‘Hello, Mrs Williams. Your husband had a comfortable night. Unfortunately he has developed a fever and may have a respiratory infection. We’re running tests to confirm, and then we will treat him with antibiotics. That will delay any procedures that may have to be done,’ the nurse informed her.
‘Oh! OK! Please tell him I will be in with his pyjamas and things shortly.’
‘I can put you through to him if you wish,’ the nurse said helpfully.
‘Thanks very much.’ She tried to inject a modicum of enthusiasm into her tone. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to her dickhead husband.
‘Hello?’ Des said groggily.
‘Hello,’ she said curtly.
‘Oh! Hi, Colette.’ He sounded wary.
‘I’ve phoned Lauren and told her where you are,’ she said coldly.
‘Thanks . . . Can you bring my cell in?’
‘I have your phone packed.’
‘Umm . . . right. Eh . . . have you told Jazzy I’m in hospital?’
‘I’m going to call her now.’
‘And eh . . . are you going to say anything about . . . er . . . last night?’
‘I will be telling her at some stage over the next few days that we will be divorcing,’ Colette said grimly.
‘Aw, Colette, can we not talk about it?’ Des urged. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Really sorry you got caught, you mean. How much of our money did you lose with Madoff?’ She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of referring to his bit on the side. Let him wait for that. And she wasn’t going to bring up the subject of his loan application either. She wanted to see if he would bring up that matter himself and how he would weasel out of it. If he didn’t refer to it, she would lull her husband into a false sense of security and wait for him in the long grass. Plans were already forming in her head for her response to that treachery.
Des sneezed. ‘Colette, I’m not well enough to talk about that now,’ he whined. ‘I feel absolutely beat.’
‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve to meet Helena Dupree for lunch in the Morgan and then I’ll be in. Bye.’ She hung up without giving him the chance to answer. Had things been different she would have cancelled the lunch meeting in her favourite museum, and been at Des’s side first thing, but she was in no rush now to go to his bedside. He was the last person she wanted to see, she thought bitterly.
Men, they were all the same. She should have known. Had it just been the other-woman stuff she would have got over it. Sex was sex. It didn’t mean a lot. Des worked on Wall Street, he was a man of means. And attractive with it. She hardly knew of a marriage in their set where one half of the couple wasn’t playing away. It wouldn’t have been a divorcing issue for her, not that Colette would admit that to anyone. Sexual fidelity was not what had held their marriage together all these years; it was the financial perfidy that gutted her. There was no going back from that. She could never trust her husband again. She almost broke into a cold sweat thinking how close she’d come to losing their London home. Her London home. Des had wanted her to rent it out all the years they lived in New York, but Colette hadn’t wanted strangers in it. She’d always enjoyed flying back a couple of times a year and staying for a week or two, relaxing after the hectic pace of her life in Manhattan. Some things were worth more than money.
She would not, in the future, live a life of anxiety wondering what other kind of stunts Des would pull with whatever was left of their money. From now on she would be in control of her own destiny. And she was lucky enough to have something at her back. The flat was a valuable piece of real estate. A thought struck her. Des’s wallet! He’d probably be looking for that. Was it in his suit jacket? She got up and went to the carrier bag where Des’s belongings were neatly packed. His car keys and wallet were in his suit pocket. She went back over to the desk, put them beside the charged BlackBerry and took a sheet of notepaper from the drawer and began to write. When she was finished, she picked up her cell and dialled Jazzy’s number. It went into message minder. Colette threw her eyes up to heaven. It was impossible to get her daughter on her phone and she wasn’t the type to ring her parents every day.
‘Jazzy, please ring me as soon as you get this message,’ she said crisply before going to dress for her business meeting at the Morgan.
Helena Dupree, an editor-at-large for a glossy fine arts magazine, was surprised but not shocked when Colette told her about Des’s heart attack when they sat at one of the round tables in the glitzy lobby café where they had arranged to meet.
‘Bankers and brokers and financial-industry workers are dropping like flies with all this economic uncertainty, I believe,’ she remarked, scanning the menu. ‘I mean can you credit what’s going on with Madoff? Mamie Winston is supposed to have lost millions with him, and Lehman. She didn’t host a table for the Friends of Autism and Asperger’s, or the Wilcox-Morgan Wing of St Mary Magdalene’s. Rumour has it she’s
