The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

cantucci and, obediently, he handed it over.

‘The children, Martin. They’ll be suffering from all this. They may not show it but they will.’ I included my own in the generalization, which made the declaration even more impassioned. And if Felix and Lucas hurt, I hurt. ‘Do you really hate them?’

‘Is that what Paige says?’ Martin frowned. ‘I knew before they arrived it would be tricky, but even I was surprised by how impossible it became. I warned Paige that she was obsessed. But…’ He gave me a steady look – the I-am-a-rock one in which Nathan had specialized. ‘… I would never have left of my own accord.’

I countered, ‘Paige has had a baby. She’s weak, her hormones are all over the place, and she’s not thinking straight.’

To my acute distress, Martin’s eyes filled. ‘Ignore me,’ he muttered. ‘But could you stop right there?’

I made a rapid reconnaissance of the room. No one had noticed Martin’s tears – had a beady-eyed rival taken it on board, it would have done him no good. A group of bankers in pinstriped suits plodded in. They were all as plump as pullets and spoke to each other in low, earnest tones. I jabbed a finger in their direction. ‘Doesn’t look that much fun working here.’

‘It isn’t.’ He shaded his eyes with a hand. ‘Nothing’s much fun, these days.’

‘You could put things right.’

Martin pulled himself together. ‘As a matter of interest, Minty, why are you taking this view?’ He meant, why should you, the wrecker, argue so strongly for the opposite?

I might have taken offence but I’d grown used to my label. ‘I have two small boys,’ I said.

He directed a countenance so full of woe at me that I was forced to look down at my coffee cup. ‘Just walk back in, Martin. Tell Paige she’s wrong and that you won’t have a broken family. Tell her it’s for the children’s sake.’

‘I didn’t agree to be hauled out of an important briefing meeting so that you could tell me what’s blindingly obvious.’

‘Nevertheless.’

To my surprise he reached over and took my hands. ‘It was well done, Minty.’

I let them rest in his. I knew perfectly well that whatever I said or advised would have little influence on him, but I had said and would continue to say it. ‘On second thoughts, Martin, tell Paige it’s for her sake too. Do it.’

I left him by the state-of-the-art elevators, which would whisk him back up to the nineteenth floor, and headed out of the door.

A postcard arrived in the post. ‘Dear Minty. I enjoyed seeing the boys and I wondered…’ there was a space between ‘wondered’ and ‘if I could see them again? I would love to take them to the zoo or to the cinema perhaps. Rose.’

The card did not exude confidence. The writing was hesitant and the wording suggested that Rose had written it against her better judgement. But in her sending and my receiving, an element shifted in the balance between us.

A week elapsed before I responded.

At Paradox, I chipped away at the final details for Pointe of Departure and toyed with the notion of developing a history of choreography but discarded it. Deb announced that she was off to work for Papillon and when I told her how sorry I was, she replied, ‘Oh, I don’t have time to hang around any more,’ in a nonchalant manner that imperfectly hid her unhappiness. The mention of time got me thinking about the abandoned middle-age project, and I retrieved it from my ‘reject’ file.

I threw myself at administration. I wrote letters to the bank. I had several long conversations with Theo. I researched addiction counsellors. I paid bills. I rearranged the furniture in the sitting room and my bedroom, so that the house took on a different aspect. Nathan’s study had been transformed into a cosy, feminine space. My papers were on the noticeboard: school rotas, work schedules… those lists.

My clothes occupied the total space available in the wardrobes and drawers and on the pegs. My bottles occupied the shelf in the bathroom. Upstairs in the attic a cardboard box contained Nathan’s razor, a shaving brush made from badger hair, a hairbrush and a new comb still in its plastic wrapping. There they would wait until I gave them to Felix and Lucas.

I lay awake and counted the ghosts. I had been wrong. There is some kind of justice, for no one ever escapes anyone else. Nathan had never got away from Rose. Rose had never got away from Hal. Rose and I had never got away from each other.

After Rose had been sacked as books editor and I had taken over, I plotted how I would spice up the pages and transform them. My books pages would fizz with new ideas. Yet when Timon sacked me, he damned my efforts: ‘Your pages were nothing new,’ he wrote.

Rose told me that she had suffered torment and anguish over Hal, her first lover. But also moments of such sweetness and ecstasy that she carried them with her for always. I do not possess memories such as those. But Rose’s were like fragrant sachets tucked into a drawer. I envied her.

My reply to Rose took me a long time to write, and the words were bottlenecked at the end of my pen. ‘Would you like to come to sports day at the boys’ school?’

It was agreed. Rose would come early to watch the opening events with Eve, and I would join them for those in which Felix and Lucas were competing – the sack race, egg-and-spoon, sprint, high jump. There was a dire form of advanced torture called the Parents’ Race, which, Lucas informed me, I was expected to win.

Sports day minus twelve hours, Felix and Lucas dragged me into the garden after their supper. They wanted to practise running and the three-legged race. I protested that they would get indigestion but Felix pulled at my arm and said, ‘Please.’

I found myself standing patiently – an adverb that had many nuances – with my watch in my hand as the boys pelted up and down the lawn until Lucas turned pale and said he felt sick.

Sports day minus five hours. The starlings were roosting outside the bedroom door again. It was five to six in the morning. Lucas snuck into the room, climbed on to the bed and nuzzled me. ‘Mummy, you must come.’

‘Why?’ I squinted at him. He was in his dressing-gown.

‘Come and see,’ he persisted.

Somehow I got out of bed and stumbled into the boys’ room. There, neatly laid out on his bed, was Felix’s sports kit. T-shirt, navy blue shorts, white plimsolls and white socks. ‘Have I got it right, Mummy?’ he asked.

‘Look at me,’ Lucas said, and tore off his dressing-gown. He was wearing his – but the T-shirt was back to front. He mimed a couple of air punches and dropped to one knee. ‘Ready, steady – go.’

‘Come here, Lukey. You’ve got your T-shirt on wrong.’

Felix scrabbled under the bed and, with an air of triumph, produced my trainers, which he must have taken from my wardrobe, and laid them at my feet. ‘That’s for your race, Mummy’

‘Right.’ I wrestled with Lucas and the T-shirt.

Felix was cataloguing his kit. ‘There are my shorts. These are my shoes…’

‘Very good, boys,’ I said. ‘Brilliant. Couldn’t be better.’ I sat down on Lucas’s bed. ‘Do you know how early it is?’

Felix had finished his inventory and was hopping about with his pyjama bottoms round his ankles. ‘You will come, Mummy, won’t you?’

I rubbed my eyes. ‘Of course,’ I said.

At Paradox, I worked solidly through the morning and got ready to leave on time, armed with the file entitled Statistical Analysis of Depression in Females, 40-65. Then Syriol called, ‘Visitor for you, Minty.’

A wan, appreciably thinner Poppy sat on one of the seats leafing through Television Weekly. At my approach, she threw aside the magazine and leapt to her feet. ‘Hi. I’m sorry to do this to you, but have you any news from Theo?’

‘No. It’s taking a heck of time, but there’s nothing I can do.’

‘Oh, God, Minty.’ She had tied her hair back savagely. It didn’t suit her.

‘Here,’ I said. ‘Sit down.’

‘I keep thinking Dad would have so hated me for this. He was always so careful and taught me to be careful,