Out of the Blue (10 page)

“All right,” I said.

“No Faith, it isn’t all right,” he said. “So let me tell you some more. Oh yes, on that silly Family Ethics Committee on which I sit four times a year, there is Baroness Warner, who’s sixty-three; the sociologist, Dame Barbara Brown, and two very married and rather boring women MPs, both of whom are called Anne.”

“This is unnecessary,” I said.

“Other females of my acquaintance include Andy Metzler’s colleagues, Theresa and Clare, and then of course there are a number of women I know socially, but then you know them all too—there’s Samantha at number nine, and we know Jackie at number fifteen, and that nice woman—whatshername—who we occasionally bump into at the health club. Add to that our old college friends like Mimi and I’d say that pretty well completes the list. Oh, and Lily of course. But if you thought for a second I was having it off with her, Faith, I’d take you down to the head doctor like a shot.”

“OK, OK, OK,” I said weakly. “Look, I didn’t ask for all this.”

“Oh yes you did,” he said. “By your suspicious behavior. But let me assure you that the only person who’s strayed around here is
Graham!
”

“Look,” I said, beginning to feel upset, “I only asked you if you know someone called Jean.”

“No,” he said emphatically. “I can honestly say that I
don’t
.”

But I knew this was a lie. Not even a white lie, but a flashing fluorescent pink and green one. And this was very significant, because Peter’s usually so truthful, but now he was being barefaced. But I couldn’t admit that I’d seen the note about Jean, because then he’d know I’d been snooping again. I really
would
like to have
him
followed, I thought. But then I reminded myself that it was out of the question, because private detectives don’t come cheap.

“Are you all right now, Faith?” Peter asked me as he stood by the door.

“All right?”

“Are you feeling convinced? Can we just kick all this nonsense of yours into touch? Because I’d just like our marriage to be…”

“What?”

“Well, normal.”

“I guess it
is
normal,” I said.

* * *

Work is a refuge these days, from my current marital distress. There’s something about staring at the satellite charts, with their masses of Turneresque cloud swirling above the blue planet, which makes me forget my concerns. And of course the cold snaps in the studio are pretty distracting. Sophie had a very bad morning. Gremlins in the autocue. Funny that, I thought. I mean, normally Sophie reads it very fluently and I’ve never ever seen her fluff. She makes it all look so natural, as though she’s ad libbing, not reading a script. But of course it’s not like that at all. Up in the Gallery, Lisa the autocue operator works the machine by hand, scrolling the script down at a pace to suit the presenter. If the presenter slows down—she slows down. If they pick up—she picks up. But this morning something went wrong.

“Welcome back…to…the show,” Sophie said awkwardly after the break. “And…now,” she went on at thirty-three rpm and I could suddenly see confusion in her face, “…a…report…on…sexual equality…in…the…boardroom…concludes…that ambitious…young…women…are…spearheading…Britain’s…drive…into…the twenty-first…century.”

It was agonising to watch. Once or twice she glanced down at her script, but it was clear that she’d lost her place. Then she looked up at the autocue again, but it was still crawling along the hard shoulder. It was like watching her being tortured, but she bravely battled on.

“Nearly four…in…ten…”

“What’s going on, Lisa?” I heard Darryl bark into my earpiece.

“Ooh, I don’t know,” she whined. “I just can’t get it to work.”

“Boardroom bosses…are now…female,” Sophie continued. “The…highest figure…since data was…” I heard her sigh “…collected. Women are also…”

“Oh, come on, Sophie!” interrupted Terry suddenly. “We haven’t got all day. Sorry folks,” he said into his autocue with a regretful smile, “but Sophie seems to have lost the gift of the gab. So we’ll skip that item and go straight to Tatiana’s report from the Old Vic. Yes, the lovely Tatiana’s been talking to Andrew Lloyd-Webber about his plans for this much-loved London landmark where Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud first trod the boards.”

“What’s going
on?”
I heard Sophie say into her microphone as Tatiana’s filmed report went out. “What happened to the autocue?”

“There were problems with it, apparently,” Darryl said.

“Well, it worked perfectly OK for Terry,” she pointed out. I could see that she was close to tears. “Lisa,” she said carefully as she swallowed hard, “kindly don’t do that again.”

“I didn’t ‘do’ anything,” I heard Lisa whine. To be honest, I’ve never liked that girl. “It just seemed to get, I don’t know…
stuck,
” she concluded feebly.

“Well, kindly
un
stick it for my next item,” Sophie said crisply. I didn’t blame her. There is nothing worse than broadcasting live to the nation with a dodgy autocue. I’ve done it once or twice and believe me, you look a total prat. Worse, people remember it for years. They say, “Oh! I saw you on breakfast TV.” And you think you’re about to get some lavish compliment, instead of which they say, “Yeah. Two years ago. It was really funny—the autocue broke down!” And you have to go, “Oh yes—that
was
funny. Oh, yes—ha ha ha!”

“You
poor
thing,” said Terry to Sophie with phony concern. “That must have been
awful
for you. So
humiliating
. And at
peak time
too. When
everyone’s
watching. Five
million
people. Oh
dear
—what a shame.” She pretended not to hear him as she looked down at her script.

“But that’s the thrills and spills of live TV for you,” Terry went on philosophically. “Don’t take this the wrong way, love, but I’m not sure you’ve got what it takes.”

At the meeting afterwards, Darryl was livid.

“Lisa, I think you should apologize to Sophie,” he said, crossing his arms.

“I’m very sorry, but I’m not going to apologize,” she whined. “It was a technical hitch.” She remained adamant that it wasn’t her fault. But as I was leaving I spotted Terry and Tatiana having breakfast in the canteen. They looked rather pleased with themselves. Then Lisa sat down with them too. And you don’t need to be a brain surgeon to guess what had happened, though I wonder what she’d been paid.

When I got home I took Graham for a walk along the river—he loves it there—then I checked out the IsHeCheating.com website again. I’d asked for advice, and I’d got it.

Emily, give your husband a break!
said Barbara from New York.
You don’t have ANY hard facts that he’s playing around so why go looking for trouble?

If you feel your man’s being evasive, then he IS,
said Sally from Wichita.

Why don’t you cheat on HIM?
suggested Mike from Alabama.
Just to even the score.

Sneak into his office and bug his phone!
advised someone else.

Call an attorney right now!

Go back home to your mom!

Just have the bastard trailed!

* * *

I was mulling over all these options tonight in the kitchen as I chopped up vegetables for supper. I wasn’t going to have an affair myself—that would be cheap and low; there was no way I could gain access to his office even if I had surveillance equipment; I couldn’t afford a lawyer, so that was out of the question, and I couldn’t go back to my mum because she was always away. As for having Peter followed, I’d decided I hadn’t the heart. Nor did I have the cash. I’d made a couple of calls and ascertained that it would cost at least two grand. I just didn’t know
what
to do.

“Mum, are you all right?” Katie enquired. She was cleaning out her goldfish, Sigmund.

“What?” I said.

“I said, are you all right?”

“Yes, of course I’m all right, darling,” I replied. “What on
earth
makes you think I’m not?”

“The gratuitously vicious way in which you’re chopping up those carrots.”

“Am I?” I said wonderingly, sword-sized Sabatier poised in mid-air.

“Yes. You remind me of Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
. In fact ever since Matt and I came home this evening, I’ve been picking up a lot of stress.” Oh God. I had that shrinking feeling. I knew what was coming next.

“I’ve been detecting a lot of tension,” Katie went on, “and a lot of suppressed anger. You’re feeling pretty hostile, aren’t you Mum?”

“I am
not
hostile!” I spat.

“Is there anything you want to tell me?” she continued calmly. “There you are, Siggy. Nice and clean.”

“Tell you?” I repeated wonderingly.

“What I really mean is, Mum, is there anything you need to talk through?”

“No thank you,” I said as I got down the salt.

“Because I’m getting a lot of anxiety here.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. Have you been having many negative thoughts?”

“Negative? No.”

“Are you in denial?”

“Certainly not!”

“Disturbing dreams?”

“Of course not. What a ridiculous suggestion. No.”

“You see, I’m worried about your super-ego,” she added matter-of-factly as she laid the kitchen table. “I think there are some repressed conflicts here, so we need to work through them to take some of the pressure off your subconscious. Now,” she said as she got out the spoons, “how about a little free association?”

“No thanks.”

“I think it would help your ego really open up.”

“My ego’s busy cooking supper, darling. Sorry.”

“Really Mum, there’s absolutely nothing to it.”

“I know,” I said as I strained the beans. “That’s precisely why I’m not keen.”

“All you have to do, Mum, is just sit down, close your eyes, and say whatever comes to mind.”

“Oh, Katie, please don’t turn me into one of your human guinea pigs,” I said irritably. “Can’t you do that at school?”

“No,” she said regretfully.

“Why not?”

“Because they’re all in therapy already. Honestly Mum, free association’s easy,” she persisted as I opened the oven and checked the shepherd’s pie. She took a notebook out of her pocket. “You just say whatever pops into your head, no matter how frivolous it might be.”

“Oh God…”

“No matter how trivial,” she went on reassuringly. “No matter how disgusting or depraved.”

“Katie!” I said crossly. “I object to being psychoanalyzed by someone who, until relatively recently, was playing with Barbie dolls!”

“Yes, but I was only ever interested in Barbies as a paradigm of US cultural imperialism. Please, Mum,” she said persuasively, “just for five minutes—that’s all.”

“Oh, all right,” I conceded. “I’m prepared to humor you. But let me assure you young lady, that I find all this psychobabble very silly.”

“That’s absolutely fine, Mum,” she said soothingly. “Go with your anger. Don’t hold back. Just let it out. Whatever you say is OK. Right,” she went on briskly. “Sit down. Close your eyes. That’s good. Relax. Breathe deeply. Let your mind wander. Now, what word springs into your mind?”

“Um…”

“No, don’t think about it, Mum. Just say it. Straight out. OK?
Go
.”

“Er, carrot.”

“Yes.”

“Chop…”

“Carry on.”

“Knife…sharp…er…stick…beat…time. Fifteen. Happy. Not. Over. Yet. Maybe. Wrigley. Wriggly. Lucky. Strike. Hit. Hurt. Wound. Heart. Flowers. Betrayal. Lying. Cheating. Philandering
bastard
. OK, that’s it!” I suddenly got to my feet. “I don’t want to play this game any more.”

“You’re exhibiting classic resistance, Mum,” said Katie benignly. “It’s quite natural, don’t worry, because it means we’re getting close to the source of the problem.”

“I don’t have any problems. Oh, hello Matt. You’re down.”

“What we saw
there,
” said Katie cheerfully as she snapped shut her notebook, “was your unconscious struggling to avoid giving up its dark secrets.”

“Look, Katie,” I said patiently as I wiped my brow. “I haven’t got any dark secrets, and all this Freudian mumbo-jumbo is simply
ridiculous
. Now, supper’s ready, so just do me a favor and go and kill your dad.”

* * *

Who is Jean? I keep on wondering. My rival. And what does she look like? Is she blond or dark? Tall or short? Is she younger than me? Is she prettier? Probably is. Is she slimmer? That wouldn’t be hard. Is she wittier, and brighter? How—and when—did they meet? Did she make a beeline for Peter, or did he chat her up? Does he imagine he’s in love with her, or is it just a physical thing? Oh God. Oh God. I’m torturing myself, but I just can’t stop. You see I found another note in his pocket about Jean this morning, and I was doubly upset about it because the weekend had gone quite well. We were perfectly “normal” together, as a family. We walked the dog. We got out a video— “Analyze This”—and the children enjoyed themselves. Matt was closeted in his room most of the time, as usual, although curiously he went out to the post box several times. But all in all, it went well. And I was just beginning to relax and to think that maybe I’d got it all wrong. After all, I still have not a shred of hard evidence that Peter’s up to no good, just these horrible, uneasy feelings which refuse to go away. But this morning, when I got back from work, I saw that he’d left his briefcase at home. So I opened it—it wasn’t locked—and I know you’ll all disapprove, but all I can say in my own defense is that it was something I just…
had
to do. I feel so tormented, you see. I’ve lost my peace of mind. My life’s in limbo until I’ve found out one way or the other for sure. So I opened it. And I’m glad I did, because there it was. Tucked into the pocket. A note from Peter’s secretary Iris, which said,
Peter, Jean called again—sounded rather anxious. Says you’re a very “naughty boy”, not to have called back, and “please, please, PLEASE to ring.”
A “naughty boy”? Good God! She was probably into S and M. And I felt really annoyed with Iris, who I’d always thought was nice, for helping my husband to pursue his sordid little
liaison dangereuse
. Then I looked at the manuscript he was working on and there was Jean’s name again. It appeared several times. Peter had doodled it in the margin as though he was quite obsessed.
Jean,
he’d written, and sometimes just a simple
J
. And the point is that if Jean was purely a professional contact, then Peter would happily have said. But the fact that he vehemently denied that he knew her makes me feel certain that he’s involved.