Getting Rid of Matthew (9 page)

"It's genius. And did she really ever say she fancied Matthew?"

"No, of course not, I added that bit."

"Nice touch."

"All I've done is put off the inevitable. And make it even worse for myself, once they do find out."

"I wouldn't worry about that," Rachel said helpfully. "Your life's pretty much over anyway, once they realize."

* * *

Back at home, Helen thought about telling Matthew about Helen-from-Accounts, but decided against it. It would only have worried him, thinking that everyone in the office was talking about him and watching his every move. Besides, he might have made a big deal of going in to work and denying it for the other Helen's sake and it suited Helen to have people believing it was the truth.

* * *

On Tuesday, despite her best instincts screaming at her to stay in the office and eat a sandwich at her desk, Helen was back at her lunchtime post again, having told Laura she needed an extra-long lunch break to go to the dentist. It was a beautifully sunny January day and the square was peppered with people venturing out for the first time that year, faces turned up to the sky like penguins watching an overhead airplane, sleeves rolled up defiantly even though they were shivering. Once again, Helen followed Sophie to Eat, lurked about behind her, then followed her back again toward the front door of May and Co., then past it when Sophie walked on and turned in to the square. She sat on a bench in the cool winter sun, took a newspaper out of her bag, and read while she ate her sandwich (crayfish and rocket—she had dithered about between that and ham, brie, and honey mustard while Helen looked on, wondering what she was doing there and pretending to be interested in the writing on the side of a tuna and cucumber baguette).

Helen didn't know what else to do other than go and sit on the next bench along and keep an eye on her. To what end, she had no idea, but it felt defeatist to turn around and go back to work. Sophie was flicking through her
Metro
and Helen took the opportunity to have a good stare at her as she walked past. It seemed so bizarre that she had a whole life of her own, a whole independent way of being that existed outside of Helen's vision of her in her head. It was almost like seeing Harry Potter walking up Camden High Street or Shrek in the corner shop, buying tea bags. She knew she shouldn't stare, in case Sophie glanced up and caught her gawking, but she couldn't drag her eyes away. Consequently, she didn't notice the overgrown tree root poking out of the pathway in front of her, or the fact that her left foot was heading straight for it.

"Aaagh!"

Helen lay sprawled on the frozen ground, clutching her ankle, which was throbbing and swelling up all at the same time. In her memory of it later, she was all Kate Winslet in
Sense and Sensibility
but, in reality, she was red in the face and slightly snotty and tearful, as much from the embarrassment as from the pain. She was trying to see if she could haul herself up without drawing any more attention to herself when she noticed that Sophie had lowered her paper, and was looking at her concerned.

"Are you OK?"

Oh, God, she's talking to me. "My ankle. I think I've sprained it. Aaagh."

"Here, see if you can walk." Sophie helped to pull her to her feet and Helen winced as she put the weight onto her foot.

"No…it hurts. Sorry, I'm sure you've got things to do. I'll be OK, I just need to rest it for a bit, I think."

"Well, you can't do that out here," said kindhearted Sophie. "My office is just over there. You can sit in there for a bit and then if it doesn't get any better we can get you a taxi to casualty."

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

All Helen's impulses were telling her to run away, that this surely couldn't lead to anything good, but she really had twisted her ankle, she really couldn't walk, it really would be foolish to sit out in the cold waiting for it to feel better, and besides, how could she resist a look inside Sophie's office?

"Ouch," she said as she hobbled toward the red-stuccoed front of the May and Co. building. Sophie gave her her arm and Helen leaned on her for support.

12

H
ELEN WAS LYING
on the sofa in Sophie's office, taking it all in. It was disconcertingly tidy and well organized, with neat piles of paper in labeled trays, and books graded according to height on the dark wood shelves.

There was no
personality
in the room, Helen thought, no pictures on the wall or photos on the desk—not that Helen was a fan of those women who plastered their offices with pictures of their children as if they were advertising them for sale, but there ought to be something, even if it was just a lipstick, lying on the desktop.

"I know. I'm a control freak." Sophie had clocked her looking around. "It's the only way I'm able to keep on top of everything. I can't afford the time to indulge myself in any distractions. Plus, I work in finance, so I'm probably autistic."

Sophie's assistant had made Helen a mug of tea and Sophie had propped her foot up on a cushion. Helen had a sneaky look at her watch: twenty-eight minutes past one. She ought to leave now to get back to the office by two.

"I'm Sophie, by the way." Sophie extended her hand to shake.

"Helen…a…Eleanor…" stuttered Helen.

"Do you work round here?"

Oh, God. Think.

"I'm a publicist. Freelance. I work from home. I live just round the corner. In…erm…" She hesitated because she barely knew where she was, let alone the names of any local streets. "…well, just round the corner, anyway."

"My husband's in PR. Well, my ex-husband, I suppose. Ex-husband-to-be, actually."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"Don't be. He turned out to be a shit."

"Right."

There was an awkward moment's silence where Helen, momentarily blindsided by this unprovoked mention of Matthew, couldn't think of anything to say, and Sophie absorbed herself in moving papers in and out of her In tray. Thankfully, the silence was punctured by the phone ringing.

"Sorry." Sophie half looked up at her. "Do you mind if I get that?"

Helen gestured go ahead, don't mind me. She listened in as Sophie took the call, in the hope of gleaning another helpful piece of inside Sophie information, but the conversation turned out to be about capital gains tax and other equally dull but far more complicated monetary things. Helen watched out of the corner of her eye as Sophie chatted, oblivious. She noticed how Sophie wound the telephone cord around and around in her free hand as she talked. I do that, she thought. In fact, it occurred to her as she studied Sophie's face, physically we could be sisters, although Helen was sallow-skinned to Sophie's porcelain. She wondered briefly what Hannah looked like.

By the time Sophie's call had finished, it was clear that she needed to get on with her work, and Helen was all too aware that she ought to get back to the office herself, so she gingerly tried her ankle and, although it was agony, declared that she felt OK to walk home. She felt reluctant to end the moment, though, and frustrated that she hadn't used the opportunity to learn more about Sophie, to better effect. Fuck it, she thought. What have I got to lose? Well, actually, pretty much everything, her conscience's alter ego was saying, but she ignored her own voice of reason. It was now or never so she tried her best shot.

"Is there a good gym round here? I haven't lived here very long and I haven't had a chance to have a good look round."

Sophie bought it.

"I've just joined Fit For Life in City Road. It's not bad. Gets a bit crowded at lunchtime."

"Great. I'll have a look."

"Tell you what, they gave me a load of guest passes—you can come with me one day if you want. Once your ankle's better."

Hallelujah. Helen could hear the crowds roaring.

"That'd be brilliant."

So they exchanged numbers and Helen thanked Sophie for looking after her and promised to call. Sophie picked up a file from her desk and absorbed herself in it, and within a couple of minutes had more or less forgotten all about her lunchtime encounter.

* * *

"So, what was she like?" Helen had told Rachel an edited version of the story, which somehow had her down in Finsbury Square on legitimate business and the meeting with Sophie a completely million-to-one-shot random encounter. She wasn't sure that Rachel believed her.

"She's…OK. Just…normal, you know," Helen said, noncommittally.

"For fuck's sake, you've been obsessed with this woman for years, you must have more of an opinion on her than 'She's OK.'"

"Quite nice, I suppose, actually…I don't know."

"Mumsy?"

"No, actually."

"Frumpy?"

"No."

"Funny? Clever? New best friend material?"

"No. Of course not. She's just…ordinary, you know."

"Any deformities, scars, bits missing?"

"Not that I could see."

"God, how disappointing."

* * *

Helen-from-Accounts had never been so popular. People were practically queuing to have lunch with her, asking all about her home life and her husband. She had no idea what'd brought on this sudden surge in status, but she was grateful for it, having always up to this point eaten her lunch alone, sitting at her desk with a magazine. Today she was sitting in Prêt with Annie and Jenny, eating a mozzarella-and-avocado salad and answering their questions about who she liked and didn't like at Global.

"How about Matthew?" Annie was saying. "What do you think of him?"

Helen-from-Accounts had always found Matthew to be charming—friendly, polite, patient when his expenses weren't paid on time.

"Oh, I like him," she said, not realizing the trap she was allowing herself to fall into.

Jenny made a small, strangled noise which turned into a cough.

"How about Anthony?" said Helen-from-Accounts, mentioning one of the other directors. "I'm not sure about him."

"Oh, he's OK," said Jenny, "but do you think Matthew's good-looking?"

"I think he's attractive," said Helen-from-Accounts and there was an almost audible thump as she dug her own grave and fell into it. And to make things worse for herself, she blushed, because she wasn't used to making girly chat and the excitement of making new friends was giving her a hot flush.

* * *

Matthew and Helen were going through their usual evening routine: dinner in front of
Emmerdale
(both now hooked), a few glasses of wine, on the sofa, feet up, watch TV till bedtime. Helen had gotten used to the sight of Matthew flopping round the flat in his pajama bottoms and T-shirt and she'd long since stopped making any effort to look good at home. They made pleasant if rather anodyne conversation and they had sex much less frequently than when they'd only seen each other for a few hours a week. Helen couldn't believe that Matthew was happy, but he kept saying that he was, so who was she to argue? She, of course, was anything but.

Tonight, though, Matthew had come home with a big bunch of lilies and arranged them in a green glass vase which he'd placed on the coffee table in the living room. Helen had never been one for flowers—not that she didn't like them, she loved having a tiny, aromatic piece of nature in her home—rather, she had never been one for receiving flowers from men. They were like chocolates or perfume, gifts that required no imagination, no inside knowledge of the recipient. Autistic men's gifts. "She woman, must give flowers." It seemed to her that there was nothing more insulting than being given a bouquet or a box of Ferrero Rocher on your birthday by someone who purported to know your inner soul better than anyone. But the random nature of Matthew's gift touched her, and despite the fact that they were now blocking out part of the TV screen, she snuggled up next to him affectionately with her head on his chest and he stroked her hair gratefully. She wished she could feel for him the way she used to, or at least the way she used to believe she did.

"Did you and Sophie ever have a second honeymoon?" she asked, genuinely wanting to know the answer.

Matthew looked cornered, as if she'd shown him CCTV footage of himself with his hand in the till.

"Erm…no, no…of course not," he stammered, protesting way too much.

"Lots of couples do, you know, when they've been together a while."

"You know what our relationship was like the past few years. I could barely stand to spend time with her."

Helen felt guilty that she'd forced him into this position where he felt he wasn't allowed to admit to even the tiniest glimmer of affection for his wife.

"You can tell me, you know. I won't mind."

But, of course, Matthew wasn't going to be caught out again. He'd fallen for this line of Helen's once before when she'd gotten him to admit that he and Sophie still had occasional sex, and then she'd forgotten that she'd promised she wouldn't mind and she'd gotten angry and irrational. He wasn't going down that path a second time.

"I told you, no," he said, standing up. "Let's not talk about Sophie."

* * *

Later, Matthew's mobile rang and he moved through to the other room so as not to disturb Helen's TV watching. He came back looking anxious.

"That was Louisa. Jason's left her and moved in with another woman. Apparently it's been going on since before Christmas."

"Fucking hell, it runs in the family. Still, at least you won't be the black sheep now."

"Louisa wants to know if she can come and stay here for a few days while he moves his stuff out."

"No. Matthew, no. This flat's too small for us two, let alone one of your sisters."

"And the baby."

"And the baby. Christ. Ring her and tell her we're really sorry, but no. I feel really bad for her, I really do, but she'll have to go and stay with Amanda or something."

"I've already told her yes. She's driving up now, she'll be here in about an hour."

"Fucking hell, Matthew. I mean…fucking hell. This is my flat. You can't randomly invite people to stay."

"Thank you for reminding me that this isn't my home. But I left my wife and my own beautiful house for you, if you remember"—Oh, here we go, Helen thought—"and I think the least you can do is let me put up a member of my family who's in trouble."

"Looks like I have fuck-all say in the matter if you've already told her it's OK."

Helen stomped around for the next hour or so, tidying up in silence and making up a bed on the sofa. She wasn't sure she'd ever met a two-year-old baby in the flesh before and wanted to ask Matthew what it'd need to sleep on, but that would have meant speaking to him, so she didn't bother.

At nine o'clock, the doorbell rang and a tearful woman carrying a crying child was let in. Helen didn't think she'd ever seen so much snot and tears. Louisa's nose—prominent at the best of times—glowed red and shiny and her mousy brown hair curled flat and damp against her head. Helen knew that Matthew's sisters were a good few years younger than he was—the product of his father's return to the family after a sojourn with his secretary—and she guessed that Louisa, as the youngest, must be around forty-six, but she was the kind of woman it was impossible to age, so conventional was she, from her paisley-patterned neck scarf to her matching gloves, shoes, and handbag. The baby—it was wearing a dress, so it must be a girl—was put on the floor, where she toddled around sticking her covered-in-God-knows-what fingers into Helen's things.

Helen got some wine while Louisa cried all over Matthew and told him what'd gone on in a series of incoherent, sobby sentences. Louisa had scarcely acknowledged Helen's existence yet, except for a quick once-over when she first came in. Now she was so wrapped up in her own misery that she was ignoring the baby's attempts to electrocute herself by poking her fingers in the back of the TV, so Helen had to step in.

"Erm…should she be doing that?"

Louisa gave the baby a cursory glance.

"Jemima."

Jemima? What sort of a fucking name was that?

Jemima, of course, being two years old, took no notice, and Louisa was already back to sniveling all over her older brother, so Helen had no choice other than to hoick the baby away from the television herself. She held her at arms' length, then placed her down next to her mother. No way, she thought, am I going to be babysitter to this child.

"I'm going to bed," she announced to the room. "Louisa, the sofa's all made up. Jemima'll have to sleep in with you, I'm afraid. Help yourself to anything. I'm sure Matthew will show you where stuff is."

Louisa didn't even look up from her crying.

"OK, night, then." Helen backed out of the room.

* * *

Between Matthew tripping over a chair as he made his way to bed at midnight, Jemima crying, and Louisa getting up and making herself tea at six, Helen had maybe three hours of sleep. So she wasn't in the best of moods when she came into the kitchen and found Louisa feeding Jemima at the table.

"Morning." She tried to inject a bubbliness into her voice that was alien to her.

Louisa looked at her coolly, gazing out from red, swollen eyes.

"So now you know what effect your actions will have had."

Oh, great.

"Excuse me?"

"You're seeing it from the other side. How a woman feels when her husband's gone off with someone else, left her alone with her children. It's not pleasant, is it?"

Why did all of Matthew's family speak like Barbara Cartland had written their script for them?

"Matthew's the one who left Sophie, not me."

"But if women like you weren't out there beckoning, men wouldn't be tempted."

"Women like me, meaning what, exactly?" Helen was considering how it would feel to punch Louisa square in one of her red pig's eyes.

"Women who think that marriage means nothing, women who think that their bit of fun is worth more than another woman's years of commitment and emotional investment, women who think it's OK for children to grow up without a father, women who don't have a man of their own."

"Well, thank you for that succinct and scarily accurate assessment of my character. Just one thing—have you ever considered that some women push their men away? Drive them into the arms of other people by bitching and nagging and…boring them to death? By being sanctimonious and superior and…self-righteous?"