‘Would you like me to get you a cup of tea?’ asked Matron kindly, pushing over the box of tissues which she kept at her side of the desk.
‘I’ll just go,’ replied May. ‘Please don’t say I was here.’
Matron pushed back her chair so that she could stand and show her out but, by the time she was on her feet, May was striding down the chequered hallway and running back to the Tube station.
Questions began to stockpile in May’s head as she waited for the train but there was no one to give her any answers.
I don’t think the woman is his sister.
What did that
mean? Of course she knew what it meant; the tone of Matron’s voice implied an intimacy that brother and sister wouldn’t have. May wanted to double-back to The Pines and interrogate
Matron further, but she would come across as a deranged nutter. She felt a nutter as well. She felt as if she were standing in the middle of a world where all the safe walls around her and the
ground beneath her were crumbling and falling. It hurt.
At two o’clock Lara received a call from Clare. ‘Hellooooo there,’ came Clare’s trill down the phone. ‘Are you all packed, then,
missus?’
‘Not yet,’ replied Lara, snatching a look at the clock. She would have to make this a quick call because she had a meeting in ten minutes and needed to get a sandwich as she had
sugar-shakes. ‘But it won’t take me long. I’m only taking the three ball-gowns.’
‘No worries, you can always borrow one of mine if you run short,’ chuckled Clare. ‘I can’t believe we are actually going, can you? I can’t remember the last time I
had a holiday.’
I can’t believe I left the booking so late and risked there being no rooms left, Lara didn’t say.
‘Are you still intent on driving, Lars?’
‘Yes, I’m fine driving. The place is a bit off the beaten track so at least if I drive we can go directly there instead of faffing about with taxis when we get off the train at
Whitby.’
‘It’s a long way, Lars. I feel guilty.’
‘Don’t. I’ll drink a lot of coffee. Plus I like driving at night. I find it relaxing.’
‘I hate driving at night,’ said Clare. ‘I hate driving full stop, to be honest.’
‘Well there you go then. We’ll both be happy if I take the wheel.’
Clare needed to get away to a fresh space so much. She hadn’t had a holiday with girlfriends since she was in her early twenties – over ten years ago. She didn’t even know
where those friends were now. Careers and husbands and babies had had too much of a divisive effect on their lives. Some uncomplicated female company was just what she needed – and a glorious
pool, lots of fluffy white bathrobes and air heavy with aromatherapy scents.
‘How will you manage to tear yourself away from your handsome James for ten days?’ asked Clare. ‘And the children.’
Lara almost laughed. She had let her friends think that she had the perfect life in Dorking in that gorgeous big house. When she had shown them pictures of James, they had wolf-whistled. So this
was the man who had whisked her off her feet and into his home like a whirlwind, they had grinned. Lara had also showed them photos of her ‘step-children’ and she hadn’t put them
right when they cooed and said how lucky she was to have such a sweet-looking ready-made family. They presumed the children loved her and she loved them and all was hunky-dory in her world. And
because Lara wanted it to be that way and was sure that it would be, because she was pulling out all the stops to make it be like that, she had smiled and nodded and agreed that she was very lucky
indeed. The lie just got too big to own up to.
‘Well, I’ll be all the better for a battery recharge,’ said Lara. ‘The children are staying with their mum for the week anyway.’
Clare tried not to think too much about children – she couldn’t have the career which had been carved out for her and be a mother as well.
‘I am so looking forward to this holiday. It’s well overdue,’ said Clare. She needed someone to reach into her head and massage everything away so it was just a big empty shell
with no thoughts of work or family or Ludwig.
‘Yes, it will be great,’ replied Lara, hoping she sounded convincing.
‘I can’t even remember the last time I saw you face to face. Five years ago, wasn’t it?’
‘Ha ha.’
It was ridiculous that they all worked for the same company and yet saw each other so rarely. Lara couldn’t remember when she had last spent any quality time with Clare either.
‘Things okay with you, then, Lara?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Lara, injecting a positivity into her voice that she didn’t feel. Her paranoia was ridiculous. How the hell did teenage girls have such a handle on
psychology? And why? Lara had fallen over backwards to join the family home without putting anyone’s nose out of joint in the process. She had never tried to take the main motherly role
although, from what she had learned of Miriam’s maternal skills, she didn’t have a great deal to worry about. Miriam was a barrister; that her nickname was ‘Barracuda
Barrett’ was an indication of her warmth and gentleness. Not. She had left James for a High Court judge who lived in France and they commuted weekly into London on the train, staying at their
very swanky pied à terre in Knightsbridge. Miriam, luckily, had no interest in wasting her time picking fights with her ex-husband’s new partner. Lara suspected she didn’t ever
appear in Miriam’s conscious thoughts. But it wasn’t the brilliant glacial ex-wife that Lara was worried about; no, it was young, ‘spicily sexy’ Tianne. She would try her
best not to think that, as soon as she was out of the house, Tianne would move in. That was a ridiculous notion. She had to trust James – not all men were the same. Even if all the ones she
had been out with seemed to be of a very similar design.
‘Lud okay?’ Lara asked. Now he sounded like a nice man. She liked the look of the big square-shouldered Ludwig on Clare’s photos so much. It was clear from what Clare had told
them that he adored her.
‘He’s good, yeah,’ said Clare, with a forced lightness to her voice. She flicked her eyes to the clock. ‘I’ll tell you about him when I see you. Have to flee
– got a meeting in ten.’
‘Ha, me too,’ said Lara. They said:
Have to flee – got a meeting in ten
to each other so much, it was almost a stock catchphrase.
Lara had a lot to do before she left for her holiday, especially as her second in command, Elise, wasn’t as competent as she would have liked her to be – probably because her heart
wasn’t in it at all. Mind you, Lara could hardly blame her. Working here was like appearing in a seventies sitcom: the men were sleazy and gropey and the women were second-class citizens,
even those as high up in managaement as she was. Giles Billingley saw anything in a skirt as fair game.
‘I’ll pick May up first then we’ll drive around for you.’
‘Lovely,’ said Clare, her mouth now full of a bacon and Brie sandwich. The canteen was too far up itself for her liking. Everything had to be complicated: boiled egg and caramelized
onion, beef, Stilton and walnuts, quiche slices with leek and cranberry. It was just wrong; someone was trying far too hard to fuse together ingredients that didn’t want to be mixed and
totally cocking up the tastes. They should have got their fundamentals right and concentrated on the bread first, she thought. She could show them how to make a proper loaf, given half the chance.
She wished she had more time to bake. Although there was no one in her life to do any baking for now. ‘See you tomorrow evening. Time?’
‘I’m picking May up at about eight so we’ll ring when we set off from hers.’
Lara then pressed the speed dial for May, but she had to ask if it was May when she picked up because her voice sounded drier than a sand pit.
‘May?’
‘Yes. Hi, Lars.’
‘You okay? You sound rough.’
‘Me? I’m totally fine,’ May lied. She had just had to take two tablets because she had the stirrings of a migraine from holding in all that stress, and she hadn’t had one
of those for a long time. She wanted to run away from the paperwork on her desk, search out Michael and face him head on with the thousands of questions which were fermenting in her brain. She
didn’t want to phone him or text him. She needed to look into his eyes when she spoke to him. She needed to see him chuckle and say, ‘What the fuck was that matron talking about? If you
don’t believe me, I’ll take you to see Susan and then you can find out for yourself which one of us is telling the truth.’
‘I’ve just been speaking to Clare. She’s getting quite giddy about tomorrow,’ said Lara, hoping that May wasn’t coming down with something. She sounded very
croaky.
‘Me too,’ May answered, forcing enthusiasm into her voice. ‘I’m packed and ready. Have been for days.’
‘That’s good,’ nodded Lara, then she chuckled. ‘I have the sneaking suspicion that Clare will be taking a few bottles of bleach with her. And her slow-cooker. And her
stain removers.’
‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ smiled May. ‘Bless her. Mind you, if Clare can’t get ketchup out of a shirt, no one can.’
Clare made them both laugh with her obsession with all things cleaning and cooking. But not unkindly so. Lara was convinced there was a TV programme in it – the Domestic Accountant. Clare
didn’t mind them taking the mick out of her in the slightest. Especially when she could chalk points up in the air for things like successfully advising Lara on the best way to get chewing
gum out of her step-son’s favourite shorts.
‘Anyway, this is just a quick one,’ Lara went on. ‘I’ll be at yours for about eight tomorrow evening. Okay with you? It’ll be nice to have a catch-up.’
‘Yes, lovely,’ said May, battling the tremor in her voice. ‘I can’t wait.’
But she could wait. The last thing on her mind at the moment was going away on this trip. And a catch-up would be very one-sided because, if her worst fears were realized, there was no way she
was going to tell her friends all about this mess.
‘Me neither,’ said Lara.
‘Great,’ said May. ‘Have to flee – got a meeting in ten.’
‘Yep, me too. See ya tomorrow.’
Lara stuffed her own sandwich into her mouth and washed it down with a coffee that had gone lukewarm. Everything in her day went at eighty miles an hour. Would she be able to handle a slow pace
for a week and a half? She had an inkling that the holiday would be cut short after two days as all three of them were too addicted to their desks. And, feeling as insecure as she did at the
moment, maybe that wouldn’t be too much of a bad thing.
May didn’t have a meeting in ten, but she wasn’t in the mood for small talk. She forced numbers and calculations of gross and net margins into her head in an effort
to stop the questions and theories which were demanding to be heard. She batted them away with all her might, and added up, filled in spreadsheets and let plans of setting up Mr Terry’s
wholefood restaurant in Clapham take over her brain.
Her PA knocked on her office door and then bobbed her head in.
‘Night, May.’
May glanced at the clock. It had somehow become seven o’clock. The last time she had looked at it, it had been three. Michael would be on his way over to her flat, expecting to share the
Marks & Spencer’s meal for two which awaited them in her fridge.
‘Night, Berenice. See you tomorrow, lovely.’
‘You work too hard,’ said Berenice, a bright and pretty girl in her early twenties – ambitious but good-hearted with it.
‘It’s seven o’clock and you’re still here too,’ countered May.
‘Yeah, but I’ve been sitting reading a magazine since six. I’m meeting friends for a meal. It wasn’t worth me going home and I don’t feel like shopping – have
you seen the weather?’
May looked through the window and saw the rain lashing the glass. She had a sudden urge to open the window and let it fall on her face, saturate her, flood her mind and wash away every last
memory of that man
.
‘Have a nice time,’ said May. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Some Malaysian place,’ said Berenice. ‘Seventeen of us for my friend’s twenty-first. See you in the morning. I’ll be early, but not so sure about bright.’
And with that she gave a little wave and closed the door.
Twenty-one seemed a million years behind her yet it was only twelve. Twelve years ago she finished her Business, Management and Leadership degree at Exeter and it had felt as though the world
was her oyster. Too bad she’d harvested an oyster in a month with no R in it.
May gulped down the massive lump of emotion clogging up her throat as she put on her coat and switched off the office light. For the five-minute walk to the Tube she played a game with herself,
working down the alphabet and naming a film star for every letter, anything to avoid thinking about the scene that would soon be played out at home. On the Tube she tried not to look at the couple
opposite her who were holding hands and whispering to each other. The woman had shiny brown hair and love was making her chestnut-coloured eyes shine. Just as May’s had been shining until
that morning’s trip to Clapham. It was her own fault. She should never have let herself fall for a married man – it was hubris, karma, kismet.
She wished she had never struggled to put up her stupid umbrella in the flash storm last November. She wished she had told the man who stopped to help her put it up to piss off and leave her
alone. She wished she hadn’t accepted his offer of a coffee and shelter from the rain in a nearby tea shop in Covent Garden. She wished she hadn’t let him open the door for her, pull
the chair out for her, work his charm on her. She wished she had walked out there and then when he told her he was married to a dying woman. She wished she hadn’t let him convince her he was
lonely and tortured and stumbling through life not knowing where he was or what he was doing any more. She wished she hadn’t been a stupid idiotic soft touch with a scar on her face who was
so sodding grateful to be loved and found attractive that she believed all the rubbish that tumbled out of his lying gob.
It was impossible to stop the tears from falling by the time she reached her street. She tried to push them back into her eyes, but they wouldn’t go. She deserved them. She let them drip
steadily down her pale cheeks and then had to stand at the corner in the rain and steady herself before she approached her front door. Michael’s company Mondeo was parked outside her
house.