Getting Rid of Matthew (13 page)

16

C
HECK THIS OUT,"
Matthew said, producing a sheaf of papers from behind his back with all the flourish of a magician with a rabbit.

"What's that?" she'd asked, reaching for them, and then her heart had sunk when she'd seen the headings on the pages. Winkworths, Frank Harris, Copping Joyce. Estate agents. Oh, fuck. OK, so they were living together already, but the
finality
of buying a place together sent a wave of panic through her. Buying together said this is it, we've decided, we're together forever and she didn't feel ready to say that—didn't know if she ever would, although truthfully, the odds were stacking up against it. When she tried to picture herself in the future, these days, that picture just didn't include Matthew. In fact, she was trying to avoid picturing her future life at all at the moment—it was too depressing.

"You're always saying the flat is too small, so I thought what the hell."

"But…" she'd said, clutching at straws, "how can we afford it? I mean, you're still paying for your other house, obviously, and you have to give money to Sophie for the kids, and I'm about to be unemployed. Unemployable, probably."

He smiled at her wryly. "Have you got any idea how much I earn? We can practically buy somewhere else for cash. Not a house, but a big flat. Much bigger than this, at any rate Where do you fancy? Highgate? Primrose Hill? Round here? I want to stay near the kids, but otherwise Bob's your oyster."

She ignored her irritation at the whimsical expression. "But I love my flat."

"No, you don't. You said yourself it's tiny and it's dark and it's damp and the Rabbits are going to kill us in our bed one night. Plus, it's mad for you to be renting at your age."

"At least let's wait until I get another job," she said, thinking, that'll probably be never. "Then I can contribute. I don't want to feel like a kept woman." This seemed to work and they spent a quite pleasant half hour sifting through the details he'd gotten anyway, "Just to see what's out there."

"You're very nice to me," she'd said to him as they got into bed. "I'm sorry I'm a bit of a miserable cow to live with at the moment."

"Tell you what, you can make it up to me," he'd replied, and moved in to kiss her. They'd had sex for the first time in what seemed like ages and it'd reminded her a bit of what things had been like before it all started to go pear-shaped. She'd been very vocal, which he'd seemed to enjoy, although truthfully she was doing it for the Rabbits' sake. When he'd fallen asleep, she'd looked at him and he'd looked so peaceful and unaware of how bad things really were that she felt achingly guilty. She'd kissed him on the forehead, glad that she'd managed to give him a nice evening, for once, and turned onto her side to sleep.

* * *

Helen and Sophie were back in the pub and Helen was pushing Sophie to open up about the breakup of her marriage. She had said no, at first, when Sophie had called her to arrange another evening out, but then had given in immediately when pressed. She couldn't work out if it was curiosity or some kind of masochism; she just couldn't pass up the opportunity to understand the ramifications of what she'd done from the other woman's point of view—to pick at that scab a bit more until she was able to numb the pain and allow it to start healing over. Sophie, always controlled, was resisting pouring her heart out, although it was tempting to do so. She did, however, share one piece of news with her new friend—that she had found out more about who her rival was—

"She actually works at Global. Can you believe that?"

Helen nearly choked on her vodka. She could feel the walls of the pub closing in around her. She looked around, nothing had changed, the world was carrying on as normal. Sophie was still talking.

"I mean, I knew he knew her through work, but I never thought she was someone he spent all day with. She used to be his assistant, for God's sake."

"How do you know?" Helen managed to ask.

"Trust me, people are dying to break good news to you when things like this happen. Apparently, she just announced it in the office the other day, although Amelia said no one's surprised, she's always been a bit up herself. No one likes her."

Ah. Amelia from Human Resources. What a bitch, thought Helen.

Throughout the evening, Helen kept bringing the conversation back around to "Evil Helen," as she now knew she was being perceived—quite rightly so, but it still irked her to hear the things that her colleagues had been saying. Other facts that Sophie had elicited from Amelia included:

Helen was rubbish at her job. (This was so not true.)

She flirted with all the male directors. (Ditto.)

She had told all the girls in the office she had another boyfriend until recently. ("I wonder if Matthew knows about that," Sophie was saying.)

She'd told everyone Matthew was having an affair with another woman to deflect suspicion away from herself. ("Nice," said Sophie.)

She was nearly forty. ("Ha!" said Sophie. "Younger than me but not that young. She won't be able to rely on her looks for much longer.")

"God, she sounds awful," Helen found herself saying, and actually believing it for a moment, until she remembered she was talking about herself. "Does she think it'll last, your friend?"

"Oh, Amelia's not my friend," Sophie said. "But she's one of those women that always want to be first with the news, so I bet she was bursting to tell me. It definitely wasn't out of concern for my well-being. I can't stand her, actually."

You've got good taste, Helen thought.

"And no," Sophie continued, "the general perception at Global is that it won't last. They all think he'll come to his senses and realize he's made a mistake, but I doubt it. I know Matthew, he'll never admit he's wrong."

"You never can tell," said Helen.

"Well, that's his problem now," Sophie replied, effectively drawing a line under the subject.

* * *

After that she wouldn't be drawn out, and they drifted into the slightly less enthralling topic of Claudia's impending birthday.

"What's she like? I mean, what kind of stuff is she into?" Helen asked, thinking that she might glean a bit of useful information to use in her fight to make her Sunday afternoons bearable.

"Claudia's big love is animals. She used to want to be a vet and I think she still does, but she can't admit it because she's in the middle of a 'can't be seen to care about anything' phase. Suzanne's the one who does well in exams. She wants to be a doctor, or at least she says she does, but I think that's because she once said so to Matthew and he's gone on about it ever since. I think she's scared to say she wants to do anything else because she's such a daddy's girl and she wouldn't want to let him down. She's a normal girly-girl, into boy bands and makeup and pink stuff. I've never so much as known her to watch
ER
, let alone take an interest in science. To be honest, I'm just grateful they're both fairly stable and not yet drug addicts or hookers or shoplifters—well, as far as I know."

Helen laughed. "They're what, ten and twelve?"

"Soon to be eleven and twelve. So what, they start young these days…"

"Do you think they want their dad back?"

"I think they'd give anything. Absolutely anything. But they're still young enough to forgive and forget. That gets much harder as you get older."

"What do they make of Helen?" Helen was unable to leave the subject of herself alone.

"Oh, they can't stand her. Or, at least, that's what they tell me. By the sound of it, she makes it pretty clear she's not interested in them."

They shared a cab home as far as the Camden tube station, where Helen insisted she get out and walk the rest of the way while Sophie took it on up Kentish Town Road. It was such a normal, everyday thing that friends do that Helen nearly forgot who they both were and allowed Sophie to drop her off at her door as she was trying to insist she should. Matthew wasn't there, of course—he was at the family home, babysitting the girls—and neither was his car, but it would still be a stupidly risky thing to do. What if Sophie, knowing where she lived, decided to drop around unannounced one day? No…it didn't bear thinking about. She picked her way past the crowds spilling out of the Electric Ballroom and replayed the evening in her head. Apart from the half hour character assassination of herself, it had been a good evening. Strange but enjoyable. Strange, enjoyable, and more than a bit reckless. She wondered if she had a death wish.

She realized she was feeling guilty about the girls. It wasn't their fault they were caught up in the middle of this, she thought. In fact, she was starting to find she was growing quite fond of them, in
principle.
When Sophie talked about them she made them sound adorable—vulnerable, complicated, unique. It was just that it was hard to equate that with the surly monosyllabic creatures who spent their Sunday afternoons glaring at her from beneath their long fringes. As she turned the corner into Jamestown Road, she vowed to try harder with them.

* * *

"Let's get a kitten," said Helen back at home when Matthew had finished moaning about Sophie getting home late and clearly half cut again.

"What?"

"I mean it. Let's go to Battersea Dogs Home and pick out a kitten or a cat or a dog. I don't know, let's just get an animal."

"Has Rachel got you drunk?" he said, laughing, but Helen could see he was pleased she was in a good mood.

17

T
HE DAYS DRAGGED ON
through the wet darkness of February with Helen forcing herself in to work, sitting at her desk feigning deafness to the occasional comments thrown out by the other women, and feeling genuine relief when they slipped back into their campaign of ignoring her. Matthew insisted on popping in to see her several times a day, no matter how many times she told him he was making things worse. Whenever he left again ("bye, girls!" all around), she kept her eyes firmly fixed on her computer screen, so as not to see the smirks. By Thursday, she'd taken to wearing her iPod at her desk. At lunchtime, she took herself out and ate her lunch in the square around the corner, even in the rain, and it was sitting there on Friday, wet hair, soggy sandwiches, damp paperback, that she ran into Sophie. And not just Sophie, Sophie and a rather attractive man.

Helen caught sight of them a split second before Sophie looked up as they passed by her bench. She froze in shock and contemplated trying to sneak away, but it was too risky. By the time Sophie spotted her, she'd just managed to compose herself and was trying to make eating on a bench, in the freezing rain in a square just down the street from Global PR, look like the most normal event in the world.

"Hi!"

"Eleanor! What on earth are you doing here?"

"I…had a meeting in Dean Street and…I've got another meeting in a bit, round the corner, so I thought I'd enjoy the beautiful weather."

Luckily, both Sophie and Mr. Attractive laughed. Helen took a proper look at him. Blimey, he really was nice-looking, tall, a slightly disturbing combination of dark hair and incredibly pale blue eyes, smile lines, well built. She hated skinny men. All knees and elbows and they always seemed to want to dress to show that off, like they were really proud of it, in stretchy tight-fit jeans that made them look like wading birds. Mind you, if anyone had asked her a few years ago if balding heads and paunches were her type, she'd have said definitely not. It was so long since she'd found a man even halfway fanciable that she spent just a fraction too long taking him in. Then she remembered it was rude to stare, especially at someone who might well turn out to be her new friend's new boyfriend.

It was just a momentary aberration and it was over in a second. She knew it was just the jolt of her hormones springing back into life, because she'd clapped eyes on someone half decent for the first time in God knew how long. She mentally chastised herself for even going there.

* * *

"This is Sonny," Sophie was saying, and for some reason they both laughed.

"Eleanor…oh, Eleanor does PR. How funny is that? Sonny's opening a restaurant in Percy Street in a couple of weeks and I was just saying to him you should get yourself a PR person, and here you are. Give him your card."

"I…er…I've run out, em, because of moving and everything, you know, I'm having to get new ones printed, so…"

"Well, I'll give him your mobile number, then. You're not too busy, are you?"

Helen made a quick mental list of the pros and cons.

Pros:

I'm nearly out of a job, so I could do with the money. I could do this standing on my head.

This could be the start of a whole new career.

Cons:

I'm not a PR person.

My name's not Eleanor.

I can't remember what my surname is meant to be.

Somehow she decided in a split second that the pros had won, and found herself saying, "No, not at all, that'd be great, ring me."

"Tell me about the restaurant," she heard herself saying.

"Well, it's Spanish. Tapas. We import all our own ingredients. Authentic Catalan. The head chef's come over from Gaudí in Barcelona. Have you heard of it?"

"No, sorry. Have you done anything like this before?" He was so enthusiastic, it was easy to imagine him charming the press.

"I had a bistro in Richmond. Tiny. Safe. This is scaring the shit out of me, to tell you the truth."

"I keep telling him he's crazy," said Sophie. "You know that statistic, nine out of ten restaurants go bust in the first year? Well, he's already had the one-out-of-ten successful one, so it's got to be all downhill from here."

"She's so supportive." Sonny laughed, and Helen thought how easy and relaxed they seemed together. She was glad for her friend, although a little miffed that Sophie hadn't mentioned her new conquest in their last drunken chat. Maybe she was seeing him before Matthew left, she thought, clutching at something that might absolve her guilt, but she knew that infidelity wasn't Sophie's style.

She said good-bye to Sophie, who was promising to call her later in the week, and to Sonny, who was saying he'd ring that afternoon. She waited until they were out of sight before she headed back to Global and sat back at her miserable desk.

Oh, God, what had she done? This was fucking insane. She'd been at Global long enough to know she could handle a small campaign in her sleep, but as Eleanor Whatshername? All her contacts, the endless editors and sub-editors and journalists she dealt with every day on Laura's behalf knew her as Helen Williamson. Maybe she could use her real name with them and her fake one with Sonny. Or she could tell him it was the PR equivalent of a stage name. Or her maiden name, although she'd never come across anyone who changed their first as well as their second name on marriage. It was a ridiculous idea. Too dangerous.

But…what if she pulled it off? What if she did a great campaign and he recommended her to his friends and she could set up on her own and fuck them all at Global? No…because if she did a great campaign, then what he would actually do is recommend Eleanor Thing to his friends. Eleanor Thing would be able to set up on her own and have a thriving business and a great new career. And she wasn't Eleanor Thing. Oh, God, what had she told Sophie her fucking surname was? She had no idea.

She went in to see Laura.

"I just wondered whether you'd had any luck, you know, if you'd heard about any jobs?"

"I have," said Laura, handing over a Post-it with a name and number written on it in black ink. Martin Ross from EyeStorm. They were big.

"It's only secretarial, though, I'm afraid. I keep trying to tell people you're totally up to it, but they all want experience. Sorry."

"Thanks for trying." Helen backed out the door. "I'll ring him," she said, having no intention of doing so.

* * *

The day crawled along. Helen had decided that if Sonny ever rang, she would say yes. She'd do the job as Eleanor Whatever Her Name Was to him and Helen Williamson to her contacts, and she'd somehow find a way to smooth out the lines between the two, so that by the time it was done she'd have the experience she needed to get a proper job. The proper job she should have tried to get years ago. She stared at her mobile, willing it to ring.

At five o'clock, the dull and pointless office ritual of Friday afternoon drinks began. The routine was that a couple of bottles of champagne were cracked open, whichever of the directors were around came and hung around the general office, and people necked down a quick glass and went home. It was meant to be a bonding thing. Usually, two or three of the sadder employees stayed on, drinking the dregs out of everyone else's glasses and raiding the fridge for beer before going on to a local pub for the evening, so that they had hilarious stories of their wild and exciting lives to relate to the office on Monday morning (I was sick in someone's glass!, I shagged some bloke in a taxi!, I danced on the table in the Nelly Dean!). Tonight, thankfully, Matthew was out at a launch, but Alan Forsyth, a partner with a well-deserved reputation for being a bit of a sleaze, was on socializing duty with Laura. The others started to drift in, Annie and Amelia among them. Helen stayed at her desk, head down, willing Laura to tell her she could leave early.

"Not having a drink, Helen?" Alan was shouting over. "Scared you won't be able to resist me if you have a couple?" The coven cackled.

"Pack it in, Alan," Laura was saying, but Alan could never pass up the chance to show off in front of an audience. Especially an audience of women.

"Not too young for you, am I?" He was finding himself so amusing his face had gone bright red and Helen thought he resembled an aubergine. An overweight, sweaty, unpalatable aubergine. She willed him to have a heart attack, or a stroke, at least. Nothing fatal, just something that might put him into hospital for a few weeks.

"I mean, I'm only, what, fifteen years older than you."

OK, something fatal.

He was never going to give up, at least not while he was making the crowd laugh.

"I do have a wife and child, though. Not that that would put you off."

Helen thought about getting out her big gun. The one that would flatten Alan with one shot. The one that would let him know that the whole office was aware of his sordid e-mail sex sessions with a woman called Felicia who was definitely not his wife. They'd spent many an afternoon when Alan was away from the office reading those e-mails aloud to each other. Somewhere along the line, Alan seemed to have forgotten that the contents of his in-box all went to his assistant, Jamie, as well as to his personal pc—Jamie, by the way, had been hired when Alan's female P.A., Kristin, had complained that he had made inappropriate comments to her at the office Christmas party, and then a few drinks later had tried to feel her up in the corridor. Of course, there had been no repercussions for Alan, except that his P.A. was let go and then a few weeks later Jamie was promoted from a runner in her place. Jamie, who was good mates with Kristin and had spent many hours listening to her complain about Alan's wandering hands, had absolutely no loyalty to his boss whatsoever and never quite got around to reminding him that his exchanges weren't, strictly speaking, confidential.

Occasionally, when one of the P.A.s had had a glass too many at Friday night drinks, they would throw in a quote or two—something along the lines of "big hard cocks" or "throbbing members" (Alan was not blessed with great originality or artistry)—and Jamie would hold his breath, hoping that his boss didn't rumble what was going on, but he never did. In his supreme arrogance, he believed he was untouchable. Helen knew, though, that a direct attack would give the game away and Jamie would probably end up losing his job, while Alan would most likely get back-slaps of congratulations from the other directors.

She took a deep breath and stood up and reached for her coat on the back of her chair.

"You know what, Alan, you're right. I do want to sleep with you. I'm not sure if it's your impeccable reputation, your astonishing talent, or your sparkling wit, but I find you utterly irresistible."

"Ooh, I've touched a nerve," Alan was saying, but his laugh sounded a bit less sure of itself.

"Fuck you."

Ignoring the collective
ooh
of the other women, Helen stomped off toward the door. Then, with horror, she realized, just as she'd thought she'd safely made it into Reception, that she'd forgotten her bag. For a split second, she thought about leaving it, but it contained her whole life. Keys, money, mobile. Scarlet, she had to turn back and make her way through the office again, all eyes on her. She kept her head up, trying to make it look as if this double exit had been part of the plan all along.

"How dare you take the piss out of me? Don't expect a fucking reference," Alan was spitting in her direction. Annie, Amelia, and Jenny were purple with laughter. Helen kept her head down.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Alan, grow up," she could hear Laura saying. "Why would she want a reference off you? She works for me." She raised her voice so that she knew Helen would hear. "And I intend to give her a very good one, too."

As Helen reached the downstairs lobby of the building, still waiting for her color to go down, her mobile rang. It was a number she didn't recognize. She took a deep breath before answering.

"Hello."

"Hi, is that Eleanor?"

Bingo
. She felt a little light-headed when she realized who it was, and she had to force her voice to sound calm and competent.

"It is."

"We met earlier, in Soho Square…"

"Yes! Hi."

"Yeah, erm…I was thinking, Sophie's right, and if you think you might have time to help me out, then I was wondering whether we could meet up and talk about it."

Helen tried to sound professional.

"Definitely. I'd love to. Name your time."

"Well," said Sonny, "how about now? I'm at the restaurant, if you want to come over and see what you'll be plugging."

Helen retraced her steps back toward the stairs and went into the ladies'. I'll just check I look presentable, she thought, but then found herself completely redoing her makeup. It's important that I look good, she said half aloud as she combed her hair through, PR is all about image. But she knew she was kidding herself and she wanted Sonny to think she was attractive.

There was nothing else for it. She wanted, no, she
needed
this job, but there was something else going on and it was making her feel…uneasy. She had to call Sophie and find out exactly what the story was with Sonny before she put herself in a situation where she might end up doing something she'd regret. She dialed. Answerphone.

Oh, fuck it, she thought, I'm an adult, I make my own choices, and I am absolutely not going to do anything wrong. I just need some work.

* * *

Sonny's restaurant was in the last stages of frantic renovation work. Helen let herself in, clambered over the rubble, and tried not to trip over the wiring. There was clearly no electricity at the moment, and the small space was lit by a few battery-powered lamps dotted about the place. Despite the bitter cold outside, the warmth from a Calor gas fire gave it a cozy feel. Two men were working away, heads down, and through the layer of dust she just about recognized one of them as Sonny. He was working intently, plastering a wall. In his old T-shirt and paint-spattered jeans, he looked like the epitome of a Diet Coke man. Helen could imagine whole offices full of secretaries putting down their dictation pads and taking off their reading glasses to gather and stare at him through the window. She stood for a moment, not quite knowing what to do, then realized she was staring at him herself. The other man looked up.