Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
Zak just sits there, as if he’s waiting for me to tell him
something else – as if, in some way, he already suspects a secret.
Fiona is looking at him and then at me. I wish I could make
everything right for them. I wish life wasn’t so bloody
complicated.
‘I’d better go,’ I say, as I finish the frothy chocolate.
‘It’s late. I’ll drive you,’ Zak says.
Fiona and I exchange careful glances.
‘Go on,’ she says, smiling. ‘You look tired.’ The placid hormones
seem to have kicked in again. She looks serene and calm.
Zak appears to have got a new car. People who care about cars
expect you to notice these things. ‘What a lovely car!’ I say to him. ‘What lovely comfortable seats.’
He tells me what the car is. He talks about its special features
and presses some buttons to illustrate technical details. ‘My
goodness, Zak,’ I say, while he goes on about its advantages as a
family vehicle.
What I’m really thinking about is the Beautiful Stranger – the
man I thought I had erased from my memory. I haven’t thought
about him since I married Diarmuid – and it’s just as well, because
I found out he got married five months after I saw him at the party. But now, as Zak talks about cooling systems and hydraulics, it’s as if the Beautiful Stranger has returned to me. I
remember how we exchanged those long, heated glances, stared
at each other with longing – surely it was longing – and then
looked away. My feelings for him are so foolish. I can’t believe I
still remember it all in such detail. I even found out his name. It’s
Nathaniel. Shortly after his marriage he moved to New York. I will probably never meet him again.
I tumble out of the car gratefully as soon as I reach the cottage.
‘Thanks, Zak, that was really good of you,’ I say. This isn’t a time
to offer him a cup of tea. Even though I’m determined to keep Fiona’s secret, something might slip out. When I push the car door closed, it slams dramatically. ‘Sorry about that!’ I smile, leaning into the open window. ‘It’s a beautiful car, Zak. Thanks so much for the lift.’
He smiles back and says, ‘You’re welcome.’ Then he drives off
happily. He’s very smiley these days; he says the thought of the new baby makes him all soppy. I love that he’s the kind of man
w
ho can be soppy. I fear for him. If only I could protect him and
Fiona – and of course poor Erika, with her demented passion
for Alex.
I used to feel that way about my parents, too, when I was little.
I wanted to turn back time so that they could love each other like
they used to. I wanted to rewrite history so that when Mum met Al, the man who became her lover, she just looked at him and
walked off quickly in the other direction. I wanted her to see that
she didn’t need someone else. She had Dad and me. She had our
lovely, rambling old house in the hills outside San Francisco. She
had the big fat chocolate cookies I used to bake for us all; the laughter when I ran into the lawn sprinkler on those baking summer days.
Most of all, I wanted her to know that she had been happy before she met Al. But then sometimes I got to thinking that maybe she hadn’t been happy, and we just hadn’t noticed. So I
lived with the feeling that one day Dad and I would wake up and
find her gone. Gone without even a goodbye.
The minute I’m inside my cottage I decide to make myself a cup of tea, but when I’m walking to
the kitchen I knock over my handbag. The notebook I found in
my parents’ attic falls onto the floor, and a photograph spills out
of it. It must have been tucked away at the back.
I pick up the photo. It’s a black-and-white picture of a woman
smiling at the camera, a big, beaming smile. The photo is faded,
but her smile isn’t. She’s a big-framed, attractive woman, the kind
who isn’t fat but will never look slender. She looks elegant, though you can see that she might walk in a sturdy, substantial fashion, her wide hips swaying under her low-cut cotton dress.
She has a brave face – you can see it in her firm jawline and her
strong eyebrows, the straight look in her eyes – and she has had
to be braver than she expected. She is smiling even though she is
sad. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. She has longings she
can’t speak about; longings she feels no one will understand.
I get a queasy feeling in my stomach as I turn the picture over.
I see the old gum and small, torn bits of paper: it was once in a
photograph album, but it was removed. And in tidy black pencil
on the back, someone has written, ‘DeeDee’.
Chapter
Eight
‘
We could live together
in a camper van,’ Erika is informing me. ‘Lots of people live in camper vans.’
‘You and me?’ I enquire. ‘Because, to be quite frank, I’m not sure I’m that keen on the idea.’
I am talking into my mobile phone and walking along Grafton
Street. I’m going to a reception organised by a woman called Greta, who has done lots of favours for me in the past, such as
sending me on freebie furniture-related trips to Italy and London.
Greta has her own PR company and is military and motherly, and
frequently rather fierce.
‘Not you and me!’ Erika splutters. ‘I’m talking about me and
Alex. If he leaves his wife, he’ll need somewhere to live… Yes, it’s
Thursday.’ For a moment I wonder why Erika is telling me this;
then I realise she must still be the receptionist at International
Holdings. The staff there keep asking her the most basic
questions. It’s as if they regress to infancy as soon as they
approach her desk.
‘Couldn’t he live in your flat?’ I enquire.
‘No, of course he couldn’t!’ she says, as if the suggestion is idiotic.
‘It can’t look as if he’s just gone from one woman to another.’
‘But that’s what would have happened, isn’t it?’
‘Not really,’ she says firmly. ‘If he leaves his wife, it’s because
they don’t love each other. He wouldn’t even have looked at me
if he was satisfied with his marriage.’
‘Why couldn’t he just rent a house?’
‘Because if we had a camper van, we could go on trips,’ Erika r
eplies. ‘Alex loves the idea of us going on trips in our little home
– staying in Provence and Tuscany, falling asleep to the sound of the waves on a Wexford beach. He’d like to spend at least part of
the summer travelling. He could bring his laptop along; he
doesn’t really need an office. Of course, sometimes he’d bring the
kids along and I’d stay behind. It’s only fair… Four thirty-five.’
I assume that someone has just asked her the time. At least I’m
not late for the reception; it doesn’t start until five.
‘So you’d keep your flat?’ I ask.
‘Oh, yes,’ Erika says. ‘Though I’d have to get someone to share
it with me, to help pay the rent while I’m away with Alex.’
‘
But you only have one bedroom.’
‘I could use the utilities room. It’s quite cosy.’
Erika’s utilities room is mainly taken up with a washing
machine, but I decide not to mention this. There is an excitement in her voice, a real exhilaration. She disappears to take a series of calls. I see a woman wheeling a pram and feel a surge of anxiety.
What will Fiona do if Zak discovers their impending baby isn’t
his? It will be awful keeping such a big secret. I’ve already been
rehearsing what to say when I peer into the cot.
Erika comes back on the line and starts telling me about the
different kinds of camper vans you can buy. She’s been looking it
all up on the Internet. She has a computer on her desk. When people approach she has to hit ‘Minimise’, so she can give the impression that she is deeply, if temporarily, committed to International Holdings. The other day she pressed the wrong
button and somehow ended up with a screen that blared, ‘Single
and sexy? Visit our chat room for fun, no strings attached!’ just as a man called Jon was about to ask her what month it was.
‘Sally? Sally, are you still there?’ Erika is saying. Though I haven’t really been listening to her, I presume she wants me to
comment on which sort of camper van might be preferable. I must
get off the subject.
‘So… you and Alex have discussed all this?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Erika says. ‘He’ll rent a house later on, in the
autumn. Divorce is very expensive; living in a camper van for a while would save him loads of money. And then he could sell it again if he wanted to.’
‘Well… I suppose it could be quite practical,’ I say. Then I add
cautiously, ‘But are you sure he really wants to leave his wife,
Erika? So many of them sound as though they want to, then don’t
do it.’
‘Of course he does!’ she virtually shouts. ‘I can’t even believe
you’re saying that.’
I decide not to apologise. Erika needs to realise that what I’ve
said is not that outlandish.
‘Anyway, his wife may leave him first,’ Erika declares
defensively. ‘She’s spending more and more time with her yoga
teacher.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I sometimes follow them.’
‘What?’
‘I sometimes follow them after class. They go to a park and talk.’
I’m not quite sure how to reply to the news that Erika stalks
Alex’s wife, so it’s just as well that someone comes to her desk and
asks her to type a letter. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ I hear a deep,
hesitant voice saying. ‘It would be a great help. It’s not that long.
Thanks, Erika. I hope you can read my handwriting.’ From the sound of his tentative tone, I suspect that this is Lionel, one of
Erika’s more junior bosses, who doesn’t have his own secretary. She has told me about him. He virtually cringes any time he has
to ask her to do anything; it’s as if he doesn’t realise she is actually
employed to do things like type letters.
‘Don’t worry, Lionel, you have the best handwriting in the building,’ Erika says in a motherly tone. Lionel is probably
b
lushing to the roots of his hair. I must find out if he’s married,
because I suspect he has a major crush on Erika. She keeps finding
chocolate biscuits on her desk, and I bet they’re from him.
As Erika gets on with her letter, I push my way down Grafton
Street to the sound of buskers playing violins, guitars and
trombones. The street is packed with shiny, manicured people with designer shopping bags. Shouldn’t some of them be in offices? The
building I’m heading for is down one of these side-streets. A very
modern new store is showcasing ‘top young design talent’.
According to the swanky press release, the whole ground floor will
be full of lamps with complex surfaces and flowing organic
shapes, edgy twenty-first-century silver and sensually therapeutic
textiles. The overall effect will be ‘amusing, intimate, ironic and
intriguing’. Greta certainly knows how to talk things up.
I’m on the right street and I’m early, so I decide to go into an Italian café and have a cappuccino. Van Morrison is playing in
the big, slightly shaded interior; I get my cappuccino and sit on a
lemon-coloured armchair by the window.
There are moments in my life when I feel perfectly contented,
and this is one of them. The secret of happiness is to count your
blessings and notice what you have, instead of what’s missing; and
I have so many reasons to be grateful.