Getting Rid of Matthew (29 page)

"So?"

"Oh, God, Eleanor, he wants to come back and I've said yes. At least, I sort of have, I've told him he's got to finish with Helen first and move out, and then we can try and start again. Have I done the right thing? Oh, God."

Helen laughed. "Calm down. Tell me all about it."

"I think he's really changed. And then I think am I just being a sucker and Helen's thrown him out and he needs somewhere to go or something. But I don't think so. I think he's for real."

"Slow down."

"Sorry. Sorry. I'm just, I'm all over the place. How are you?"

"I'm fine. Just tell me how it went."

"He seems different. He said that he'll leave Global and set up on his own, so he can spend more time at home."

"Wow," said Helen, who knew that for Matthew work was everything. Maybe he really had changed. For her friend's sake, she hoped so.

"And he was honest with me. Probably for the first time ever. He told me he'd been seeing her for six months before he moved out."

Helen felt her elation dissipate. "Really, six months?"

"I know, it's awful, isn't it? I'm trying not to think about all the things we did in that time. All the excuses he made when he was home late or whatever. Mind you, he was always home late, so I didn't notice anything different. But…I think that's a big step, him telling me the truth, because he knew it'd upset me, but honesty won—and I appreciate that."

"Six months?" Helen was still trying to take this in.

"Exactly the same as me and him with Hannah," Sophie said sadly.

"That's a coincidence."

"I feel bad about Hannah. I can't believe I cared so little about her at the time."

"I'm sure she's happy. It's been a long time."

They arranged to meet for a drink on Monday night which, Helen knew, would have to be the last time. After that, Eleanor was dead, without even a surname to put on her gravestone. Helen sat on a bench, wondering what to do next, feeling utterly deflated. This ought to have been a great cause for celebration, the day she'd been waiting for for the past two months. She had her life back. She had herself back. So why did she feel like crying?

33

M
ATTHEW HAD MOVED OUT
by the end of Saturday, checking himself into God knew where with his cases and holdalls. Helen had happily agreed to let him come back and pick up the rest of his things later on—some of which were still in boxes from his last move. She had never really made him feel at home in her flat, she thought with a tinge of guilt. In the end, there had been no battle over Norman, who sat oblivious on the sofa while Matthew packed up around him because, of course, he knew he was going back to Sophie, and Sophie was allergic. The flat felt twice the size, even with some of his things remaining, and Helen felt a prickle of pleasure at having her own space back. No more toy cars or felt slippers. No more Sunday afternoons nervously awaiting the return of Suzanne and Claudia. Hopefully, Matthew had learned a few things and was going to be a better father. The weekend stretched out before her and on into the following week, and she had nothing—literally nothing—to do. Well, she would enjoy it, she was determined. She would pamper herself and do all those things she never had time for before her new job started in two weeks' time—if only she could remember what those things were.

On Sunday, she slept in until midday with Norman—previously banned from the bedroom at nighttime—stretched out beside her. It felt right to be on her own. Scary, but right. She would build her life up slowly, piece by piece, and this time she would do everything right—work, friends, home, and maybe, eventually, a boyfriend. One who definitely didn't belong to someone else. She would never do that to another woman again. She would start with her career—she'd been given a chance and she intended to put her heart and soul into making the most of it. Everything else could wait.

She thought about Matthew and Sophie briefly. Six months, he had said, and Sophie had believed him. Helen wished she didn't know that he had lied to her so soon.

The only thing she did on Monday was to call Sandra to break the news she had forgotten to give her on Friday, that she had failed to get a nomination at the Ace Awards. She knew that it would come as no surprise, and she knew that Sandra had probably found out for herself by now, but it felt like a loose end and she wanted to do the professional thing and pass on the news herself. Sandra sounded surprisingly bubbly when she answered the phone.

"Oh, fantastic," she said when Helen asked her how she was feeling, apparently having forgotten her suicide attempt of three days ago.

"Oh, well," she said, when Helen told her the bad news about the awards.

"Sandra, what's going on?" Helen asked, confused.

"I'm giving up show business. I'm going to stop trying to be a celebrity which, let's face it, I should have done a long time ago. And I'm going to go and live in Italy with Giovanni and have babies and milk goats or whatever it is they do."

"Giovanni?"

"You know Giovanni. From that restaurant. Anyway, it turns out he's only been over here for a couple of weeks—he lives in Siena now, even though his mum and dad are in Clacton—and he was temping as a waiter to pay for his trip. He had no idea who I am. I mean it, no idea. He'd never heard of me, never seen my picture in the paper, well, till the day after that do, you know. But he still looked after me and took me home and didn't try and sleep with me. And now that he does know who I am, he doesn't care. And I'm so happy."

"Listen, I'm really, really pleased for you. I think it's great. A fairy tale."

"Thanks…sorry, who is this again?"

Helen smiled. Sandra might be giving up celebrity, but it didn't seem like she was going to be any less self-obsessed. "It's Helen."

"Oh, Helen, sorry. You've always been really nice to me, thanks."

"Good luck," Helen said, as she ended the call. God knew Giovanni could turn out to be a wife-beater or a drunk or a cross-dresser, Sandra barely knew him, but she sounded so happy and, Helen thought, she deserved a bit of happiness.

* * *

Sitting at a corner table in the Lamb in Lamb's Conduit Street, Helen tried not to think about the fact that she would never see Sophie again. She had thought about telling her tonight that she was moving away, but she couldn't face the good-byes and had decided to go for the coward's way out—be unavailable for the next couple of weeks, take longer and longer to return calls and then, once Sophie had begun to tire of her flakiness, announce she was going away. She wanted tonight to be fun and she wanted to hear all the details of Sophie's and Matthew's reconciliation. Had she seen him since he had moved out? Had he told her that Helen had wanted the break-up as much as he had? Had she slept with him yet?

Helen sat in the quieter back room of the pub, near an open fire, jealously guarding the empty chair opposite her. Christ knew how long it would be before she got to go out for a drink in a pub again, that wasn't something she could—or would want to—do on her own. Pubs required friends, and currently she had none. Or boyfriends—ditto. Maybe her and Laura could be friends once they started working together, stop off for the odd drink to talk about work and find they had things in common to chat about. It was a definite possibility—three months ago she'd hated the woman, now she was genuinely fond of her. At this rate she'd be in love with her by Easter. Or Helen-from-Accounts? No, that didn't bear thinking about. She took another long sip of her vodka and cranberry.

Sophie was late, as always. Helen had adjusted her mental clock so that an arrangement to meet Sophie at six thirty actually meant twenty to seven. She looked at her watch—six forty-two—Sophie was two minutes late. Right on cue, Helen saw her friend pushing through the crowd, looking flustered, as if she'd been rushing, as usual, but also unmistakably flushed with something other than the stress of the rush-hour crowds. Helen had never seen anyone glowing before, but Sophie was doing a pretty good impression of it. She stood up and hugged her. Sophie shook her wet umbrella, put it on the floor underneath the table, and sat down.

"You look…amazing." Helen gave her an exaggerated look up and down.

"I feel great. I've made the right decision, I know I have."

"So, has he done it? He's broken it off?"

"He has. He's staying in a hotel around the corner from us. Do you know what's insane? That I felt sorry for Helen. He told me that she begged him to stay, used all kinds of emotional blackmail, but that he knew he was doing the right thing."

Helen bit her tongue. She'd just about gotten over caring for her own sake that Matthew always felt the need to paint her as the weak, desperate one, but the fact that he was still doing this now, while at the same time promising Sophie that he had changed, was
so
infuriating.

"Really, I thought you'd got the impression that she was losing interest anyway. Didn't he say…"

"Well, apparently not. Anyway, I'm not going to lose any sleep feeling bad about her. She obviously didn't feel bad about me those whole six months…"

"Obviously."

"Anyway, it's over. He's promised never to have any contact with her again."

Helen could feel her anger rising on her friend's behalf. Fucking hell, that man was incapable of telling the truth.

"Don't they have things to sort out, I mean, he moved out pretty quickly…all his stuff?"

"In storage."

"Right. Well…good for him." She couldn't get involved, couldn't worry about this, it wasn't her problem anymore. Sophie had gotten him back, which was what she wanted. It was up to her whether or not to fall for his bullshit again. But Helen could see why she had. He was so plausible, so vulnerable, so fucking manipulative. How did he keep getting away with this? Because women—like Helen herself—allowed him to. They
enabled
him. She thought about coming clean with Sophie, saying, "I'm her, I'm Helen," and then exposing all his lies, but the whole idea was too terrifying, she wouldn't know where to start. Sophie would probably think she was playing some kind of sick joke, or she'd just attack her—hadn't she said once that she wanted to kill her rival? She would just have a couple of drinks, say good-night, and leave them to it. She'd done her bit, she'd done what she had set out to do, she'd put the world to rights, now it was up to them. If Sophie was gullible enough to allow him to walk all over her again, then that was her problem.

"I'll get us a drink." Helen stood up. "What do you want?"

And then Sophie said something which made Helen's knees buckle and the room start to swim in front of her eyes.

"Oh, wait for Matthew to get here. He'll be here any minute."

She thought she must have misheard.

"Mmm?"

"Matthew, he's just parking the car and then he's going to pop in and say hello. He gave me a lift down and I wanted him to meet my friend. He'll only stay for one, because he's got to pick up the girls from their friends'…"

Helen didn't hear the rest of what Sophie said, because all the blood from her head had rushed down to her feet and she was having to concentrate on not falling over. She sank back down onto her stool again.

"Oh. Great," she said weakly.

She tried to think straight. She had to get out before he arrived. She could feign illness, but that might take too long, with Sophie fussing over her before she could make her escape. Fuck it. She was never going to see Sophie again anyway, so she would just pretend she was going to use the toilet and then simply walk out. It would be a mystery, but at least they would never know the truth, or if they did work it out, then she would never have to be confronted by it.

She stood up again, legs shaking, and picked up her bag. Her coat she would have to leave behind.

"I'm just going to the ladies'," she said, and turned around to find herself looking straight at Matthew. His expression was a mixture of anger, confusion, and fear.

"Helen?"

She was trapped. She thought about making a run for it, but she would have had to push Matthew out of the way. Sophie was looking at them, bemused.

"Matthew, this is Eleanor, my friend I was telling you about." She looked from one to the other. "Do you two know each other?"

Helen stood there dumbstruck, looking at the ground. There was nothing she could do to save herself here.

"Eleanor?" Matthew was saying. "This is Helen."

Helen couldn't look at Sophie's face.

"I don't understand," Sophie said quietly. "Eleanor, what's going on?"

"What the fuck have you been doing?" Matthew growled.

The truth was starting to dawn on Sophie. "You're not…?"

"I can explain," Helen muttered.

Matthew practically pushed her down into a chair in the corner. She was trapped, with one of them on either side and the table in front of her. A few other drinkers were looking in her direction, fascinated by the drama. Her eyes filled with tears.

"Go ahead," he said tersely.

Helen looked up at Sophie for the first time and her expression floored her. All of the glow had left her—she looked confused and vulnerable, not wanting to take in what she was being told.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm waiting." Matthew ignored her apology. Helen took a deep breath and looked at Sophie.

"You were never meant to know."

"What is this, some kind of fucking game?" Matthew interrupted.

"I felt bad about what I'd done. I realized I didn't want Matthew anymore, and I felt awful that he'd given up his family." She looked up and saw Sophie staring fixedly at her. "I thought I could try and help you get back together. Put things right."

"You made up this whole thing? You…engineered our friendship to try and fuck with my life even more? I confided in you. I told you…things. Christ, you fucking bitch."

Sophie had raised her voice and the people at the other two tables were riveted.

"No. No…making friends with you, that was never meant to happen. I just wanted to see what you were like, because I was feeling so guilty about what had happened, and then I fell over and then…well…then I got to like you. You were my friend. And I wanted to try and put things right."

"Whatever it is you're trying to do, it won't work. I want Sophie back and there's nothing you can do to get in the way of that." Matthew was practically spitting.

"That's what I'm trying to say. I want you and Sophie to get back together." She turned to look at him. "When you turned up on my doorstep, I thought we could try and make a go of it. But we couldn't. And I couldn't just throw you out. So I thought…well, I know now it was a stupid idea…"

"You begged me. Begged me to leave Sophie. And now, just because I don't want you anymore, you're trying to ruin things for us. I should never have got involved with you. Sophie's right, you're a bitch." He put his hand over Sophie's territorially.

Helen met Sophie's hostile gaze.

"It's true. I did beg him to leave you. Over and over again. For how long was it, Matthew?"

Matthew flushed a furious red.

"Six months," Sophie said coolly.

"And let's not forget the other three and a half years," Helen added quietly, turning to stare Matthew down.

"Don't listen to her."

"Four years, Sophie. That's how long we were together. And I'm not proud of that. Believe me, it sickens me. And I'm not telling you that because I want to hurt you, I'm telling you that because you need to know he's still lying to you. He's never going to change."

"She's the one who's lying," Matthew insisted, but Sophie was looking at Helen intently. Neither woman looked at him.

"Remember that time you thought Claudia had meningitis and you couldn't get hold of him because his phone was turned off? She must have been, what, eight at the time? That's because he was with me. Or the time you were meant to go on holiday to France and Matthew canceled at the last minute? My fault I'm afraid. I'd just had an abortion and I threatened to tell you if he didn't stay and look after me. Trust me, I'm
really
not proud of that."

"Fuck you." Sophie nearly spat in her face.

"You're too good for him, Sophie. Don't do it."

"Fuck off. Just fuck off."