Tess Stimson - The Adultery Club (17 page)

I won’t mind that he never makes the bed, I’ll devote

myself to being a perfect wife, a perfect mother, I’ll do

anything, only please, please keep him safe.

Kit arrives ten minutes after Liz. He scoops up the

children and whisks them home with him - ‘Who’s for a

sleepover at Uncle Kit’s? No, Evie, you appalling child,

you may not bring that revolting rabbit, not unless you

bring carrots and onions to have with him’ - and I sit

riveted in front of the television, gripping my towel to my

chest with white-knuckled fingers,, unable to tear myself

away from the horrific news footage, my mind blank with

fear.

The terrorists have outdone themselves this time and

blown up a power station too, it seems. So much of

London is blacked out and of course the telephones are

down, landlines and cell networks. There’s no way of

communicating, of finding out, and all I want to do is

leap in the car and drive up there and see; but of course I

can’t, the roads into central London are closed, half the

city is cordoned off, so I sit here, taut as a bow, not daring

for one second to stop the silent mantra in my head - keep him safe keep him safe keep him safe - in case I snap the thin thin thread connecting my husband to life.

I watch the live images with an eerie detachment. The

smoking ruins, the carnage - this is Tel Aviv, surely?

Baghdad, or Kabul; not London. Not again.

None of it seems real. In a moment that old woman,

covered in a blanket of grey dust, will open her eyes

again, they’ll wipe all the tomato ketchup off that dead

eyed teenage boy, those people will stop shivering under

the foil emergency blankets and get up for a cup of coffee,

laughing and complaining about the canteen sandwiches

as they stretch their legs and wait for the next take.

Except, of course, that those crumpled mounds beneath

blue sheets aren’t carefully arranged props, that isn’t red paint on the pavement there, that lost teddy bear - somehow there’s always a teddy bear, isn’t there? - belongs to

a real child.

Even though I know the lines aren’t working, I press

redial again and again until Liz finally takes the phone

away from me. ‘He’ll call you she says brightly, ‘as soon

as the networks are back up. He’ll be fine. You know

Nicholas, fit as a fiddle. Look at him snowboarding.’

So what! I want to scream. A whole orchestra of fitness

can’t protect you against nails and glass and bricks and

concrete!

By midnight, the news networks have shifted into

aftermath mode; their reporters, more composed now that

the initial adrenaline rush of ‘Breaking News!’ has eased,

tell us little new information as they stand in front of arc

lit heaps of smoking, blackened rubble, grim-faced rescue

workers slowly toiling in the background. In the studios,

terrorism ‘experts’ and politicians bicker. And still I have

no idea if my husband is alive or dead, if he is already

one of the two hundred people - dear God! Two hundred

- blown into flesh-and-bone smithereens by the blasts; or

if he will be a statistic added in later.

Eventually, I send Liz home, to cherish her own husband.

I call Nicholas’s parents again and promise to let

them know the minute I hear anything at all. ‘No news is

good news Edward says bravely, but I can hear Daisy

sobbing quietly in the background. And then I curl up on

the sofa, still in my bath towel, dry-eyed, wide awake,

waiting. Waiting.

Because we’ve all had to learn, haven’t we, that this is

how you find out that your husband, your child, has been

killed by a terrorist bomb on the way home from work;

there’s no flight manifest, nothing to say clearly, in black

and white, one way or another. You tell yourself there’s

more chance of someone you love being hit by a bus

than blown up on one, but fear washes through you as

you wait anxiously for the phone to ring, and an hour

l.ih-r you’re still waiting, and the dread coagulates in your

stomach; and yes, the lines are down, and yes, he’s probably

stuck in gridlocked traffic somewhere, but the hours

pass, and the next day breaks and he still hasn’t phoned,

and somewhere out there, for two hundred families the

worst has happened, even if they don’t yet know it. The

fear blossoms like a mushroom cloud in your soul and

you’re left clinging to a tiny shred of hope as if your

sanity depended on it: which of course it does.

And at quarter to seven the next morning, my phone

finally rings.

‘Mai? It’s me,’ Nicholas says.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you

thank-‘Mai, are you there? Dammit, these lines—’

‘I’m here,’ I whisper dizzily.

‘You saw the news, obviously. I’m fine, bit shaken up,

as you’d expect, but we were lucky, office lost a few

windows but the main damage was the other end of

Holborn.’ His tone is flat, leached of emotion. Shock,

obviously. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks on television, but

Christ, it’s bad enough.’

The words spill out of me with all the pent-up force

of twelve nightmarish hours. ‘But are you sure you’re all

right? Where were you when it happened? What did you

do? Where have you been, I tried to call you but—’

Tm fine,’ he says again. ‘Look, I’m sorry you were

worried but - hang on.’

There is a strange noise, like rushing water, and then a

clatter as Nicholas picks up the phone again. His voice

sounds muffled, as if he’s climbed into a wardrobe. ‘Mai,

it’s been a hell of a night,’ he says wearily. ‘I know you

must have been going frantic, bul it was out of my hands.

I’ll do my best to get home as soon as I can, but you can

imagine what it’s like trying to move anywhere at the

moment. I don’t even know if the trains are running yet.’

‘Waterloo’s open again, I heard on the news. Where

are you now?’

‘Oh. Yes. At the office, obviously. Spent the night here.

Look, Mai, let me go now, OK? I’ll be home when I can.

How are the girls?’

He sounds more shaken than I’ve ever heard him. He

clearly isn’t telling me the half of it, and a fist twists my

insides. Lord knows what he’s been through, what horrors he’s seen. How close I came to losing him.

“The girls are fine,’ I say, ‘they’re with Kit—’

‘Of course.’

‘Nicholas, please. He was worried sick about you - we

all were.’

‘Sorry. Yes.’

‘I love you,’ I say, suddenly overwhelmed. ‘I do love you, Nicholas.’

He hesitates, and I smile through my tears. Embarrassed

to say it in front of everyone at the office, even

now. How very Nicholas. ‘You too,’ he mumbles finally.

It’s only after he’s rung off that I realize I haven’t asked

if he’s spoken to his parents. I try to ring him back at the

office, but get a disconnected tone - clearly the phone

network is still very patchy, Nicholas must have been

lucky. I telephone the Lyons myself with the news, and

then drift slowly into the kitchen, suddenly rather lightheaded.

It’s

like I’ve been holding my breath for the past twelve

hours. I feel sick, elated, tired, anti-climactic, angry, foolish, all at once. I never want to have to go through a night

like that again. How dreadful that it takes something this

appalling to remind you how very much you have to lose.

I suddenly feel very small and ashamed of myself. I

spent most of yesterday mentally raging against Nicholas

simply because he was out working whilst I was stuck

slaving over a hot ironing board and picking up raisins of

rabbit poo from the fruit bowl. But his job nearly cost him

his life. What is a little boredom or the odd steam burn on

your wrist compared to that? A

thrill of pure happiness sweeps over me. He’s safe,

he’s alive. I do a little jig of relief and delight and pleasure by the Aga, I just can’t help it.

Which is why, when Trace Pitt pushes open the top

half of the kitchen stable door and sees me for the first

time since the day I lost our baby, I am standing there

stark naked with sparkles and glitter in my pubic hair.

Nicholas

Standing up was an egregious error. Not only is my

tent-pole erection now clearly visible should anyone care

to cast their gaze thither, but I am perfectly positioned to

see straight down Sara’s raspberry silk blouse - Christ

Almighty, no bra - thus profoundly exacerbating the problem

which I originally rose to alleviate.

I pick up the manila case folder on the conference table

and hide behind it: literally and metaphorically.

‘So. Ah. Mrs Stockbridge. We’ve heard from your husband,’

I say briskly to my client, ‘and it seems that he has

now made a sensible proposal to resolve our concerns

regarding your being divorced whilst your financial

claims remain to be determined. He has renewed his

commitment to nominate your son to receive his death

in-service benefit and, moreover, he has nominated

you—’

Sara’s eyebrow quirks. I have noticed that her eyebrows

attain particular mobility in response to my use of

such words as heretofore and whence. She really is the most

unlikely lawyer.

‘—he has nominated you1 continue hastily, ‘to receive

all funds payable under his Life Insurance policy. We are

told by his Counsel that this will produce two hundred

thousand pounds upon his death. This will remain the

status quo pending the resolution or determination of

your wider application—’

‘So he can go ahead and marry his floozie anyway?’

Mrs Stockbridge interrupts.

I regard my client in confusion, disconcerted by this

abrupt departure from the legal niceties. Stolid, powdered

and neatly dressed, she has that rather musty, fishy

smell of a woman on the Change. Mrs Stockbridge is not a woman I wonder about kissing. I do not imagine her slipping her tongue between my lips, if she’d run away, if

she’d stay, or if she’d melt into me, mouth to mouth, lust

to lust-Christ. That damn song Sara sent me. I can’t get it out

of my head.

Across the table, Sara shifts in her chair, her untrammelled

pink nipples jutting tightly against the silk.

I defy any man to remain unaffected.

‘Mrs Stockbridge, I realize this situation is distasteful

to you—’

‘Distasteful!’

Tears and raised voices: to my mind, Dante’s tenth

circle. When someone cries in front of you, anything could

happen. My discomfort is perfectly natural. I cannot

remember my parents’ fiery battles, as Malinche alleges, I

was only six months old; it is just normal, natural British

rectitude. Obviously.

I edge around the table, wondering how best to handle my emotionally imploding client. Perhaps some tea-With a slight shake of the head, Sara quells my ministrations

at the tea tray. ‘Mrs Stockbridge, I know it doesn’t

seem fair,’ she says quietly, ‘after thirty-four years of

marriage, for him to leave you for a girl who wasn’t even

born when you started your business together. And now

you have to sell it, and your lovely home, and move to a

little flat on your own, whilst he gets to walk away and

start a new life without looking back. I can quite see it

doesn’t seem right.’

Thank heavens. Sometimes a woman’s touch is essential.

A man can’t be expected to deal with waterworks

and precipitate emotional outbursts. It’s not in his nature.

‘She was our granddaughter’s babysitter Mrs Stock

bridge says thickly. ‘I thought he was going to our Sandra’s

house every night to see the new baby.’

‘We can’t make it right,’ Sara sympathizes. ‘But we can try to help you make the best of it. He’ll get his divorce, that can’t be helped, but we’ll make him pay dearly for

it. And sometimes,’ she adds shrewdly, ‘when you tell

people they can’t have something - or someone - they just

want it all the more.’

Mrs Stockbridge and I reflect on this for a moment.

Our client is no doubt thinking, perhaps with a modicum

of surprise, that her attractive blonde lawyer has a rather

sensible head on her strong young shoulders. Indeed, Sara

is quite correct in her supposition: I have helped sunder

many second marriages precipitated in no small measure

by contested, drawn-out first divorces. What may have

sliirti’d off as a brief fling is often forced to become

something far more serious than it warrants by the sheer

weight of chaos it has caused.

I, on the other hand, am wearily thinking, with a great

deal less surprise, how much I should like to take Mrs

Stockbridge’s attractive blonde lawyer to bed. And how very fortunate it is that the firm has no cases that are likely to be heard outside London in the foreseeable future.

‘Mrs Stockbridge I say, returning to the matter in

hand, ‘the offer is fair - certainly in financial terms - and

my advice would be that you accept it, albeit with reluctance.

It was only because there was no financial security