Stop the Clock (25 page)

Tina shook her head. Anthea smiled pityingly.

‘Word of warning to the wise,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t take the latest guidelines too much to heart if I were you.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Tina said as Anthea moved on.

She was just wondering how soon she could make her escape when Julia McMahon saw her from across the room and bore down on her with the righteous anger of a victim seeking redress. Must be Dutch courage – in the office, she avoided Tina as much as possible. It was obvious to Tina that Julia had fallen hard for Dan back in the summer, and it must be equally obvious to Julia that something had happened between Tina and Dan. If Julia had put two and two together, then . . . oh dear.

‘So when are you coming back?’ Julia demanded. She had interpreted the dress code faultlessly – she looked decorative but demure, with just a hint of fun. Close up, though, her dark eyes had a dangerous, champagne-fuelled glitter.

‘I’m not really going away, strictly speaking,’ Tina said. ‘I’ll still be writing my column every week, and generally keeping my hand in. But I’ll be back full-time in June.’

Julia’s lip curled. ‘It’s a long time.’

‘I’ve been working here for a decade,’ Tina said. ‘If
you look at it in terms of a whole career, six months is not a big deal. On the other hand, if you look at it from the perspective of someone who only started a year ago, I suppose it is.’

Julia turned red. Her mouth puckered as she rummaged round for something to come back with. Tina thought for a moment that she was about to apologize. Then Julia’s gaze settled on Dan, who was standing, glass in hand, next to Monty, and attempting to banter with him.

‘Well, where would you old hands be without some fresh blood?’ Julia said.

‘If you want him, I’m sure he’s all yours,’ Tina told her.

‘He’s not an office chair. You can’t bequeath him,’ Julia snapped.

Dan chose that moment to excuse himself and amble over. Either he’d had nothing more to do with Julia since their break-up and had an entirely clear conscience? or he was blind drunk and wanted everybody to love each other because it was nearly Christmas.

‘What are you two talking about so intensely?’ he asked.

‘Julia was just about to tell me the ways in which you are not like an office chair,’ Tina said.

‘I think I’ll leave you two to it. You obviously have rather a lot to talk about,’ Julia said with a pointed look at Tina’s bump, and marched off.

‘What was all that about?’ Dan said.

Tina sighed. ‘You know what, I think I’m going to go home.’

‘Oh no, no, don’t do that. Let’s find a sofa somewhere and sit down. I want to talk to you. I’ve been feeling awful about the way I behaved the other night. I’m so sorry, Tina. I shouldn’t have said what I said. I
am
with you, I’m completely with you, whenever you want me to be that is, and when you don’t, then, phhht! I’m gone.’

Yup: blind drunk.

‘OK, Dan, I appreciate that. Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t have bitten your head off. Great party, isn’t it? You have a good evening – I’m just off to get my coat.’

But Dan grabbed her by the hand. ‘Please don’t go, not just yet. I’ve been thinking about you so much, and there’s something I want to say to you.’

Monty, now in conversation with Jeremy, was staring at them both as if considering a gentlemanly intervention.

‘Not here,’ Tina hissed. ‘People are staring.’

‘So what?’ Dan said. ‘They’re going to find out sooner or later and when they do it’ll be a ten-minute wonder and then they’ll get over it. Why are you so obsessed with having secrets?’

Jeremy detached himself from Monty and descended upon them with the melancholy assurance of the senior colleague who knows his underlings have to at least pretend to like him.

‘Evening all,’ he said. ‘Enjoying the largesse?’

‘Dan, please,’ Tina whispered, and Dan let go of her hand.

‘We are, very much,’ she said to Jeremy, ‘but I’m actually heading off now. Dan’s very kindly offered to help me on my way. The coat check’s down a few too
many stairs for me – I’m getting to be like a little old lady.’ She got the ticket for her coat out of her evening bag, and Dan took it and went obediently off.

Jeremy watched him go, then turned back to Tina.

‘I suppose that was what they call inappropriate behaviour,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t it?’

‘He was just getting a little carried away with the festive spirit, I guess,’ Tina said. ‘Marvellous party. I thought they might scale it down a bit this year, after the redundancies.’

‘Different budget,’ Jeremy said. ‘You know how companies like to compartmentalize these things. Well, we all do, don’t we? It’s human nature, isn’t it? But sometimes it’s hard to keep it going. You know, Tina, you’ve done a great job so far, but I’m genuinely curious to see how you’re going to manage when you’ve got a screaming infant keeping you up all night. And they do, believe me. Women moan about men, but children are infinitely more trying.’

‘Yes, well, men are meant to be adults,’ Tina snapped.

‘You’re going to have to be careful. The powers-that-be don’t like the chaotic mum thing.’

He gave her the full benefit of his disturbing smile: a mouthful of true hack’s teeth, stained with a lifetime’s heavy reliance on nicotine, beer and coffee. Then he walked away.

She leaned against the wall and wished herself in bed, and then Dan appeared with her coat.

‘Let me see you into a taxi,’ Dan said.

‘Oh no, I’ll be fine, I don’t want to take you away from the party.’

‘You’d be doing me a favour,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m really sorry. That was all I really wanted to say, and now I’ve got even more cause to say it.’

She gazed at him, took in the worried frown, the oh-so-trustworthy blue eyes, and suddenly thought: He really means it.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘then let’s go.’

As they walked out their arms somehow aligned so that his hand was just underneath her elbow, barely touching, but ready to catch her if she stumbled and fell. The warmth and hubbub of the party followed them down the corridor and out of the entrance into the night. They were leaving it in full swing.

Outside it was freezing; their breath hung and plumed in the air. But she barely had time to feel the cold before he spotted a black cab and stepped out into the road to flag it down. The cab did a U-turn and halted in front of her, and she got into the back seat and he shut the door. He stooped to smile at her and drum his fingers on the window and wave as the car moved away.

ADAM HAD A
girlfriend. Lucy suspected as much when she rang him one morning to confirm arrangements for dropping off the girls and heard what sounded suspiciously like a feminine giggle in the background. She told herself she was imagining things. But a fortnight later, he cancelled a day out with the children at short notice, pleading a dose of flu. She rang him the evening before he was next due to see them to check he was better, and then he broke it to her: he’d moved on.

He dropped it in at the end of the conversation, after the discussion about when he was coming (twelve noon, on the dot) and where he was taking them (for pizza). She checked whether he’d Amazoned the Christmas present suggestions she’d given him (he had), double-checked that he was still happy to see them on Boxing Day but not on Christmas Day itself (he was), and was about to ring off when Adam said, ‘Er, Lucy . . . there’s something you should know. I’m seeing someone.’

‘Really,’ she said.

‘I don’t think it’s serious,’ Adam said.

‘Then why are you telling me?’

‘Well, you know, I just . . . I didn’t want you to hear from someone else.’

‘Like who? It’s not as if we have any mutual friends any more. Your buddies aren’t exactly beating a path to my door to pass on the latest gossip.’

‘Oh come on, it’s not as if your mum friends have made any effort to stay in touch with me. And as for Tina and Natalie, I’ve known them for years, and neither of them have bothered to make contact.’

‘Yes, well, I imagine they have other priorities. So who is this person you’re seeing?’

‘She’s called Emily. She did TEFL with me, and she’s doing a bit of work at the language centre.’

‘So that’s why you haven’t gone abroad yet. I knew it. I knew you’d end up dating a student.’

‘Actually, she was one of the older ones on the course,’ Adam said, ‘and she’s a very nice person.’

‘Good for her,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

She ended the call before he could come out with the line she could tell was on the way: ‘You know, if you two met under different circumstances, I think you’d get on . . .’

The girls were in bed, and the house seemed very quiet. She opened a bottle of wine and sat down in front of the television, but found it difficult to concentrate. She was plagued by the unkind questions that women whose husbands cheat on them are told to ask themselves:
Could it have been my fault? What did I do
wrong? Was there anything I could have done differently?
The questions were much more obvious than the answers, and after she’d got through the wine she had to console herself by popping outside to finish off her pack of ten.

She came to with a start in the middle of the night, alone in the double bed, in sheets that were damp with sweat, although the air was cold.

‘Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!’

It was Clemmie. Another nightmare! Lucy turned on the light, hauled herself out of bed and rushed to offer comfort, banging her hip on the chest of drawers as she went past. Another bruise to add to the collection. She was covered in them, all at varying stages of repair; if she’d had a resident husband, she might have been taken for the victim of a brute.

Ellen had been the same. She was beginning to remind herself of Ellen more and more: puffy-faced, bitter, erratic, forgetful, emotional by night, irritable by day, and, every evening, always with a drink on the go.

Clemmie was sitting bolt upright, the whites of her eyes wide and round in the gloom. Lucy sat down next to her and pulled her into a hug; Clemmie was stiff but unresisting.

Lucy asked what the bad dream was about. Clemmie was initially reluctant, but after a bit of cajoling she murmured, ‘I dreamed you didn’t love me any more.’

‘What a silly dream! Of course I love you. Try to go back to sleep now.’

Lucy lay down and patted the space next to her. Clemmie snuggled back under the covers and rested her head on the pillow, her face up close to Lucy’s. Lucy
reached out to stroke her hair. So soft! Being horizontal felt a bit better. Pounding headache, nausea . . . she really shouldn’t have finished the bottle.

‘Mummy,’ Clemmie murmured, ‘you know Grandma gave me that money for Christmas? Do you think I could use it to get a Talking Walking Pet Wolf?’

‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow, darling. Go to sleep now,’ Lucy said.

Ellen had refused Lucy’s offer to buy the girls presents on her behalf, and had rustled up a crumpled fiver for each granddaughter, posted to them right at the beginning of December in cards that must have been written for her by one of the nurses. But a fiver would not go far towards covering the cost of the animatronic wolfhound toy Clemmie had spotted advertised on TV, and had been pestering for since November.

Then Clemmie said, in a quite different tone of voice – wide awake, sharp, and rather critical: ‘Mummy, you smell funny.’

Lucy jerked upright.

Was it the booze Clemmie had noticed? Or the cigarette smoke?

‘Don’t be so rude, Clemency. I’ll see you in the morning.’

Ignoring Clemmie’s protests, she left the room, shut the door gently but firmly behind her, and went back to bed.

Four fifty a.m. In a little more than seven hours she’d come face to face with Adam. And she’d be looking knackered, hungover and haggard. It wouldn’t even be a battle. She was heading for wipeout.

At midday, bang on time, a sleek grey Mercedes pulled up outside the house with Adam in it. In the driving seat sat a young blonde woman Lucy had never seen before: Emily.

Emily glanced up at the house rather fearfully, as well she might, because Lucy, who had spotted her from an upstairs window, was already storming down the stairs like a Fury in pursuit of vengeance.

Lucy flung open the door just seconds after Adam had pressed the bell. He looked at her with mild astonishment. Had he had his teeth whitened? He certainly had a new hairstyle – was that gel in it? – and a new leather jacket. Oh God – his new woman had given him a youth-over.

‘What is that woman doing outside my house?’ Lucy hissed.

‘For God’s sake, Lucy, keep your hair on,’ Adam said. ‘What was I meant to do, drop her off round the corner so she could cower in a hedge and you wouldn’t have to see her? I did tell you about her.’

‘You didn’t tell me you were planning to invite her round to my house. You said you’d bonded because she was one of the older students on the course!’

‘She is. She’s twenty-six.’

Exactly the same age as Hannah.

‘You are just so fucking predictable!’

‘Lucy, calm down. You’re making a scene. It’s embarrassing.’

‘I take it that’s her car. Presumably she’s got a rich daddy. Is that the attraction? She looks like a Sloane.’

‘Sloanes haven’t existed since 1988. You’re showing your age, sweetheart.’

He caught her hand before it slapped his face.

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The children are watching.’

She looked over her shoulder and saw Lottie and Clemmie hovering shyly in the corridor.

Adam let go of her wrist.

‘You’d better borrow Clemmie’s booster seat,’ she said.

‘If you really think it’s necessary.’

‘I do.’

She clicked the key to unlock her car for him, then pulled the front door to, stepped back into the hallway, took Clemmie’s anorak off the banister and started helping her into it.

‘Daddy’s brought a special friend to meet you, isn’t that nice? Would you get your coat on, please, Lottie? Are you going to wear your boots? Clemmie, you can do those yourself, can’t you? Chop chop, Daddy’s waiting.’