The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs (32 page)

“You’re the one who’s been working away. I’m always here.”

“Well, I’m back now.”

“Yes, you’re back at home. And smoking.”

“God, don’t. You sound like Cara. She can’t bear me smoking. Well, I think it’s the smoking she can’t bear, actually maybe it’s just that she can’t bear me full stop.”

“What do you want to eat? I’ll go and get it. You wait here, no problem. I’m sure I owe you.”

“Surprise me.”

I surprise her with something called a “Superfoods Salad.” I feel she might need an injection of her five-a-day, as well as a glass of wheatgrass juice.

“I suppose I can make up for it with coffee and a cake afterward,” she says, looking skeptically at the bean sprouts.

“Is work still very stressful?” I ask.

“Not particularly.”

“Everybody’s feeling a bit low at the moment. There’s lots of summer colds going around, aren’t there? I’ve been feeling fluey for weeks now.”

“I’m not ill.”

“We haven’t had a debrief on Norfolk yet. That seems like ages ago.” I am tempted to tell her about what Joel and I stumbled across that night. In my head I start with us creeping downstairs, but then when I try to think how I might describe what we saw, I realize that some peccadilloes go beyond even gossip.

“It was all right.”

“What did you think of Mitzi’s house? Amazing place, isn’t it? She’s got exquisite taste.”

“That’s what Cara says.”

“Does she? Yes, I suppose we can all agree that Mitzi’s got exquisite taste.”

“I think it’s stupid. Her house is stupid and pretentious and vaguely immoral.”

“Immoral?” I ask.

“To pretend that having a second home is some great ecological gift to the planet when it can never be anything but quite the opposite.”

“And that’s what Joel says.”

“Maybe we should wife swap.”

I giggle nervously.

She lights a cigarette, right when she should be tucking into the avocado, and sighs. “But I think that may have already happened.”

“What do you mean?” I keep my voice airy.

“I think Cara’s seeing someone else.”

“What makes you think that?”

“She’s been so absent. She doesn’t seem to even notice that I’ve come back. We’ve stopped having sex. I thought me being away during the week would perk up our sex life at weekends at least. At first I thought it was just standard lesbian bed death, but I don’t think so now. She seems more alive than she’s been for months. She’s like she was with me, in the beginning. She is so having sex, just not with me.”

“Aren’t you jumping to conclusions?”

“I spend my working life telling people not to jump to conclusions.”

“Exactly.”

“But just because the conclusion is jumped to, doesn’t mean it’s not right.”

“Do you want the rest of your salad,” I ask, “or shall I go and get that coffee and cake for you? I think carrot cake counts toward your five-a-day.”

She scratches her head vigorously.

“You all right?” I ask.

“My head’s itchy. I think it’s like some sort of nervous tic or
something. I think maybe it’s a physical manifestation of all my indecision about everything in my life at the moment.”

“Becks, I’m so sorry.” I scratch my head in sympathy. I hope I haven’t got nits.

“About what?”

“That you’re having such a rubbish time at the moment. But don’t let your feelings about other things force you into making assumptions about Cara. You’ll probably find out that she hasn’t actually done anything. Maybe she’s just thought about it.”

“That’s just as bad.”

“Is it?”

“Perhaps not. But I tell you, she doesn’t get the sexed-up glow just thinking about it.”

“Have you asked her?”

“I know, I know, I should just talk to her. Ask her directly what she’s doing. But I’m too scared to.”

I say nothing. I feel like my Superfoods Salad is going to come back up.

“She’s married,” says Becky.

“Cara?”

“No, the bitch who’s shagging her.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s the way Cara likes them. Straight, I’d guess, certainly bi-curious, heteroflexible, whatever. God, the number of straight women with girl crushes on her, it’s ridiculous. There’s a lot of them about and they all fancy a pop at my girlfriend. And she fancies a pop at them. Especially if they’re married. A more exciting challenge. Less likely to want to move in with her and mess up her precious flat. I’m the exception and Cara regrets that. She needs to live alone.”

“Some people do, they just know they want to be alone. From when they’re little.”

“That’s what Cara says. That she’s always known. Well, she doesn’t have to live with me anymore. I’m leaving.”

“Don’t be hasty.”

“I’m not. Even if she’s not fucking some other man’s wife, I don’t want to carry on feeling like I’m a stain on the polished limestone floor anymore. I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am and I feel like I’m falling backward every day.”

“Will you go back to your flat?”

“Sold it.”

“I never knew that. I thought you were keeping it. As insurance.”

“I thought you’d tell me to be sensible and keep it. That’s what I’d have told anybody else to do. It was an act of faith to sell it, like my clients who refuse to get a pre-nup. Idiots,” she snorts. “I’ve got some plans. In my head.” She smiles and her looks are transformed back to handsome once again. “I hadn’t said it out loud. I hadn’t dared. But you know what? It doesn’t make me feel so bad to be talking about leaving her. I can’t feel any worse than I’ve been feeling.”

“Oh, Becks, I feel so awful. I had no idea. I’m so sorry, I really am sorry. I’ve been so wrapped up in myself that I’ve been a terrible friend. A really terrible friend.” I think I may cry again. It’s like now that my eyes have learned how to cry, they’re never going to stop. I feel like I’m standing at the end of a very tall diving board. All I’ve got to do is leave the board. It’s that split second of jumping that counts, not the entry into the water. If I say anything, I will say everything. I take a deep breath and then I jump. “I had a drink at Cara’s, at your place. Did she tell you?”

Becky is rummaging around in her bag and pulls out her mobile. “Look at this.”

I look at it. “It’s a text message. From Cara.”

“To Cara. I found it on her mobile and forwarded it to mine. Open it.”

“Wasn’t there a name attached to the number?”

“It said Plumber. It’s not really the plumber, that was just a pseudonym, I’m guessing. Unless she’s sleeping with the plumber, which is unlikely since he’s a fat Ukrainian.”

“And you didn’t recognize the number?”

She shakes her head. “I should have written it down but I thought it would come through when I forwarded the message to my number. Stupid mobile. I managed to take a look at Cara’s mobile the next day, but the message had disappeared. Been deleted. Read it.”

Your smell is on my fingers.

“Yuk,” I say. Becky looks at me skeptically. “No, it’s not the girl smell thing. I love the girl smell thing. Well, not literally. I don’t know, other people’s dirty texts are probably always a bit embarrassing.”

“They also sent a photo.”

“What of?”

“A very depilated muff.” So that’s what Becky calls it. “So much so, it was quite hard to tell what it was. I thought it was an ear. Not my scene, you see. Though Cara is, obviously, very well tended in that area.”

“Do you know when they were sent?”

“Two or three weeks ago.”

I feel a flash of jealousy. I look at Becky and I hate myself for feeling that. I feel ashamed once more that I could have ever even entertained the idea of doing anything with Cara. And I feel gladder than ever that nothing happened, though this may be as much to do with finding out that I am not the only object of Cara’s advances as it is to do with not betraying both my
husband and my best friend. I almost jeopardize my family with some hot sex with a woman and it turns out that she’s indiscriminate in her approaches. Becky clicks her phone and shows me a photo on it displaying an image more gynecological than pornographic, all smooth and toned and hairless. It’s unthreatening and clean, except for a neat scar at the point where the top of the pubic hair would be were there any. “Wow.” I turn the camera upside down. It’s difficult to tell which way around it’s supposed to go. “That really is bald.” I suspect that maybe Cara would have recoiled at the sight of my nakedness in the same way that Ruskin supposedly did at his poor pubic-haired wife on his wedding night.

“And you think something’s still going on?” I ask.

“It’s a bit irrelevant, isn’t it? Something has happened and it will happen again. It wouldn’t even surprise me if there was more than one person. She’s vampiric like that.”

“But you don’t want to throw all you’ve got away without at least trying to talk to her.”

“I’m not going to take lectures on relationships from you of all people.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve talked about leaving Joel because he leaves the toilet seat up.”

“No, that’s not true. I don’t even mind about the toilet seat particularly. Well, not about it being up. The splatter that goes on is quite annoying, yes.”

“Mary.” Becky looks at me sharply. “My relationship is rubbish and that’s why I’m breaking it now. You’ve got something worth saving, not to mention two children. You know that, don’t you?”

I smile in reassurance.

“I don’t know about you,” she goes on. “Whether you really
mean your stupid talk about your marriage, or whether it’s some sad bid for attention, like a teenager taking a dozen paracetamol.”

“I don’t think you can ever really understand what goes on in somebody else’s relationship.”

“True,” she says. “Too true.”

I return to the office sure that I am flushed with shame, wearing a scarlet letter for my adulterous thoughts. I may not actually be Cara’s other woman, but I had wanted to be. I have a vision of Joel, Becky and the boys sitting around the kitchen table, intoning, “How could you?” How indeed.

Matt is leaning across Lily’s desk in a way that means his crotch is resting on it. If he were a woman, he’d be permanently wearing a push-up bra.

“So, right, weirdly,” he says to her, “after hearing nothing about the dirty house format for months, we finally heard back from the commissioner.”

“And?” asks Lily.

“He didn’t much like it. But Jane at Documentaries saw it and she loved it.”

“Really?”

“No, not really. She thinks there is something there, but that the reality-show house thing is a bit dumbed-down. Says the channel is trying to smart-up now, wants to make serious programs again and words I never thought I’d get to hear. She went on and on about how they’d like us to rework it as a serious examination of relations between men and women in the twenty-first century, who does what, two-part doc, psychologists, yadda, yadda, yadda.”

“That’s what I said in the first place,” I say.

“Was it?” asks Matt.

“Yes. It was my idea, remember?”

He looks blank. “It was,” says Lily. “Definitely. She knows all about that domestic shit. Wrote the introduction to the pitch document.”

“That was the bit that caught Jane’s eye,” says Matt.

“Really?” I feel a buzz I haven’t felt at work in years.

“Yeah, she said it didn’t seem to match the tone of the rest of the pitch and to use it as a starting point for an alternative look. I was going to get you to do that, Lily.”

“To be honest, I think Mary would do a better job of it.”

“Thanks, Lily.” My introduction was the best bit of the pitch document. Yes!

“Do you want to develop it, then?”

“Yes, of course.”

“But you’ll have to do it on your day off. I can’t spare you the rest of the time.”

“Fine. I’ll do it. I’ll manage.”

I frown at my laptop. In all the chaos of my real world, I am reliant on looking to my virtual one for order. The List provides me with a rational framework to overlay upon the anarchy. Have you ever seen those drawings for children that make no sense until you put a transparency on top of them and then the picture becomes clear? That’s what The List does to my life. It gives it some meaning. That tea bag leaving a tannin stain on our worktop is no longer just a tea bag, it’s a point in a narrative that has an unstoppable momentum toward a goal. The wet towel left to fester in the bathroom becomes a neat number on an Excel spreadsheet, something rational instead of nonsensical.

But it isn’t any longer. The List has stopped making sense. Joel’s tally, which was so near to its completion, now races up and down in a pattern that no longer matches the months of yore. It used to be so predictable. There was a pattern to the
rubbishness of Joel. If The List doesn’t make sense then nothing does. I have nothing left, and eventually my mind will become the same as the disordered jumble of our house. It’s as if The List is a robot with a malfunction that causes it to repeat tasks or walk around in circles. This is not the way of The List.

Yesterday, for example, Joel took off his clothes before bed and threw them one by one, slowly, in the general direction of the laundry basket. Just as I was about to clock this misdemeanor, he went over to it and put them all in. Then he took them all out and repeated the whole process. And again.

Perhaps it’s just as well that we have less than a month to go. I shall miss you when you’ve gone. The List, I mean.

It’s what Joel always irritatingly calls my “day off,” which he views as an open receptacle for filling with irritating chores along the lines of “Can you pick up my dry cleaning… on your day off?” and “You can always take the car for its MOT… on your day off.” I try to convey just how hard I work on my “day off,” usually by ringing him up when Gabe’s having one of his tantrums and just holding the phone out.

What I never do is phone Joel when I’m lounging around a beautifully tended garden while my older child is in school and my younger is being looked after by Mitzi’s nanny. I wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea.

“This is heavenly,” I say to Mitzi. I had meant not to see her for a while, but then she rings up and asks me over and her house has the best toys, an enormous paddling pool and a sprinkler system. It is more enticing than the alternative, a trip to the supermarket.