The Model Wife (2 page)

It wasn’t like that for Meena. When she wanted some TLC she just went home to Wembley where her mum did her laundry – even ironing her knickers – and stuffed her with curries and her dad mended the dodgy gearbox on her car. Poppy found it very tiring being all alone, but with Luke by her side, she wasn’t. Not any more.

‘Thank you,’ she said again.

Luke smiled, only a little smugly. ‘Nice to get my hands dirty,’ he said. ‘It makes a change.’ He paused. ‘And nice to be appreciated. For once. With everyone else it’s just take, take, take. “Why can’t you make it to the school play?” “What do you mean you can’t take two weeks off at Christmas to join me in Barbados?” “I want a pony.” “Can I go skiing?” You’re the only one who just lets me be.’

The domestic references set faint alarm bells ringing, but the overall message was what she’d been waiting to hear. Poppy stroked his face. ‘I love you,’ she breathed.

He smiled at her. ‘I love you too, my Poppy.’

In Poppy’s short life it was the first moment of true perfection. Perfection only slightly marred when five seconds later Luke’s mobile rang and he looked at it, frowned, switched it off and said, ‘Oh shit, I’d better be off.’

He began pulling off his clothes for the shower he always took before heading home. Sometimes Poppy felt insulted that he had to wash off all trace of her, but tonight she didn’t mind. She sat on the edge of the bath and watched him, liquid joy coursing through her veins.
He loved her. He loved her!
They were going to live happily ever after.

Only after he left in a minicab did Poppy focus again on that pesky matter of the wife. And the three children. Poppy knew they lived in North London, that there were two teenage girls and a younger boy, that the wife was called Hannah and had been a journalist but was now a full-time mother. She wondered if Hannah wondered where her husband was these late nights and for just a millisecond felt a shiver of guilt. But then she shrugged it off. Luke never talked much about his family, then only to complain, so he couldn’t care for them that much. It wasn’t Poppy’s fault if he preferred being with her. It didn’t occur to her that Hannah could stand in the way of her long-term happiness. After all, men left wives and children all the time. Look at what had happened to Mum. Poppy had met her handsome prince. And somehow or another, she would get him to the altar, because that was how all good fairy tales ended.

2

You didn’t exactly have to be Sigmund Freud to see why Poppy might be searching for a handsome prince. Her dad had walked out on her mum, Louise, when she was only twenty-two and seven months pregnant. Poppy knew virtually nothing about him except that his name was Charles, and that Louise had met him in the South of France where she was spending a summer selling ice cream on the beaches. Poppy found the idea of her nervy mother behaving in such a carefree fashion rather hard to believe, but there was evidence in the form of a photo of her laughing on a pebbly beach in white shorts and an acid-green T-shirt that read ‘Frankie Says… Relax’, with a floppy black blow in her permed hair and a tray of ice creams round her neck.

Anyway, Charles and Mum had had a brief fling. Then he disappeared and never responded to any of Louise’s letters telling him she was pregnant. That was all Poppy knew. If she tried to find out more about him – what he looked like, where he was from, his favourite music – her mother would snap: ‘You don’t need to know anything about that bastard, we’ve managed fine without him, haven’t we?’ So when very young, Poppy had stopped asking questions.

And in a way, they had done fine without him, very well in fact. Obviously Louise had had to work extremely hard to support herself and her baby daughter. She’d found a job with a recruitment agency, so Poppy’s early years had been spent either in a nursery or with her gran who came to live with them when Poppy was four. A couple of years later, Gran’s arthritis got too bad to cope with a small child, but by then Louise had founded her own company and was making good money. So Elisabetta from El Salvador was drafted in to be Poppy’s surrogate mum, which worked out fabulously until the phone bill arrived sending Louise into meltdown and Elisabetta on the first plane back west.

After that au pairs came and went in quick succession. Poppy had lost her heart to each of them. Her earliest memories were of Margarita from Colombia cuddling her when she cut her knee, of Greta from Austria applauding when she rode her bike without stabilizers for the first time, of Adalet from Turkey walking backwards in the swimming pool encouraging Poppy to splash towards her. But Louise had felt differently: the girls were too slapdash, too cheeky, stayed out too late on their nights off. Even the ones who behaved impeccably had to leave as soon as Louise noted her daughter growing too fond of them, because it wouldn’t do to get too attached.

With each departure Poppy wept bitterly. The girls all felt wretched and swore they’d keep in touch with the sweet blonde girl with Caribbean-blue eyes, but after a couple of postcards, communication slowed and eventually halted, as they found new families, boyfriends, proper jobs and got on with their lives.

In the end, Louise decided the best thing by far for Poppy was boarding school, which, thanks to her thriving business, she could now afford. She sold the semi in St Albans, bought herself a bijou two-bedroom flat in Clapham and rung round for the prospectuses. Everyone gasped when they heard Poppy had been sent to Watershead when she was only nine, but actually it had been great. Matron was kind, the headmistress was lovely, she’d had lots of little friends and Gran came to visit every other weekend.

It was at Brettenden House that the misery had kicked in. That was a really snobby place – all the other girls seemed to live in huge country piles and own at least four ponies and their mummies had all been to Brettenden too. Poppy was aware that behind her back most of the girls called her ‘noov’ short for ‘nouveau’, which in their limited world was one of the cruellest insults. She only had one real friend, Meena, whose dad was an accountant from Wembley by way of the Punjab, who’d slaved to send their daughter to a smart school only to find she was mercilessly dissed for being lower middle class. ‘Does your dad do my dad’s tax returns?’ landowners’ daughters would ask, sniggering. To make it worse, Meena had no interest in academia whatsoever and kept begging her parents to arrange a marriage for her to the richest man they could find.

On Saturday nights when most of the other girls had gone home to their country estates, Poppy and Meena would curl up together in the common room and watch a DVD of their favourite film,
Pretty Woman
. The idea of a world where a Richard Gere type hero solved your problems with a flash of his credit card was incredibly appealing.

‘That’s what we want,’ Meena sighed. ‘If you were married to a man like that you wouldn’t need to worry about exams.’

Poppy agreed. ‘Much more fun than being my mum and working all the hours God sends and always being exhausted.’

The Richard fantasy became even more pressing when, just a month before GCSEs, Gran died. Poppy’s prospects had been poor anyway but, griefstricken, she only obtained two passes: a C in art and a Din English. Brettenden suggested that perhaps the sixth form was not the right place for her and Poppy wholeheartedly agreed. Happily, Meena was ousted too, so the pair of them found a flat together in Kilburn. Meena got a job in a Starbucks on Oxford Street and Poppy found one selling swimsuits at Harvey Nichols.

In retrospect Poppy realized it was the happiest period of her life. Work was a laugh: there was a nice crowd available for drinks most evenings, and watching rich women squeeze themselves into five-hundred-pound bikinis every day was very entertaining. But a few months later a woman with a face like a hawk had begun quizzing her about Eres versus Missoni, then suddenly diverted into asking if Poppy had ever done any modelling and would she like to come to her office for a chat?

And so, at eighteen, Poppy Price had found herself persuaded to hand in her notice at Harvey Nicks and set off pounding the streets of London with an
A–Z
and a book full of pictures of herself to be studied by hard-faced women in tiny dark offices, who turned to each other and said things like ‘Pretty face but needs to lose at least a stone’ as if she didn’t even exist. Poppy wasn’t at all sure about her new career; she was naturally a size eight, but the pressure was on to be a size six or a four. It was generally agreed that she was not edgy-looking enough to appear on the catwalk, but had a more ‘commercial look’, which meant she appeared in a couple of adverts for bathroom warehouses and detergents. She also did some shoots for teenage magazines that involved standing on a street corner wearing a sweater dress and stripy tights, arms linked with another (prettier) model, pretending to laugh, even though the cold wind was biting her face, while passers-by sniggered at her, and a photographer yelled they were supposed to be going out on the razz not to a funeral. But her friends, Meena especially, were so excited at the idea of knowing a real-life model that she decided to stick with it for a couple of years before going back to swimwear. Then Luke and love entered her life, and their arrival seemed to sprinkle fairy dust into every cranny of her existence. After her rocky start, modelling jobs suddenly started to rush in: a shoot for
Elle
, the cover of
Cosmo
, a shoot for
Glamour
(in Cuba), another for
Harper’s Bazaar
.

Poppy and Luke’s relationship had lasted nearly a year. She adored him with every ounce of her being. She worried increasingly about the fact he still hadn’t left Hannah, but she was sure it was just a matter of biding her time. She saw him usually two nights a week and occasionally for a stolen hour or so at weekends. They didn’t go out as much as they used to, they mostly stayed in bed, but that was enough.

Then came that terrifying yet amazing day when Poppy’s period was so late and she’d been feeling so weird and off the booze that she decided to buy a pregnancy test. She peed on the stick and saw the line turn blue. It wasn’t a massive surprise. Even though Luke had asked her frequently if she was on the pill, and she’d frequently assured him she was, she’d never actually picked up her prescription. After all, Meena said the pill made you bloated, and Poppy kept reading in the papers how it was virtually impossible for any woman to have babies these days, except by expensive and painful IVF. And – although she could hardly admit it even to herself – she wanted a baby to love more than anything else, plus Luke would
have
to leave his wife, so she didn’t see how getting pregnant could really be a bad thing.

She toyed with the idea of calling Meena who was surfing in Cornwall for the week in the hope of picking up Prince William or at least one of his friends. Then she decided Luke had to be the first to hear the news. She had to wait forty-eight hours until he came round after the show. She meant to tell him straight away, but he was feeling very frisky and steered her straight to the bed before she could even open her mouth. After a session which hadn’t been quite as vigorous as usual because Poppy was terrified of hurting the baby, whom she had already christened Isabelle, she took a deep breath.

‘Luke,’ she said, stroking his chest, ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘Mmm?’ Luke’s eyes were closed; he was drifting off to sleep.

‘I’m… we… we’re having a baby.’

‘What?’ Luke sat up. He looked horrified. ‘You
are
joking?’

‘No,’ Poppy said, confused.

‘Fucking hell, Poppy! How the fuck did this happen? You’re on the pill.’

‘I… Yes, I am, but I guess it didn’t work.’

‘The pill
always
works. Shit. Well, we’d better get you to the doctor quickly. How far gone are you?’

‘I’m not sure. Maybe a couple of months. I didn’t want to go to the doctor until I told you. I thought we could go together.’

‘Fucking hell,’ Luke said again.

Poppy started to cry. This was not the overjoyed reaction she’d expected.

‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘Pleased? How could I be pleased? I don’t want you having an abortion, but I don’t see what bloody choice we have.’

She gasped. ‘An abortion?’

‘Well, what else were you going to do?’

‘Have the baby of course. Little Isabelle.’

Luke’s face turned a shade of plum. ‘Isabelle? You know it’s a girl?’

‘No, I just have a feeling. I—’

‘My middle daughter’s called Isabelle. Christ, Poppy.’

Poppy cried a lot. She said there was no way she was going to have an abortion. She said, not very convincingly, that she’d be fine as a single mother, that her mum had coped and she would too. Luke had snapped back that, of course, she couldn’t go it alone, he’d support her, but he couldn’t leave Hannah and the children, she had to understand that.

‘But why not? You don’t love
her
.’

Suddenly, Luke looked all of his forty-nine years. ‘I’d forgotten how young you are, Poppy. Of course I love Hannah. She’s my wife. The mother of my children.’

‘But you love
me
.’

‘I love both of you,’ Luke said, looking very agitated, ‘but in different ways. I mean, if things had been different, if I’d met you at another time, I would have married you. But I’m married to Hannah; I can’t leave her. You must see that.’

‘But men leave their wives all the time. What’s the problem?’

Luke looked aghast. ‘You really can’t see what the problem is?’

‘You could still see your children.’

He got out of bed and started getting dressed. ‘It’s not that simple. I’m a public figure, you know. The papers would have a field day if I left my wife for a younger woman.’

‘No, they wouldn’t,’ Poppy said. ‘You’re not
that
famous.’ After all, since Mrs Angry on day one, the only person who’d recognized Luke had been the waiter in the Indian round the corner, and it turned out as the conversation progressed he’d thought Luke was one of the contestants in
The X Factor
.

It was the wrong thing to say. ‘Your little friends may not know me but, believe me, I’m a household name.’ Luke knotted his tie. ‘I have to go now. Don’t cry. We’ll sort all this out. I’ll find you a doctor, the best doctor. But you can’t have this baby.’

She cried all night, finally falling asleep as dawn broke. She completely forgot a car was coming at nine to pick her up for a shoot for a new low-calorie chocolate bar and was in such a deep sleep she didn’t hear the doorbell. Her phone’s battery had died, so when she did rise at eleven, it was to a barrage of irate messages from Elsa at her agency. But no messages from Luke. Nothing.

The car came back for her, she went to the shoot, where the make-up artist tutted over her red eyes and blotchy skin and told her not to be such a naughty girl in future. Between every shot she checked her phone for messages.

Nothing.

She
left messages all day for Luke, but his phone was switched off. She texted him continuously. In the end, he rang her shortly after eight when she was howling on the sofa, while spooning her way through a tub of Skinny Cow ice cream.

‘Sorry I haven’t been in touch,’ he said, sounding as distant as if he was calling from the moon. ‘It’s been frantic at work, but I will find you a doctor.’

A large rock was lodged in Poppy’s chest. ‘I told you, I’m not getting rid of this baby.’

He sighed. ‘Well, just think about it. I have to go now, Poppy. I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye.’

Poppy had known unhappiness before, but now she was becoming acquainted with true misery. That night and the following day passed in a blur of sobbing and sleeplessness and fruitless attempts to call Meena, then Luke, then Meena again. Neither returned her calls (later, she discovered that Meena couldn’t get a signal at the seaside). But then at nine the following night something miraculous happened. The doorbell rang and when Poppy answered it, expecting the Chinese food delivery man, she heard Luke’s voice on the crackly intercom.

‘Poppy, it’s me. Please let me in.’

She opened the door to see him climbing the stairs, carrying a large suitcase.

‘I’ve left them,’ he called up to her, stopping for breath on the first-floor landing. ‘I’ve come to live with you, Poppy. You’re going to have the baby. I’m going to make you my wife.’

My Husband, the Bimbo and Me