Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-two
Lila
“So what are you going to say to him?”
Eleanor and Lila are at the launch of a new makeup brand. Eleanor gets sent enough free makeup to open a small branch of Boots the Chemist, and Lila is always happy to accept free stuff, especially as she has no clue what she should be wearing anymore. They are standing in a Georgian room with floor-to-ceiling windows while young people, who are clearly off-duty models, hand round champagne and tiny canapés of mostly unrecognizable food. Around the edges of the room people stand in front of illuminated mirrors, trying out the free testers to a soundtrack of ambient music. Eleanor is currently blending three different shades of foundation on Lila’s cheeks, pausing and frowning while Lila looks longingly as tiny portions of fish and chips in paper cones pass by, just out of reach.
She has spent a week trying to work out what she will say when she sees Gabriel Mallory. She has ignored his texts, the last two of which have suggested they go out for dinner—in one he calls her dolcezza— and she has invented a work deadline to avoid doing the school pickup. She had felt wretched for two days, then woken up clear-headed, with just a slow-burning anger, at him for his duplicity and at herself for not picking up on it.
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it a bit”—it has actually consumed her every waking moment—“and I just want to ask him what he thought he was doing. I mean, how the hell did he think Jessie and I wouldn’t ever meet?”
“And she’s only the one you know about.”
This thought has not escaped Lila. She keeps thinking of the way he had described his late wife as “seeing things that weren’t there,” the way Victoria’s parents no longer want to speak to him. She waits as Eleanor gets a cotton bud and runs it carefully under her eye.
“I thought I might write a letter. Just telling him how awful he’s made me feel, and how I’d assumed we were all too old for this kind of rubbish.”
“Spoken like someone who has never been on a dating app.”
“Is that what they’re like?” Lila blinks at Eleanor in horror.
“It’s pretty much a jungle out there. If the jungle was full of duplicitous, preening, toxic chancers, that is. The actual jungle might be preferable. Oh, no, not this shade. You look like someone off Love Island .”
“Do you think a letter is a bad idea?”
Eleanor picks up a lipstick and unscrews the lid, testing it on the back of her hand. “The problem is, you’re treating him like someone who (a) will bother to read it, and (b) consider their own accountability. Everything you’ve told me suggests he won’t do either. Close your mouth.”
Lila waits as Eleanor applies the lipstick. “So he just gets away with it?”
“No. Not least because you tell Jessie. Oh, yes, that looks better.” She leans back and nods with approval.
This is the weird bit. Lila wants to tell Jessie. She had liked her instinctively. She is clearly not to blame for any of this. She feels a kind of sisterly responsibility toward the fellow single mother, the fellow dupe. But when she thinks about starting the conversation, she feels clammy with anxiety. What if Jessie doesn’t believe her? What if she blames Lila? She was clearly seeing Gabriel before Lila was. What if this creates yet another layer of drama in the school playground? The thought of everyone knowing this latest humiliation—the Philippa Grahams and the Marjas seeing she has been betrayed by yet another man—is too much to bear.
Eleanor turns Lila’s seat so that she can see herself in the mirror. She looks, she thinks distantly, actually pretty good.
“I just…I just don’t know if I can face it.”
“Moody Blush? It’s very subtle on you.”
“No. Telling Jessie.”
Eleanor rolls her eyes. “And this is how the patriarchy continues.”
“So now I’m responsible for the oppression of all womankind?”
“If you don’t tell her, you’re responsible for the oppression of two.”
“Ugh. Why are we somehow responsible for the fallout of men behaving like arseholes?”
Eleanor doesn’t say anything.
“What?”
“I’m not sure you’re entirely above blame right now.”
“I did say sorry to Jensen.”
Eleanor shrugs. “Sounded like a pretty flimsy apology to me.”
“You think I should have said more?”
“Uh…yes?”
Lila thinks about this as they stroll back toward the tube station. This has been the worst thing about it all, and perhaps the reason why she hasn’t felt as destroyed by the end of Gabriel as she might have expected. She had been so obsessed by the Shiny Object that had been Gabriel Mallory that she had completely failed to think about the far better man whose feelings she had trampled over. Every time she thinks about him picking up that typewritten chapter, the shock on his face, she feels a shame that ends up somewhere in her boots, a dreadful, chill thing, like the kind of damp cold that gets into your bones on the worst kind of winter day.
“I don’t think he’ll talk to me.”
“Then you send him a long text explaining what an idiot you’ve been, and you absolutely take responsibility for all of it, and you say you hope that one day he can find it in himself to forgive you, especially as the book has been canceled.” She turns to look at Lila and stops for a moment. “You did cancel it, right?”
Lila pulls a face.
“Oh, Lila. For God’s sake.”
···
The thing is, Lila cannot find a way round it. She knows she has to cancel the book. The contract had arrived in her inbox, followed a few days later by a cheerful digital reminder to sign. She had opened it, looked at the figure, with all its lovely zeros, and wanted to cry. She has no other way of earning money, not the kind she needs to support everyone. She has considered a thousand alternatives, but everything she thinks up sounds weak, even to her. Dan has cut her child support, her savings are down to an amount that would barely fill her car with petrol, and she has no idea what she and the girls will live on, once that is gone. She sent Jensen a payment for the last of the garden work the previous week. It was not acknowledged, and she was not surprised. But that was the last sizable chunk from her royalties, and she had not felt able to ask Bill for any of it, given he no longer even wanted to live with them.
There is nothing for it. She will have to sell the house. And somehow this fact mixes with the cold hard fury of the last few months, and finally propels her into action.
···
“Hi! I was wondering how you were.”
Lila had pulled Jessie’s number from the school WhatsApp, expressing interest in coming to her shop to buy some art supplies: a lie, but it sounded better than “I’d like to come and wrench your heart out through your ribcage with my bare hands.” She has arrived forty minutes before she is due to pick up Violet, and stands in the little shop, stacked to the ceiling with tubes of paint, A3 cartridge paper, and crafting supplies, breathing in the faint smell of turpentine. “Much better, thanks,” she says, trying to ignore the distinct sweatiness of her palms.
“You went so pale in that coffee shop! Does that happen to you often?”
Jessie is wearing an old-fashioned shop apron in navy blue. Her hair is clipped up and she looks young, fresh, and pretty. Lila gazes at her surreptitiously as she serves a customer: an old woman who counts out the price of two balls of wool with gnarled, arthritic fingers. It is easy to imagine how attractive she was to Gabriel. The mystery was why he wanted someone else at the same time.
“Would you like a cup of tea? I can nip out the back to make us one while it’s quiet.”
Lila declines. “Actually,” she says. “I need to talk to you about something.”
Jessie is apparently perceptive enough to detect the change in tone. She gazes warily at Lila for a minute, then walks out from behind the till. “What?” she says baldly.
“This is really awkward.”
“Go on.” Jessie’s smile has disappeared.
“That headache I got when—when we met. It wasn’t a headache. I was—” Lila swallows. “I was just shocked when you mentioned Gabriel Mallory. Because…” It’s horrible what’s happening on Jessie’s face. It’s as if she already knows, and her whole face is begging Lila silently not to say the thing. “I—I had been seeing him. I thought it was just me.”
For a moment, everything in the shop grows still.
“Gabriel—Gabriel was seeing you ?”
All the color has drained from Jessie’s face. For a crazy moment Lila wonders if that was what she had looked like when Jessie had said the same to her. She suspects she hadn’t looked quite so photogenic.
“You mean seeing seeing?”
“We had sex. And were talking most evenings.”
Her mouth has dropped open. “Since when?”
“Well, two or three months ago, and the sex happened…in the last month.”
They flinch as the bell rings at the door. As they turn, a man in a checked shirt and salmon-colored trousers walks in, holding a list. He squints at it, then looks up at them.
“I need some gouache. Is that how you pronounce it?” He says it “gwayche.”
There is a short silence.
“Goo-arsh,” says Jessie, numbly. “It’s over here.” She walks the man to the far corner of the shop, where all the paints are on display in little white tubes. “Don’t go over as far as that bit. They’re all watercolors.” She turns back toward Lila, her face still rigid with shock.
“But what did he—”
“What’s the difference?” The man’s voice booms across the shop. He is staring at the tubes.
“I’m sorry?”
“Between goo-arsh and watercolors. Can you mix them? They’re for my wife. I’m not really a painter. Come to think of it neither is she. She’s trying to find something for her mental health. I told her Valium would be cheaper but apparently the GP disagrees. Haha!”
He’s delighted with his own joke.
Jessie gives her head a tiny shake. “It’s similar to watercolor but less opaque. It has a high percentage of chalk,” she says, like someone reciting the words.
“Is it cheaper?”
“What?”
“Which is cheaper?”
“Depends.” Jessie turns abruptly to Lila, her face incredulous. “Are you sure ?”
“That I slept with him? Er, yes?”
“Which one?” the man repeats.
Jessie drags her attention back to him impatiently. “It depends on the brand. The prices are on the shelf.” She stands there, her hands dangling at her sides, apparently still trying to digest Lila’s news.
“I’m so sorry,” says Lila. “Obviously if I’d known he was involved with someone else I wouldn’t have gone near him.”
“He didn’t say anything about me?”
“Not a word.” It is this that seems to wound Jessie more than anything. Lila can’t help herself. She hesitates, then says: “I have to ask you something. Did he call you by a name? Other than your name, I mean?”
The man has taken two steps back toward them. “Can you tell me where I would find Burned Umber?”
Jessie screws up her eyes. “It’s dark orange,” she says, waving a hand behind her at the shelf. “They’re all labeled. He called me ‘carina.’ It means ‘cute.’ It was our thing.”
“He called me Bella. That was ours.”
“Bella,” she repeats.
“And Cadmium Orange?”
“ On the shelf ,” Jessie says, louder this time. And then to Lila: “But I don’t understand. I’ve been seeing him for almost a year!”
“I promise he didn’t say a word. I thought—I thought he was still getting over the death of his wife.”
“So did I!”
“I hate to interrupt your little conversation, but I need to find these colors.”
“He was sleeping with both of us at the same time?”
“It looks like it.”
“UGH!” Jessie’s face is anguished.
“I just…I had to tell you. I mean obviously I’m never seeing him again so it’s up to you what you decide, but I couldn’t let you go on without knowing who you were dealing with.”
“Oh, my God. He picked up two mothers in the same school playground ?” Jessie’s voice is lifting in pitch as the full horror sinks in.
“Cerulean Blue?” The man appears beside them.
Jessie turns, as if seeing him for the first time. She looks hard at his large, florid face, then whips the list out of his hand. She strides over to the shelf, and, almost without looking, plucks out twelve different colors, eliciting a muttered I say from the man. She walks back to the till, rings them up, and holds out her hand. “Fifty-nine forty-five.”
“Fifty-nine pounds? That’s an awful lot for a bunch of paints.” He reaches reluctantly for his wallet.
“Think of it as investing in your wife’s mental health. And, believe me, if it’s that easy to keep her happy, you’re a lucky man,” Jessie says. She is not smiling.
He looks a little worried then. He hands over his credit card, accepts the proffered bag, and leaves. They stand in the little shop in silence, watching him stride briskly down the street, casting backward glances as he goes.
“Fucking hell,” Jessie says, slumping. She looks like she wants to cry.
“I know.”
“Does he know you know?”
“Not yet. But he will.”
“Damn it. I can’t leave the shop.” Jessie presses her palms to her face. Her shoulders give a single shudder that seems to travel through her whole body. Lila feels a stab of sympathy. Then Jessie lowers her hands, and wipes briskly at her eyes. “Ugh. Ugh.”
She looks up, and her face sags with disappointment. “You know the worst thing? I was doing fine before I met him. I was just rolling with my life, woke up happy most days, just me, the kid, my shop…We were doing okay. And he knocked me right off that perch. Made me ecstatic for about five minutes, then question myself all the time, made me feel empty when I wasn’t with him. It was like I was living on a roller-coaster…happy, sad, anxious, ecstatic. Now…now I just feel like an idiot…And for what?”
···
She will write a letter, Lila thinks. No, two letters. She will pick up Violet, then go home and write a letter to Jensen, with a much more abject and sincere apology. Then she will write to Gabriel, telling him what she knows, and laying bare the hurt he has caused to two decent women who had genuinely liked him and hadn’t deserved any of it. She will write a letter so that she does not have to have this conversation in public, in full view of Philippa Graham and Marja and the rest of them, and then she will never acknowledge him again. But he will know what he has done, because she will not shy away from spelling out any of it: her hurt, Jessie’s hurt, the horrible, insidious way he has made two women feel worse about themselves.
She walks the twenty minutes to the school, her thoughts lost in what she will say, the exact turn of phrase that will force him to look at his own behavior, cause him to question himself, in the way she and Jessie had done. She will channel Estella Esperanza—discreet, focused, deadly. She will make her move without anyone around her even being aware of what has happened. She is still thinking about the best way to express her disappointment when she does a double-take walking past the Crown and Duck, the gastropub beside the chemist, which has a sprinkling of tables outside. It is an overcast day, and at this time of year only half the tables are occupied. But it is the end table that draws her eye. Because there, sitting with a woman, his hand resting casually on the tabletop in front of him, is Gabriel Mallory.
Something in her solidifies, roots her briefly to the spot. She watches as they laugh at something. The woman is in her thirties, dark curly hair and a black polo-neck. Her large eyes are soft and adoring when she looks at him, and she reaches out and lightly touches his arm, as if she cannot bear to be that close and not make physical contact. He peers at his watch and says something, pointing in the direction of the school. It is the woman’s expression as he speaks to her that makes Lila wince: her acquiescent smile, the slight ruefulness at their imminent separation. Lila crosses the road and walks over to the table. “Hello, Gabriel,” she says brightly.
There is barely a flicker on his face. He looks as if he might be pleased to see her, in the slightly distant, pleasant way one might greet a neighbor. He half rises from his seat, puts a hand on her arm. He is wearing the blue cashmere jumper she had particularly loved. “Lila! How lovely to see you.”
“On your way to school pickup?”
“Yup. Just finishing up a drink. I managed to get away early for once, so I thought I’d give Lennie a surprise.”
The woman is gazing up at Lila, wearing the kind of bland smile someone wears when they’re not sure what your relationship is to the person they’re fixated upon.
“Lila’s daughter is at Lennie’s school,” Gabriel says, turning to the woman, as if in explanation.
Lila considers this description of her presence for a moment. “Yes, I’m Lila. Lovely to meet you,” she says, holding out a hand, which the woman takes. “And you must be…Divina?”
The woman’s smile falters. “I’m sorry?”
“Hmm. Let me guess. Maybe Gorgeousa? Is that a word? Perhaps it’s an English version. Beautiful? Sexy?”
The woman’s gaze flickers toward Gabriel and back toward Lila. Gabriel’s smile has fallen away.
“Oh. Sorry.” Lila wiggles her head, like she’s done something daft. “It’s just that, according to Gabriel, I’m Bella. As in beautiful. And recently I accidentally ran into Gabriel’s other special friend Carina—that means cute, by the way—and she and I exchanged notes and now we’re just curious about who else is in our exclusive little gang. Perhaps a little less exclusive than either of us realized at the time. But hey-ho! Have a lovely rest of your drink.”
She gives a cheerful little wave and starts to walk away. Then she stops and turns, holding up a finger. She drops her voice to a cartoon whisper. “Oh. And if you’ve made it past the intermittent texting stage, you might want to get tested. He’s really bad at condoms. Bye!”
It turns out Lila cannot be bothered to write two bloody letters. There is only so much emotional labor a woman can be expected to handle.