Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

Timon cleared his throat. ‘Under the circumstances, you might like to take a day off, Rose. That would be perfectly all right. Take the week.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘you don’t understand. The work is important to me, and I wouldn’t dream of abandoning it.’

‘As you wish.’ He considered further. ‘Leave it with me, and see me at eleven thirty on Monday’

I finished that conversation feeling better. At least I had done something. Made a stand over Minty.

Huddled into the rug, I sat and thought about deceit. How was it possible to live for long periods of time without letting clues slip? In a peculiar way, I felt nothing but admiration for Nathan and Minty because I didn’t think I would have had the wit and style to carry off such a secret. How did Minty square taking such an interest in my clothes, my ideas, my family, which I knew was genuine, with the knowledge that she was taking my husband to bed?

How, for example, did Nathan manage to insist that I sit down with him and review our pension situation when he knew he was not going to be around? Perhaps the effects of harbouring a deep, fearful secret were so debilitating that an autopilot took over the normal, humdrum bits of your life and permitted you to act normally.

Perhaps we all lived on several levels and juggled them without thinking about it. Perhaps one grew so attached to everyday habits and questions – they were so bred into the blood and the bone – that one could not bear to give them up, even though one knew that, by any law of justice, one should do so.

Chapter Eight

On Monday morning I prepared myself to go into work. I sat down at the dressing-table, and smoothed layer after layer of cream into my face. It was dry and sore from weeping, and the skin under my fingertips felt like cracked tissue paper.

The sunlight in the bedroom spared me nothing: a startlingly blue vein on my leg, the dark, troubled circles under my eyes, a toe that had once been unblemished. Hang on. This is not the right woman in the mirror. The right one is the young, happy one.

I chose a sea-island T-shirt, a linen trouser suit and flat black pumps. I put on mascara, a slash of red lipstick and brushed my hair into shiny obedience. Then, with Parsley colonizing my lap, I painted my nails bright battle red. This was my armoury, the best I could summon, but when I levered myself to my feet, and Parsley slid protesting to the floor, I discovered cat hairs trapped in the wet varnish. ‘You wretch, Parsley’

The green eyes turned in my direction. You fool, Rose.

I picked the cat hair off my nails and went downstairs to the kitchen. I tapped the coffee pot, but decided against it and tried to eat a banana, but abandoned it.

Outside, it looked as though it was going to be fine again and, concierge and custodian, I went from room to room, drawing back curtains, plumping up a cushion, wiping away a smear of dust, seeking comfort from the intimacies and familiarities of my routines. The clock’s tick in the sitting room seemed abnormally loud in the still, silent air.

The contents of my book bag remained where I had left them. I checked them over. A piece I should have edited. A couple of memos I should have read. The novel, the cookery book and the biography, which, in the normal course, I would have dipped into before sending them out for review.

Bag over my shoulder, I closed the door on the house, the cool sitting room and its ticking clock, on the garden, and the drift of a light rain on the grass, on the double bedroom where, deep in the past, Nathan had whispered to me that he was so lucky, so lucky, to have me and, in reply, I had breathed thankfulness into the night.

The strap of my bag had made a groove in my finger – I was clasping it so hard – by the time I stepped out of the lift at the office. Jenny from Human Resources was waiting to get in. When she saw me, her expression turned to mild panic and I thought, So soon. Not that I had imagined Nathan and I would be immune from gossip. To give Jenny a chance to collect her wits, I made a play of swapping my heavy bag from hand to hand. ‘Morning, Jenny.’

‘Look,’ she muttered, ‘I want you to know…’

It was the cruel office joke that, despite being a paper expert on human resources, Jenny was no good at them in the flesh, and she could not finish whatever she wanted to say. Instead, she bolted for the lift. The doors clacked shut.

It was not a good start, and as I made for my desk, I summoned every ounce of the control and wit I would need to negotiate the long hours. Then, with a shock, I realized I was not very interested in getting through the long hours. Feeling sick and shaky, I sank into my chair and the photograph caught my eye.

Nathan’s face smiled out at me, and I tried to think of something else. Ianthe maintained we were on this earth to be tested. I always laughed when she said this, and told her she was being old-fashioned, New Testament-ish. I said it even though I knew she was right.

The coffee machine clicked and gushed. The photocopier disgorged hot, acrid shanks of paper. The clack and bustle of office life closed in, insulating the occupants of the building with thick, polystyrene walls of habit.

The phone rang. It was an author whose novel had received a bad review. I listened politely to an outpouring of rage, which finished, ‘You were out to get me.’

‘No, not at all. The piece made the point that you would sell magnificently. I’m sorry my reviewer did not like it.’

He snapped back, ‘You don’t like the fact that I’ve made a lot of money.’

‘How very nice for you.’

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Nathan… in his grey suit, heading for Timon’s office and disappearing inside. He looked neither to right nor left. Caught off-guard, I dropped the phone and buried my face in my hands.

‘Rose,’ Maeve Otley limped over, ‘you don’t look so good. I’ve brought you a cup of tea.’ She edged it on to my desk with her lumpy, painful hands. Tut some sugar in it. Go on, you’ll need it.’

Maeve was far shrewder than she ever let on. She touched my shoulder briefly. Her sympathy was easy, but I had never imagined it would be so hard to accept. ‘Thank you,’ I managed.

Maeve favoured long sleeves to hide her hands, and she fussed with the cuffs of her purple dress. I think she was making a judgement about how much I could, or could not, take on board. ‘Don’t let them beat you,’ she said at last, and returned to her desk.

I had neither the energy nor the focus to consider what she might have meant, and I reached for something, anything, from the nearest basket on the desk. As it happened, it was the discarded review of Hal’s book. ‘This man is a fraud…’ wrote the critic happily. I held it between fingers that had grown cold with the shock of seeing Nathan. Hal was too good and too stringent a writer to have an easy ride. Anyway, he always maintained that a gene had been implanted in the English that triggered the worst. Quality and brilliance reacted with envy to produce acid.

My rule had been never to look at Hal’s books and I had kept to it religiously. But now I picked up A Thousand Olive Trees from the June pile. Once upon a time, I had imagined that Hal’s face would remain in my memory for ever. It had not. The details and sharp outlines had faded, leaving an impression, the blurred recollection – like all the other so-called ineradicable memories. Like old stone weathering and fading. Like sand shifting in dunes. I turned to the back flap of the jacket, and there he was, leaner, older, fair hair bleached and battered by the sun, looking much as I would have expected.

Nathan was carving the chicken. The kitchen was steamy and fragrant with cooking and herbs; the radio played in the background. I chopped carrots into matchsticks. Having been dragged out of bed at midday, the seventeen- year-old Sam and fifteen-year-old Poppy were in their rooms, reluctantly getting dressed. Sartorially they were at the stage of toned-down anarchic punk. Sam offered us a variety of paint-sprayed T-shirts, incorporating the word ‘kill’. Poppy favoured jeans with the waistbands cut off.

‘The book of the week,’ said the announcer, ‘is an account of a journey through the North African desert. Desert and Go by Hal Thorne will begin on Monday at nine forty-five…’

In the saucepan the water hissed and foamed as the carrots hit its surface. ‘Lunch will be in a moment,’ I said.