Chapter 37
37
A lone now, Helen checked her phone again . No new messages. She put it down and picked up her drink. Caro had left. She’d wanted to get back, call Tomasz, and get some sleep, something Helen suspected she hadn’t had much of lately. So here she was, an hour later, agitated, bored and, as she was driving, sober. She’d sipped her way through another Diet Coke, tried reading another chapter of her book, (hopeless without her reading glasses), and scrolled aimlessly through every social media account she had. She was filled to the gills with artificial sweetener and increasingly sad. The young people around her made her feel nostalgic, the look on Caro’s face earlier, left her worried and, now that she was on her own, the awful image of Libby dropping her head on the table and begging her not to go was more vivid, more real than the day it had happened. She was all out of options, unable to distract herself from a memory, she didn’t want to remember. Not so much because she had been the cause of her daughter’s tears, but because of the way in which she had stopped them.
‘I won’t go,’ she’d said. ‘I won’t take the job.’
So easy to say to Libby, so impossible to repeat to anyone else, let alone Fiona Chambers, to whom she had written a long, overly apologetic and repetitive email.
Can I just ask for some time to think about this? she’d said in seven different ways. There are a few things I’d like to discuss with my family.
To which Fiona had – generously – responded: Of course. Take some time, Helen. Christian and I totally understand. It’s a big decision.
She stretched her arms out, linking her fingers together as she flexed her wrists. Now that she had had that time, she was still no nearer to being able to send any kind of follow-up email. Either I would love to accept/ I’m so excited … Or I’m so sorry but/ Under the current circumstances I feel unable …
Current circumstances. Her smile was rueful. How long would they last, these circumstances that were not circumstances at all, but were responsibilities? The rest of her natural life? She would have liked to have talked to Caro, had been planning to talk to Caro, but Caro’s news had been a torpedo, blowing every other topic of conversation out of the water, and thinking this Helen looked up and across the square. There was no doubt in her mind that in urging Caro to say nothing she had done the right thing. Her own adultery, the brief holiday fling she had had in Cyprus, had been the symptom of a marriage in terminal decline. It was something she hadn’t felt guilty about at the time and didn’t now. What had happened to Caro was … Frowning, Helen picked up her straw and stirred the inch of Diet Coke left. What had happened to Caro? She had become accustomed to the air of confidence and authority in her friend, the polish and smoothness of a high-maintenance routine. But what she had never seen, and Kay had said as much, was the glow Caro had acquired since meeting Tomasz. Caro had become a woman who, because she was desired, was desirable. That’s what had happened to her. And a desirable woman, Helen thought as she finished her drink, is a powerful woman. And newly acquired power is always hard to control. On the table her phone buzzed.
Hi. Goose is going to drive me home.
NO!
Helen banged out the text.
You really don’t need to worry. It turns out we know each other.
Well enough for him to drive you home? Are you sure?
Well enough to have married him.