20. Pouilly Fumé
Mysterious, smoky flavours .

Gaynor poured two glasses of Chablis and handed one to

Victor. He looked up briefly from the newspaper.

“Thanks.”

She sat down at the kitchen table opposite him. “This Friday, can you get home early? I’m not working so I’ve organised dinner out. Lizzie’s game – she’s got a guy over she met in India, who sounds great – and I thought I’d give Lyndsey and Roger a call. It’s ages since we’ve seen them – it’ll be fun.”

He looked up again and she smiled at him. “I’ve booked the terrace at Marchesi’s – they’ve got an opera night and….”

She saw his face shift – saw it for a moment, the discomfort, the way his eyes flicked away from hers. For a second she could almost see the pulsating of his brain as he formulated his excuses. Then it was gone and the easy, relaxed expression returned. It was over so quickly she could have imagined it.

“Oh!” He’d adopted his brightest voice. “I thought I told you – I’ve got to stay over on Friday. That’s a shame. Got this boring bloody dinner with the Homestyle mob.”

Her heart dropped. “Really? On a Friday?”

He sipped at his wine. “Yeah, well, you know the CEO? He’s just split up with his wife. You know – going through the lad-about-town bit? There’s some new restaurant in Piccadilly he fancies. And there’s been a bit of trouble with the shoot for his new commercial – we’ve had to delay it – and the account chaps think we ought to take him.”

Gaynor took a gulp from her own glass. She heard her voice get tighter.

“Can’t Laurence go instead? You do so much and it’s opera night – you loved it last time. I thought you’d be pleased.”

“And I would be.” He smiled at her. “I’m sorry, darling. I’ll make it up to you. Why don’t you go and have fun with Lizzie and I’ll do something really special with you next week.”

She was suddenly furious. “It’s always next week – but next week never comes, does it? Send somebody else and do something for me for a change!”

Victor’s smile had gone. “I can’t. The shit has hit the fan. They’re pissed off about the shoot and I’ve got to go myself.”

“Why have you?” She was shouting now.

He looked at her warily. “Because I just have. I would rather be at home and take you out. Of course I would.”

She banged her glass down on the work surface. “I don’t believe you. I don’t think you want to do anything with me any more. I think,” she said, her voice dropping with quiet venom, “that you are full of shit!”

He put his own drink down and sighed. His voice was half-annoyed, half-weary. He didn’t look at her. “Why do you always have to make me feel so guilty?”

She stood up. “Perhaps, because you are!”

Victor deliberately folded the paper and put it away from him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You seem to take every opportunity to stay away these days – there’s always something to take you back to London. I rather wonder why.”

His eyes were hard. “Don’t start that again, Gaynor!”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s just bloody paranoid. Look at you.

You’re shaking. DTs again? You ought to do something about your drinking, Gaynor – you’ll end up a lush.”

She felt her voice quiver with rage. “I’m shaking because I’m angry. I don’t drink any more than you do.”

“You’re a woman – your body can’t take it. Anyway, I’m cutting down, actually.”

“Can’t say I’d noticed.”

“You don’t notice anything apart from yourself.”

She gasped at the injustice. “You bloody bastard. I’m the one trying here – I’m trying to get our marriage – our friendship – back again.” Tears had sprung to her eyes. He stood up and picked up the paper.

She screeched at him. “That’s right! Walk out like you always do! Don’t discuss anything – don’t look for any answers. You go to fucking London. See if I care what you do.”

She heard him cross the hall and the front door open and close. Running into the sitting room at the front, she saw the Jag pull out of the driveway.

“Bastard!” she yelled again.

She drank the rest of the wine in the bottle, the unfairness of the situation becoming ever more apparent with each glass. There was she, organising nights out, trying to do nice things for him, to make him happy, and all he could do was accuse her of thinking of herself.

“Bastard,” she said over and over again, her brain stuck on the word, finding some comfort in its endless repetition. “Bastard, bastard, bastard!”

She sat at his desk and leafed through his leather diary. Nothing written in for Friday at all.

“It’s in the one at work...” She could imagine his smooth tones now. For a moment she thought about phoning Ziggy and asking her what Victor had scheduled, but no doubt Victor had that covered too. She was only the wife. No doubt Ziggy, with her silly neon hair and pierced nose, had been fully briefed not to tell her a bloody thing.

She hurled the diary to the floor and in a fresh fit of rage and frustration thrust her arm outwards and swept the rest of the desk-top clutter with it.

Pens, rulers, Sellotape dispenser, paperclips and Post-it notes scattered across the carpet. A blue willow-patterned bowl full of business cards sailed through the air and landed with a crack on the edge of the fireplace. It broke into several pieces, the cards fluttering around it like confetti.

“Bollocks.” She put her head in her hands, suddenly in tears again, her anger thinning away to misery and defeat. She knelt down and began to pick up the broken pieces of china. Victor would be furious. She’d have to tidy up quickly, say she’d knocked it accidentally.

She could see his face. “What were you doing, anyway? Poking through my things again?”

She gathered up the cards, stacking them in her palm. The sort of people Victor met – media people, the creative and beautiful – seemed to vie with each other to have the wackiest, most off-the-wall presentation of their details and skills. There were plastic cards, metallic ones, some with fluorescent print, some embossed. Printers, photographers, illustrators. Here was a shocking-pink affair edged in green. Daring Damien –Transformations Unlimited .

She looked at it. Had Victor taken Damien up on his services? Asked for a total transformation from Wonderfulin-the-Beginning to Pretty-easy-going-puts-you-down-a-bitand-doesn’t-always-listen-but-you-can’t-have-everything through to Completely-Selfish-and-Philandering-Arsehole?

This next one was on paper as thin as tissue crossed over with black spidery fibres – Optic Design Dot Com . Hmm. Very happening.

‘Katrina Carpenter’ had a photo of herself on her card – a gothic babe with black lips. She was a ‘Life Coach’. Was she the one? Was Victor going to her ‘studio’ in Hammersmith twice a week for tuition on how to ‘unlock his potential’? Gaynor grimaced. Yeah right. His potential to be an absent partner, pissing off for pretend dinners with clients, rather than spend a single evening with his wife.

But probably not, if Katrina was left languishing in the bowl. Gaynor had seen Victor empty his pockets and wallet here many times. Keys and phone in the top drawer, change in the little brass dish, important cards left on his desk to follow up. The remainder tossed into this bowl – just in case. She picked up the rest and flicked through them. PR people, media buyers, MDs of companies she’d never heard of, people Victor had met at parties and conferences. Forever Fabulous Makeovers – hmm, couldn’t he have bought her one? And then, beneath a black card with silver writing – Hassan Farquari Celebrity Agent – was a small, credit-card sized piece of cardboard. She only looked at it idly at first but then frowned. It was an instruction card. Quick guide to the Speakeasy 3340.

She picked it up and looked at it more carefully. Retrieving your messages. There were some numbers in biro in the top right-hand corner in what seemed to be Victor’s writing. She turned it over in her hands, running her eyes down the list of instructions. The operating instructions for an answer-phone. To retrieve your messages remotely…

Gaynor frowned. It wasn’t the one they had. The one sitting on the shelf in the hall next to the phone. She began to read.

1) dial your phone number.

2) Wait for the tone and enter the four-digit pass code…

Gaynor frowned. Whose machine was it? The mystery elephant’s? But why would Victor need to remotely retrieve her messages? Perhaps it was a work thing. It was a London number.

She hesitated. Suppose she called it and someone answered? She could always put the phone down.

Suppose it was Victor? She needed to know. Taking a deep breath and pressing out 141 first, she dialled the number. It rang three times then there was a beep and Victor’s smooth tones broke in.

He didn’t say much. Just gave the number and sorry there was nobody there to take the call. Please leave a message. Fumbling, she pressed out the four digits he’d scrawled on the card. Surely, if it was work, he’d have said his name or EBTD? She looked at the number again. A different code from the Soho offices.

There was another series of beeps. Then a robotic voice. You have TWO new messages. Gaynor’s stomach tightened with sudden anxiety. In a split second she knew she was going to hear something she’d wished she hadn’t.

But the first one sounded like Laurence. Where are you, you old bastard? I’ve left messages everywhere. There’s a load of problems with the Hampstead shoot. We’re going to have to rethink. Can you call me? Beep!

Then a second one. Message left at nine-forty-five-pm on the twenty-second of… Gaynor realised she was holding her breath. It was a voice she’d never heard before. A man – cultured, speaking with an amused drawl – maybe a bit drunk or stoned or something.

Victor baby. Are we going to see you at Tony’s little soirée on Friday night?

Within the first few words she knew this was it. Her insides lurched as she heard the whole message. The voice paused as if sucking on a cigarette and then went on: More to the point – will we be seeing the lovely Gabrielle? Starts at nine. Ciao…

She gripped the back of Victor’s office chair. Gabrielle? Was that the woman in Victor’s life? Obviously. Quite clearly she and he had a circle of friends she, Gaynor, knew nothing about. A private phone line – presumably in the flat – she also never knew existed.

She swallowed, feeling her heart thump. The lovely Gabrielle. Dressed no doubt in three hundred pounds’ worth of Voluptua lingerie. On Victor’s arm, walking into a party together. Gaynor felt horribly sick. She replaced the receiver, trembling.

She’d known already, of course she had. It had been adding up for a long time. Even before the lipstick on his shirt, the lingerie in the wrong size, the constant staying away. Even before that, there’d been his funny moods and distance. His snide comments, his readiness to put her down one minute, to make it up the next. He’d obviously been struggling with guilt or just plain fear of being caught, for a long time. Yes, she’d known.

But it was different now – a deep shock to really know. Though it wasn’t rage she was filled with as she would have expected, but misery. Misery and a deep, deep fear.

She suddenly hated him. Hated him for standing there in their kitchen – the kitchen in their joint marital home – where he was supposed to be honest and true to her and lying, blatantly lying, sipping at his Chablis and just making up a tissue of lies.

Gaynor took a swallow from her glass. He was clever, Victor, talking about his clients, mixing fact with fiction, spinning the sort of plausible story that meant he could never be caught out.

She looked at the phone card she was still holding.

Except this time, she thought grimly, he bloody well would be.