘Let’s meet up again soon, okay? I’ll message you.’

  He reaches over and kisses my cheek, and then marches over to the door. As he opens it, the cold air whooshes in and dries the saliva he left on my skin. I rub at it and then gel my hands, while the old man on the next table sniggers.

  ‘Glad to see the back of him, eh, love?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I say, as I look at the closed door.

  The former love of my life is gone.

  Again.

  I finish my lemonade, pop to the toilet and then head back onto the street. I pass by the pub car park, just in case Simon is still there, but he isn’t. The space is empty, except for a huge skip, an old blue van and the landlord’s Range Rover. A ginger cat eyes me from next to a wheelie bin, and I can’t help but think he’s judging me for meeting my old married lover.