Name & Address Withheld (22 page)

‘I wanted to tell you, but… Look…it’s over now. I should’ve listened to you earlier. You were right; it can never work out…’

Lizzie wondered if Clare was actually listening. Her eyes were dancing with rage and disappointment.

‘Really, this afternoon was the last time. I know I’ve been stupid, but I can’t help it. I love him and I suppose I was hoping for a miracle.’

‘Screw up your life. See if I fucking care.’

Clare couldn’t listen any more. Everything was muted by the sound of blood rushing furiously in her ears. She stormed past Lizzie, up the stairs and into her room. Her door slammed. Lizzie wanted to follow her, but first she had to usher Matt out of the war zone.

He was dressed and sitting on her bed quietly. From his shell-shocked and timid demeanour Lizzie imagined he’d heard every syllable.

‘Oops.’ It was English understatement at its most masterful.

Lizzie sat down next to him. She was shaking. ‘I think I’m going to throw up.’

‘I’d better go.’

Lizzie couldn’t look him in the eye. Instead she spoke directly to his shoulder. ‘I don’t think this is going to work any more. Go back to Rachel. Give it your best shot. Maybe there’s still a chance. You don’t need all this extra hassle…and neither do I.’

Matt looked at Lizzie incredulously. ‘You’re upset. You don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘I do know. I just should have said it a lot earlier.’

‘But you just told Clare that you loved me.’

‘God, I was stupid to see you again once I knew… Anyway if you were eavesdropping properly you’ll also know that I told her that this afternoon was the last time.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘Don’t bother.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’ Matt gave Lizzie a kiss and then did a good job of getting the hell out of the flat.

The front lock had barely clicked shut when Lizzie knocked on Clare’s door. There was no answer. But Lizzie knew she was in there. She just started talking.

‘Clare. Please. Let me explain. I couldn’t tell you because I knew how you’d react. I wanted to. I can’t bear it when we fight.’

‘Well, you should have thought about that before you opted to be the other woman.’

Clare’s voice was cold and controlled. On balance, Lizzie thought she preferred the hysterical shouting and swearing stage.

‘It’s complicated. More complicated than you know. I know I’ve got to end it. I have ended it. But it’s like we can’t keep away from each other. I know it doesn’t make sense, and it’s been hell trying to deal with it all by myself.’

‘It hasn’t been great being the one who’s left out either, believe me.’

‘I’m so sorry, Clare. Please, let’s get that pizza. Let’s talk.’

‘You’ve left it a bit late, don’t you think? If you want time on your own, you’ve got it. As much as you bloody well like. Get him to invent a business trip. Then you two can shag all day, every day and run around the flat with no clothes on while his wife sits at home. Don’t worry. I realise there isn’t room in your love triangle for anyone else…’

Clare finally opened the door to her room and to Lizzie’s horror she could see that she had been crying. Worse still, she had packed a bag.

‘If I hadn’t come home early today you wouldn’t have told me, would you? No, of course you wouldn’t. Why not? Because you knew how I would take it. Badly. You of all people. You know how gutted I was when I found out that Joe had been unfaithful. I know you were lured in unsuspectingly at the beginning, and I was here for you, but for the last few weeks you’ve been totally selfish. You’ve hurt me, you’ll hurt his wife, you’ll hurt him, you’ll hurt yourself. It’s a no-win situation for a mistress…’

Mistress. The word resounded for a second as Clare paused for breath mid-tirade. Labels, in Lizzie’s opinion, were for clothes. And this was the ultimate in unfashionable brands.

‘Do you know what hurts the most?’

Clare paused for a split second. Lizzie waited. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Whatever she said at this point was bound to be wrong.

‘That you knew all that. You knew exactly what you were doing and yet you still carried on. Day after day after day. Look, I know I’m probably overreacting, but I need some time to calm down and I can’t do it here. I’m going home. You blew me away with this one. I’m sorry, Liz, but I’m really disappointed in you.’

Frozen to the spot, she listened to Clare walking down the stairs, her feet heavy with disgust. The door slammed. Lizzie was alone. All alone. In every sense of the word. She slumped to the floor and sobbed.

chapter 17

W
hen the doorbell rang eleven days after that fateful Wednesday Lizzie was in full tracksuit-bottomed despair and currently running the experiment on her hair that she had so often wondered about. Apparently if you left it for long enough it sort of washed itself. She was still waiting. And when Lizzie saw Matt standing forlornly on the doorstep she wished she hadn’t let herself go quite so much. Then again, she knew she had to send him away, however hard it felt. She’d managed to ignore the faceless phone messages and e-mails, but this was much harder. Matt followed her up the stairs in silence, and as they sat down opposite each other in the sitting room he was the first to speak.

‘How are you?’

She looked terrible. She knew she did. But she also knew that she had to be strong. Matt was worried.

‘Fine.’

‘I wish I was…’

Lizzie was doing a very good impression of a bloodhound. Her nose was indulging itself in the faintest trace of the familiar aftershave that had followed him up the stairs. Drawing on
every milligram of will-power, she resisted the now almost compulsive urge she had to bound over to the chair and dissolve into his chest. Her head was aching with the effort.

‘I love you, Lizzie. I can’t stop thinking about you. Even more now than before.’ It was true. Matt felt as if he was wading knee-deep through mud on a daily basis. He’d never felt like this before. His self-diagnosis: lovesick with a hint of self-loathing. Prognosis: apparently terminal. He didn’t know what to do. He was running on instinct.

Lizzie was torn. In all her years of unfulfilled dating—and there had been many—the only people who’d been this keen on her had been the ones that she wasn’t really interested in at all. Perhaps she had stumbled unsuspectingly into the plot of a Shakespearean tale of unrequited love, a West End musical, or even an opera. She’d seen it all before. Boy meets girl, circumstances—convention, religion, family feud, skin colour, class—dictate that they can’t be together, so they agonise to close friends, children and wild animals of the forest, before moping—and singing—for about an hour and then, after the interval, just when they think they can’t cope any more, something happens.

Heartache had always been big business. But there was no happy ending in sight. Not in Putney. Not today.

‘You only think you love me. We both know it’s the thing you can’t have that you always want the most.’

‘I don’t understand. What’s changed?’ Here he was, finally face to face with Lizzie, and she remained as steely as she’d been when he’d seen her last. She couldn’t really mean it, but he didn’t know how to prove it. And the only person in the world that he could confide in was sitting opposite him, her arms firmly folded.

‘Me…’ Even at this intensely painful time Lizzie could see the funny side of this statement. A few more chocolate biscuits and a velour tracksuit and Waynetta Slob would have a serious rival vying for her place on the three-piece suite. ‘Matt, you tricked me. I’ve never been interested in being the other woman. Ever. I want to be the only woman. The one. The one you can’t live without. The one you have to tear yourself away
from in the morning and the one you want to come home to at night. I can’t deal with being plan B, the one in reserve, second best.’

‘Liz, it was an accident—’

Matt interrupted himself. He’d done it again. As soon as his mouth had closed behind the third syllable he’d known it was a mistake. He started again. Second time lucky.

‘What I mean is that I wasn’t looking for you. I didn’t want to start a double life. But then we met and I knew. I don’t want you both. I just want you.’

Lizzie wanted to fling her arms around him and tell him it would all work out, but this was not the time for her to suffer a moment of weakness. She’d indulged in one of those and look where it had got her. She went on the offensive.

‘Why do men do it? Apart from the ego thing, of course, and the fact that most men can be flattered into bed if the woman is pretty enough. Make that keen enough. The fact that your wife was trusting in you while you were in bed with me makes me feel like shit. And no one gave me a choice until it was too late.’

‘Believe me, Liz, I’ve suffered too.’

‘Sure you have. Must be really tough having to remember who it is you’re shagging.’

Matt shook his head. He could see where she was coming from, but it wasn’t like that at all. He also knew that trying to tell her when she was in this sort of mood would be futile.

‘I’m trying to work a way out of this mess.’

‘You’re only saying that because now I’m telling you I’m no longer an option. Frankly, you might as well stay with Rachel. You’ve probably gone and put me on some sort of pedestal by now, and I’m probably no better than her in lots of ways. I’m just the forbidden fruit…’

‘You’re much better.’

Lizzie was playing her role to perfection. A bit of her wished she wasn’t being quite so convincing, although it was good to know that she could remain articulate in the face of a crisis. Usually she came up with her best lines when she was relat
ing events to a third party, a good couple of hours after the confrontation had finished.

‘Don’t kid yourself. Believe me, underneath my exciting mistress veneer I’m just the same. I have bad breath in the morning and armpit stubble. I can just choose to be at my moodiest when you’re at home or in the office. Mistresses aren’t nicer or better than wives, you just see them less. The whole concept is based on fantasy and it’s flawed.’

‘I thought we were worth fighting for. I thought things were going really well… I love you, Lizzie. I know you love me too. I want us to work, and so do you. I can feel it.’

The words just hung in the air. He didn’t want to leave. She sat back in her chair and began an intense study of her cuticles. Well, that was how it appeared. She was actually concentrating on not crying. No wonder people ignored their principles when it suited them. Doing the right thing was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. The tension was unbearable. It was minutes before Matt broke the deadlock. His voice was calmer again.

‘You’re just saying that it’s over, Liz, you don’t mean it.’

Lizzie took a deep breath.

‘I do mean it. We had fun. You were going through a bad patch, but it doesn’t matter how you dress it up—you’re married to and living with someone else. Someone that’s not me. I just think you owe it to yourself and to Rachel to give it your best shot. You can’t just walk away. Believe it or not, I’m the easy option.’

Matt’s body was now hunched in defeat. ‘Is this what you really want?’

Her heart was shouting
No. No. No. No. No.
Lizzie ignored it. It didn’t deserve a fair hearing. So far it had only got her into trouble. ‘Look, we had great sex. We had a laugh. But we’ve only known each other for a few months. It was just a fling. An affair.’

‘An affair to remember?’ Matt couldn’t resist finishing off the 1957 film title. He did it automatically and with no enthusiasm.

Lizzie’s heart felt as if it was breaking, but she knew that
this was damage limitation. She forced herself to think of the repercussions of another moment of weakness. She couldn’t lock herself away with Matt for ever. She had to get up every morning and face the world.

Lizzie was silent as Matt finally got to his feet, numb in defeat. This wasn’t how he’d envisaged the end of this afternoon at all. In his version there was more smiling—laughter, even—promises, a future, kissing—yes, lots of kissing. He could feel himself shaking as he leant over and kissed her tenderly, breathing in slowly for a fix of her smell. She was motionless.

‘Take care, Lizzie…’ Just saying her name out loud made him want to cry. ‘I’m only leaving now because you’re telling me to, and because, most importantly, I want you to be happy, not because I want to go. And later, if you think you’ve made a mistake, you know where to find me. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I really believed we could get through this together. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. Maybe I just don’t deserve you.’

He turned and walked to the door. His eyes were wet with tears that Lizzie couldn’t see. He didn’t know where he was going. His feet were on automatic pilot. He was no longer aware of his surroundings.

It was the worst moment of Lizzie’s life. What on earth did she want? An Academy Award? A Joan of Arc statuette for services to martyrdom? What if he had been it? What if he was ‘the one’? She knew that it was an old-fashioned concept, but deep down she was just an old-fashioned girl.

chapter 18

M
ornings became afternoons and afternoons became evenings. The only consolation was she knew she wasn’t alone in her suffering. She only had to watch
EastEnders
to know that what she was going through would’ve been ten times worse if she’d lived in Albert Square.

She shouldn’t have been so surprised—after all, she’d gone from born-again-virgin to mistress and back again in under three months. But why hadn’t she learned from previous mistakes? She’d known from an early age not to take things out of the oven without wearing oven gloves, she’d discovered to her cost that tapered trousers were never flattering, bitter experience had taught not to drink beer after champagne or wine, and yet she still hadn’t worked out how to avoid heartache.

All this time on her own wasn’t helping. In the age of communication Clare was single-handedly resisting all Lizzie’s attempts to get in touch. Worse still, she’d been back to the flat, collected more stuff and hadn’t even left a note. Lizzie had apologised repeatedly, and couldn’t manage another morsel of humble pie, but in Clare’s eyes she’d betrayed the sisterhood and purgatory wasn’t over yet. But if Clare was stubbornly de
termined to take the side of a woman she’d never even met, let alone lived with, Lizzie knew she was better off on her own. Clare would calm down eventually. Her high horse always ran out of steam before the final fence.