The Model Wife (9 page)

10

Poppy was seated between Marco Jensen and a middle-aged man called Bill.

‘Do you work for the
Seven Thirty
?’ she asked as they sat down.

‘Christ, no! I’ve got a real job.’

‘Oh.’ Poppy nodded and smiled at Dean, who was hovering behind her with two bottles of wine. ‘Red, please.’ Another glass, she hoped, would make this evening, which had started so horribly, pass a little quicker.

‘I’m a writer,’ Bill continued, ‘do a little bit more for my money than her indoors.’ He nodded at Emma Waters. The penny dropped.

‘You’re Mr Waters!’

‘Mr Pearce actually,’ he corrected snippily. ‘Emma kept her maiden name. Unlike you.’

‘How do you know that?’

He laughed. ‘Everyone knows who you are. You’re the bimbo.’ Luke, who was deep in ingratiating conversation with Farrah Cutler, looked up, annoyed. ‘I don’t know how you put up with it.’ Bill continued, ‘It must be so humiliating.’

‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ Poppy said with all the sincerity of Prince Philip asking a factory worker if he enjoyed his job. ‘It’s just fish and chip paper. What kind of writing do you do?’

‘Bill’s a civil servant,’ Emma cut in icily.

‘That’s not true, darling. What about my play?’

‘Oh yes, the play.’ Emma sounded as if she was referring to a particularly large dog turd on her front path. She turned back to Dean and started chattering vivaciously.

‘What’s the play about?’ Poppy felt bound to ask.

‘Just something I’ve been working on for a while. It’s influenced by Anouilh. Do you go to the theatre much?’

‘Well, no, I’ve got a baby so…’

But Bill had suddenly turned his back on her and was making animated conversation with Marco’s girlfriend, Stephanie, who – Poppy knew from Luke’s bitching – worked in the City and earned about five million pounds a second.

‘Of course I love Jean Genet,’ she was saying earnestly. Bill nodded and smiled. Poppy winced, took a large gulp of wine and a mouthful of her pomegranate and feta salad. She wondered how on earth she was going to get through the night. She felt so intimidated by all those other confident, eloquent, older women. Look at Thea, laughing vivaciously at something Dean had just said. Why had she shot her down so vilely about Cuba? She’d only been being polite.

Poppy looked at her again. Something about Thea made something in the depths of Poppy’s mind stir, like a long-sleeping beast. She realized with a jolt that she was the perfect woman she’d seen talking to Luke that first morning at Sal’s. That was the kind of woman her husband ought to be with, she thought sadly. A woman who talked about what was on the Booker Prize shortlist and what to do about global warming rather than the fact their toddler hadn’t yet started potty training, but they were going to get round to it soon. A woman who had been friends with Hannah and showed admirable loyalty by her disdain for her successor.

‘Did you have a good Christmas?’ she said to Marco, on her other side.

‘Sorry?’

‘How was your Christmas? Did you go away?’

‘Uh. Yeah. Steph and I hired a chalet in Verbier.’ Marco wasn’t making eye contact, his expression was fixed on Dean, a few tantalizing places away, who right now was in intense conversation with Emma. Poppy glanced again at her husband, who was gallantly laughing at Farrah’s every word. She was saying, ‘And I looked at Highgate, but it’s really very academic and – I don’t know – I’ve got a feeling maybe the boys are more creative. It’s a tricky one, schools. Where do your kids go?’

‘Are you good at skiing?’ Poppy tried.

‘Sorry?’ Marco zoned in on her. ‘Um. Yeah. I’m pretty good. Do you ski?’ He sounded as if he’d just come round from a general anaesthetic.

‘No, no. I’ve always wanted to. My mum would never let me go on the school trips. Said she couldn’t afford them. But I’m not very coordinated anyway, so—’

‘Sorry, sorry, Dean!’ Marco shouted. ‘Did I just hear correctly? Did you say the show’s being cut down?’

A murmur went round the dinner table.

‘That’s right,’ Dean said. ‘As of next month, the channel’s cutting fifteen minutes from the show, so it will end at eight fifteen instead of eight thirty.’

Fantastic. Luke will be home fifteen minutes earlier.

^io
5

But Poppy’s delighted thought was drowned out by the cries of protest.

‘But this is outrageous!’

‘How could this be allowed to happen?’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Guys, guys! Don’t shoot the bloody messenger, all right?’ Dean threw up his hands. ‘I’m just telling you what the channel has decided. I can’t say I’m exactly thrilled about it, but what can you do? Having a news programme that finishes at eight thirty is no good for the schedule. Sadly, we’re taking up too much of the all-important eight p.m. slot. When people turn on the telly after their Vesta curry they want to watch a movie with George Clooney or, failing that, Peter and Jordan going shopping for a new cot for Princess. They don’t want to see Luke interviewing the prime minister of Japan.’

‘Oh come now, you’re not saying Luke isn’t every bit as delectable as the Cloonester?’ There was a sarcastic note to Emma’s question.

‘Of course he is. And you, darling, are Britain’s answer to Nicole Kidman – we all know that. And Marco is…’

‘I think he looks a bit like a young Val Kilmer,’ Farrah said dreamily.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ Luke had got where he was partly because his voice could cut across a room and hold everyone’s attention. ‘Listen to how this conversation is degenerating already. Look, this is a disgrace. The
Seven Thirty
is one of the last bastions of decent TV journalism still standing and you’re telling us that our paymasters are cutting fifteen minutes of it in order to feed the masses more Hollywood pap.’

Dean and Roxanne looked at each other.

‘That’s the long and short of it, yes,’ Dean said.

Roxanne hastily interrupted. ‘Look, guys, I know this must seem like a dramatic step, but then dramatic measures are needed. You know how badly viewing figures – not just for the
Seven Thirty
but for the channel as a whole – have been falling. We had to do something about it urgently.’

‘Look on the bright side,’ Dean continued. ‘Fifteen minutes less work a day for you all.’

‘And of course no one is taking a cut in salary,’ Roxanne added.

‘I think it could be a good thing,’ Marco said quickly. ‘It could make the whole show sharper. Snappier.’

‘Thanks, Marco.’ Dean beamed.

Luke’s look couldn’t just have killed Marco, it could have disembowelled, diced, sautéd and braised him overnight.

‘And what about the content?’ he snarled. ‘Are we dumbing that down in accordance with our shorter running time?’

‘I wouldn’t say dumbing down—’ Roxanne said.

‘But we will want more of an emphasis on showbiz,’ cut in Dean.

‘And human interest.’

‘Fewer foreign stories.’

‘Focus groups are telling us they just aren’t interested in what happens abroad.’

‘Unless the sun’s shining and they can buy cheap lager and fags there.’ Dean guffawed. Roxanne rolled her eyes. Farrah got up and started collecting plates. Poppy jumped to her feet.

^io
7

‘Can I help?’

‘Oh, thank you, Poppy.’ No one glanced at her as she collected the crockery, they were all too busy being aghast.

‘The budget is going to be cut overall by fifteen per cent, so that will leave far less funding available for foreign travel,’ Roxanne was saying.

Poppy followed Farrah into the gleaming kitchen, where a sour-faced woman was garnishing a vast tray of roast lamb.

‘Is it nearly ready, Elisa?’

‘Very nearly, Mrs Farrah.’

‘Hello, I’m Poppy.’

Elisa looked startled. So did Farrah. ‘Oh yes, this is Elisa, our housekeeper. Elisa, Poppy’s looking for a nanny. I told her she should call Brigita.’

‘Yeah, good idea,’ Elisa said glumly. Raised voices filtered in through the half-open door.

‘Oh shit, Dean’s put the cat among the pigeons, hasn’t he?’

‘It’s not his fault,’ Poppy said. ‘I mean, he’s just obeying orders, isn’t he?’

‘Like the SS.’ Farrah giggled. ‘You’re very sweet, Poppy. Sounds like you’ve had a bad rap. Got any pictures of your little one you’d like to show me?’

Poppy got out her phone and she and Farrah spent a happy ten minutes cooing over photos of each others’ children.

‘We’d better go back in now,’ Farrah whispered to her, as if they were naughty school girls, who’d been sneaking fags behind the bike shed. ‘I don’t know about you, but I find these corporate-wife evenings a right pain in the backside. I don’t understand half the shop talk and no one wants to know about me because I’m just a mother.’

Poppy smiled nervously. She longed for another glass of wine.

‘They don’t seem to understand that we do the hardest job in the world. I mean, you can’t imagine Dean or Luke putting up with more than a morning of wiping bottoms or making Lego towers. Mind you,’ she continued before Poppy could say that she could quite understand why no one wanted to hear about Farrah building a Lego tower, ‘you need a break or you’d go bonkers. If I didn’t get my me-time at the gym I don’t know what I’d do. That’s why you should call Brigita, Poppy. You’ll be amazed how much better you’ll feel with an extra pair of hands.’

‘Mmm,’ Poppy said evasively. She hated the idea of a nanny; it brought back too many memories of her own miserable childhood. Even if things weren’t quite right between her and Luke, at least Clara was happy at home with her mummy.

‘Just gives you time to get dressed properly,’ Farrah continued with a kind wink. ‘Know what I mean?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I should have told you earlier, but I didn’t want to embarrass you in public – your top’s on inside-out. Now, I think the meat’s rested long enough, Elisa. Let’s take it in. Poppy, if you could bring the gravy that would be a real help.’

11

A week had passed. Luke Norton’s heart was beating fast: faster than when he had found himself under fire from the Taliban in Afghanistan, or even when Hannah had confronted him about Poppy. He’d finished presenting the show half an hour ago and now he was sitting in the back of a cab negotiating its way through London’s doctorland, the streets that lie between Regent’s Park and Oxford Street. Behind the anonymous Georgian facades, smooth doctors wrote stressed businessmen prescriptions for Valium and legendary beauties got out their credit cards in return for losing their stretch marks. Every problem could be solved here, as long as you had the cash to pay for it and knew the right address. Or so Luke hoped.

‘What number Harley Street did you want?’ the driver asked.

‘Ninety-five.’

‘Here we are then.’ They pulled up outside a discreet grey door.

Luke got out and paid. ‘A receipt, please.’ He’d put the taxi fare down on expenses, everyone did.

‘Do I know you from somewhere?’ the driver asked.

Normally Luke loved that question. But not tonight.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You look very familiar.’

‘Can’t help you, mate.’ As the cab drove off, Luke inspected the names attached to the various doorbells. Complementary health clinic. Oculoplast. Foetal medicine. He put his finger on the bell for Dr Mazza.

‘Hello?’ squawked the intercom.

Luke glanced over his shoulder. ‘Um, hello, I’ve got an appointment.’ He lowered his voice and whispered into the grille. ‘Luke Norton.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Luke Norton,’ he repeated just as an enormous lorry trundled past.

‘I can’t hear you above the traffic noise. You’ll have to speak up.’

‘LUKE NORTON TO SEE DR MAZZA.’

‘Oh, Mr Norton. I’m sorry. Do come in. You know where we are. Second floor.’

The door buzzed open. After months of surreptitious research and phone calls, on the eve of his fifty-second birthday Luke found himself climbing a thickly carpeted stair, pushing open a heavy door and entering a gleaming reception area filled with orchids. The platinum blonde behind the desk smiled at him.

‘Mr Norton. Welcome. I’m Dahlia, Dr Mazza’s assistant.’

Luke felt a faint flicker of alarm. Dr Mazza had obviously used her for practice and the results weren’t quite as impressive as one might have hoped. Her face was frozen in a semi-smile and it looked as if there were ping-pong balls under her cheekbones. But before Luke could bolt down the stairs, Dahlia continued, ‘Oh hello, Mrs Lyons. How are you feeling?’

Luke swung round. Kelly Lyons stood behind him, proffering her credit card. Shit, shit and double doo-doo. Of all the people in the world: one of Hannah’s closest friends from the school-run crowd. Their eyes met. To his relief, even though Kelly’s face was paralysed, her eyes were full of panic.

‘Shh,’ she said, raising a manicured finger to her plump lips. ‘I won’t tell if you don’t.’

‘OK.’ Luke gulped. Well, well. Kelly. Whose fresh features Hannah had always envied. ‘Why do
her
kids sleep through the night?’ he remembered Hannah wailing after their annual Christmas drinks when Kelly had looked peculiarly energized for someone who had just bought and wrapped thirty-seven presents and sent two hundred and three Christmas cards. Well, it turned out they probably didn’t, but Dr Mazza had helped hide the evidence. For a mad second, Luke itched to get out his mobile to text his ex-wife the news.

Kelly smiled at the receptionist. ‘Thank you, Dahlia. I’ll see you in three months then.’

‘Lovely, Mrs Lyons. Take care.’

‘You too.’ She turned again to Luke. ‘
Not a word
. All right?’

‘Never,’ Luke said, as earnestly as if they were two members of the French Resistance agreeing on a plan to smuggle British soldiers to the coast.

As she departed, Dahlia turned to him smiling apologetically. ‘Sorry about that, Mr Norton. It’s very unusual for our clients to recognize each other. As you know, this is Dr Mazza’s late night for his very favourite clients – he only fitted Mrs Lyons in because she’s got her sister’s third wedding next week and she’s
such
a regular. But don’t worry, I’m going to put you in the celebrity waiting room now, so no one else will spot you.’

‘Excellent,’ Luke said, chuffed his status had been acknowledged.

‘Gianluca’s running a bit late,’ she said as she ushered him to a small room decorated with prints of Scottish lochs. ‘Would you like a glass of champagne while you’re waiting?’

‘Why not?’ Luke said, picking up an
Economist
from the pile of magazines in front of him. But he couldn’t concentrate. He couldn’t believe it had come to this, that he, Luke, the brave war correspondent, was reduced to secret appointments with a Botox doctor. His thoughts turned to Kelly Lyons. Christ. He’d always fancied her, and they’d once had a slightly too-long kiss under the mistletoe at another Christmas party, but now Luke was glad he hadn’t fucked her. The knowledge she was having Botox diminished her in his eyes, though he didn’t pause to wonder what she might think of him.

Luke’s attitude towards women was schizophrenic, to put it mildly. An only child, his mother had been a rather cold and distant figure who made it plain to him from a very early age that he ranked far, far below her husband in her affections. Luke couldn’t help suspecting she would have loved him more if he hadn’t been three stone overweight. Unsurprisingly, as a fatty, he found it hard to get a girlfriend. His teenage years were filled with girls laughing at him when he asked them to dance and lonely Saturday nights masturbating in his bedroom.

But while backpacking round India after his A levels, Luke got a terrible case of food poisoning and the weight melted off. By the time he got to university, the ugly duckling was most definitely a swan. At first he’d been amazed when girls started to pay attention to him; quickly he became blasé about it.

Luke entered a phase of serial monogamy. He always had a steady girlfriend and another waiting in the wings to replace her. He liked the security that came from being in a couple, but he also loved the buzz of the chase, so as soon as one challenge had been conquered he would look round for the next. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight, Luke got through women faster than some of his friends changed their bedsheets.

He adored this new Casanova version of himself. Knowing he was such a hit with the ladies infused the rest of his life with confidence. He’d always wanted to be a journalist and, on graduating, he won a prized news traineeship with the BBC. Thanks partly to his handsome face, but mostly to talent, within a few years he was a foreign correspondent, working all over the world. He quickly discovered that – even more than the kick he got from sexual conquests – he loved the adrenalin jolt of working in a danger zone. He first made his name reporting from Chernobyl, then did some fine work in Israel and the Occupied Territories. It was during this stint that he first set eyes on Hannah Creighton, dancing on a table in the bar of a Jerusalem hotel where the world’s press had been despatched to cover a new peace treaty.

Luke was instantly attracted to the lively redhead from the
Daily Post
, not least because she didn’t seem in the least bit interested in him. In the hotel bar, she flirted with the Japanese, German, French and Italian reporters but paid not the blindest bit of notice to her compatriot. When he bought her a drink, she said ‘Thanks’, downed it in one, then turned her back on him and carried on talking to Ulrich from Swedish TV.

Naturally, Luke’s blood was up. Omitting to call Annie, his girlfriend at home, he spent the next few days love-bombing Hannah, buying her more drinks, taking her on trips to obscure corners of Jerusalem that only insiders knew about, telling her she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, until finally, after five days, they went to bed.

But in the morning she slipped out of his room before he was awake and avoided him next day then returned to London without telling him. Back home, he’d bombarded her with calls, but she stonewalled, saying she was busy. When he finally bumped into her at a party she ignored him all evening. It took another six months to get her back into bed and then during the following six months she only occasionally returned his phone calls and often cancelled dates at the last minute. Intrigued, in lust, Luke asked her to marry him. She said no, then three months later said yes. The wedding was planned to take place a year from that day, and Hannah moved in to Luke’s flat in Willesden.

And suddenly everything started to change. Hannah began cooking for him. She began taking his suits to the dry cleaners. She started to get cross when he got home late from a night out with the boys. She no longer wanted to go out on Saturday night and paint the town red,

but to stay in snuggled together in front of the TV. She kept wanting to talk about marquees and invitation fonts. In short, the woman Luke walked down the aisle with was no longer the devil-may-care woman he’d proposed to.

Soon Tilly was born and the mews house was swamped with dirty nappies and drying babygros. Luke adored his baby daughter and was impressed by how brilliantly his wife adapted to motherhood, so brilliantly in fact that she decided not to go back to work. But coming home from work to find Hannah making purées and talking about what happened at playgroup was about as sexy as a bottle of formula. Luke loved his wife but he was no longer in love with her.

It didn’t really prove a problem. He was constantly away on assignments where temptations were plentiful and indulging them was seen as par for the course for the war crowd. After twelve hours dodging bullets, a warm body in your bed at night was incredibly affirming, proof you had made it through another day. Usually the flings only lasted a couple of nights. Sometimes longer. When he’d been in Sarajevo he’d enjoyed a four-month affair with Anne-Marie Gleen from Irish TV. But the same rules applied: as soon as he returned to their Hampstead house Hannah had made so beautiful he slipped easily into the role of devoted family man, even if occasionally he’d meet Anne-Marie for a quick ‘drink’ when she was passing through town.

Tilly was followed only a year later by Isabelle and then, when she went to primary school, Hannah confessed she was getting broody again and so they conceived Jonty. It was around this time that Channel
6
, which was launching in the spring, contacted him to ask if he’d be interested in the job of chief foreign correspondent for its flagship evening news programme; he accepted and after seven years was promoted to anchorman.

Luke was in two minds about the change of job. He didn’t know if he could let go of the endorphin rush when his phone rang with orders to get on the next plane to Bosnia or Somalia or East Timor. On the other hand, Hannah was getting increasingly shirty about his lengthy absences, especially now the children were old enough to question why their father was risking his life. Mainly, however, the idea of being the face of the programme was very appealing to his vanity.

On the whole, it had been the right decision. He missed those war-zone thrills, but he still got sent on just enough foreign trips to satisfy his wanderlust. To compensate for the lack of excitement in his work life, the affair quotient increased. Nothing heavy, naturally. Luke always made the ground rules very clear: he wasn’t going to leave his wife; he had no time for girlfriends who tried tricks like calling him at home.

No one serious. Especially not Poppy. Poppy’s role in Luke’s life was, quite simply, to make him feel better about the way he was slowly shedding hair and his belly burgeoning. It was embarrassing to admit it, even to himself, but Luke liked the fact she was a model. It was an affirmation of his alpha maleness that he could attract the very cream of the crop. Still, she was nothing but a delightful diversion.

Until she became pregnant.

Even then, disaster could have been averted. The baby could have been got rid of (though in retrospect Luke found it very hard to imagine life without Clara). While he worked out how to deal with the problem, he went into slight meltdown. He got wasted after the BAFTAs and ended up in bed, with Thea, as he occasionally did. But, happily, Hannah swallowed his excuse about crashing on Gerry’s sofa. He was just congratulating himself on having got away with that when, two nights later, he arrived home to find four suitcases packed and sitting in the hall. And a very angry wife telling him to leave. For ever.

He’d done everything he could to try to change her mind. Begged. Pleaded. Promised. But Hannah was adamant. She’d known about the other women all along, it transpired, and this time she’d had enough.

Luke went to their friends Grahame and Fenella’s for a night, but Hannah got on the phone demanding they kicked him out, so kick him out they had. In retrospect, he should have gone to a hotel but, wounded and needy, he’d decided to spite Hannah and headed to Poppy’s horrible studenty flat. Luke was a proud man. He couldn’t bring himself to admit he was there because he had no choice, so he told Poppy he had left Hannah, that he wanted to marry her. Of course, even after Poppy’s overjoyed acceptance, he’d carried on frantically negotiating with his wife, but Hannah had been deaf to all pleas for forgiveness. After Luke received the decree absolute in a shockingly short space of time (and this after he’d agreed to give Hannah pretty much everything, in the hope she’d be touched by his generosity and forgive him), he decided the best way to spite his ex was to marry Poppy as quickly as possible.

But even as he sat at that miserable wedding lunch at Orrery, slowly getting plastered and trying to laugh at silly Meena’s jokes, Luke knew he’d made a terrible mistake. Poppy was divinely beautiful, he kept reminding himself, and sweet, and young. Other men would envy him, marvel at his virility to be with this peach while their wives were turning into prunes.

Two years from that day, Luke was still telling himself the same thing. But it sounded increasingly hollow. Having a woman only slightly older than his daughter on his arm didn’t make him feel like a stud but like a dirty old man.