Wishful Thinking (45 page)

‘Have you seen the new temp?' Laurence asked when she went to the loo.

‘No.' Lin and I looked round simultaneously, fixing him with a steely double stare. ‘What new temp?'

‘Working for Larry in Phoenix. Started this morning. His PA was rushed to hospital with an appendectomy: they say she'll be off for a month at least.'

‘Poor Clare.' I was a little perfunctory. ‘What's this temp like?'

‘Looks about twenty, blonde ponytail, short skirt.'

‘Shit.'

‘Saw Cal chatting her up at lunchtime. Back to his old ways. She was giggling a lot.'

‘
Shit
.'

‘I didn't want to say anything in front of Georgie,' Laurence said. ‘Too chicken. But I thought perhaps one of you should tell her. Don't want someone catching her off guard with it. Trudi Horn's never forgiven her for hooking Cal long-term when he slipped through her fingers in less than a month. She'd love the chance to stick a dagger in and twist it.'

Lin and I gazed at each other in mutual despair.

‘Thanks, Laurie,' I said. ‘You've cast a gloom over the evening – and it was pretty gloomy already.'

‘Cal can't mean it,' Lin protested. ‘Until a few weeks ago they were so much in love. Even when they were fighting, I thought . . .'

‘He doesn't have to mean it,' I said. ‘He's a man. He's just doing what men do – trying to get laid. That has nothing to do with love.'

Georgie rejoined us before the conversation could continue. ‘You look like a convention of depressives,' she remarked. ‘I hate winter. Is it my round?'

‘Mine,' said Laurence, heading for the bar.

This time, Lin and I avoided each other's gaze. Neither of us wanted to break the bad news yet.

‘Why is life so bloody?' Georgie demanded rhetorically.

‘Cookie's all right,' Lin said, fishing for a cheerful thought. ‘Your wish worked out – didn't it?'

‘In a way.' I hadn't told them anything about Todd. There was so little to tell.

‘You
are
all right, aren't you?' Lin persisted, looking vaguely anxious.

‘Of course.'

‘No, she's not,' said Georgie, with alarming perspicacity. ‘It's not Nigel any more, but there's someone. And it isn't going well.'

‘Is that true?' Lin asked.

I said nothing.

‘This sort of stuff never happened to Charlie's Angels,' Georgie commented. ‘Maybe we should rename ourselves. The Three Stooges.'

‘Who're they?' Lin inquired.

‘Some old comedy act.'

‘The three witches,' I said. ‘As in
Macbeth
. “Double double toil and trouble . . . ”'

‘I like that,' said Georgie. ‘I feel evil. (And she hadn't even heard about the temp yet.) Bags I be the hag.'

‘I thought they were all hags,' Lin said.

‘No. The hag is the boss, the one who controls the trio. Then there's a vague one with Sight – you – and one who raises the dead – that's Cookie. The happy medium.' I groaned. ‘The hag is the oldest and the ugliest and the nastiest – and that's how I feel. The hag is astride, This night for to ride . . . We've spent too much time suffering in silence – or just suffering. Time to get positive again. Let's make some magic –
black
magic. Let's make trouble for someone.'

‘Jerry Beauman,' said Laurence, returning with drinks.

Georgie brightened.

Jerry Beauman . . .

There's nothing like having a hate figure in your work environment, somebody you can rely on to be irredeemably nasty and on whom you can turn whenever the bile is overflowing. A legitimate target. Jerry Beauman had his uses. Georgie wangled a further meeting at his flat to discuss party strategy, though we had no opportunity to go near the bathroom. I suggested Andy should put his banker's ear to the ground, but Lin still hadn't spoken to him since he left London with the new-look Catriona and was unwilling to keep calling. ‘Something's up,' I said, or rather hissed, as Jerry quit the meeting for the second time to take a private call in his study.

‘You could pick up the extension,' Lin postulated, looking round for one.

‘People don't have them much any more,' Georgie pointed out. ‘There's a phone in the hall and one in there—' she indicated the study door ‘– and that's it. Who needs extensions when you've got cordless? Besides, there's a kind of click on the line when you pick up, so he'd be bound to realise there was someone there.'

I wondered how
she
knew about the click, but let it go.

We hadn't told her about the temp: we didn't need to. Back at the office, Georgie saw for herself.

‘Just Cal's type,' she said, and something in her face – something very firmly closed – meant we didn't venture further comment.

Todd Jarman left a message on my voice-mail, and for a dizzy hour I let myself believe all kinds of things, but when I called back it was just a query about promotion for
The Last Harlot
.

‘When's the exact publication date?' he asked me. ‘I know it's January, but I'm booking a skiing trip around that time and I want to be sure not to overlap.'

‘Beginning of Feb,' I said, consulting my computer. ‘The . . . third. We should have lunch very soon – to discuss PR.' At least Todd wouldn't demand a champagne launch – or would he?

‘Yes, we should,' he said.

‘With Georgie Cavari,' I added, trying not to sound reluctant. I must stop hallucinating that he fancied me. This was just normal author/editor conversation.

‘Give me a date,' he said after a pause.

‘I'll have to check with Georgie.'

‘You do that.' His voice, while not actually saturnine (
can
a voice be saturnine?), had dark undertones. I worried suddenly that I'd given myself away at that awful dinner party – that even now I sounded fluttered, flattered, all a-gush. I terminated the call as quickly as I possibly could, and then worried all over again that he would think me brusque and unfriendly.

Being attracted to someone when you aren't sure if they're attracted back (and, since it's me, they probably aren't) is a situation fraught with potential embarrassment. I'd been there before, of course, but not in a work situation, and it had never been this strong. Every time I remembered how we'd made love on my sofa I blushed inside (and sometimes outside). And whenever I talked to Todd now there was a small treacherous corner of my mind which couldn't help thinking of that.

On the whole, I was glad to be distracted by a call from my sister – at least until she spoke.

It was my birthday next week, my thirtieth, a big deal. (Ugh. What was there to celebrate? Incipient spinsterhood?) Was I having a party?

No.

‘And don't tell me I ought to get hitched,' I said.

‘I wasn't going to,' Sophie responded indignantly. She obviously thought I was a hopeless case.

She was probably right.

‘What d'you want for a present?'

‘A hot-water bottle,' I said. At the rate I was going, that was all I'd ever cuddle up to.

Then came the evening when Georgie and I went to the pub, and Cal was there with the temp. Georgie didn't say anything. She drank quickly, soberly, without effect. She left early. (Georgie was the sort of person who never left anything early.) I went with her, wanting to offer support and comfort, knowing there was nothing I could do.

‘He isn't serious,' I said awkwardly. ‘It's just . . .'

‘Just lust?' She made an odd, dismissive gesture, something between a nod and a shrug.

‘D'you want me to come back with you? I'm always here – if you need me. I mean—'

‘I'm all right.' She got into a taxi, and went home.

I took the tube.

I'd been in about an hour when the phone rang.

‘Cookie?' Her voice was almost unrecognisable. ‘I'm very sorry to disturb you, but – can you come over? Now? I – I need someone . . .'

I dressed hastily, and went out.

At the house she let me in, offered me tea, forgot about it. She sat down on the sofa in the living room – a big room, two knocked into one, with a high ceiling and shabby old furniture she couldn't afford to replace – and hugged herself like a lost child. The house was warm, but she looked cold. Cold and small in that big space. She'd switched on one of the lamps but left the overhead light, and in its uncompromising glare I could see the lines on her face, all fifteen of them, and the sad droop of her mouth now the laughter had gone out of her. For once she looked all of her forty-three years, but in some way she also looked like a girl, young and vulnerable and horribly bruised by her first encounter with the cruelty of love. Because it was the first for Georgie, I knew. This was somewhere she'd never been before.

I said: ‘Shall I make the tea?'

It was trivial, but I didn't know what else to say.

‘I – sorry. I should've . . .'

‘I'll make it.'

When I gave her the mug, she cradled it like a heat-source on a winter's day. I tried to find the right words – words of sympathy, consolation, comfort – but there weren't any. There never are.

‘I was such a fool,' she said at last.

‘Lots of people go out with married men,' I said. ‘Sometimes they leave their wives. You weren't a fool, just . . . reckless.'

‘I didn't mean that. I knew he wouldn't leave, though I used to fantasise about it occasionally. But he loves the children so, and he's got such a strong sense of responsibility. I meant . . . I was a fool to make it difficult for him, when things were so difficult anyway. I was a fool to waste time picking fights, and going off with other men. Christy could've had all the couply stuff, the family stuff, the marriage – she was welcome to it. All I wanted was the loving, the being loved.'

I murmured something inadequate, stroked her shoulder. I thought it would be better if she cried, but she looked too desolate for tears.

‘I miss him so,' she said. ‘I didn't think it would be like this. I didn't know it would
hurt
so much, seeing him with someone else. Before that, I kept thinking we might get back together. If it was just my pride – but I don't care about that any more. I'd probably crawl to him on my knees, if I thought it would do any good. Isn't that shaming?'

‘No,' I said. ‘It's love. Love isn't anything to be ashamed of. The people who hang on to pride are the people who love by halves. There was that stupid book
The Rules
: remember?' (I'd read it, of course.) ‘All about getting yourself a man you don't really love so you can stay in control. How to be comfortable – and a coward. You don't want to be like that.'

She tried to smile. ‘No I don't.
Sensible
Cookie. He always said you were sensible . . . It was so wonderful, being loved. Like . . . thermal underwear. This layer of warmth that wrapped me round, wherever I was, whatever I did . . . even if we didn't see each other very much. He didn't say romantic things, but it didn't matter. He isn't a smoothie. I liked the things he said because he
meant
them. Mind you, he said we'd always be friends, but . . .'

‘You will,' I assured her.

‘I don't think so. Not
just
friends. I couldn't bear it, if he looked at me in that cosy, ex-boyfriend way: Hey, didn't we have a blast? I couldn't
bear
it . . .'

Some time later, she said: ‘I don't regret a thing, do you know that? It hurts so bad I wish I was dead, but I don't regret it. How could I regret the best thing in my life? One day I'll turn into a boring old woman, going on about all my lovers, but Cal is the one who'll make me cry. Oh Cal . . . Cal . . .'

The tears came, but only briefly. Then she sat up and blew her nose. ‘Oh well, I suppose there's nothing left for me but to be utterly ruined and imprisoned for debt. It doesn't matter now, after all. I'll have to wear convict-gear and they'll cut my hair off . . .'

‘You have your hair short anyway,' I pointed out. ‘And they don't send people to prison for debt any more. I don't think you have to wear convict-clothes, either.'

‘Damn. Some people have no concept of sticking to the story. I'll just have to turn to real crime.'

‘Don't start that again.'

‘Thanks for coming,' she said suddenly. ‘Thanks for not saying
I told you so
.'

‘I don't think I
did
tell you so – did I?'

‘Probably not. You're too tactful. Could you – would you stay?'

‘Only if there's alcohol,' I said. ‘Or more tea.'

We had both, and watched the late-night thriller, which was strange, and strangely depressing, and then a vintage horror film on Channel 4, all human sacrifice and heaving bosoms (much more fun). I crashed out in the spare room but Georgie stayed on the sofa, and in the morning she was still there, hollow-eyed and unsleeping, watching children's TV and letting her tea go cold.

The months rolled on towards Christmas, and the year darkened. On my birthday I got mildly drunk and a male friend who I'm sure had never fancied me before made a pass, but I turned him down. Good for my ego, but nothing else. Everyone in the office decided they were suffering from Seasonal Adjusted Disorder, or whatever it's called. I arranged lunch with Todd Jarman in order to discuss publicity, only to be summoned at the last minute by Alistair and delegated to entertain an important American writer who was in town. Was Fate trying to tell me something? I wondered. He's not for you. Keep Off the Grass. Bloody Fate.