Separate Lives (16 page)

BOOK: Separate Lives

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It took only moments to touch the phone icon, and then the voicemail icon, and see the list of the last few voice messages left on Alex's phone on the day he lost it, which included two “Unknown”s, one from “Guy” andÂ .Â .Â . yup,
there it was: one message from “Soos.” I took a deep breath. I tapped “Soos” and listened. And then I marveled at how little time it had takenâmaybe less than twenty secondsâfor Alex's phone to reveal its secrets.

Hi, it's me. Hope all's OK with the GermansÂ .Â .Â . Look, I'm probably going to be a bit late home tonight, but maybe you'll be even later? Anyway, um, Ruby's covering for me and I should be back by about 7:30, after this bloody meeting the guide publishers have just shoe-horned into an arsing Friday evening. Call me if you pick this up before say, 4:30? Otherwise I'll see you laterÂ .Â .Â . and I'll probably grab fish and chips so let me know if you want some too, otherwise I'll assume the Germans have force-fed you bratwurst and cabbage down the bier-keller and therefore you're fine. ByeeeÂ .Â .Â .

Just the one message from “Soos,” then. The kind of ordinary message left by thousands of people every day on their partner's phones. Nothing sinister about it, just domestic trivia. Or then again, maybe not. Because in no way could Susie's message to Alex be construed as a date-night invitationâmore like a date-night obfuscation. I had “evidence,” sureÂ .Â .Â . but I had no real evidence of anything concrete. And then just thinking about my oh-so-casual use of the word “evidence” gave me an involuntary shiver. “Evidence” hinted at a scene of crime, called to mind
Silent Witness
and forensics sorts in paper suits moving around dead bodies, wielding dusty brushes. And whose crime scene was this, anyway? It was starting to feel like mine.

I was also disarmed by the fact that listening to Susie's message on Alex's phone and therefore hearing what I wanted to hearâwhat I'd believed I would hearâwas so intensely disappointing. I now knew what I'd needed to
know and yet of course I still “knew” nothing. I didn't know the truth. And why had I even needed to know? What did I seriously think I could achieve by finding Alex's phone, which only that morning had seemed so unlikely?

And of course even when I had my hunch confirmed, it didn't change anything. What was I expecting to do with information that had, quite literally, fallen into my hands? Was I going to call Alex and say, “Look, don't ask me how or why, but I have your old phone. And I can tell you that Susie did not leave the message she claimed she'd left, but a different message, saying she'd be late home.”

And did that message even mean that Susie was having an affair? Not in and of itselfâof course not. And even though I
did
think she was having an affair, maybe that just said more about me than it did about that simple, funny, garbled message from a woman to her long-term partner?

The fact is, I didn't feel remotely clever or enlightened; I felt like a fool. In the space of one day I had somehow gone from being merely a woman spurned to, at worst a petty criminal, at best a sneak. And either way, undeniably also a thief. Somehow I was now a woman reduced to stalking other people's lives in order to fill the yawning chasms in her own. That would be the therapist's version, I guess; the version of my “truth” that would probably help me not to hate myself too muchâif only I ever dared share it in therapy. ExceptÂ .Â .Â . I don't do therapy.

But though I felt completely grubby, even inside my crisp, clean, high-thread-count Frette sheets, I could also see a way out of this, a way I could potentially absolve myself of responsibility for what now very clearly looked to be a kind of momentary madness, albeit a form of madness born out of loneliness.

There, I said it, Mum. Because only properly lonely people with time on their hands and no sense of perspective do the kind of things I had just done. Who the hell was I to interfere in Alex and Susie's domestic life? I could maybe blame Gary the gay financier, I could conceivably blame you, and Dad. I could even blame Alex for flirting with me over a bowl of chili at Lisa and Guy'sâif indeed he had, and even that was open to debate. But mostly I had only myself to blame. Never had that old clichÃ© about being “careful what you wish for” felt more apposite.

That night, I slept the sleep of the restless dead and woke up feeling and looking zombie-ish. Downstairs, Hal was already making himself sweet porridge. A bowl of sugar-loaded carbs looked very attractive.

“Enough for me?” I asked my son, aware a subtle reversal of roles might be underway. He looked pleased.

“Yeah, I made loads. Have some.”

So we ate a convivial, silent breakfast together, me and my handsome five-foot-eight son; three-quarters boy, one-quarter man, with his inky hands and messy cowlick, just like his dad's.

“Busy day today?” I asked him, the way I'd probably ask a grown-up Man of the House, if there were one to ask.

“Yeah, y'know. I'm taking my guitar 'cos I'm going round to Dom's after, for like band practice?”

“Band practice? I didn't know you were in a band!”

“We just started it.” He shrugged.

“That's very cool. So, who's in the band? What are you called? What do you play?”

“Dom sings, me on guitar, Charlie G on bass, even though he's a bit crap, and Dom's brotherây'know Jules?âon drums. He's good, Jules. He's better than all of us.”

“Well, yes he would be. He's sixteen. So what are you called?”

“It keeps changing. Yesterday it was still Expelliarmus, but Jules says that's lame. He wants to change it to Expelled.” Hal shrugged. “I don't really care about the name, to be honest; I just like playing.”

“And the music?”

“Oh, really old musicâNirvana, sick stuff like that, but Dom's rewritten the lyrics to âSmells Like Teen Spirit.' He says they don't make sense.”

“Well yes, rock lyrics often don't. That's probably the point.”

“Yeah. So that's OK tonight, Mum? Band practice?”

“You bet. I'm all for band practice. Lock yourselves in a garage, turn the amps up to eleven and make your eyeballs bleed, then write an anthem and become a rock god. I mean, what's not to like? But maybe we should have a conversation about the groupies and drugs? And you'd better be home by eight. It's bed by nine on a school night, even for a rock god.”

“Shut up, Mum!”

But he still looked pleased. And I was pleased that he was pleased. I was, indeed, all for “band practice,” even for a boy who was still a fortnight shy of thirteen. So the day got off to a better start than I'd expected and the rest of it was spent doing something so predictable, so feminine and so entirely in-character that within moments of setting foot in Selfridges, where I was intent on serious, focused self-gifting, I felt instantaneously better. And as the week progressed, day by day I reclaimed a little bit more of myself, sloughed off Monday's weirdo Pippa, a woman who slept with other women's partners, “stole” their phones, hacked into them and listened to messages she shouldn't. What kind of madness was
that
? And now Alex's phone was stashed away in
the back of my wardrobe. A trophy from my crime scene. Gone from sight but far from forgotten.

By the following weekend my memories of the previous one had almost completely faded into a dreamy blur. It's a weird thing, sex. I mean of course it's weird, but the strangest thing about it is its transience. I've always been struck by the fact that youâwell, Iâcan have proper mind-bending, chandelier-swinging sex and while you're having it the focus is so intense and consuming that everything else in the world is completely blotted out. You forget you're a mother (maybe it's essential that you do?), forget that you have friends and a life or a job and a million thoughts that would normally consume you. And then later, when it's passed, the memory of the person you had the sex with may remain strong and powerful but trying to recall the sex itself is almost impossible.

Maybe it isn't like that for everyone but it's always been like that for me. Maybe that's a good thing, if also a bit sad? Perhaps that's also what keeps people sane because that kind of sex is just too “trippy” to assimilate into real life; before you know it you'll be leaving each other messages about whose turn it is to get the fish and chips and which one of you needs to be home in time to relieve the nanny.

So anyway, by the weekend I had convinced myself it was better this way, even though I'd still bought the pair of fuck-me slingbacks I'd seen in the
Sunday Times
. I do believe there are old habits you really can change, but I think most of them die pretty hard.

I miss you so much, Mum.

Pippa xxx

CHAPTER 6
Alex

Friday NovemberÂ 27, 2009

Separate Lives (16 page)

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