Molly Chatwell woke and slid her hand across the bed to where Jack usually lay flat on his belly with his arms stretched out over his head. Her hand moved across the space without meeting resistance; he was already gone. She wasn’t surprised or concerned. Jack regularly woke at six. He’d slip from the bed without disturbing her, use the main bathroom to shower and shave, and dress in the spare bedroom. As soon as he was ready, he’d leave, buying a takeaway coffee from a café near his office on his way and having it at his desk.
In their early days together, before they were married and for a couple of years afterwards, he’d come in and kiss her goodbye before he left. Sometimes, when the children were younger, they’d wake when they heard him moving about and would come running, jump into their bed and snuggle against her. Jack would come in, wrap his arms around all three of them and kiss them goodbye. Molly’s heart swelled at the memory, a piercing regret for times long gone.
Nowadays, with Freya and Remi off at university, Molly preferred the extra rest and usually slept until her alarm went off at seven. It hadn’t gone off yet. She shut her eyes, hoping for a few more minutes and had almost dozed off when the loud beep beep of a reversing vehicle made her eyes open in surprise. It wasn’t a sound she usually heard so early… unless, of course, it wasn’t… rolling over, she grabbed her phone and looked at the blank screen with dismay. She never forgot to charge her phone… never… and she had to start today?
Two weeks before, and after one too many cocktails, she’d told her friends how wonderful it had been to see her two children embarking on the first step of their exciting future, Remi off to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Freya to the Sorbonne. ‘They’re living their dream, their future perfectly mapped out,’ she’d said, slurring her words slightly. ‘For the first time in twenty years, it’s only me and Jack.’ It was easy to be enthusiastic after a few drinks; she didn’t mention that she found the house too quiet, and she wondered what she and Jack were going to talk about now that their children had left. Flown the nest. It was an expression she hated. It implied they wouldn’t come back, but of course they would. It was into that moment of doubt that one of her friends had dropped what had seemed like a wonderful suggestion.
‘All this extra time on your hands now, you should have a party.’
A party! ‘That’s a brilliant idea,’ Molly had said, lifting her glass. ‘And you’re all invited.’
The next morning, her head thumping with the first hangover she’d had in too many years to remember, she mentioned the plan to Jack.
‘Great,’ he’d said. ‘But have it on a Friday night. It will suit my work colleagues better; a lot don’t like to come back into the city on a Saturday.’
Molly had been thinking of friends rather than work colleagues, but she shrugged. A few more people wouldn’t make a huge difference and it would be nice to have some of her work colleagues over too. What, after all was the point in having the perfect house to entertain, if they never did? ‘Fine, fine,’ she’d said. ‘We’ll have it on a Friday night.’
And tonight, was that night.
With no idea what time it was, she leapt from the bed and dashed out to the landing where an ornate clock stood on the windowsill. It had been given to them as a wedding present, twenty-two years before. Jack loved it, she detested it, but she had to give it credit, it kept perfect time, and it told her clearly, she was very late.
Back in the bedroom, she plugged her phone in to charge and dressed quickly in her standard workday clothes of tailored black trousers, white shirt and black jacket. As a single woman, she’d been an adventurous dresser, and would think nothing of spending an hour or more putting her look together in the morning. Marriage hadn’t altered her routine much, but the arrival of the children had. Returning to work after maternity leave, she discovered the convenience of wearing a smart trouser suit. Initially, she’d matched it with a variety of coloured shirts, but one day she bought a white Armani shirt and from then on she wore one every single day.
The only variation was the jewellery she added. Today, she picked up a string of dark blue Murano beads they’d bought in Venice on their first wedding anniversary and hung them around her neck. They were heavy, went almost to her waist, and made any outfit look good.
Make-up applied with practised ease, a brush flicked through her straight auburn hair and she was ready to go. She grabbed her bag and the barely-charged phone and rushed down the stairs with one final thing to do — grab the list she’d stuck to the front of the fridge freezer. Her eyes ran down it and she swore softly.
What a stupid, stupid idea this had been!
Up till a few weeks ago, they’d had a housekeeper. Ten years before, following a succession of unsatisfactory au pairs and unreliable childcare, they’d been alerted by a friend of a friend to a woman looking for part-time work. Rebecca, an English teacher who’d taken early retirement to look after her terminally ill husband and now widowed, wanted something less onerous than teaching. Freya and Remi had taken an instant liking to the kind woman who appeared to have an endless supply of patience and good humour. She’d come on a temporary basis and stayed, running the house in her calm, unhurried way; there every day when the children came home from school, always waiting with a pot of tea ready when Molly arrived home after a stressful day at work. Rebecca had become part of the family; celebrating when Remi and Freya got the university places they’d wanted, sobbing along with Molly when first Remi, then Freya had left.
A week later, Jack insisted there was no longer a reason to have a housekeeper. ‘It’s hard to justify the expense for the two of us,’ he’d said.
Molly had looked at him, horrified. Get rid of Rebecca… he couldn’t be serious. Molly was going to argue that they both had busy, high-pressure jobs and it was a relief to come home to an organised house, the words on the tip of her tongue slipping away when she saw his troubled expression.
There had been grumbles recently about work; she’d thought nothing of it – the world of finance tended to be volatile – but maybe this was something else, something worse? He had been working late more than usual, coming home with heavy eyes, refusing to discuss it, brushing off her concerns. He was drinking more too. Recently she’d noticed a smell of alcohol on his breath when he came home from work. She’d commented on it once; he’d said he’d bumped into an old friend and had joined him for a quick one on the way home. The next time she’d noticed, a day or two later, there was a look in his eyes that said don’t ask.
‘Is everything okay in the office?’ she’d ventured, giving him the opening to tell her if there were a problem. She didn’t expect an answer; Jack was notoriously reticent about his job, preferring to keep his work separate from his home life. She’d tried to convince him more than once that it was healthier to talk about things, more cathartic and better for his mental well-being, but each time he’d laugh and accuse her of spouting psychobabble.
‘Everything is fine,’ he’d said, giving her a peck on the cheek along with the answer she’d expected. ‘But that doesn’t mean we can throw away money, Mol. The kids are going to cost us a fortune over the next three to four years.’
‘But we’ve paid for their tuition, Jack.’ She hadn’t wanted to pay it all upfront, it had made a deep dent in their savings, but he’d insisted, and as usual, she’d given in.
‘Accommodation, living expenses and so forth,’ he’d said with a shake of his head, ‘we haven’t paid for that. It’s all going to mount up.’
Molly knew only too well. The Sorbonne wasn’t that expensive but living in Paris certainly was. And as for MIT, it was astronomically expensive to study there and cost almost as much to live in Boston as in Paris. Molly remembered blinking when she’d seen the invoice for three years’ tuition and the first year’s compulsory on-campus accommodation. For a moment, she’d thought they’d put an extra zero in by mistake but no, the six-figure invoice was correct. She’d not told Jack, but her eyes had watered when she’d done rough calculations as to how much both children were going to cost them over the next three years.
Perhaps it wouldn’t do any harm to tighten their belts a little. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she’d said reluctantly, ‘we don’t really need Rebecca anymore.’ Molly felt like a traitor. ‘I’ll speak to her tomorrow and give her a month’s notice.’
Rebecca, as it turned out, wasn’t too surprised. ‘I was beginning to feel a bit of a fraud rattling around here on my own. But I’ll miss you.’
Molly had started to cry, so had Rebecca, the two of them, arms wrapped around each other, consoling themselves for change’s inevitable loss.
She wasn’t gone a day, when the cold hard light of reality dawned on Molly. Despite it being Jack’s idea to get rid of the housekeeper, he wasn’t interested in doing any of the shopping, the laundry or the mountain of ironing Rebecca had done and he still came through the door in the evening expecting a dinner to be ready. When Molly had complained, he cited exhaustion and wiped a hand across his eyes.
Molly wanted to argue that her job was equally as exhausting, but he’d looked unusually pale so she’d said nothing. She looked around the living room. She was aware that many women juggled child-rearing, running a house and working full-time without outside help; had she not had a housekeeper and cleaner over the years, no doubt she’d have learned to cope too. But she had been able to afford help and wasn’t interested in learning to juggle things at this stage.
She set an account up with a local supermarket and ordered everything they needed from there; it meant some compromise, but it was worth it. For convenience, she set it up as a repeat order; every Saturday morning the same items would be delivered.
Molly had never entertained the idea of getting rid of Terry, their cleaning lady. To Molly’s relief she was willing to come for an extra couple of hours a week to do the laundry and ironing. ‘But you will make sure the house is cleaned properly, won’t you?’ she said to her, watching as Terry nodded with more vigour than she’d ever seen her use while she cleaned.
‘Of course, Mrs Chatwell.’
‘Fine,’ Molly said, relieved, ‘we’ll give it a trial.’
Unfortunately, it seemed that Terry’s idea of taking on extra work was to leave everything half-done. Now, only two weeks after Rebecca’s departure, the house was looking uncared for, some of Molly’s white Armani shirts had a pink tinge, and their clothes never looked better than half-ironed.
Molly tucked the to-do list in her pocket and looked around. The L-shaped living room was the ideal space for entertaining and one of the reasons they’d bought the house. A long, narrow, marble-topped unit separated the glossy high-end kitchen in the short arm from the rest. To the front of the long arm, a circular table sat in the deep bay window where floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the garden and allowed light to flood the room. French windows opened from here onto a wide veranda. The other end was furnished for comfort; two huge sofas facing each other across a wide, low table. On the wall, a large ornate picture frame disguised the TV. It was a perfect space for entertaining but now, thanks to Terry’s half-hearted efforts, it looked decidedly unkempt.
Pulling open a drawer, Molly tore a page from a notebook and scrawled a message: make sure you do a good job today, we’re having friends around. She propped it against the kettle where Terry, who drank copious amounts of coffee in the few hours she was there, was sure to see it.
Molly speed-walked to South Kensington station, squeezed on with the mass of blank-faced morning commuters and stood sardine-like for the short journey to Hyde Park Corner. Her head was spinning with all she had to do and here she was, the day of the damn party and already running late.