Who's Afraid of Mr Wolfe? (38 page)

Ellie heard the echoes of her own story and didn’t like it. She finished off her drink and resisted the urge to go and pour herself another one. Edith reached across and took the second photograph back from Ellie and stared down at it. ‘I was completely at a loss to know what to do, Ellie. I was in love with Henry, but I was a married woman. And then, well, then the problem solved itself.’

Edith slowed to a halt before resuming. ‘One afternoon, about six months after we’d taken up again, he was due to take a plane up to Delhi. When he walked out of my bedroom door that afternoon I never saw him again. Didn’t ever get the chance to say goodbye.’

All these years later Ellie could see the pain in Edith’s eyes. She got up, went and sat next to her on the sofa and held her hand.

‘So he was killed? In his plane?’

‘No.’ Edith snorted. ‘He wasn’t going to Delhi at all, the little shit returned to his wife and family. In Torquay. It appeared he was the marrying type after all.’ She threw the photographs back into the tin.

This was not turning out to be the poignant love story Ellie had imagined.

‘The point I am trying to make, very badly, Ellie dear, is that I had to come to terms with the love of my life just going. He left me to pick myself up and get on with living with George. And I did. George may not have been Henry, but he was a good man and, well, we rubbed along.’

‘You’re telling me that I will have to do the same, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. Jack was a lovely, lovely man, but I think you have to accept that he is not coming back to you, Ellie. Jack either can’t or won’t sort himself out enough to fall for someone again. Particularly somebody like you.’

‘Why
particularly
somebody like me, Edith? What’s so strange about me?’

‘Well, you don’t really do half-hearted, do you?’ Edith said in a matter-of-fact way. ‘You have never been … what do you call it? Cool? I remember your mother bought you the most beautiful frilled knickers when you were about three and you walked around all day with your skirt held up looking at them. You were completely oblivious to people laughing and even to your mother’s embarrassment. You loved them so much you couldn’t bear not to see them.’

There they were again, knickers. Whatever happened in Ellie’s life, it always came back to them.

‘There was no way you would accept half-measures from Jack and share him with someone else.’ Edith patted Ellie’s hand. ‘Look, I’m not saying that Jack is exactly the same
as Henry, but they did both have wives they forgot to mention. And in Henry’s case, he decided not to leave her for me …’ Edith’s meaning was clear: Jack wasn’t going to leave Helen.

Edith put the lid back on the biscuit tin. ‘I know this won’t have cheered you up, Ellie dear, but it should give you hope. I never thought I could be happy again after Henry went, but I was. Maybe not the ecstatic kind of happiness I had with Henry, but it was enough.’ She picked the tin up and looked at it. ‘And at least I had something to remember Henry by.’

‘Yes,’ Ellie said with a sigh, ‘all those love letters and photographs.’

Edith grinned. ‘No, dear, I was thinking of your aunt Pandora. She’s the spitting image of him.’

For the first time in her life Ellie did a double-take.
Whaaat?

‘She doesn’t know, of course,’ Edith said, getting up. ‘Nobody does. Only you.’ Edith stooped to kiss Ellie and then toddled off to bed, her biscuit tin clamped firmly under her arm.

Ellie could not believe it. Aunt Pandora, linchpin of the WI and the local Conservative Party, was a love child. She started to laugh, thinking of the expression on Pandora’s face if she ever found out, and then abruptly stopped laughing. She wished that Jack had left her something, anything, to remember him by.

Climbing the stairs to bed, she tried to concentrate on Edith’s message that life would go on and things would get better.

But that night she dreamed that she was carrying Jack’s baby, and when she woke up, the realisation that it was only a dream left her feeling empty and cheated.

It was positively uncanny. The more power and prestige you got, the funnier your jokes became. Hugo was almost bent over double at her story about the beaver and the vicar. In fact, since she had become senior copywriter, he’d found everything she did side-splittingly funny or deeply, deeply impressive.

Still, Jack had been proved right: her opinion of Hugo and the other suits had improved since she’d taken a little time to get to know them better. Hugo could still be an arrogant swine at times, but he’d earned his wages on the Scarsdove account.

He had taken the jittery council, worried about spending money on anything that looked too flashy or expensive, and led them gently through the case histories of other councils who had successfully rebranded. He’d even accompanied them on hearty, back-slapping tours to some of the best ones. Ellie could not help but be impressed by
the way he had handled it. Somehow Jack had worked his magic on Hugo as well.

Except, as far as she knew, he hadn’t slept with Hugo, told him he wanted to look after him and then dumped him.

So, once Hugo had got the council used to the idea of going for something a bit more radical, Ellie and Lesley had come up with a look and a tone of voice that they could live with. The council had now convinced themselves that it had been exactly the kind of thing they had been looking for all along.

Much against her usual instincts, Ellie had since found herself saving Hugo’s bacon on quite a few occasions. Being a pig in a suit, he was extremely grateful.

Ellie let Hugo laugh a bit longer and then gave him a playful punch on the arm. ‘Come on, Hugo, it wasn’t that funny. Now, where are you taking our Yorkshire friends tonight?’

Hugo went red and started to fiddle with the pencils on Lesley’s desk.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘You’re taking them to a lap-dancing club, aren’t you?’

‘Well, um, yes, Ellie, yes, I am. They asked specifically. They don’t have one in Scarsdove.’

‘Tut, tut. Do the taxpayers of Yorkshire know how their public servants spend their time?’

‘Well, strictly speaking it’s their own time. I mean, it is after working hours.’

‘I was pulling your leg, Hugo.’

‘Oh, yes. I knew that. Yes. Ha, ha, ha.’

She gave him another friendly punch on the arm. Hugo seemed to respond to ‘chap-like’ behaviour from girls, probably a result of his years at a single-sex boarding school.

‘Seriously, though, Hugo, thanks for doing this tonight. If I had to watch Adam Adamthwaite’s impersonation of a hippo dating a giraffe again, I might die.’

Hugo winced. ‘Yes, palls a bit, doesn’t it? Well, perhaps the Thong Throng will take his mind off it.’ He stood up. ‘OK, see you later. Think I might have time to thrash Ian at table tennis.’

When he’d gone, Ellie sat back in her seat and let her mind roam to Jack. In the five weeks since she had returned from New York, her recovery from him had been virtually non-existent. A part of her was still over on the other side of the Atlantic.

She kept finding herself replaying every detail of that first time they had made love, and the time he had allowed her to give him carpet burns on his bottom, and the time he had slung her over his shoulder and carried her off to bed. She let her mind travel over every detail of his body, from his long fingers and his strong arms to the flat sweep of his muscled belly. If she was feeling particularly masochistic, she would remember how she had wrapped her legs round him and how he had cried out into her hair.

But it was that look in his eye on their very last night
together that still haunted her. If it had been a lie, then all her senses were redundant, her gut reactions misplaced. Never again could she trust herself to see something and interpret it correctly.

She leaned forward and clicked the mouse on her laptop to open her emails and paged down to find the only communication she had received from Jack since she had seen him in New York:
Congratulations on the ideas for the Whispedge account. Saw them yesterday and thought they were great. Jack
.

As love letters went, it lacked something. Like love.

She’d dithered for days about replying. In the end she had simply typed,
Yes, we’re pleased with them. Best wishes, Ellie and Lesley
.

She was satisfied with how professional it sounded, and the inclusion of Lesley was a masterstroke. He’d see how she had put it all behind her now.

Or he’d guess that as an advertising copywriter she was really good at bending the truth.

She sat for a while and thought about him mourning Helen, unable to go back and unwilling to move forward, and felt incredibly sad. He was living some kind of half-life and now, it appeared, she was too.

The only difference in their two situations was that her love had rejected her, not died. Somehow there was not as much comfort in that thought as there should have been.

Her particular grieving process had not been helped by having to hear about Jack every day. He was doing well, transforming the American agency, helping them win new accounts. Same old story, same old Jack.

She checked the clock and packed up for the evening. No point in hanging around. Lesley would not be back from her ‘get to know the future in-laws’ holiday in Crete until tomorrow. Apparently Lesley was now the second daughter that Megan’s parents had always wanted. The thaw had happened when one of Megan’s married uncles disgraced himself with his secretary. The ensuing scandal meant that Megan and Lesley had been demoted from the top sinners spot and Megan’s family had decided that Lesley was, after all, not that bad a catch. Apart from her lack of a penis. The wedding looked as if it might take place before the end of the year, and Megan’s grandfather had stopped threatening to put Lesley in his leek trench.

Ellie closed the office door behind her and headed for the lifts. She wanted to get home and check on Edith, cook her a proper meal, perhaps even persuade her to stay in for one evening. Edith showed no signs of slowing down; in fact she was even more manically busy. Yesterday it had been a tea dance, today it was carpet bowls, and tomorrow she was on a coach trip to Brighton.

Wandering through reception, she waved at Rachel. Mike was in his customary position, leaning on the desk worshipping her. There had been a general agency bet on
the number of weeks the whole thing was going to last – even when the two of them announced that they were moving in together. Almost everybody had laughed behind their hands, but Ellie wished them luck. She was holding out for romance.

Outside on the street, it was hot and sticky and London was crying out for a good downpour of rain to clean and rinse everything. Ellie sniffed the air, but all she could smell was petrol fumes. There was nothing to excite her here this evening. The only thing that excited her was thousands of miles away, probably planning to cook steak for some other woman by the light of the moon.

Among the presents that Lesley had brought back from Crete were a liqueur that tasted of ash, a statue of a man with an enormous penis, and a blow-up aubergine. Ellie was trying to find room for them in the office. They’d have to have a good clear-out when they decamped to the bigger room along the corridor, but for now Ellie balanced the items on the mini-fridge and hoped nobody asked for a beer.

‘… Ooh, and this one is of me and Megan’s mum at a restaurant in Chania,’ Lesley said, clicking through the photos she’d already downloaded on to her computer. ‘And this is Megan’s dad trying to teach the waiter Welsh.’

Lesley’s happiness was infectious, and they spent the morning chatting about the holiday and the fast-developing wedding plans. Ellie was glad to lose herself in somebody else’s life. Over a second cup of coffee Ellie filled Lesley in on what had been happening in the agency
while she had been away, especially the latest developments in the Rachel and Mike romance.

‘Yeah, Rachel’s already backed me into a corner to tell me. She was hinting she might make it to the altar before me. Mike stood there with a soppy grin on his face.’ Lesley frowned at her pencils. ‘Has someone been touching these?’

Ellie remembered Hugo playing with them. ‘I knocked them over, sorry.’

‘Oh, that’s OK. I don’t mind if it was you.’ She hurriedly started to rearrange them and then said hesitantly, ‘Talking of office romances, how are you feeling about “he who cannot be named”? I’ve been building up to ask you.’

Somehow the nickname Lesley had given Jack always made Ellie laugh. And laughing felt good, like she was exercising muscles she hadn’t used for ages. ‘Well, concerning Voldemort, there is nothing new to report. Heart still smashed, pride still trampled, still zero interest in other men.’

Lesley gave her a searching look. ‘You don’t have to do that light-hearted thing with me, Ellie.’

‘No, I know, but—’

‘You’re allowed to be sad for as long as you want.’ She reached out and brushed her fingers over Ellie’s hand. ‘But remember, the hating-him stage will kick in soon. It’s got to. Law of physics, you know.’

Ellie laughed. ‘Well, if I think of how he talked to me in that restaurant in New York, then I think I do hate him
a bit. Especially when I remember how he let that woman he was with join in. But … when I think of everything else about him, then, pathetically, no, I can’t hate him.’

Lesley asked a few more questions about Jack, but Ellie didn’t want to linger on the subject. What more was there to say? It was over; even she could see that. If she had been starring in a romantic comedy, Jack would reappear and say it was all a mistake on his part. Unfortunately this was real life, her life, and she had somehow to get on with it. Just as Edith had said.

At this moment, though, the thought of what ‘getting on with it’ meant filled her with dread. In a few years’ time would she have ‘settled’ for someone else, some kind of approximation to Jack? Or even worse, would she be half of a couple like the one Edith and she had whispered about in the restaurant, sitting there with nothing to say to each other? Bored, bad reflections of each other?