The Sudden Departure of the Frasers (13 page)

‘Are you still in the same job?’ I asked.

‘No, I do bar work now. A place out in Walthamstow.’

Though Gemma recoiled fractionally at the words ‘bar work’ and ‘Walthamstow’, I smiled on. ‘And are
you
married yet?’

He put the cigarette to his lips, needing its touch, though of course he would have to wait until he was outside to light up. ‘Divorced. I married Lesley, but it didn’t last – obviously.’

I tilted my head, eyes blank. ‘Remind me who Lesley was?’

He stared. ‘Remember, she transferred from the Bristol call centre?’

‘That’s right. You were
her
team leader too, weren’t you? Well, good to see you again,’ I said, thinking just the opposite.

‘Who was
that
?’ Gemma asked, with fearful contempt, the moment he was out of earshot. ‘He
smelled
.’

‘An old manager of mine. We had a fling. He was slightly more fragrant then.’

‘Well, he’s not
at all
like Jeremy.’

The way she said this, prurient, almost thrilled, implied that Jeremy must surely be unaware of my previous lifestyle choices, whereas in fact I’d told him my story as soon as we’d met – or certainly enough of it for any romanticization on his part to be as much a kindness to me as to him. Between us we’d settled on the notion that I’d been some kind of wild child, a free spirit whom no one had been able to domesticate until he came along and stopped the rot.

Now, in my lofty sitting room in Lime Park, the scent of lilacs sweetening our nostrils, the others rushed to atone for Gemma’s latest slur. ‘Oh, she doesn’t mean everyone down here must be boring, Amber, especially not you! You could
never
be boring, you’ll
totally
make this the place to be …’

But I was far too pleased with myself to really care what Gemma thought. ‘I love it here,’ I told them. ‘And to be honest, when we moved in I thought myself it might be a bit dull, but it turns out I haven’t met a single dud.’ This was in fact quite true; yes, one resident had claimed
the greater part of my attention, but the others were an agreeable bunch too. Among other dates in my diary was one to take Caroline and Liz shopping. (I had a plan to divert them to my hairdresser’s while we were at it, see if I couldn’t do something about those farmers’ wives’ haircuts.)

‘Have you noticed anything about Imogen?’ Gemma said, and all at once I became aware of an air of concealment, subterfuge in the group.

‘No, what?’

‘Look at her properly, go on!’

‘OK.’ But Imogen seemed exactly the same to my eye. Weight loss would be the usual cause for excitement of this pitch, but I couldn’t cite this when she looked, if anything, a little heavier than the last time I’d seen her; women tended to be intolerant of disingenuousness or bluff on this, if no other, subject. What then? We were too young for Botox, and news of anything surgical, like Helena’s breast enlargement, would have been aired long before the event, not after.

‘Is your hair shorter?’ I asked her. ‘You’re growing out your highlights?’

‘No, not that,’ Gemma said, answering for her, then offered a clue: ‘She hasn’t drunk any of her wine, have you noticed?’

‘Sadly,’ Imogen conceded.

‘Not sadly, Imogen! It’s awesome news!’

‘She’s pregnant!’ They sang it out, a chorus of hallelujahs, and I understood then something I hadn’t understood before: they all saw having a baby as the summit of female
ambition, the solution to the puzzle of life, the cure for all disappointment. Did I? Well, apparently not, since I’d just been luxuriating in the notion that I had everything and yet had not included a baby in that reckoning. If I was honest, recently it felt as if I was using the idea of starting a family to justify my idleness; I’d said I wanted to so often it felt like a line in a play, uttered with perfect conviction every night and twice a week in matinees, but, in the end, the author’s thoughts, not mine. Was that the missing link in my otherwise seamless reinvention of myself? Was that the trapdoor by which Rob Whalen had entered?

Did I actually
want
a family?

I hugged Imogen. ‘That’s wonderful news, I’m so happy for you and Nick.’

‘And how about you and Jeremy?’ she said warmly. She was a really nice girl, far too sweet to preen or gloat. ‘Any luck yet?’

‘No, not yet. Maybe soon.’ And I glanced at Gemma as if to say,
See, I haven’t got it all
. And she looked back with a half smile as if to say,
I already knew
that.

That invitation to the Identico.UK summer party, the one at which Jeremy and I met: it had in fact been sent to her, the more senior contact, but she had passed it on to me in favour of a more promising function. She’d spent years imagining that if she
had
turned up that evening, she would now be me.

Poor Gemma. I almost felt sorry for her.

I’m aware how ridiculous I must have sounded, reporting all those conditions I made to Rob – no emails or phone
calls, texts to be deleted immediately after being read – when the reality was there were none of the mousetraps of affairs between working people, none of the snatched lunch hours and self-consciously separate arrivals and exits. Schedules like ours were tailor-made for adultery: he was at home most of the time, free to work in the middle of the night for all it mattered to anyone else, while my day was unhampered by employment of any kind, my hours alone long and unmonitored. Hetty was in charge of the works, the builders accepted that my involvement was limited, if not purely decorative; in any case, they had my phone number should there be an explosion on the other side of the wall that I managed to miss. Jeremy didn’t get home till seven-thirty if he was lucky, and any change of plan was more likely to involve a delay thanks to an eleventh-hour pitch or some tedious client whim. Yes, I was having sex with another man a room away from our home, but it could just as easily have been a hotel room, a flat on the other side of town. The miracle was we weren’t doing it every day. We paced ourselves.

‘This is great,’ Rob said one afternoon in June as I slipped lazily back into my underwear, wondering if I’d have time for a snooze in the relaxation room at the gym. He liked to watch me dress, which felt as erotic as undressing, an insolent scrutiny that might at any time lead to the suggestion that I stay a little longer. ‘Everything I want from a relationship with a woman, without having to have the relationship itself.’

I laughed, reaching for my dress. ‘If this is all you want from a relationship, then I pity your girlfriends.’

‘Do you now? That’s interesting.’ He thought about this, eyebrows drawn together, and I sensed a deepening of interest. Our conversation, conducted mostly in bed, had to date comprised detached, ironic banter between two determinedly dispassionate personae. ‘So what is it they want? What is it
you
want? I mean, what are the elements you get from Jeremy, apart from the obvious?’

I glanced up from strapping on my heels. ‘The obvious?’

‘Yes, the money. And don’t pretend you’d like him just the same if he was a bus driver living in a bedsit in Stonebridge Park.’

‘I might.’ I shrugged. ‘If I knew where Stonebridge Park was.’

He reached to tug at the hem of my dress – a prim-necked black shift with a less-than-prim mid-thigh skirt – and draw me back to the bed. ‘Come on, tell me what you get out of being married.’ He was genuinely fascinated, intent on discovery. Perhaps he wondered how he might win someone like me in full, I thought, and allowed myself a moment of thrilled arrogance.

‘OK.’ I perched on the edge of the bed, swung my legs up to get comfortable, thinking about his question seriously. ‘Security: that’s the cliché, but it happens to be true. Also, sharing things, making joint decisions, supporting each other when things aren’t going well, and celebrating together when they are.’ I looked away, embarrassed to sound sentimental, though not embarrassed to feel it. ‘Having someone to go home to or to come home to you. Not being alone in the dead of night, not being alone inside your own head.’

‘Why don’t you want to be alone inside your head?’ Rob asked, a certain slyness to his tone. ‘You don’t like your memories of the bad old days?’

I gave him a blithe smile. ‘Oh, the good thing about the bad old days is they killed enough of my brain cells for me to not
have
any memories.’

He sniggered, went on sniggering.

‘What?’ I said, prodding him.

‘You really
don’t
remember, do you?’ And he laughed proper delighted laughter. ‘All this time, I thought you were just messing with me.’

Turning cold, I rubbed the bare skin of my upper arms, feeling the goosebumps. ‘Remember what?’

‘We met before. We had a one-night stand.’

‘No we didn’t,’ I said. ‘I would have remembered that.’

‘You can name every man you’ve slept with?’ He was watching me closely, his eyes full of mischief – or was it malice? Mischief, I decided.

‘Maybe not,’ I said, pouting; after all, I’d had my ‘One night, best forgotten’ motto (if you could call it that). ‘But I know I would remember
you
.’

‘I would have hoped so, but apparently not. Mind you, you had a big bag of coke with you – not a wrap, a fucking sandwich bag full. God knows where you’d got it.’

I uncrossed my arms and held up a hand. ‘Don’t. I don’t want to hear any more. Nothing you say could surprise me, but I have a feeling it might depress me.’ I sighed, stretched, mourned just a little that first Sunday when I’d stood at his door and thought we were strangers. ‘Well, at least you’re not trying to blackmail me, which is something.’

Rob looked at me in wonder. ‘Blackmail you? Why would I do that?’

‘One of my exes did.’

Not long after that accidental meeting in the bar in Covent Garden, I’d had an email from Matt. Though I was fairly sure I’d mentioned neither my married name nor the name of the agency I worked for, he’d found me easily enough. He was strapped for cash, he said (no shit), adding, none too subtly:
Does your new husband know? Does your new boss?

At the time, Jeremy had been so consumed by a demanding new client I hardly saw him myself from one day to the next and, not liking to bother him with my upset, I found myself a lawyer. A woman after my own heart, or at least a woman after the same cash Matt hoped to extort, she promptly sent him a letter alleging attempted blackmail and threatening to contact the police if any further approach was made.

‘That’s the way to do it,’ Rob said approvingly. ‘What did he think he was going to get from you? It’s not like you’re a public figure, is it?’

I settled onto the pillows. ‘I think he thought Jeremy was some kind of dotcom millionaire and that I had passed myself off as a virgin on our wedding night.’

‘What a moron. No one would believe
that
.’

I smiled, head growing heavy, eyes drooping. I couldn’t let myself fall asleep: it was against adulterers’ rules. ‘We didn’t spend the night
here
, did we?’ I murmured, turning my face to his.

‘No. It was your place.’

‘In Old Street?’

‘That’s the one.’ His fingers were on me now, pushing between my knees and up my thighs, making the skin shiver. ‘Do you remember—?’ he began.

‘No,’ I insisted. ‘I honestly don’t want to know, Rob.’

‘OK.’ His mouth hovered over mine. ‘Then all I’ll say about that night is that you let me do whatever I wanted.’

‘Which is different from now
how
, exactly?’

I closed my eyes, apparently not yet leaving after all.

‘You look amazing, Liz,’ Caroline said.

‘Perfect,’ I agreed. ‘
Exactly
to brief.’

‘Thank you,’ Liz said. Spots of colour bloomed on her cheeks as she registered our thrilled reaction.

We were at my hairdresser’s in Chelsea, Caroline and I standing with a hand each on the back of Liz’s chair, our heads tilted identically in consideration of our third. Though we wore radiant chemical haloes of our own, haloes that would do necessary damage to our credit cards, it was Liz who was the undisputed archangel, her formerly disgraceful thatch having been shorn by a genius to a chic, gamine crop.

‘You look like Mia Farrow in
Rosemary’s Baby
,’ Caroline said.

‘I’d rather not be likened to a character in a horror movie, if you don’t mind,’ Liz laughed. ‘There was enough of that during the divorce.’

‘Jean Seberg then. Or Leslie Caron.’

‘Kate Moss, when she had her pixie cut,’ I said, settling
it. I checked my watch. ‘We ought to get back for the school run, ladies.’

For the purposes of my affair, I had made it my business to know these women’s schedules inside out. It wasn’t complicated; with children involved, their day ran like clockwork and I could easily avoid arriving at or leaving Rob’s house when I knew they’d be passing his gate on the way to Lime Park Primary (handily, the kindergarten their younger offspring attended was based at the school and the half-hour staggering of pick-up times meant they were away from the street for at least a full hour).

‘This has been the most amazing day, Amber,’ Caroline sighed, as we tumbled into the taxi, our heads turning in vain little impulses to catch our reflections in the window. ‘I can’t wait to see if Richard notices my highlights.’

‘I think he will,’ I said. She had confided to me earlier in the day that she and Richard had let a whole year pass without sleeping together, which had given us a no-brainer of a goal towards which to work. ‘Keep your hair loose over your shoulders, OK? No ponytail.’

‘No ponytail,’ she agreed, touching her butter-pale strands as if not quite believing that the head they were attached to was hers.

I turned to Liz. ‘I think it’s only a matter of time now before you’re back in the saddle, too. Remember, the diet we discussed doesn’t apply to sex.’

They both giggled.

‘What about Rob, Amber?’ Caroline exclaimed. ‘Do you think
he
could be a possibility for Liz?’

‘We shall have to see if he likes women with short hair,’ I said, safe in the knowledge that he in fact liked long, thick tresses that he could grip in tight handfuls and bury his groaning face into.