Attachment (13 page)

“One sin a month. From the health point of view,” she added helpfully, thinking she could do both: the column and the kestrels, a little moonlighting from Mrs. Moonlight. Mackay probably never even looked at a paper that wasn’t a tabloid. She would use her own name, Warner, never mind if her own agent said she was “Jean Hubbard or nobody.”

Although
borsa della nonna
was sadly not on the menu, Jean was pleased to see that her
penne e formaggio al forno
—basically macaroni and cheese, or what Phyllis used to call Kraft dinner—cost £22.50. She couldn’t leave before coffee, so she was going, instead, to order a serious dessert: the chocolate cappuccino mousse (£16.50). When it arrived, she remembered Iona’s marvelous bag. Awash with fresh regret over her missed chance in the bookstore, she longed to get beyond the force field of mousse-smooth goods and even of old friends. She couldn’t wait to be back with her daughter, at home in Camden Town, where pink hair was still cool and a feedbag might do for funky.

Outside it was raining hard, but nothing could make her linger. Mackay had just failed to tip the coat-check girl and was now blinking and working his arms into a too-small trench coat; he looked like a seagull trying to lift up out of an oil spill. Jean, stepping into the revolving door, could almost feel the willpower it cost him not to press in behind her, and when she turned to say good-bye, holding her coat over her head against the rain, she saw in his bulging eyes the commensurate will to reward his self-control—with a fat wet kiss smack on her lips. A fat wet kiss followed by fat wet tongue. It was over before she could protest, and she ran down Albemarle Street screaming and waving at the wonder of a free black cab, vowing that she wouldn’t allow herself to think about it again, ever.

And she vowed that if the newspaper published her kestrel piece she would quit her job, whatever came next. She’d finally grasped this dangerous fact:
Mrs
wasn’t just a dull, successful formula magazine with a pervy, pea-brained editor; it was the perfect expression of the calcified mind-set of its prize columnist. She had to stop
being
this
Mrs.
She knew Iona and Ellie would wonder why she didn’t just confront Mark. But they didn’t love him. It was easy to be righteous; what was hard was loving people, even when they were
so
unlovable. Wouldn’t she go on loving Victoria if she forged her mother’s checks, or ran a brothel out of Albert Street, or secretly converted to Hinduism and married her boyfriend in Mumbai? Wouldn’t she herself hope to be forgiven, and still loved?

But maybe Mark yearned less for return than for liberation. Maybe you could love someone and yet wish for that—freedom. Or maybe she’d forgive him, to their mutual great relief, only to find, unhappily, that the ghost of Giovana was as robust and toxic as her rumor had been… Basically, my friends, Jean said to her imaginary critics, there’s nothing here you can eagerly assent to. With uncharacteristic clarity she understood that—one way or another—when she did confront him, and breathe life into the phantasmagoria of Giovana, their marriage would be over. Of course she resisted final confirmation of Mark’s betrayal; of
course
she preferred her shred of
doubt, real and instinctive as loving him, and she clung to it, smoothed it with her flattened palm, wrapped herself in it each night, and each night, as she didn’t need her friends to tell her, it covered her a little less.

The cab rolled through the rain, and Jean, desperate for air and a good sluicing, pulled the window down and leaned her face out, helplessly recalling that long-ago christening of the office-house with Mark, the roof’s standing ovation in a downpour.

J
ean was so spent
and bedraggled by the time she got to Mark’s office, an entire building in a lane behind Clerkenwell Green, she couldn’t believe she agreed to go with Dan “down the pub.” But he greeted her as she stepped out of the cab, opening an enormous orange umbrella over their heads like a sun—how did you say no to that? He took the updated drawings from her, tossed them onto the polyp-shaped reception desk, and locked the office door behind him. He threw his heavy key chain up into the air, and then backhandedly caught it, ringing in the weekend.

All those keys, Jean thought, taking the arm he offered as they set off down the street. Dan was, she knew, much trusted. She thought she might talk to him about Giovana. Not
talk
exactly, and not confide—just somehow air the subject. He could tell her the weight a thing like this had for Mark: the male point of view. But then she remembered, her body temperature precipitously rising, she’d already given Dan the male view of Giovana, that day in the Internet café…and silently she fell into step.

“I’ve never understood why pubs insist on squelchy beersoaked carpets instead of washable boards, like in American bars,” Jean said, unpeeling her sodden mac. “But it sure is snug
in here.” With its patterned, deep red wall-to-wall and the afternoon fire casting a glow over the room that they had, for just a while longer, to themselves, the Hope and Anchor was indeed enchanted.

Dan just smiled. “What can I get you?”

Already collapsed into a high-backed sofa near the fire, Jean surprised herself by ordering a half-pint of shandy. It was what she used to drink with Mark at the country pubs around Oxford, the Perch, and the Trout, in those carefree weeks after Finals, before she was banished to New York. They’d cycle out of town for lazy lunches, then spend the afternoons reading in the long grass at Port Meadow, sprung forever from the library.

She stretched her arms and legs while Dan went to get the drinks. She’d checked two feared appointments off her list: Scully, who if he was alarmed didn’t show it, and Mackay, whose revolting performance was a blessing because she was now determined to free herself from him. And she had at least parted from Iona without revealing the miasma of her soul. She’d crossed London in the rain to deliver Mark’s work for him, and soon there would be dinner, just her and Vic. Tomorrow was Saturday—finally, she could relax.

“We’re moving away from crisps and cleaning products and that sort of thing.” Dan was keen to tell Jean about the new accounts. “Mark’s given everyone so much freedom in the office—you can really see the new talent taking off. So, for example, you’ve got Theo and Blake working more or less independently on the National Gallery and the Arts Council. And most of the time, well, I’m pitching new stuff—new clients but also new gear: high-speed trains, electric cars, improved pedestrian signage; cool fluorescent self-locking bicycles for the urban rider…”

“You’re such a boy—very focused on modes of transportation.” Jean liked to listen to him talk. She realized Mark never really told her anything about work; as he would say, he “spared her.” She was thinking she didn’t want to be spared. “And what’s this I hear about a Clio?” she asked, knowing that Dan had picked up a prize for the firm at the ad industry’s awards ceremony: for best public advertisement, poster category. Mark told her that Dan had worked on it in his free time, pro bono, and it had been selected for the new Women’s Aid campaign.

“Have you seen it?” He looked at her sidelong, blowing smoke away from her out of the corner of his mouth.

“No, not yet,” she said apologetically, wondering how old he was. “But I’m sure I will.”

“Only marginally less depressing than the old one,” he said. “You know, the one with a blurry, sepia-tinted bint holding a steak over her eye with one hand while dialing the emergency services with the other. Mine has a mobile, no bruises, and the girl’s texting. You’re supposed to be reminded of the old advert—and the same old problem. But my girl, she’s a looker, in addition to being in color and in razor-sharp focus—yep, that’s what clinched it. You can actually see the girl.” He laughed, suppressing a cough.

“Well, it’s accurate, I’m sure. And that’s useful,” she said with effort. The ad didn’t
sound
very remarkable—every ad she’d seen in London today seemed to feature a pretty girl texting. “Most domestic abuse probably is fairly hidden, right? No welt doesn’t mean no abuse.”

“Exactly right, Mrs. Hubbard. Could be that lass right there,” he said nodding his head toward a busty redhead pressing coins into the cigarette machine.

“Mrs. Hubbard” again. Maybe it was just that everyone agreed with her: Jean was about the ugliest name in the language. One short of Mildred—or Phyllis, for that matter. She looked over at the redhead, impressed that a girl with such a
rack had the nerve to wear a sweater so tight and so fluffy, and pink for a redhead—there practically used to be a law against it. Too confident, anyway, for a victim of abuse, Jean thought, still staring. The chubby girl looked up as if she sensed they were talking about her and broke into a gummy big-toothed smile. She waved childishly at Dan, who winked back and turned to Jean.

“Another half?”

Jean glanced at her watch—quarter to five. “Okay,” she said. “You know her?”

“Yes ma’am. Shirley. Our latest intern, just three months in the saddle. Shall I introduce you?”

But the girl in pink had vanished, as if she’d fallen through the floor. Dan shrugged as if this was no more than you could expect from interns these days and headed back to the bar. The place was filling with young office workers, their arms spiking the air as in a classroom, trying to get the bartender’s attention.

Lots of people leaving work early, she thought, wanting to be off herself, regretting the beer on the way. But Dan was good company. She realized that, for the first time all day, she was
not
annoyed by anything.

Okay, he was a little cocky, but she liked this certainty that seemed not so much earned as a part of him, like his shortened vowels and his wide, athletic stance, like his inky hair and the jut of his big jaw, the sharp break in his long, thin nose. Dan sounded like Ted Hughes,
that’s
who he sounded like. In fact he looked a little like the great northern bard—Ted Hughes before life turned his hair gray. Jean, momentarily embarrassed to be caught studying him, looked down at the rain-soaked suede boots she hoped would revive with some vigorous brushing. Dan, she saw, had very wide feet and sturdy inelegant shoes that didn’t mind the rain and didn’t mind how they looked.

“There’s something different about you,” she said. “When did we last see each other? At the Christmas party?” He looked straight at her as she studied his face. “I know what it is: your glasses. You’re not wearing glasses.”

“Yeah, I finally got contacts,” he said, pleased she noticed. Jean held it against him only a little, this small vanity that didn’t go with the rest of his rugged self. Hard to imagine him getting the invisible sequins into his eyes with those thick, stifflooking laborer’s fingers; and she thought of Mark’s long tapering hands, stabbing ineffectually at the tublet of milk on the train. Jean guessed that she and Dan didn’t have much more to say to each other, but also that the silence was fine. You could say nothing, or you could talk to him about anything at all: a discovery that made her feel lucky, as if she’d just found a twenty-pound note in the pocket of an old jacket.

Jean drained her second shandy, not as delicious as the first. “Remember that intern—Natalie, I think her name was? The one who wanted to be a dancer.”

“Sure do. She was great.”

“
Was
great? You mean she left? So she didn’t take your advice. Don’t quit the day job.”

“You remember that?” Dan turned to look at her, intrigued, and a little surprised. “Well, she wasn’t as good a listener as you. I don’t know why I bother. No one ever takes my advice.”

“What about Giovana? Is she a good listener?” It just popped out. She offered him a cool, corrective little smile, as if she was not only unruffled but maybe even amused by the whole business.

He stared at her, and his characteristically mobile face went still. He didn’t exhale the smoke in his mouth as he waited for another word, not yet sure what she knew. Then he grinned—or was that a smirk? So he did know about Giovana. Of course
he did. Maybe
everybody
knew. And why was he giving her that loony look, or was it supposed to be “meaningful”? But no, this was just intense embarrassment on her behalf. She immediately set to framing the disaster, telling herself she should
not
be humiliated, that it was
good
that Dan knew she knew. And if he chose to pass it on, well, maybe this was the only way she would ever communicate with Mark who over all these months she had utterly failed to confront.

Some new arrivals in the pub stopped by their sofa, and Dan leapt up to talk to them. Jean didn’t care that he didn’t introduce her; she just wanted to go home. And now she could stop pretending, as she occasionally had, that it was all an elaborate hoax. Giovana was no joke, and what’s more, she was clearly still around. When Jean rose to go she saw the room was jammed and the clock above the bar said six o’clock.

“
Shit.
Vic will be home any minute.”

Dan touched her arm, sensing she was about to sneak away. “Wait,” he said, and broke off his other conversation. “Let me get you a cab.”

Outside, the rain had broken and left behind a gray and yellow sky so bright at the bottom it looked manufactured, like the glow from a distant stadium. She violently inhaled the clean air and wobbled on her boots. Dan put up a steadying hand and squeezed her elbow.

“What are your plans for the weekend?” he asked, keeping an eye out for a taxi.

“Vic has a big do in Cambridge tomorrow night. A flurry of twenty-firsts, a
hail
of twenty-firsts.
Sooo,
I will probably do as Mark has urged me to, and see a double double feature of Bulgarian documentaries.”

They both laughed, knowing Mark’s preference in movies for what he himself called the billion-dollar bloodbath.

“Actually,” Dan said, pulling up the collar of his leather jacket and plunging his hands into his jeans pockets, “there’s a brilliant
Chinese
film festival on at the NFT. Would that do?”

“It might, so long as it’s all double features, no intervals, and preferably no subtitles. And please, black and white only.”

“I’m dying to see the uncut version of He Lu Hui’s
Shroud of Dew,
but I have to admit, I can’t find a sinner in Christendom who’ll go with me. Tomorrow’s the last night. You mad enough to come with me?
Please
say yes.”

“Hmmm,
Shroud of Dew,
huh?” Then she saw that he was serious, looking at her as if something depended on it. “All right. I will,” Jean said, looking up from a level head, gamely and quietly as the question demanded, feeling that she was in a movie herself, not having given it even a minute’s thought, as if this conversation had no bearing on what she might do tomorrow night or any other night of her life.

“You won’t chuck, will you?” Dan asked.

Jean liked the way he said “chook,” along with “look” for “luck.” “No, I won’t chuck,” she promised. “Now may I go home?”

Dan stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out an almighty whistle, bringing a passing cab to a halt right in front of them.

“That was good,” Jean said, still facing him and folding herself into the cab while he held the door open. She pushed the window down and said “Thanks,” which she meant, resting her paws on the glass like an upright rabbit.

Vic was leaning on the railing when she arrived. Jean, shelling out her third twenty-pound note of the day, was stricken.

“Oh darling, I am so sorry,” she said. Dan with his orange umbrella and black leather jacket receded like a Halloween
dream. “Where’s your key, sweetheart?” When she kissed her she smelled smoke on her breath. So, she smokes. No point asking her.

“Vikram has it. I thought you’d be here. Don’t worry about it, Mum.”

“Do you mind if we stay home?” She was blindly sifting through the rubble at the bottom of her damp bag. “We can order in. I am so sick of being out. The jet lag is really beginning to hit me.” And that second shandy, she thought as the door swung open and banged into the wall. Elizabeth was whining, her cat’s cry almost human. Definitely
not
going to any
Cloud of Mist
at the NFT, she thought, remembering her ridiculous promise. She imagined Mark’s amusement at the image of her setting off south of the river, for a
Chinese documentary,
and wondered if he’d called. Just then, she saw his mobile phone, left behind on the hall table.

“I don’t mind at all. Ramen, or are you depressed by a noodle dinner? I’ve given up meat.”

“You have? Wow. Impressive, I guess. Your pick, darling,” Jean said, kicking off her boots and shaking out her hair like a dog. “I just want a crack at that bath.
God,
I’m glad to be home. Do you mind if I go first? How’s your day been?”

“Good,” Vic said, already at the bend in the stairs going down to the kitchen. “I’m going to feed Elizabeth. I have things to tell you when you come down.”

What things? Smoking vegetarianism was enough news for one day. Jean ran a bath. Naked, waiting for the tub to fill, she caught herself in the mirror. The right breast was bruised, a blush irradiating out from the biopsy spot; she thought for a moment of Dan and his campaign against domestic violence.

The white marble bath surround was lined with unfamiliar products—pink-luster bath-oil beads, discount cream shampoo and iridescent cream rinse in two-gallon jugs. Even Vic wouldn’t buy this stuff, Jean thought. Traces of the heart-broken Maya Stayanovich. Traces she saw, looking around, she was going to have to borrow.

Wait, there was a tube of something maybe a little nicer. Jean unscrewed it and sniffed—that faintly medicinal gel Mark had on his hair this morning. She held out her arm as far as it would reach and read the label through the steam rising from the tub: Ortho-Gynol jelly. She smiled. Mark had gotten the wet look with Maya’s contraceptive cream. Vic will love this, she thought, so pleased to be home, not for a moment considering that the tube might belong to her daughter. Stepping into the bath she stretched right out, keen to wash off the Hope and Anchor, and sank below the waterline.