Chapter 13
On this damp and drizzly Monday morning, Celia wonders how she could possibly have failed to realise that Geoff was having an affair.
Now she thinks that someone must have crept into their bedroom while she was sleeping and tapped the top off her head – like you do with a boiled egg – and scooped out her brain and replaced it with potting compost.
Because really the signs were obvious. As she unlocks the front door of Elegance and lets herself in, she finds herself running through them in her mind.
First up, there was that morning Geoff saw her off on her London-bound train. She thinks of it now as ‘The Pret Incident’. Occasionally, when she’s alone in town, Celia does something rebellious and pretty wild.
She buys herself a Pret a Manger sandwich.
It doesn’t matter that Geoff is unlikely to ever find out.
That delicious sense of naughtiness isn’t diminished one bit.
It feels doubly naughty if there’s a window seat free, where she can perch brazenly, daring one of his ‘spies’ – a colleague or a golf pal – to spot her as she relishes her illicit snack.
At thirteen-hours-twenty-six, subject seen consuming outrageously priced chicken and avocado in soft wholegrain plus small additional item, possible Love Bar.
However, on the morning of her departure for Amanda’s wedding, it wasn’t Celia who’d splashed out on an outrageously priced falafel wrap from Pret, but Geoff. ‘Here. This’ll keep you going,’ he announced, pressing the paper bag into her hands.
‘Thank you!’ She’d have been no more shocked if he’d handed her an entire lobster as a journey snack.
‘No worries. Have a brilliant time!’
Now, of course, she knows that his burst of generosity was due to the fact that he was anticipating something of a ‘brilliant time’ too.
By the time she arrived at the wedding venue, one of her suitcase wheels had broken. She’d caught a couple smirking as she’d dragged it across the room and parked it in a corner, glaring at it as if it had disappointed her terribly today.
Sweaty and mortified, she’d then hidden in the loos where she’d tried to phone Geoff several times, just to be reassured by the familiarity of his voice. However, he hadn’t picked up or returned her calls. Clearly, he’d been busy. Busy stuffing his haggis into that woman’s croute .
Such an energetic performance, Celia reflects darkly as she clicks on the lights and flits around the shop, running a feather duster over the shelves.
Quite unlike the kind of sex she and Geoff have been having for years now: a tweak here and a twiddle there as if he were adjusting the boiler settings to save 50p on the utility bill.
Then on he’d climb and thrash about a bit.
The usual routine. Until the last time they’d had sex, three or four weeks ago now.
Instead of falling asleep instantly – as had been his habit – he clambered off her and reached for an item on his bedside table.
Glasses. He put his glasses on and then picked up a biro, plus the newspaper which he buys with actual money on Sundays because he enjoys the sudoku.
Sitting up in bed, he studied the half-done puzzle, jotting notes in the margin as if the sex had been an irksome interruption.
Celia watched him raptly. He’s just relaxed, she told herself.
Isn’t it great that we’re so comfortable together that he can switch so easily post-orgasm to the puzzle page?
But actually, that didn’t make her feel any better.
How very stupid she was not to realise that he does in fact have feelings – intense feelings, judging from what she witnessed at the caravan – for someone else. As far as she could make out, there was no sudoku happening there.
Parked behind the shop counter, Celia checks the time.
The morning is creeping on at a snail’s pace due to an absence of customers, and now the shop is the cleanest it’s been since Celia started working here some five years ago.
She could catch up on emailing plant hospital customers but isn’t sure she would be capable of making sense.
Terri badgered her to call Ruth, her boss, to explain that she needs time off (‘No one would expect you to be all smiley and enthusiastic about fascinators!’).
But what would Celia have done at home? Yesterday the flat felt terribly claustrophobic.
Logan had taken himself off to his room, and Celia found herself torn between desperately wanting Geoff to contact her, and never wishing to hear from him ever again.
As it is, there’s still no word and she’s certainly not planning to contact him .
An extremely stylish older woman breezes into the shop with a cheery hello. They exchange pleasantries as she peruses the rails. ‘Looking for anything special?’ Celia asks, and she smiles.
‘Just an anniversary.’
‘Oh, is it yours?’
‘Yes – our first, actually.’ Her eyes seem to sparkle as Celia thinks, her first! She’s probably seventy and she looks fantastic and so happy. ‘The anniversary of our first date,’ she adds.
‘That’s lovely!’ Something seems to catch in Celia’s throat. ‘Are you going out to dinner?’
‘He’s actually booked a lovely hotel in the Highlands so we’re staying over.’
‘That sounds perfect,’ Celia croaks.
The woman murmurs that yes, he’s terribly thoughtful like that, and she gathers an armful of dresses in various size options and disappears into the changing room. They say ‘room’, but it’s separated from the main shop area only by a heavy velvet curtain on a rail.
Soon the woman emerges, briefly, looking rather elegant in one of the frocks. ‘Oh, that’s lovely on you,’ Celia enthuses. ‘The colour’s just right and it fits you perfectly…’
‘You think so?’
Celia nods. Imagine , she thinks, being newly in love like this woman clearly is. Actually, she can’t imagine, and emotions are welling up in her now and she wishes she’d taken Terri’s advice and not come in. This having to be perky and enthusiastic – it’s too much.
The woman disappears again and emerges in her own smart trousers and blouse, and hands Celia a dress. ‘I’m going for this one.’
‘That’s the one you came out in?’
‘Well, no.’ She smiles awkwardly, running a hand over her silvery bob.
‘It’s the smaller size and it is a bit tight around the middle.
’ Why buy it then? Celia wants to cry because the woman is beautiful as she is.
‘I’ve got time to slim into it,’ she adds, and of course Celia accepts this because her job is just to sell clothes.
Yet as soon as the woman has left with the size ten, she berates herself for not even trying to persuade her that she looked wonderful in the dress that actually fitted.
And that the ten will never fit her, unless she eschews all food and has several ribs removed.
Yet this happens all the time: customers picking their fantasy size over their actual size.
And it never works – at least, hardly ever.
Because outfits are returned, unworn and in mint condition, bar the faint whiff of failure and disappointment.
All that hope – it’s heartbreaking sometimes.
Celia remembers those ridiculous ill-fitting red shoes she’d bought for Amanda’s wedding and tries to push the thought from her mind.
Yet she can’t – not today. What were Geoff and his lover doing while she was safely out of the way in London, being patronised by that old boor she’d been put next to at the table?
Celia remembers the man clearly. Short grey hair, neatly trimmed beard, wire-framed spectacles.
His casual question about what was ‘on her agenda’ in London (‘Er, no plans really!’) led to him recommending she caught a performance at the Festival Hall.
And this segued neatly into him railing against how people behaved at the last classical concert he attended.
‘Clapping,’ he spluttered. ‘Clapping in time with the “beat”.’ He waggled his fingers to denote quotation marks.
‘Really?’ Celia tried to look suitably shocked. Having never been to a classical concert, she couldn’t understand what was so bad about enjoying yourself.
‘It was Carmina Burana ,’ he added.
‘I’m not sure I know him,’ she admitted.
He frowned at her. ‘That’s the piece . Not the composer…’
‘Oh.’ She sensed herself reddening and wished she could spirit herself home, to the flat where Geoff commandeered the central heating thermostat. Where he stopped short of keeping it at Baltic temperatures only because she insisted it would shock her plants.
Even that would have been better than feeling so lost at the wedding, the front of her shift dress smattered with oily marks from where the wrap’s falafel filling had tumbled out on the train.
Geoff and Celia hadn’t been gifted his parents’ caravan at that point. He still would have had access to it, as he had keys. However, with Celia in London, and Logan not around either, he’d have been able to invite that woman to their flat.
This means they did it in our bed, Celia decides. Or in the living room – on the sofa where she sits watching Gardener’s World. She pictures herself curled up there with a cup of tea, oblivious, while Monty Don demonstrated how to create a hawthorn hedge.
Because where else would they do it? Not her and Monty – although she does have feelings, proving that she’s not entirely dead below the waist – but Geoff and his ladylove.
Not in the plant room, surely? Geoff has always had an aversion to so much greenery ‘taking over’ their flat, and she can’t imagine the rickety pull-out bed in there would stand up to too much vigorous thrashing.
And surely he wouldn’t have whisked her into Logan’s room where Celia stores the shade-loving ferns?
Now the image she’s conjured up, of Geoff bending that woman over the kitchen table – the table at which she and Logan used to play Jenga together, and where he’d do his homework dutifully – tips her over the edge.
To her horror tears are coming, in a boutique for mature ladies, and they will not stop.
She scurries to the changing room and draws the velvet curtain and flops down onto the stool.
And she cries and cries, praying that no customers come in because she will be incapable of helping them, just as she couldn’t help that nice man who’d shown up at her flat with the cactus.
Celia doesn’t know how long she has been in there, crying her heart out over all the years lost with a man whom she doubts ever really loved her. Maybe he thought, with her having a baby, that she’d be grateful somehow.
Well, she was. She was extremely grateful. But now, as she hears the shop door opening, and the owner Ruth call out, ‘Celia? Celia, love, are you there?’, she feels as if her heart has shattered all over the changing room floor.