The Reading Group Part 29

'I'll get us a cab.'

'It's a school night.'

'You don't go to school.'

'Very cute. My children do. In my car.'

'I'll take them.'

Harriet knew when she was beaten. 'Okay, if you insist. But I'm not promising laughs.' Harriet's face was set, grim.

Nicole punched her arm. Quite hard. 'Try.'

Harriet rubbed her arm ruefully, then laughed in spite of herself. 'All right, you n.a.z.i. I'll try.'

It was loud inside, excited chatter with a back beat Nicole recognised vaguely from Cecile's radio. She pushed Harriet in the direction of an empty table, and went to the bar. The barman, tall and slim with a floppy blond fringe and a length of brown leather tied round his neck, looked her up and down with predatory interest. 'A bottle of champagne, please. Two gla.s.ses.' She took out her purse, and laid thirty pounds on the bar.

He looked over her shoulder at Harriet, who was sitting hunched and uncomfortable. She hadn't taken off her jacket. 'Celebrating, are we, ladies?' He was Australian.

Nicole picked up the bottle and gave him her broadest smile. 'I certainly b.l.o.o.d.y hope so, mate! Keep the change.'

'Champagne?' Harriet's voice said she'd rather be drinking turps. 'What are we celebrating?'

'I want to drink to lots of things.' Nicole poured two full gla.s.ses expertly. She'd drunk enough champagne with Gavin all these years. Too bad they'd always been celebrating him getting away with being a complete s.h.i.+t. She put a gla.s.s into Harriet's hand, and clinked it convincingly with her own. 'Here's to the end of the Gavin era. Here's to my new job. Here's to that barman fancying the a.s.s off me even though I'm old enough to... well, I'm not old enough to be his mother, am I?' She thought for a moment. 'I'm old enough to teach him a few things, I reckon, and still young enough that he'd probably let me. So here's to that.'

Harriet raised her gla.s.s half-heartedly, and drank.

'There's more!' She looked straight and hard at Harriet. 'Here's to you getting Tim back.'

The morning he had left, Harriet had been sitting in her car outside Nicole's house when she got back from the gym. She was crying and listening to Elvis Costello sing 'I Want You'. Harriet could certainly do high drama, but this time Nicole had seen it was real. Knowing all along that Harriet had been an idiot about Tim, was no consolation in the face of this abject misery.

'It's like I woke up from some horrible catatonic state the second he left me. Because he left me. A second too late,' Harriet had said, hiccuping and snorting.

Nicole knew Harriet wasn't sleeping well. She had been having nightmares. Vivid, real, graphic ones. Tim in bed with someone else, making love to her. A woman without a face. Or cellulite. She said they made her so physically, demonically jealous that she felt sick. The house was spooky, too, without him. Harriet had cleaned everywhere. She'd given up watching television, and instead, listened to old CDs. So many songs reminded her of him. She spent her evenings looking at photographs, carefully stuck down and annotated in alb.u.ms by Tim of course. She'd complained, of course, said it was a.n.a.l to be so up to date with your photographs, said his comments in the margins were naff. Now she pored over every one, looking intently at his face and hers. Looking for clues, maybe.

Nicole had to hope he wasn't serious, that he wanted to scare her into realising what he and Nicole had known all along, that they were right for each other, that they were meant to be together. Any other possibility was untenable. Nicole loved Harriet, but she knew her friend had been mean to Tim, and not just about Nick the Nick thing wasn't all that significant in the scheme of things: after all, she hadn't gone through with it, had she? The damage she had inflicted on Tim was much more subtle than another man. It was the cold shoulder, the making him feel as if he didn't impact on her, the way she ignored him all evening when they were out in a group. That was far worse. Surely he wouldn't have found someone else. Whatever else she doubted, it wasn't Tim's commitment to Harriet. It had to be a game. And she guessed that on some level he was counting on her to make Harriet play it.

Looking at the limp dishrag that sat in front of her now, Nicole wondered how in the h.e.l.l she was expected to galvanise Harriet into anything approaching action.

'It's too late. It must be, or he would never have left. I've blown it. If there isn't another woman now, how long will it take for him to find someone better for him than I am?'

'I can't believe I'm hearing this,' Nicole said, exasperated.

'Well, it's true. I've been a complete b.i.t.c.h. I've got what I deserved. I'm a flipping genius, I am. I got the greatest man ever to fall out of love with me. That's it. He's gone, Nic.'

'You haven't.'

Now it was Harriet's turn to lose patience. Couldn't Nicole see what she had done? 'Most men would have gone years ago. He lasted longer than anyone else would have done. The first night we knew Josh was going to live, the first night I came home to sleep, after we'd been so close, together every moment at the hospital, he wanted to make love to me. He put his arms round me in our bed, and I could feel that he wanted me, wanted to be close there, like we had been in the hospital. I wouldn't even let him kiss me, not properly. I just pretended to be sleepy and I rolled over as soon as I could. That night, of all nights. I don't know why. It's no wonder he's left, Nicole. I wasn't giving him anything he needed that he couldn't get from a service apartment and a good PA. I wasn't being a wife to him. I haven't been a wife to him for years. Probably ever.'

'But you want to be?'

'Of course I do. But he's gone, hasn't he? He's given up on me. I can't fight that.'

'Yes, you b.l.o.o.d.y well can. Is this my friend Harriet talking? I can't believe I'm hearing it! Fight for him, for Christ's sake. If you're telling me the truth, and you really want him back, and you're not just afraid of being alone, then fight for him. Why aren't you up there right now?'

'It wouldn't work. Men like Tim don't leave if they don't mean it.'

'That's exactly where you're wrong. I think it's a cla.s.sic cry for help. I think it was the only thing he could think of that would make you sit up and take notice of him and his feelings. I think he'd have you back like a shot, if you could make him see you meant it, that it was really him you wanted.'

'You think?' Harriet had sat up a little.

Nicole reached across the table and took her hand. 'I'm sure.' She squeezed. 'Harriet, I don't know much. My own marriage has been a disaster, and maybe I'm the last person who should be giving advice. But I know Tim loves you. He once told me he thought he was born to love you. He is absolutely devoted to you. I am more sure of that than I am about almost anything else in my life. I have never known a man love a woman like I think he loves you. You've hit the jackpot. He wants you, he wants his kids, and he wants this life. You just have to tell him that that's what you want too. You have to make him believe it. Tell him you've been a stupid b.i.t.c.h, chasing some non-existent b.l.o.o.d.y rainbow, and that you've woken up to yourself. That's all. I'm telling you.'

'D'you think?' She looked like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz when the good witch tells her she can go back to Kansas. She looked as though she believed that Nicole saying it made it so. That was part of Harriet's appeal, that childlike quality of trust and dependence, Nicole realised. That was part of the spell.

'I think.'

'Then I will. I'll make him come back. I will.'

Nicole felt relief flood through her. In a funny way Harriet's marriage meant more to her now than her own, because hers had been bad and Harriet's was good, and if it lasted, it proved something was true, and she needed that to be the case just now. 'Good. Good. So, enough of lying around mooning over photographs and listening to some truly tragic eighties pop. Promise?'

Harriet giggled. She'd drained the first gla.s.s while she was listening to Nicole, and was now half-way through the second. 'If I can pull this off, no more mooning. But I'll never give up my Elvis Costello, and Bruce the Boss he stays too.'

Nicole refilled her gla.s.s, and tapped it against Harriet's. 'Okay, Rome wasn't built in a day. We'll work on it.'

'Nic?'

'Yeah?'

'What's the quickest way to lose half a stone?'

Tim Tim was drunk. His friend Rob hadn't seen him so drunk for years or, rather, drunk like this. They'd been house-mates at university, and best mates, he hoped, ever since, and they had certainly sunk a few thousand beers over the years, but this was different.

Tim was a fantastic, amiable drunk at college. He was tall, so he could drink five or six pints without much effect except on the dance-floor, where his gangly frame became more and more loose-limbed and dangerous to bystanders. But he always got you home you could rely on that if you wanted to get completely bladdered because he never wore the beer goggles of most of his peers, the ones that had you roaming the front quad in search of available women susceptible enough to your charms, or drunk enough, to overlook that you would never know their last name and take you to their rooms anyway. Tim never did that. He had kept a pretty little girlfriend from the sixth form for the first two years, and worked hard for his degree during the third. Cla.s.s of eighty six, they were. Economics graduates, with jobs in the bag and wealth in their sights. Tim had been more successful than Rob he had gone for the flat-rate-pay safe route, training as an a.n.a.lyst, rather than the get-rich-quick then burnout path. He had diligently sat his regulatory exams with the FSA, grandfathered in as a market pract.i.tioner at thirty-three, and was now an acknowledged expert in the media sector. His personal stock in the City was spectacularly high. Rob had made a lot of money, too, with his wide-boy, dare-or-die att.i.tude to the markets, but he was ten a penny, cannon fodder in a financial war, and he knew it.

Tim had been good fun after graduation, too. They'd gone round the world together, following the well-trodden steps of a million kids from the Home Counties, then settled down in a two-bed flat near Clapham Common to real life. And, eventually, in Tim's case, with Harriet, whom Rob adored, because she was funny, and s.e.xy, and had let Tim out to play from time to time before they had had the kids. His wife, Paula, who'd come along three or four years after Harriet, was G.o.dmother to Chloe, so Rob considered himself and Tim more family than anything. He hadn't seen much of him lately a few s.n.a.t.c.hed lunches at Corney and Barrow, but no full-on sessions for months. Now Tim was drinking alone at a table in the corner of Pavilion, looking unkempt and tired, and Rob was worried.

He was p.i.s.sed, that much was obvious, but it was only seven o'clock. Rob had only been twenty minutes late a difficult phone call from the States had come through just as he was leaving but Tim looked like he had been here for some time.

'What do you mean, you've left her?'

'Which bit is hard to understand? Left, moved out. I've left.' Tim's voice was aggressive, but his face was a picture of misery.

'Where have you gone?'

Tim almost laughed. So typical of Rob to ask where, rather than why. He loved his friend, but Rob had the emotional depth of a puddle. Maybe he should have got him to bring Paula. She might have been better at this. Then he remembered that Paula was pregnant, with a boy they'd had the scan last month and Rob had already asked him to be a G.o.dfather. He didn't think he could bear to see them with each other, so happy. 'I'm staying at the RAC.'

'Christ, that must be a bit rough.' Living at his club? That was sad. All right for a night when you got too p.i.s.sed or worked too late to get home, although Tim was normally a homing pigeon in that situation, but not to live. Tim stared into his gla.s.s. 'Do you want to come and stay with me and Paula? I mean it, mate, you'd be welcome.'

'Thanks, but no. You two don't want a miserable git hanging around right now.'

'Offer stands.' Tim nodded acknowledgement, but didn't speak.

'So, do you want to tell me what it's all about, or just sit here and get s.h.i.+t-faced? I'm easy either way.'

Tim laughed grimly. He was clearly already well on the way to the latter.

'Has she got someone else?'

'I don't think so, although a few months back I thought there might be someone but I think it's the idea of it, mainly.'

'I'm not with you.'

'No, and nor is she. It's like I drive her crazy, like she hates me, Rob, because I'm not someone else something else.'

Rob might have had a strategy ready for the other-guy scenario it was in his a.r.s.enal of solutions for 'normal' man problems, like deal gone wrong, wife overspending, team relegated, but he was clever enough to know that he couldn't help constructively with this one. If counselling, Prozac and lawyers might be involved, it was a case for Paula. He wished she was here.

He opted for flying in the face of what Tim was slurring. Straight denial. 'No, mate. She loves you. I'm sure of it.'

'You think?'

'Course I do. You and Harriet, you're watertight, Tim. Look at the other couples we know who've come apart. Nothing like you two. You've got this great life great house, great kids, great future.'

Tim shook his head dismissively. 'Yeah, f.u.c.king great, except that she spends all her time worrying about what she might be missing whether she might have been happier if she'd gone for someone else.' He rubbed his hand wearily across his face. He wasn't sleeping. He missed the indentation, the sound and smell of her body next to his in the bed, and every time he woke up through the night he reached out for her.

'She doesn't even want me to touch her. I can't remember the last time she made the first move.' His expression was pained.

Too much information, Rob was thinking. It might be okay for women to talk about that sort of stuff, but he had given up the blow-by-blows with one-night stands and bedpost notching. The last thing he wanted was to look at Harriet when he saw her and think she was frigid or anything else in that department, thank you very much. 'I'm out of my depth here, Tim. I don't know what to tell you, mate.' He patted his friend's shoulder uncomfortably. 'What I do know is that you sitting in the RAC and her in the house isn't going to make it better, is it?'

'Aha. That's the point.' Tim's head was rolling in a vague figure-of-eight as he spoke. 'Exactly the point. This is make or break, mate.' He never called Rob mate when he was sober. 'I've removed myself, haven't I?' He wasn't making any sense.

'How many of these have you had, Tim?'

There were two chaser gla.s.ses on the table next to his pint. 'Not enough. I love Harriet. I haven't so much as looked at another woman that way since I met her you know that as well as anyone.' Rob nodded. 'And I want to fight for her. I do. But I can't fight out loud, that won't get me anywhere. I have to gamble, you see. I have to give her what she thinks she wants s.p.a.ce from me, a life without me, her freedom back. And I just have to hope it pays off. D'you see?'

Almost, Rob thought. He was wondering whether there were any cabs outside that might take Tim if he could hold him up straight.

'And if it doesn't, I'll walk away. Lose everything. Give it all up. The kids, Harriet.'

Rob was horribly afraid that he was going to cry.

'I have to know, that's all. I can't live like this any more. It's killing me.'

'Come on, you're coming home with me tonight.'

Tim shook his head vigorously.

'No arguments. Come on.'

Tim leant on him. He didn't have the strength to argue. The fresh air outside the pub hit him in the face, but it didn't sober him up. He had drunk far too much far too fast.

'It'll pay off, Tim, I'm sure it will. This time next week you'll be home and this nonsense will have been sorted out I'm sure it will.'

'Are you?' Tim was childlike, as if he believed that if Rob said it would be okay it would be.

'Too right. Then we'll go out and get drunk the proper way, shall we?'

'To celebrate?'

'To celebrate.'

'It's like that song, isn't it? Who was it? Sting I think. You know...' and now he broke into it discordant, high-pitched '... If you love someone, set them free. Free, free, set them free...'

Even through the fug of his drunkenness, and the disharmony of his own singing, Tim felt a s.h.i.+ver of fear. That future, the one where it did work out okay and Harriet loved him again, was the only one he could contemplate, drunk or sober.

The next morning he felt like death. He just couldn't do it any more. His body was at his desk at six forty-five, just like always, but his stomach and his head were somewhere else. He looked awful, too, he was unsurprised to find out when he went to splash his face with cold water in the washroom. The bright white of his s.h.i.+rt (brighter, it had to be said, for being washed, starched, ironed and hung by the club's laundry service than when it was washed with Chloe's navy swimsuit and shown the iron briefly during Holby City on a Tuesday night) made his face look grey and lined. His eyes were bloodshot, and his tongue, on close inspection, looked as mossy as the patio. He suspected, too, that he smelt.

He hadn't hung around long at Rob and Paula's this morning, avoiding breathing his toxicity over pregnant Paula by kissing her b.u.mp in a gesture she clearly thought endearing. She'd rubbed his hair maternally. 'It'll be all right. Rob told me. It'll pay off.' She'd winked kindly, then settled down to the three rounds of toast, with honey and Marmite, that Rob had made for her.

Back at his desk, Tim rooted around in the top drawer, looking for painkillers. He couldn't find any, and he was just looking up petulantly for his PA when she came in. In one hand she had a mug of coffee and two paracetamol, in the other the morning's post. That was why he adored her, called her Moneypenny, and spent a hundred pounds on Chanel perfume for her every time he went through duty-free. She was better than his mother.

She put down her offerings quietly beside him, and watched sympathetically while he took the pills, even though the coffee was too hot and made him wince. She looked like Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins, but about three stones heavier. He remembered Harriet making an excuse to come in and meet her, just after he'd employed her, about five years ago. 'I want to make sure you haven't hired a babe,' she had said, and was satisfied instantly by the sight of Sylvia bending over a filing cabinet to retrieve something and blocking out all the natural daylight in the room. He'd been happy she cared.

'I'll take your calls for half an hour, let those have a chance to work,' she said. Then, as she reached the door on her way out, without turning round, she added, 'Top letter's from Harriet.'

Monday.

Dear Tim.

I'm writing not talking because (a) I'm not at all sure you want to see me or speak to me just now, and (b) even though I don't express myself brilliantly on paper, it's probably better than blurting and wittering and going on, and I can't say much at the moment without crying, and we both know that that just comes across as manipulative, and I don't want you to think that, so I'm going to try writing. The thing is this. You have to forgive me and come home and make our family and me complete again, because it is wrong without you here and it could never be right.

I know I've been a lousy wife. Especially lately, but probably for years. I've taken you for granted, and I've been preoccupied with obsessing that the gra.s.s is greener, and I've been selfish and stupid. Early midlife crisis, maybe. Or late adolescence. I don't know why.

But you've left me, and I can't bear it.

Part of taking you for granted has been a.s.suming that you would always be here with me, sorting out my messes and putting up with my nonsense like you have done all our lives together, and now I'm afraid, so, so afraid, that you've had enough and washed your hands of me.

I'll do anything. I'd have done it already if I'd known what it was. I love you, Tim, all the ways I should. I promise you that if you come home it will all be okay. Better than okay. Just please come home to me.

I love you.

Harriet.