Venus Envy (14 page)

About one hour later, I was still sitting on the sofa when Snowy came back in across the hall. Two male ,voices laughed as they followed her into her flat. I felt a stab of annoyance: nobody should be having a good time this evening.

In my own room, I thought about Seamus again as I turned out the lights. I halflaeartedly resolved not to let him walk all over me, but I didn’t really mean it. Moybe Keisha was wrong about those other women. She wasn’t the one getting all his attention, she didn’t know how he could make you feel. And it was totally unfair to compare him to Dick.

My last thought before going to bed was that I could

win him back. He sounded panicked, right? Tm sure he has’ - got an explanation? And if Seamus could prove he’d changed, well then. Things-could be different.

Bronwen was better the next morning. Or at least she was together. She had that terrible listless look about her, you know the one, when your life has fallen apart but you still have to live it. She skipped breakfast. Food would be tasting like dust right now, and the world would be grey from sky to horizon.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked gently.

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She shook her head. ‘I’ll get through it, though.’ ‘It’s Sunday. Take the day off.’

‘Can’t. Got a shoot with Trevor Leighton today. Anyway, it wouldn’t help.’

It wouldn’t, so I didn’t push it any harder. Keisha arrived back ten minutes after Bron had left, grinning madly.

‘Girl, you should have seen it. He nearly fainted when I got there with Rashid. He hands over the film, and Rashid says, “Let’s check the camera.” So he gives that up and Rashid drops it on the floor and stamps it into pieces, goes, “Whoops.” Dick didn’t say a word,’ Keisha pealed with laughter.

‘I hope you went through the place with a fine-tooth comb.’

‘We went through it with a bulldozer. Rashid smashed .everything up. It looked like he’d been

burgled when we left. The TV, the video …’ ‘Won’t he go to the police?’

‘You must be joking. He almost wet himself, he was so frightened. And Rashid wore gloves. He won’t do shit. When we left, Rashid shook his hand and crushed so hard he moaned, there was this huge welt all along the side.’ She chuckled, hugely pleased. ‘I told him he was right, Bronwen was frigid, and that’s why she’d bothered with him. Because his dick was so small she hardly noticed it, and he came so quick it was all over in thirty seconds.’

We smiled at each other.

The good feeling lasted almost the whole way to the office on Monday morning. When I reached Hamilton Kane I no longer felt twenty feet tall, the Avenging Angel of Womankind. Now I felt two feet tall. The dumb broad Seamus had rewed over. And I was late. But Jenny didn’t seem to mind.

‘I don’t know why you’re even here, Alex,’ she said

in astonishment. ‘Mr Mahon told me he’d given you the day off.’

‘Oh.’ I pressed my fingertips to my temples, my mind racing. Seamus must have assumed I’d be too upset even to come in. ‘Yeah, he did say something like that. I forgot. I just don’t want to get too behind.’

I saw Seamus inside his glass office, holding forth to some brokers. He paused for a second and looked at me, then gave me a rueful little grin like a boy caught raiding the chocolate tin.

I felt deflated. Didn’t he care, didn’t he realise how serious this was?

I sat down at my computer and switched it on absently. I felt a compelling urge to find out the truth,

, no matter how hard it was. I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to like what I found, but I had to do it all the same. Like picking at a scab or scratching a gnat bite. It only makes it worse, but how do you fight the compulsion?

I tap-tapped on my keyboard. Pulling up dates and no.tes. Double-checking against my own desk diary. When he told me he was abroad, or away at conferences. I had eight dates to check with Jenny.

‘Mr Mahon wanted me to log his movements for the travel office - was he away these nights, or am I going mad?”

Jenny scanned my list in amazement. ‘You’re going mad, Alexandra. Who on earth told you this? He went to Seville on the eighteenth and there is no Hull conference - why on earth would one of our partners be in Hull?’

Why indeed? I reddened. ‘I’m so stupid, I’ve probably got the wrong month completely. Never mind.’

Jenny was watching me suspiciously now, but I couldn’t care. We were on e net so the quants could check the press database for clues to companies they were tracking, but I was Sherlock Holmes in a skirt

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today. I typed in Seamus Mahon, Dolores Mahon and ‘mystery’. You know, as in ‘mystery blonde’. I was hoping it would come up with ‘Please modify search terms,’ computer speak for ‘drop dead, loser,’ but for once it didn’t. ‘There are forty-three hits.’ Oh, my God, I said silently as I pulled up one gossip-column item after another. Seamus and the mystery brunette. Seamus and Dolores. Seamus and mystery companion seen exiting nightclub. Dolores ultimatums. Ecstatic reconciliations.

I couldn’t hide from this, much though I longed to. Wonderful Seamus and horrible Dolores, horrible

‘mystery companion’! He didn’t just want his wife, he

‘wanted as many women as he could Schedule in! For one dizzy second I wondered if I myself was the mystery companion in any of these articles.

Oh sure. ‘Seamus Mahon and mystery mousy secretary.’ Doesn’t have much of a bloody ring, does it?

Maybe I should have wanted to cry but I didn’t. I just sat there feeling winded, like Rashid had punched me in the solar plexus. Then I had to scramble to dump the Seamus articles because Jenny was coming over to see if I was OK.

‘Fine. Bit of a hangover,’ I said morosely, offering her an excuse she could believe.

The phone bleeped on my desk, making me jump out of my skin.

‘Alex, would you come in here for a minute?’ Seamus was asking, so mildly I wanted to scream. ‘I need a quick word with you.”

‘I knew it,’ said Jenny, staring cbldly at me. ‘What are you talking about?’ I demanded, but she didn’t say another word, and there was nothing for it but to walk across the room and knock on Seamus’s

door.

I told myself I was going to give him seven shades of hell.

‘I hope you’re not too cross with me,’ Seamus said endearingly.

‘Cross? You’ve lied to me: you’ve got other girls, and your wifem’

‘Now, boys will be boys, so,’ said Seamus, and he gave me his most dazzling smile. ‘Don’t tell me we can’t work something out. I’ve got every faith in you, Alex Wilde.’

‘You’ve …’ I was so aghast I was just spluttering. ‘Sure, I’ve every faith in you being reasonable. We’re having so much fun. You like it and I like it, why would we ever want to pack it in?’

It’s a bit like hurting yourself really badly. Sometimes you don’t feel the pain at first, because you’re so numb with the shock. But you know it’s coming.

‘What do you mean?’ I whispered. ‘All those things you said …’

‘I meant them all, sure I did. But you’ve got to understand,’ he said, a bit prissily, ‘I’m the type of man who loves women. I just have to be around them. I can’t help myself,’ and there was that little-boy shrug again.

I heard what he was saying. What the words were shrouding. He was telling me that even though I’d found him out, he didn’t care. He was not going to change. And I could take him as he was or not at all. The only future for me was as one of the harem.

I must have looked how I felt, because a spasm of worry crossed that pretty face. ‘Alex, look. Now we can start a real relationship. Now you know who I

Jim.’

‘You’re a lying bastard,’ I said, and to my horror, a big fat tear trickled down my cheek. I dashed it away angrily but not before he noticed.

‘I never actually said you were my only woman.’ ‘You said your marriage was dead.’

‘Well… Dolores told me she wanted to try again.’

‘Oh right, she just said that on Saturday night.’ Even I couldn’t buy that much bull.

‘So? I’m up for free love, Alex. Monogamy just isn’t

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natural. The difference between me and most guys is that I admit it,’ Seamus said virtuously. ‘Look, you can

have another boyfriend as well.’

‘Hey, thanks very much.’

‘Don’t you value what we have? We have a grand time together, you’re a great laugh. All the romance in the world. And I love to hold you in my arms,’ Seamus said, and his green eyes were soft and now he was twisting the knife in my heart. I wanted to drop to my knees and beg him to think about this, to think about how much I adored him, how wonderful we were together. To ask why he needed other girls. To promise that I would be all he needed in a woman. I’d get thinner, I’d borrow Keisha’s clothes, I’d take cordon

loleu cookery courses and instruction in Gaelic.

But you should be proud of me.

‘It’s over between us. I don’t share blokes,’ I said, and I rushed out of his office before the tears brimming under my lashes could escape and betray me.

Our flat was a bit of a downer. Bronwen came home sober and crying and went straight to her room. Keisha sat around chain-smoking and watching videos of Lennox. And I found I couldn’t even cry. I just felt empty and withered, like an autumn leaf.

Gail got in around eight o’clock. She was carrying a stiff blue paper bag from Tiffany’s and humming away.

‘God, who died?’ she demanded, flopping down on the sofa. ‘Did anyone pop down to Planet Organic for me? I’m out of tofu, too. Look what Snowy bought me.’ She pulled out a stunning silver necklace of interlaced stars. It was so delicate and romantic it made me want to start crying again. Nobody ever got me things like that.

‘You’ll have to make do with what we’ve got in the fridge. Keisha’s split up with Lennox—’

‘That wasn’t a real relationship anyway,’ Gail said in her superior way.

‘Maybe not, but she’s upset. And Bronwen broke up with Dick, and I’ve broken up with Seamus.’

‘Oh.’ Gail thought about this for all of five seconds. ‘Hey, my door’s open. I’m sure I left it shut. You haven’t been in there reading my nature novel, have you? If you nick the idea I’ll sue.’

‘Nobody cares about your bloody nature novel!’ The phone rang. All three of us jumped at it. We were like Pavlov’s dogs with a ringing phone. Well, it could be your man, right? Blokes can let a phone ring and ring. I’ve never met a woman who can go past two rings without giving in and picking up.

‘It’s Seamus,’ Gail said grumpily, holding the receiver out to me. I grabbed it with no self-control whatsoever. Oh please say you see the error of your ways, please say you’ll change …

‘Alex Wilde. You sound as gorgeous as ever. How about letting me make things up to you? Swan Lake on Friday night, Covent Garden, champagne, the works?’

‘And then back to the wife and kiddies on Saturday morning? Get real.’

‘Ah, come on, babe. How long are you going to be like this?’

‘The whole thing is just boring to me,’ I lied. ‘Maybe one day you’ll be bored, and then we can forget it. But right now,’ said Seamus, and lust was thick in hi voice, ‘you want it.’

He was right. That’s the-sad thing. Desire was clinging to me like rabidivy. His v6ice was getting me slick between the legs and hardening my nipples into raisins. God, how great it would be to be a guy and just fuck without consequences. In all my relationships, sex would drive away the sadness. Even though I wasn’t coming, his passion made me feel so good, so earthily female. It was the only time I felt we were

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talking the same language: not words but kisses, sweat

and flesh, rubbing all the extraneous stuff away.

I wanted Seamus back. I didn’t want to be alone in

this flat, nearly thirty, with my lonely girlfriends. My work sucked, my career was nonexistent. And I couldn’t even make a success of love. Which I firmly believe every woman is born to.

‘You can’t always get what you want,’ I told him

and hung up.

How was I going to get through this? I had to go

into that office every day and see him, looking so beautiful. God, what if he turned nasty? What would my mother say when she was out golfing with Fiona Kane? ‘Thank you for getting that shitty job for my , worthless daughter, but she got fired because she was

screwing her boss.’

‘I might split up with Tony,’ Gail said importantly. I looked over at my little sister, her waifish beauty such a contrast to my lumpy, healthy looks. Gail is the kind

of girl who never spends a day unescorted - the bqyfriend is dead, long live the boyfriend. Men fall in love with her after one flick of her glossy hair. And the irony is, inside Gail is as robust as a troop of Horse

Guards, whilst I am as fragile as a cobweb in the dew. But men don’t bother to look past the wrapping. Still, anything was better than obsessing about Seamus, so I went along with it. ‘What’s wrong with Tony?’

‘He’s OK, but he isn’t The One,’ Gail said dreamily.

I was uncharitably thinking that maybe his country cottage wasn’t really up to snuff, or perhaps his BMW

was more than two years old.

‘I thought you liked him.’

‘Mmm, but I can do better,’ Gail said proudly. There was nothing to say to this, and if they were feeling anything like I was, Keisha and Bronwen wouldn’t want to talk. So I got up and went into my

own room, got a lump of clay, and started pounding at it. Owl’s wings started flying from my fingers, fluid shapes screaming into life. It’s good, really good, my work when it’s born of pain.

Even if I am the only person who thinks so.

The next week was bloody horrible. Doing that mindless work, with only Jenny to protect me from Seamus. And the trouble was, how beautiful he looked.

My computer was besieged with his e-mails. Little flowers kept landing on my desk - forget-me-nots, as if I And Seamus kept sending me poems in the internal brown envelopes we use for memos. I ripped them open and ripped open my own scar tissue. ‘I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread-on my dreams.’ I couldn’t help it, I kept crying. I had to buy loads of hayfever tablets from Boots and litter them all over my desk to convince Jenny it was really an allergy.