Getting Rid of Matthew (30 page)

"I'm going." She stood up, and Matthew moved his legs to let her pass.

"Oh, and his stuff." Helen turned back to Sophie. "It's not in storage, it's at my house."

"That's not true." Matthew glared at her.

Helen was still looking at Sophie. "Sophie, I'm really, really sorry. For everything. I was a bitch for the last four years, but I've been trying to make up for it. I know you won't believe me, but it's true. I've really valued our friendship, and I'm really going to miss you." She felt a tear escape down her cheek. "I know you're never going to believe that but it is true."

"Please go. I don't want to listen to you anymore."

"I know. Just…I know it's none of my business…but I care about you, I really do. Just think hard before you take him back. He's still lying to you, Sophie. He's incapable of behaving any other way."

"Matthew and I are getting back together and there's nothing you can do about it," Sophie half called after her as she left.

* * *

"You came on to my son? You came on to my fucking son?" Helen banged the phone down. She didn't know why she'd answered it, she'd known it would be him, no one else ever called on the home number. She wiped her eyes, poured herself another glass of wine, and lay back down on the sofa feeling—temporarily—all cried out. She didn't know why this hurt so much, she never had to see either Sophie or Matthew again, so what difference did it make if they knew what she'd been doing? What difference did it make if they hated her?

It was the fact that she had been so close—she was home and dry, everyone had gotten what they wanted. Now she felt dirty, like a criminal who had insidiously oiled her way into other people's lives for her own ends. Of course, they didn't understand that she had been acting with their own interests at heart, why would they, it was insane—even she didn't understand it.

In desperation, she called Rachel, knowing it was pointless.

"Bali or Mauritius?" Rachel sounded chirpy.

"I don't know. Rachel, it's all fucked up," she sobbed loudly.

"Jesus, Helen, what's up?"

Helen couldn't get the words out; when she tried, a sort of gurgle drowned out what she was trying to say.

"Stay where you are. I'm coming over."

"Will you?" Helen felt pathetically grateful.

"Of course." There was a pause and then Rachel spoke again. "Oh, shit. I can't, I've got someone coming round about flowers at eight."

"Never mind," Helen managed to say.

"No, fuck it. I'll cancel the flower woman."

"Really?"

"Really. To be honest, I'm going to go insane if I have to have another conversation about lilies versus roses. In fact, you're the only person I can say this to, but this whole fucking wedding is driving me mad."

"You can tell me all about it," Helen said.

"No chance," said Rachel, laughing. "It's way too boring. Open the wine, I'll be over in half an hour."

* * *

In a way, it was like old times; they got drunk and they bitched and Rachel listened to Helen while she poured her heart out about Matthew and Sophie and Leo. But Helen knew that however hard she was trying, she didn't
really
understand. Nothing, for Rachel, was ever really that serious. It felt great to have her friend back, of course it did. It would do her good to have someone to have a laugh with, to go shopping or to the cinema with. She would even throw herself into helping to plan the dreaded wedding. But it wasn't enough.

34

T
HE NEXT FEW WEEKS PASSED
in a kind of haze. Helen felt numb, like she was observing things through a thick fog. She couldn't decide what she was most depressed about, the fact that Sophie had now thrown away her life on a man who would—inevitably—fuck her over again in the future, or the fact that she, Helen, had orchestrated the whole thing.

Matthew's belongings were now stacked up in the hall. Helen was beginning to think that he was never going to come and get them, but she couldn't bring herself to throw them away, nor was she about to call him and ask him what he wanted her to do with them. She had endured two days of angry phone calls from him before she had decided to unplug the phone and leave it unplugged. She only answered her mobile to Laura, Rachel, and her mum. Well, she would make a decision about his belongings when she moved—she had given in her notice at the flat and was halfheartedly looking for new places, although there was something about being told again—at nearly forty—that you weren't allowed to keep a pet or that you mustn't hammer a nail into the wall to hang a picture, that she was finding utterly soul-destroying.

There was no getting away from it—she missed Sophie. She had known she would, of course, and she thought she had prepared herself for it, comforting herself that she was doing the right thing by her friend. It was bizarre that someone she had known for such a relatively short time should leave such a big gap in her life. Despite the fact that Rachel was back to her old self, Helen now knew that she couldn't count on her regardless. There was only one person she wanted to call right now to share her troubles with—and she was never going to be able to speak to that person again.

The first couple of weeks of her new job were lonely, setting up the office on Marshall Street on her own, sitting by a phone that rarely rang. She knew she should be out hustling for new clients, but at the moment it took all her energy to drag herself home on the tube for
Emmerdale
, pasta, wine, and then bed. When Laura joined her on week four and their assistant, Rhona, shortly after, she started to feel like she was waking up and work became a friendly alternative to being home alone. It was still a few weeks before Helen-from-Accounts would arrive with her hilarious postcards of anthropomorphized kittens and coffee mugs adorned with witty sayings. Helen knew she would be wanting to put up posters in the kitchen about washing up after yourself before too long, and she had already decided to have a quiet word asking her not to bother.

Occasionally, Laura and Helen went to the pub after work, which broke up the week, although they were still at the stage where they mostly talked about business and, though they got on, hadn't yet found much common ground elsewhere.

As a favor to Sandra, Helen placed a "Sandra turns her back on celebrity" piece, because although Sandra had chosen to bow out quietly, she hadn't chosen to bow out
that
quietly, and that led to several follow-up stories about how Sandra had really been a good girl at heart, looking for love all along. Before she saw it coming, Sandra was signing a contract for a reality TV show following her first steps in her new life in Italy, and Helen had agreed to take on all her PR. Helen was walking with a demurely dressed Sandra through Soho after leaving a meeting with the TV company when she stopped dead as she saw a familiar figure. Up ahead of them was Matthew, striding along with that overconfident walk he had when things were going his way, and walking next to him, holding his hand while she struggled to keep up, was a woman. A woman who wasn't Sophie.

"Jesus," Helen found herself saying out loud.

"What? What is it?" Sandra strained to see what Helen was looking at.

Matthew and the woman—who, though attractive and with the requisite long brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail, was most definitely in her fifties, which was unusually appropriate for Matthew—stopped outside Global, where they kissed, on the lips, in full view of the world.

"Isn't that Matthew?" Sandra said, starting to wave. Helen grabbed her flailing arm.

"No…I don't want him to see me with you. He might be upset…you know…that you left Global and went with me," she said, knowing full well that Global had dropped Sandra weeks ago.

Matthew went up the steps and into the building, and the woman turned back the way she had come and walked straight past Helen and Sandra, who were still rooted to the spot. She smiled vaguely as she passed them in that way people sometimes do at strangers, and Helen thought she looked…
nice
. She didn't look like a home wrecker; she looked like someone's slightly glamorous aunt. Like someone who would look after you when you had the flu while still remembering to put on her lipstick at the same time.

It was unbelievable. No, wait, it was all too credible, given Matthew's history. Maybe a bit sooner than she'd expected, but inevitable just the same. Matthew was incapable of sticking with one woman at a time. He lived his whole life terrified that the grass was greener somewhere else, or that somewhere there was a party he ought to get himself an invite to. He'd conned Sophie into taking him back, and now he was doing this to her…and it was all Helen's fault.

Helen hugged Sandra good-bye and wished her luck for filming, which started in two days' time with a scene in which—it had already been decided—Sandra would make a spontaneous decision to throw out all her skimpy outfits, which weren't going to suit her new life and personality.

She walked back around to the office—the
CARSON PR
sign still gleaming bronze outside—and shut herself in her own small room. She had no idea what to do. This was none of her business. This was
so
none of her business, but she couldn't bear to sit back and let Sophie have her life ruined all over again. Shit, why did she have to see him? Why did she care? She was sitting with her head in her hands, staring at the top of her cluttered desk, when Laura came in and Helen found herself confiding the whole story to her.

"Don't get involved."

"I can't just let him get away with it."

"I mean it, don't get involved. What good can it do?"

"I can get her to see what he's really like before they get too serious again. I don't know."

"My guess is they're serious already. Leave it alone."

"Oh, God." Helen laid her head down on top of a pile of papers. "Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God."

* * *

At six o'clock, she persuaded Rhona to go to the pub for a quick one, where she downed three large glasses of wine while she listened to the twenty-three-year-old assistant's sweet but inane ramblings about the merits of Usher versus Lee Ryan. By the time she got home, she knew she was pissed and she knew it was a bad idea, but she sat down with another glass anyway and punched Sophie's mobile number into her phone. If she answered, Helen would hang up—she couldn't face another fight, and besides, Matthew might be there listening in to the other end of the call—but if it went to answerphone, she would leave a message. Saying what, she hadn't quite decided, as she heard the ring tone change to indicate the call was going on to voice mail and then Sophie's voice telling her to leave a message.

"Erm…God…Sophie, it's, erm, Eleanor, well, Helen…You know…Me. Oh, shit, this is such a bad idea. Erm…I'm not calling to apologize again, because I know you don't want to hear it, and I know you hate me at the moment." At this point, she sniffed loudly and a drunken tear rolled down her cheek and landed on the sleeve of her sweater. She dabbed at it with her spare hand.

"Anyway. I have to tell you something and…please hear me out, don't hang up…I'm not doing this out of any kind of revenge or anything other than that I feel bad that I pushed you back towards Matthew and now he's screwing someone else behind your back. Again. Shit, that's what I've got to tell you—I saw him with another woman and I'm not imagining things, he was definitely
with
her, if you know what I mean. I don't know about the screwing bit, but I'm guessing…knowing Matthew. I want you to know what he's like—that he hasn't changed, and you shouldn't let yourself get dragged through all that again. You're too good for him. Way, way too good for him. And…I'm going now. Thanks for listening. If you did. Sorry. Bye."

She pressed the red button to cut the call off and then immediately dialed again.

"It's me again…If you get this call first, then don't listen to the other one. I can't remember what order they play them back to you in. But if you do, don't listen. Ignore it. Oh…and if you've already listened, then sorry. Bye."

Oh, fuck, she thought once she'd hung up, I didn't say who it was that time, which means she'll definitely listen to the other call just to find out. She considered ringing for a third time, but even in a slight alcoholic haze she could see that that would be stupid and would turn the whole thing into even more of a farce than it already was. It was fifty-fifty; Sophie would either hear the bad news or she wouldn't. It was out of Helen's hands.

She woke up in the early morning, clothes on, TV blaring, lying on the sofa still in her shoes. Her mobile phone lay on the floor beside her. Oh, shit, she thought. What the fuck did I do that for? She switched it off, half stumbled to the bedroom, took off her top layers, and crawled into bed, hoping to sleep some more. She found herself thinking about Leo, though, something she didn't allow herself to do very often. How had he felt when he heard the news that the woman he'd kissed was his father's girlfriend? His potential new stepmother. That must've been a good day, like walking onto the set of
Jerry Springer
, the only one who doesn't know why he's there, about to be humiliated. And how about the fact that she had talked to him about her disastrous relationship that she was trying to get herself out of? With his father. Oh, and the small fact of her lying to him about her name, her job, pretty much everything. Except the fact that she fancied him, Helen thought. That bit was true.

35

S
PRING MOVED INTO EARLY SUMMER
and Helen waited for a response from Sophie, jumping every time she heard her phone ring, but there was nothing. Either she never listened to the message or she had decided to ignore it. Helen didn't know what kind of response she was expecting—anger probably—but after she got over the relief that it was looking like she'd gotten away with it, she began to feel cheated. How could Sophie just turn a blind eye to a piece of news like that? What was wrong with her?

Helen knew that the gossip machine must have gone into motion, that everyone she knew must know that Matthew had gone back to his wife, but no one ever mentioned it directly to her, although the sympathetic looks she often got from mutual acquaintances made her think—gratefully—that Matthew must have kept the whole Helen/Eleanor saga to himself and was allowing her to play the victim, which suited her just fine. Helen-from-Accounts had mentioned tentatively one day that Geoff had a friend who might be a good match for Helen, and Helen had wondered (aloud as it happened, although she hadn't meant to) whether suicide might be a better option. Laura simply never brought the subject up.

One morning, Helen arrived for work and found Laura, Helen-from-Accounts, and Rhona standing around a large, messy-looking chocolate cake with
HAPPY 40
TH
HELEN
written on the top in squiggly writing. She was late, and they'd clearly given up waiting for her and were having a conversation about
EastEnders
, so she had to cough to let them know that she was there so that they could launch into a painful version of "Happy Birthday." Helen had been trying to forget about her big day, and she didn't know whether to laugh or cry for a moment, but when she then thought about the fact that these three women were the only people in the world who had remembered her birthday—not her mum and dad, not any of her other friends that she saw once a year, not even Rachel—she opted for crying, which brought the singing to an abrupt end.

"I made the cake myself," Helen-from-Accounts said, which made Helen cry even more.

To make matters worse, they had bought her a gift—a very tasteful bracelet, which Helen guessed (rightly) Laura had chosen—and they went out for lunch to the local dim sum restaurant and drank Tiger beer and went back to the office late and slightly giggly. Helen felt both awkward and flattered about the fuss the others were making, and tried not to think about how depressing it was that the sum total of her forty years amounted to this random little bunch of people she had ended up working with. At the end of the day, they tried to persuade her to let them take her down to the pub, but she knew that they all had lives that they wanted to get home to, and besides, the beer from lunchtime had given her a headache, so she claimed other plans and went back to her flat.

* * *

She was putting some pasta into a saucepan when the doorbell rang. She had long since stopped expecting Matthew to come back for his things, but even so, the jarring croak of the bell made her stomach lurch and her heart start to pound. She felt sick with nerves as she half crept to the front door to peep through the spy-hole. A flickering light—a candle maybe—seemed to be burning outside her door against a white background, like a benign version of a Ku Klux Klan ritual. There didn't appear to be a face attached or at least none she could see. She could just tiptoe back down the hall and hide under her duvet until they went away, but curiosity and gratefulness that someone—even if it was someone who hated her and was likely to throw petrol over her and use the candle to light it—had remembered her birthday combined to overcome her nervousness, and she turned the key in the lock, putting the chain on first.

The white cardboard box—for she now saw that's what it was—contained a large cream and fresh fruit birthday cake with one lit candle sticking out of the center. As the door scraped open on the mat, the box was lowered, and Helen saw Sophie looking—rather blankly—over the top of it.

"Happy birthday," she said in a voice that was impossible to read. "It is your birthday, isn't it?"

Helen was thrown. She had often imagined a fraught and anger-filled meeting with Sophie one day and, in her lowest moments, had comforted herself with a deeply unlikely fantasy in which her former friend came around to say that she forgave her for everything, and they somehow picked up exactly where they had left off before it all went wrong (only with Helen being Helen and not Eleanor, of course). But this Sophie didn't seem to have read either of those scripts, and was now standing awkwardly on the doorstep, cake in hand, looking like she didn't know what to do next. The fact that she'd brought the cake, though—and lit the candle in quite a festive way—that surely had to be a good thing. Unless it was poisoned, of course.

"God. Thanks," Helen blustered. "I can't believe you remembered." And then realizing she had to do something to break the stalemate, "Do you want to come in?"

"OK. Just for a minute."

Helen led the way down the corridor, wishing she'd tidied up at any point in the past month.

"So…" Sophie was saying, looking around, "this is where Matthew was living."

"Erm…yes."

There was what seemed to both women like an endless silence. "Have you come to pick up his things?" Helen said eventually.

Sophie didn't answer her question. "I got your message."

"Oh…I was drunk. I'm sorry. I really wasn't trying to make trouble…" She ran out of steam.

"It's OK, I know all about her—Alexandra—I've known for a while."

"Right." Helen saw Sophie was still holding the box and took it from her. "It's a lovely cake."

"Isn't it?"

"I'll get us a drink. You will stay for a drink, won't you?"

She opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio and poured two large glasses, then went back through to the living room and sat on the chair opposite the sofa, where Sophie was now sitting. What the fuck was going on? She took a deep breath.

"Sophie. Don't get me wrong, it's great to see you, but I don't understand. Last time we saw each other, well…let's just say I wasn't expecting you to remember my birthday."

Sophie took a long sip of her wine. "To be honest, I don't really know what I'm doing here. I felt bad, knowing it was your birthday and knowing you might be sitting here on your own…"

"Because I have no friends…"

"…because you have no friends. Understandably." She half smiled. "And I wanted you to know something, just because…well, I just wanted you to know." She breathed in deeply, looking at Helen over her glass. "Matthew and I aren't together."

"Oh. Right…Alexandra."

"No, Alexandra came later. She's very recent, actually, they met at some kind of divorcée meeting. She's nice, I like her, but it's early days and it might be too much to hope he'll stick with someone who's his own age."

"She
looked
nice." Helen had no idea where this conversation was leading.

"I hated you that evening," Sophie carried on. "You have no idea how I felt having to take all that in—about you, about Matthew."

Helen was looking intently at a spot of dirt on the coffee table. "I'm sorry."

"But I knew you were telling the truth about the fact that he was still lying to me. I thought you were telling me because you wanted him back for yourself…"

Helen snorted despite herself.

"…and then I realized it didn't even matter if that was the reason, the fact was he hadn't changed, and he was probably never going to. So I told him I wasn't going to take him back."

"How did he take it?"

"Cried, shouted, blamed it all on you. At one point, he was definitely considering asking you if he could come back here, though—he hates being on his own."

"Shit, I really messed everything up. If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't even have got close to him again. I should've just told him that night when he turned up on my doorstep that it was wrong, that I didn't want him. Saved us all a lot of trouble."

"You should've never fucked my husband in the first place."

"That, too. I'm sorry."

"I haven't come here to try and give you a hard time. I just thought you deserved to know, that's all. How it all turned out." Her voice softened. "I know you were worried about me. At least, that's what I gathered from those drunken messages."

She put her glass on the table and stood up. Helen suddenly felt that, more than anything in the world, she wanted to keep Sophie there long enough for them to patch up their friendship properly.

"Don't go. Please. Have another glass of wine." But Sophie was putting her coat on.

"I don't think I should. It feels…weird. I don't even know what to call you."

"What about the cake? At least, help me eat it. You can't bring me a whole cake and then leave me to it."

"Oh," said Sophie, "I meant to say, the cake, it was Leo's idea."

"Leo's?"

"He made it."

"For me?"

"No, for someone else. Of course, for you."

Helen felt a lump rise in her throat. "How is he?"

Sophie looked at her tentatively and then lowered her voice to soften the blow. "He got married."

So that was it, the end of that particular fantasy that Helen had somehow allowed herself to indulge in, where Leo came knocking on her door, telling her he couldn't live without her and so what if she had been shagging his dad only a couple of months ago, he loved her. "He got married? Who to?"

Sophie laughed. "Oh, sorry, did I say he got married? I meant he got a new car. Of course he hasn't got married."

Helen managed a laugh. "How could you do that to me? I mean…obviously I've done much worse to you…" she added, feeling as though she had to keep apologizing for her behavior.

Sophie interrupted her, still smiling. "I'd rather we didn't keep bringing it up, to be honest."

"So, truthfully, how is he?"

"He's good. He said to say hello."

"He did? And he made me a cake?"

"It's taken a while for him to get used to the idea that his father was Carlo—that
he
was the reason you didn't get together. There wasn't a real Carlo, as well, was there? I get so confused…"

"No!" Helen was indignant and then remembered she had no right to be. "Honestly."

"Because if you ever get involved with Leo, I for one would kill you if you messed him around."

If she ever got involved with Leo? Had Sophie really just said that?

"Erm…do you think that's possible, that we might ever…?" The question hung in the air between them.

"Elen…Helen, we have to take this one very small step at a time. Who knows what might happen further down the line, but we have to all agree that it's nothing but the truth from now on."

Further down the line? That implied that they were going to see each other again. That there might be a future for their friendship. And who knew what else. "Of course."

"Truthfully, I don't want to hear anything more about you and Matthew, but I do need to know who's Helen and who's Eleanor, if you know what I mean. I don't even know if I know who you are. All I know is that I miss whoever I thought was my friend, and I'd like to see if I can get that back."

"Me, too." Helen was near to tears.

"So I thought maybe we could go for a drink, start again, and see how we get on."

"Really? Yes. Please." Don't beg, she thought. "That'd be great."

"But you have to promise me you won't get in touch with Leo till I say it's OK. Not a thing—not even to say thanks for the cake, because I know what he's like…I don't want you anywhere near him till I know I can really trust you. OK?"

To Helen, this felt like the most reasonable request she'd ever heard.

"OK," she said, starting to smile. "I promise."

They stood in the living room, slightly awkwardly, for a moment, neither quite knowing what the next step should be. Did they make a date to go out for a drink? Did they leave it, with Helen left waiting anxiously for Sophie to call her, like a lovesick teenager? There was a blast of cool evening air as the cat-flap swung open and Norman breezed in from the small backyard, shaking the length of his body huffily to dry himself. It had started to rain outside.

"Oh, is this Cushion?" Sophie asked, and then looked like she was about to sneeze. Helen grabbed him up and bundled him into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.

Helen sighed. "Actually, his name is Norman."

"Right. Of course it is." Sophie's tone betrayed a tiny streak of irritation. "Claudia's cat."

Helen grabbed a pile of photographs from a small table in the corner. "I've been keeping these for her, as a record of how he's doing. Look," she said, brandishing one of the pictures in front of Sophie, "he caught his first mouse. I was going to send them to her…one day…but I didn't know…well, you know…" She ran out of steam. She knew that Norman coming in had just reminded Sophie that everything about her was a lie, that she couldn't even assume the tiny, insignificant details she thought she knew were true. "Well, anyway…"

Sophie took the photographs from her and put them in her bag. "She'll love them, thanks."

Helen inhaled deeply. "And obviously, I'm not a successful PR person, either. Not yet, anyway."

"I gathered that," Sophie said. But she smiled when she said it.

"I'll tell you what," she continued, starting to take off her coat again. Helen held her breath. "I will have another glass of wine. And you can start to tell me who you really are."