Josie pads out to the living-room, naked, and stands over him. ‘Is everything okay?’
Joe nods, still furious, too wound up to speak.
‘Your wife?’
He nods again. Why is she hounding him, for God’s sake?
Josie sees how tense he is and rests a hand on his shoulder. She walks around to face him then kneels in front of him, cradling his head and kissing him.
‘It’s all going to be okay,’ she says, but his shoulders are still tight, his body still stiff and unyielding. ‘Trust me,’ she says, her lips moving down his chest, his stomach, then on to his twitching cock.
Joe tenses, then relaxes. Yes. This feels right. Josie is right. It’s all going to be okay. He gives in to the feeling of pure physical pleasure and forgets about Alice. All that matters is right now, feeling Josie’s warm wet mouth.
Alice gets up and goes downstairs, putting the kettle on to make camomile tea. Snoop raises his head as she gets up, but doesn’t have the energy to follow her, so Alice sits alone at the kitchen counter, trying to release the grip of fear on her heart.
Stop being so ridiculous, she tells herself. Your mind is racing because of that bloody book. He probably just forgot to turn the phone off. He’s probably fast asleep and the phone is ringing in the hallway. But why did it suddenly switch off mid-ring? Doesn’t that mean he turned the power off? Not necessarily. Maybe the battery went flat. A million possibilities race through Alice’s mind, and even though the fear abates somewhat, she still feels unsettled.
Two hours later she takes a Valium, and gratefully, half an hour after that, she finally gives in to sleep.
27
Now that Joe has got away with it again, he knows he can continue getting away with it. He and Josie have fallen into a routine, much like the routine of old in London, only this time he doesn’t have to keep thinking up excuses as to why he’s home late.
It’s just perfect, he thinks for the umpteenth time, as he heads over to Josie’s apartment, smiling at this beautiful spring day.
A wife in the country and a mistress in town. Why didn’t he do this years ago? He smiles to himself. Alice had always wanted to live in the middle of nowhere. He could have stashed her in some Cotswolds cottage and played the quintessential bachelor in London. But no, he was too well known there, someone would have talked, word would have got out.
But here it’s a different matter altogether. Josie is proving to be the perfect mistress. She looks great, she thinks he’s perfect, and she’s willing to do anything he wants. Plus, she understands the rules of having a married lover: never put pressure on him and never question him about his wife; never phone his house and do something dangerous like put the phone down should his wife answer, and never expect anything more than you already have.
He couldn’t have orchestrated a better situation had he tried. In fact, Josie’s so easy to be around he’s finding he’s spending almost every night with her. He’s learnt to call Alice at around nine to pre-empt any late-night phone calls when she might question his whereabouts – the last time that happened he managed to say he was fast asleep with earplugs and had forgotten to turn off his mobile phone – and phone her first thing in the morning just so her suspicions aren’t raised.
He’s even started going out properly with Josie – to dinner, to benefits, to parties, Alice rarely venturing into the city any more – even though he’s careful not to indulge in any public displays of affection since the last close shave. He introduces Josie as a work colleague, and even though everyone suspects, no one knows for sure. Naturally his own colleagues in the office have a stronger suspicion than most about what’s going on – they had all heard the original rumours about why he was transferred to New York, and they know that Josie was the woman involved, but Joe is too senior for people to question him, or tease him, or make jokes to his face, and so he carries on regardless.
And although he’s loath to admit it, Josie is, in many ways, proving to be a far better companion than Alice. For starters, she’s in the business, can easily hold her own with clients far more important than he. She truly understands how he feels when a deal doesn’t come off, or when there are problems at work, and knows how to make him feel better about it.
Alice tries, but Alice has always said that she has a mental block when it comes to numbers, and money, and finances, and Joe has stopped bothering to explain things to her, irritated by her blank expressions of sympathy.
And Josie looks great. She’s learnt what Joe likes and subsequently dresses to please him. She wears tight white shirts and tailored suits, the skirt covering the stockings and suspenders he loves. She click-clacks on spindly heels, unlike Alice who always used to complain that heels hurt her feet, and who now rarely removes her Timberland boots or gardening clogs.
Josie has the mane of glossy blonde hair that is always a prerequisite for anyone Joe is involved with, and he finds himself now looking at Alice’s two inches of mouse and wild curls with increasing distaste.
He’s trying very hard with Alice. Trying to encourage her to be who she used to be, the woman he can proudly introduce as his wife. But where once upon a time Alice treated Joe like a god, listened to everything he said, did anything and everything to please him, since coming to America Alice doesn’t seem to care any more.
‘But I’m happier like this,’ Alice grins up at him from her position cross-legged in front of the fire, her hair scraped back in a messy pony-tail, blowing the loose curls away from her face. ‘Aren’t you happy that I’m happy, darling?’
Joe smiles and lies that of course he’s happy. But look at her, for God’s sake. Her nails are short, her hands are now coarse and workmanlike. She doesn’t wear her rings any more because she’s worried about damaging them while working in the garden, and her make-up is clearly gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere.
Alice looks exactly as she did when he first met her. He had known then how malleable she would be, how much potential she had, and how she would have done anything to please him. He cannot understand why he’s having such a hard time transforming her again, six years later.
Joe buys Alice a weekly present. A voucher to a spa; a pair of Prada shoes; the latest Vuitton bag that everyone in the city is dying for. He presents them to Alice hoping she will use them, hoping these beautiful things will encourage her to dress up again, to look beautiful, to make an effort for him, but she merely thanks him, lies about how much she’s always wanted whatever it is, and then puts it away in a cupboard in the bedroom.
Alice comes to the city because she has to, not because she enjoys it. She tries not to even stay overnight any more. She takes the train up to Grand Central in the morning, and is usually back in Highfield by five. He knows she’s beginning to hate it more and more, she only comes in because she thinks it keeps him happy, but he’s beginning to resent having to make the effort.
After all, he has a more than adequate companion in Josie.
As for Alice, she knows how things have changed. She can sense that Joe is distracted again, distant, but it doesn’t upset her now. There are times, like last night, when Alice lies in bed panicking about her marriage. She lies there knowing she’s married to the wrong man, knowing they’re not making each other happy, knowing they want completely different things in life, and she feels sick and scared, and tries to push the thoughts away.
The nights she has these fears seem to go on for ever, but at some point she always manages to fall asleep, and always, when she wakes up and the sun is streaming through the window, she feels better; knows that those night fears were just that – fears, and not a reality.
And meanwhile she has been busier and busier. HomeFront has become one of the most popular classes in the Newcomers Club, and Alice and Sandy are now running something almost weekly.
Just this month they are organizing a trip to the White Flower Farm in Litchfield, a visit to a pottery kiln, and a class on the secrets of ageing new terracotta pots for the patio.
She and Sandy meet up regularly, classes aside – walks with the dogs, coffee in town, popping in to one another’s houses to finalize plans for the next HomeFront meeting – and she has discovered a new friend in her neighbour Sally.
Suddenly Alice finds that she’s not lonely any more. There are always people dropping in, Sally brings Madison to play almost daily, and now when Alice goes into town to do some shopping or run some errands, she invariably bumps into at least two people she knows.
James has become so accustomed to seeing her at Sunup nursery, he’s even stopped flirting with her, and has become, if not a friend, then certainly someone she enjoys spending time with.
He has helped her plant a small vegetable garden, teaching her how to fence it in with eight-foot fences to keep the deer out, and has helped her discover what will and won’t do well in zone 6.
And now that spring has finally sprung, Alice’s garden is a mass of colour. The forsythia bushes splash a bright yellow just past the terrace, and the hundreds of narcissus and tulip bulbs she planted in the autumn are now in full bloom.
The bed in the front, the bed that Alice has ignored, presuming the ground cover was weeds, is now covered in tiny purple flowers of vinca, with the yellow flowers of lamium just starting to push through the pachysandra.
Bleeding hearts are weeping small pink flowers everywhere she looks, and Alice is finally getting to know her garden, finally learning about the plants, the soil, which plants will grow and which won’t.
And it is a learning curve. Unlike England, with its mild temperatures and steady rainfall, Connecticut has freezing winters, often with thick snow, and boiling summers. Alice has learnt the hard way that the plants she grew so well on the terrace in her London house – olive trees, french lavender, potted citrus plants, and dwarf hebes – didn’t have a chance out here.
Instead she has had to learn to love rhododendrons, azaleas, hydrangeas. After the disaster with the lavender that died a horrible death over the cold winter, she has edged her borders with Six Hills Giant catmint instead, has planted busy lizzies under the canopy of blue spruce at the back of the garden, has learnt to appreciate plants like bayberry and juniper in place of her beloved bays and cypresses.
Alice has become a woman obsessed with her garden, much to the amusement of Sally, who planted a few yew hedges, a couple of rhododendrons and that was it.
‘I guess it’s because you’re English,’ Sally smiled, sitting on the terrace one day drinking coffee with Alice. ‘You’re all obsessed with gardening, aren’t you?’
‘Not all. My best friend Emily – you remember Emily, don’t you? She doesn’t know the first thing about gardening and doesn’t want to. We always used to joke that we ended up with the wrong lives. There I was living this fast glamorous life in London and dreaming about living in the country, and she was the one who bought the house in the Cotswolds when she should really have been married to someone like Joe.’
‘She’s not married, is she? That man, what was his name? Harry? He was just her boyfriend, wasn’t he?’
Alice nods. Even the mention of his name brings the guilt flooding back. That night, the night of Sally and Chris’s party when Harry kissed her, is something she tries very hard not to think about.
She tries hard not to think about how much she hurt her best friend, and she tries even harder not to think about how she felt, lying on the ground, wrapped in Harry’s arms. She doesn’t think about it because when she does she can remember it so clearly, it was as if it happened yesterday. She can feel every blade of grass, every millimetre of stubble on Harry’s face, smell his warm skin as if he is right in front of her.
And it’s too painful. It fills her with a longing she’s not used to, a longing she doesn’t know what to do with.
Alice jumps up. ‘Come on, Madison,’ she says to the little girl. ‘Why don’t you throw the ball for Snoop?’ And all three of them run down the steps to the lawn, laughing as Snoop leaps up and down on his hind legs.
Valium always makes Alice feel slightly groggy when she wakes up, and for a split second she forgets why she took the pills in the first place. Then she remembers.
But as always, now that the sun is shining she feels better. Not perfect, but better. She goes downstairs and as she passes the office a thought occurs to her. If he were up to no good – although today she’s sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for his mobile phone last night – but if he
were
up to no good, surely there’d be some evidence somewhere?
She pauses outside the office door. No, she couldn’t possibly turn into one of those snooping wives in the films. Isn’t the first rule of snooping that if you snoop, you’re inevitably going to find something you don’t want to find? But there is a force pulling her into the office, a force out of her control, and on auto-pilot Alice gently pushes open the door and looks around.
Receipts. There are his receipts. Alice sits down behind the desk and starts going through the receipts. Nothing unusual. She examines each and every one, fascinated at this hidden life her husband leads, all these restaurants where he entertains clients. She doesn’t even know what she’s looking for. Nothing, hopefully. She finds restaurant bills, and dry-cleaning receipts, and petrol receipts. Nothing suspicious in the least.
She starts to relax, but then notices the computer. Turning it on she clicks until she’s online, then looks at the last few sites that have been visited.
Gardenweb.com
. She smiles to herself. That’s hers.
Google.com
.
Hotmail.com
. All hers.
She goes to Hotmail to check her e-mail, and it occurs to her that she could check Joe’s e-mail. His password is the same for everything: champ. She types in his name, then his password, and goes to his inbox. Part of her feels terrible for doing this, but she can’t stop. She’s come this far and she can’t stop.
She clicks on the messages and scans the names of the incoming e-mails, looking to see if there’s anything that might be suspicious, but no. Everything looks fine. Her heart is pounding but she’s relieved, and she turns the computer off, shaking her head at her stupidity as she goes to make a pot of coffee.
That evening, as usual, Joe phones to say he won’t be coming down. Alice doesn’t have the strength to be angry. She just nods and puts the phone down, and sits numbly on the sofa staring into space for most of the evening.
On her way up to bed, she remembers the office, his e-mail, and knows there must have been something she was missing, and she finds herself walking back into the office, her head emptied of all thought.
Alice sits down feeling numb, and switches on the computer, knowing where she’s going, knowing what she’s looking for, but no longer caring. Fed up with the pretence, fed up with being taken for an idiot.
Into his Hotmail account she goes. Into a folder she had ignored earlier. A folder marked Private. And there they are. Three new e-mails from Josiejo. And she knows instinctively that JosieJo is far too playful a name to be business. Her heart beats painfully, but even as she clicks on the messages she knows she can’t stop. She knows what she’s going to find, and this time she needs to know.
Slowly she reads all three messages. Short, perfunctory, but clearly not work e-mails. Still. Not quite enough evidence. She moves back up to the Sent box where she finds what she both is, and isn’t, looking for.
Sent. To Josiejo. This morning at 9.23 a.m. Subject: Tonight. She reads the e-mail five times, each time feeling sicker and sicker. Her hand starts to shake as she reads the explicit language, realizes that this is someone her husband is sleeping with, realizes this e-mail isn’t just graphic, it also contains an intimacy that implies this is someone he’s known for a long time. Someone who isn’t just a quick fuck, not something she, Alice, could pretend isn’t happening. Not small and unimportant enough to brush under the carpet knowing that it doesn’t pose a real threat to her marriage, that it doesn’t really mean anything, that she should pretend it doesn’t exist.