‘Darling – I’ll be with you in a minute. Ruth’s at lunch, but I’ll get Judith to fetch you a cup of tea – or do you want coffee?’
Eleanor couldn’t rescue herself from the lurch of shock she felt in the pit of her stomach at hearing Ruth’s name in John’s mouth in time to answer before his head had disappeared again from around the door of the office. She had looked up just in time to catch the briefest glimpse of a dark red, striped tie at his neck, and it was all she could do to stop herself leaping up from her chair and following him. She tried to pull herself together enough to call for coffee in as normal a voice as she could muster, but he was shouting to her from the corridor before she could manage more than an intake of breath.
‘Do you want to see Martin? Ruth said you were bringing something to show him.’
It was hopeless. The second mention of her name had hit her in the stomach again, and she felt once more the dangerous threat of tears and decided to keep her mouth shut. She knew John wouldn’t wait for a reply – much of the time his questions were thrown out rhetorically in any case, and she was well used to being ignored when replying to them, particularly in the context of the office. If she didn’t answer, he would just stride on in whichever direction he had been going before he had diverted from his route long enough to cast a quick greeting at her where she sat in the luxurious outer office. She had tried to search his face in the couple of seconds it had been in front of her; anxious to catch traces of the new person she was now dealing with. It was disconcerting to find him looking the same as ever, and again she felt a flash of panic and guilt at the assumption she had made and at the guilty verdict that she had so quickly imposed on him on a single piece of evidence.
She took a well-worn gilt compact out of her handbag and began to powder her nose and cheeks, trying hard to ignore the contrast that the picture of her face in the tiny mirror made with the image of the upturned face of the young girl squinting into the rain that she had seen a few minutes before.
‘Thank you, Judith.’
The tea was put down on the coffee table in front of her. She looked up, suddenly anxious that something in the tone of her voice had given her away; half expecting to see curiosity or sympathy on Judith’s face, but meeting only her usual expression of bland indifference.
‘Mr Hamilton says he won’t be long. Anything else I can get you, Mrs Hamilton? Did you want to see Mr Havers?’
‘No, for goodness’ sake, why does everyone think I want to see Martin? And I did ask for coffee, Judith.’
‘Sorry, Mrs Hamilton, I thought Mr Hamilton said tea. And I thought Ruth said you were coming in to see Mr Havers.’
Eleanor knew that Judith was right and that the slight tone of resentment in her voice was completely justified, but that didn’t prevent it from annoying her. How dare she come back at her like that? What gave her the right to—
‘Did you want me to change it for coffee?’
‘No, no, leave it now. Leave it. Tea’s fine.’
She looked at Judith’s large, tightly skirted bottom and hips as she walked away from her and felt a wash of sweaty dread break over her. Could she be another one? Now she no longer knew John, he could be capable of anything. But he hated fat women; he had always said so. But even as she thought it she knew that ‘always’ had no meaning now: the man who had ‘always’ didn’t exist.
She looked around the office at the large modern watercolours, cream sofas and glass coffee table and tried to identify something else that was badgering for her attention at the back of her mind. It took a few seconds to identify it: she was hungry. Her usual routine of toast and marmalade first thing, followed by morning coffee and biscuits an hour or so later to the accompaniment of Woman’s Hour, had been abandoned in the morning’s upheaval, and it was only now that she realised she had eaten nothing since a small supper over fifteen hours before.
Eleanor was solidly built; shaped in a way that had changed little since spreading into a traditionally English pear-shaped middle age in her mid-forties. Her intake of food had varied little over the years: although she sensed that the energy she expended was a little less every month that passed, she did nothing to adjust the amount of fuel that sustained it, secretly a little mocking of those of her friends who had joined in the general drift towards diet and exercise. Gyms and aerobic classes were for those younger than she, and were even to be looked down on for encouraging an unhealthy awareness of one’s own physical condition. Missing a meal was not something to be taken lightly, and even in her present emotional state, the demands of routine were pressing and unavoidable.
She considered calling Judith again and asking her to send out for a sandwich, or to bring her a plate of biscuits from the office kitchen, but suddenly seeing again in her mind’s eye the meeting with John that was inevitable if she stayed, she decided to use her hunger as an excuse to herself to go, and quickly picked up her coat and bag and left.
She turned the car round and drove down one of the side roads towards Marylebone High Street, thoughts of the quiches and rolls she knew would be in the window of her favourite coffee shop juggling for position with an image of Ruth’s slim frame balanced on one hip on a corner of her desk as she nibbled at a crispbread or sipped at some mineral water.
‘Coffee and a Danish pastry, please.’
‘Cappuccino, espresso or filter?’
It had taken an enormous effort on Eleanor’s part to bring her voice into a semblance of normality long enough for her to give the order, and the strain made her dizzy. To have it countered with a question fired back at her so quickly took her by surprise.
As the young waitress gazed down at her, Eleanor opened her mouth to try to answer but suddenly stopped; hit by a terrible uncertainty. The choice of coffee seemed suddenly impossible. How could she make a decision if she didn’t know who she was? She found herself stuttering and panic-stricken: unable to reply or even look the girl in the eye. The waitress’s obvious embarrassment just made it worse, and it was a relief when she muttered something about coming back in a moment and, putting a menu down onto the polished wood surface of the table, moved away towards another customer.
Eleanor took stock. It was so extraordinary for her to be out of control like this. It was new, and it frightened her. Yes she suspected her husband of having an affair, but surely she could deal with this as logically and calmly as she always had with problems? Why did she feel so completely incapable? Even her physical surroundings seemed to be all at once abandoning the rules: the marble floor tilted away from her into the shadows; the walls looked warped and soft; the table sloped and buckled. She rested her forehead on the palm of her hand for a moment and closed her eyes. In the relative calm of the pink world of her inner eyelids she could see more clearly, and suddenly understood. Not only was John not the man she thought she had known: she herself wasn’t the same woman, either. Her position in an ordered, comfortable, middle-class world was turned upside down, and by living with a man who had been lying to her for – how long? – she had unwittingly colluded in a nonsensical pretence. For so long she had read in magazines of women resenting their position as ‘somebody’s wife’ and had always thought their worries childish and irrelevant: now she could see – could feel – what they meant. If she wasn’t the happily married woman she had thought she was for so long she seemed to be nothing.
By the time the waitress returned she was able to order, and after downing the cappuccino and chicken sandwich that arrived within minutes, she felt fortified and more resolved. Sensing suddenly
