This Charming Man (29 page)

‘Fabulous women?’

‘… One of those white Africans, from
White Mischief,
even though I haven’t seen it. Who can fly a plane and ride and track animals.’

Amanda made another mark in the notebook. ‘Describe for me, please, your day-to-day life as one of these “fabulous women”.’

‘Aaah…’ For God’s sake, how could she do that? She hadn’t even seen the bloody film. ‘I… ah… I… never have to cook, wash or iron.’

Amanda looked disdainful. ‘That’s your ideal life. Come on, Marnie, unleash the dream! You have servants, yes?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Describe an encounter with one of them. Visualize it.’

‘Aaaah…’ This was ridiculous. ‘I march into the house. I’m wearing jodhpurs tucked into black leather riding boots… I fling myself onto a divan covered with a zebra-skin and say, “Bring me a huge gin and tonic, Mwaba.” ’ After a moment’s thought, she added, ‘ “Chop chop, Mwaba.” ’

‘Excellent. Go on.’

‘Oh. Well, he gets it for me and… and… I don’t thank him. I never thank anyone for anything. When I arrive at places, I fling the key of my LandRover at the first person I see and say, “Park it, yah.’”

This depressed Marnie. Thanking people was the least that one human being could do for another and she had refused to thank poor mythical Mwaba just to get Amanda’s approval.

‘What do you look like?’ Amanda asked.

‘God, I don’t know.’ This was so difficult. ‘Tall, I suppose. Thin. But I don’t care about my appearance.’ She liked the sound of that. ‘I never condition my hair or wear face-cream, and I make those sleeveless, khaki, long jacket things look good.’

‘But you’re beautiful?’

‘Oh why not?’

‘Are you married? In this ideal life of yours?’

A blank. ‘Yes. No. Yes. When I was twenty-one my first husband shot himself, then I divorced the second when I was twenty-seven.’ Suddenly ideas were firing in her head. Maybe she was finally starting to do this thing right. ‘I’m thirty-five now in my ideal life – I mean, I
am in my real life too, but I’m still talking about my ideal life – and in the process of divorcing my third husband. I’m having a torrid affair with a much younger man.’ A pause. ‘And a much older man.’ Why the hell not? ‘Not that much older, just a few years. Five. Seven. Yes, seven.’

Another mark in Amanda’s notebook. ‘Tell me more.’

‘The weather is always sweltering hot. I get the odd bout of malaria, but it’s just an excuse to drink more gin, because of the quinine in tonic. I say, “Can’t stomach the damn tonic undiluted. Would only sick it up.” My friends are called Bitsy and Monty and Fenella, and it’s the same people everywhere I go. Now and again I fly my own plane to Jo’burg but I’m soon itching to get back to the bush.’ She was on a roll now, finally in the zone. ‘In the bush, we drink our heads off and dinner isn’t ready until eleven at night, at which point everyone is too drunk to eat. We’re not interested in food, but we’re terrified of running out of gin. We watch the skies, wondering when the supply plane will be in with more gin.’

Amanda had stopped making notes. She simply sat and listened.

‘My husband slurs things like, “My beautiful wife.” He’s trying to be ironic, but he’s so obviously in love with me that he simply seems pathetic. I say, “Shut up, Johnny, you’re drunk.” He used to be handsome but now he’s puffy and jowly from the drink. ‘Cold as ice,” he slurs. “Cold as fucking ice.” No one, except my younger man, can keep up with my drinking.’ Marnie took another breath to continue, she was enjoying herself now – and just as quickly she wasn’t.

Amanda was looking at her with a strange expression, part concern, part something else. Contempt perhaps?

‘Well!’ Amanda sat up straight and said, with a pretence at cheer, ‘That’s a tall order, Marnie. Let’s work with what we have. Have you ever lived on the continent of Africa?’

‘… No.’

‘Can you fly a plane?’

‘… No.’

‘Or shoot a gun?’

‘… No.’ Marnie was whispering now. ‘But I do own a sleeveless khaki jacket.’ From her short-lived riding lessons. ‘And I’ve got a four-wheel drive.’

‘A four-wheel drive? I bet you do.’ Amanda stared down at her notebook and Marnie realized the look was going on for too long.

Eventually Amanda raised her head and said, ‘I can’t help you.’

Marnie froze. Shock muted her.

She thinks I’m just a spoilt, bored housewife
.’

I’m not a housewife. I have a job
. But the words remained unsaid.

‘I could take your money, but that wouldn’t be ethical. I won’t charge you for today’s session.’

Marnie’s face was hot.

I don’t want to live in Africa. I don’t want to be rude to people. I only said it to please you
.

Her head dipped, Marnie was gathering her bag and putting on her jacket, stunned by whatever had taken place. Could it be that Amanda Cook had judged her by her house in Wandsworth and her – false – soul-destroying aspirations? Could it be that Amanda Cook had simply decided that she didn’t like her?

Nothing, nothing, I will feel nothing
.

Marnie nodded goodbye to Amanda who was still sitting imperiously in her chair, then she was leaving the room and stopping herself from running down the stairs in case her shaking legs sent her tumbling to the bottom.

As she re-entered the outside world, the cold night air slapping her flaming cheeks, she realized that she hadn’t noticed any framed diplomas on the walls. Was it possible that Amanda Cook didn’t have any professional qualifications? But instead of making her feel better – at least it hadn’t been a real therapist who had judged her and found her so lacking – it made her feel worse. She had surrendered herself and her mental health to a woman who was perhaps one of the very fly-by-night operators that she had warned Marnie against.

What kind of idiot was she? How could she think so little of herself that she couldn’t even check that someone had the right credentials?

Somewhere inside her was a world of shame, but walking fast kept it contained. Listening to the click-click-click of her heels on the pavement was comforting. It meant her legs were moving, even though her knees were watery.

∗

Nick was waiting in the hall. He was very obviously agitated.

She wasn’t late. She’d done nothing wrong. It had to be the…

‘… Bonus?’ she mouthed.

The look on his face told her everything. It was finally official: no bonus again this year.

Fuuuuuck
.

The kids had picked up on the atmosphere of catastrophe and had slunk off to the playroom.

‘Bad year in the markets,’ he apologized.

‘No one’s blaming you.’

He was devastated; earning money was how he validated himself.

‘We’ll sort something out,’ she said.

Later, when she’d put the girls to bed, she found Nick in his office, surrounded by lever-arch files of bank statements and credit card bills.

‘Where the fuck does it all go?’ he asked helplessly. ‘Everything costs so much.’

Their mortgage, most of all. They’d bought the five-bedroomed house three years ago, just before Nick stopped having the Midas touch. Nick had insisted on buying such a big house. He’d said it was what she deserved. She had liked where they’d been living, but because he’d been so insistent, she went along with it. And she’d believed him when he assured her that they could afford it. Then interest rates had crept up a couple of points, which wouldn’t have impacted too much on a normal-sized mortgage, but on a massive one like theirs…

‘Let’s write down everything we spend money on and see what can go,’ she suggested. ‘School fees,’ she started with. ‘We could move the girls to a cheaper school.’

‘No.’ He groaned, like he was actually in pain. He was so proud that his children were in a private school. ‘They need stability and Verity wouldn’t survive in a state school.’ Their current school had small classes with individual attention. ‘She’d be bullied to death. What about Melodie? Could we manage without her?’

Melodie was their nanny, a capable Kiwi who had about twenty other jobs on the go.

‘She’s working the bare minimum as it is.’ Marnie got the girls to school and Melodie worked from 2.30 to 6.15. ‘If she goes, I can’t work.’

‘Could you go part-time? Just work mornings?’

‘No.’ She had already asked Guy about it. ‘It’s a full-time position.’

Nick scribbled some calculations to see if Marnie’s salary was more than Melodie’s wages and decided that it was, barely.

‘Mrs Stevenson?’ he asked. Their cleaning woman.

‘I’m a full-time working mother. She’s absolutely fantastic. And she costs fifty quid a week.’

‘All right, okay,’ he grumbled. He tapped his pen nib against his notebook. ‘But something has to give somewhere.’ He swept a look over her. ‘You spend a fortune on your hair.’

Mutely, she stared at him. She needed her hair even more than she needed Mrs Stevenson. The expensive cut she was prepared to forgo, but not the colour. A picture of herself with two inches of grey roots flashed in her head. She could never leave the house again. It was proving a big enough challenge at the moment, even with perfect highlights.

‘And all those… healing things you do. Meditation and acupuncture and… what’s that thing you were at tonight? Cognitive something?’

‘Counselling. But I won’t be going back. And I don’t do any of the others any longer.’ Because none of them worked. ‘How about your gym membership?’ she suggested. ‘Perhaps you could jog around the common instead?’

Aggrieved, he said, ‘I
need
to go to the gym. I’m up to my eyeballs in stress. Anyway I’ve paid for the rest of the year.’

‘Okay.’ She braced herself to address a truly painful subject. ‘Your car…’

‘My…? Are you barking? If I show up for work in a Ford Fiesta, it’s the same as having “Loser” stamped on my forehead. I need the Jag to keep the respect.’

‘I’m not suggesting a Ford Fiesta. But…’

‘What about yours? A Porsche? Why don’t
you
get a Ford Fiesta?’

‘Fine. I don’t care.’ The Porsche SUV was too big, guzzled an appalling quantity of petrol and was far too much of a yummy-mummy cliché.

But that seemed to make Nick angrier. She
should
care.

‘Holidays,’ she said. ‘We spend lots on them.’

‘But we need a holiday. It’s the one thing we really need.’

‘We don’t
need
any of it.’

He’d got used to dropping a grand on a suit; buying three of them in one go. She’d got used to it too. Handing over seven hundred pounds for a handbag – merely something to carry her stuff in – when she could just as easily pick up a bag in Next for thirty quid.

But Nick had celebrated her extravagance: if his wife could afford to spend a hundred and fifty pounds on a haircut, it signified that he was a success.

It was humiliating for him to ask for constraints on their lifestyle.

‘At least we have each other,’ he said. ‘We’ll get through this.’

It was such a dishonest statement that she couldn’t reply. He opened his mouth to press his point home, then abandoned the plan.

Sitting among the files which detailed their extravagant attempts to spend their way to happiness, he looked entirely beaten; the intensity of her sorrow left her breathless.

‘I’m sorry, Nick,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

‘I want to be a trophy wife.’

It was Marnie’s sixteenth birthday – Grace’s also, of course – and the conversation over the celebratory dinner had meandered into considering what their futures held.

Grace had declared her ambition to be a journalist; Leechy, who was always present on family occasions, had said she wanted to work in a ‘caring profession.’

‘As a nurse, maybe,’ she’d said.

‘A doctor,’ Ma had said quickly. ‘Forget about being a nurse in this country. You get paid a pittance and have to work all the hours.’

Then they’d all looked at her. Marnie, what do you want to be when you grow up?

She’d had no idea. She already felt grown-up – in some ways utterly jaded – and had no particular enthusiasm for anything. The one thing she was sure of was that she’d like to have children, but round here that wouldn’t count as a career.

‘Come on, Marnie, what do you want to be when you grow up?’

‘Happy.’

‘But what job do you want?’ Bid had asked.

Embarrassed at once again being out of step with everyone else, she’d
considered saying that she’d like to be an air hostess, then realized that aspiring to be a trophy wife would upset them even more. Not that she had any chance of being a trophy wife; she wasn’t tall enough. It was like being a policewoman or a catwalk model, there was a minimum height requirement.

‘A wife!’ Ma was scandalized. ‘Marnie Gildee, I brought you up to think differently.’

‘Not just any wife,’ Marnie said flippantly. ‘A full-on trophy job.’

She’d said it to shock because she’d been so uncomfortable with Grace and Leechy’s certainty. ‘You got married,’ she accused Ma. ‘You’re a wife.’

‘But it wasn’t my sole ambition.’ Ma had worked in the trade union movement all her life. It was where she’d met her husband.

‘You’re not even blonde,’ Bid turned on Marnie with sudden venom. ‘Trophy wives are always blonde.’

‘I can be blonde if I really need to be.’

Mind you, she wasn’t entirely sure that was true. She’d tried bleaching a handful of her hair and it had gone green. But she wasn’t backing down.

‘What’s the point in me having career plans?’ Marnie asked. ‘I’m hopeless at everything.’

‘You? You’re so gifted.’ Ma’s voice rose. ‘You could do anything you wanted. You’re far brighter than Grace and Leechy – sorry, girls, just calling a spade a spade. It’s a crime to squander such gifts.’

‘Me?’ Now Marnie was almost angry. ‘Who are you confusing me with?’

She and Ma glared at each other, then Ma looked away; she didn’t believe in mothers and teenage daughters being at loggerheads, she said it was a myth put about by soap operas.

‘Confidence,’ Ma said. ‘That’s all you lack, confidence.’

‘I’m hopeless at everything,’ Marnie repeated firmly.

And she proved herself right.