Authors: Elle Field
Tags: #Chick-Lit, #Contemporary Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Fiction, #Humour, #New Adult & College, #Romance, #Women's Fiction
Found
Found Copyright © Elle Field 2016
E-edition first published: August 2016
All rights reserved.
No reproduction without permission.
The moral right of Elle Field to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead is entirely coincidental.
I slam the front door shut behind me, my recent phone conversation still playing on my mind. The longer I talked to Giles, the more my feelings of unease grew, but as I dump my briefcase on the floor I realise I had to talk to
someone
. Arielle certainly isn’t listening to me at the moment.
Confessing my unhappiness to my brother was the best thing to do, and Giles was right: I can’t let Arielle’s lifestyle continue. It’s not only bad for her, it’s bad for
us
. She deserves to do so much more than play the role of an idle rich girlfriend and, a bit further down the line, my idle rich wife. I mean, she loves fashion. Surely she can do something more than just spend my money on clothes?
Money is
my
thing, the thing that is currently playing on my mind along with my irritating cough and a feeling of tiredness that I can’t seem to shift. This tiredness goes beyond anything I’ve felt before. I’m dead to my bones and work isn’t helping matters.
Because of liquidity problems in banks in the US, something that’s happening thousands of miles away, me and my team are having long nights.
Every
night. I gave my team the day off since I was at the hospital, but Arielle thinks I’ve been at work. What does
that
say about the state of our relationship?
As I head towards the sitting room, I take a deep sniff. Nope.
Nothing
. No whiff of a lovingly prepared, home-cooked meal. Nothing tantalising keeping warm in the oven that she’s picked up from the nearby King’s Road. Not even a takeaway menu or two on the hallway table that suggests my girlfriend – my girlfriend who spends her days shopping, going to salons and does very little else – has thought about me. Didn’t she get my message that I was coming home for lunch?
As I walk into the room, it’s evident she didn’t. Sprawled on the sofa in a burgundy tracksuit that I know will have cost a fortune, Arielle is flicking through a travel brochure.
For fuck’s sake
. We only came back from Saranda the other month, a picturesque Albanian town close to the dazzling, turquoise Ionian Sea, where we spent an idyllic two weeks. Arielle does not need another holiday. She’s done
nothing
since we got home. How has that stressed her out?
‘At it again?’ I snarl, unable to hold back my fury when I clock several more brochures stacked next to her. We have money, sure, but at the rate that Arielle spends it, I’m going to owe more than I earn.
‘Bad day at the office, dear?’ she trills at me. ‘I don’t know why you let the market get to you,’ she continues without waiting for an answer. ‘We’re in the 21st century, Piers. We’re beyond recessions.’
She gives a little chuckle, which infuriates me because she’s not stupid. If she used that brain of hers, thought about things and picked up a newspaper instead of a fashion magazine or travel brochure, then she wouldn’t spout crap like that.
Storming over to her, I grab the brochure out of her hand. ‘Read about the market in this did you, Arielle? Oh no,’ I continue angrily, throwing the brochure to the floor, ‘you can’t have done because you don’t read anything useful, do you? You only read about things that cost me money.’
I am livid. My dad worked hard to support my mum, brother and me; equally, my mum worked hard as a wife and mother. Arielle is taking bloody liberties because she does
nothing
. Arielle’s only priority is
Arielle
.
‘You can shout at me all you want if it makes you feel better,’ she answers in the most bored tone I’ve ever heard. I don’t even have her respect anymore, and that hurts. It really hurts.
I look at her in disgust. Sure, I fancy Arielle as much as I did the day I met her – she’s so beautiful with her blonde hair and her laughing, full mouth – but we’ve not laughed together in a while and I’m beginning to find her spend, spend, spend attitude exceedingly ugly. I don’t know who the woman I love has become.
‘What would make me feel better, Arielle,’ I scream, and I’m not proud of this, ‘is if you got off your ever-increasingly fat ass and got a job. You are nothing but a filthy, manipulative lay-about.’
I regret the words as soon as they are out of my mouth, but this is our norm. We’ve been having more and more rows lately. Usually I storm off and apologise once I’ve cooled down – but not this time. This time she’s not going to get away with being the princess that I turned her into.
‘What?’ she gasps, then quickly composes herself and looks non-plussed again.
‘You heard me.’ I glare at her. ‘Get a job because this ship is sinking.’
‘You told me not to work,’ she calmly points out, though I notice her forehead pinches slightly.
‘If I told you to jump off a cliff, would you?’ I ask. ‘Wait, you probably would. What happened to the girl I fell in love with? When did you become so greedy and selfish? You’ve become dull. You’re not the Arielle I thought I loved, and...’ I pause only for the briefest of seconds, but I
have
to say these words. ‘... I want you to go.’
She’s staring up at me from the sofa, a hint of genuine worry starting to appear in those beautiful blue eyes of hers. ‘Go where?’ she asks dumbly.
‘I don’t care. We’re over.’ I turn away, scared to look at her because she will break me if I do.
‘Piers...’ She stands up, trying to grab hold of me as she starts to take this seriously.
‘No, Arielle,’ I state firmly. This is killing me, but it is for her own good. ‘I need you gone.’
‘We’re over? Just like that?’
Giles’ earlier encouragement rattles around my head, his advice to be firm, and I turn to face her so she can see that I am serious. ‘I need space. I need to seriously think if we have a future.’
‘We do, we do!’
She tries to kiss me, but I gently push her away. If I kiss her, I will crumble. ‘Don’t,’ I say sharply, stepping back from her.
There’s the slightest pause, and then: ‘Where should I go?’
That’s it?
She’s not even going to fight me? One stern word or two from me, a rebuff of a kiss, and she’s walking away. Do I really mean nothing to her?
Am I just the idiot who pays the bills
?
I feel dizzy, probably because all this stress is aggravating my condition, and I remember that the consultant this morning insisted I should be signed off work. The office owns me though; I’m paid too much to be sick.
‘I don’t care,’ I snap, focusing my attention back on Arielle. ‘I’m not your keeper. Just go.’
‘But, what about my belongings?’ she whines.
Her
belongings? I didn’t see Arielle working sixty-plus hours a week to pay for her things.
‘You mean
my
belongings.’ I bite my tongue to stop myself ranting at her. We need some space, then she can work out what she wants to do in life – prove that she’s with me because she loves me and not because of my money.
‘You’ve got ten minutes. Pack a weekend bag.’
She nods.
Crashing down on the sofa, I hold my head in my hands and try to quell the dizziness swimming around it.
‘This is silly, Pony,’ she coos, using our pet name when she returns – it could have been five minutes later or fifty for all I know, but I’m feeling more steady now. As I look up at her, I regret what I’ve asked her to do, but I know I need to stay strong. ‘Can we not talk about this?’ she asks.
‘No.’ I grab her handbag from the floor and hold it out for her. ‘Here.’
‘Is the market that bad?’ she asks gently, more like the Arielle I know and love. Where has
she
been all these weeks? ‘We can talk about this,’ she offers.
I try to speak but I’m fighting the overwhelming urge to cough. I’ve had one diagnosis today. With my dad dying how he did, and my uncle having cancer, I don’t trust my gene pool. I imagine there is worse to come for me health-wise.
‘Talk? Talk, Arielle?’ I rasp at her, trying to stifle that cough. ‘You’ve barely acknowledged me all week and only now you realise that I needed to talk to you as I’m kicking you out! You really are a manipulative bitch. I thought I might have been wrong–’
‘But–’
‘No,’ I interrupt back, a madness bubbling up inside of me. ‘I’ve made up my mind.’ I grab her handbag and take out our joint bank cards, plus her house keys. ‘This is it. We’re truly over. Now leave.’
‘My cards,’ she protests.
‘No.
My
cards,’ I state firmly because I’m the only one who puts money in those accounts. ‘Out.’
‘No! You can’t do this to me!’
Like a girl possessed, she drops her bags and runs towards our bedroom, but I scoop them up and grab hold of her. Frogmarching her towards the front door, I shove her handbag at her, and throw her holdall outside.
I stand in the doorway as she stares back at me, bewildered. I suspect I may also look a little dazed at what I’ve just done, and I feel like a monster, but
her
cards? Giles was right; it’s time she stands on her own two feet. Prove to me that I’m more than a cash machine.
‘Goodbye, Arielle,’ I say, not looking at her, though it kills me to utter those words now that my moment of madness has passed.
What am I doing
?
‘Piers, no!’ she screams back at me. ‘What about my stuff?’
What the fuck
?
Her stuff
? What about
us
? Is that all she cares about – her things?
Has she ever loved me
?
‘I hope you chose wisely,’ I sarcastically snarl, and I want to punch the door. ‘Because you’ll need to buy new
stuff
out of your own money. Now money, Arielle, is what you get
when you work
.’
I slam the door shut and storm through the house to the sitting room, where I collapse on the sofa and violently start to cough.
Fuck
. What have I done? Shakily, I pick up the phone and call Giles before I cave in and run after her.
‘How did it go?’
I can hear my six-year-old niece, Annabelle, shouting in the background. It sounds like she’s already over the “tummy ache” that kept her off school today.
‘I’m ten seconds away from chasing after her,’ I confess with a groan.
‘Do you love her?’
‘Of course,’ I splutter because Giles and I do not talk about love, not really. He must be worried about me.
‘Then you have to let her find her own way. We spoke about this.’
‘I just wanted her to be happy. I thought...’ I pause as I run my hands through my hair. ‘... I thought I was doing the right thing by taking away the worry of work,’ I try and explain. This is such a big mess.
‘There’s a big difference between taking away the worry of work by supporting someone versus someone doing no work whatsoever,’ Giles remarks dryly.
‘It was only ever a temporary thing,’ I defend, ‘until she figured out what she wanted to do. I never meant for her to do nothing all of this time... I don’t know how four years have passed.’
‘Time flies,’ Giles says stoically, and I know he’s thinking about Elise, his wife, who died of a brain aneurysm when Annabelle was a baby. One minute she was laughing and joking in their garden, the next minute she was gone.
This makes me feel like shit. I have the love of my life; Giles doesn’t. Well, I
had
the love of my life: I’ve just tossed her out. I daren’t look through the window. If I see her, I’ll let her back in, and then where will our relationship be in another four years?
‘Besides, she’s not going to be homeless, is she?’ Giles continues. ‘We talked about this. Let her go home to her parents, figure out her head, and I bet you’ll be using that engagement ring you bought her before the end of the year.’
I mumble a reply as I try and stop myself from coughing, but I don’t manage it. I’m getting really tired of this.
‘How was the hospital by the way?’ Giles asks when I finally stop spluttering down the phone at him.
I clear my throat. ‘There was a mix-up at the lab so they just took more samples. I’m sure it’s nothing,’ I say dismissively.
I am not telling anyone what I was diagnosed with today. I’ll get this treated, I’ll get better, and they’ll never need to know.