What She Wants (6 page)

Long fingers twirling the stem of his wine glass, Matt watched Hope doing her best to be charming to boring Peter Scott. She was great at that sort of thing, he thought fondly. You could always rely on Hope to do the polite, decent thing no matter what. Nobody else in their right mind would let Peter start off on his ‘my thesis’ saga but Hope was too

kind to stop him. That was her problem: she was too kind. She let people walk all over her. He didn’t know why she’d worn that clingy dress. Tight stuff didn’t suit her. His wife had an other-worldly air that made her look nice in flowy stuff, long dresses, that type of thing. Not like Jasmine. You had to hand it to Adam, he knew how to pick them. There wasn’t a man here who hadn’t thought for one brief, erotic moment of what the new Mrs Judd would look like without that sparkly dress. Probably cost more than all the dresses in Hope’s wardrobe put together. Anyway, Hope would never wear such a thing. That dress was a statement: Look at me, it said. That wasn’t Hope’s scene at all. She was much more of a background person, happy to be out of the spotlight. It was a pity she didn’t realize how gorgeous she was. He was always telling her but she just didn’t get it. He’d seen scores of men eyeing her up over the years and Hope never, ever noticed them. When people looked at her, she checked to see if she had her skirt tucked up into her knickers or had gone out in her slippers. ‘Great night, isn’t it?’ Dan said, leaning over and touching Matt on the shoulder. ‘Yeah, fantastic night,’ Matt said automatically. It was a great night. He had his colleagues here, cheering him for his birthday, and his boss who’d just brought him into the boardroom that day to say he was giving Matt a raise. Two lovely kids, a nice wife … everything a man could want. Only he wanted more. Matt stared into the middle distance and thought about how his perfect, wonderful life was choking him. He’d had a crazy and impulsive idea about how to fix it, well, how to fix some of it, but how did he break it to Hope? He didn’t know where to start. Confiding in Jasmine had helped a bit. She’d promised to put a good word in for him with Adam if he ever actually made the break. Telling Adam would be a doddle compared to telling Hope.

By the time people were staring happily into their liqueurs, Hope had finally managed to move seats and was now between Jasmine and Dan. Jasmine was very nice, Hope decided, convinced now that there was nothing between her and Matt. She could see how other women would feel threatened by her: that amazing figure, tiny waist and gravity-defying boobs, not to mention a sweet face with huge blue eyes. But she was funny, unaffected and not at all the predatory bimbo that Betsey had initially dubbed her. Well, she wasn’t predatory, anyway. ‘Your husband’s wonderful,’ Jasmine said in between sips of sambuca. ‘I was telling him how I wanted to write a book and he said “snap!” The last person I said it to told me not to bother my head with books when I could be on the cover of one.’ Jasmine looked vexed at this. ‘Matt said what?’ Hope asked, curious and hurt at the same time. How had Matt discussed this with Jasmine and not with her? ‘I daresay it’s a pipe dream,’ suggested Jasmine. ‘It is for me too. But Matt writes for his job, he’s got a better chance than most. I’m thinking of doing a creative writing course, myself. I know it’s tough. Like selling records. I went out with a musician once and he was obsessed with record sales.’ She laughed ruefully. ‘Oh, speaking of music, Matt was telling me about your older sister and this great job she’s just got in the record company. I love the sound of that. What’s she like? Very clever and high powered, I suppose?’ ‘The opposite of me, you mean,’ said Hope automatically. And it was true … Sam was a human dynamo, all fire and energy. Now she was running a label at Titus Records. Hope still wasn’t exactly sure what the new job entailed because Sam had only been there a week and their emails had been short, but it was demanding, that was for sure. Sam couldn’t bear to be free of pressure. She’d worked herself into the ground for five years as marketing director of another

huge record label and now, when Hope thought her sister should be slowing down a bit and perhaps thinking about settling down, Sam had moved companies to another, bigger job. Jasmine was back on the subject of writing: ‘Matt told me about his plan to take a year out and live in the country. I know it’s only an idea and you’ve nothing settled yet but I think you should go for it. It’ll be easier for him to write with no distractions. Harder to see your sister, mind you, if you were to move abroad. Matt was telling me your parents died when you were kids and that you’ve only got one sister.’ Hope’s heart missed a beat. ‘What are you on about?’ she asked, feeling a queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach, a sensation that had nothing to do with drinking too much. ‘It’s fine, really,’ Jasmine assured her in a stage whisper. ‘You don’t have to pretend you don’t know. I won’t say a word to Adam about it, I promised Matt I wouldn’t. I’m sure that Adam will go ballistic when he discovers Matt wants to take a year’s sabbatical but you have to pursue your dreams, don’t you.’ She got misty-eyed. ‘I’d love to move somewhere remote to write but I’d hate to be away from twenty-four hour shops. Won’t you mind?’ Hope recovered her composure. This was not the moment to say the notion of Matt taking a year out was news to her. She tried to look resigned instead of astonished. ‘Who knows what’ll happen,’ she shrugged. ‘The whole idea is very much aspirational right now. We love Bath and …’ ‘Jasmine, time to go,’ announced Adam suddenly, looming behind his wife and putting proprietorial hands on her slim, golden shoulders. With Jasmine and Adam gone, the party deflated. Betsey insisted to Dan she was tired and had to go home. ‘We should go too,’ said Elizabeth, reaching under the table for her handbag. With the wisdom born of being slightly drunk, Hope

realized that her husband’s colleagues weren’t so close to him as he thought. Their eagerness to party only lasted as long as the boss’s presence. When Adam was gone, so was the party spirit. But Matt didn’t seem to mind and waved everyone off with great bonhomie. In the taxi, Hope sat quietly as they drove out on the Bristol road. Matt lay back against the seat with his eyes closed, his face expressionless now they were alone. As houses sped by, Hope worked out what she was going to say when they got home. It went against the grain to start an argument in the back of a taxi with the driver listening to every word. The pieces of the puzzle had fallen painfully into place thanks to the artless Jasmine. Matt was dreaming up an enormous career change and Hope and the kids didn’t figure in his plans. Would she stay on in the house in Bath or move to London to be near Sam, Hope wondered in shock. She’d move, definitely, she couldn’t stay in the house where they’d been so happy. Correction; where she’d been so happy. Matt obviously hadn’t been happy or he wouldn’t want to leave it and her. The children had been little lambs and the chocolate biscuits had been great, Elaine, the babysitter, said when they got home. ‘Good,’ said Hope absently, getting out her purse. Her hands were shaking, like an alcoholic’s before the first drink of the day. ‘Matt will walk you home.’ ‘It’s only across the road,’ protested Elaine. ‘Better safe than sorry,’ Hope said. ‘It’s half twelve, you know. Time for the deviants of the world to emerge.’ ‘In Makings Lane?’ asked Elaine incredulously. When Matt came back, Hope was sitting waiting for him at the kitchen table. Her hands were still shaking, so she put them on her lap and clasped them tightly together as if she was praying. Perhaps if she had prayed, none of this would have happened, she thought wildly. ‘I thought you’d be on your way to bed by now,’ Matt

remarked, pouring himself a glass of milk. It was the longest statement he’d made in about a week. ‘Jasmine said a very strange thing to me tonight,’ Hope said evenly. ‘She said you were taking a sabbatical to live in the country to write a book - not this country was the implication. I just wondered when you were going to tell me of this plan and if I and the children were actually included.’ ‘Ah.’ Matt sat down with her. ‘Too much red wine is a terrible thing.’ ‘You mean Jasmine misunderstood?’ Hope could barely get the words out. ‘Not exactly,’ Matt said slowly. ‘I’m afraid I got a bit carried away and said too much.’ ‘So it’s true.’ Her legs began to shake too with fear. ‘Hope,’ Matt wasn’t sure how to start but he knew he had to. Telling Jasmine had been a decision fuelled by too much wine but it had been a relief to talk about it with someone other than Dan. It was time to tell Hope. ‘It’s been a dream of mine for years and you know me, respectable family man, I’d never do anything wild or out of the ordinary, anything that would jeopardize our future but now I’ve got the chance and I thought, why not take a year out. I know that Adam would keep my job open for me - he’d have to, I’m the best he’s got,’ he added, proud of the fact. ‘But what about me and the kids?’ asked Hope, eyes wet and filled with terror. Was Matt drunk? Didn’t he care about them at all? ‘I mean all of us going away. You, me and the kids for a year. To Ireland; Kerry, in fact. Uncle Gearoid’s solicitor phoned me on Monday about the old house. I know it’s sudden but it’s like the answer to my prayers. I’ve been so down, Hope, so depressed and then he phones to say the house is officially mine. I haven’t been able to think of anything else all week.’ Hope’s whole body was shaking now; she could barely take in what he was saying because her mind was so befuddled with fear and anxiety.

Gearoid had been a poet who, over forty years before, had left his home in the UK for a small town named Redlion in Kerry, where he lived a bohemian life with gusto. Hope had never met him because he’d refused to leave his beloved adopted country to come to their wedding but he’d always sounded like a mad old rogue who pickled his liver and wrote bad poetry that nobody had ever wanted to publish. He’d even changed his name from Gerald to the Irish and unpronounceable Gearoid, which Hope still found impossible to say, no matter how many times Matt said it phonetically: ‘Gar, like garage, and old like haemorrhoid.’ Matt had spent a few summers in Redlion as a child and still talked mistily about what a wonderful place Kerry was. But as Gearoid became more eccentric with age, he refused to travel to stay with Matt, who, in turn, never seemed to have the time to visit his ageing uncle. When he died, he left Matt everything; partly because he didn’t have any children of his own and partly, according to his solicitor, to annoy the other distant relatives who’d been hanging around like vultures hoping for a piece of property in a popular tourist destination in south-western Ireland. ‘Everything’ turned out to be a rundown house the solicitor imagined wouldn’t fetch much. Hope had assumed that Matt would simply sell the house. They could certainly do with the money. ‘Probate’s finally been sorted out,’ Matt explained. ‘The house is mine. And yours, of course. There’s a bit of land but only an acre or so. It all seemed much bigger when I was a kid. I thought he had loads of land. Anyway,’ he paused, ‘this is my idea. I’ve told you about the writers’ community there that Gearoid helped start up in the Sixties?’ Hope nodded, still looking shell-shocked, although Matt didn’t notice because he was fired up with the enthusiasm of telling her his plan. ‘It’s spooky because this is so coincidental,’ Matt went on eagerly, ‘but last week I read an interview with the novelist, Stephen Dane - you know the guy, he writes those literary thrillers. Anyway, he’s just sold a book to Hollywood. We’re

talking millions, Hope. And in the middle of the interview, he mentioned that he wrote his first novel in Kerry, in Redlion, actually, in the writer’s centre. Don’t you see, it’s got to be a sign. ‘We’d both take a year out and go and live in Gearoid’s house. I’d write a novel. I’ve got one in me, I know it. Imagine it, Hope,’ Matt said, his eyes alight with enthusiasm, desperate to transmit his excitement to her and unaware of what she’d been thinking since his birthday, ‘we could be with the children all day. I could get some part time copy writing work and we’d live cheaply enough. We could rent out this place for a year and cover the mortgage. We wouldn’t lose out. This is our big chance.’ And it was, Matt was convinced of it. He’d slay the demons that lived in his head and told him he’d never amount to anything but a bitter old ad man. And he’d get the chance to live another life, even if only for a brief time. Hope stared at him, hardly daring to believe that it wasn’t the death knell she’d been expecting. Matt wasn’t leaving her; he wanted her and the children with him. She leaned her hands on the table. Her sleeve immediately stuck in the sticky patch left behind from Millie’s morning yoghurt. ‘Why couldn’t you tell me?’ she said, her voice unsteady. ‘I didn’t know you felt this way.’ ‘I’m sorry I kept it to myself. It’s embarrassing to talk about your dreams like that, Hope, but I want to write and I’m never going to do it here, not with a full-time job, not in this house. You need a creative atmosphere. It would be fantastic for us as a family. Having the house there in Redlion takes all the hassle out of it. It’s perfect.’ ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this on your birthday?’ she said helplessly. ‘I knew there was something wrong, I asked you what it was then and you wouldn’t tell me! I thought you were having an affair.’ It was Matt’s turn to look astonished. ‘An affair! Whatever gave you that idea?’ he said incredulously.

‘Everything,’ Hope said. ‘You told me there was something wrong but that I couldn’t fix it. And you didn’t kiss me or touch me and I was just so sure Her voice broke off and Matt sat down at the table and took her hands in his. ‘Darling Hope, what a crazy idea. I was killing myself wondering whether I could do this to you. All I could think of was that you’d hate it, that it was such a huge step to go abroad for a year. I kept telling myself it was a stupid idea, that I shouldn’t do it but I’ve been talking to Dan about it and …’ ‘Dan!’ Hope felt a spark of fury that while she’d been dying inside at the thought of Matt leaving her, he could have saved her a lot of anguish if only he’d told her the truth. Meanwhile, he’d actually been asking other people’s opinions on a move that affected her more than anyone else. ‘Is there anyone you haven’t discussed this with, apart from me, of course?’ She ripped a tissue from the box on the table and rubbed violently at the yoghurt marks on the table. ‘I need you to understand, Hope,’ Matt said quietly. Hope thought she understood all right: Matt had made another unilateral decision about their lives. There had been the time a mere month after their marriage when he said he’d accepted a job with the ad agency in Bath even though they’d both decided to travel round the world for a year. (Well, the trip around the world had been his idea initially, but she’d agreed to it, had bought the rucksack and got the typhoid injection.) Or the time he’d agreed to rent a holiday cottage in France with Dan and Betsey, without even discussing it with Hope. And what had she said on each occasion? Had she roared: ‘It’s my life too, Matt. I don’t agree with your plans so you’ll have to unmake them?’ No. Anger and neediness had fought and neediness had won. Too scared at starting a battle with the one she loved, Hope had smothered her upset and said: ‘Of course, that’s a good idea. Let’s do it.’ Sam had been furious with her: ‘How dare he bloody give