Tess Stimson - The Adultery Club (4 page)

back home to his wife, self-esteem restored, wardrobe

re-invigorated, renewed for another ten years of married

bliss with a couple of new bedroom tricks up his sleeve

(really, the wives should be thankful). It’s quite another

to take an unbroken marriage and deliberately turn it into

eggs Benedict.

Sorry, but husband-stealing is a bullet-proof no-no in

my book. It just wrecks things for everyone. Aside from

the poor kids who’ll only get to see their dads alternate

Saturdays in McDonald’s, in the long run it’s you who

gets shafted. Leopards don’t change their two-timing

spots: a man who cheats with you will cheat on you,

so how are you ever going to trust him even if you do

manage to prise him away from his sad-sack spouse?

And let’s get real, the odds on that happening are microscopic, despite the friend-of-a-friend everyone knows who

finally got to walk down the aisle with one husband,

slightly used, previous careless lady owner, after years

of patient waiting. It’s an urban myth. If they don’t

leave their wives in the first three months, they’ll never leave.

I slug some more white wine into my glass. Bang goes

all that hard work in pump class this morning. Screw it, I

deserve it.

I scope the wine bar for talent over the rim of my

drink, tuning Amy out as she witters on about Terry. I

love this girl to death, but I have so had it with this

conversation. For a tough, ball-breaking corporate tax

lawyer, she doesn’t half have her head up her arse when

it comes to men.

It’s raining outside and, depressingly, already dark,

though it’s still not yet five; the bar smells of wet wool

and dirty city streets and damp leather and money. It’s

one of the reasons I became a lawyer, if I’m brutally

honest, to make money; though as it turns out I don’t

quite have the temperament to go all the way like Amy,

and make some kind of Faustian pact to sell my soul to

corporate law for sackfuls of filthy lucre. I’m ashamed to

admit it, this isn’t a desirable trait in a lawyer: but I’ve

discovered I won’t actually do anything for money. Hence

the switch to family law. Less cash perhaps - though still

enough to keep me in L. K. Bennetts when I make partner,

which I fully intend to do before I’m thirty - but at least

I won’t die from boredom before I get the chance to

spend it.

The windows steam up as the bar fills with randy, rich

lawyers kicking back for the weekend and predatory

secretaries undoing an extra button as bait. Fortunately

Amy and I snagged a table early; though since this is one

of those retro eighties places with tall spindly chrome

tables and those uncomfortable lemon-wedge stools that’d

make a size eight arse look huge (and, let’s face it, mine

was bigger than that the day I was born) this isn’t the

advantage it could have been.

Each time the door opens, there’s another blast of cold

air and wet whoosh of traffic noise as black cabs and red

buses - even lawyers can’t afford to drive their own cars

into London these days - swish through the puddles. Everyone’s

body temperature goes up ten degrees when they

come into the warmth; lots of red cheeks and moist noses.

Hello-o-o. Talking of moist. Look who’s just walked in.

Dark blond hair, tall - by which I mean taller than my

five foot eleven or I’m not interested - and very broad

shoulders. Ripped jeans, but designer trashed not poor

white. Ripped pecs and abs, too. Not a lawyer, obviously.

Advertising or journalism, I’d put money on it.

I cross my legs so that my short mint-green silk skirt

rides slightly up my thighs, revealing a sliver of cream

lace hold-up, and let one killer heel dangle from my toe.

Gently I roll my shoulders back, as if to relieve tired

muscles, so that my tits perk up - there’s plenty of nipple

action thanks to the frigging draught from the door - and

casually slide one hand up my neck to play seductively

with my long hair. At which point I grope fresh air and

the silky prickle of my new urchin crop and remember I

had the whole lot lopped off for the first time in living

memory for my new job. Quickly I turn the gesture into a

fiddle with my earring.

I count to ten, then sneak a quick peek at the target. Shit. Some skeletal blonde has skewered herself to his hip, and is death-raying the circling secretaries with a

diamond solitaire the size of a Cadbury’s mini-egg on her left hand. My fucking luck.

It’s not that I’m especially keen to acquire a husband,

particularly when it’s so easy to recycle other people’s.

But perhaps it might be nice to be asked. I haven’t even

been introduced to a boyfriend’s parents yet (though I’ve

hidden from a few under the duvet). Right now, such is

my dire on-the-shelfdom, I’d settle for having a boyfriend

long enough for the cat not to hiss when he walks in. Amy says - without any discernible trace of irony - that my chronically single state is my own fault for not Taking

Things Seriously, Focusing and Setting Goals. Personally,

I blame my mother for allowing me to be a bridesmaid

three times.

‘—sometimes I think he’s never going to leave his

wife.’

Amy, doll, he is never going to leave his wife.

‘Honestly, Sara, sometimes I wonder. Do you think

he’s ever going to leave his wife?’

There was a time I used to lie and tell her yes, love

conquers all, it’s a big step, you have to give him time,

you wouldn’t want a man who could just walk out on his

children without a second thought anyway, would you?

‘No,’ I say.

‘Yes, but Sara—’

‘No.’

‘Sometimes I think you don’t want me to be happy

she says sulkily.

‘Oh, yes, that’ll be it,’ I say tartly. ‘I just listen to you

go on about this total arsehole ad bloody infinitum for

my health. I mean, why chillax at a club when I can

spend my Friday nights sitting in a wine bar - and for the

record, that’s whine spelt with the aitch - listening to my

best friend make excuses for some pathetic creep who

can’t just make one woman miserable like most married

men, oh, no, he has to ruin two women’s lives to feel

good about himself.’

‘You don’t have to be such a bitch about it.’ Amy sniffs,

getting a face on. ‘You’re always so cynical—’

‘I am not cynical.’

‘You are. People can’t help falling in love, Sara. You

know she says, adopting the familiar pitying tone that

Couples (however fucked up) use towards Singles the

world over, ‘when it finally happens to you you’ll understand.

You can’t always choose where you love.’

She pushes the boundaries of friendship, she really

does.

‘I need to go to the loo I say crossly, sliding off my

lemon wedge. ‘Keep an eye on my bag, would you?’

I smooth down my skirt - two inches above the knee;

sexy, but not obvious - and make sure I give it plenty of

va-va-voom as I sashay to the toilet. You never know

who’s watching. The trick, I’ve found, is to think about

the last time you had really hot sex - though, sadly, in my

case this is a more distant memory than it has any right

to be for a single, solvent twentyfive-year-old female with

no immediately apparent drawbacks like hairy armpits,

suppurating buboes or Juicy Couture tracksuit bottoms.

Not that I’m really in the mood now, to be honest. Amy

and her married shit-for-brains have put paid to that.

Why do some women insist on believing that any man,

even a swamp donkey who doesn’t belong to you, is

better than no man at all?

But I walk toe-heel, toe-heel to get that hot-model lilt

into my walk anyway.

Since I don’t actually need to pee, I was just trying to

avoid twentyfive to life for strangling my best friend,

I loll idly against the freestanding green glass sink - this

place takes itself way too seriously - and gurn at the

mirror. Frankly, this grim fluorescent light doesn’t do a

girl any favours. Every spot I’ve ever had since the age

of twelve is suddenly ghosting through my make-up, and

you could fit Roseanne Barr into the bags under my eyes.

I run my fingers through my new short hair, wondering

where the fuck the sassy, sharp, sexy-career-girl crop

I had when I left the salon this morning has gone. Thanks

to the rain and wet Laundromat warmth of first the tube

and now the bar, I’m starting to look disconcertingly like

Lady Di circa 1982, which is hardly the effect I was looking

for. Oh shit. I should never have let Amy talk me into

cutting it. I must have been bloody mad. Let’s face it: her

judgement is hardly without peer.

Despairingly I tug the shingle at the bare nape of my

neck. How long does it take for hair to grow? Five

millimetres a month? I’ll be an old maid before I look

presentable again. No man is going to go near me, I’ll

turn into a dyke divorce lawyer, I’ll never have sex again

except with hairy women wearing Birkenstocks. Maybe

I’ll join the Taliban. At least if you’re stuck under one of

those black sheets no one’s going to know if you have

spots or a bad-hair day.

The moment I rejoin Amy, she starts on again about

Terry, and I wonder if she even noticed I was gone. Dear God, if I ever get a boyfriend again, which appears to be increasingly unlikely, please strike me down and cover me with

unsavoury rashes if I ever end up like this.

I glance at my watch. I should be heading over to

Fisher Lyon Raymond for the old sod’s retirement party

now, anyway. Hardly the most exciting Friday night

option - although sadly the best offer I have on the table

right now - but I couldn’t exactly turn him down when

he invited me at my bloody job interview. And it probably

is a good idea to ‘meet everyone in an informal setting’

before I start there next week. See them all with their hair

down - or even their pants, if what I’ve heard about

family lawyers is true.

Astonishingly, given my current run of luck, it’s actually

stopped raining by the time we finish our drinks and

leave. I walk with Amy to the tube station - resisting the

uncharitable but reasonable urge to throw her under a

train - and then carry on alone down Holborn towards

Fisher’s, my breath frosting in the icy night air.

It’s a five-minute walk that in these heels takes me

twenty, so it’s gone seven by the time I get to the office

block that houses the law firm. To my surprise, the entire

building is in near-total darkness. I press my nose to the

opaque glass front door: even the security guard has

buggered off for the night. I’m puzzled: Fisher told me

the party was here at seven, I’m sure of it.

As I straighten up to leave, someone shoves the door

open from the inside, almost knocking me out. The suit

doesn’t even glance at me as I mutter something about an

appointment and slip into the warm foyer before the door

slams shut. I rub my bruised temples. Lucky I’m not a

frigging terrorist, you supercilious git.

I take the lift up to the fourth floor and squint - a little

more cautiously this time - through the glass porthole in

the door to the Fisher offices. Just the cleaner, moochily

waving a duster over the receptionist’s desk. Shit. Now what?

I wait a few moments, then irritably thump the lift

button to go back down. Looks like it’s just me, my remote

and a Lean Cuisine tonight, then. Marvellous. I’m having

the most misspent misspent youth since Mother Teresa.

I hit the button again. Someone must be loading the lift

on the second floor; it’s been stuck there since forever.

The back of my neck prickles, and I shiver. Offices at

night creep me out. Too many thrillers where the girl gets

it behind the filing cabinets. All those shadows-The door suddenly opens behind me and I jump about

fifteen feet.

A lawyer strides out of Fisher’s and is almost through

the stairwell door before he even notices I’m there. He

pauses, outstretched hand on the chrome push bar.

‘Can I help you?’ he asks curtly: very Surrey public

schoolboy.%ť

‘I’m looking for Fisher Raymond Lyon. Am I on the

right floor?’

‘Yes, but I’m afraid the office is closed for the night.

Did you want to make an appointment?’

‘Oh, I’m not a client,’ I say indignantly. Shit, do I look

like a sad divorcee? ‘I’m a solicitor. My name’s Sara

Kaplan - I’m starting work here next Monday.’

‘Ah, yes, of course.’ He switches his briefcase to his left

hand and sticks out his right, practically breaking my

fingers with his grip. Right back at you, I think, squeezing

his hand as hard as I can. ‘Nicholas Lyon, one of the

partners. I’m afraid I was detained on a difficult case in

Leeds when my colleagues interviewed you, I do apologize.

I understand you come very highly recommended

from your previous firm.’