The Better Half Read online

  I was going to be incredibly late for the lunch. Ordinarily on a day like this – with so much to pack in – my heart would have been racing and I would have been making frantic calculations as to how I was going to get everything done. But now I didn’t care. I just cried and cried. It was as if once the lid had come off I couldn’t get it back on.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ the judge’s wife had asked, as we turned to leave the airport. ‘I don’t like to leave you like this. Can we call your husband?’

  No, I had wanted to howl at her. We’d probably interrupt him humping some young one.

  I was still crying a little when I got home. Ella would kill me for having made a show of myself. But how could I explain to her? How could I say to her that as she walked away I’d been struck by the emptiness of my life? I walked down the black gravel path that wound through the landscaped gardens to the coach house on the off-chance that Dylan was there. He had come and gone, leaving puddles of towels dumped on the floor. His bathroom was like something out of a top-flight spa. ‘What did your last slave die of of?’ I’d say to him sometimes.

  ‘Happiness,’ he’d shoot back, with a lopsided grin so that I couldn’t stay mad.

  He’d left the shower running. Dylan was careless about things like that. Ella wasn’t much better, in spite of all her stated environmental credentials and her haranguing of Frank to introduce green building technologies into his business. They were part of the power-shower generation, I thought, switching it off. Frank and I were of the generation that got up early to put on the immersion heater so that we could have a lukewarm wash on the way out. My family had had weekly baths. The rest of the time Ma had given us what she called a ‘cat’s lick’. The kids told me to shut up when I told them stuff like that. I’m not sure they really believed me. They thought thrift was freakish. ‘Yeah, right, Mum, and I suppose you walked to school in your bare feet.’

  I was back in the house now – in the hall – sitting on the bottom stair. I knew I should move, but I just couldn’t. The staircase behind me curved upwards towards the first floor. Light came through the big square skylight so that the oak panelling of the hall and the four giant Andy Warhol-style pictures of me were illuminated. There were other paintings – too many for the walls, bunched together as if we couldn’t bear not to display our vast collection.

  Frank bought art by the yard. So while he was bolshy in his declarations about knowing what he liked, he had a childlike reverence for artists and bought the expertise to help him choose paintings. That admiration was coupled with scorn for those who purported to know about art. We’d once gone to an art exhibition with Ciara and Will. This was the first time either Frank or I had ever heard of the artist even though Ciara, who’d done some history of art courses, had told us that, while not Warhol, he was ‘the godfather of pop art’. Will had stood at a distance staring at a painting for a very long time before moving slowly forward and nosing right up against it as if analysing every daub. Frank had wanted to hit him over the head with a bag of hammers.

  Frank was solution-driven. He knew he was locked out of a world he didn’t know how to navigate. He didn’t have the language and it was too late to learn, so he was going to conquer the terrain by owning more damn art than anyone else. He was a dealer’s delight. They saw him coming.

  I sat dumbly on the stair, contemplating a move into the kitchen. I didn’t want to sit in the kitchen, my shrine to modern technology. I’d be swallowed by its vastness, by the silence hanging inside its stainless-steel perimeter. There was no life, no action there.

  When the children were smaller the kitchen had been the nerve centre of the house, especially in the morning when it had been mental. The kitchen in our second house had been small with cheap modern presses and a breakfast bar because it was too small for a full-sized table. The counter would be covered with crumbs, blobs of butter and jam and bowls of sodden cereal. Questions had been constantly fired at me of the ‘Where’s my gum shield/maths copy/library book?’ variety. Frank would have been going on about something or other. ‘Just sort it out, Anita,’ he’d say, if the kids started fighting. Then I’d usher them out to the car with orders to tie their laces, zip up their coats, promising to pick up this and drop back that, beeping the horn for Dylan, who would have run back into the house for something. A little later I’d have that moment of semi-relief when I, like the droves of other mothers, sprinted away from the school free as a bird for a couple of hours. There had been order and happiness and security in that morning chaos, I thought now.

  The distant hum of the vacuum-cleaner came from the top of the house. Lena was upstairs. She was nice, Lena, in a matter-of-fact Polish way. She didn’t speak much English, which was unusual for a Polish girl. We communicated in our own way and sometimes we even had a cup of tea together, although that seemed to make her a little uncomfortable. I wondered what she thought of us – a spoilt bunch of lazy so-and-sos who couldn’t lift a teacup for ourselves.

  I wasn’t always spoilt. I had done my own cleaning and mended my clothes and made do. I had saved for things. I could hear the crunch of gravel as footsteps approached. Crouton started to bark. I had left the gates open. There were footsteps and then some junk leaflets fluttered through the door. They were for an Indian restaurant with Chinese sounding dishes. Through the mullioned window by the door I could see a Chinese man retreating. We’d had a meal from them – I’d rung before I thought. They were a Chinese restaurant trying to branch into Indian. The food had tasted weird.

  This hall was as big as some people’s whole apartments. The house was a shrine to Frank’s success. I was proud of it, really. I didn’t go along with that the-poor-are-happy routine, which some people – usually people with plenty – promoted. The poor and the meek did not inherit the earth. There had been plenty of proof of that in my neighbourhood.

  Our local parish priest used to go on with that old cods-wallop while his soft, buttery bum spilt over the sides of his big, comfortable car seat. And he had a big parochial house and grand dinners. There were times, though, when I caught myself wondering if we’d got lost in our house, if we’d been drowned by its sheer grandeur and sense of expensively purchased isolation.

  I stared at my handbag, slouching on the ground like a small snoozing animal. It was hand-sewn Italian calfskin and had cost a sinful amount. I had seen it in a magazine and tracked it ruthlessly, like a lioness stalking her prey, getting my mitts on it ahead of the posse so that I could produce it with quiet up-your-bum glee. It had seemed such a triumph, such a coup.

  I wondered what time Frank would come back. I had considered going to him and telling him I knew about your woman but that it was okay. We could move past her. We were bigger and stronger than that. We could have counselling and get the old Frank and Anita back. With a bit of work and effort we’d be back in the new-couple stage, when we were in love with each other and ourselves. Back when the possibility of romance and greatness seemed to lurk around every corner, when I’d looked in the mirror and thought that the world was created for the two of us.

  My mobile phone began to ring, its sound muffled by the leather of the bag. It would be Ciara, wondering where I was. She had left successive messages.

  ‘Ring me.’

  ‘Call me, babe.’

  ‘I’m getting anxious.’

  The lunch was in aid of Indian street children. Ciara was styling the show, which was why I’d been drafted to bring the prizes – it was all hands on deck in her first outing as a stylist for years. She had been a stylist in London, a chapter in her life that she frequently mentioned – kind of wistfully, I thought. She had styled photo shoots for Vogue. ‘I worked on an advertising campaign with Mario Testino,’ she said sometimes, when she was pissed, thumping her chest with her fist as if she didn’t quite believe it herself.

  She’d met Will by chance, at the conclusion of a long, unstable relationship with a narcissistic and sexy
film director, who mainly seemed to make ads even though he was always on the verge of becoming the next Scorsese or Tarantino. He had dumped her for the fiftieth time – enter Will, stage left.

  Will had told the story many times of how they’d met at a rugby international, all reference to the unreliable ride of an English director omitted. Ciara always carolled her lines on cue. Show time! She would say, smiling prettily, something like ‘I had no interest in rugby – it was total chance I was dragged along to that match.’

  Will would beam. ‘It was Fate, darling.’

  Once he had said it was ‘kismet’. Later when we were lying in bed Frank’s voice had come out of the dark: ‘What the fuck is kismet?’

  Ciara would continue, ‘Will rescued me from my life in London …’

  ‘She was running herself ragged shooting.’

  ‘And here we are,’ Ciara would trill, at which point Will would hold out his hand to catch hers.

  The London life had been packed away in the thorough way Ciara did everything, but there were times when I wondered if she had packed away an essential part of herself with it, like a river forced to go underground. And whether one day that river might burst to the surface and break its banks.

  So, because Ciara hadn’t styled a show in years she was, understandably, nervous. I was helping with the auction prizes but only in an unofficial capacity. Ciara was on the committee. After years of manoeuvring she had finally managed to muscle her way onto it so that now she could officially ‘put something back’ along with all the other wives of movers and shakers who were involved. They included the wife of a television presenter and, most desirable of all, the wife of the rock star – she was a beautiful woman with a serene aura, extremely grounded and exceedingly nice. Ciara had spent quite a bit of time chasing her down. She had proved more elusive than Ciara had bargained for, though. Ciara reminded me of someone pursuing a plastic bag blowing down the road, which stopped and then started again just as they were about to catch it.

  If I let her down, Ciara would fillet me. Her Olympian social climbing would not allow for a friend’s cock-ups. But although I was woefully late I did not answer the phone. Instead I laid my head against the off-white wall. My gaze swivelled to a photo on the table. It had been taken at the top of the Eiffel Tower by another tourist. Ella had been around eleven. Her jacket hung open to reveal a sweatshirt with a picture of a horse on it. It had been hard work to get it off her body. She had worn it to bed a number of times. Her teeth were encased in braces, and she wore a pink bobble hat. Dylan had been fourteen. He had spots between his eyebrows. Frank was wearing an acid green Puffa jacket that made him look chunky. I was smiling at something he was saying. I looked so much younger, I thought, eyeing my rounded cheeks. You could see our breath misting the cold Parisian air. I was scared of heights. My heart had been in my mouth as I climbed the steps to the top of the tower, trying not to look down through the gaps in the wrought-iron. I had counted to a hundred over and over again to distract myself.

  We had gone to EuroDisney as well and grazed on trans-fats and sugar among the wobbling fat people buying mountains of overpriced merchandise positioned at the foot of every ride. Dylan had loved every minute of it. We’d stayed in an awful Wild West-themed hotel for a night, where we’d eaten breakfast in the ‘Chuck Wagon’, which Frank had secretly liked. Ella had dragged us back into the city to the Louvre where we’d seen the Mona Lisa. Dylan had pronounced it a ‘heap of shite’. It had been a very happy holiday, I thought, feeling a twist in my stomach.

  Frank had made a mistake. Men would be men. Sensible women turned a blind eye.

  Again, I heard the sound of footsteps. These were shorter and sharper. A woman’s tread, I thought, hearing the click-clack of stilettos advancing towards the house. A white envelope fell onto the mat, ‘Personal’ emblazoned on the front. It was addressed to Frank. I stood up and peered out the window.

  Through the cascading rain I saw a flash of red curls under an umbrella. Oh, Jesus. I shrank out of sight. Every pore in my body felt alert. The air was being pressed out of my lungs.

  I could yank open the door. I could shout that she was on private property. She would be wrong-footed to see me – the lady from the clinic. It might take her a while to make the connection. I could yell torrents of abuse at her. I could take a running jump at her and leap onto her back, grabbing fistfuls of the Irish-dancing hair. I could wrestle her to the ground and spit in her face and shout things like ‘Ho’ and ‘Slapper’ and ‘Whore of Babylon’.

  Instead, I inched towards the window, quivering. Two spots of red burnt on my cheeks. She was walking away, the gravel crunching under her angry footsteps. She stopped and turned towards the house. She tipped her head back as if she sensed she was being watched. Her expression hovered between doubt and anger. Her mouth was set. Her skin was the colour of cream. She had so much hair. An image of Frank twining his fat disloyal fingers in it ran through my mind. She gave a pursed-mouth scowl, then turned away. She strode down the drive.

  There was the sound of a car door being slammed, followed by an engine being turned on. I was a useless yellow-bellied coward, I thought, my chest heaving. Bending forward, I plucked the envelope from the floor, my hands shaking violently as I ripped it open. I felt a welling in my chest and the words swam in front of my eyes.

  Dear Frank,

  I’m having this baby with or without you. I don’t believe in abortion and I cannot believe that you would even consider murdering our child.

  I need to know if you are on board before I tell my parents. I intend to tell them before the week is out. They will support me even if you won’t.

  Fiona

  I pitched backwards, a strong, silent scream building inside me.

  5

  Frank had gone AWOL. His phone was bouncing straight to message minder. Whether this was because he was dodging his distraught wife or his pregnant mistress, I didn’t know. I left message after message, shrieking down the phone, my words jumbled as I wept angry choking tears into it. My legs were shaking under me like a pneumatic drill.

  I had to go to the lunch. The auction prizes were loaded into the boot of my Range Rover, including a valuable piece of sculpture shaped like a tree that was so ugly Frank had said he would have paid good money to see it destroyed. Now, I thought, suppressing a sob, I’d like to wrap it around his head.

  I had daubed my puffy face with makeup. I’d had a stiff drink or two – maybe even three, because the glasses were generous – but I wove my way towards town, hoping I wouldn’t be stopped by the law for driving over the limit.

  The fashion show was in progress when I got there. Slinking to my seat under cover of the relative darkness I saw that I had been demoted from the front row to the second – a sign that Frank’s and my social star was dimming maybe. Not that I cared.

  Ciara had fixed me with a tense, hypnotic stare when I’d arrived. ‘Where were you?’ she’d mouthed at me.

  I had invented a story about a flat tyre, which she had only half accepted. She had eyed me suspiciously, her expression chilly. Normally this would have had me reaching for the vapours – or the wine bottle: I would not have crossed my style heroine Ciara, but now I really didn’t give a damn. In the hierarchy of pain it was lower than the faithless-husband-and-pregnant-girlfriend scenario.

  Later she seemed to relax anyway because it was obvious that the show was pretty slick. She sent me a text: Think we’ve gt a hit on r hands!!!! And she was probably feeling a bit more humane towards me because I clocked some photographer taking repeated shots of her in her seat. Ciara loved having her picture taken. Nobody would come near me, I predicted. I never let my picture be taken because I wasn’t photogenic. It was something to do with my features. I looked sort of squinty-eyed in photos – like somebody’s slow cousin. But I wouldn’t be getting the chance to say no today anyway, that was for sure. Truthfully, I might as well
have slung a bell around my neck I looked so thrown together.

  I saw Ciara making for the loo and trailed after her – old droopy drawers.

  ‘Let me in.’

  She opened the door, checked that we weren’t observed, and ushered me in. ‘If someone sees us they’ll make the wrong assumption,’ she said, slamming the cubicle door behind us.

  ‘Or the right one,’ I corrected her.

  ‘Really? You want some charlie?’ She eyed me with surprise.

  That was Ciara’s little secret – the woman who got crushingly bored and escaped to the loo to pep herself up. The consultant’s wife who, all week long, was about yoga and organic food and her children, and at the weekend could hoover the GDP of Bolivia up her beautiful nose. Ciara was like a Dyson. The habit dated from her London days. ‘The most fun I’ve ever had in my life was in bathrooms,’ she had said to me once, in a rare moment of coked-up candour.

  Will hadn’t a clue. More than once I’d heard him tell a story about his college days – about how one summer in America he’d taken a toke from some surfers. Mad bastard, Will. If only he knew about his wife skipping off to meet her dealer. I’d gone with her once. My heart had been racing like a jack-hammer. We’d pulled into the forecourt of a petrol station. The dealer had driven up in a soft-top Mercedes. Ciara had hopped out and air-kissed him. He was tall and thin in an expensive soft leather bomber jacket. And next thing, boom, she was back in the Land Rover with ‘the gear’. Mission accomplished.

  ‘I’m high on life. I want to get even higher,’ I said, watching her upend some fine white powder onto the downturned loo seat. She gave me an assessing look. It was the lumpen tone. And I didn’t do cocaine. Charlie was not for me. Once you took some, it was like lighting a big fire that had to be stoked or it went out and left you cold and miserable. It was a beast that demanded to be fed. You wanted more and more and more, and it became the driving force of the evening. And it made me anxious. I didn’t need to feel more uptight. I had cornered the market in that. Plus, to be totally honest – and I didn’t often confront this truth – I was a booze hound.