She wrote ‘No. 2’ on her piece of paper. ‘The corpse of the marriage. How much will you get? Half the house?’
‘The whole house. So he says.’
‘Get it in writing.’ Once Nicola had slipped into practical mode she was formidable. ‘It is the least he could do. I’ve never seen Douglas do a damn thing to that house, whereas you’ve turned it into a real home. Number three. Money.’
Meg shook her head. ‘Not a lot. But having no children means it’s less complicated.’
‘What about the need for revenge?’ Nicola’s pen was hovering over the margin ready to write number four.
‘That’s a bullet point?’
‘Oh yes.’ Nicola stared thoughtfully down at her plate for a moment. ‘Anger can fester. You may think you don’t care now, but you might later. When you’re lonely, feeling down, maybe you even start to miss him. Then you’ll start to think about the slag who seduced your happily married husband.’
‘He wouldn’t go for a slag,’ Meg found herself protesting, ‘and if we’d been happy she wouldn’t have managed to seduce him.’ She shook her head.
‘Don’t you believe it. The thirty-somethings trawling the male workforce are sophisticated babies.’ Nicola raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘They want someone else’s man; one who is mature and steady and knows how to look after a woman and who is preferably rich or soon to be rich. They weren’t prepared to take a chance on a penniless youngster still in college, like you and I did. No, they waited. Waited for a man who’s been perfectly trained by another woman. Like great black spiders.’ She scowled. ‘Don’t forget, I know what I’m talking about. This was before your time, but one of them hooked my old man when he was in hospital for God’s sake! I only turned my back for a few hours and she had him convinced he’d die without her personal physio talents! By the time he was fully conscious after the op. she had got him to agree to move in with her. By the time he left hospital he thought he’d never walk again unless she was beside him. But we’re not talking about me.’ She cut a wedge of Danish and inserted it into her mouth.
The minute or two of silence which followed allowed Meg space to think for the first time since the morning’s shattering phone call.
Even so, after Nicola’s unexpected tirade she couldn’t resist asking the question. ‘Did you extract your revenge?’
Nicola smiled. ‘Oh yes.’
‘What was it?’
‘I let her have him.’
‘Wasn’t that a rather hollow victory?’
‘Nope. Their marriage lasted five months. Then when he begged to come back I said no.’ There was a hardness in her voice Meg had never heard before. ‘She took him for every penny he had had left after I finished with him.’
Meg glanced at Nicola’s face and for a fleeting second she glimpsed the pain in the other woman’s eyes. Nicola had loved her husband and to Meg’s certain knowledge there had never been anyone to replace him.
‘OK!’ Nicola uncapped her pen again. ‘No revenge then. So, on to the dream. The dream before real life and the saintly unseduceable Douglas made you compromise.’ She had written a ‘4’ in the margin.
‘I wanted to sail single-handed round the world.’ As soon as she had said it Meg stopped, completely stunned by her own words. Where had they come from? She opened her mouth to call them back, deny them, but instead she found herself saying, ‘Not without stopping. Nothing like that. I would stop everywhere. Every island. Every country. Every port. Every deserted river mouth. And I would buy a camera and take a million photos and produce wonderful travel books to feed other people’s dreams.’
Nicola stared at her, astonished. ‘Can you sail?’ she asked at last.
‘No. Haven’t a clue!’ They gazed at each other for a full minute, and then dissolved into gales of laughter.
‘I think point five had better be sailing lessons,’ Nicola said quietly. ‘Followed by six and seven, photography and navigation.’
It took her two and half years, still working in the daytime with Nicola, attending evening classes and courses and boat shows and photographic exhibitions. She lost weight, she grew her hair, she changed her wardrobe and she acquired a genuine, slightly-weathered tan, all unlooked-for but glorious side effects of her new found interests. Douglas had gone to Bristol, remarried, and then, as predicted returned to London without wife, house or much money. He met Meg for a drink – for old times’ sake – and found her, to her extreme gratification, newly attractive. Too late. Meg had bought a boat with Nicola’s buy-out money.
When she finally sailed, heading for southern climes, she wasn’t alone. Her navigation instructor was with her. Just to make sure she didn’t take the wrong turning. She planned to allow him to disembark in the fullness of time but until that moment they were getting on far too well and having much too much fun to worry about the future.
And the boat? She had called it
First-class Travel
As she rode the escalator up from the crowded District Line, Abi glanced furtively at her watch. Normally she didn’t allow herself to do that. To see the hands moving round as she fought her way through the crowds was to invite stress. If she left her time-check until she arrived on the teeming concourse of Liverpool Street Station she could see which trains were there on the departure board, and she could make a spot judgement. Run or saunter, or go grab a coffee. The stress was thereby minimised.
Today had been particularly bad. The crowds seemed heavier than usual and she had had an especially exhausting afternoon in court. A child custody case – the worst kind. The 5.42 was still alongside Platform 11 and she had four minutes to get there. With every step her briefcase and large shoulder-bag grew heavier, but on this occasion it was worth the hurry. To get home as soon as possible, to have a cool bath and a long, lazy gin and tonic on the terrace at the back of the cottage was the sole thing on her mind at this moment.
The cottage had seemed a sensible buy when she and Don split up: two small homes in exchange for the beautiful Georgian townhouse that had been sacrificed on the altar of divorce. Initially, she had been pleased with her purchase. Idyllically pretty, with a thatched roof in a charming, riverside village. But it was lonely. There was no one to share her frozen meals with. No time to meet the neighbours. No energy to go out and seek for company, male or female. No possibility, given her long, long hours of work, of even a cat or a dog for company… She sighed.
The first-class allocation on these trains was a joke. It was to be found at the end of the first carriage, a small glassed off section, only seating a mere sixteen people, presumably all the business travellers – people like her whose tickets were paid for by their firms because they needed to work in that precious hour or two on the way to and from home. If she were travelling Intercity there would have been a table to work at, and above all she wouldn’t have to wait till she got home for the G &T, but as it was even the token space and relative quiet provided in this small area was welcome.
She slid the door back and climbed into the one vacant place with murmured apologies to the other passengers upon whose toes she was treading. The train was hot and stuffy. The windows were dirty, misted with condensation, and closed. She leaned back wearily as the train pulled out of the station. What, she asked herself for the hundredth time that week, was it all for?
Her neighbour reached down into his own briefcase and brought out a laptop. Opposite her a mobile phone trilled importantly and was immediately silenced. She sighed and closed her eyes. If someone didn’t open a window soon they would all suffocate anyway, and that would be the end of all their problems.
At Chelmsford half the train passengers disembarked. Those who remained spread themselves more comfortably and someone at last lowered a window. Abi did not open her eyes.
When she awoke, the train was standing at a small station, the doors blessedly open. Soon it would be dark.
