A Time for Friends (50 page)

It was a possibility she had sometimes considered. Des was catnip for a certain type of woman. All those Wall Street hot shots were. So many people she knew, male and female, were engaged in
extramarital affairs. It was a gossip staple as long as she had lived in New York.

How long had it been going on for? She’d never heard even a whisper. Tears stung her eyes. They were supposed to be a team, she and Des. They had worked very hard for all they’d
achieved. They had never been overwhelmingly ‘in love’, but she loved him and had felt he had loved her. And they had supported and encouraged each other in all their endeavours.

At least he’d had the decency to keep it very discreet, because some well-meaning ‘friend’ would certainly have found an opportunity to alert her to the fact of her
husband’s infidelity. She had seen it happen many, many times. Des at least had played far away from home, metaphorically speaking. Some of their acquaintances weren’t so considerate,
she thought bitterly, feeling bile rise in her throat.

She’d better get to the hospital. At least he was on the Upper East Side – she wouldn’t have to go far. East 77th just off Park. Lennox Hill’s revamped and updated ER was
supposed to be an improvement on what had been there before. With cardiac problems he’d be attended to promptly. Was that a consolation or not? Colette didn’t know how she felt. Angry,
bitter, frantic, stunned? She pulled off her robe and hurried into her bathroom to freshen up.

A heart attack! The words sent terror through her. Was he in danger of death? Should she ring his family? His mother was dead and his father too frail to travel. There was no point. And what
about Jazzy? Should she call her? Colette swallowed and tried to keep calm as she sprayed on deodorant. She brushed her hair, and touched up her make-up with shaking hands, smearing her mascara.
She’d go to the hospital first and see what was happening. Jazzy could meet her there. She pulled on a pair of black trousers and a cream V-neck jumper. Hospitals were always stuffy; she
didn’t want to be baked. She grabbed a scarf before ringing down to the concierge and asking him to call her a cab. ‘Stay calm, stay calm,’ she whispered to herself as the
elevator sped silently downwards. ‘Thanks, Arun.’ She faked a smile at the Indian concierge on duty as he held the door for her and walked with her to her waiting taxi. A thought struck
her. ‘Someone will be dropping off some er . . . items . . . for me. Will you hold them until I get back?’ she asked.

‘Certainly, ma’am,’ Arun said politely.

‘Lennox Hill ER,’ she instructed the taxi driver, shivering as she got into the cab. It was freezing and she wrapped her black woollen coat around her and tightened the soft cream
angora scarf around her neck. As the driver drove towards Park Avenue she gazed unseeingly at the busy sidewalks and the blur of night-time colours that made New York as bright as day.

There were three ambulances at the entrance to the multimillion-dollar Anne & Isidore Falk Center. She’d attended a fundraising dinner for this very centre, a few years back. She
hadn’t thought she’d be inside its doors, ever, Colette thought distractedly, making her way to the reception desk. ‘Des Williams. Admitted by ambulance with a suspected heart
attack. Can I see him, please?’ she asked the woman behind the desk.

‘And you are?’ the woman asked politely, tapping his name on the keyboard.

‘I’m his wife.’

‘Fine, Mrs Williams, your husband has been triaged and has just been taken upstairs for an angioplasty. If you’d like to take a seat I’ll let you know when the procedure is
over and you can see him.’

‘Thank you,’ Colette said weakly. ‘How long will it take?’

‘Thirty minutes. Three hours. It depends on what has to be done. Take a seat and I’ll let you know,’ the woman said politely.

Wasn’t the angioplasty the thing with the balloon going through an artery? That was fairly commonplace. Her dad had had one and he’d been let home the following day. Perhaps this all
wasn’t as serious as she’d thought. She’d hold off ringing Jazzy until she knew more. She didn’t want to frighten her daughter and there was no point in both of them hanging
around, and besides she needed to be on her own to think. To try and make sense of what was happening. Colette sat down on one of the dark blue sofas in a waiting area, almost in a daze. Her
leather-gloved hands were shaking. She was in turmoil. Des with another woman. A woman who knew he’d taken a hit with Madoff. Colette hadn’t even known he’d invested with the
disgraced financier. There’d been no discussion about it because she most certainly would not have been in favour and would have made her feelings very clear about it. So Des had hidden it
from her and told this other woman. What else did he tell her? What else did he keep from Colette? What did that say about their marriage? Not a lot. Another memory surfaced and she buried it deep.
She wasn’t going to think about that now. The past was the past: she had enough to deal with in the present.

She spent two hours alternating between rage, anxiety, grief and fear before she was finally allowed to see her husband. Des was very pale, and sedated, lying against the crisp white pillows,
with an IV drip in his arm and a blood pressure and cardiac monitor attached to him.

‘How did you know I was here?’ he slurred when she called his name and he opened his eyes.

‘Your lady friend told me,’ she said coldly. ‘She’s leaving your phone and briefcase and clothes at our building. Arun will keep them until I get home.’

‘Oh!’ he said, his eyes sliding away from hers.

‘I have to have surgery,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll be here a few days.’

‘I’ll pack a case for you.’

‘Thanks,’ Des murmured and closed his eyes, the sedation taking effect as he drifted back to sleep.

Colette stared at him in the dimly lit room. This man she had shared her life with for almost twenty-five years seemed like a complete and utter stranger. She wanted to shake him, wake him up
and slap his face hard and demand an explanation from him.
Why? How long? Who is she?
But his sleeping form defeated her and she stood in impotent fury and felt an irrational urge to tear
his drip and his monitors from him.

‘Bastard,’ she swore at him. He’d even cheated her out of a scene. She wouldn’t be able to rant and rave at him for fear he’d have another episode. She’d have
to swallow it all down and probably give herself a stroke or a heart attack, she thought bitterly, bursting into tears of anger and frustration.

‘Don’t cry, Mrs Williams, your husband is stable. He’ll be fine,’ a nurse said reassuringly, mistaking the reason for Colette’s distress when she came into the room
to take a note of her patient’s vital signs. ‘Why don’t you go home to bed?’ she urged. ‘Mr Williams will sleep for most of the night anyway because of his sedation.
There’s nothing you can do here. We’ll have him ambulatory tomorrow and he’ll be more with-it so you can talk to him then.’

‘Right, thanks.’ Colette struggled to compose herself. She picked up her coat and scarf where she’d thrown them over the side of a chair and took a tissue out of her bag and
wiped her eyes. ‘I’ll bring his pyjamas and toiletries in tomorrow,’ she managed to say.

‘That’s perfect.’ The nurse smiled at her and held open the door for her and Colette walked out into the corridor wondering was she in some sort of surreal nightmare or could
all this be really happening.

The icy blast of a needle-sharp breeze blowing off the East River hit like a slap in the face when she stepped outside, and Colette knew her life had changed completely and there was nothing
dreamlike about it. The nightmare was very real indeed.

At least Des’s clothes weren’t rolled up in a Macy’s carrier bag, Colette thought wearily when Arun produced her husband’s coat, briefcase and a
Bergdorf Goodman bag from the small office behind his rosewood desk. Des’s bit on the side had some cop on, Colette noted caustically. The woman had placed a layer of white tissue paper on
top of the bag, concealing what lay underneath. Top marks for discretion.

‘Let me get the bellboy to carry this up for you, ma’am,’ the concierge offered, carrying the bags to the elevators.

‘Not at all, Arun, just put them on the floor beside me, thank you,’ Colette said, pressing a twenty into the young man’s hand. She just wanted to be by herself to try and
absorb the multiple shocks this evening had walloped her with. She let herself into the apartment and dropped the bags onto the marble floor in the hall. She’d deal with them in the morning.
For now she just wanted to fall into bed with a large glass of brandy.

A thought struck her as she divested herself of her coat and scarf. She should charge Des’s phone. He’d be wanting it ASAP to make calls to work. In fact she supposed she should ring
his secretary first thing to let her know to cancel his appointments. Not that he deserved that she should go to such trouble, Colette thought grimly, carrying his briefcase through to the den. She
flung it on the sofa and poured herself a measure of brandy and took a slug of the amber liquid, grimacing at the kick of heat at the back of her throat. She’d be taking a sleeper tonight
too. If Des decided to kick the bucket that was his tough luck.

She opened the Montblanc briefcase and found the BlackBerry that he always used. Would that woman’s phone number be on it? Colette wondered. She knew his password. Jazzy12. Their
daughter’s name and birthdate. She knew it because, when Jazzy was younger, Des would always let her play games on his phone. He had kept the same password for all his upgraded phones. She
keyed it in and scrolled through his text messages. Most of them were business ones. A couple from Jazzy, and two from herself. A few from friends. But otherwise nothing untoward. She checked his
call log. The last phone call was to her. The call that woman had made to tell her that Des was in hospital. She scrolled through the other calls he had made that day. Every number came up with a
name. Only one, to a woman, and Colette knew by the name that she was a Wells Fargo trader. Colette had met her a couple of times. A woman in her mid-forties with two children, and divorced, who
wouldn’t have time for an affair even if she wanted one. She didn’t even colour her hair any more, Colette remembered, thinking that the grey, though superbly cut, was ageing. Hardly
her. Des liked stylish women who were well maintained. She switched the phone off and went over to the Victorian pedestal desk and plugged the phone into the charger. She could do with charging her
own BlackBerry too; she’d charge it in her dressing room.

She flicked through the pockets in the briefcase and saw the white padded envelope that Des had taken the papers from that morning and as she lifted it out she saw an iPhone tucked in a leather
case, nestled snugly in a phone pocket. She took it out, flipped it open, slid the screen across and was instructed to enter a passcode. She keyed in Jazzy12, but no luck. She tried several
combinations of birthdays, names, car regs, but the phone would not give up its secrets and she knew this was the one he used to make his assignations. Were there photos of him and his mistress on
it? The woman’s name? Address?

‘What bloody difference does it make,’ she muttered, flinging the phone back into the case. The white envelope lay on the sofa and she pulled out the pages to flick through them. Her
eyes widened in mounting horror as her attention was caught. She stiffened and sat up straight and studied the typescript with growing concern. He wouldn’t do that to her, would he? But his
signature was on the last page. The line with her name blank underneath his. No wonder he hadn’t wanted her to read it, and just sign it unseen. This was unambiguous proof of how her husband
had planned an even greater betrayal than the ones she had already learned about this day.

Stunned, she reread the papers just to make sure she wasn’t mistaken, and what she read spelled the death knell of her marriage. She had to take action, had to take desperate measures or
her future would be even more uncertain than it was now.

Colette stood up and paced the room. There was no one she could talk to or confide in. She couldn’t tell her parents. They were elderly and far away and she knew they would insist on
flying over to New York to be with her. She would end up having to take care of them. And besides she didn’t want Frank knowing the depths Des had sunk to.

She
wouldn’
t tell anyone here in New York about what had happened. How mortifying would that be? It was bad enough that her husband had got screwed by Madoff, and proved that he
was not the financial hot shot he thought he was, and that he was having an affair, but this last wounding duplicity was one none of her American friends would ever know about. And she certainly
couldn’t and wouldn’t tell their daughter. Jazzy idolized her dad. It would be bad enough that she would learn that her parents were divorcing and that their wealth was no longer
secure.

Colette glanced at her watch. Ireland was five hours ahead. It was 5.30 a.m. in Dublin. There was only one person in the world she could share the horrendous details of today with, but even 5.30
was too early to ring Hilary. She’d get into bed and wait for another half an hour. She’d take a Xanax instead of a sleeper. She would need all her wits about her tomorrow without
having the cotton-wool head sleeping tablets gave her. She went out to the kitchen to get a drink and a water cracker to take with her tablet. Des’s side of creamy mash was still in the
fridge, she remembered, having the sudden urge to eat something comforting and hot, even though she didn’t feel particularly hungry. She shoved the dish of potato into the microwave and when
it was heated dropped a dollop of butter into it and spooned the mash into her mouth. It was completely comforting and so very tasty and easy to swallow. There was a dish of mac and cheese covered
with cling film; that would slide down easily too, Colette decided, putting that in the microwave. And toast! Hot buttered toast! How good was that?

An hour later, sickened after her binge and purge, Colette lay against her fluffy pillows, fingers trembling, as she dialled Hilary’s number. It rang and rang, and then, relieved more than
words could say, Colette heard her oldest friend say a groggy, ‘Hello?’