Busy Woman Seeks Wife (19 page)

“You could work in that cinema, like I did. You’d be perfect for it—you never fall asleep in films, do you? Always staying
on to see the last boring credit, that’s you! Just change your surname, perhaps, if you do apply. Anyway, look on the bright
side. You’ve got more free time. You don’t have to do that woman’s ironing anymore. And you don’t have to hang out with that
weird old lady. Yes, I know you liked her. That’s ’cos you’re weird too. But in a good way. See you later. Off to work, tra
la la!”

Frankie sat down and tried to read the paper. He’d gone out to get it earlier as a way of trying to get the phone to ring
but not even that had worked. Unemployment figures up! Great, even more people to compete with. Frankie thought again about
the other actors who had been at the rehearsal rooms in St. John’s Wood going up for the part of the angst-ridden Joel. They’d
clearly all had more experience, even after applying the bullshit formula. Frankie knew, because he’d done it himself, you
could discount around thirty percent of what anyone said, rising to forty percent before an audition, and as much as sixty
percent if it was film or telly. He should just have left there and then, and not bothered to have humiliated himself. But
after such an awful confrontation with Alex, everything the Bean had taught him had gone out the window when it came to reading
for the part.

Frankie pushed Alex out of his mind. He had his own problems and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to apologize. He’d left three
answerphone messages and had even written a letter. If she was too pigheaded to see that everyone had just been trying to
help her and her precious career, that was certainly not his problem. But the Bean. Frankie stood up and started to pace again.
He really had to go and see her, but he’d let her down too, and after she’d pulled so many strings to get the producer to
see him. He caught sight of himself in the mirror. He looked bloody awful. Like a wanted man. If only he were! That decided
him. He couldn’t hide out here anymore like a housework-obsessed desperado, cleaning and polishing while the world passed
him by. He’d go out, take the bike and go to see the Bean. Perhaps she could cheer him up. Maybe, if he came clean and told
her just how badly he’d messed up at the audition, they could go over it together. It would be painful, of course, but he
might at least learn something.

E
lla sipped her coffee and resumed typing. She was definitely getting faster, although it would probably be physically impossible
for her to type any slower. Was it possible to type backward? She still couldn’t do it, however, without her tongue sticking
out ever so slightly—a fact that Mike, the boss, had teased her about mercilessly. She heard him stirring in his lair. He
had seemed grumpier than ever this morning, and she didn’t want to draw any more of his fire than she absolutely had to. Although
she had learned by now that he was largely benign, at least to her. Even so, if he thought she looked in need of something
to do, he might pull her off to go and do some photocopying or filing—both of which she hated. She quickly tucked her tongue
back in and returned to the keyboard.

Of course, it really wasn’t difficult for Ella to stay occupied in this job. She was loving it. She had always had a good
memory for things people told her, and now she found she could fit seemingly random facts together and turn them into a story—or
at least the germ of a story—that she could chase up. And the fact that she was so small and young-looking made it easy for
her to get talking to people, to hang around unnoticed and watch what was going on. People weren’t careful about what they
said when she was around. Like yesterday, when she’d stood watching that big four-wheel drive with the tinted windows parked
on the pavement, engine running, a handwritten note on the dash reading we’ll unlock your mobile phone while-u-wait.

And now here she was, writing it up as part of her story about the increase in street crime in the area, and the irony of
how criminals are providing a stolen mobile phone unlocking service for street thieves. Ella sat back and stretched, glancing
around at the other desks in the room. Kerry had just arrived and treated Ella to a glare before sitting at her computer and
checking through her e-mails. “Oh! Now that’s interesting!” Kerry did this a lot—making statements in the hope someone would
ask her to expand. Ella gave her a scornful glance and shuffled through her sketchy handwritten notes to make sure she hadn’t
missed anything.

Luke came in, checking his watch against the clock on the wall as he did every morning. God, he was tedious. Kerry spun around
in her chair and greeted Luke with surprising warmth. “Hi! Good morning and how are you today?”

“Er, all right, thanks,” he stammered, his Adam’s apple wobbling up and down as he swallowed nervously.

“Check your e-mail. I’ve just had one from Lindsay. Bet she’s copied it to you.”

Luke switched on his screen. “Oh, do you think so? Let’s have a look.”

Ella kept her eyes squarely on the screen, but was now listening to the conversation going on behind her. Lindsay was the
woman she’d been called in to replace, all that time ago, when she’d just started that stupid job looking after the Bean.
It seemed a lifetime ago now. She shook her head wryly. How long would she have been able to stick that out? God bless Lindsay
and her bad back!

She jumped when her phone buzzed. “Hello, Mike! And what can I do for you?”

“Ella? In here now. We need to have a talk.”

Ella scowled as she replaced the phone. That didn’t sound good. He hadn’t called her Lois, his usual nickname for her. This
could mean only one thing. She sighed, picked up her notes and went through to his cave. “Please, God, no more photocopying.
I’m better than that!” she groaned as she perched on the chair in front of his desk. “By the way, when I said God just then,
I didn’t mean you. Whatever it is, can we be quick, ’cos I want to get back out on this story. Any chance I could borrow your
mobile?”

Mike hadn’t looked up from the papers he was shuffling on his desk. When at last she trailed off, he raised his eyes and stared
at her for a moment. “Sorry, kid. I’m going to have to let you go. I’ve just heard from Lindsay. She’s been given the all
clear to come back.” Ella felt a sudden sharp pain in her stomach. He shrugged. “Well, you knew it was only going to be for
a while, eh?”

Her notes slipped from her hands and she dropped to the floor to gather them up. “Oh well. Yes of course,” she jabbered. “I’ll
be off then. I wanted to go, er, shopping anyway and I’ve got loads of things to do.” Her mind was racing. She stood up without
looking at him, concentrating so hard on the pages crumpled in her hands that she didn’t even hear him call her name as she
rushed headlong from the room to gather up her jacket and backpack.

S
aff dropped the clothes in the washing basket and opened the bathroom window. The heat today was stifling, with a humidity
that wasn’t even relieved by opening all the windows. Lucky Max would be sitting in an air-conditioned office. He’d been so
busy these past couple of weeks they’d barely had time to speak, and when he was home he was holed up in his study on some
new investigative documentary project about benefit fraud. Or something.

Saff wiped some storm bugs off the windowsill and looked out at the dry patch of garden. How lovely it would be to have a
view of fields and to keep chickens, and to have a dog to walk in the woods. At least that would give her something interesting
to do. Some friends had mentioned meeting for coffee at Starbucks, but she couldn’t face the inane chatter about holidays
and children and men.

Slowly she walked into Oscar’s room, the remnants of the morning discarded all over the floor, his pajama bottoms lying in
a pool on top of his slippers, where they’d dropped as if he’d been propelled out of them. She sighed and leaned down to pick
them up. So dull, so boring to do this every morning. So stultifyingly tedious that each day was a landscape of the same tasks,
broken only by the occasional highlight, and the other night playing poker had been one of them. They had laughed so much,
the three of them, and the Bean had been in her element teaching them both how to bluff. Then Alex had walked in.

Saff slumped on Oscar’s unmade bed, her stomach clenching again as it had almost constantly since she’d seen Alex standing
there in her flat doorway, her face so drawn and her eyes so questioning. They had done a terrible thing. They may have convinced
themselves that the Frankie deception was to “help Alex out” but it had gone too far—she winced as she remembered the dinner
party. She realized now they should have let on that Ella couldn’t do the job and given Alex the chance to replace her. Frankie
stepping in was only meant to be temporary, but instead he had stayed and it had become a sort of bonding joke. So much so
they had actually forgotten about the feelings of the person they were deceiving. Shame on them.

Saff threw the pajama bottoms onto the floor again. How could they have done such a thing? Alex was the most honest person
she knew. She despised artifice, which explained why she found her mother’s expansive gestures and exaggeration so irritating.
Knowing all that, how could Saff have put her oldest friendship in such jeopardy? She’d tried calling Alex at home but had
gotten the answering machine. She hadn’t bothered with the mobile because she knew her number would come up and Alex would
ignore it. Even at the office her calls had been diverted to her assistant, who kept saying she was “away from her desk,”
a phrase Saff loathed.

Turning her back on Oscar’s mess, Saff made her way downstairs and, making herself a cup of coffee, went out to sit on the
garden bench, surrounded by her flowering tubs, an urban apology for a garden. With a surge, she realized how lonely she was.
The children were at school, too excited and busy to bother with irrelevancies like being tidy; Max was being important and
needed; Alex didn’t want to speak to her and she deserved that. Saff could hear her mother’s voice in her ear telling her
to pull herself together. Do some charity work. Visit the elderly. Join a committee. But Saff knew she couldn’t find the energy
or the enthusiasm. The phone rang in the kitchen.

“Hi, Saff? It’s Ella. Frankie got your number from the Bean for me. I hope you don’t mind me calling?”

Saff smiled in surprise. She’d liked Ella when they’d met at the famous dinner party and despite everything was pleased to
hear from her. “No, no, not at all.”

“Only I heard about the Alex thing and wanted to say… well, I’m sorry. It’s probably all my fault.”

“It was all our faults,” Saff sighed. “Mine most of all. Don’t blame yourself.”

There was a pause. “I wondered, if you’re not too busy, are you free for a coffee?”

Saff laughed drily. “I’m never busy.”

An hour later they were both sitting on the garden bench. “Oh, this house is so lovely, Saff. It’s a real home.”

“Is it?” Saff could hear the bitterness in her own voice. “It’s not much of an achievement just being a housewife.”

Ella nudged her. “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that, you know. People need lovely homes to come back to and people to look
after them.”

Saff looked down at the cup in her hands. “It’s not so great when you are stuck in it all the time.” She looked at the girl
beside her, envious of her youthful energy and optimism. For all the girl’s flightiness, she was surprisingly thoughtful.
It was she who’d noticed how condescending Todd had been at the dinner party, and any relation of Frankie’s couldn’t be all
bad. “I’m bored rigid,” she blurted out, surprising herself. “What I need is something to do. A job, but one that I can do
and
look after the children ’cos I’d never earn enough to pay for child care, not with my lack of skills. Besides…” She
looked down again. “I want to be here for them or what’s the point?”

Ella tutted. “Yeah, jobs. They’re not all they are cracked up to be.”

“That sounds heartfelt. Yours not going well? I thought Frankie said you were enjoying it?”