How do you break it to someone that their wife is having an affair with your husband? It’s hardly dinner-party conversation.
I may be playing with fire but I have decided I need something seismic to happen. Sitting around losing two pounds a week and waiting for either Saskia or Robert to feel remorse and break it off is not enough. I need to take control.
I wonder if either of them has considered what will happen to Josh once they come clean. He can hardly stay on the show. I can’t imagine the humiliation. Are they expecting he’ll just be a gentleman and step aside, losing his job in the process? I feel indignant on his behalf.
I can hardly just pick up the phone and tell him that his marriage appears to be over.
But I do know where he lives and when there’s a good chance he might be home alone.
I just have to get up the courage to do it.
Meanwhile, I’ve decided to invite Robert’s sister, Alice, over for dinner. I don’t know how I can get across what a selfless gesture this is on my part. Let’s just say that Robert adores his little sis. I, on the other hand, would rather be locked in a giant Bikram studio, doused in Saskia’s sweat, and forced to perform yoga moves in forty-degree heat continuously for a week than spend time with her.
I know that sounds awful. She’s my husband’s flesh and blood, his only sibling. I would hate it if he felt about any of my family the way I feel about Alice. It’s not as if I didn’t try. When Robert and I first met I was excited to hear that Alice was only a couple of years younger. I imagined us as best friends, allies, confidantes. And then she came up for a visit.
I was intimidated by her right away. She oozed cool. Somehow, on her, faded jeans, ballet flats, a stripy T-shirt and an artfully placed scarf gave off Audrey Hepburn, and not onion-seller as it would have if I’d attempted it. She had long blonde hair that was just the right side of unbrushed, perfectly smudged kohl-rimmed eyes and a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. And she didn’t only ooze cool, she oozed confidence. Something I was already severely lacking in. My fantasies of her looking up to me in awe as I introduced her to the big city crashed and burned.
To say that Alice was spoilt would be like saying Hitler had a bit of a vindictive side. It was clear very quickly that whatever Alice wanted, Alice got. I’d organized tickets for us all to go to see something or other at the National – money I couldn’t afford, but I wanted to make a good impression. Alice made it obvious right away that she wanted Robert to herself. An aspiring actress (his whole family were actors; I always imagined their house was like the capital city of luvvydom), she was desperate to see the play but when she found out the tickets were for three and not just the two of them she stamped her foot like Violet Elizabeth Bott and actually said the words ‘I’ve come up to see you. I don’t want to have to spend all evening with her’ in front of me. I waited for Robert to tell her not to be so stupid but actually what he did was take me aside and say that maybe she had a point. So they went on their own. Didn’t even try to sell my now spare ticket to pay me back.
To be fair, she was only eighteen that first time I met her. I assumed she would grow up and realize she wasn’t the centre of the universe at some point, but it never really happened. She got into RADA the following year and so every time I went to their family home in the holidays I had to listen to the whole clan (Robert included) banging on about how it was the best drama school in the world and only the truly gifted stood a chance of getting in (the implication being that any old untalented nobody could train at the North London School of Speech and Drama). For some reason, Robert never took this personally, in the same way that I did. He was as convinced that his sister was the second coming as his parents clearly were. I should point out here that I adore Robert and Alice’s parents. They just have a blind spot, that’s all. And that blind spot’s name is Alice.
Anyway, you get the picture. She was indulged and mollycoddled to the point of becoming insufferable.
Here’s the thing about Alice, though. She’s nearly forty. Thirty-eight. She has never had a professional acting job. OK, so neither have I. But she still calls herself an actress while I have long since accepted I work in a bakery. She still goes to workshops and open auditions and talks about herself as if she has a full diary of thespian commitments. Which she does, except none of them has ever paid her. She’s one of the ninety-nine per cent for whom it just never worked out, however hard they tried. And she’s never had any other kind of job. In so far as I know, she still lives off money her parents give her. AT THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD! She lives in a flat they bought for her in Islington. They pay a monthly allowance into her bank account. And we all pretend it isn’t happening. Between auditions she dabbles in various artistic pursuits, none of which ever comes to fruition.
And yet she has the audacity to still treat me as some kind of lower life form because I gave up the life of being an unemployed wannabee and actually got myself a paying job.
I tried for a long time to get along with her. Robert’s own blind spot meant he would never hear any criticism and, besides, I didn’t want to become that person who slags off their partner’s family every chance they get. But I began to find her visits unbearable. It became harder and harder to listen to her pontificate about acting and the near-misses she had had (she was always down to the last two for any part she went for, according to her, and, of course, there would have been no way to prove this otherwise, as she well knew), and the directors who called her saying they were desperate to find the right role for her, when I knew it was all bullshit. Under other circumstances I might have felt sorry for her. But her attitude and the tendency of the whole Westmore family to treat her like some kind of undiscovered star made it impossible.
So I long ago stopped inviting her over. Whenever she surfaces I always suggest to Robert that the two of them meet up without me. (I try and make this sound as if I’m doing it for their sake.) And when I’m forced to see her – at Christmas or weddings and funerals – I bite my tongue as much as I can and just accept I’m going to be excluded from their conversations.
Alice has never married (too much of a self-centred fuck-up). And she’s never had children because then, of course, she would have to assume some kind of responsibility and think of someone other than herself.
Georgia calls her ‘Baby Jane’, but only when Robert is out of earshot.
Anyway, in my effort to do things that will make Robert think what an all-round fantastic wife I am, I have emailed Alice and asked her if she fancies coming over for dinner on Saturday night. Even though I’m sure she’s wishing I won’t be there, the lure of spending time with her big brother, along with free food and booze, is clearly more than she can resist. I receive a curt ‘Yes. Lovely’ a few minutes later.
‘Auntie Alice is coming over at the weekend,’ I say to Georgia, as she potters round getting ready for school.
‘Oh God, really? When?’
‘Saturday evening.’
Her face falls. I already know she has plans and I’m not about to mess with a seventeen-year-old’s social calendar at this late notice.
‘I know you’re going out but it would be lovely if you could just be around long enough to say hello.’
She visibly relaxes. ‘OK. But you have to defend me if she starts giving me the lecture.’
The lecture is the stuff of legend between Georgia and me. Alice had always assumed that Georgia would want to follow in the family footsteps and go to drama school. The news that she had applied to do medicine, that she had zero interest in treading the boards, was met with something I can only describe as a gasp.
‘All the Westmores go to drama school,’ Alice said, as if she were quoting from the Bible.
‘Not this one,’ Georgia replied, laughing it off. Somehow she has always managed to take her aunt’s insights with the pinch of salt they deserve.
‘But …’ Alice stuttered. I wondered for a second if she might ask for smelling salts for the shock. I wouldn’t have put it past her. Instead, she looked at me accusingly.
‘She must take after you.’
‘I … I actually went to drama school myself, if you remember,’ I said hesitantly.
‘Oh yes, I always forget,’ she said. ‘It seems so unlikely somehow.’ This, of course, from Alice, was the most damning thing she could think of to say.
‘Ha!’ Georgia snorted, and I marvelled again at the way my daughter could treat Alice’s barbs as a joke. It made her untouchable. ‘Honestly, Auntie Alice, I’m just not interested. I’m very happy with what I’ve chosen.’
Alice launched into a long (and boring) diatribe about the noble art of acting and how important it was to express your creativity and not be beholden to a job that would stifle you. I suppressed the urge to butt in to say that was all very well in Alice’s case, she had parents who were still happy to support her, but George was actually going to have to make her own way in the world. I let her ramble on, Robert nodding every now and then at the wise nature of her words.
It’s a speech that’s been often repeated since and it’s known, by Georgia and myself, as ‘the lecture’.
‘I will, I promise,’ I say to her now. ‘I just thought it’d be nice for Dad.’
When I break the news to Robert I actually feel bad for a moment that it means so much to him. Have I really got in the way of his relationship with his only sibling so much just because I don’t like her? That feeling doesn’t last long, though. She’s a nightmare and he’s … well, we all know what he is. Still, I know I’ve done the right thing. I’ve gone up a few places on the Perfect Wife scale.
‘Will George be here?’ he asks, on his way out the door.
‘She’s going out but she’s going to stick around to say hello.’
‘Just long enough to get the lecture,’ he says, and chuckles. I’m taken aback. I had no idea he had picked up on Georgia’s and my in-joke. It makes me warm to him a bit. A tiny bit.
‘Exactly.’
On Saturday morning I leave home, ostensibly to head to Selfridges’ Food Hall to stock up on delicious goodies for the evening ahead. Actually, I have already bought everything I need locally and it’s all sitting in the bakery fridge, from where I can collect it later.
In reality what I’m doing is heading down to Richmond. Unless Saskia has woken up with a leg missing, she’ll be heading in the other direction for her class at West1 Hot Yoga! I feel sick. I’m shaking. I’m wondering what on earth I think I’m doing.
I try to calm myself by thinking about the upcoming evening with Alice. This has always been my strategy with her. Try to think up calm and measured replies to any harsh comment she might throw my way to prevent myself from losing my temper. It’s quite therapeutic. I try to think what the meanest, most tactless thing she has ever said to me is. In the end, I can’t decide between two:
‘You’d actually be quite pretty if you lost weight.’ This was said a couple of years ago, when we were spending Christmas with Robert’s family and I was tucking into a delicious home-made mince pie. It was the ‘quite’ that got me. Even in her twisted way of thinking she was giving me a compliment, she couldn’t bring herself to be truly complimentary.
And ‘I’m so pleased that Georgia seems to have inherited more than her fair share of Westmore genes. At least she won’t have to worry about what she eats.’ As if Alice’s skinny frame was natural and not the result of serious self-deprivation, coupled with twenty Marlboros a day. As if Robert didn’t spent hours on a treadmill trying to keep the paunch at bay.
When she actually says these things it’s all I can do to stop myself from decking her. But when she isn’t around I find the things she says endlessly amusing. It passes the time. Once I allow myself to look again, the train is nearly at Richmond. I walk for about ten minutes, to where the houses are bigger and set further back from the street. I remember the low stone wall with the hollyhocks behind it, honeysuckle spilling over the edge. A picture-postcard idyll in a tiny south-west London oasis.
I spot it from along the street and slow down. I have no way of knowing whether Saskia has actually gone to Bikram or not. I check the time – there’s still about ten minutes until the class is due to start. I think about sending her a text but I wouldn’t know what to say, short of asking her outright if she was there, which she might find a bit odd. I’m here now, though. I don’t want to lose my nerve. I prepare a speech in my head explaining how I was in the area so I just stopped by on the off-chance, in case she’s home. She’ll think I’m a stalker but at least that’s better than her knowing what I’m really up to.
Before I can bottle it I force myself towards their front door. There’s a car on the drive but it could belong to either of them. Somehow I manage to ring the bell and not turn and run.
The wait is agony. Then I hear someone moving around. A man’s cough.
Josh’s face registers that he recognizes me but he’s not quite sure from where.
‘Hi.’
Then it dawns on him. ‘Oh, it’s Paula, isn’t it? It took me a minute to work out who you were. What on earth are you doing here?’
He’s so open and friendly – if a bit bemused – that I know he has no idea what I’m about to tell him.
‘Um … Do you … is Saskia in?’
Now he looks really confused. Obviously, Saskia hasn’t filled him in on our blossoming friendship.
‘No. Was she expecting you?’
‘No. Although we have had brunch a couple of times recently, so … Look, Josh, I know this is going to sound a bit odd but it’s you I came to see. Can I speak to you?’
He looks cornered. I’m sure I’m spoiling his plans for a lovely quiet day off and I feel bad that he has no idea by how much. He thinks this is a mild inconvenience when, actually, I’m about to ruin his life. I almost back out.
‘Sure. Er … do you want to come in? Is everything OK … Robert …?’
Of course, he assumes I’m about to tell him that one of his biggest stars is sick or in rehab or something.
‘Yes. It’s not about work. Not really.’
I follow him into the front hall and through to the kitchen.
‘Coffee?’ he says, and I say yes, just because I always find it hard to refuse if someone offers me caffeine. I need to put him out of his misery quickly, though, I know.
‘I’m just going to say this,’ I start, and he pauses, filter in hand. Those are never good words to hear. He has nice hands. Capable hands, my mum would say. She loves a man with capable hands.
‘I think … something’s happened that … I think Robert and Saskia are having an affair.’
He actually laughs. ‘What? Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’m sorry, Josh. It’s true. I read a text.’
The colour has drained from his face. ‘Show me.’
‘I can’t. I don’t have Robert’s password so I couldn’t take a photo of it or anything, but I know it off by heart.’
He sits on a bar stool, coffee forgotten. I really could do with the caffeine, to be honest, but it feels rude to ask.
‘So how come you saw it then?’
I explain the whole story. It sounds fairly implausible even to me, I have to say. His expression doesn’t change.
‘So, what did it say? Go on.’
I take a deep breath. I need to get this exactly right.
‘Jesus. Exclamation mark. That was too close for comfort last night. Exclamation mark. WAY too risky! Hope Paula bought it. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. Didn’t feel comfortable having to lie to her face. Exclamation mark. Love you. Kiss, kiss, kiss.’
I sit back and look at him, unsure what to say next. He runs a hand over his cropped hair.
‘And then I searched through his stuff and found a thing. A heart. Some kind of love token, I don’t know. Anyway, there was a card …’
I repeat the words from the card, including the two kisses at the end, I don’t want to leave anything out.
He’s quiet for a second, then: ‘Did you have any idea before?’
I shake my head. ‘No. Well, I did sometimes wonder if he strayed occasionally …’
Because I have no proof to show him it occurs to me he might think this is some kind of elaborate wind-up. Or that I’m a fantasist with a grudge against his beautiful wife.
‘How about you …?’
He looks at me as if I’m crazy. ‘God, no. Never. He’s admitted it then, I take it?’
I pause for effect. I need him to take in what I’m saying. ‘I haven’t told him I know yet.’
‘You only found out today?’
‘No. A couple of weeks ago. Here’s the thing, Josh …’ I’m still standing up and I feel a bit lightheaded so I pull myself up on one of the other bar stools.
‘I want to ask you not to confront her yet. Saskia. I know that sounds ridiculous. All you must want is to get on the phone to her now and ask her what the hell is going on. I was the same when I found out. But I’m worried that if they know we know, that’ll just give them the excuse they need to make it official …’
‘No,’ he says, and it sounds like an animal in pain.
‘I’m so sorry I had to be the one to tell you.’
‘I’ll fucking kill him,’ he says, and I have to stop myself from reminding him that it takes two to tango.
‘Get in the queue.’
He doesn’t laugh like I hoped he would. Of course he doesn’t, I’ve just shattered his world,
‘Did you say you’d met up with her?’ he says, as if it’s only just sunk in.
‘Yes, but …’
He cuts me off. ‘How long’s it been going on?’
I’m clueless. ‘No idea. Nothing’s really changed, that’s what’s so confusing about the whole thing.’
‘Do you think … I mean, are we talking months? Years?’
‘I don’t know. Honestly. I’ve told you everything I do know.’
‘And you’re definitely right, aren’t you? I mean, about what the text said and the fact it was from Sas?’
‘Yes. Unless he has someone else in his phone under Saskia.’
He seizes on this as if I’ve offered him a lifebelt in a storm. Jumps up and starts pacing. ‘That’s it. Why would he ever risk being caught like that?’
I’m not lying, I’ve considered this too. But, on balance, I’ve decided I’m right. Maybe having some other woman listed under Saskia would protect whatever other woman it was if he got caught, but he would still be in a shitload of trouble. The point was, Robert never thought I would see anything incriminating. He had no reason to make a smokescreen.
Josh’s doubt does give me a safety net, though. ‘Maybe that’s another reason to hold off from confronting her. Imagine if I was wrong and you accused her of something she hadn’t done. Do you know her passcode?’
He nods. ‘Of course.’
This slightly takes me by surprise. ‘Really? I have no idea what Robert’s is. He just uses that fingerprint thing.’
‘Sas and I have always shared stuff like that. That’s what makes this so …’
‘You’ve never gone through her phone, though?’
He gives me a look like I’m accusing him of robbing a wheelchair-bound pensioner. ‘Of course not!’
‘Well, now might be the time to start. If you can look at any other texts between them, that might confirm it. Or disprove it, you never know.’
‘Shit,’ he says, plonking himself down again on one of the chairs by the gorgeous old wooden table in the centre of the kitchen. Now I feel a bit calmer that he’s not going to blow the whole thing right away, I start to notice how stylish their home decor is. Like something out of a magazine, but lived in. Loved. ‘I really don’t want to become that person.’
I decide I need to wait before filling him in on the rest of my plan. He’s not ready.
‘Just please promise me you won’t say anything till we’ve spoken again. We need to agree on what we’re going to do and when we’re going to do it. Otherwise, if you have it out with Saskia she’ll go straight to Robert and tell him and it’ll all be out of my hands. Please, Josh, the only thing that’s keeping me sane is feeling as if I hold the cards at the moment.’
Even though I can tell he’s devastated, he’s a nice bloke. He feels bad for me. I know every fibre of him must be screaming to head to Marylebone and drag her out of her stupid hot-yoga class and demand the truth, but I don’t think he will.
He asks me about the heart token and I describe it as best I can. The note. The ‘S’.
‘I’m sorry again that I had to be the one who told you. I just thought you deserved to know …’
‘You did the right thing,’ he says, and that’s a relief, at least. ‘It’s as bad for you as it is for me and I know it can’t have been easy.’
We exchange numbers before I leave. I put him into contacts as ‘Gail’. I’m not stupid.
Robert is in a good mood. Ever since I told him I’d invited Alice over, he’s been smiling at me. It’s quite unnerving. He and Georgia have cleaned the flat. How he got her to agree to that on a Saturday morning I have no idea. Bribery, I imagine. Some kind of secret agreement to override a veto I had put on something.
I don’t really care. Georgia is about as sensible as it’s possible for a teenager to be about the importance of her exams. Robert has always been better than me in acknowledging that. I have a tendency to panic. To feel the need to remind her over and over again not to blow it. I can hear my mother doing the same to me and, even though I remember how it used to drive me crazy that she must have so little faith in me, I can’t stop myself parroting the same.
Today I keep quiet. Partly because I’m so relieved I don’t have to clean up myself. I concentrate on the job in hand, unpacking the bag I’ve retrieved from the bakery on the way home (I almost couldn’t get away from Myra, she was so desperate for the details), stashing the contents in the fridge. Smile, I tell myself. This is all pointless if you give away that something’s up.
‘What’s Alice been up to lately? Anything I should know?’ Robert speaks to his sister on the phone about once a week. I long since stopped asking for news.
He laughs a wry laugh. ‘The usual. I think she had a new boyfriend for a while but that seems to be all over now.’
Alice has had a seemingly endless stream of rich, usually older, boyfriends. If you ask me, she’s one of those people who thrives on conflict. She loves the highs and lows, the screaming rows and hysterical break-ups, followed by the gut-wrenching apologies and promises to change. I once asked her – when I was still pretending to try to form a bond with her for Robert’s sake – why she was always attracted to relationships with added drama, and she raised an arched eyebrow at me, took a long drag on her cigarette and said:
‘It makes me feel alive.’
It was all I could do not to laugh. But that’s Alice for you. She’s always starring in her own movie in her head. Usually French and incomprehensible and in black and white, I imagine.
‘She’ll probably have someone else on the go already,’ Robert says now, an effort at friendly banter.
‘Knowing her,’ I agree.
‘I wish she’d settle for someone,’ he says. We’ve never really talked about this, not for years anyway, because I would always express a similar sentiment, and Robert would get all defensive and say something twattish like that Alice was a free spirit or a butterfly. So I’m surprised to hear him say this now. Even more surprised, given that settling for me seems to be the last thing on his mind these days.
‘I know. Not that she’d thank us for saying so.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Best not offer any advice on that front.’
Alice arrives in a flurry of silk scarves and Chanel No. 5. She has an electronic cigarette dangling daintily between the fingers of her right hand and a bottle of something fizzy clutched in her left.
She flings herself at her brother, air-kissing him noisily on each cheek, then does the same to Georgia and, slightly less enthusiastically, me. I hear her actually say the words ‘Mwah! Mwah!’ as she hovers near my ear. She’s looking good in a Breton top and faded, rolled-up jeans. Ballet flats on her feet. Basically, the identical clothes she was wearing when I first met her nearly twenty years ago. Her long blonde hair is side parted and carefully tousled. Her green eyes are kohl-rimmed. She’s still a beauty, there’s no doubt about it.
‘You’ve lost weight.’ She holds me at arms’ length, trapping me there while Robert and Georgia turn to look. I actually blush guiltily. Trust body-obsessed Alice – stick-thin even to this day – to notice.
‘Oh, I don’t think so. Maybe a little. We went for a walk …’ I add, as if so out of shape was I that one walk on the Heath could make a visible difference. Although that’s probably not too far off the truth.
She grabs at my waist and I squirm. As usual, I’m in an oversized top and leggings. She hangs on to – what looks to me – quite a handful, while I stand there feeling like livestock being appraised at market.
‘You have. Definitely.’
‘Actually, Mum, you do look like you’ve lost a bit.’ Georgia gives me a big smile. I know how much my getting fit would mean to her.
I’m actually quite flattered that Alice noticed, although then I remember that she has always been obsessed with how big I’ve become. She’s a size fascist. To her, a woman letting herself pile on the pounds is on a par with her neglecting her children. Whenever she’s having some kind of grubby liaison with a married man she’ll always say in a knowing way that the wife has ‘let herself go’, thus implying it was the wife’s own fault that her husband ran off with a skinny narcissist who spends all her waking hours worrying about how she looks. And always with half a glance to me.
Thankfully, Robert has lost interest in the state of my body already. ‘What can I get you, Alice? Is that fizz cold?’
She hands over the champagne. ‘Not really, but it’ll do.’
‘We have cold,’ I butt in, a big smile plastered on my face. Champagne was on my list of Alice favourites and my supplies bag contained a bottle.
‘We do?’ Robert looks at me quizzically. We never do.
‘I got some in,’ I say. ‘Special occasion.’
He rewards me with a smile, pleased that I’m indulging his sister’s expensive tastes. ‘Excellent. And I’ll put this in for later, shall I?’
‘You’re looking gorgeous, as always, Alice,’ I say, eyes wide, no hint of sarcasm.
She attempts modesty: ‘Oh no, I just threw on any old thing.’ I nearly laugh. I’m a much better actress than she is.
We settle down at the kitchen table, doors to the tiny balcony open, as it’s a beautiful evening. Alice begins her one-woman monologue ‘Tales of Me’ – which basically means she talks about herself and her fabulous life non-stop for the next half-hour. There are stories of man friends who have whisked her off to the south of France and unrequited suitors who are half dead with desire for her.
As she holds court I find myself tuning out and just watching her. Despite my suspicions of Botox (paid for by God knows who), her skin is starting to look a little papery. Fine lines are creeping vine-like around her eyes. It suddenly strikes me as rather tragic. To be someone for whom looks have always been the most important thing. To define yourself as a ravishing beauty all your life, only to watch it begin to fade before anything else has started to have any meaning. At least I stopped relying on what I looked like years ago. I can’t imagine how tiring it must be.
The thing that really knocked me sideways about Alice when I first met her wasn’t her complete lack of interest in me, it was her confidence. She always knew that everyone in the room had noticed her. I remember her once bemoaning to me the fact that girls didn’t like her because they were intimidated by her beauty. She’s always been a master of the humble-brag. Poor me, poor me – by the way, have you noticed I’m gorgeous? She had absolute faith in the fact that if people didn’t want to be her friend they were just jealous.
I, on the other hand, thought that her indifference to me must mean that I was dull. Provincial and unworldly up against her glittering urban sophistication. It took me years to work out she was just scared I would come to be more important in Robert’s life than she was.
I get up and potter about, getting the food ready. The olives are already on the table and, as she speaks, Alice nibbles on one with her tiny, perfect teeth. The starter is a goat’s cheese salad, already made, apart from lightly grilling the cheese. Cheese that I know Alice will take one bite of, declare delicious and then leave. At the moment, I’d love to be able to do the same, but it looks so yummy that I’m giving myself a night off my diet. This evening is enough of a trauma as it is.
‘So,’ I say, in an effort to be friendly, ‘what’s happening with you? Didn’t Robert tell me you were doing some kind of new show or something?’
He did, several weeks ago, before the new me was born. I know that because when he came off the phone and told me Alice had decided to write and perform a piece about her own fascinating life I said something like ‘Jesus Christ, who’s going to go and see that?’
Her face lights up, another opportunity to intone about herself.
‘Yes! I’m only at the early stages, you know. I just thought I have so many extraordinary stories to tell that I should get them all down on paper. I’m looking for a director at the moment.’
‘Amazing,’ I say. It isn’t. I’ve heard a version of this many times, plays Alice is on the verge of producing and starring in. None of them ever gets off the ground. ‘Where are you thinking of putting it on?’
She twirls her champagne around in her glass. ‘Oh, well, ideally somewhere like the Donmar …’
Georgia snorts and then recovers herself. The Donmar Warehouse has a capacity of about two hundred and fifty. There aren’t two hundred and fifty people in the world who would want to go and see Alice wank on about herself if her play ran from now for the rest of her life.
‘Right. Wow! Doesn’t … I mean, that must get booked up a long way in advance …’
‘Well, of course,’ she says. ‘And a part of me wonders if it wouldn’t be better in a more intimate setting anyway. More, you know, conversational. Like the King’s Head. Or the Etcetera.’
The venues she’s naming are getting smaller and smaller, but she’s still dreaming. One night in a broom-cupboard-sized theatre, capacity one, would be about right. She could take whatever man she was seeing at the time. Oh, and Robert would probably want to go. She could do an extended run of two performances. Of course I say none of this.
I can see that Robert is looking at me, no doubt waiting for me to scoff, so I keep my expression open and friendly.
‘You’ll have to tell the story about the bloke who cast you in that film that didn’t exist. That was a great one.’ This, I know, is one of Alice’s favourite stories about herself. I don’t believe a word of it. It has to do with a very attractive, successful man (all the men who pursue Alice are attractive and successful, apparently) setting up a fake audition just to meet her. I remember I pissed her off the first time she told me because my reaction was that he was obviously some kind of dangerous sex pest and she should report him to the police. Now I listen to her tell the whole thing again and laugh and ooh in all the right places.
I pull out the grill pan and slide the cheese on to the plates. Georgia takes this as her cue to escape. There’s a flurry of hugs and perfume.
‘I haven’t even had the chance to talk to you properly,’ Alice says sulkily.
‘I’ll see you again soon. I’m late,’ Georgia lies, and she flees before the lecture can even begin.
Sadly, that means I get to hear it myself.
‘Such a shame,’ Alice starts as soon as the front door closes. ‘But I suppose we have to let her make her own mistakes.’
Usually, this is where I would pounce. I can’t abide the way she thinks she knows best about everyone. Worse that she thinks everyone wants to end up like her. Today I bite my tongue.
‘Exactly. You can’t force anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. However much you may want to.’
‘Sadly true.’ She sips on her champagne. Then turns her attention to her brother. ‘So, Robbie …’
She’s the only person who ever calls him Robbie. He is so not a Robbie. I called him Rob once, early on in our relationship, and he made it very clear that he was a Robert.
‘… how’s the great Farmer Giles?’
They chat away happily and I leave them to it, concentrating on eating my way around the cheese, just like Alice. Great, she can be my new role model.
Robert smiles expansively. ‘Isn’t this nice? We should do it more often.’
By the time she leaves in a taxi I’m exhausted with the sheer effort of pretending like I care all evening but Robert is in such a good mood that it must have been worth it. He reaches for the red wine and pours us both a glass.
‘I’m going to get ready for bed,’ I say, yawning. ‘I’ll be back to drink this. Leave the clearing up till tomorrow.’
‘I’ll just load the dishwasher.’
I leave him to it. Head for the bedroom to change. Halfway through, I do something I never do and go and stand in front of the full-length mirror in just my underwear. I know that Alice is right. My clothes are feeling looser and I’m sure I must have lost a few pounds. If I was expecting to be pleasantly surprised, I’m in for a letdown. Rolls of fat still spill out in every direction. My arms flap when I move them and my legs knock in at the knees from the sheer effort of carting the rest of me around every day. Even though I’m starting to feel stronger, there’s no evidence of anything resembling muscle anywhere.
Smaller I may be, but I can’t see it. Of course, I have avoided seeing my naked reflection for so long that I never witnessed myself at my biggest. But it was bigger than this, obviously. Bigger than huge.
I shove myself miserably into my pyjamas (a different oversized T-shirt and leggings, funnily enough) and head back to the kitchen. Robert is back at the table, glass in hand.
‘I think I’m going to go to bed, actually. I’m knackered.’
‘Oh,’ he says, and he looks disappointed. He’s never been one to sit up drinking alone. I know I can’t afford to lose the brownie points I’ve accumulated this evening so I force myself to give in.
‘OK, well, I’ll just drink that one, seeing as you’ve poured it.’
I sit down opposite him.
‘Thanks for this evening,’ he says. ‘I know she can be difficult sometimes but it means a lot to me to have her round.’
Another gold star slots into place. I’m fishing around for some small talk – there’s only so far I can go with the ‘wasn’t it lovely to have Alice round?’ conversation. I’m terrified he’s going to want to start inviting her every weekend. Luckily, I’m saved by Georgia barging in, clearly a couple of vodkas down.
‘Is it safe?’ she hisses in a conspiratorial whisper.
‘Are you drunk, madam?’ Robert laughs.
‘Only a little bit. Is there any of that champagne left?’
‘No!’ Robert and I say in unison.
‘Spoilsports.’
‘Now I really am going to bed.’ I down the last of my red wine. ‘You too, I’d suggest.’
She rolls her eyes at me but ambles off in the direction of her room, waving a hand as she goes.
‘Do you think we’re terrible parents because our seventeen-year-old has come home tipsy?’
‘What, and we never did at that age?’ he says with a smile.
God, I think, we were only a couple of years older than Georgia when we met. How depressing. ‘That was different.’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘In what way?’
‘I have no idea.’
Things are going so well that I start to wonder if he’ll want to have sex with me. Robert always initiates it. I gave up on that one years ago because I started to get scared he might take one look at my roly-poly tummy and reject me. And it doesn’t happen very often. Rarely, in fact. Especially lately, for – it now occurs to me – obvious reasons. But when it does it’s usually on a night like this one. A few drinks, a bit of conversation about the old days, both of us making an effort. Oh God, I hope not. Not when I know it won’t be me he really wants to be with.
I bend down and kiss the top of his head. ‘Night.’
By the time he gets into bed I’m doing a good impression of someone who’s fast asleep.