Foursome (6 page)

‘Erm… I’ve been meaning to say to you. Did you see that… erm… that article in the
Guardian
about that new car? The one that’s all electric but it’s a sports model?’

I have no idea where this came from. Dan has no interest in cars. Alex has no interest in cars. But it manages to divert attention from the email fiasco for a moment. And because Alex has clearly also decided to bail out he goes along with the car conversation for just long enough for Lorna to lose interest in the previous topic.

I can breathe again. The guilt that had washed over me when I thought that Alex was going to tell the whole embarrassing story means that I feel better disposed towards Lorna for the rest of the meal. I try to smile and nod while she talks. I even think about trying to join in the conversation myself, but there seems little point; she doesn’t actually seem to need any feedback. The rest of the meal passes off uneventfully and, thankfully, at ten it is all over with no one feeling in the mood to suggest going on anywhere else.

At home Dan and I go through our usual routine. A quick debrief over a glass of brandy, bed, read for five minutes then lights out. He is asleep almost immediately as he almost always is. These days, like most couples with many years and two children behind them, bed is primarily for sleeping. I look at him fondly in the half dark, but I can’t shake the image of Alex and Lorna in the smug first flush of coupledom. There’s no denying that their physical attraction is real, whatever Alex’s underlying motives might be. His hand on her knee, her rubbing his thigh as she told some story or other. It unsettles me a bit, and I wonder if it does Dan too, this blatant display of sexual chemistry. It makes me feel inadequate, unexciting and unexcited. I briefly think about waking Dan up, telling him I’ve got a sudden urge, take me now, but I know he’d just be confused, wonder what had got into me and if I was OK and the moment would be lost. So I just cuddle into his broad back and try to sleep.

8

Isabel is sitting at a table by the window, nose in a paperback. She looks so exactly like, well, like Isabel, that I almost burst into tears as I rush across the café to greet her. We haven’t set eyes on each other for nearly a month and, as I get her in a bear hug, I realize just how much I’ve missed my friend. We’ve talked on the phone, of course, but with Alex staying at ours for all that time we got out of the habit of inviting her round. The intensity with which she returns my embrace and the fact that she won’t let go even when I’ve clearly relaxed my arms tells me that she’s missed me too. We eventually break apart, ignoring the stares of a weasely-looking young man in a nylon suit, who I think is hoping he’s about to see a live stage show of
Emmanuelle
.

‘So,’ she says as I sit down. ‘How have you been?’

‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Well, work’s a bit…’ I realize that I can’t even begin to explain the whole story so I witter on aimlessly. Eventually Isabel asks the question she always asks.

‘So, how’s Alex? Is he OK?’ she asks.

I’ve agonized about this. On the one hand Isabel will be horrified and hurt to discover that Alex is already seeing someone else. On the other, the fact that it’s Lorna might even amuse her. I know that someone will tell her once the grapevine moves into action and I decide that it’s better if that someone is me. I leave out the part about Alex making a pass at me obviously. I want her to take him back if he ever sees sense and she’s hardly going to do that if she thinks he’s that disloyal.

‘He’s obviously doing it just to prove some kind of a point,’ I say, although it’s hard to justify what point without telling her what I really think. ‘To himself, I mean. That he was right to leave or something. God knows.’

Luckily my instincts were right and the pain is outweighed by the comedy value. Isabel manages a smile.

‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘maybe he likes her.’

‘But this is
Lorna
,’ I say, my voice rising an octave. ‘He can’t really like her.’

‘Oh God, do you think he’s calling it the bean yet?’

‘And that’s another thing. He nearly told her that story. I mean I have to work with her. What if he tells her and then she tells Joshua or Melanie…’

Isabel laughs. ‘I doubt she’d want to admit to it to anyone.’

The conversation slows to a halt for a moment. Isabel looks at me.

‘Rebecca,’ she says hesitantly. ‘Why do you think he left? Really?’

‘I have no idea,’ I say. I’m not about to tell her that he now claims he never really loved her after all. ‘I always thought you seemed so happy.’

She sighs. ‘I don’t think it was ever as good as you thought it was. Not for years, anyway. We argued all the time when we were on our own. But don’t all couples? About money, mostly. Him getting a job…’

‘But… I always thought… I mean, you do OK, don’t you?’ I ask. ‘You’re doing something you love and I guess he just wanted to try and do something he loves too. And when you had the girls, I mean, I was always so envious of you that you could just go back to work knowing he was happy to stay with them.’

‘I didn’t want to go back to work, though,’ she says, and a look of irritation passes over her face. ‘I wanted to stay at home and do the new-mother thing. But even then he refused to think about looking for a job.’

I’m shocked. I had no idea. It had all seemed like such a perfect twenty-first-century solution to me.

‘I cried all day every day in the office,’ she’s saying. ‘But Alex insisted that if he got another job it would be a slippery slope and then he’d never have any time to do any writing.’

‘Gosh,’ I say. ‘I didn’t realize.’

Isabel is on a roll. ‘And, to be honest, I have no idea when the last time he actually wrote something was.’

‘I thought you loved your work,’ I say, rather lamely.

‘I do. But I would have liked to opt out for a while. Or I’d like to have been able to be part time so at least I could spend some time with my daughters while they were little. Tell me,’ she says, ‘do you think Alex is a good writer? I mean, you read something of his once. Do you think he’s ever going to become the next Alan Bennett?’

I blush. I don’t want to be too disloyal to Alex but she’s got a point.

‘I guess not,’ I say. ‘No.’

‘He’s been trying for twelve years. And at no point during that time did he even think, Well, maybe I could work part time, do my bit for the family, and write on my days off. Because he never cared that much. It was all about him having a nice life, pottering around all day and chatting up the mums on the school run.’

I’m about to say that doesn’t sound like Alex when I realize that, of course, it does, so I keep my mouth shut.

‘The whole writing thing is like a diversionary tactic. If he says that that’s what he’s doing, then no one questions why he hasn’t got a job. No one’s got the faintest idea whether he ever actually writes anything or not. He can play the tortured artist. But even with all that I never thought about leaving. We were in it together. We’d promised. And I loved him.’

‘Why did you never tell me any of this?’ I say, irrationally hurt that she hasn’t confided in me.

‘Because,’ she says, ‘you know, you always thought it was all so perfect, the four of us. You were always saying how amazing it was how it had all worked out. I don’t know. I didn’t want to be the one to disillusion you, I guess.’

She’s right. I did always marvel at our luck, that the four of us had found each other. We were a perfect unit, like those two sets of Siamese twins who happened to fall in love in Russia or somewhere.

I try and take this all in for a moment. Isabel sips her coffee and looks at me, willing me to understand.

‘I’m so sorry, Izz,’ I say. ‘If I’d have known… Well, actually, I don’t know what I would have done if I’d have known. Tried to convince you that it was all in your head, maybe, that nothing was really wrong. That would have been helpful.’

She laughs. ‘You probably would have succeeded. You can be very persuasive when you get a sulk on. And he’d still have left.’

I feel like we’ve exhausted the topic for now. There’s so much more I want to ask her, but I think it’d be pushing my luck so I change the subject.

‘How are the girls doing?’

‘Oh, you know,’ she says. ‘They’re miserable. They can’t understand why he’s done it.’

We make plans to get the kids together so that the twins can engage in a bit of William baiting, which will cheer them up. There’s a big old elephant in the room, which only I can see, which is Alex’s declaration of love to me. I wonder briefly whether knowing that about Alex might actually help her in some way. Make her see that he’s not worth pining over. But it’s not worth the risk. And, besides, if I tell her, then I’ll have to tell Dan and I don’t see how that would be beneficial to anybody. Uncomfortable as I am with keeping a secret from him – beyond hiding his Christmas and birthday presents I’m not sure I ever have done – in this instance I know that it’s the right thing to do. In Dan’s case ignorance is bliss.

Back in the office Lorna looks at her watch as I walk in.

‘I thought you were coming back at one thirty,’ she says for the benefit of Melanie, who is also in the room. It is now one thirty-four, by the way. I am four minutes late. Arrest me.

‘I’m meant to be meeting Alex,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if it’s worth it now.’

‘Tell you what,’ I say. ‘Why don’t you come back at twenty to three. It’s really no problem. Is it Melanie?’

‘What? Oh no,’ Melanie says. ‘Just work it out between you, so long as everything gets done.’

‘There,’ I say to a sulky-looking Lorna. ‘Crisis averted.’

Over dinner I tell Dan that I had lunch with Isabel, but I skirt around what she told me about the state of their marriage. I’ll save that for later, once the kids are out of the way.

‘Did she say anything about Nicola and Natalie?’ William asks, fish finger poised in front of his mouth, little finger aloft like a duchess with a tea cup. I smile at him.

‘She said they’re fine. But they’re sad they haven’t seen you for a while so I thought we might go over there at the weekend.’

The way his face lights up you’d think I’d told him he’d won the Nobel Prize.

‘Excellent,’ he says.

Zoe looks at him. ‘God, you’re sad,’ she says, but he’s too happy to retaliate.

9

Somehow in the chaos of everything that’s been going on I’d forgotten about IT. The holiday. Every year since I can’t remember when, we have all gone on holiday together. Rebecca and Daniel, Alex and Isabel and then, as they arrived, the four kids. In the summer we go away in our couples like normal people and the rest of the time we hang around each other’s roof terraces and gardens and local parks. But the autumn half term has become
our
time. The group. We book ahead, getting together for an evening in the early summer to argue about where it’ll be this year. We’ve done Madeira and Lanzarote, Crete and Rhodes, Center Parcs and Euro Disney.

This year, on an evening in late May, we decided on the Amalfi Coast, where it should be warm though not hot and where we could force some culture down our children’s throats and then get pissed on cheap red wine in the evenings. Cleverly we booked it there and then. Six nights in Sorrento. In the subsequent fighting over who was getting to keep the house and the dog, no one has even thought to argue about who gets the holiday. We’ve all forgotten. At least, that is, until one night when I wake up in a cold sweat and realize that we have got to cancel it. Now. While we can still get some of our money back. Before it just becomes accepted that we’re going. Or at least, some of us are.

I shake Dan awake.

‘Dan,’ I say in a stage whisper. ‘Wake up.’

He groans. There’s nothing Dan hates more than being disturbed when he’s sleeping, but this is an emergency.

‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘We have to cancel Sorrento. I think we only have a couple of days left. Can you do it tomorrow?’

Dan booked it on his computer. He has the reference number, the details of the travel company, all that essential stuff. It makes sense for him to be the one to cancel it. He sits up. Once he’s awake, he’s awake.

‘You woke me up for that?’

‘I was scared I’d forget. We can’t afford to lose the deposit.’

‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘I think Alex still wants to go. I guess he’ll bring Lorna.’

I snap my bedside light on so he can see exactly how serious I am.

‘No,’ I say in a tone I’d ordinarily reserve for a naughty dog. Down boy. ‘No, Dan, no. Are you f… reaking mad?’

‘Did you just say freaking?’

‘I’m being serious.’

‘But freaking?’ He looks at me, realizes I am not in the mood to laugh. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he says. ‘She’s OK.’

I can’t believe this is happening.

‘What about the kids? They haven’t even met her yet. It could damage them for life watching their father frolicking on the beach in his swimming trunks with some bikini-clad woman who’s not their mum.’

‘I don’t think anyone’s going to be frolicking on the beach in their swim wear in October,’ he says in that pedantic way he has sometimes.

‘That’s not the point,’ I say, getting desperate. ‘The point is that this holiday is for the kids. If anything, it should be Isabel who comes with them, not Alex.’

‘You want me to tell Alex that we’d rather go on holiday with Isabel than him?’

‘Why not? He’s the one who’s ruined everything. Look, just cancel the holiday, OK?’ I say, turning over so my back is towards him. ‘We can go somewhere else, just us and Zoe and William. Maybe take the girls along too. But no Alex. And no Lorna.’

‘Fine,’ he says in a way that makes it clear that it’s anything but fine.

‘Whatever,’ I retaliate, channelling Zoe.

The next morning we get ready in huffy silence. We still walk to the tube station together as we do every day and I wait until I’m about to disappear underground, leaving him to catch his bus, before I say, ‘Don’t forget to cancel the holiday,’ and then I practically run off before he can respond.

The upshot is this. Dan calls Alex to let him know the holiday is about to be cancelled. Alex says, hold on a minute, I still want to go and, by the way, I’m taking Lorna. Dan, being Dan, says fine. He calls the travel company and tells them it’s going to be two adults only. No children, no Dan and Rebecca Morrison.

‘So,’ he says to me as I’m cooking dinner that evening. ‘It’s all sorted out. Where do you want to go instead?’

He comes up behind me and snakes his arms round my waist, his way of trying to end our dispute. I’m not playing, though.

‘We can’t go anywhere,’ I say. ‘I can’t have the same week off work as Lorna. So now the childless couple gets to go away in half term and we get to do precisely nothing because we can’t take the kids out of school.’

‘Shit,’ he says, ‘I didn’t think of that.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘You didn’t, did you?’

Actually, Lorna being out of the office for a week turns out to be as good for me as having a holiday. I don’t edge along from Piccadilly tube station every morning, my shoulders hunched up around my ears. I can relax knowing that for a whole week there’s no question of dinner or a trip to the pub or a cosy night at home with the four of us.

Dan and I suddenly remember why we like each other so much and cuddle up on the sofa in front of the TV contentedly. Just the two of us. Neither of us mentions Alex or Lorna for fear we’ll break the spell.

At work, I have no doubt, I am less defensive, less inclined to sulk. Without question more productive because without Lorna there to play Phone Wars with I answer each call happily, on the first or second ring. I can’t be helpful enough.

Isabel has taken the girls to Cornwall for the week. She calls me to tell me that I would love their hotel because it’s run by someone who used to be a children’s TV presenter in the 80s and that he still wears his trademark red glasses and uses his catch phrase – fabbo! – at every opportunity. She is amusing herself by refusing to acknowledge that she knows who he is, which, she says, he is clearly waiting for. As the days go by, he is becoming more and more frustrated and saying ‘fabbo!’ way more often than necessary. Soon, she says, he will no doubt produce the battered old kangaroo puppet who used to be his sidekick and then probably break down and say, ‘Don’t you remember me?’ and start crying. I laugh and ask her to take a photo if he does.

Otherwise, she says, to be honest, it’s depressing. It’s great watching the girls having a good time but some adult company in the evenings wouldn’t go amiss. Once the twins are in bed there is nothing to do but sit in the adjoining room and watch TV.

‘I may become an alcoholic,’ she says, and she laughs, but I know she’s miserable.

‘I might join you,’ I say.

We promise to meet up as soon as she gets back.

‘Say hi to Dan from me,’ she says as she rings off.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘Bye.’

Melanie and Joshua are being very secretive. They keep closeting themselves away in one or other of their offices for ‘talks’. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that they had a thing going on. Actually, that’s not such a ludicrous idea. I suspect that he would in a heartbeat if she was up for it, but she has a handsome, attentive, successful husband and a very professional attitude towards her work, which means, I think, that she would never mix business with carnal pleasure. He, on the other hand, is a bit of a randy old dog who would probably never say no. I like him, though, don’t get me wrong. There’s a certain old-fashioned, gentleman-cad quality about him that I find quite endearing. He’s very theatrical, very luvvy and utterly harmless.

Anyway, clearly something is afoot because no one ever really shuts their doors at Mortimer and Sheedy, unless they’re with a client. In fact, the last time I can remember was when the Gary McPherson scandal broke and that didn’t last for long because Lorna and I were having to fend off calls from the
Sun
and the
Mirror
within minutes so there was no point anyone trying to pretend it was a big secret.

I’m running through the client list in my head, trying to imagine who might have done what and with whom when they emerge, all smiles and everything goes back to normal.

‘Everything OK?’ I say to Melanie later. She’s never very good at keeping secrets.

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

The week passes way too quickly and before I know it I’m dawdling along Jermyn Street from the tube station, shoulders up, braced for the inevitable.

‘Oh, Rebecca, we had such a great time!’ she says, the minute I walk through the door, and then proceeds to tell me every minute detail of that great time, starting with the second they set foot in Gatwick Airport and ending, well, I don’t really know, because I’ve long since switched off. Nearly an hour has gone by when I look at my watch, and that and the fact that she seems to have stopped talking tells me that she’s probably reached the end of the journey home.

There’s a pause.

‘Good,’ I say. ‘I’m glad you had a good break.’

Luckily that seems to be all that was required and she sets off again about what has she missed and has anything happened and what’s the goss?

‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothing has happened, you’ve missed nothing and there’s no gossip. Sorry.’

That shuts her up for a moment and then thankfully Joshua arrives and she follows him into his office and rehashes the whole thing again.

While she’s been away I have been steeling myself. The third time the phone rings and she pretends to be fascinated by some speck of dust on her desk, I answer but then, once I have put the person on the other end through to Melanie, I take a deep breath.

‘Lorna,’ I say, and she looks up, eager as a puppy for some interaction. I almost bottle out.

‘This thing with the phones…’ I start, and then realize that I’m not quite sure where I’m going even after rehearsing this moment in my head for a week.

‘The phones?’ she says, like she hasn’t quite understood me right.

‘Yes, you know, the way you never answer them.’

‘I do,’ she says. ‘What are you talking about? I’m always answering the phones.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘You don’t. At least, you only do when you have to, when I don’t give in first.’ Now I say it out loud it does sound a little paranoid.

‘I’ve been away for a week. I have to catch up with what I’ve missed. I’ve just been concentrating, that’s all. I haven’t even noticed the phones have been ringing. How many times have they rung?’

She’s getting louder now. Loud enough so that Joshua and Melanie will be able to hear every word. I want to tell her to keep her voice down, but that’d be like a red rag to a bull. I’m beginning to wish I’d never started this.

‘I’m not talking about today,’ I say, and then, as if by magic, the phone bursts into life. Lorna leaps at it, answering before it has even managed to get one full ring out, looking at me triumphantly as if to say, ‘See how wrong you are?’

I wait for her to finish. I’m not sure how to get back on the subject without tipping her over the edge, but in the end I don’t have to. I never really understood what passive aggressive meant until I met Lorna. She’s the living embodiment of it, all innocent little baby face but she will never let things go. Underneath all that pitiful feyness she’s like a pit bull.

‘So, what were you accusing me of before I answered the phone?’ she says, putting a great deal of emphasis on the last four words. I can see the water gathering in pools in the corners of her eyes. I know that once it’s released, once it finds its way down her cheeks, it will be impossible to stop. At least, not before Joshua notices, she’ll make sure of that.

Still, I knew it would be like this. Now I’ve started I have to finish because I don’t know when I’ll have the courage to bring it up again.

‘I wasn’t accusing you of anything,’ I say evenly. One of us has to remain calm. ‘I was just saying that you have a habit of waiting for me to answer the phone rather than picking it up yourself and I’d be grateful if we could share the load a bit more, that’s all.’

I can see it, one tear struggling to force its way out, clearing the way for its hundreds of brothers and sisters to follow.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she says, ramping up the volume another notch. ‘I’ve been on holiday. Why are you attacking me the minute I walk back through the door?’

‘I’m not… forget it. There’s no point carrying on this conversation. Let’s just forget it, OK?’ I say.

‘No,’ she says. ‘You can’t just accuse me of something and then try to pretend you haven’t.’

‘I shouldn’t have said anything,’ I say. This is how it always ends if I ever try to say anything even vaguely critical to Lorna. I should have learned my lesson by now.

‘No,’ she says again. ‘You must have meant it. You’ve obviously been festering away about something the whole time I’ve been off…’

‘What’s going on?’

Oh great, now the cavalry has arrived in the form of Joshua on his great white charger.

‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Everything’s fine.’

‘Rebecca thinks that I deliberately don’t answer the phones,’ Lorna says, and right on cue the watery army starts its way down her face. ‘She thinks that I wait so that she has to do it. That I pretend to be busy when I’m not or something.’

She gives way to big noisy sobs. Once again I am the school bully. I wonder if anyone cries like that when they’re on their own, wailing and moaning, when they don’t have an audience. I doubt it. Joshua puts a paternal hand on Lorna’s shoulder.

‘Rebecca?’ he says.

I take a breath.

‘I think,’ I say, ‘that sometimes Lorna holds back from answering the phones in the hope that I’ll do it, yes. Even when I’m clearly in the middle of something and she isn’t,’ I add for good measure.

Surely he can see the sense in what I’m saying. From his and Melanie’s point of view they just want the phones to be answered promptly and by someone who sounds like they’re happy to be there.

Lorna gives another well-timed sob and Joshua turns back to her to be confronted by the full force of Niagara Falls. He looks at me again, disappointment in his avuncular eyes.

‘Honestly, this has got to stop.’

Once he’s gone back into his office she looks at me and smiles nervously.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t mean to get you into trouble.’

I turn back to my work without answering. When the phone rings a few minutes later she answers it on the second ring.