Spellbound (4 page)

Then during a trip to Denmark he met Inge, a waitress at the coffee shop next to the hotel. He met her on the first day, and was in bed with her by the third. A business trip doesn’t count, he told himself, pushing away the guilt, as long as I don’t do anything in London, on my home turf.

That lasted precisely four more months.

And now his latest is Valerie. Valerie who is sophisticated enough not to be taken in by his charm, who is dangerous enough to have her own agenda, to want to play games just to see what kind of reaction she can incur.

He knows that on one level Valerie is a safe choice. Far too experienced a woman, a lover, a mistress, to believe that sex is anything other than sex, she would not actually do anything to seriously jeopardize his marriage, he knows, but Alice is not stupid, and until last night, when Valerie turned up at the restaurant to play a little mind fuck, Joe had not realized quite how close to the wind she was prepared to sail.

Joe is much more careful now about the women he chooses, but clearly not quite careful enough. And then, at times like this, when he is nearly caught, when he is shocked into realizing quite how much he stands to lose should Alice ever discover his affairs, he vows to stop, to settle down and become a proper husband again.

*

‘Valerie.’ He gazes down at her, knowing that this is the last time he will sleep with her. ‘I can’t do this any more.’

‘I thought you might say that.’ Valerie reaches over and grabs her robe, for as hard and ruthless as she may be, the prospect of being dumped while naked makes her instantly vulnerable, and she needs to cover herself for protection. ‘And was it because I turned up last night? Or were you growing bored with me?’ She isn’t upset, merely curious, and they both know full well that there will be another Joe in a matter of days, that there may in fact be a number of Joes already waiting in the wings.

‘Ah well. Tant pis. I had a lovely time.’ She cups his cheek in her hand and kisses him on the lips, stroking his cheek tenderly. ‘You are going to try to be a faithful husband now?’

Joe nods.

Valerie smiles. ‘Until the next Valerie comes along,’ and she turns and climbs back into bed. ‘Take care, my dear.’

‘And you too.’ Joe is relieved, grateful that she has taken this so calmly, like such a professional, and now wondering whether he is doing the right thing. Valerie sees the light go on in his eyes, and shakes her head.

‘No, Joe. No last goodbye fuck. I prefer my endings clear and clean cut.’ She blows him a kiss. ‘Go home to your wife and treat her well. Tell Alice I said hello.’

Joe sighs with relief as he walks down the stairs from Valerie’s apartment. No second thoughts now. With that last statement from Valerie, Joe knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s doing the right thing.

‘I hate these bloody things.’ Alice is on her hands and knees, phone cradled snugly between her chin and shoulder as she brushes paint stripper thickly on to the legs of a cherry demi-lune table she’s picked up in a junk shop.

‘I know, darling,’ Joe says beseechingly on the other end of the phone, ‘but it’s only an art gallery opening and I promise we won’t have to stay long.’

Once upon a time Alice would have loved going to the opening of an art gallery. She would have felt blessed to have been able to go to such a glamorous occasion, would have been awestruck at being allowed to see paintings before anyone else, would have stood in front of each painting for minutes at a time, drinking them in, forming an opinion.

But she has learnt not to do that any more. She has learnt that an art gallery opening is just another place to see and be seen. That you take a glass of champagne from a waiter bearing a silver tray when you arrive, then walk around the room air-kissing all the familiar faces, commenting on how marvellous the art is when in fact you can’t possibly see anything due to the hundreds of people crammed into one small gallery.

‘You promise we can come straight home afterwards? No other parties?’ She drops the paintbrush into a can and picks up a small wad of wire wool.

‘I promise. What are you doing now, Alice? What was that noise?’

‘Stripping a table I found.’

Joe laughs. ‘I don’t know why you always insist on doing it yourself. You can buy these pieces of furniture anywhere you want.’

‘Because I enjoy it,’ Alice says. For the hundredth time. ‘You know I get pleasure from it.’

‘That’s because you’re strange. You’re the only woman I know who actually enjoys getting filth under your nails and getting covered in paint.’

That’s because, Alice thinks, I’m the only woman you know who thinks there’s more to life than manicures and appearing in
Tatler
.

‘I promise I’ll clean up by tonight.’

‘I promise I’ll have you dirty again by the time we get to bed.’

‘Will you ever lose that schoolboy sense of humour?’

‘Would you want me to?’

Alice smiles, feeling loved and wanted, loving this feeling of closeness to her husband. It happens so rarely these days, but there are times when the pressure lifts and the cloud that seems constantly to overshadow her seems to disappear for a while, when Joe is not distracted and distant, when he reverts to the Joe she fell in love with.

Times like now, when work doesn’t seem to be as demanding and he is not required to be in the office all hours, when the business trips are few and far between.

And when the pressure of work has been relaxed, Joe is more relaxed. He is back to being the loving, playful husband he was when they met, and she has learnt to enjoy those times, for she knows they will not last.

She has heard the occasional rumours about her husband, but she chooses to ignore them. Infidelity is something she is simply not prepared even to think about.

4

The cab driver pulls up with a screech outside the gallery in Cork Street and even from this distant vantage point Alice can see Joe is already inside, standing head and shoulders above everyone else, chatting animatedly to a couple they see from time to time at gallery openings such as these and the odd dinner party.

Not friends, exactly. Acquaintances. Alice and Joe don’t have many of what Alice calls friends, not friends in the sense that Emily is a friend, not friends in the true sense of the word.

Of course there are people who consider Alice to be their friend, particularly those who feel it may benefit them in some way to be seen with Alice Chambers, but Alice is fully aware they mix in superficial circles, and she has learnt to judge each overture of friendship with just the right amount of friendliness and suspicion.

Yet people want to be friends with Alice. They want to know more about her, want some of her luck and success to rub off on them. Women are drawn in by Alice’s natural warmth, and intrigued by her air of mystery.

They don’t know where she came from, just that Joe, hugely eligible and unlikely ever to settle down, suddenly announced he was getting married, and to a woman none of them had ever heard of.

And they have tried to get close to her, but with a charming smile she always manages to turn the conversation back to what they are doing, what they are thinking and feeling, and these women so love talking about themselves that after a while, flattered and charmed, they find that they haven’t found out anything more at all.

Of course people have talked about her. The cattier women in the circle claim she was a waitress, claim to have seen her serving sushi at parties many years ago. Others say it was her own business, that she was a hugely successful businesswoman in her own right, that the current hot caterers – Rhubarb and Mustard to name but two – modelled themselves on her unique and innovative style.

Neither is true, but they love to talk. Particularly when they have so little to go on.

Alice is frequently at their lunches, always impeccable in the latest designer outfits, always gracious as the others gossip away, but she doesn’t ever let anyone get too close, and the longer she has been married, the more rumours have started swirling.

She refuses to have sex with Joe, they say, which of course is why he’s off sleeping with anything in a skirt. She’s into swinging, they say, and in fact the two of them have been known to share Joe’s racier girlfriends. She’s clearly a dominatrix, they say, and a friend of the architect said the cellar had been converted into a dungeon complete with torture rack and chains.

The fact remains that the ladies who lunch are fascinated by Alice Chambers because they simply don’t know who she is. They long to be a fly on the wall in her bedroom, love seeing her walk into a restaurant, or a première, or an opening, to see what she’s wearing, whether she might do anything that would give them more fodder for gossip.

Alice pushes open the door of the gallery and gives Joe a half-wave and a smile. She has to squeeze through hordes of tightly packed people to reach him, and already she has seen more than half a dozen familiar faces, and she knows by the time she air-kisses and does the ‘Hellohowareyous?’ it will be several minutes before she reaches him.

No one is looking at the paintings. The loud buzz of conversation fills the air as people talk, and laugh, and constantly turn to see who else has walked in the door.

Clearly the gallery is the place to see and be seen tonight. Look over there, at the platinum blonde in the one-shouldered top, isn’t she the famous It girl? And the tousle-haired brunette with the miraculously growing pout, isn’t she you-know-who? And the fresh-faced pop star in the corner.

They’re all here tonight, the paparazzi scattered around going into a frenzy, not sure who to photograph first.

The celebrities turn and flash large sparkling white smiles for the cameras, careful to show off only their best sides, gracefully extending a leg in the most flattering of poses. They chat up the photographers, knowing it will work to their advantage, knowing that they will only stay in the papers for as long as they continue to court the press.

The women who are not famous glare furiously at the paparazzi, wishing that they were, hoping that their expressions of disgust may convince the photographers they might be famous too, may convince them to take their photographs as well.

The photographers turn to look at Alice with interest, a couple of them recognizing her from the diary pages, and as soon as one raises his camera to flash a quick snap, the others run over just in case they’ve missed anything, and soon, much to Alice’s horror, the entire room has turned to stare at her.

No posing for Alice. No white-toothed smiles and smooth brown thigh peeping out from a long, slashed dress. Alice drops her eyes to the floor, lowers her head, and pushes past them, trying to reach Joe quickly, wishing that these people would just leave her alone.

‘Alice?’ She looks up as Emily puts her arms around her tightly and squeezes her. ‘What a fucking nightmare.’

‘Oh, Em!’ she whispers. ‘I hate these bloody people.’

‘Great.’ Emily releases her with a smile. ‘So why did you invite me?’

‘Because I didn’t think you’d come. You never come to anything, Emily, how come you’re even here?’

‘You’re right, I never come because I hate these people too, but you’re my best friend, and I love you, and I haven’t seen you for ages so I decided to brave it.’

‘You haven’t seen me for ages because you’re always so busy.’

‘Bollocks, Alice. You’re the one going off to this charity do, and that film première, and dinner at the Ivy all the time.’

‘Okay, we’re both busy. That’s the best you’ll get from me.’

Emily laughs. ‘Okay. That I’ll accept.’

‘Come and see Joe.’ Alice can see Joe has stopped talking, is waiting for Alice to reach him. ‘He’d love to see you.’

Emily can never quite decide what to make of Joe. She’s never been comfortable with his flirtatiousness (and no, of course he hasn’t flirted with Emily – he wouldn’t dare), and although Alice has said she trusts him, Emily does not, but there is something so irresistible about Joe, something so inherently likeable, that as much as she wants to hate him for his smooth charm, she can’t.

Of course Emily hasn’t heard the rumours. Emily mixes in a different social circle entirely, and although she does, from time to time, enter Alice’s world, she’s not comfortable with these people, and they are not comfortable with her.

When Alice went off to catering college, Emily went off travelling for a year. By herself. She filled a tiny rucksack with one sweater, two sarongs, three pairs of shorts, four T-shirts, five pairs of knickers and eleven bottles of hair conditioner – her only luxury, although she would claim it as a necessity for her corkscrew curls – and hopped on the hovercraft to France.

Everyone told her she was mad. Travel? Yes. By herself? Absolutely nuts. Only Alice was completely supportive, and devastated that she couldn’t go too.

So Emily went to France, fell in love with Laurent, the son of a wealthy hotelier from St-Paul de Vence (whom she met in a bar in Paris one busy, drunken night), travelled down to the Côte d’Azur to stay with Laurent’s family in their fabulously luxurious home, from where they both crossed the border at San Remo into Italy, and travelled to Naples, before driving down the Amalfi coast to Sorrento and Positano.

It was the most romantic and exciting time of Emily’s life. Laurent had to leave after Positano, had promised to start working in his father’s business, and there were rivers of tears when they said goodbye. Emily was tempted to follow him back to the South of France, but she had been planning this trip for months, years, and although she loved Laurent, she knew that if she didn’t do everything she had planned she would regret it for the rest of her life.

So from Italy she went to Greece, and in Greece she hooked up with a bunch of rowdy Australians, and, thankful that she had saved enough money to be able to do this, she booked a bucket flight to Sydney and spent the next eight months working as a waitress in Australia, taking off the last six weeks to travel round and see the country.

She’d write Alice long letters about the adventures she was having, the people she was meeting, and Alice wrote back, trying to make her course at catering college sound as exciting as Emily’s life, but failing miserably. How could she possibly compete?

By the time Emily returned to London she had had two flings and three relationships with large, tanned Australians, and Laurent had been well and truly forgotten.

Alice and Emily’s friendship continued as if Emily had never been away. ‘That’s the mark of true friends,’ Emily always used to say. ‘That we might not see each other for a year but when we do it’s as if we were never apart.’

That was until that fateful night when Alice ran into Joe. Alice had phoned Emily the next day, so excited she could barely breathe, let alone talk.

‘You won’t believe it,’ she said. ‘You won’t believe who I saw last night, who,’ Alice paused in disbelief, ‘took my number!’

‘It better be good or I’m putting this phone down,’ Emily groaned, never her best first thing in the morning, particularly at 8.15 a.m. when she hasn’t got to bed until two. ‘It’s the middle of the bloody night.’

‘It’s not. It’s 8.15. I thought it would be okay to call now.’

‘Of course it’s not bloody okay. You know I try to lie in on the weekends.’

‘Oh God. I’m really sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry, just tell me and then I can go back to sleep.’

‘Joe Chambers.’

‘Joe Chambers. Gorgeous Joe Chambers?’

‘Yes!’

‘Noooo!’

‘Yes!’

‘And is he still gorgeous?’

‘Yes!’

‘Noooo!’

‘Yes!’ Alice giggled in delight.

‘And he asked for your number? Are you serious?’

‘Yes!’

‘Noooo!’

‘Oh, fuck off!’ And they both started laughing.

‘Did he really ask for your number?’ Emily thought back to the years of Alice waiting for Joe at the bus stop after school.

‘He really did. And Em, he’s so lovely. Really. And I can’t believe he asked for my number.’

‘Did he remember you then?’

‘I don’t think so, but he said he did, and he remembered my brother. Actually I hope he doesn’t remember me. God, I was a horror at school.’

‘Everyone was a horror at school. Remember how they called me Afro Girl?’

‘I wasn’t much better. I was Big Bird.’

Emily started laughing.

‘Fuck off, Em. It’s not funny.’

‘Sorry. But we were all ugly.’

‘Except Joe Chambers.’

‘Except Gorgeous Joe Chambers. Jesus. I can’t believe he asked you out.’

‘He didn’t ask me out. He just asked for my number. Do you think he’s going to ask me out?’

‘How old are you? Twelve?’

‘What? I’m just asking.’

‘Of course he’s going to ask you out. Why else would he ask for your number?’

‘Duh! To cater a dinner party.’

‘Oh.’ Emily had forgotten about that.

‘Bugger. He probably just wants me to do a dinner party for him. Oh damn,’ Alice moaned. ‘I wish I hadn’t blushed so much. He probably thinks I’m a complete idiot.’

‘Probably,’ Emily concurred.

‘Oh no. Do you really think so?’

‘How the hell do I know? Now you’ll just have to experience what the rest of the single sisterhood goes through every time we give out our number. We sit glued to our phones for days on end, hating mankind, and thinking that if only we were thinner, or fatter, or blonder, or darker, or louder, or more quiet, he’d phone.’

‘Sounds horrific. Is it really that bad?’ Alice of course has been so busy with work, she’s managed to rather successfully avoid the trials and tribulations of the dating scene, although, as she has said on numerous occasions, Emily has more than made up for it for the both of them.

‘It’s worse. But thankfully you’ll now be able to discover that for yourself.’

Two weeks later, two weeks during which time Alice had begun to seriously hate her telephone, and hate Emily even more for being on the end of the line when it did ring, Joe finally called.

Unfortunately he was ringing her for the exact reason she feared – he wanted her to cater a dinner party for him.

What she didn’t know was that he was using this as an excuse to see her again, and after the dinner party he asked her out on a proper date.

And Alice, at least as far as Emily is concerned, has never been the same since.

Where did shy, mousy, curvy Alice go? What happened to the girl who loved animals, and children, and dreamed of a cottage in the country with roses climbing over the porch?

Emily blames Joe for Alice’s transformation. The Alice of old would never have been caught dead in heels higher than an inch, let alone – Emily looks down at Alice’s feet – these pointed, four-inch, doubtless horrifyingly expensive shoes. The Alice of old would never have dreamt of dyeing her hair (apart from a disastrous experiment with Jolene bleach and green Crazy Colour when they were sixteen), let alone visiting Jo Hansford every six weeks and – presumably – spending hundreds of pounds on her honey highlights. The Alice of old would have been happy snuggling up on a sofa in her Garfield slippers, tucking into a pizza (albeit one she had made herself with fresh buffalo mozzarella and shredded basil leaves plucked from the terracotta pot on her patio), watching crap TV for the evening, would have hated the idea of dressing up and going to a snazzy, sophisticated soirée such as this.

The Alice of old used to laugh at the women for whom she used to cater, the same women who are milling round this art gallery, but now Alice has become one of them.

Emily remembers that a few months after Alice started dating Joe, she and Alice had met at Prêt à Manger for a quick lunch.

‘I’m on a diet,’ Alice had said, picking out a small salad and a Diet Coke as Emily was carrying a huge Club sandwich, chocolate fudge slice and banana smoothie to the till.

‘Diet? But you don’t need to
diet
.’ Emily had looked at her in horror. This was Alice. Alice who cooked for a living. Alice who adored food.