I Don't Know How She Does It

total nightmare.

To: Kate Reddy

From: Debra Richardson

Just got yrs to say yr canceling lunch. AGAIN. The first 49 times it was funny. I realize you have the most disgustingly demanding job on the planet, but if we don’t make time for friendship what hope is there?

Are we next going to meet after our deaths? How is the afterlife looking for you, Kate?

Oh, hell. No time to reply.

WEDNESDAY, 8:33 A.M. Been standing outside the hotel for at least fifteen minutes now. It’s impossible to get a cab and the journey downtown will take at least twenty-five. Am going to be late. Still, my senses quicken at the prospect of seeing Jack tonight; it’s months since I last saw him and I’m having trouble calling his face to mind. When I think of him all I get is a broad smile and a general impression of ease and happiness.

It’s a fabulous morning, one of those glittering New York days that hurt your heart. Incredible rain last night has given everything a remarkable windscreen-wiped clarity. As we reach the bottom of Fifth, I see the buildings of the financial district quiver with the slight watery shimmer that comes from the play of condensation and light and glass.

8:59 A.M. Brokers Dickinson Bishop are on the twenty-first floor. My stomach does an Olga Korbut flick-flack in the elevator on the way up. Gerry, a beaming fellow with a broad Irish face and straggly red sideburns, meets me at the landing. I tell him I need forty-five minutes and a place to show slides.

“Sorry, you got five, lady. Things are pretty crazy in there.”

He heaves open a thick wooden door and unleashes the sounds of an average day at the Coliseum, plus phones. Men bawling into receivers, fighting to make themselves heard, or shouting out instructions across the room. Just as I’m wondering whether to make a run for it, a message comes over the PA: “OK, listen up, you guys, in two minutes Miss Kate Reddy of London, England, will be talking to you about international investing.”

About seventy brokers gather round, mastiff-necked New Yorkers in those terrible shirts with the white collars and the marquee stripes. They lean back against the desks, arms crossed, legs apart, the way that kind of man stands. Some carry on trading but pull down their headpieces to lend me half an ear. There is no way I’m going to be seen or heard down here, so I take a split-second decision to stand on a desk and shout my wares.

“Good morning, gentlemen. I’m here to tell you why you must buy my fund!”

Cheers, whistles. The closest I’ll ever get to being a pole dancer, I guess.

“Hey, miss, anyone ever tell you you look like Princess Di?”

“Is your stock as good as your legs?”

What strikes me about these Masters of the Universe is how hopelessly, helplessly boyish they are. In 1944 they would have been landing on the beaches of Normandy, and here they are gathered round me as if I were their company commander.

I give them the big speech about the money — the way it’s awake when I’m asleep, the way it moves around the world, its amazing power.

Then they fire questions at me. “Whaddaya think about Russia, ma’am? Isn’t Russia money the pits?” “Did you see a Euro yet?”

It’s gone well, unbelievably well. At the lift, a grinning Gerry tells me the guys normally only get that fired up for a Knicks game. I should really go back to the hotel and pick up my messages, but I walk for a while along Wall Street, feeling plugged into the power supply. On the corner of Maiden Lane and Broadway, I hail a cab and take it uptown to Barney’s for some post-traumatic shopping.

The store has an immediate consoling effect. I take the little lift to the top floor, where I spot an evening dress. I don’t need an evening dress. I try it on. Black and floaty with a fragile braid of diamante fixed down each side and in a plunging V under the bust, it’s the kind of dress they once danced the Charleston in. I just about have the figure for it; I just don’t have the life. My life is the wrong size; there’s no room in it for a dress this beautiful. But isn’t that part of the thrill, buying a dress and hoping the life to go with it will follow soon like a must-have accessory? When the girl at the till hands me the chit to sign, I don’t even check the amount.

3:00 P.M. The hotel room is like a hundred I’ve stayed in before. The wallpaper is beige embossed on beige; the curtains, in bold contrast, look like an explosion in a herbaceous border. I check the minibar for emergency chocolate and then the drawer of the bedside table: there is the Gideon Bible and — a more contemporary touch — a collection of sayings from the World’s Great Religions.

I check my watch. The time difference with England is five hours. If I call now, it should be around the kids’ bedtime. I’m expecting to hear Richard’s voice, but it’s Paula at the other end. She says Rich has asked her to stay over a couple of nights until I get back and left a note for me that he made her promise to deliver in person.

Where the hell is he? I ask Paula to open the note and read it to me. Just look at the time. I think of all the things my husband could be doing to help out while I’m not there as our nanny starts to read his words aloud.

“I’ve been trying to talk to you for a while now, but I find it increasingly hard to get your attention.”

“Yes, but does it say what time he’ll be back?”

“Kate, can you hear me? Are you listening?”

“Of course I can hear you, Paula.”

“No, that’s Richard. In the note. He says, Kate, can you hear me? Are you listening? ”

“Oh, right, sorry. Go on.”

“I am so sorry, my darling, that we have reached this terrible imp—”

“What imp?”

“—ass.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. “How do you spell it?”

Paula announces each letter carefully: “I-m-p-a-s-s-e.”

“Oh, impasse. I see. It’s, you know, it’s French for…well, anyway, what else?”

Paula sounds dubious. “I’m not sure I should be doing this, Kate.”

“No, please carry on. I have to know what his plans are.”

“He says, If you need to get hold of me I will be staying at David and Maria’s for a few nights until I find a place of my own. He says, Don’t worry, I’ll still go and pick Emily up from school.”

So it really can happen, then. In real life. A thing you’ve seen in bad TV drama and turned over because it’s so implausible. Only this time there is no turning over and maybe no turning back. One moment the world is pretty much as it should be — rocky and a little barren, perhaps, but still the world as you know it — and then suddenly you have the sensation of the ground giving way beneath your feet. My husband, Richard the rational, Richard the reliable, Richard the rock, has left me. Rich — who in the letter he gave me the day before our wedding wrote I’m Ever and you’re Reddy; here’s to long life, my darling—has walked out and I have been paying so little attention that our nanny has ended up breaking the news.

During the long pause, Paula’s breathing has got heavier; there is a wheeze of anxiety coming down the line. “Kate,” she asks, “are you OK?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Please, Paula, sleep in our bed”—as I say the words it occurs to me that it may be my bed now, not ours—“the children go there first in the morning. I know this is asking an awful lot, Paula, but if you could just hold the fort. And if you can please tell Emily and Ben that Mummy will be back as soon as she can tomorrow.”

Paula doesn’t reply at once, and I think if she lets me down now I don’t know what I’ll do.

“Is that all right, Paula?”

“Oh — sorry, Kate, I’ve just seen there’s a PS on the other side. Richard says, I know I can never stop loving you because, believe me, I’ve tried.