The Adultery Club (3 page)

Reminds me. Ours is sometime around Christmas—the eighteenth or nineteenth, I think. I must remember to find her something particularly special this year. She’ll kill me if I forget again.

I spend the next hour or so absorbed in paperwork. When Emma knocks on my door, it is with some surprise that I note that it is almost seven.

“Mr. Lyon, everyone’s going over to Milagro’s now for Mr. Fisher’s party,” she says. “Are you coming with us, or did you want to wait for Mrs. Lyon?”

“I believe she said she’d get a taxi straight to the restaurant from the station. But I need to finish this Consent Order tonight. You go on ahead. I’ll be with you as soon as I’m done.”

Emma nods and withdraws.

Quietly I work on the draft order, enjoying the rare peace that has descended on the empty office. Without the distraction of the telephone or interruptions from my colleagues, it takes me a fraction of the time it would normally do, and I finish in less than forty minutes. Perfect timing; Mal should be arriving at the restaurant at any moment.

I loosen my suspenders a little as I push back from my desk, reflecting wryly as I put on my jacket and raincoat that being married to a celebrity cook is not entirely good news. I rather fear my venerable dinner jacket, which has seen me through a dozen annual Law Society dinners, will not accommodate my burgeoning waistline for much longer.

Bidding the cleaner good evening as I pass through reception, in a moment of good resolution I opt to take the stairs rather than the lift down the four floors to street level.

As I come into the hallway, I find a young woman in a pale green suit hovering uncertainly by the lifts, clearly lost.
She jumps when she sees me and I pause, switching my briefcase to the other hand as I push the chrome bar on the fire door to the stairwell.

“Can I help you?”

“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,” she says quickly. “I’m a solicitor. My name’s Sara Kaplan—I’m starting work here next Monday.”

“Ah, yes, of course.” I let the fire door swing shut and extend my hand. “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 highly recommended from your previous firm.”

“Thank you. I’m very much looking forward to working here.”

“Good, good. Well, welcome to the firm. I’ll look forward to seeing you on Monday.”

I hesitate as she makes no move to leave.

“Miss Kaplan, did you just want to drop off some paperwork, or was there something else?”

She fiddles nervously with her earring. The uncertain gesture suggests she’s younger than I had at first thought, perhaps twenty-five, twenty-six. “Um. Well, it’s just that Mr. Fisher invited me to his leaving party, and I thought it might be nice to meet everyone before Monday—”

“Oh, I see. Yes, of course. It’s not here, though, it’s at the Italian restaurant across the road. I’m just going over there myself.”

Eschewing the stairs for the sake of courtesy, I summon the lift and we stand awkwardly next to each other,
studiously avoiding eye contact, as it grinds its way up four floors. She’s tall for a woman, probably five ten or so. Short strawberry blond hair, wide swimmer’s shoulders, skin honeyed by the sun, and generous curves that will run to fat after she’s had children if she’s not careful. Her nose is a little large, but surprisingly it doesn’t ruin her appearance—quite the contrary. Its quirky route down her face leavens otherwise predictable, glossy good looks. I suspect a fearsome intellect and formidable will lurk behind those clear mushroom gray eyes. Attractive, in a magnificent, statuesque way, but absolutely not my type at all.

Although she does have a certain earthiness. A just-fallen-out-of-bed air.

Christ,
I want her
.

Amazing
, isn’t it, how an intelligent, street-smart woman who has the rest of her shit together can be reduced to a gibbering splat of emotional jelly by a man? And not even a lush hottie like Orlando Bloom—as long as he keeps his mouth shut—or Matthew McConaughey. No,
our
Casanova is fifty-one, short, bald—and married.

So, he’s a bastard. This is
news
?

“He promised he’d leave her,” Amy says again. “As soon as they’d sold their house, he said he was going to tell her about us.
He promised.”

Clearly no point reminding her he also promised he’d be faithful to his wife, keeping only unto her in sickness and in health twenty-four/seven and all the rest of that crap. If promises have a hierarchy, I’m guessing the sacred vows you make to your wife before God and congregation come a little higher in the pecking order than drunken pillow-talk to a bit on the side young enough to be your daughter.

“How long have you been shagging him?” I ask.

“Four years,” she says defiantly.

“And how long has he been promising to leave his wife?”

“Four years,” she says, slightly less so.

In fact, her boss, Terry Greenslade, has so far sworn to leave his wife just as soon as—and this is in no particular order—(a) he gets his promotion (b) his wife gets
her
promotion (c) his eldest child starts college (d) his youngest child leaves school (e) his dying Catholic mother finally wafts off to limbo or purgatory or wherever it is these incense-freaks go; and (f) the dog (FYI, a golden Labrador; how smug-married is
that?)
recovers from, wait for it, a hysterectomy. I suppose his latest selling-the-house excuse is an improvement on canine wimmin’s trouble, but it’s all still Grade A bullshit. Every milestone has come and gone and surprise, surprise,
he’s still with his wife
. Like,
hello?

It’s not that I have a particular moral thing about affairs with married men, though it’s not something I’d shout about from the rooftops either. But at the end of the day,
they’re
the ones cheating, not you. A brief, passionate dalliance with someone else’s husband is almost a feminine rite of passage; no girl should leave her twenties without one. And married men are usually great in bed—it’s the gratitude.

But it’s one thing to have a quick fling and send him 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, 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 more white wine into my glass. Bang goes all that hard work in the gym 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 has 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 LK Bennett
shoes 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. Each time the door opens, there’s another blast of cold air and whoosh of 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 garter, 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 draft from the door—and casually slide one hand up my neck to twiddle 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. 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 that 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 spelled
with
the ‘h’—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. “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 toward Singles the world over, “when it finally happens to you you’ll understand. You can’t always choose where you love.”

She pushes the bounds of friendship, she really does.

“I need to go to the loo,” I say crossly, sliding off my stool. “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 bathroom. 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 twenty-five-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 twenty-five to life for strangling my best friend—I loll idly against the freestanding green glass sink—this place takes itself
way
too seriously—and squint at the mirror.
Frankly, this grim fluorescent light doesn’t do a girl any favors. Every spot I’ve ever had since the age of twelve is suddenly ghosting through my makeup, 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 hip 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 judgment is hardly without peer.