Chapter Thirty-Seven
The problem with clichés is that they’re often uncomfortably based in truth, which is why it’s so disappointing that after taking some small steps forward, I am of course forced into a couple of giant steps back.
After checking off a few more boxes, I’m feeling almost normal again, until one evening when I leave the training center to head for the bus stop and see someone who knocks me entirely off course: Claire Ramsay.
She looks up and it takes a second, but recognition dawns and she smiles. “Hey, you’re the one who booked Lachlan’s birthday dinner. Allie, right?”
“Abby.”
“Oh, soz babes.” She touches her chest, and I can’t help but notice there’s no diamond on her ring finger. “Claire.”
As if I didn’t know! As if this woman hasn’t occupied a respectable amount of my mental real estate for the last nine months, a two-bedroom condo in my mind.
“What brings you to town?” I ask, and I don’t know if that’s bitchy of me.
She has every right to be offended that I’ve insinuated it’s weird for her to be in the same city as her husband.
But then again, since I haven’t spoken to said husband in months, I actually have no idea who would be offended by what right now.
Regardless, she doesn’t seem fazed. She takes a pack of cigarettes out of her bag and shakes one out.
It’s long and thin, and looks like it would slip right into one of those vintage cigarette holders the glamorous women of the ’60s used.
Audrey Hepburn with a ￡200 blowout. “I was supposed to meet Lachlan at six, but of course, he’s just texted and said his session with the physios is running over. ” She offers me the pack. “Want one?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Neither do I, except when I’m being driven to the edge of my bloody sanity.” She lights the cigarette and takes a drag, blowing the smoke out of the side of her mouth so it doesn’t go right in my face. “Lach hates it.”
The questions are queuing up in my mind at an almost frenetic pace.
How are she and Lachlan doing? Are they back on good terms if they’re meeting up?
But if that’s the case, why is she being driven to the edge of her sanity?
Is that why she isn’t wearing her ring? Does she know about Lachlan and me?
How much Botox has she had? Should I get Botox?
Okay, so some of the questions are more important than others.
I try very hard to be cool, calm. “What are you two getting up to tonight?” I ask, like I’m the kind of person who could have a casual conversation with the possibly estranged wife of a past almost-lover.
But the hypotheticals are too much, the strange web of relationships between us impossible to navigate, and my question comes out loaded with way too much curiosity.
Claire sighs. “You’re mates, right?” She continues before I can respond, which is good, as I have no idea how to answer that.
“Maybe he’s mentioned it, but we’ve been going to counseling.
It’s part of our endless journey toward deciding what to do about our marriage.
We’ve been doing it online, but I guess in the final stage, it’s really important to be in person. ”
More questions pile up. “Final stage” like the last interview before landing your dream job? Or “final stage” like a terminal diagnosis?
“Ah,” is all I can say.
I guess she interprets that as leave to go on, because she ashes her cigarette and stares in the direction of the training center, just over my shoulder.
“Did you know Lachlan and I met each other when we were eight? Eight years old. I barely understood what boys were, and I ended up marrying the first one I ever fancied.”
“I think that’s sweet.”
“I did too, for a long time. My girlfriends always call it a fairy tale love story, like I’m in some Disney film or a fucking Taylor Swift song.
And I love him, I really do. But there are things I want to accomplish in my life.
Things I know I’m capable of. If I had known all that at eight or twelve or eighteen—hell, if I had known it at twenty-five—would I have chosen to be in the position I’m in today?
Like, does the princess ever really choose to be rescued by the prince? ”
I shift on my feet, unsure of how to respond. It’s not like I don’t have a conflict of interest here, I’m just not entirely sure what that conflict is, whether I want them to split up or stay together, or if it doesn’t actually matter anymore. I play it safe: “What do you mean?”
“My life will always be defined by him. It will always depend on what’s best for him, not best for me, or even best for us.
I wanted to go to the States a couple years ago—they were doing some footballers’ wives show and they wanted to meet me for it.
They thought I could have lots of opportunities if we moved to LA, like the Beckhams did.
Not just reality TV—acting, or presenting, or producing, or a thousand different things.
But Lachlan wouldn’t even consider it. He said people in the prime of their playing careers don’t move to the American league. ”
“Well, obviously I can’t comment on whether that was the right decision for your marriage, but he does have a point about the quality of the league.”
“I know, and I honestly get where he’s coming from, but it’s like…is that it, then? I never get to make choices that are best for me?”
“I’m sure he’s worried about squeezing the last few years out of his career. Maybe he’d be more open to it after he retires?”
“Yeah, well, footballers aren’t the only ones considered washed-up by their thirties.
” She runs her fingers through her hair and tousles it at the roots.
“Sorry, I know I sound like the world’s biggest diva, complaining about being married to someone rich and famous and handsome and kind—I recognize it’s mad to have these problems. But it’s like…
Have you ever done something because of that?
Because you feel like you should, because it’s easy or because it’s expected?
Maybe not the best choice, but not a terrible one? ”
I have to laugh. “Pretty much my entire life.”
She smiles, a tight, controlled smile that doesn’t make it to her eyes.
“So you get it. But instead of either sucking it up and accepting that this is the choice I’ve made or pulling the ripcord and getting out of it, for some reason I’ve chosen this weird third path of sabotage, where neither of us gets to be happy.
And it’s so bloody stupid. Like, when Lach’s dad died, his sweet old dad who I loved, I barely acknowledged it.
I was trying to push Lachlan away, to make him hate me, because it would be easier for him to end it if he did hate me, since I was the first one who wanted out.
I felt like such an arsehole, and it didn’t even work.
Because he’s too stubborn to admit failure, and I guess I am, too. ”
“So you think the marriage has failed?” It’s a bold thing to ask the woman whose husband you were once maybe trying to steal, but there’s a part of me that just has to know.
She takes the last drag of her cigarette and stubs it out in the ashtray. “Yes. No. I don’t know. We’re working on it, on the off chance there’s something salvageable, but I think we’re delusional and one of us just needs to call it.”
As she talks, I can’t help but notice how many eyes slide to her.
She’s so conspicuous compared to the local geezers who usually loiter in front of the pub; here on the hardscrabble edge of a working-class town, she screams money.
And she looks the part, with her camel-colored wool trousers, silk T-shirt, tailored overcoat, immaculate contouring.
The only thing about her that’s not perfect is the fact that she’s smoking, but she makes it look so chic that I’m tempted to bail on the years of anticigarette rhetoric drilled into me by a series of mustachioed D.A.R.E. officers.
But there’s something underneath the perfect exterior, something damaged and skittish, a wounded baby deer energy.
She can’t let the cracks show, because to admit imperfections is to admit defeat.
And though many times I have wished this woman didn’t exist—or merely pretended she didn’t—I have to admit I feel somewhat sorry for her.
She’s caught up in this lifestyle that she was too young to understand, that was foisted upon her because she had a schoolgirl crush on someone who happened to become famous.
And okay, I’m not so naive as to think she’s had no agency, no say in the matter, because she could have stayed in the shadows and just been his wife, ignored the media’s relentless attempts to feature her and her perfect hair, husband, life.
But the fact remains that she is now a WAG, and is therefore expected to do WAG things, and that kind of constant perfection must be exhausting.
I’m sure Lachlan doesn’t care about any of it, sure he wishes they could forget about all the trappings of WAGdom and just live like a normal married couple… but she’s too far gone for that.
As if she can read my mind (a terrifying thought), she sighs.
“Lachlan wants to stay in Liverpool, become the manager at Mersey, pop out some kids, spend holidays in the Highlands. And when I was twenty, that sounded brilliant to me. But I’ve changed.
I know so much more about what’s available to me.
I want to move to America, explore new careers, meet fascinating people at fabulous parties, jet off to Thailand at a moment’s notice.
I want to have a life for myself as more than Lachlan Ramsay’s wife. Does that make sense?”