January 2 – Friday
Amanda checked the clock, it wasn’t surprising, eight twenty-two, it was three minutes exactly since she last checked. She turned on the television in the front lounge, the music system in the kitchen and she lit candles in the hall. She picked up a magazine; threw it aside again. She was one step away from descending on the box of chocolates that whispered to her from the utility room where they lay expectantly, they knew she’d be back for them, eventually.
Richard was always late these days, but, she told herself, that didn’t mean anything. It was hardly a crime to work hard. Richard wanted to be top dog, he would wipe Hugo Lennox’s eye this year, and then, maybe Nicola wouldn’t be quite so superior anymore.
Amanda was trying desperately to compensate. The truth was, at this moment, she didn’t give much of a damn either way whether Richard got the job. As far as she could see, they had as much as they could want. A promotion would just mean more stress, when they didn’t need any more money. It would mean she’d be expected to entertain people, and while there would be caterers and planners, entertaining Richard’s work colleagues was about so much more than just putting food on the table. God, even thinking about it was getting her all worked up.
It was almost nine-thirty when she heard his key slip into the lock. Somehow, her senses heightened, she imagined she could hear the metal twisting in the barrel. The soles of his shoes kissing their lovely original parquet floor bristled along her nerves unreasonably.
‘Richard,’ she called as he passed the sitting room door. ‘I’m here.’ Funny, but mostly he just made his way to the kitchen, or his study – and those were the nights he arrived home before she was in bed already.
‘So you are,’ he called as he made his way into the kitchen.
‘Can I get you something to eat?’ She followed him.
‘Ah, maybe something light,’ he said, ‘you can bring it through.’ He walked past her, headed for the study and, she realised, if she disappeared now, he probably couldn’t describe what she looked like, not really. He couldn’t tell the police what she was wearing, or if she’d had her make-up on, or her rings. God, she could be walking about with whiskers and nose rings for all he knew, because, she realised now, he didn’t really look at her anymore. Oh, he looked at her when they went to the New Year’s party – not that he said she was nice. He managed to concede the heels balanced her out, so she didn’t look so round. God, she’d been ridiculously happy when he said that six inches turned her almost into an oval shape. Was that all she expected now? And when had she turned into a maid or waitress for him? She looked down at the tray in her hand, was she going to carry his food into him and clear up afterwards?
She stood for a moment, alone again in her big kitchen. What was she thinking? Less than twelve hours ago, she’d found a condom in his pocket and even if she’d managed to convince herself that it was some kind of silly misunderstanding, she couldn’t really be planning on pandering to him until she was sure it was just a mistake – could she?
Well, no she bloody couldn’t.
‘Richard,’ she said a little too loudly as she rounded the kitchen door into his little study. When he looked up from his desk, she could see he was startled. Perhaps it was more than that, he looked really quite unwell. As though he’d had an argument with someone – she knew the look, a mixture of insult and upset. He didn’t like it when he couldn’t get his own way. She remembered it from when they fought with Tess Cuffe over the court case. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, why? Why wouldn’t I be?’ he looked at her now as though he was waiting for her to supply an explanation for why he looked so worried.
‘No, you look terrible and it reminded me…’ She was distracted now, but it was as much with the present as it was with the past. ‘Tess Cuffe…’
‘Tess Cuffe?’ He shot up. ‘What about her? What’s she been saying? Because whatever it is, you know what she’s bloody like. Too much time on her hands, that woman – she’s nothing but an interfering old busybody.’
‘Richard, I didn’t mean…’ God, what had she mentioned Tess Cuffe for, she always annoyed him, although, not usually as much as this. Amanda decided he must have had a really rough day of it. ‘She didn’t say anything, no, I was just…’
‘Well, that’s all right then,’ he said, lowering himself into his chair, as though the threat of attack had passed. ‘Been a long day,’ he said and Amanda wondered if that was meant to be some kind of apology for leaving any pleasantries somewhere outside the front door.
‘I know, Richard. You work too hard,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘Actually,’ she took the condom from her pocket and slipped it across the desk. ‘Look familiar,’ she drew up the corners of her mouth and managed a nervous smile, of course he wasn’t having an affair, how stupid was she really? Her Richard, the very idea! He was far too busy to have an affair, far too worked up about his job and Tess Cuffe and a million other important things, to even have sex with his wife, never mind about an affair as well. ‘I found it,’ she said, moving it across a little further and dipping her voice, just a fraction. God, it was so long since they’d had sex, perhaps that was all they were missing. A good old-fashioned bonk-a-thon. Once upon a time, it would have worked wonders for his stress levels, even if it did make her crave tiramisu.
‘I…’ Richard cleared his throat, picked up the condom, as though trying to figure out what was happening, he squinted for a moment, ‘it’s a… it’s a… oh, my God,’ then he dropped it, as though it might burn his fingers off. ‘Where did you get this?’ His voice was hardly a rattle.
‘It was in your pocket,’ Amanda said. ‘After the party, I was getting your suits ready for the cleaners.’
‘Oh, I see,’ he said, flopping back in the chair. Then he sat forward and Tess thought the silence would swallow her up, he looked from her eyes to the condom and back again. ‘God,’ he said, his voice returning to a glimmer of its usual cockiness. ‘Those jokers, you know what this is, don’t you?’
‘Well, I suppose, it’s…’ Amanda felt her temperature drop. Had she shivered?
‘It’s those blokes from accounts, they’re such a crowd of wankers,’ he moved his four fingers across his lips, left them there for a moment, and with that trademark move, if he never said another word, Amanda knew he was lying to her.
‘Of course,’ her voice echoed, ‘the blokes from accounts, total wankers.’ She took up the condom, automatically, felt it almost burn into her hands and somehow managed to get out of there without collapsing. She had to think this through, couldn’t face the stark truth of what it all meant. One thing was certain, it was confirmed, for her at least, Richard was lying.
*
‘A personal trainer,’ Megan winked at her when they were having their weekly coffee in the Berkley a few days later. Then she added with a throaty laugh, ‘You’d be amazed what the right one can do for your marriage as well as your waistband.’ It was the worst kept secret that Megan was having a fling with a Mexican muscleman called Pedro.
‘Well, I think it’s very brave, deciding to give up the things you love,’ Clarissa sniffed. Clarissa hadn’t seen a jam tart in twenty years. She had developed a series of convenient food intolerances, so it seemed to Amanda that all she could manage now was water. Mind you, Amanda often reflected, it was doing wonders for her skin, if not exactly imbuing her with a sense of fun.
‘I don’t know about that, now, it is just cake and biscuits after all, but I’m thinking of going power-walking too,’ Amanda chimed in, she could hear her voice going through the usual conversations, but they were outside of her. She was still in shock. She knew it. She hoped she was hiding it well.
She sipped her coffee in silence while the other women gossiped and it dawned on her that they might already know if Richard was having an affair. They usually did, when it was someone else. One of the husbands would always let slip on the other, so their coffee mornings had always been lively bitchfests. They gleefully swapped stories about the women who were not present. Each of them stupidly believed they would never be the one on the outside. Isn’t that what Amanda had thought? Her Richard would never have an affair like Cordelia Pearse’s husband. That had been truly scandalous. They’d all known about it for so long. He’d been shagging his secretary at every possible opportunity, while Cordelia kept a stiff upper lip. At least Cordelia had the last laugh. None of them realised at the time that Cordelia was siphoning off not only her husband’s bank account but, in the end, his company credit card as well. Then, when it suited her, she hightailed it back to her well-heeled Boston family. She cheerfully left her hapless husband to face the music. Apparently, he was working in the charity sector now. Richard said it would take him three lifetimes to pay back what they owed.
She shuddered again, realising that comparing herself to Cordelia Pearse was something she never thought she’d be doing.
‘Are you cold, darling?’ Nicola examined her a little too closely through narrowed kohl-rimmed eyes.
‘No. I’m fine. I think I’m just shaking off a touch of flu. I probably should be getting home, keeping warm.’ Amanda began to shrug into her cashmere coat.
‘I can drop you back, if that suits.’ Nicola leaned over towards her. ‘I thought you looked a bit peaky when you arrived.’
‘As I said, I’m just fighting off the sniffles.’ Amanda could hardly breathe. The last thing she wanted was to break down in front of this lot. She couldn’t do that. She’d be the talk of the wives for a solid week. She could almost hear the phone conversations in her ears as she left, whispering about her marriage, about her home, her children and, of course, about the fact that she had let herself go so badly over the years. Oh, yes, that would be the pronouncement from Nicola. She could imagine the words tripping off those scarlet lips. I told her, when you’re forty, Botox is your only friend.
Amanda made her way back to the jeep. Usually, after the Berkley, she trotted up to the National Gallery, wiled away an hour or two. She couldn’t go there today, she knew, even sitting before one of her favourite paintings wouldn’t soothe her soul. In her head, she hadn’t left the women behind her at all. She could hear their cackling voices making up words in her ears. These women were supposed to be her friends. Friends, the people she could depend on and rely on when things went pear-shaped. Could she really rely on Nicola or Megan or Clarissa?
Suddenly she thought back to when news of Cordelia’s marriage break-up became official. Amanda winced, she was no better than the others. She had greeted it with a mixture of interested curiosity at best, at worst, well… she’d hate to be talked about as they had discussed Cordelia. God, she was sorry now. And not just sorry because she found herself in the same boat. She was genuinely sorry for how they had spoken about and treated Cordelia. They had frozen her out. Well, they had frozen her out after they pumped her for any details she would give and then chewed over the carcass of her marriage as if they were vultures at a desert feast. They had been horrible. She had been horrible and really, she knew, as she drove back towards Swift Square, she absolutely had no right to expect anything better now that she found herself in the same position.
The house was silent when she arrived back, aside from the low hum of the alarm, clocking her movements, measuring ever tremor that crossed its various trip points. Suddenly, she sensed the whole house was watching her. It was waiting to see what she would do next. Was it laughing at her? Did this overstuffed monstrosity that she had helped create see right thought her?
Amanda stood in her lovely bedroom for a moment. This house – she couldn’t truthfully call it a home – had taken years to assemble. Years of her time and effort and the price of a dozen working-class homes to decorate. And what was it all for? she wondered now as she ran her hand along the wild organza drapes that she had imported especially from France. They’d cost the equivalent of a teacher’s monthly salary just to cover the master bedroom window. She felt completely empty looking around the room that once made her so proud. Now, it represented something pinched from her. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to live here anymore. That idea filled her with complete panic. Her breath, shortening in her lungs, told her it was time to stop thinking and start moving. Only she didn’t know where to move to or how to stop the maelstrom of emotions that had overtaken her since she found that…
She looked at the dressing room door again. She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t stay in this room. She ran out, banged closed the door behind. In the kitchen, she went straight to the fridge. She grabbed a block of cheese and was about to cut off a large satisfying chunk when she caught sight of herself. Her reflection gaped back at her from the mirrored surface of the Danish TV that Richard insisted they must have installed across the opposite wall.
Amanda glared at the woman standing there. It was déjà vu, that woman who’d looked back at her only a few days earlier had sunk to a new low. She was a washed-up, overly preened, doormat of a woman. The image that stared back at her did not come near to matching the woman she once believed she could be.
What was she going to do?
Eat her way out of her collapsing marriage? Could chocolate and cheese really be the solution?
Ragroll her way to happiness? She had a feeling this wasn’t a problem that could be sorted by Farrow and Ball.
Bury her head and hope it would just sort itself out? Convince herself that by keeping up the façade all would be well?
She knew it wouldn’t. Nicola, Clarissa and Megan might be able to live that kind of life, but not Amanda. The silver foil packet from her husband’s tuxedo had put paid to that. Now, standing here, looking into the depths of those achingly sad but familiar eyes, Amanda King knew that she would have to shake things up. She would have to make some radical changes and she’d have to figure out what kind of life she wanted to live. From today, she was living it on her own terms.
*
Amanda might have known that Tess Bloody Cuffe would be out lumbering about the square. As luck would have it, they bumped into each other just on the halfway mark. Well, Tess would have to behave herself out here. She couldn’t just go around calling Amanda names or making a nuisance of herself, and if she did, Amanda had a feeling that she was in for a nasty surprise, because on this occasion, she might just bite back.
‘So, you’re out walking now, are you?’ Tess said as they passed each other on their second time round the square. It was typical, of course, that Tess would have to walk in an anticlockwise direction, Amanda thought as she took a clockwise direction.
‘Looks like it,’ was all Amanda managed as they breezed past each other. Really, Tess Cuffe was too much, out wandering about with her face almost hidden beneath that huge scarf. She’d do herself a mischief if she fell over and then it’d be Richard that’d have to fork out for ramps around that little flat.
Oh, God, Richard, she wanted to wail her pain out here, right in the middle of the road.
Then, she saw Tess Cuffe rounding the end of the square. Had she managed to make it around the square with greater speed than Amanda?
‘You’d need to be taking it easy, you don’t want to end up doing damage to yourself,’ Amanda volunteered as they passed each other for the second time. Amanda was almost out of puff, but she was determined to stay walking for longer than Tess and she certainly wasn’t going to be walking any slower than her.
‘Wouldn’t you just love that?’ Tess cackled. ‘A nice clean heart attack to finish me off and then you could have my flat kitted out into a man cave or a sunken gymnasium no doubt.’ And she seemed to pick up pace as though she was racing Amanda about the square, lapping her in some juvenile way. Amanda thought about her words. Of course, she was right, there was a time when Amanda thought she could do something lovely with the flat, but now in her mind she’d annexed that part of the house from her imagination. All the same, it was a shame they’d ended up with such bad feeling between them. Richard, with his bloody court case and his ranting and bullying – he’d turned her right off having anything to do with the basement, if it ever came up. Of course, she wouldn’t go saying that to Tess. She’d spent twenty years working on their united front – she wasn’t going to let that woman know that they were anything less now.
‘I suppose, you’re trying to lose the weight for the new year,’ Tess enquired as they met each other again, this time Tess had made even better headway and Amanda slowed down still further. ‘Take the lead out of your backside, no harm,’ Tess guffawed.
‘Takes one to know one,’ Amanda retorted, ‘when it comes to having a big bum.’ Beneath the glassy ray of the street lamp, Amanda did a double take. Was Tess’s face bruised and battered-looking? She could have sworn as the old girl walked past that there were bruises and perhaps stitches too. The thought threw her off balance a little. She’d spotted the plaster on her hand before Christmas and for a moment she wanted to turn back and ask if everything was all right. It was what you did, wasn’t it? Enquired after your neighbours? Well, not when your neighbour was Tess Cuffe and she was as likely to call you all the names under the sun as she was to engage in any kind of civilised conversation. So, instead, when she reached the point where she was opposite her house, Amanda crossed the road, leaving Tess to make her way round the square once more. Truthfully, she was out of breath anyway, if anything Tess had only spurred her on to work a little harder. God, there was a part of her that felt more determined than ever to get fit – well, fitter than Tess Cuffe anyway.