Stop the Clock (6 page)

‘You’d be wonderful to paint,’ Adele said. ‘Lots of flesh. Like a Lucian Freud. You should be reclining on a sofa like an odalisque.’

‘Well, like I said, there isn’t usually this much of me.’

‘Have you got photographs?’

‘God, no.’

‘You should get Richard to take some.’

‘I don’t think Richard would want to photograph me,’ Natalie said.

‘Why not?’

Natalie shrugged. ‘I can’t say I blame him.’

Adele stood up and started moving dishes into a cavernous fridge. ‘Come through to the living room and I’ll draw you.’

‘Oh! No, it’s very nice of you, but I should be getting back.’

‘You can keep your clothes on, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘But I’m wearing a tent.’

‘Take it off then.’

‘But I’m covered in stretch marks.’

Natalie had never been particularly proud of her body, but at least prior to pregnancy it had been free of scars. Now pink lashings snaked across her hips, breasts and thighs, textured like pastry pulled to the point of rupture.

‘Imperfections are what make people interesting,’ Adele said.

She closed the fridge and walked off without looking back, and Natalie found herself following her.

She sat for Adele for twenty minutes. The time passed slowly, as it does when one is required to be still, but not tediously; the experience was too novel, too intimate and too gratifying.

Natalie lay on the sofa in the sitting room, naked, propped up on cushions, one arm curved around her jutting belly, which was hard, moon-white and smooth as stone. She had never undressed fully in front of another woman, yet she had not felt awkward or embarrassed. Weirdly, she had felt proud – proud of her own daring; and, stranger still, she had felt relieved.

She had slept badly for weeks now, and was comfortable enough to doze, but Adele’s eyes, darting from Natalie back to her drawing and back to Natalie again, made that impossible. It was an impersonal process, scientific, analytical, almost mechanical. Of course it was flattering. How could it not be? To be worthy of such scrutiny, to merit recording? Each glance was an affirmation, and Natalie’s skin tingled and glowed as if
emerging from obscurity into the cumulative caress of dozens of pinpricks of light.

An hour later, carrying a rolled-up tube of sugar paper secured with masking tape, Natalie stepped into the back of the taxi Adele had called for her.

She felt drunk, or drugged. She’d spent the morning asleep; when the alarm had gone off she’d resisted the summons to wakefulness for as long as she could. She’d been resentful, groggy, sedated. Now she was still out of it, but she didn’t feel at all like sleeping.

The taxi drew up outside her house within minutes and she gave the driver a tenner and told him to keep the change. He hadn’t tried to talk to her, hadn’t broken the spell; that in itself deserved rewarding.

She let herself into the empty house. Richard wouldn’t be back for hours. What to do? She stuck Adele’s drawing in the back of the wardrobe and ran a bath.

She just fitted in it. Her belly reared up in front of her, enormous, slippery, unavoidable. She couldn’t see her crotch. But it was still her body; under occupation, but unsurrendered. She knew it could still be forced into pleasure, in spite of the ordeal that was looming.

Natalie got out and dried herself and hung the towel over the rail to dry. She went into the bedroom and hung back from the window as she pulled the curtains. She sat on the edge of the bed, and then carefully lowered herself down on one elbow until she was lying on her side. She closed her eyes and imagined herself thin, light, supple and implacably erotic.

ONE BY ONE,
all of Tina’s longstanding office buddies had married eligible men and stopped working at the
Post
. Each one, on leaving, had said, ‘I’ll miss you,’ and Tina occasionally wondered if they ever did.

She certainly missed all of them, but it was necessary to adapt, and so, when her thirty-sixth birthday passed without a card from her colleagues landing on her desk, she told herself it was no surprise; why should anybody remember? It wasn’t as if she’d publicized the occasion. What was the point of making a big deal about getting older?

Anyway, a couple of days later there would be another, arguably more important milestone to celebrate: the tenth anniversary of her first day in the office. She knew that wouldn’t go by unmarked. Her boss had sent out a department-wide email in advance, suggesting that they commemorate the occasion with a lunchtime drink.

On the morning of the big day she got in at a quarter to nine, the optimum, irreproachable time, just in case anybody who mattered was paying attention. Not so early as to suggest mental derangement, but a safe, professional distance from being late. As she pushed through the revolving doors she felt light years removed from her younger, less certain self, who had passed through this same entrance ten years ago with her heart in her mouth, terrified of making some appalling blunder that would result in her being sent back into the outside world before the day was out, never to return.

The older and wiser Tina Fox had a decent suit and handbag, good shoes, her own column, and a degree of confidence in her ability to cope with whatever the day might have to throw at her. She had not only survived, she’d thrived, while her peers had fallen by the wayside – well, the women among them had, at any rate.

The lobby was in the process of being tarted up, and smelt strongly of fresh paint. The workmen were adding the finishing touches, hanging framed editions of notable front pages on the walls. An older colleague of Tina’s, Anthea Trask – a willowy
Post
veteran who’d had five children and still had the figure of a girl? had pointed out that it was usually a sign of trouble when an organization started doing up its reception area. But Tina thought Anthea’s scepticism was unfounded. The
Post
’s testy, grumbling persona had such a well-established place in national life that it was impossible to imagine it being abandoned by its readers and falling on hard times.

As she headed towards the lift the front page mounted
on the adjacent wall caught her eye. ‘Women warned: “Don’t wait to have babies”. Scientists reveal fresh insights into the fertility time bomb’.

That was one of the great contradictions at the heart of the
Post
– it liked to give mothers a hard time, especially those who were single, working or in any way removed from a hazy 1950s ideal of domestic bliss, but at the same time, it was uneasy about women who weren’t mothers, and it particularly didn’t like young females to disport themselves too freely, without fretting at least a little about the potential consequences of their actions.

It occurred to Tina that she had been effectively set up – that if she used her column to acknowledge the downsides of being a thirtysomething spinster, she’d look like a loser, and however much she advocated the joys of the single, childfree life, in the end it would all just come across as so much special pleading. Her readers would conclude that she was lonely and jealous of her more fecund friends, as the letters and online comments she’d received so far had tended to suggest.

It was only then that she noticed Dan Cargill, her office sparring partner, occasional rival and, unfortunately, one-time lover, standing with his back to her and waiting for the lift. Up until that drunken night a couple of weeks ago she would have gone up to him and teased him about the pattern on his tie, or the report about Snookums the baby elephant he’d had in the paper the previous day, or about being in early for once. But she had made a mistake, and now she was just going to have to avoid him.

Even as she veered away she noted the details of his
appearance that most irritated her. Which was worse: the unpolished shoes, the lightly creased chinos, or the rumpled, quite possibly unwashed hair? No, surely the chief offender had to be the jacket, which was one Dan wore often. It was an indeterminate shade of brown reminiscent of nicotine-stained pub walls, its bulging pockets doubtless crammed with notebooks and cigarettes and recording devices.

He was just such a
hack
. Not much of a successor to the Rt. Hon. Justin Dandridge QC, MP (Con.) for Wellerby South and Shepstowe. Justin had always been so dapper – so impeccably well groomed, with his three-piece suits and handmade brogues . . .

How on earth had she let down her guard enough to cry on Dan’s shoulder – let alone to tumble into bed with him? Thank God she’d at least retained the self-discipline not to tell him exactly why she was so upset. She didn’t imagine for one minute that he would have treated pillow talk as confidential information. If she’d given him even the faintest hint that she’d just emerged from a long-running affair with a married MP, he’d almost certainly have seen it as an opportunity to coax the whole story out of her and write it up as a dazzling exclusive.

She hurried away from him towards the stairs and up towards their office on the third floor, taking the steps two at a time. Honestly, what was the point in getting in early if you couldn’t even beat Dan Cargill to it? If he was raising his game, she would just jolly well have to raise hers too. After all, she was the one who had survived the
Post
’s restless newsroom politics,
backstabbing and power struggles for a whole decade, and had earned the cachet of her own column. Whereas Dan had only showed up a year ago, fresh from a stint on a medical trade mag; not long before that he’d been covering stories about parking and rubbish collection for a local rag in the West Country. She was an old hand; he was virtually an ingénue.

Which made it all the worse that she had inadvertently slept with him . . . and then, adding insult to self-injury, had deluded herself into thinking that their obviously doomed encounter might be the beginning of a viable relationship! What a fool she’d been . . . inviting him over to dinner, and even going so far as to tell Natalie that she’d met somebody new.

Some date it had turned out to be. They’d barely started on the steaks before Dan began to quiz her about how long she’d worked at the
Post
, and where she’d been before that. She’d filled in the chronology for him happily enough – she’d even been grateful that someone was finally showing an interest in her career. But then, as he continued to press for detail, alarm bells had started ringing, and she’d challenged him: ‘Dan, if you want to know how old I am, why don’t you just come out with it and ask me?’

‘Because that would be rude,’ he’d said.

‘Why? Do you think I’m old enough for it to be a touchy subject? How old do you think I am?’

‘Twenty-eight,’ Dan had said without missing a beat.

‘Oh, spare me – I’m thirty-five.’

‘Really? You look younger.’

She could almost hear the cogs turning:
So she’s
panicking about her fertility, in thrall to her biological clock; she’ll be pushing for at least cohabitation, or preferably insemination, within six weeks of starting a relationship . . . tick-tock, tick-tock . . .

‘How about you?’ she’d asked.

‘Me? Thirty-three.’

Then he’d made an awkward crack about cougars, and she had cleared the table and rolled a cigarette and he had lit up too, and they had both sat there smoking and silently cringing. The conversation hadn’t really recovered, and by the time they finished coffee it was clearly game over. She could see it in his eyes: the nervousness, the reluctance, the desire to let her down gently, and then he’d made his excuses (an early start the next day, to report on a conference about osteoporosis) and left.

Which was really a blessing in disguise. What if he’d started snooping? He was a journalist, after all; he was bound to be nosey. Given half a chance he’d probably have gone through her drawers, or rummaged in the wardrobe, and could she really trust him to be discreet about anything he might find? What if he’d come across something that could have led him to Justin?

No – if she was going to get together with anyone, it would have to be someone who was less inclined to ask questions. So it was just as well that it was all over before they’d really had a chance to get started.

The only saving grace was that, as far as she was aware, he hadn’t told anyone else at work about their one-night stand. She certainly hadn’t noticed anybody looking at her differently, or suddenly going quiet when
she turned up in the canteen or approached the water cooler – but if that were to change, she’d make sure that Dan regretted it. Hell hath no fury like a woman spurned – especially if she’s spurned because she’s deemed too desperate to make use of her ageing ovaries.

She went into the newsroom and saw that her mad dash up the stairs had paid off; Dan was not yet at his desk. She settled down in front of her PC, turned it on and opened her desk diary to peruse her to-do list. A moment later Dan came in. But instead of slouching past her as if she didn’t exist, as had become his habit in the fortnight since Agegate, he trudged slowly towards her, as if struggling to make his way through an invisible force field, and came to a halt facing her, for all the world as if he expected her to actually stop what she was doing and talk to him.

Whatever next! He was clearly about to attempt an exchange of words! She looked him up and down with all the superiority she could muster.

‘Morning, Vixen,’ he said, and attempted a smile.

Oh God, why did he have to go and call her that? It had been Justin’s pet name for her – she’d suggested using it as a title for the column as a sort of private joke, hoping that when he glanced through the paper he’d notice it, and be touched, perhaps, or amused, or even a little bit impressed. But no – he’d just become even more preoccupied and unavailable, until she’d finally lost her temper and presented him with an ultimatum. Surprise, surprise, when it came down to it, Justin had opted to stay with his wife, who also happened to be the mother of his children.

Dan waggled his fingers at her as if attempting to break her out of a trance. ‘Hello, earth to Tina? “The Vixen Letters” is the name of your column, right? I haven’t just walked into some alternate reality where it’s called something completely different?’