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She scampered upstairs like a greyhound. Hope stepped over the ketchup cake blindly and switched on the kettle. Very strong coffee was the only answer. She had a husband who wanted to leave her and a delinquent four-year-old daughter who had apparently picked up the worst swear words in the world at the nursery which Hope had to shell out most of her salary to pay for. Wonderful.
Hi Sam, how’s the new job? Is everyone friendly? Stupid question, Hope decided, deleting it. People were friendly to newcomers in offices but not to new bosses.
We’re all great and looking forward to Matt’s birthday dinner. I did plan to buy a dress but decided against it. If only I could fit into your designer outfits. Next time you have a wardrobe clear out, send a plastic bin liner of stuff down to me and I’ll diet!
Talk soon,
Love Hope.
By the Thursday night of Matt’s birthday dinner, Hope had lost two pounds with the stress of it all. Normally, that would have thrilled her, but when her weight loss was connected with the fact that Matt had been almost monosyllabic since his birthday, it wasn’t a cause for celebration.
Over the last couple of days, Matt had been very quiet and had stayed very late at the office on two evenings, ostensibly to get some work done on an important campaign they were presenting on Monday.
Hope was convinced he was going to see her and had resisted the temptation to follow him in the Metro. But it was impossible to play private detective with two small children in tow. Hope could just picture Millie announcing loudly over breakfast the next day: ‘Daddy, we saw you and a strange lady and Mummy cried and said a rude word.’
Even more telling, he’d been looking over some papers in their bedroom and had quickly stuffed them back in his briefcase when Hope walked in unexpectedly. Distraught, Hope had walked out again. They had to have been divorce papers. What else would he want to hide?
She longed to confide in someone, but whom? Sam had never approved of Matt and would probably arrive in fury from London with a top lawyer in tow and order Hope to screw everything she could out of Matt in the divorce settlement. Betsey, her closest friend, was married to Matt’s friend and colleague, Dan, so there was no way she could tell Betsey of her fears. In fact, she was scared that if she said anything to Betsey, the other woman would take her hand pityingly and say yes, she’d been dying to tell Hope that Matt had someone else. She had other friends but they were mainly couples that she and Matt went out with, friends of both of them, in other words, so unsuitable for spilling the beans to.
How could she phone up Angelica and Simon and say that no, the Parkers wouldn’t be coming for dinner in three weeks’ time and had they heard anything about Matt and some bimbo?
So Hope did what she’d been doing all her life: she bottled it up inside herself and lay wide-eyed in bed at night, listening to Matt’s even breathing beside her and wondering what the hell she was going to do with the rest of her lonely life without him.
The restaurant was buzzing with a glam Thursday night crowd but even so, other diners looked up when the Judd’s Advertising crew were escorted to their table. Most of the eyes were on Jasmine Judd, new wife to the boss, a radiant, satin-skinned blonde who was spilling out of a dusky pink sequined dress and made Hope feel more than a little inadequate in the safe jersey number that had looked sophisticated and modern at home but had been transformed into several-seasons-out-of-fashion in this elegant setting. She never got clothes right, she sighed. But then, Hope was beginning to feel as if she never got anything right.
If the male diners were all open-mouthed at the sight of Jasmine swaying on her high heels, the female diners were able to feast their eyes on Matt, who was looking particularly good in a fawn-coloured suit that made him look even more matinee idol than ever. His hair suited him in the cropped style; it made his deep set eyes look darker than usual and showed up the firm, he-man jaw that made lots of the women in Maltings Lane wave at him too energetically when he was out cutting the grass in his shorts and T-shirt.
He certainly looked after himself, fitting in three nights a week in the gym come what may. Hope now knew he wasn’t keeping himself fit for her. But at least he was wearing his birthday tie.
‘George Clooney eat your heart out,’ Yvonne had joked the first time she’d clapped eyes on Matt at the annual building society barbecue.
Hope knew this was high praise indeed but hadn’t liked to tell her that Matt considered gorgeous George to be common and modelled himself more on Cary Grant. If his temples weren’t already greying in a distinguished manner à la Cary, Hope wondered if Matt might start bleaching them himself.
Many times in their marriage, she’d wondered how she’d ever managed to end up with Matt. Quite a few other women wondered that too, she felt, judging by the calculating gazes she got from them at parties. Hope never realized that the calculating gazes held plenty of envy for her. Convinced she was frumpy and dull, she had no idea of her own attractiveness. To her, beauty meant the glossy sophistication and superb bone structure of people like Jasmine. It couldn’t possibly mean a sweet, kind face or big anxious eyes or a soft mouth that constantly twitched up at the corners into the most bewitching smile.
Nor did Hope realize that while Matt might sometimes look briefly on the stunning creatures who flirted with him, he needed a yielding, gentle woman like Hope as his partner. The strong, glamorous women who eyed him up boldly, simply reminded him of his strong, glamorous mother, a woman who wore signature red lipstick, kept her dark hair in a sleek bob and flirted with all and sundry. Hope, who was scared of her mother-in-law and always felt deeply inadequate beside her, never realized that one of the reasons Matt loved her so dearly was because she was the direct opposite of his mother.
Hope walked behind Matt to the table, miserably thinking that maybe she should announce that her delectable husband was back on the market. She’d be flattened in the rush, that was for sure. Matt was a nine on a one-to-ten scale of attractiveness while she’d been maybe a five when they’d married. In her black dress with her hair refusing to behave and a pre-menstrual spot emerging like a beacon on her chin despite all the concealer plastered on it, Hope currently felt as if she was a two. Compared to Jasmine, she was in minus figures.
She stared at Jasmine jealously. Was she the one? No, Hope decided. Matt was a career man first and foremost. Having an affair with the boss’s wife was career suicide.
A long table against one wall was reserved for the party of ten. Dan had organized the dinner party and was now telling everyone where to sit. As the others obediently went to their seats, Hope’s prospects of a red-wine fuelled evening where her mind would be taken off her troubles vanished. Dan told her to sit in the centre with her back to the wall and she realized she was going to spend the evening hemmed in by people she didn’t like.
Lucky Matt had Betsey, the flamboyant journalist who was married to Dan, on one side. Betsey was one of Hope’s closest friends, although she was a teeny bit self-obsessed and tended to swing all conversations back to herself. Hope would have loved to have been able to sit beside Betsey and confide in her: she was almost desperate enough to do so.
On Matt’s other side, he had Jasmine. Both women were chattering away happily to the birthday boy. Hope, on the other hand, was stuck with the art director’s husband, an eternal student with a goatee and dirty finger nails, who could bore for Britain in the Olympics on the subject of the changing face of industrial architecture. Hope didn’t give a damn about industrial architecture and could see nothing interesting in Victorian glassworks.
On her other side was Adam Judd, the agency boss, who never had anything to say to her and who was now avidly watching his luscious wife, Jasmine, flirting with Matt.
Across the table, Dan smiled at Hope. She automatically smiled back, thinking ‘you pig, you’ve stuck me with the most difficult people at the table.’ Sam would have said something sarcastic to him: Hope knew she’d never dare.
Dan immediately turned to his neighbour, the agency’s commercials director, a quiet woman named Elizabeth.
Soon, she was laughing too.
Hope sighed and took another big slug of wine. She wasn’t a heavy drinker but the thought flitted through her mind that perhaps tonight was the night to get plastered and confront Matt. She’d never have the nerve unless she was drunk…
Then again, Matt would go ballistic if she got drunk and made a fool of herself. These people were Matt’s colleagues, she must make an effort. But it wasn’t easy. Tortured by thoughts of Matt’s infidelity and watching all the women at their table like a hawk, in case she was one of them, Hope was not enjoying herself. The silence at her side of the table was deafening, made all the more obvious by the machine gun rattle of conversation on the other side. Adam ate like he was starving, only speaking when he wanted butter, pepper for his smoked salmon, or the bottle of wine passed down his end. Hope gave up trying when her third stab at conversation (‘Are you and Jasmine going anywhere nice on holiday?’) was deflected with a grunted ‘no’. Adam looked grim at the notion, as if he wasn’t letting Jasmine go anywhere she’d be able to stun passing men with the sight of her in a sliver of uplift bikini.
Peter, the student, was eager to discuss his thesis whenever Hope turned in his direction.
‘I’d really like to develop the idea into a book,’ he was saying grandly in between hoovering up goats’ cheese salad, ‘but bizarrely, I can’t get anyone interested.’
Hope had tuned out by now but nodded and said ‘Really? How interesting.’ She wished she was more like Sam who could invest the words ‘how interesting’ with an iciness that would freeze the Pacific Ocean and immediately make the other person realize they were the exact opposite of interesting.
‘Funding is the problem, control of funding,’ Peter said, tapping his bony nose mysteriously. ‘It’s impossible to get funding for the really worthwhile projects like mine,’ he added pompously.
‘It is outrageous that so many commercial books get published when worthy, unsaleable books like yours don’t,’ Hope said gravely.
Peter blinked at her, unsure whether she was serious or not. But Hope’s face was the picture of earnestness.
‘Well, yes,’ he drivelled on, satisfied that Matt Parker’s quiet little wife couldn’t possibly have been mocking him. ‘You see, if you let me explain my theories…’
In desperation, Hope turned to find that Adam was now talking business to Sadie, the art director. Sadie’s eyes caught Hope’s briefly but as Adam was talking, Hope couldn’t interrupt. Adam ignored Hope completely. Just like Matt, she thought bitterly. He’d barely looked at her during the first course, concentrating on making everyone else laugh and have a great time.
‘You can see the problem,’ Peter continued as she turned back to him.
‘Of course,’ Hope said, wondering why the hell she’d been looking forward to an evening out when it was proving as thrilling as having her blackheads squeezed. She’d thought it might be more enjoyable than enduring another silent evening of telly-watching at home. But at least at home, her mind was taken off its problems thanks to prime time viewing.
‘More wine, Hope?’ asked her husband from the other side of the table, seeing no-one else had bothered to refill her glass.
She nodded glumly.
Matt’s long fingers reached across the table and touched hers. He winked at her and mouthed ‘thank you’. Thank you for being bored senseless on my behalf, she hoped he meant. She smiled weakly back with relief. He did love her, he did. She knew Matt well enough to know he was trying to make up. Even if there was somebody else, she could weather it as long as Matt loved her. Hope gave his fingers a final squeeze.
It wasn’t too much of an effort to be nice to Matt’s colleagues and their spouses. It was the least she could do. She only had to put up with Peter once or twice a year.
Long fingers twirling the stem of his wine glass, Matt watched Hope doing her best to be charming to boring Peter Scott. She was great at that sort of thing, he thought fondly. You could always rely on Hope to do the polite, decent thing no matter what. Nobody else in their right mind would let Peter start off on his ‘my thesis’ saga but Hope was too kind to stop him. That was her problem: she was too kind. She let people walk all over her.
He didn’t know why she’d worn that clingy dress. Tight stuff didn’t suit her. His wife had an other-worldly air that made her look nice in flowy stuff, long dresses, that type of thing. Not like Jasmine. You had to hand it to Adam, he knew how to pick them. There wasn’t a man here who hadn’t thought for one brief, erotic moment of what the new Mrs Judd would look like without that sparkly dress. Probably cost more than all the dresses in Hope’s wardrobe put together. Anyway, Hope would never wear such a thing. That dress was a statement: Look at me, it said. That wasn’t Hope’s scene at all. She was much more of a background person, happy to be out of the spotlight.
It was a pity she didn’t realize how gorgeous she was. He was always telling her but she just didn’t get it. He’d seen scores of men eyeing her up over the years and Hope never, ever noticed them. When people looked at her, she checked to see if she had her skirt tucked up into her knickers or had gone out in her slippers.
‘Great night, isn’t it?’ Dan said, leaning over and touching Matt on the shoulder.
‘Yeah, fantastic night,’ Matt said automatically.
It was a great night. He had his colleagues here, cheering him for his birthday, and his boss who’d just brought him into the boardroom that day to say he was giving Matt a raise. Two lovely kids, a nice wife…everything a man could want. Only he wanted more.
Matt stared into the middle distance and thought about how his perfect, wonderful life was choking him. He’d had a crazy and impulsive idea about how to fix it, well, how to fix some of it, but how did he break it to Hope? He didn’t know where to start. Confiding in Jasmine had helped a bit.
She’d promised to put a good word in for him with Adam if he ever actually made the break. Telling Adam would be a doddle compared to telling Hope.
By the time people were staring happily into their liqueurs, Hope had finally managed to move seats and was now between Jasmine and Dan.
Jasmine was very nice, Hope decided, convinced now that there was nothing between her and Matt. She could see how other women would feel threatened by her: that amazing figure, tiny waist and gravity-defying boobs, not to mention a sweet face with huge blue eyes. But she was funny, unaffected and not at all the predatory bimbo that Betsey had initially dubbed her. Well, she wasn’t predatory, anyway.
‘Your husband’s wonderful,’ Jasmine said in between sips of sambuca. ‘I was telling him how I wanted to write a book and he said “snap!” The last person I said it to told me not to bother my head with books when I could be on the cover of one.’ Jasmine looked vexed at this.
‘Matt said what?’ Hope asked, curious and hurt at the same time. How had Matt discussed this with Jasmine and not with her?
‘I daresay it’s a pipe dream,’ suggested Jasmine. ‘It is for me too. But Matt writes for his job, he’s got a better chance than most. I’m thinking of doing a creative writing course, myself. I know it’s tough. Like selling records. I went out with a musician once and he was obsessed with record sales.’ She laughed ruefully. ‘Oh, speaking of music, Matt was telling me about your older sister and this great job she’s just got in the record company. I love the sound of that. What’s she like? Very clever and high powered, I suppose?’
‘The opposite of me, you mean,’ said Hope automatically. And it was true…Sam was a human dynamo, all fire and energy. Now she was running a label at Titus Records. Hope still wasn’t exactly sure what the new job entailed because Sam had only been there a week and their e-mails had been short, but it was demanding, that was for sure. Sam couldn’t bear to be free of pressure. She’d worked herself into the ground for five years as marketing director of another huge record label and now, when Hope thought her sister should be slowing down a bit and perhaps thinking about settling down, Sam had moved companies to another, bigger job.
Jasmine was back on the subject of writing: ‘Matt told me about his plan to take a year out and live in the country. I know it’s only an idea and you’ve nothing settled yet but I think you should go for it. It’ll be easier for him to write with no distractions. Harder to see your sister, mind you, if you were to move abroad. Matt was telling me your parents died when you were kids and that you’ve only got one sister.’
Hope’s heart missed a beat. ‘What are you on about?’ she asked, feeling a queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach, a sensation that had nothing to do with drinking too much.
‘It’s fine, really,’ Jasmine assured her in a stage whisper. ‘You don’t have to pretend you don’t know. I won’t say a word to Adam about it, I promised Matt I wouldn’t. I’m sure that Adam will go ballistic when he discovers Matt wants to take a year’s sabbatical but you have to pursue your dreams, don’t you.’ She got misty-eyed. ‘I’d love to move somewhere remote to write but I’d hate to be away from twenty-four hour shops. Won’t you mind?’
Hope recovered her composure. This was not the moment to say the notion of Matt taking a year out was news to her. She tried to look resigned instead of astonished. ‘Who knows what’ll happen,’ she shrugged. ‘The whole idea is very much aspirational right now. We love Bath and…’
‘Jasmine, time to go,’ announced Adam suddenly, looming behind his wife and putting proprietorial hands on her slim, golden shoulders.
With Jasmine and Adam gone, the party deflated. Betsey insisted to Dan she was tired and had to go home.
‘We should go too,’ said Elizabeth, reaching under the table for her handbag.
With the wisdom born of being slightly drunk, Hope realized that her husband’s colleagues weren’t so close to him as he thought. Their eagerness to party only lasted as long as the boss’s presence. When Adam was gone, so was the party spirit. But Matt didn’t seem to mind and waved everyone off with great bonhomie.
In the taxi, Hope sat quietly as they drove out on the Bristol road. Matt lay back against the seat with his eyes closed, his face expressionless now they were alone. As houses sped by, Hope worked out what she was going to say when they got home. It went against the grain to start an argument in the back of a taxi with the driver listening to every word.
The pieces of the puzzle had fallen painfully into place thanks to the artless Jasmine. Matt was dreaming up an enormous career change and Hope and the kids didn’t figure in his plans. Would she stay on in the house in Bath or move to London to be near Sam, Hope wondered in shock. She’d move, definitely, she couldn’t stay in the house where they’d been so happy. Correction; where she’d been so happy. Matt obviously hadn’t been happy or he wouldn’t want to leave it and her.
The children had been little lambs and the chocolate biscuits had been great, Elaine, the babysitter, said when they got home.
‘Good,’ said Hope absently, getting out her purse. Her hands were shaking, like an alcoholic’s before the first drink of the day. ‘Matt will walk you home.’
‘It’s only across the road,’ protested Elaine.
‘Better safe than sorry,’ Hope said. ‘It’s half twelve, you know. Time for the deviants of the world to emerge.’
‘In Maltings Lane?’ asked Elaine incredulously.
When Matt came back, Hope was sitting waiting for him at the kitchen table. Her hands were still shaking, so she put them on her lap and clasped them tightly together as if she was praying. Perhaps if she had prayed, none of this would have happened, she thought wildly.
‘I thought you’d be on your way to bed by now,’ Matt remarked, pouring himself a glass of milk. It was the longest statement he’d made in about a week.
‘Jasmine said a very strange thing to me tonight,’ Hope said evenly. ‘She said you were taking a sabbatical to live in the country to write a book – not this country was the implication. I just wondered when you were going to tell me of this plan and if I and the children were actually included.’
‘Ah.’ Matt sat down with her. ‘Too much red wine is a terrible thing.’
‘You mean Jasmine misunderstood?’ Hope could barely get the words out.
‘Not exactly,’ Matt said slowly. ‘I’m afraid I got a bit carried away and said too much.’
‘So it’s true.’ Her legs began to shake too with fear.
‘Hope,’ Matt wasn’t sure how to start but he knew he had to. Telling Jasmine had been a decision fuelled by too much wine but it had been a relief to talk about it with someone other than Dan. It was time to tell Hope. ‘It’s been a dream of mine for years and you know me, respectable family man, I’d never do anything wild or out of the ordinary, anything that would jeopardize our future but now I’ve got the chance and I thought, why not take a year out. I know that Adam would keep my job open for me – he’d have to, I’m the best he’s got,’ he added, proud of the fact.
‘But what about me and the kids?’ asked Hope, eyes wet and filled with terror. Was Matt drunk? Didn’t he care about them at all?
‘I mean all of us going away. You, me and the kids for a year. To Ireland; Kerry, in fact. Uncle Gearóid’s solicitor phoned me on Monday about the old house. I know it’s sudden but it’s like the answer to my prayers. I’ve been so down, Hope, so depressed and then he phones to say the house is officially mine. I haven’t been able to think of anything else all week.’
Hope’s whole body was shaking now; she could barely take in what he was saying because her mind was so befuddled with fear and anxiety.
Gearóid had been a poet who, over forty years before, had left his home in the UK for a small town named Redlion in Kerry, where he lived a bohemian life with gusto. Hope had never met him because he’d refused to leave his beloved adopted country to come to their wedding but he’d always sounded like a mad old rogue who pickled his liver and wrote bad poetry that nobody had ever wanted to publish. He’d even changed his name from Gerald to the Irish and unpronounceable Gearóid, which Hope still found impossible to say, no matter how many times Matt said it phonetically: ‘Gar, like garage, and oid like haemorrhoid.’
Matt had spent a few summers in Redlion as a child and still talked mistily about what a wonderful place Kerry was. But as Gearóid became more eccentric with age, he refused to travel to stay with Matt, who, in turn, never seemed to have the time to visit his ageing uncle. When he died, he left Matt everything; partly because he didn’t have any children of his own and partly, according to his solicitor, to annoy the other distant relatives who’d been hanging around like vultures hoping for a piece of property in a popular tourist destination in south-western Ireland. ‘Everything’ turned out to be a run-down house the solicitor imagined wouldn’t fetch much. Hope had assumed that Matt would simply sell the house. They could certainly do with the money.
‘Probate’s finally been sorted out,’ Matt explained. ‘The house is mine. And yours, of course. There’s a bit of land but only an acre or so. It all seemed much bigger when I was a kid. I thought he had loads of land. Anyway,’ he paused, ‘this is my idea. I’ve told you about the writers’ community there that Gearóid helped start up in the Sixties?’
Hope nodded, still looking shell-shocked, although Matt didn’t notice because he was fired up with the enthusiasm of telling her his plan.
‘It’s spooky because this is so coincidental,’ Matt went on eagerly, ‘but last week I read an interview with the novelist, Stephen Dane – you know the guy, he writes those literary thrillers. Anyway, he’s just sold a book to Hollywood. We’re talking millions, Hope. And in the middle of the interview, he mentioned that he wrote his first novel in Kerry, in Redlion, actually, in the writer’s centre. Don’t you see, it’s got to be a sign.
‘We’d both take a year out and go and live in Gearóid’s house. I’d write a novel. I’ve got one in me, I know it. Imagine it, Hope,’ Matt said, his eyes alight with enthusiasm, desperate to transmit his excitement to her and unaware of what she’d been thinking since his birthday, ‘we could be with the children all day. I could get some part time copy writing work and we’d live cheaply enough. We could rent out this place for a year and cover the mortgage. We wouldn’t lose out. This is our big chance.’
And it was, Matt was convinced of it. He’d slay the demons that lived in his head and told him he’d never amount to anything but a bitter old ad man. And he’d get the chance to live another life, even if only for a brief time.
Hope stared at him, hardly daring to believe that it wasn’t the death knell she’d been expecting. Matt wasn’t leaving her; he wanted her and the children with him. She leaned her hands on the table. Her sleeve immediately stuck in the sticky patch left behind from Millie’s morning yoghurt.
‘Why couldn’t you tell me?’ she said, her voice unsteady. ‘I didn’t know you felt this way.’
‘I’m sorry I kept it to myself. It’s embarrassing to talk about your dreams like that, Hope, but I want to write and I’m never going to do it here, not with a full-time job, not in this house. You need a creative atmosphere. It would be fantastic for us as a family. Having the house there in Redlion takes all the hassle out of it. It’s perfect.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this on your birthday?’ she said helplessly. ‘I knew there was something wrong, I asked you what it was then and you wouldn’t tell me! I thought you were having an affair.’
It was Matt’s turn to look astonished.
‘An affair! Whatever gave you that idea?’ he said incredulously.
‘Everything,’ Hope said. ‘You told me there was something wrong but that I couldn’t fix it. And you didn’t kiss me or touch me and I was just so sure…’
Her voice broke off and Matt sat down at the table and took her hands in his.
‘Darling Hope, what a crazy idea. I was killing myself wondering whether I could do this to you. All I could think of was that you’d hate it, that it was such a huge step to go abroad for a year. I kept telling myself it was a stupid idea, that I shouldn’t do it but I’ve been talking to Dan about it and…’
