John.
A text message.
Coffee, she thinks, grasping for safety. Coffee and croissants. She eases herself out of his hold, her eyes still fixed on his sleeping face. She lifts his arm, lays it gently on the sheet. He wakes, and she freezes. She sees her own confusion momentarily mirrored in his eyes.
“Hey,” he says, his voice hoarse with lack of sleep. What time had they finally slept? Four? Five? She remembers them giggling because it was growing light outside. He rubs his face, shifts heavily onto one elbow. His hair is sticking up at one side, his chin shadowed and rough. “What time is it?”
“Almost nine. I’m going to nip out for some proper coffee.” She backs to the door, conscious of her nakedness in the too bright morning.
“You sure?” he calls, as she disappears. “You don’t want me to go?”
“No, no.” She’s hopping into the jeans she discovers outside the living-room door. “I’m fine.”
“Black for me, please.” She hears him sink back against the pillows, muttering something about his head.
Her knickers are half under the DVD player. She picks them up hastily, stuffs them into a pocket. She hauls a T-shirt over her head, wraps herself in her jacket, and without pausing to see what she looks like, heads down the stairs. She walks briskly toward the local coffee shop, already dialing a number into her mobile phone.
Wake up. Pick up the phone.
By now she’s standing in the queue. Nicky picks up on the third ring.
“Ellie?”
“Oh, God, Nicky. I’ve done something awful.” She lowers her voice, shielding it from the family that has walked in behind her. The father is silent, the mother trying to shepherd two small children to a table. Their pale, shadowed faces speak of a night of lost sleep.
“Hang on. I’m at the gym. Let me take this outside.”
The gym? At nine o’clock on a Sunday morning? She hears Nicky’s voice against the traffic of some distant street. “Awful as in what? Murder? Rape of a minor? You didn’t call up thingy’s wife and tell her you were his mistress?”
“I slept with that bloke from work.”
A brief pause. She looks up to find the barista staring at her, eyebrows raised. She places her hand over her phone. “Oh. Two tall Americanos, please, one with milk, and croissants. Two—no, three.”
“Library Man?”
“Yes. He turned up last night and I was drunk and feeling really crap and he read out one of those love letters and . . . I don’t know . . .”
“So?”
“So I slept with someone else!”
“Was it awful?”
Rory’s eyes, crinkled with amusement. His head bent over her br**sts. Kisses. Endless, endless kisses.
“No. It was . . . quite good. Really good.”
“And your problem is?”
“I’m meant to be sleeping with John.”
The barista girl is exchanging looks with Exhausted Father. She realizes they are both silently agog. “Six pounds sixty-three,” the girl says, with a small smile.
She reaches into her pocket for change and finds herself holding out last night’s knickers. Exhausted Father coughs—or it might have been a splutter of laughter. She apologizes, her face burning, hands over the money, and moves to the end of the counter, waiting for her coffee with her head down.
“Nicky . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Ellie. You’ve been sleeping with a married man who is almost definitely still sleeping with his wife. He makes you no promises, hardly takes you anywhere, isn’t planning on leaving her—”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that. I’m sorry, sweetie, but I’d put my too-small expensively mortgaged house on it. And if you’re telling me you’ve just had great sex with a nice bloke who’s single and likes you and seems to want to spend time with you, I’m not going to start begging for Prozac. Okay?”
“Okay,” she says quietly.
“Now, go back to your flat, wake him up and have mad hot monkey sex with him, then meet me and Corinne tomorrow morning at the café and tell us everything.”
She smiles. How nice to celebrate being with someone, instead of having perpetually to justify them.
She thinks of Rory lying in her bed. Rory of the very long eyelashes and soft kisses. Would it be so very bad to spend the morning with him? She picks up the coffee and walks back to her flat, surprised by how quickly her legs are working.
“Don’t move!” she calls, as she comes up the stairs, kicking off her shoes. “I’m bringing you breakfast in bed.” She dumps the coffee on the floor outside the bathroom and dives in, wipes the mascara from under her eyes and splashes her face with cold water, then spritzes herself with perfume. As an afterthought she flips the lid off the toothpaste and bites off a pea-sized lump, swilling it around her mouth.
“This is so you can no longer think of me as a heartless, selfish abuser of men. And also so you owe me coffee at work. I will, of course, return to my heartless, self-centerd self tomorrow.”
She leaves the bathroom, stoops to pick up the coffee, and, smiling, steps into her bedroom. The bed is empty, the duvet turned back. He can’t be in the bathroom—she’s just been in there. “Rory?” she says, into the silence.
“Here.”
His voice comes from the living room. She pads down the hall. “You were meant to stay in bed,” she admonishes him. “It’s hardly breakfast in bed if you—”
He’s standing in the center of the room, pulling on his jacket. He’s dressed, shoes on, hair no longer sticking up.
She stops in the doorway. He doesn’t look at her.
“What are you doing?” She holds out the coffee. “I thought we were going to have breakfast.”
“Yes. Well, I think I’d better go.”
She feels something cold creeping across her. Something’s wrong here.
“Why?” she says, trying to smile. “I’ve hardly been gone fifteen minutes. Do you really have an appointment at twenty past nine on a Sunday morning?”
He stares at his feet, apparently checking in his pockets for his keys. He finds them and turns them over in his hand. When he finally looks up at her, his face is blank. “You had a phone call when you were out. He left a message. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but it’s pretty hard not to in a small flat.”
Ellie feels something cold and hard settle in the pit of her stomach. “Rory, I—”
He holds up a hand. “I told you once I didn’t do complicated. That would—um—include sleeping with someone who’s sleeping with someone else.” He steps past her, ignoring the coffee she’s holding. “I’ll see you around, Ellie.”
She hears his footsteps fading down the stairs. He doesn’t slam the door, but there’s an uncomfortable air of finality in the way it closes. She feels numb. She places the coffee carefully on the table, and then, after a minute, steps over to the answering machine and presses play.
John’s voice, low and mellifluous, fills the room. “Ellie, I can’t talk for long. Just wanted to check you’re okay. Not sure what you meant last night. I miss you, too. I miss us. But look . . . please don’t text. It’s . . .” A short sigh. “Look. I’ll message you as soon as we . . . as soon as I get home.” The sound of the receiver clicking down.
Ellie lets his words reverberate in the silent flat, then sinks onto the sofa and remains perfectly still, while the coffee grows cold beside her.
Chapter 23
FAO: Phillip O’Hare, [email protected]
From: Ellie Haworth, [email protected]
Excuse me for contacting you like this, but I’m hoping that as a fellow journalist you will understand. I am trying to trace an Anthony O’Hare who I guess would be the same age as your father, and in a Times column of last May you happened to mention that you had a father of the same name.
This Anthony O’Hare would have spent some time in London during the early 1960s, and a lot of time abroad, especially in central Africa, where he may have died. I know very little about him other than he had a son with the same name as you.
If you are he, or know what became of him, would you please e-mail me? There is a mutual acquaintance who knew him many years ago and would dearly like to find out what became of him. I appreciate this is a long shot, as it is not an uncommon name, but I need all the help I can get.
All best
Ellie Haworth
The new building is set in a part of the city Ellie has not seen since it was a random collection of shabby warehouses, strung together with unlovely takeaway shops she would have starved rather than eaten from. Everything that was in that square mile has been razed, swept away, the congested streets replaced with vast, immaculately clad squares, metal bollards, the odd gleaming office block, many still bearing the scaffold cauls of their nascence.
They are there for an organized tour to familiarize themselves with their new desks and the new computers and telephone systems before Monday’s final move. Ellie follows the Features party through the various departments while the young man with the clipboard and a badge marked “Transfer Coordinator” tells them about production areas, information hubs, and lavatories. As each new space is explained to them, Ellie watches the varying responses of her team, the excitement of some of the younger ones, who like the sleek, modernistic lines of the office. Melissa, who has clearly been there several times before, interjects occasionally with information she feels the man has left out.
“There’s nowhere to hide!” jokes Rupert as he surveys the vast, clutter-free space. She can hear the ring of truth in it. Melissa’s office, on the southeastern corner, is entirely glass, and overlooks the whole Features “hub.” Nobody else in the department has their own office, a decision that has apparently rankled several of her colleagues.
“And this is where you’ll be sitting.” All the writers are on one desk, a huge oval shape, the center spewing wires that lead umbilically to a series of flat-screen computer monitors.
“Who’s where?” says one of the columnists. Melissa consults her list. “I’ve been working on this. Some of it’s still fluid. But Rupert, you’re here. Arianna, there. Tim, by the chair, there. Edwina—” She points at a space. It reminds Ellie of netball at school; the relief when one was picked from the throng and allotted to one team or the other. Except nearly all of the seats are taken, and she is still standing.
“Um . . . Melissa?” she ventures. “Where am I supposed to be sitting?”
Melissa glances at another desk. “A few people will have to hotdesk. It doesn’t make sense for everyone to be allocated a workstation full-time.” She doesn’t look at Ellie as she speaks.
Ellie feels her toes clenching in her shoes. “Are you saying I don’t get my own desk area?”
“No, I’m saying some people will share a workstation.”
“But I’m in every day. I don’t understand how that will work.” She should take Melissa to one side, ask her in private why Arianna, who has been there barely a month, should get a desk over her. She should expel the slight anguish from her voice. She should shut up. “I don’t understand why I’m the only feature writer not to—”
“As I said, Ellie, things are very fluid still. There will always be a seat for you to work from. Right. Let’s go on to News. They’ll be moving, of course, on the same day that we do . . .” And the conversation is closed. Ellie sees that her stock has fallen far lower than even she had thought. She catches Arianna’s eye, sees the new girl look away quickly, and pretends to check her phone for more nonexistent messages.