Two Fridays in April (18 page)

Stefano’s
, she types.
Near the railway station. A quarter to two. I’ll wear orange
.

Less chance of them being seen there, not a place she’d expect
to bump into any of her friends, or any business associates of Alex.

Less than a minute later, his reply blinks up on her screen:
See you then, looking forward to it
.

He’d wanted them to meet in a hotel – presumably so he could book a room – but she’d said no. Not on a first date: she’s not like that. She’s never been like that. And he didn’t run away when she said no, which is a good sign.

She clicks on his profile picture, the one that prompted her to send the first message, over two months ago now. It pops into a larger format, and she studies his features. Grey eyes, biggish nose, pleasant smile. Teeth hidden; mightn’t be perfect but hopefully not awful.

Hair so short it’s little more than a bristly covering on his head. White, it looks, or light-coloured anyway. She has no objection to short hair – better gone than receding – and his face is presentable enough to carry off the bare look.

Presentable, but not young. Craggy jawline, a fan of creases on either side of his eyes, deep grooves from the base of his nose to the outer edges of his mouth, a network of broken veins scribbled across his cheeks. Quite a few years older than the fifty-two he’s claiming, she’d put a bet on it. Not that she’s in a position to criticise – she put fifty on her profile. They all do it.

She wonders what kind of lover he’ll make, if she decides she wants him. Jack was sweet in bed but too submissive, too eager to please to keep her interested. Con, it has to be said, was gratifyingly enthusiastic between the sheets but lacked finesse – and for all his avowals of passion, was a stranger to the finer points of seduction.

Alex had been promising at the start. He’d had plenty of experience, knew what she’d like without her having to ask for it – until she married him and he got what he really wanted: someone to keep house for him and meet his physical needs as they arose. Someone who would look good on his arm, who could hold her own in an intelligent conversation, and host a sophisticated dinner party. Once he was assured of that he stopped trying to impress her, both in and out of bed. He let the mask drop and became himself.

She was a replacement, that was all, for the wife he had divorced less than two months before he and Isobel had been introduced. The wife whose departure he refused to discuss, passing smoothly onto another topic whenever Isobel brought her up. Maybe that should have warned her – what was he hiding? – but she was lonely, and not inclined to look for warning signs.

She’s aware that other women envy her. Alex is rich and successful and attractive. He writes her generous monthly cheques; he gives her expensive birthday and Christmas presents. He takes her on city breaks to Rome and Paris and Berlin.

But the money means nothing to him, and the presents are so impersonal she knows his secretary bought them. And he spends most of their weekends away on the phone while Isobel wanders alone through galleries and parks.

And when he visits her bedroom once or twice a week – they’ve never shared a room: he claims to be insomniac and not suited to sharing – he rarely speaks as they couple, never stays to hold her for more than a few minutes afterwards. He never wants anything from her that isn’t useful to him.

By the time she met him she was forty-nine, and weary of dating men who inevitably disappointed her, and wondering if she was destined to end up alone. The physical attraction to Alex was immediate when her date at the time, a rather overweight but amusing architect called Samuel, introduced them to one another.

Alex is my old college buddy
, he told her, little imagining that his old college buddy would arrange to meet Isobel again before the night was out, and would propose to her within months.

And foolishly – still foolish at almost fifty – Isobel allowed herself to be swayed by his polished looks and suave manner, his professional background and his expensive gifts. He would do, she thought, he would be someone to grow old with – so she said yes, and made what was arguably the biggest mistake of her mistake-filled life.

And now, a decade later, she has finally decided to leave him.

Nobody will understand, of course. He doesn’t beat her, and as far as she knows he’s not unfaithful. He doesn’t drink too much, or take drugs, or gamble his salary away. When she leaves, all people will see is a woman walking away from her second marriage. Her second failure.

She won’t let that stop her: they can think what they like. But at nearly sixty the prospect of being alone again is too daunting, so she won’t leave him until she can find a viable alternative – and ironically, it was Alex who provided her with the perfect wherewithal.

He presented her with a laptop for Christmas, one of his typical detached gifts. She hadn’t used a computer in years, not since her days of working the ticket desk at the cinema, but
when she switched it on a few days later she discovered that the principles hadn’t changed much. After a few minor teething problems, she worked out how to join an online dating agency, and towards the end of January she had her first encounter.

He was an Italian chiropractor living in Ireland. He was shorter and older than his profile picture had suggested, but he was pleasingly attentive and easy company. They met half a dozen times, and went to bed on three occasions –
Speak Italian
, she ordered, and he murmured words that sounded like music as he removed her clothes gratifyingly slowly, and she closed her eyes and told herself he meant them.

But after their sixth date, when she was beginning to imagine future summers in Tuscany, he vanished abruptly. His profile, still her only means of contact, disappeared overnight from the site. It was like she’d conjured him up.

The second man she met, a forty-one-year-old architect, had amused and aroused her in roughly equal measure, and their one and only physical encounter, which took place in his expensively furnished but rather dirty apartment, left her with bruised upper arms and a bite mark on her inner thigh that took weeks to fade. She deleted his messages and blocked him as soon as she got home: too much, too forceful.

And now it’s April, and this is the third. This one may be different; he may be third time lucky. His name, to all intents and purposes, is Joseph. Hers is Amanda. She enjoys the play-acting: it’s entertaining, and quite arousing. She can be anyone she wants, until she decides she wants to be herself.

She logs off, shuts down the website. She’ll arrive at Stefano’s at two, make sure he’s there ahead of her. She regrets the lie to
Alex about having to work longer today – she’s not a fan of lying in reality, avoids it where she can – but in this instance she could hardly have told him the truth.

She removes her towel and drops it into the laundry basket in the bathroom. She checks the time: ten past nine. Better get a move on – Phyllis hates her to be late, and she has dessert to make for tonight before she leaves.

She applies body cream, slips on underwear and sits at the dressing table. She considers the array of jars and tubes and brushes and pens laid out before her.

She picks up a jar and unscrews the lid. Time to take ten years off.

‘I have to leave on the dot today,’ she tells Phyllis. ‘I have an appointment.’ Her boss isn’t above taking advantage if you let her.

‘No problem,’ Phyllis replies, writing in a small green notebook. ‘Anything exciting?’

‘Getting the hair done, nothing too adventurous.’

‘Lovely.’

It’s not a proper job, it’s more like a hobby. Five mornings a week, ten till one, on duty behind the counter of Phyllis’s little health-food shop, selling vastly overpriced organic quinoa, brown rice flakes and semi sun-dried tomatoes to people with more money than sense.

She quite likes it, though. She enjoys the company, and she has no qualms about bringing home the odd bag of goji berries, or half-kilo of the organic spicy couscous that George likes. She
sees these little non-purchases as a supplement to the pittance Phyllis pays her.

She saw the ad in the shop window, a year into her marriage. She’d had to give up her job in the cinema, of course – marrying Alex meant moving back to the city. He didn’t seem bothered about whether she found another, so for the best part of a year she kept his large house spotless, cooked dinner for him and George and made sure she was bathed and scented when he got home. She refused to accept, for as long as she could, that anything was wrong.

But eventually she’d had enough. One morning she waited until father and son had left the house, then she scanned the jobs section of the newspaper and began applying.

Three months and countless applications later, she realised that fifty-one-year-old women weren’t exactly in demand. She lowered her standards, lied about her age, dressed to suit the job and delivered applications in person – but nothing worked. And then she was passing Phyllis’s shop one day and saw the ad stuck in the window.
Part-time help needed
, it said. She pushed open the door and walked in.

Phyllis came right to the point.
The pay isn’t great. You’d want more, but I can’t afford it
.

The money doesn’t bother me
, Isobel replied.
Give me a week, try me out. I just want something to do
. Phyllis agreed, and took her on.

That evening she told Alex she’d found a job. He lowered his newspaper and looked at her in surprise.
Do you need more money?
he asked.

No
, she replied,
I just want something to do. You’re at work all day and it gets lonely here
.

He considered this for a second or two, then shook out his paper and went back to it.

It’s in a health-food store
, Isobel added.
It’s on Reilly Street
.

Is that right?
His eyes never leaving the page.

Just in case you were interested
, she said lightly, and this got no response at all, so she left it at that.

The work is simple; a trained baboon could do it. Isobel’s weekly salary is less than each morning’s till takings – of course Phyllis could afford to pay more – but for the past nine years the job has kept her sane. She’d happily do it for nothing.

Alex has never once visited the shop – Phyllis probably thinks Isobel made him up. Her husband Ron appears every so often, usually on an errand for Phyllis. He’s tall and cheerful, with more foxy hair growing on his chin than on his head, and he has the belly of a man who prefers a pint of beer to a plate of quinoa.

The morning passes in the usual way. Isobel sells coriander and wheatgrass and vanilla pods and flaxseed and oat bran and a variety of essential oils and homeopathic remedies. A woman buying aloe vera gel and a bottle of cider vinegar admires Isobel’s orange dress. ‘The colour is perfect on you,’ she says.

Phyllis returns at a minute to one. ‘Chilly out there.’ She shucks off her leather gloves. ‘Rain on the way, I’d say.’

Isobel gets into her coat, winds her blue and white scarf round her neck, tucks her bag under her arm. ‘See you Monday,’ she says, and Phyllis hands over her wage packet and tells her to enjoy the weekend.

As she leaves the shop a small blue car drives past, a pair of white ribbons fluttering along its bonnet, the driver sounding
the horn repeatedly. Isobel glimpses a smiling, white-veiled bride in the rear: their eyes meet for a split second.

Good luck
, she thinks.

She parks the car in a side street and makes her way on foot to the hair salon, half a block away, where Damien is waiting for her. ‘Careful with the make-up,’ she tells him. ‘I have a hot date for lunch.’

He laughs – assuming, of course, that the hot lunch date is with her husband. She could tell him the truth – he thrives on intrigue, and has never met Alex – but some things are best kept to oneself.

‘A tidy-up,’ she tells him, ‘and lots of conditioner.’

Her hair doesn’t need a tidy-up – it’s not three weeks since her last cut. But a fresh going-over from Damien with his scissors, however minimal, will make her feel good, and she needs to feel good when she walks into Stefano’s. That’s what almost-sixty does: it pulls at your confidence, makes you less sure of yourself.