Sex with the Ex (21 page)

“…I am afraid of alarming you, but things with Edward deteriorate with each passing day. He is fearfully ill and I am once more pretending the illness is mine.
I don't want to disturb your shooting, but perhaps you could advise me on what I should do about his condition.

 

I am dissembled. Concealing him is become increasingly difficult, he is now too weak to move. His breathing is labored. I fear arousing the suspicion of a doctor, so I call no one. I love and respect you too much to bring scandal upon your good name. I shall await your council, anxiously, your loving wife, Hen.”

 

An extract of a letter from Lady Henrietta Posche to her husband, Charles

“H
ow random is that!” I complained to Elizabeth as I explained Charlie's phone call.

“I don't know why you're in such a lather, to be honest. The two of you have a lot of sorting out to do, especially if you plan to set up your own PR company, but even if you intend to work for someone else, you have to establish what access to clients your contract with Charlie stipulates.”

“I suppose that's true but, Elizabeth, there was something else, remember I told you that he had the check all ready for me when I went in to resign?” Elizabeth nodded. “Well, I opened the envelope and it wasn't a check at all but an old letter from the archives of Lady Posche.”

“Really! Shit, that must be worth something.”

“I guess, but it's weird as well because it was sort of like a love letter.”

“A what letter?”

“I've probably got this all wrong, but it was a letter from
Lord Charles Posche to his wife, only it was a letter of longing, as if he wanted her to know how much he loved her. Oh, I don't know, do you think—”

“Charles is in love with you?”

“No. But it was a bit cryptic.”

“Cryptic for in love, you mean.”

“Do you think that's possible?”

Elizabeth turned away and bit one of her nails. “He said something to me. I promised I wouldn't tell you.”

“That's not fair.”

“It's not about this. At least, not directly, anyway. I mean, I don't know, he's never said a word to me about his feelings for you, I swear, although I've seen the way he looks at you sometimes. We all have.”

“What did he say?”

“I can't, Lola.”

“What did he say?” I insisted.

She shook her head. “Why don't you ask him yourself about his feelings for you? After all, you've resigned, so you have nothing to lose, right? Besides, it's a very personal gift, so give him something in return and at least end things nicely.”

“What did he tell you?”

“It's better you ask him yourself, Lola.”

“That's not very loyal.”

“That's not fair and you know it. It's better you hear it from him, for your sake.” I pried a bit more but gave up. Elizabeth can be very stubborn like that. I knew I wouldn't get any more out of her.

“I need something personal for a man,” I told the girl at Prada half an hour later.

“How about a wallet?” she offered.

The guy at Gucci was no more imaginative, so I ended
up on Mount Street at William & Son where they had the most beautiful leather goods, backgammon boards, chess boards, soft calf boxes crafted in a wide array of colors. I found myself fingering a deep orange leather envelope with a small heart etched onto it in silver. It seemed the perfect envelope for the letter to Lady Posche.

“Can I help you?” inquired a kindly-looking older gentleman who was holding a black Labrador just like Cinders, who was straining on a leash to jump on me.

“She's a puppy,” he explained. “You'll have to forgive her, she's still very enthusiastic about people.”

“She can probably smell my rabbit,” I told him, patting my bag. “Jean loves dogs.”

He laughed and so I explained about the gift from my boss and the sort of gift I wanted to reciprocate his kindness with and he agreed that the envelope I was holding would be the perfect gift.

So, armed with my beautifully wrapped gift, I took a cab, still unable to get the letter out of my head. I wondered if I'd have the courage to bring the letter up. I wondered if he'd have the balls to tell me what it all meant.

This time Carl was on reception and suggested I go straight up, as Charlie was on his own.

I took the secret staircase the same deep orange as the envelope. I couldn't help imagining Lord Charles Posche and how he must have felt about Lady Posche smuggling her lover up these stairs, or if he even knew, and I wondered about my future, about Richard's secrets and our future together.

A future in which I would never take this staircase again.

I tapped on the door and heard Charlie call out, “Come.”

I used to find it funny when he said that. Elizabeth had once remarked it would make her orgasm to hear Charlie
call that word out to her. I entered to find him standing by the window, looking speculatively out over the courtyard. I was used to seeing him in this pose, but in the few days away from him, I had forgotten how much presence he had. He exuded solidity, as if he'd been internally constructed by master craftsmen rather than assembling himself amateurishly like the rest of us.

I let Jean out of the bag and she hopped straight over to Cinders, who gave her a friendly lick. I had calculated that we would spend this meeting in negotiations, but now all I felt was heaviness, sadness for the distance that Richard had put between Charlie and me.

Before that night when I'd spotted Richard laughing easily with Jeremy and Hamish, and then later when I'd spied him arguing with Leggy Blonde, Charlie and I had been so close. I remembered that night so vividly now, the way he'd crouched behind the drinks station with me, and later how he'd sensed my agony at seeing Richard with another girl and called me a car. He had been a good friend as well as a brilliant boss. He'd been there for me whenever I needed him and now I was walking away from all that.

“So, Lola, how are you bearing up?”

What did he mean by “bearing up”? I could only presume he was speaking of my aunt's death. “Fine. She was very old.”

“Yes, she was. But actually, I was speaking of the Richard thing, how are you managing there?”

“The Richard thing?” My love life had officially become a thing.

I sat down, confused now. It sounded as if Charlie knew about Richard seeking help for his cocaine addiction.

“I thought you might need an extra friend,” he explained.

“Yes, he's well,” I said, determined to be a paragon of discretion after my phone call with Richard this morning.
Wherever he was, I had to trust he was fighting for his sobriety.

Charlie interrupted my thoughts. “It's a rum business for everyone.”

“What do you mean, a rum business?” I asked, pronouncing “rum business” in an exaggeratedly toff way.

“Well, him going back to Sally after proposing to you!”

“Back to Sally?” I repeated.

He repeated the sentence. “Back to Sally.”

I looked up into his clear blue eyes but I wasn't absorbing his meaning at all, so I asked again, “Back to
Sally?
”

He looked as confused as I was. “Yes, he's gone back to Sally, didn't he tell you?”

I watched Jean sniffling about with Cinders. I looked out over the courtyard buzzing with the hum of members' conversations. My hands were wrapped around the gift I'd brought for him.

“Lola, are you okay, I presumed you of all people would have known?”

“Richard's in the Priory,” I told him, even though I knew at that moment that he wasn't.

“The Priory?” he repeated, as if I'd said the fifth dimension.

“I think it's very admirable,” I told him sanctimoniously.

“Lola, he's convinced Sally to take him back. God knows why. I suspect he's got nowhere else to go, but I promise you, I wouldn't lie to you about something like that.” He came over to me, crouching at my feet. I stared at my hands, turning the gift over and over. He put his hand over my hands to still them. “Lola?”

I turned to face him. “And how would you know where Richard is? I doubt he'd confide in you after you hit him on Saturday. You're the last person he'd discuss
his private affairs with. Or is this your secret confidence with Elizabeth?”

“My what?”

“Elizabeth told me you told her something that she wasn't to tell me.”

Charlie reached out and stroked my hair. “Sally's my sister, Lola. I, well, that is to say, I wasn't sure if you knew or not. I presumed Richard would have told you and, well, I suppose when I doubted that he had, I didn't want to be the one…”

It's difficult to describe the emotions involved when struck with a revelation like that. All I can say is they were so powerful that I couldn't register them. Instead, I shoved the gift into Charlie's hands. “This is for you,” I announced. He looked embarrassed as he took it, which was perfectly understandable as that was when the Leggy Blonde walked in and I turned to walk out.

I looked at her as I passed her, looked her up and down and up again. Although she was leaner and blonder than Charlie, she had the same easy smile, which she rested on me now. And then she blushed as she took in my shock. So here she was, flesh and blood. The Leggy Blonde. A slide show of all the times I'd seen her, having an argument with Richard that first night I saw her, walking in on our lovemaking, and here in Posh House snuggled up intimately with Richard on the sofa, stroking Jean.

I looked over at Charlie. The whole thing felt like a setup, like a joke had been played on me. Why had he never told me about his sister and Richard? Why had he let me go on believing? Why had he let her go on believing—or had he not, had she been privy to things he should have shared with me?

Like Charlie, she looked and sounded as if she'd been bred
rather than brought up; like fine bloodstock, there were no rough edges, no evidence of flaws. “You must be Lola, I've heard so much about you,” she said, extending a hand. How typical of her to be so civilized; how typical of her to be the one to extend the hand of friendship to the other woman—because when it came down to it, that's what I was to Sally. The competition.

And I couldn't bear her civilities, they only highlighted my incivilities. I wanted to slap her, but then again maybe underneath her good breeding she wanted to slap me. So I took her hand and shook it politely as I said, “And you must be the woman doing my job…
and
my fiancé.” I couldn't help myself, the words just came out of their own accord—delivered coldly, with perfect CCC control.

I looked her in the eye, daring her to blush, but instead I was blushing myself.

“I didn't know until a couple of weeks ago and then I left him,” she explained, beginning to lose her composure. “It's him. I can't seem to help it. I love him and, well, he…” I heard pain in her voice, the pain I'd experienced so much with Richard. The pain of disappointment and resignation and inevitability.

So I left because I knew I couldn't keep up the CCC thing. Only, halfway down the secret passage as the tears began to flow, I remembered Jean and had to go back in and fetch her, which was very embarrassing.

Charlie and Sally tried to stop me. Charlie even grabbed my arm. “Wait, Lola, don't go like this.”

“Please, Lola, don't go,” agreed Sally. “I know how you feel. I feel the same way.”

I looked at her with hatred then. “No, I don't think you do,” I told her, even though I suspect she did. “He was my husband,” I added, as if this gave me some special status.

“I've told him I can't do it anymore, Lola. I just wanted to talk to you, to explain, to—”

“Please, Lola, stay, listen,” Charlie entreated. But I left, knowing I would never go back, never stand in this room again, because now it had finally dawned on me that going back was what had landed me in this mess in the first place.

“…I doubt much that what I shall reveal to you can make much sense; I find my head so heavy that I cannot feel my heart. All I know is it continues to beat, though it would be better for all were it to stop.
If I did say once that my love for Edward should have nothing to do with my marriage to Charles, 'twas when his carriage toward me gave me such an occasion as could justify these words.

 

It was my intention to charter a course of domestic felicity, for I considered my love for Charles worthy of a wife. In this I did Charles a grave injustice, for I must conclude I have no value to Edward now, at times I wonder if he knows who I am, for his hallu
cinations are such as to render him unaware of any one or anything.”

 

Extract of a letter from Lady Henrietta Posche to her sister, Elizabeth

T
he journey home was dominated by complicated feelings that jumbled together like a mass of slithering eels. Richard rang me soon after I'd got back into the flat.

“How's it going?” I asked brightly, giving nothing away.

“Great, but it's you I'm interested in, how are things?”

I told him I'd just got back from sorting out some final business with Charlie. It seemed slightly unreal to me that I was able to lie to him so easily, but then years of staying CCC under pressure had clearly paid off. Also, I wanted to hear what he had to say because I was absolutely certain that Sally would have called him after our meeting.

But he didn't betray himself in the slightest. He told me that he was already beginning to feel better and the Priory doctors expected him to be able to leave Friday.

“Sorry I was so short with you this morning,” he explained. “But they are pretty strict about outside contact. You could be my dealer for all they know,” he joked.

“Marcus?”

“What?”

Can't you even follow your own lies? I was thinking. “Nothing,” I replied, feeling a surge of anger and embarrassment for the way I'd been so blind. “So you are feeling better, things going well at the Priory? Met any nice addicts?” I was speaking in a faux-jolly, nasty sort of way. I sounded like a pin being dragged down a blackboard.

But Richard appeared not to notice. “I'm missing you,” he whispered sexily. “I really miss you, Lola. I'm doing this for you, for us, you know that.” The saddest thing was that I truly believe if you had put Richard on a lie detector monitor at that moment it would show he was telling the truth. Because I truly believe that Richard believed all his lies—which is ironic, because despite all the evidence, I had believed all Richard's lies, as well.

I know it sounds mad knowing what I now knew. It
was
mad…but I wanted to believe him too, more than I have ever wanted to believe anything in my life. I wanted to believe him the way I had always believed him, ignoring the nagging voices of my own judgment telling me he was lying.

I watched Jean as she hopped toward her water bowl. Richard was saying something to me but it didn't seem to matter what. He was so wrong in every way and my pulse raced to tell him what I really thought of him. But instead, all I said was, “Well, you'd better get off the phone or they'll catch you. You wouldn't want to create suspicion.”

“No, you're right,” he agreed solemnly. “I'll call you tomorrow if I get a chance, otherwise I'll see you Friday, babe.”

I pressed end. “Babe? Can you believe I loved a man who can call me babe?” I asked Jean, who was looking up at me. Her eyes seemed to brim with understanding as she hopped
over and gently began humping my foot. I picked her up and held her above my head. “Oh, Jean, what have I done?” I asked her, but she wriggled around, eager to be put down again. Rabbits do their best but they are not a girl's best friend.

So I called my best friends.

Elizabeth and Clemmie met me at the Met Bar at eleven. I arrived first, unable to spend a minute longer alone in my flat. Swiping my card outside, I began to relax as I entered the familiar buzz of the deep red bar. I saw another friend, Niki, sitting with a couple of actors I had organized various parties for at Posh House, so I just said a quick hi and slipped into the booth closest to the DJ's station, and when the drinks waiter came, I ordered a Bellini. I couldn't quite define what I felt but I did feel something, a mixture of things, really: a soup of shame, shock and despair. Mostly despair.

I looked around the tables of wealthy men and women chatting. There were a few people getting down to the music and a couple kissing at one of the tables in the middle of the bar. I watched them as I sipped my Bellini and wondered how they'd met, how long they'd been together and whether they thought they'd last forever and whether they would.

There was no escaping the reality that Richard had never loved me. Worse than the reality that Richard had never loved me, though, was this: I was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, I had never loved him. Sure, I'd been in love with the idea of love, with the idea of happily-ever-afters. I'd been in love with the idea that I could have what Kitty and Martin had; an unquestionable passion for another human being that carried on despite interruptions, a love that withstood everything—even divorce.

The girls slipped into the booth with me and ordered cosmopolitans, after which I think they were stuck for words. They'd probably already said all the things they wanted to say now. How Richard was a cokehead, a liar, a prick. There wasn't any ground we hadn't covered in the anti-Richard field and yet here they were, desperate to pick up the pieces of their girlfriend's heart—the girlfriend they'd warned was going to have her heart broken if she persisted with her obsession with Richard. But they didn't say, “We told you so.”

Actually, they didn't talk about Richard or Sally or Charlie or me. Instead, we talked about old times, safe times, before all this had happened. Elizabeth started the ball rolling with how she had bumped into Clive that day.

“Clive the sherbet head?” I asked, remembering the story she had told at Aunt Camilla's funeral ball—about the one bright moment of the evening.

She nodded. “Fizz Nose himself,” she joked.

Andy the barman approached our table then and handed out taster cocktails. “Something I'm working on,” he explained. “See what you think,” he told us as we dutifully knocked them back.

And promptly spat them out again. All of us giving Andy the barman the thumbs-down. “Not too good?”

“Andy, what is in that, it's disgusting!” I told him, taking a sip of cosmopolitan to take the taste out of my mouth.

“Yes, what's in it?” Josie asked, sniffing her glass suspiciously.

“Absinthe, vermouth, gin. I was reviving the Piccadilly cocktail, from the Savoy cocktail book.”

“Well, don't,” I told him firmly, “it died for a reason.”

“A very good reason,” Elizabeth added.