Simone
SIMONE
Sender: Remy
Simone’s heavy drop in income had to be addressed.
She used to work for an agency, but once she had a list of dependable clients, she gave up being told to entertain men she didn’t like because they paid well, while also giving up twenty percent of her earnings, and went out on her own.
Due to this, Simone did not know how to solicit clients herself and suddenly felt out of her depth.
Her options were to give up being her own boss and join another agency, or resort to the internet, risking, no, guaranteeing, a digital footprint.
Simone had good savings and made extra money from a few low-risk investments, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that she only had one client still within reach, and that if she were smart, she’d keep that client while determining a long-term solution.
Two hours after Cillian had responded with an invite for tonight, Simone arrived at the Soho hotel bar. She’d intended to go straight to their room, but Cillian took one look at her and said, “You look like you need a drink. Why don’t we talk first?”
Simone felt her back stiffen as she took the seat beside him. “Honestly, what is it with you and talking?” she asked, unkindly. “What information do you want? What’s your agenda, here?”
Cillian frowned. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What do you mean by information and agendas? Seriously, Simone,” he said gently, “are you all right?”
“Where does your wife think you are, right now?” Simone asked, needing to move the interrogation off her. “Does she know you’re out with another woman right now?”
Cillian was stunned for a moment before he answered. “Actually, yes. We have an agreement.”
The fight—in which Simone thought she had a good chance of winning—left her. “An open marriage?”
“Yes.” Cillian shifted his mouth from side to side.
“It wasn’t my choice initially, but it became my choice when I caught her with a friend of mine.
Matthew. We used to work at a school together, but when I found out about the two of them, I punched him in the face.
No students were around but it happened on school property, so I was suspended. ”
Simone had not seen that coming, and yet something in what Cillian had just said sounded familiar. “Matthew?” she asked. “Have you mentioned him before?”
Cillian nodded. “Remember I told you about Johnny, the ex-friend who couldn’t understand why I didn’t want children? Johnny took Matthew’s side when I refused to accept that ‘mistakes happen.’ Hence the fallout.”
Now Simone felt worse, which she didn’t think possible after last night. “I’m sorry for asking, especially so abruptly. It’s none of my business,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to take my upset out on you. I guess your streak for unkind colleagues continues.”
“You’re not unkind,” Cillian promised. “But you are upset about something, aren’t you? Why not just talk to me?”
“One could argue talking is what got me here.” Simone shook her head, thinking of Remy. She downed the rest of Cillian’s drink to distract herself. It didn’t help because only seconds later Simone did the unthinkable—she burst into tears.
Once she’d accepted that all her delicate undereye dabbing wouldn’t work, Simone attempted to gather her things and leave before she could embarrass herself any further, but in her haste, she knocked her purse from the counter and her personal items scattered across the floor.
She bent to shove her phone, keys, lipstick, and school lanyard back into her purse and make for the door, but upon standing, Cillian held her back before pulling her to his chest.
It was an awkward fit at first because he didn’t know how to hold her in this capacity, until Simone recognized it was her who didn’t remember how to be held.
The last person she’d hugged regularly had been Remy, and Remy was an inch or two shorter, so Simone’s default hug stance was to accommodate someone smaller than herself.
Now she struggled to fit into Cillian. Eventually, she simply rested against him.
When she finally pulled away, she said, “People are staring.”
Cillian sighed. “Come with me.”
In their room, Cillian removed his shoes and lay on the bed before beckoning to Simone. She slipped out of her heels and curled up beside him, her head resting on his chest. It took Cillian a few seconds to decide where to settle his hands. Ultimately, he placed them on her back.
“So… what happened?” he asked.
Simone didn’t know where or how to start—what and how much to share. She didn’t want to confess everything to Cillian, not yet feeling safe enough to divulge the complexities of her personal life. She settled for the most recent and convenient truth.
“I miss Remy already.”
“Who’s Remy?”
Simone almost snorted. Who’s Remy? How could she answer this?
Remy was the woman whose shirt Simone had spilled wine on and who then asked her out to dinner an hour later.
Remy was the woman she’d stumbled across hunched over in a park on the verge of vomiting again.
Remy was also the first person to see the inside of Simone’s new flat.
The first person to ask to be Simone’s friend.
Remy was the first of many things.
She was the first person Simone had cared for in a long time—the first person who’d made her laugh out loud in months.
Remy was the person who’d brought Simone a cake on her birthday, a slice of which Simone had stored away.
She wasn’t willing to admit to anyone that she’d slipped out of bed in the early hours of the morning after her birthday to store a slice in the freezer because she’d remembered that couples did that with their wedding cake.
Even though she’d forgotten about the cake when she’d woken up later that day, Simone had, at one point, imagined defrosting the slice and sharing it with Remy a year after their meeting at the bookstore.
An anniversary of sorts.
When she thought of Remy, Simone thought of driving in the rain, walking in central London at night, and Scrabble.
She thought of the cinnamon roll from Bethany and the playground conversations with Cillian—the ways that simply knowing Remy had forced her out of her shell.
She thought of Remy’s capacity to love those in her life and her ability to throw herself out there, to stare down the barrel of rejection with a hopeful smile.
Simone thought of so many things when she thought of Remy.
Cillian gently nudged her. “Who’s Remy?” he asked again.
“She used to be my best friend,” Simone answered, finally.
Lara thought herself a good wife to Cillian in many departments, but she had the tendency to be a hypocrite.
When Cillian discovered Lara was sleeping with his friend Matt, she’d been the one to suggest they open up their marriage.
She did this because Lara still wanted to see Matt and she assumed her husband’s Catholic guilt would stop him from being with another woman.
Plus, Lara wasn’t ready to give up Cillian, their home, social circle, or routine.
Fast forward a few months and Lara had been displeased to learn that the phrase “The grass is always greener on the other side” didn’t just relate to pathetic men in their late forties, trading their loyal wives for gold diggers in their twenties, but to her as well.
Once their secret was out, Matt revealed himself to be uninteresting, and if she were being brutally honest, just a tad bit slow .
With the rose-tinted glasses lifted, Lara lost interest. But by then, Cillian had started seeing someone, and it was beginning to grate on her.
Despite mistaking her own hypocrisy for “being wronged,” Lara knew she couldn’t now turn around and declare open marriage a bad idea. Besides, she had a sneaking suspicion Cillian knew things with Matt had fizzled out by how much more often she was at home. So what was left for her to do?
Earlier that evening, Lara had decided to follow Cillian, to a hotel in Soho, not to interrupt or cause a scene—that wasn’t her style!
—but just to see who he’d be meeting. She’d positioned herself in the farthest, dimmest corner, and considered leaving as soon as she’d sat down, but then Lara had been forced to watch Cillian greet his date: a tall, ethereal Black woman wearing a silk dress that managed to both drape and cling to her.
Lara had been forced to watch Cillian talk with her, then hug and comfort her, his cheek pressed against the top of her head and his eyebrows dipping in concern.
Lara hadn’t seen that look on his face in years.
She returned home and immediately opened her laptop to pull up Linwood Primary’s website.
Even with the pain of witnessing such an intimate scene, Lara now had a vital clue in finding the woman’s identity.
Once said woman had started crying, she’d knocked her bag off the bar, emptying her purse on the floor.
Even from across the room, Lara had recognized the blue patterned strap of her lanyard.
Cillian wore the very same one to school.
On Linwood Primary’s website, under the Teachers tab, she found her. Simone Beduah.
Immediately, Lara hated her.
Simone looked nothing like Lara—and that was terrifying.
For Cillian to stray so far from his type could only hint at something serious.
Lara had seen pictures of Cillian’s few exes and they all looked like some variation of herself…
yet here was Simone. She was Black while Lara was white, dark-haired instead of blond, eyes the color of earth and not the ocean, tall instead of the mean average, angular instead of curved, and striking instead of pretty.
If Simone had looked more like Lara, she might have been able to let it go, even if only temporarily, but this discovery, combined with the fact that she was Cillian’s coworker, meant Lara had very little choice.
She deleted the tab and snuck into Cillian’s inbox; Lara rarely overheard Cillian on the phone, so she figured emails would be their chosen method of communication.
When she found correspondence with an escort agency, the glass of red wine almost slipped from her hand.
He’d hired an escort, too? That would make it two people to her one. That she knew of.
Simone forgotten, Lara delved further into the agency’s emails until she reached the very first. What made Lara stop in her tracks was that, although the name didn’t match, the physical description of the escort matched Simone perfectly and there was even a photo attached farther down.
It was the same woman. Simone, the teacher, was also Raven, the escort.
Lara then turned to Cillian’s bank statements, her heart beating wildly.
This was the last piece of confirmation she needed.
Obviously they wouldn’t put the agency name on the statement, but one thing escorts can’t hide is the amount of money they charge.
Lara tracked the consistent payments all the way down to the most recent available bank statement, and after six months, the “agency” name changed but the amount of money didn’t.
Instead, the regular payments went into an account under the name S. Beduah.
Lara had finally done it. She’d found her excuse. Now, she had to do something.
She finished her glass of wine and sat back with relief.
The woman Lara had caught Cillian with was a whore, and whores cannot work at schools.
Think of the children.