The Other Woman's Shoes (42 page)

Jack looked sad, disappointed. What had he been expecting? That she’d keep her bed warm for him to pop back over the ocean now and again, to come back for a bit of London action between the sheets?

‘Martha, I know you’ve gone through quite a bit–’

‘Some would say that.’

Jack chose to ignore her tone and pushed on, ‘And I know you’re hurting, but, well, maybe I could be there for you.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ll have time to stay friends, what with servicing all your new naked friends.’

‘Right,’ said Jack slowly. He dropped his head into his hands and used the heels of his palms to rub his eyes. ‘There are no other naked friends.’

‘Well, you haven’t been in New York long,’ said Martha. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll–’ She stopped mid-sentence. ‘What do you mean?’

‘There are no other naked friends. Here or at home.’

‘But…’ Martha left the word hanging in the air. Jack was gorgeous; she’d always been sure that he must be spending his every waking moment beating women off with a stick or, worse still, not beating them off. What was he saying?

‘There haven’t been any other naked friends since I met you. Since the Salsa club.’

Martha didn’t want to make another mistake. ‘Why?’

‘Because there wasn’t any need. I didn’t want to be with any other woman.’

Martha shook her head and gently and surreptitiously pinched the skin on her forearm; she wanted to check that she was awake. ‘So why did you let me think that there were other women?’ How could he have put her through such misery and uncertainty? Not that she had been all that miserable. Mostly she’d managed to blank out the possibility of other naked friends. But Eliza had been very uncertain and had done her level best to make Martha miserable.

‘I didn’t really think that you’d think there were others. Besides not wanting others, when would I have found the time, and where would I have found the energy, considering the amount of shagging we do?’

Martha wished he’d stuck to his first answer; it was far more romantic.

‘Besides which, there were the children,’ continued Jack.

‘Well?’

‘And the marriage.’

‘But everyone has a history. You do.’

‘I was never sure which way it would resolve itself. You were barely out of a marriage. In fact, technically, you aren’t out of your marriage. I didn’t want to put pressure on you.’

‘I
feel
divorced. And soon I really will be. It feels true, and I don’t know if there is any other measure. It doesn’t feel as though Michael is mine any more or that I am his, despite the names on the mortgage deed and the pension policies. He’s gone. He’s vacated my home and my heart.’
Martha really hoped she didn’t sound as though she were begging.

‘And, in all honesty, I wasn’t sure if I could take it all on, if I was up to the job of being a… a… what’s the word?’

‘Boyfriend,’ suggested Martha.

Jack glared. ‘A family man.’

‘Oh, I see, and now it’s OK to tell me that you don’t have any other naked friends because you’re leaving anyway, and that’s my consolation prize.’ Martha was almost proud of how indignant she sounded.

‘No, Martha, that’s not it. I love you. Martha, you are the most fabulous person I have ever known, I’ve told you that. I love you so much. I think I’ve loved you for a while, and I was just waiting for the right moment to tell you. Today I actually ached for you. Can you believe that?’ Jack was laughing. ‘Today I knew that the only thing that could make a perfect day even better was seeing you. I want you to come with me. This job is the job of a lifetime. I’ll be earning three times my current salary. I can give you and the kids a really great standard of living. It’s proved easier than I thought it would be, the unknown, being around children. They’re great. Noisy, smelly, but great. The company will pay for our home and the kids’ education; we can be a real family. A happy family. Me devoted to you, hanging on your every word.’ He was laughing and joking, but he meant it too. ‘I didn’t say anything to you this morning because I wanted to know exactly what I was offering you.’ Jack was smiling a wider smile than Martha had ever seen before. It shone through his eyes, his pores; even his hair seemed to glisten with
happiness. He’d worked it all out. He had a solution. He was able to offer Martha the Happily-ever-after she wanted and she deserved. He’d never been happier.

‘I can’t live here, Jack.’

‘No, not straight away. You’ll have to pack up the house.’

‘Michael.’

The word punched Jack. It knocked him to the ground more certainly than if Lennox Lewis had landed a blow.

‘He’d never agree to it. He’d have a court order slapped on me quicker than you could say “Green Card”.’

‘We’d fight it,’ said Jack. He stood up, panicked, and ran his fingers through his hair. Almost instantly he fell back into his chair again. ‘We’ll fight it.’ But Jack already knew that Martha would never be able to join him. His words drifted, without gravitas, like feathers in the air on a very windy day.

‘I can’t take his children away from him.’

‘They’re your children.’

‘And his.’

The lovers sat in a silence that deafened them. Martha watched her sweet coffee go cold, and she wondered how brave she was expected to be. Surely the call for heroes and martyrs had long been extinct. Apparently not.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ sighed Jack. He looked at Martha with desperation and she knew what he wanted her to say.

‘Take the job, Jack.’ Martha was thinking, If you love something let it go, if it comes back it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was. And she hated the fact that the most important things in her life could always be distilled down
to a message on a twee Hallmark card. ‘When do they want you to start?’

‘End of April.’

‘We should get a drink and celebrate. You can have orange juice but I need something a bit stronger.’

‘I signed the contract. I didn’t think.’ His tone was apologetic.

Martha would have felt sorry for him, but she felt so sorry for herself that she didn’t have the capacity to feel pity for anyone else, not even Jack. ‘No.’ Of course not. Why should he? He wasn’t married to her; they weren’t his children.

For the last three years, in every waking moment, Martha had thought about her children and what was best for them; she was used to it, it was automatic. Jack didn’t have the same responsibility, he wasn’t there. He could break the contract, there would be a get-out clause – they both knew that – but neither of them suggested that he do so.

47

The visit to the zoo was less of a success than Eliza had hoped. From the second Greg had offered to take them there she had indulged in
visions
. Visions, such as him pushing the double buggy (in a manly way), freeing her up to concentrate on humorous stories of how she’d filled the last few months. Of course, she also planned that these anecdotes would be tightly edited and generously embellished so as to paint her in as strong a light as possible. There would be no point in admitting that most of her dates had been mind-numbing, cheap or tedious – that would not cause her ex to sizzle with jealousy, and she wanted him to sizzle. Think bacon in a pan. She imagined that the children would suddenly transform from small demons to more celestial characters, so as to give the impression that she was in control after all. She hadn’t visited London Zoo, or indeed any zoo, since the age of eight. Her dim recollection was that the place was full of cute furry animals.

Greg tried to push the buggy, but he wasn’t good at turning corners, got a bit frustrated, then heavy-handed, and bent one of the axles in temper. Eliza was so worried about what Martha would say when she saw her precious Maclaren buggy that she was rendered speechless for a good few minutes.

When she finally did say something it was all very
derogatory. ‘Bloody hell, Greg. How can you be so cack-handed? Or rather cack-footed. Martha’ll go mad, you total arse.’

‘Total arse,’ repeated Mathew as clear as a church bell, stopping Eliza from continuing her tirade.

‘Jesus, Eliza, it’s a pram, not a kidney machine, it doesn’t matter. I’ll bang that axle out with a hammer when I get home. Chill. Since when have you been so hyper?’ scowled Greg.

Eliza doubted Greg’s ability to fix the buggy. He wasn’t particularly handy with a toolbox, but she decided to bite her tongue. Which meant it was impossible to entertain him with anecdotes of her disastrous dates. She did try, but the stories didn’t sound at all amusing – which shouldn’t have surprised her, as they hadn’t been funny to live through. The children felt far too comfortable with Greg to improve their behaviour one iota. They continued to be picky, sticky and tricky. The animals were not cute. They were sad and smelly.

It was not a roaring success.

Despite all this, Eliza felt happier than she’d felt in months. Even when it started to drizzle, she comforted herself with the fact that although she was in hell on earth, she was at least doing her time in damnation with Greg.

Which made it acceptable. Despite the overwhelming smell of camel faeces clogging her nostrils.

He didn’t have a pension policy. He didn’t have private health care or a monthly salary. He had no hope of ever struggling into the higher tax bracket, and yet he was everything she wanted. He always had been, even when she hadn’t known it.

Eliza felt overwhelmed with remorse and regret. Greg might not have a fitted kitchen, or even a juicer, but these were surmountable problems. He did have a girlfriend, and this obstruction would be less easily overcome. The Bianchis had told her that he seemed very happy, that he was ‘always laughing’ with this new woman. And he was clearly into her in a big way, because why else would he have cleaned up his flat? Oh God, how could she have been so stupid and careless as to muddle it all up so completely?

It was mortifying to admit, but she
had
left Greg on a whim. They’d had a dull couple of months, he hadn’t had any work, and was actually subsidizing his gigs with the money he earned from selling hats. It was ridiculous. And whilst Eliza loved her job, she didn’t earn a fortune, or at least not enough for two. Because money was tight they rarely went out or did
anything
. By contrast, all of their friends had suddenly started to grow up: everyone else seemed to be getting engaged or buying houses or getting promoted, and Greg didn’t show any inclination to do any of this. His idea of planning was to think about what he wanted for tea before 5 p.m. And for a while all of this had seemed to be insuperable.

But she’d muddled it up. She’d lost sight of what was important. And how a person made you feel was very important. She should have talked to him.

Eliza was glad it was raining; perhaps that way Greg wouldn’t notice the bastard tears that had sprung from nowhere. At the moment she was safe enough, they were hovering in her eyes. She just looked as though she had an awful cold, but they were threatening overspill any second now.

‘This is boring,’ whinged Mathew. He made a half-hearted attempt to escape his captivity by bouncing around in the buggy; the movement woke Maisie, who let out an almighty howl of objection. Eliza envied her this freedom of expression.

‘Let’s give this up, no one’s enjoying it very much,’ said Greg.

Eliza was about to grumble ‘Best bloody idea you’ve had all day’, when she looked at him. He seemed so disappointed; after all, the zoo had been his suggestion. Eliza would put her last pound on the fact that this wasn’t what he’d imagined, either. There he stood in the grim zoo, with her grim niece and nephew, in the grim rain. He didn’t even have a jacket with a hood.

Yet he was still smiling. Well, at least, the corners of his mouth weren’t actually turned down.

He took her breath away. He was all the romance of jazz songs in smoky bars, blooming roses, crooning voices and spectacular musicals. This was as delightful as floaty dresses, red wine, hazy memories, bright dreams, small waists and even those kisses where he takes your chin in his hands and tilts your face up to his.

Problem was, this scene also had a hint of that other type of romantic – the tragi-romantic: a host of missed opportunities, maybes, should-have-beens and what-ifs.

Eliza wasn’t going to accept that. She may have been impulsive and at times confused, mistaken or rash, but she was, above all things, a very determined woman.

‘No, look, it’s just a bit of rain, I’m having a great time,’ she lied.

‘Eliza, remember who you’re talking to.’

‘OK, it is a bit crap,’ she admitted. But she didn’t want it to be over. All her senses were being assaulted. It was almost impossible to see the animals for the drizzle, or have a conversation that would drown out Maisie’s screams. Eliza was so cold she couldn’t feel her fingers. And she couldn’t smell anything other than animal shit. But the worst thing would be for them to go home now, for Greg to leave her with nothing but the taste of regret. ‘How about we go and get something to eat? It’s getting late. The children are probably crabby because they’re starving.’

‘And because they’re children,’ Greg added.

‘Oh yeah, and because of that. How about lunch? My treat.’ Eliza hoped she sounded nonchalant. Because desperate has never been an aphrodisiac. Say yes. Please say yes. Please.

‘OK, if you’re paying,’ said Greg, but he was smiling and Eliza had the feeling that he’d have come anyway; it wasn’t just the promise of a free chicken-and-chips that was luring him.

They found a burger bar where the management didn’t sigh and huff and puff at the sight of the buggy.

They took off their damp coats and draped them over the backs of chairs to steam. The children were given fizzy drinks and a pot of crayons, Greg and Eliza asked for a half-bottle of red wine and the mood distinctly brightened. They placed their order (everyone chose something with chips, and Eliza didn’t have the energy to argue for vegetables). The service was speedy, the food was tasty, and as the damp clothes dried off everyone slipped back into their more sunny personalities.

‘Shall we order the other half?’ asked Greg, pointing to the empty bottle.