January 22 – Thursday
It was almost three weeks. Three weeks now since condom-gate and Amanda was still undecided. One thing was for sure, she had to do something. Something more than walk around the Square each night. God, last night she’d almost turned on her heel and headed in the opposite direction just so she could walk along with Tess Cuffe. Amanda took it as a sign that she was now, officially desperate. If she truly was that desperate, well, it was time to call up the men in the white coats and start chanting novenas to whatever saint took care of hopeless cases. At the same time, she had to admit that something had changed in Tess Cuffe, it was as though she’d softened, just a little. Maybe they were both changing, just a bit. So, now, rather than nasty comments and frosty silence, there was a tepid wariness between them that Amanda welcomed even if Tess might not.
She sat at her kitchen table with a small notebook before her and a pencil in her hand. She had plenty to be thankful for. No, really, she tried to convince herself, there was lots to be thankful for. She looked around her pristine kitchen. How many people would give a kidney to live in a house like this? The problem was, Amanda knew that the kitchen in itself really meant very little. By the same token, her lovely house and her lovely car – they were essentially worthless if you weren’t happy. How had it taken her so long to truly understand this? Like Amanda and her life, they were empty. There was no putting it all back together. Like a priceless broken vase, Amanda couldn’t see how it could be fixed. For one thing, they both needed to want it and Richard clearly didn’t.
She needed a plan. She held her pencil over the notebook, circled the blank page for a moment. It was no good. She needed to do something now. She picked up her mobile. She would have it out with him. She would be brave and she would be strong. She hadn’t really talked to him in days, beyond pass the milk, or have you seen my keys? Not really since she’d shown him the condom. They’d skirted around each other, two uncomfortable actors playing parts that no longer belonged to them. He left early, came home late and she was too cowardly to pretend she was even awake.
She dialled his number, her stomach doing backflips and somersaults in traitorous sequence. It went straight to mailbox. She held the phone in her hand for a moment. Perhaps, it was a sign? She was not meant to ring him now. Perhaps, he was with her? Perhaps, this very minute, they were…
Bastard. How could he do this to her? How could he do this to them? He was ruining her lovely life. This lovely, perfect life that she had constructed around them. They were already living the dream, why did he have to go and spoil it all?
She had to stop it – she was tormenting herself with these thoughts. She jumped from the table, no plan in mind, but found herself in the living room, staring up at the cabinet Richard had commissioned specially to carry his golf trophies. She didn’t question, didn’t think about it. Later, she’d wonder, is this what blind rage felt like? Is this how people commit murder and then get off with a plea of insanity? Had she really come to the point where she was no longer compos mentis?
Possibly, because in the next fifteen minutes she managed to take every single piece of crystal out of the cabinet and carry them carefully out the back door. A sense of what she was about to do may have fleeted in some deep part of her while she stood with the trophies at her feet. And then, she picked up the biggest, most important piece of glass Richard had won. A four ball with a political bigwig, a fat-cat CEO and a work crony. She remembered the day well. The wives had turned out to glide about the clubhouse, while their men competed on the greens. Truly, Richard wasn’t much of a golfer, but when you have enough money, it’s amazing how you get picked for all the best teams.
She lifted the crystal; it was almost two foot tall, a deep vase with the all-important inscription. Waterford crystal – probably worth as much as a pair of Louboutin heels. Amanda pushed that thought from her mind easily. As she felt it fly from her hand, she smiled. A liberating sense of relief passed through her when she heard the crash of glass against the old brick wall.
It took only minutes to bring to smithereens a lifetime of golfing memorabilia. Did she feel bad about it? No, Amanda realised it was the first time in a long time that she felt she might be doing something to settle the score.
Later, as she swept up the shards, she knew it would take more than just a shelf of golf trophies to make her feel they were even, but she had every intention of making sure they were. Win or lose, Amanda had a feeling that she needed to somehow get the upper hand if they were ever going to be happy again.
*
Friday was coffee morning. Amanda checked her appearance before heading out to the jeep. She’d made an appointment at the hairdressers to sort out her grey roots. Not Claude; not this time. She was finished with Claude and with his overpriced, exaggerated notions and attitude of infallibility around all issues follicle. No, this morning she was going to a little salon that had opened up just around the corner.
‘Growing it out, are you, Amanda?’ the girl – she introduced herself as Sonia – sounded as if she’d been brought up in the Liberties as she took strands of Amanda’s hair in her fingers.
Even in this subdued light, designed to make all hair look good, there was no denying that the colour was awful. Amanda hadn’t put her make-up on yet, so the overall effect was nothing short of tragic. In snapshot, she reminded herself of a strawberry muffin. Her bouncy bob was shocking red icing with a badger strip of white sugar grey hair. Beneath this, the bland invisibility of middle age, without the strategic application of primer, eraser and highlighter, not to mention foundation, blusher and lips, made her resemble half-baked muffin dough.
‘No bad thing, change is as good as a rest,’ the girl said, but she was nice, not like the stylists Claude unleashed on her.
‘I don’t know how it got to that colour, really. I mean, I started out colouring the greys, but the place I used to go to, well, they just seemed to keep deepening the colour, so…’ Amanda picked up a strand between her fingers, winced. It was almost crimson, and a radioactive hue of crimson at that. ‘I want something understated; something that’ll be easy to take care of.’
‘What colour were you? You know, before you let the rainbow fairies at it,’ Sonia asked and they both giggled at that.
‘Well, I was a redhead, a nice redhead – I used to get compliments all the time.’ It was ‘quite striking’, was what Richard had said. ‘Well, it was quite nice.’
‘And do you want to go for something similar again or something a bit more…’ Sonia wiggled her fingers as though she was ready to cast a spell on the disaster before her.
‘I want something that’s appropriate, low-key. I want something that gives me a bit of a break. You know, something that’s classy, but not boring. Is that too much to ask?’
‘Nope. Not at all. We could go for a nice, light brown, colour it all over and then, if you want, I can add in some lighter tones throughout. You’ll look…’ she scrunched up her face for a moment before smiling, ‘normal. No, seriously, it’ll look good. You’ll look good and it won’t take long.’ Sonia looked around the salon. It was a weekday morning and although there was a steady stream of custom, it hadn’t the same frenetic feel to it that Claude actively cranked up so clients always knew he was in demand.
Sonia mixed the colour expertly and Amanda felt herself relax in the faux-leather chair surrounded by the chattering of harried women who were just grabbing what time they could before getting back to busy lives. For an hour or two, the warm sweet-smelling salon and a mug of instant coffee provided a respite, and the fleeting camaraderie was enough to buoy Amanda for her meeting with the girls.
Amanda emerged from the salon looking and feeling better than she’d done in weeks. When her hair was blow-dried she’d applied her make-up, carefully and more subtly than usual. Then she paid a fifth of the price she would have handed over to Claude and headed off to the dreaded coffee morning feeling like Jackie O – without the strand of pearls.
She caught a glimpse of herself in one of the shop windows as she made her way back to the car, the image she saw there was a pleasant surprise. Critically, she could admit, she was hardly a supermodel, but she looked better; maybe even a little bit sophisticated with her new colour and tidied-up hairstyle. She had made an effort, nothing out of the ordinary for the set she was meeting, but compared to what she wore at home these days, she was decidedly glam.
‘Oh,’ Nicola sniffed, ‘you’ve had your hair done.’ She leant a little closer to inspect. ‘So you weren’t brave enough to go for grey after all?’ She smiled smugly at the other women.
‘I still might, just not yet. Anyway, I couldn’t just let it grow out now, could I?’
‘It’s super,’ Clarissa said, ‘more chic than the red.’ She nodded her approval.
‘Anything is better than that badger strip you had last week,’ Megan laughed. ‘Honestly, we thought, next thing you know, Richard would be finding a younger model.’ She glanced at the other two and for a moment, something cut through the silence that fell between them, then she looked back at Amanda. ‘Not of course that Richard would ever do anything like that.’
‘Well, obviously,’ Amanda said as convincingly as she could. She had to front it out. Even if she was going to confront Richard, it would be something that she would never share with this lot.
‘Still off the cake?’ Clarissa asked.
‘Yes,’ Amanda said. Curiously this week, she hadn’t even noticed the tiered plate before her, loaded up with biscuits, banana bread and cherry slices. ‘It’s really made a difference too, I can feel it already,’ Amanda said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. A few weeks ago, she would have been ecstatic at the thought of losing over half a stone in weight, now, well, it was the very last thing on her mind.
The conversation around her had moved on to gardeners. Apparently, you were nobody these days unless you had your garden redesigned and there was only one designer everyone wanted. Of course, Clarissa had him on speed dial. She passed the number along to Amanda, who didn’t remember asking for it, but she smiled when she realised it was Carlos and she put it in her handbag without a word.
She sat back a little in her chair and watched the three women who had been her so-called friends for almost two decades. They were clones, each of them may look different, but they were clones. All of them prayed at the same altar. Was it desperation? Was that why they strived so hard for perfection? Was it fear? Perhaps they feared finding themselves in the situation Amanda had found herself in now.
She took a deep breath. Even the coffee sat precariously in her throat, threatening in its own spiteful way to damn her. This place, the Berkley hotel, they had come here every week for years. Amanda could remember her first time. She’d been completely in awe of it all. This beautiful room and, of course, Clarissa, Nicola and Megan were enough to make anyone catch their breath. Back then, they really were all beautiful, full of life and expectations. Their smiles were genuine then – weren’t they? Maybe they weren’t. Maybe they had always been this bitchy and she just hadn’t noticed because she was on the inside for so long. That thought made her feel disgust, not at them as much as at herself. They had been despicable. Cruel to people who were not faring as well in life as they were; when had she turned into someone who took pleasure in other people’s misfortunes?
God, but she wanted to scream. Suddenly she wanted to call them out, tell them exactly how she saw them. She wanted to rupture their bitch fest and stamp out of here, she wanted to run down that street outside, find her car and drive… Where? Home was not the refuge she had hoped to make it. Since her suspicions began, she felt like an outsider in the beautiful house she’d spent so much of her time getting just right. Now, it was all wrong. Everything about it was wrong. She wanted a home where she could throw her coat over the stair rail, where she could leave her bag on the kitchen worktops without having to put it away immediately. She wanted a home that smelled as if her family lived there. She wanted a home where people sat together, not behind forbidding bedroom doors and beneath inimical headphones. She wanted a house that was a home. Could the house on Swift Square ever be that now? God, she couldn’t answer that and the question as it hung over her carried in it a maelstrom of emotions from fear to regret and from sadness finally to anger.
‘You’re not even listening to us. Honestly, Amanda, you’re in another world, it’s as if you’ve something on your mind and it’s completely cut you off from us?’ Nicola was studying her, and although her mouth was smiling, those shrewd green grey eyes were assessing.
‘No, just one of those things. I’m making biscuits for the Girl Guides and, for the life of me, I can’t remember where I left my shopping list.’ Amanda smiled what she hoped was an endearing smile. They had always seen her as a little ditzy. Over the years, Amanda had become the fat one. She was the one who could tell a joke and got frazzled by the various demands of having a fabulous life, but cake kept her on the straight and narrow.
‘I was just saying,’ Clarissa bent a little closer to the group and Amanda leant forward out of courtesy as much as out of habit, ‘I have it on good authority that this new girl, Arial Wade?’ She looked around at the women who were nodding like wind-up dolls. Amanda nodded automatically too, although she hadn’t a clue who they were on about. ‘Well, apparently, she’s working her way through the trading floor. She’s slept with every junior trader in the place and…’Clarissa smiled coyly, enjoyed having them hang on her next words.
‘Oh, come on, do tell…’ Nicola was practically gagging.
‘Well, it seems that they’re looking at promoting her, so she could yet be…’ Clarissa walked her perfectly manicured fingers along the tabletop.
‘No. There’s not a chance that she’s going to swan in from…’ Nicola looked around. ‘Where was she before? Japan, wasn’t it?’ She shrugged, ‘It’s never going to happen, not if she decides to shag Julian Fitzgerald himself. Everyone knows Hugo has…’ she looked across at Amanda, ‘well, either Hugo or Richard are entitled to that job.’ That job was the job. It was the job Richard had set his heart on – the prize they were working towards for most of their married lives. The one that Amanda had always believed he’d pull from under Hugo and Nicola Lennox’s nose. Now, well suddenly, it all seemed so worthless.
‘Nicola, seriously, they haven’t given it to either Richard or Hugo, maybe they are holding it open for someone…’ she was going to say better, ‘newer.’ Amanda smiled with an ease that she never knew she had. ‘After all, what do we need it for anyway? My family is taken care of, we have lovely homes, lovely holidays. If Hugo retired tomorrow morning you’re still set up for life.’ Amanda looked around at the other women who were staring at her now, all but open-mouthed. ‘I mean, truly, quality of life, girls,’ she said and she smiled to herself, sipping her coffee.
‘You don’t mean that,’ Nicola said slyly. ‘You know something we don’t… about this job, have you heard something?’ She was leaning forward so much, Amanda thought she might topple over.
‘Heard something?’ Amanda said innocently. ‘Moi?’ She was enjoying her moment of being the centre of it all, the one who seemed to hold all the cards. It was like a holiday from feeling so crap all the time.
‘We’re your friends, Amanda, come on, you’ve got to spill. You know the curiosity will just kill me if I don’t find out for another week.’
‘Do you think she’ll start shagging the senior traders?’ Megan’s hand flew to cover her mouth, normally she managed to keep her reserve.
‘I’d say she already has,’ Nicola was aloof and Amanda knew that if she didn’t play along, Nicola would be the first to shoot a poison dart in her direction.
‘Look, I don’t know anything about this Arial Wade, but I’m just saying, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? They’re looking for new blood, and maybe she’s it. As a woman, we should be applauding her. I mean, better her to get it than some hotshot hardly out of his dad’s school tie. Do we want someone who relegates everyone else to the scrap heap?’
‘Hmm.’ Nicola was thinking now. ‘Maybe we should meet this Arial Wade?’
‘Warn her off, you mean?’ Megan was chewing on her lower lip and Amanda couldn’t help but feel for her. It was amazing the clarity that arrived with knowing that your worst fears had materialised.
‘No. Nothing as juvenile as that. After all, if she’s made it onto the stockbrokers’ floor, she’s hardly going to be intimidated by a few ladies who lunch,’ Nicola’s laugh was sardonic, cruel almost. Was that all she thought of herself? Amanda wondered. Was it all she thought of any of them? Had they become little more than ‘ladies who lunch’ and supplicate themselves to second place because their husbands were super-earners?
‘Well, I say good luck to her,’ Amanda said with far more conviction than she felt. ‘May the best man win.’ She shivered then, a rattle through her bones as though someone had stepped on her grave, or perhaps they were just laughing at her.
*
Amanda was delighted to sit in the jeep once she left the Berkley. She switched off the radio. Its incessant chatter only added to the frizzle of agitation that the women had brought to her nerves. At the traffic lights, she turned left instead of right, headed for the underground parking close to the Stock Exchange. She hadn’t a plan, just a need to not go home yet. At the same time as she was parking the jeep, she knew she really did not want to run into Richard. She could go shopping, that always worked well to soothe her nerves. After all, most of her clothes were becoming loose on her now; she’d begun digging in the back of the wardrobe for items that she’d saved for one day.
No. Shopping wouldn’t do it for her. Not this time. Shopping didn’t sort out seething anger and that was the emotion that she was feeling now. It came as a bit of a surprise, but today, finally, the shock and fear had begun to subside. Now she was angry. Furious with herself for feeling so weak and vulnerable and for becoming what once she would have despised. When did that happen? Had she always been such a wishy-washy wife? She had spent the last few weeks in mortal fear that Richard’s affair would tear her world down. Now she was beginning to see that the world she thought was so pristine was far from being as perfect as she had believed. Today, with this unfamiliar anger searing through her, she realised, that tearing down the lot might be the best thing for her. At least then she could be free to take on the world on her own terms. At least then she wouldn’t have to pretend, because that was what her life had become – pretence. It was the same for Nicola, Megan and Clarissa, only they couldn’t see it yet.
Amanda took the exit furthest from the Stock Exchange. She was walking up Crown Alley when a key-shaped sign caught her attention. She’d never noticed it before, but it seemed to be drawing her towards the light green door emblazoned with the words. P Boland, Investigator and Researcher. Serendipity, wasn’t that what they called it when things just seemed to fall into your hands.
The girl at the desk was lovely. A nondescript little thing, but her eyes were quick and she typed as if she was on a death mission. ‘You’re lucky. The twelve o’clock cancelled. If you could take a seat for a minute?’ She made no move to ring through to her boss, but continued to type at breakneck speed for about four minutes. It was just enough time for Amanda to begin to come to her senses.
She was about to pick up her bag and make her apologies for being silly and that she should not have come when the girl got up from her desk and switched on the kettle. She tipped her head to one side and asked, ‘Coffee or tea?’ and Amanda found herself asking for a cup of tea.
The mug was hot and steaming in her hands and somehow it managed to taste a million times better here with this stranger than the coffee she’d just left behind at the five-star Berkley Hotel.