Tempting Fate (9 page)

Going to stay with Jill, Elliott’s sister in Manhattan, is a far safer proposition.

Being on her own, given Gabby’s recent obsession, may, on the other hand, turn out to be the most dangerous proposition of all.

There is no response from Matt by bedtime, leaving Gabby in a haze of anger and insecurity. She is tempted to email, asking if she did something wrong, but manages to resist, telling herself not to act like a crazy woman, telling herself she is married and has to let this obsession go, telling herself to grow up and move on.

‘Are you okay?’ Elliott has been standing in the doorway, watching her.

‘Fine. Why?’

‘You keep putting the Kindle down and frowning. It looks like you’re either very worried or very angry about something.’

Gabby puts the Kindle down and holds her arms out for Elliott. ‘I’m sorry, sweetie. I guess I was just thinking about Olivia, and the teenage stuff. I’ve always felt that we’ve managed pretty well, but I really didn’t like the way she spoke to me tonight. I’ve noticed this a few times recently. I was thinking about whether we’re in for a rocky ride.’

Gabby hugs Elliott, knowing how he loves being in her arms. She is aware she hasn’t been as affectionate of late, has been distracted, and she can feel him relax, happy to have her back.

‘She just misinterpreted and she was angry,’ he says. ‘I understand. Perhaps she was rude, but she was scared. All in all, Olivia’s a great kid, and I think we’ve got off pretty unscathed. If she has a few moments of rudeness we’re still doing pretty damn well. Compare her to Jolie, Gabs. Look at what we could be dealing with.’

Claire’s daughter, Jolie, once one of Olivia’s best friends, has gravitated towards the fast crowd in school. Once one of the brightest, she is now far more interested in drinking and partying. Her clothes have gone from classic cute prepster – J.Crew, Sperry’s and cashmere cardigans, to juvenile hooker – micro skirts, five-inch platform heels and tight shirts to show off the cleavage pushed up by her Victoria’s Secret leopard-print bra.

Over the last two years Jolie has become surly and truculent, screaming at her parents for no apparent reason. Claire, often despairing, has confessed she hopes to God this baby she’s carrying is a boy because she never wants another one like Jolie.

Gabby sighs. ‘You’re right, you’re right. I know you’re right. It just … worries me when she acts like that.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Elliott smiles at his wife and traces the frown lines on her forehead. ‘It ages you and I can’t have my hot wife looking old.’

‘There’s always Botox,’ Gabby says, half joking. For years she has denigrated the many women she knows who suddenly appear looking, not younger, exactly, but … smoother. There is something almost indefinably different about them, and it took her and Claire a while before they figured it out. Botox smoothes the women’s foreheads, in many cases unnaturally arching their eyebrows and giving them a look of permanent surprise; cheekbones miraculously grow into Marlene
Dietrich-style high apples; their skin is strangely taut and shiny, thanks to chemical peels.

Claire is desperate for Botox, but has a fear of needles and will never do it, and Gabby has never wanted any of it, until very recently, when she started to think it might be rather wonderful if she was able to look younger. Why not erase the frown lines, eradicate the crow’s feet? Would her lips not look better if slightly plumped? Wouldn’t her face look more radiant if some filler were added to raise her cheekbones to where they would have been had the good Lord been generous enough to actually grace her with high ones in the first place?

But Elliott will not allow it. The very idea of injecting anything unnatural for the sake of vanity is anathema to him. The side effects are unknown, he said. Wait ten years and we will find out terrible things, he warned.

The lure is getting stronger. Gabby stands in the bathroom sometimes, staring at her face in the mirror, her fingers pulling her skin ever so slightly tighter, pouting to see what her lips would look like bigger.

‘You’re not having Botox,’ Elliott says, moving to his side of the bed and reaching for the remote control to turn on the television.

At 4.23 a.m. Gabby is wide awake, and has been for two hours. As soon as she woke up, and as she so often does these days, she grabbed her iPhone, now kept charging
next to the bed, to see if Matt had responded. Her heart leaped with exhilaration when she saw he had.

Do you know the song about a girl called Gabrielle, a girl who is very dangerous … ? Shades Apart? You ought to listen to it … I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch – things have been a little crazy again over here. I had a wonderful time with you the other night. You are just as beautiful, bright, clever and special as I remember. Actually, more so. And that ‘friendly’ kiss goodbye? What can I say? WOW. Your husband is a lucky guy and I’m jealous as hell. I’m flying off to Cincinnati this week and have a ton of meetings so I may not have the chance to email. What do you have going on this week? I’m hoping to be back in about a month – cannot wait to see you again. xxxx

Gabby takes her iPhone into the bathroom, shuts the door and rereads the email. What does it mean? He can’t wait to see her again, and yet the earlier part, the mention of her husband, seems so light, as if he doesn’t really care, as if he’s already written her off, already realized she is truly out of bounds.

But she is, as she keeps reminding herself, out of bounds. She is happily married, with no idea why she has this desperate need to keep this young man interested, other than to inflate her ego, which is both sad and shameful.

Aware of all of this, Gabby still can’t help the soaring of her heart when his emails come in, nor the
ensuing obsessive picking apart of every paragraph, every word as she looks for meaning between the lines.

Going straight to iTunes she downloads the Shades Apart song, playing it over and over in her bathroom, searching the lyrics for hidden messages, hoping Matt has deliberately picked this song because it will tell her how he truly feels about her. She listens, and she smiles.

Finally she knows she’ll sleep well, but first she’ll reply.

My friend – Cincinnati sounds … Midwestern. I’ve never been. That’s how you can tell how very English I am. I’ve lived in Connecticut for years, but other than California, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine I’m a disaster – couldn’t tell you anything about the rest of the country. Oh. Missed Arizona. We once had a wedding in Tucson. My husband’s off to New Mexico for a conference the weekend of the twenty-third. I was thinking of going too, but the girls are away that weekend, and the prospect of a weekend alone, in my own house, is just too tempting. Wouldn’t it be fun if your schedule coincided with that weekend – think of the Martinis we could drink! The fun we would have! Hope you travel safely, and don’t worry about being out of touch – I have a busy week too. xxx

It is a test. Of course it is a test. She hits send with a smile on her face, a clutch of anticipation around her heart. Will he rise to meet the challenge, and, if so, what does that mean?

Gabby glides back to bed, plugs her iPhone into the charger again, then lies down, eyes closed, thinking about the weekend she’ll be alone, fantasizing about Matt coming here.

Would she have him over to the house? No. That would be far too inappropriate. Would she sleep with him? No! Absolutely not. She just wants the flirtation to continue a little longer, wants to continue to feel the high she gets from being appreciated, desired, by someone other than her husband.

On the night she sees Matt she’d wear something devastatingly fabulous, and she would undoubtedly have lost ten pounds by the twenty-third.

Maybe she’d even get Botox. She’d never tell Elliott, but she would explain to him that her visit to the dermatologist is because she’s having moles removed.

If Matt comes on the weekend she’s on her own, Botox it is.

‘I can’t believe you’re actually doing this,’ Claire says, turning to study Gabby’s face as she drives. ‘And behind Elliott’s back! How are you going to explain it?’

‘Moles and skin tags removed.’

‘No! I mean, how are you going to explain your sudden lack of lines?’ Claire bursts out laughing.

Gabby looks at Claire in disbelief. ‘Do you know my husband? Hello? He’s a man. They never notice things like that.’

‘True,’ Claire says. ‘Trish said the first time she got Botox her husband – she was still married at the time – just kept saying how beautiful she was. He had no idea. He thought she’d simply woken up one day looking years younger.’

‘She
would
have Botox,’ mutters Gabby. ‘I knew she wasn’t that beautiful naturally.’

‘Stop being jealous. She is that beautiful naturally. Botox just erases the lines; it doesn’t change your features. God, I’m jealous, though. I can’t even dye my hair while I’m pregnant. Will you look at this?’ She dips her head down to show the grey.

‘I can’t see,’ Gabby says. ‘I’m driving.’

‘You know I won’t be able to come in and actually
watch while they put the needles in, right? Even the thought of it makes me feel woozy and nauseous. But I cannot wait to see. You know it doesn’t have an immediate effect, don’t you? It takes a few days.’

‘I know. But you have to swear not to tell anyone, ever, that I did this.’

‘I swear. I only told Trish …’

‘What!’

‘Kidding. This stays between you and me. It’s only Botox. It’s not like you’re getting a facelift, although I suppose these days Botox is the equivalent of a facial. Really, it’s no big deal. If I didn’t have my needle phobia I’d be on that Botox wagon quicker than you could say “frown”.’

The dermatologist, her long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail to frame her exquisite face, steps back to gaze at Gabby. ‘Have you ever thought about a little filler?’

‘Not really,’ Gabby says dumbly.

‘You could have Restylane or Perlane. Just here in the cheekbones. Look –’ she hands Gabby a small mirror, gesturing for Gabby to look at her face – ‘you see these lines from your nose to your lips? As we age our faces drop, but if we added just a tiny bit of filler here,’ she touches Gabby’s cheekbones, ‘it would not only add back the volume you’ve lost, but it would pull your face up and erase those lines. See?’

Gabby’s eyes widen with pleasure as her face is pulled up and the lines disappear.

‘I wouldn’t do too much,’ the clinician reassures her.

‘You mustn’t do too much,’ Gabby says. ‘I can’t stand seeing those women with apple-like cheekbones.’

‘Absolutely. You just need a touch to restore volume. I do it on myself and do my cheekbones look bad?’ She turns her head slowly from side to side, knowing how beautiful she is, how perfect her cheekbones are. ‘I’m forty-seven but these treatments have helped me stay young.’

Gabby gasps in awe. ‘Forty-seven! No! What else do you do?’ she asks, wanting to look exactly like her.

‘Sculptra,’ the clinician says matter-of-factly. ‘You’d be wonderful for Sculptra, and you’d love it. Everyone I do it for loves it. You do it twice, all over the face, and it stimulates your body to start producing collagen again, so you immediately start looking younger. Even better, the effects are cumulative and last a couple of years. The more time that passes, the better you look. You’d look fantastic with Sculptra. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.’

‘I want it,’ Gabby bursts out, feeling entirely unlike herself. ‘When could you do it?’

The dermatologist laughs. ‘We’ll do it all right now. And the Perlane too?’

‘Yes!’ Gabby finds herself saying. ‘All of it!’

‘What took you so long?’ Claire grumbles, throwing down a three-month-old copy of
Better Homes and Gardens
, as Gabby finally appears in the waiting room, a series of small red bumps on her forehead.

‘Ouch!’ Claire winces. ‘Did it hurt? Was it awful?’ She squints. ‘You did something to your cheekbones! Oh my God! What’s the matter with your mouth?’

‘It’s numb. I had some other stuff and they gave me a local anaesthetic. Do I look freaky?’

‘What other stuff? Yes, you look freaky. What did you do?’

‘Let’s get out of here. I’ve just handed over a shocking amount of money. I need to recover and figure out a new story. There’s no way in hell Elliott’s going to believe I had a few moles removed for that price. It’s at least a leg. Maybe both. Jesus, Claire. What the hell was I thinking?’

‘I don’t know. What were you thinking?’

‘I wasn’t. I just got completely carried away when I saw the dermatologist. Have you seen her? She’s forty-seven! The woman looks thirty. I asked her for everything she has.’

They are in the car park when Claire starts laughing uncontrollably, crossing her legs as she holds onto the boot of a car for support. ‘Oh no,’ she weeps. ‘Don’t make me laugh. I’ll have an accident.’

‘I wasn’t making you laugh. I’m telling you what happened.’

‘I know.’ Claire calms down enough to stand up
straight, wiping her eyes. ‘I think you’re having a mid-life crisis.’

Gabby doesn’t say anything until they are in the car and driving, but Claire’s words keep reverberating through her head. Is that really what is happening? There is no question that she feels as if her days as an attractive woman are numbered, but does that explain all that she has been going through? Is it really something as predictable as that?

‘Do you think women
have
mid-life crises?’ she asks, as they approach traffic lights. ‘And does this mean I’ll be going out and buying a red sports car and chatting up twenty-year-old hunks?’ She tries to sound flippant, but thoughts of Matt fill her head – his impending trip back to Connecticut, the way he smiles at her, the way his eyes darken when he looks at her – making her heart, even now, skip a beat.

Claire raises an eyebrow. ‘You were chatting up a rather gorgeous young man at the bar that time we went out,’ she says.

‘I wasn’t chatting him up.’ Gabby is indignant. ‘He was chatting
me
up.’

‘Are you still emailing him?’

Gabby, unable to keep it to herself, desperate to talk about him to someone, if only to say that he is a new friend, had confided in Claire a few days after Matt sent the first email.

‘Sporadically,’ she lies. ‘I actually saw him last week. He was in town and we had a drink.’

‘No!’ Claire’s eyes are wide. ‘Gabby! You’re so bad!’ She peers at her friend. ‘Just a drink, right? Tell me nothing happened.’ Her face becomes stern.

‘God, no!’ Gabby says. ‘Just a drink. He was flirting, though.’

‘And how about you? Were you flirting back?’

‘Maybe just a tiny bit. But I wouldn’t do anything. I’m married, and I love Elliott. There’s absolutely no way in hell I would ever have an affair, nor do anything to jeopardize my marriage.’

‘Did you tell Elliott you were having a drink with a guy you met in a bar?’

Gabby shifts uncomfortably in her seat. ‘Sort of. I told him I was meeting a guy. I didn’t tell him how we met initially.’

Claire shakes her head. ‘Oh, Gabby. You know this is how these things always start, right?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘No one thinks they’re going to have an affair. Everyone starts by thinking it’s just a fun flirtation, or a new friendship, that they’ll never let anything happen. So they pretend to be friends, even though the only thing these two people have in common is a mutual lust, which eventually has to ignite. It’s one of the laws of the universe. They have an affair, and mitigate it by deciding that it isn’t just an affair, that this is their soulmate. They aren’t supposed to be married to the lovely, stable lawyer in boring old Connecticut; instead they are meant to be living with the dangerous, unstable, inappropriately young surfer in
San Diego, or wherever it is the interloper happens to be from. They blow up their marriages, leaving devastation in their wake, to run off with said surfer, only for them both to discover, several weeks, months, but no more than a year down the line, that in fact they have nothing in common other than that lust, which has now, shock horror, completely disappeared.’

‘Claire, I –’

‘Then they realize what a terrible mistake they’ve made, which is when they go back to their husband, tail between their legs, begging to be allowed to come back, telling them how sorry they are, what a terrible error of judgement they made. The husbands have invariably moved on, and these women spend the rest of their lives beating off sad, middle-aged, professional singles at the handful of bars around town. It happened to Alison and Denise. Oh, and Cathy. Same story. There. That’s my cautionary tale for you. I shall say no more about it.’

‘You’re so convinced. You don’t really know what happens behind closed doors.’

Claire shrugs. ‘It happened to my sister. Who’s now in a crappy walk-up apartment in Pelham Manor, taking any job she can find and bitterly regretting leaving her rather wonderful husband for her metal teacher. The thing with Rodrigo lasted six months. Her husband has now remarried and had a baby, and the new wife, ten years younger, is living the life my sister should be living – in the Upper East Side apartment with doorman, nanny
and housekeeper. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.’

Gabby laughs nervously. ‘That is so not going to happen to me.’

‘So stop the emailing,’ Claire says. ‘How would you feel if Elliott was emailing a younger, gorgeous woman? If he insisted they were just good friends it wouldn’t make you feel any better, would it?’

Gabby shakes her head. This has occurred to her. Particularly the last email referencing their ‘friendly’ kiss. It wouldn’t do for Elliott to read that. Not at all. But there’s no way Matt is her soulmate. So this would never follow the trajectory taken by Claire’s sister. How ridiculous.

Although … she has indulged in the odd fantasy of what it would be like to live in Malibu, to be Matt’s … partner. Not at the expense of leaving Elliott, though. Her fantasy is more of a daydream about a life entirely different to her current one.

Sober, reasonable Gabby knows these are only fun fantasies, that she is not seriously thinking she and Matt may be an item. Sober, reasonable Gabby recognizes she is obsessed in an unnatural and unhealthy way, and that it can’t go on much longer.

Sober, reasonable Gabby is hoping that, perhaps, after the twenty-third, she’ll be able to let go of it entirely.