“Ooh!” I look up, brightening. “Yes, let’s.”
We do the ring test five times, and decide the odds are 3–2 on it being a boy. So we make a great big list of boys’ names and Suze tries to persuade me to call it Tarquin Wilfrid Susan. Yup. I don’t think so.
By the time she’s bundled up all the children, fed them lots of fish oil capsules (to counteract the dumbing-down effect of TV), and left, I feel a lot better. She’s right—Luke and I just need to spend a bit more time together. And I’ve thought of a much better plan than taking him out to lunch. I mean, he goes to boring old business lunches all the time. I want to do something different. Something romantic.
So the next day at work, I phone down to the Food Hall and order a picnic basket of all Luke’s favorite food. I’ve already checked with Mel, his assistant, and he hasn’t got any appointments booked for lunchtime. (I didn’t tell her why I was asking, because there’s no way she’d keep it secret.) My plan is to surprise him and have a picnic lunch in his office and it’ll be all intimate and lovely! I’ve even got them to put in a bottle of champagne, a checked cloth, and a plastic “picnic” candelabra from Homewares, just to set the scene.
As I set off for Luke’s office at lunchtime I’m feeling quite excited. It’s been ages since we did something spontaneous like this! Plus I haven’t been to Brandon Communications for weeks, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone. There’s been the most amazing buzz at the company, ever since they won the Arcodas pitch. The Arcodas Group is so huge, and so different from all the financial clients they normally deal with, it’s been the biggest challenge they’ve ever faced. (I know this from helping Luke write his motivational speeches.)
But then, what is life without new adventures and new dreams? Brandon Communications is the best in the business, stronger and more dynamic every year, thriving on new enterprises. Together they can take on any challenge, meet it, and conquer it. As a team. As a family. (I wrote that bit.)
I arrive at the offices just before one, and sidle across the marble foyer to Karen, the receptionist. She’s talking to her colleague Dawn in a low voice, and she looks all pink and upset. I hope nothing’s wrong.
“It’s not right,” I can hear her saying in a guarded voice as I approach the desk. “It’s just not right. No one should behave like that, boss or no boss. I know I’m old-fashioned—”
“It’s not,” Dawn interrupts her. “It’s having respect for your fellow human beings.”
“Respect.” Karen nods vigorously. “How she’s feeling, poor thing…”
“Have you seen her? Since…” Dawn trails off meaningfully.
Karen shakes her head. “No one has.”
I’m following their conversation with slight unease. What are they talking about? Who’s “she”?
“Hi!” I say, and they both jump.
“Becky! Goodness!” Karen looks quite flustered at the sight of me. “What are you…Did we know you were coming today?” She starts leafing through the papers on her desk. “Dawn, is it in the appointment book?”
In the appointment book? Since when do I have to make an appointment to see my own husband?
“I just thought I’d surprise Luke. He’s free at lunchtime; I’ve already checked. So I thought we could have a nice picnic in his office!” I nod at the basket hanging on my arm.
I’m expecting them to say, “What a lovely idea!” But instead, Karen and Dawn both look kind of nervous.
“Right!” says Karen at last. “Well. Let’s just…see if…” She presses a couple of buttons on her switchboard. “Hello, Mel? It’s Karen at reception here. I have Becky here. Becky Brandon. She’s here to…surprise Luke.” There’s quite a long silence, during which Karen listens intently. “Yes. Yes, I’ll do that.” She looks up and smiles at me. “Take a seat, Becky. Someone will be with you shortly.”
Take a seat? Someone will be with me? What on earth has happened to them?
“Why don’t I just go straight up?” I suggest.
“We’re…not quite sure where Luke is.” Karen definitely looks shifty. “It’s probably better if you…” She clears her throat. “Adam will be down shortly.”
I don’t believe this. Adam Farr is head of corporate communications at Brandon C. He’s the guy they always summon for tricky situations. Luke says Adam is the consummate expert at handling people.
I’m being handled. Why am I being handled? What’s going on?
“Do take a seat, Becky!” Karen says, but I don’t move.
“I couldn’t help overhearing you earlier,” I say casually. “Is something wrong?”
“Of course not!” Karen’s reply is too swift, as though she’s been waiting for me to ask. “We were talking about…something on TV last night. Weren’t we, Dawn?”
Dawn is nodding agreement, but her eyes are edgy.
“What about you?” says Karen. “Keeping well, are you, Becky?”
“Not long to go, is it?” puts in Dawn.
I try to think of a natural, friendly reply—but how can I? This whole conversation is fake. Just then, the lift doors open and Adam Farr strides out.
“Rebecca!” He has his corporate smile on and is slipping a BlackBerry into his pocket. “What a pleasure to see you!”
This guy may be the smoothest operator in the company. But he is not fobbing me off.
“Hi, Adam,” I say almost curtly. “Is Luke around?”
“He’s just finishing up a meeting,” says Adam without missing a beat. “Let’s go up and get you a coffee. I know everyone will be thrilled you’ve dropped by—”
“What meeting?” I interrupt him, and I swear I see Adam flinch.
“On finance,” he says after an infinitesimal pause. “Very dull, I’m afraid. Shall we?”
Adam ushers me into the lift and we travel up for a while in silence. Now that I’m up close to him, I can detect signs of strain in him, beneath the confident, business-y manner. There are shadows under his eyes, and he keeps tapping his fingertips together in the same rhythmic pattern, like a nervous tic.
“So…how’s life?” I say. “You must all be really busy, with the expansion and everything.”
“Absolutely.” He nods.
“And is it fun, working on all these different Arcodas projects?”
There’s silence. I can see Adam’s fingers tapping together faster and harder.
“Of course,” he says at last, and nods again. The lift doors open, and he shows me out before I can say anything else.
A few Brandon C staff are standing there, waiting for the lift, and I smile and say “Hi!” to the faces I know—but no one smiles back. At least not a genuine smile. Everyone seems taken aback to see me, and there are a few fake little flashes of teeth, and a couple of people say, “Hi, Becky,” and then look down awkwardly. But nobody stops to talk. Not even to ask about the baby.
Why is everyone being so weird ? Over by the water cooler I can see a couple of girls talking in lowered voices and glancing at me when they think I’m not looking.
My stomach starts to churn. Oh God. Have I been totally naive? What do they know? What have they seen? A sudden vision comes to me, of Luke ushering Venetia down the corridor to his office, closing the door, and saying, “Please don’t disturb us for an hour.”
“Becky!” Luke’s resounding voice makes me jump. “Are you OK? What are you doing here?” He’s striding down the corridor toward me, flanked by his second-in-command, Gary, on one side, and some guy I don’t know on the other, with a bunch of people following in their wake. They all look fairly stressed out.
“I’m fine!” I say, trying to sound cheerful. “I just thought…we could have a picnic in your office.”
Now that I say it, in front of all his staff, it sounds really stupid. I feel like Pollyanna, holding this stupid wicker basket. There’s even a pink stripy bow tied round the handle, which I should have torn off.
“Becky, I have a meeting.” Luke shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”
/>
“But Mel said you didn’t have anything booked!” My voice is more shrill than I intended. “She said you’d be free!”
Gary and the others glance at each other and melt away, leaving Luke and me alone. My cheeks are prickling with humiliation. Why should I be made to feel stupid and in everyone’s way, just for dropping in to see my husband?
“Luke, what’s going on?” The words spill out before I can stop them. “Everyone’s giving me weird looks. You sent Adam down to ‘handle’ me. Something’s wrong, I know it is!”
“Becky, no one’s been handling you,” Luke says patiently. “No one’s giving you weird looks.”
“They are! It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers! No one’s even smiling anymore! Everyone looks so tense, and strained….”
“They’re preoccupied, that’s all.” Despite his easy veneer, Luke seems rattled. “We’re all working very hard right now. Including me. I really have to go.” He kisses me. “We’ll have the picnic at home, OK? Adam will call you a car.”
And the next minute, he’s disappeared into the lift, leaving me alone with my basket and my jumping, unsettling thoughts.
A meeting. What meeting? Why didn’t Mel know about it?
Now I’m envisaging him hurrying into a restaurant where Venetia is waiting, cradling a glass of wine while all the waiters watch admiringly. She gets up, and they kiss, and he says, “Sorry I’m late, my wife turned up—”
No. Stop it. Stop it, Becky.
But I can’t. Thoughts are piling into my head, thicker and faster, like a snowstorm. They’ve been seeing each other every lunch hour. All the Brandon C staff know about it. That’s why Karen and Dawn looked so awkward, that’s why they tried to get rid of me….
The other lift is waiting with its doors open, and on impulse I get in. I reach the ground floor and walk as swiftly as I can manage out of the foyer, ignoring the calls of Karen and Dawn, just in time to see Luke being driven away by his company driver in the Mercedes. Frantically I hail a taxi, step in, and dump the basket on the seat.
“Where to, love?” asks the taxi driver.
I slam the door and lean forward.
“You see that Mercedes up ahead?” I swallow hard. “Follow it.”
I can’t believe I’m actually doing this. I’m tailing Luke through the streets of London. As we drive round Trafalgar Square with the Mercedes in sight, I feel like I’m in some kind of movie. I even find myself glancing through the rear window to check that there are no baddies in pursuit.
“Your boyfriend, is it?” the taxi driver suddenly says in a strong South London accent.
“Husband.”
“Thought as much. Got another woman, ’as ’e?”
I feel a horrible pang in my chest. How did he know? Do I look like the cheated-on partner?
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “Maybe. That’s what I want to find out.”
I sit back and watch a bunch of tourists follow their tour leader across the road. Then it occurs to me that this taxi driver is probably a total expert on people following their partners to prove adultery. He probably drives them all the time! On impulse I lean forward and slide the dividing window across.
“D’you think I should confront him? What do most people do?”
“Depends.” We’ve reached some snarled-up traffic and the taxi driver turns round to face me. He’s got a long face like a sniffer dog, and dark, mournful eyes. “Depends if you want to ’ave an open an’ honest marriage.”
“I do!” I exclaim.
“Fair enough. Risk is that by ’aving it out, you drive ’im into the arms of the other bird.”
“Right,” I say doubtfully. “So…what’s the other option?”
“Turn a blind eye an’ live a sham for the rest of your days.”
Neither option sounds that great.
We’re edging along Oxford Street by now, making slow progress through all the buses and pedestrians. I’m craning my neck, scanning the road ahead, when all of a sudden I glimpse Luke’s Mercedes, turning into a side street.
“There! He went that way!”
“I saw ’im.”
The cabbie deftly changes lanes and a few moments later we’re turning into the same side street. The Mercedes is at the end of the road, turning the corner.
My hands are starting to sweat. It almost felt like a game when I first hailed the cab. But now this is serious. At some point his car is going to stop and he’s going to get out and…then what am I going to do?
We’re winding round the narrow streets of Soho. It’s a bright, sharp autumn day, and a few brave people are sitting out at pavement cafés, cradling cups of coffee. All of a sudden, the taxi driver signals sharply and pulls up behind a van. “They’re stopping.”
I watch, breathless, as the Mercedes comes to a halt on the other side of the road. The driver opens the passenger door and Luke gets out, without even glancing in our direction. He consults a piece of paper, then heads to an unsalubrious-looking brown-painted door. He rings a buzzer and a moment later is admitted.
My gaze travels up to a battered sign hanging from a first-floor window: ROOMS.
Rooms? Luke has taken rooms ?
I feel as if something’s clenching me tightly round the chest. Something is going on. Venetia’s up there. She’s waiting for him in a black fur-trimmed negligee.
But why some grotty room in Soho? Why not the Four Seasons, for God’s sake?
Because he’d get spotted. He’s come here because it’s out of the way. It all makes sense….
“Love?” Through a haze I realize the taxi driver is talking to me.
“Yes?” I manage.
“You want to sit here and wait?”
“No!” I grab the picnic basket and thrust the door open. “Thank you. I’ll…take it from here. Thank you so much.”
“Wait a mo’.” He gets out and offers me a hand to help me step down from the cab. I scrabble in my bag and give him a wodge of cash without even counting it. The taxi driver sighs, peels off a few notes, and hands the rest back.
“Not used to this game, are you, love?”
“Not really,” I admit.
“You need any more help…” He feels in his pocket and produces a gray business card. “My brother Lou. Does a lot of work for divorce lawyers. You might want to get yourself one of those an’ all. Make sure you and the kid are taken care of.”
“Yes. Thanks.” I pocket the card, barely aware of what I’m doing.
“Good luck, love.” The taxi driver gets back in his cab, still shaking his head, and drives away.
I’m standing outside the building with the “rooms” sign. I could buzz at the door and see what happened.
No. What if she answered?
My legs suddenly feel wobbly. I need a seat. The ground floor of the building is a business print shop, and I find myself walking inside and sinking into a chair. What am I going to do? What?
“Hello there!” A voice makes me jump and I turn to see a cheerful man in a short-sleeved striped shirt. “Are you interested in some printing? We have a special offer on all our business cards. Vellum, laminated, textured…”
“Um…thanks.” I nod, just to get rid of him.
“Here you are!” The man hands me a sample book and I start to leaf through it blindly. Maybe I should just go up and…and burst in. But what if I really do find them together?
I’m turning the pages more and more feverishly. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I’m here, in the middle of Soho, wondering if my husband is upstairs with another woman.
“Here’s our form. If you’ll just fill it in…” The man has come back with a clipboard and pen, which he thrusts at me. On automatic pilot I take them from him and write “Bloomwood Inc.” at the top of the page.
“What kind of business are you in?” the man asks chattily.
“Um…double-glazing.”
“Double-glazing!” The man frowns thoughtfully. “I’d suggest a nice
laminated white card with a border. With the address here and your company motto here…Do you have a motto?”
“For…for all your glazing needs,” I hear myself saying. “London, Paris, Dubai.”
I have no idea what I’m saying. The words are just coming out of my mouth.
“Dubai!” The man looks impressed. “I’ll bet they have a few windows out there!”
“They do.” I nod. “It’s the window capital of the world.”
“Now, I never knew that!” the man says with interest.
I stiffen. I just heard a rumbling-footsteps kind of noise. Someone’s coming down the stairs.
Luke. It has to be.
Except…that was a bit quick, surely?
“Er…thanks very much! I’ll think about it….” I shove the clipboard back at the man and rush out of the shop and into the street. In front of me the brown-painted door is slowly opening and I quickly edge behind a small tree.
My entire body is clenched with dread. Blood is rushing through my ears. Stay calm. Whatever happens, whoever he’s with—
The door swings open—and Luke steps out, followed by a couple of men in suits.
“Let’s discuss it over lunch,” he’s saying. “There’s a couple of clients I think could really benefit from that approach.”
He’s not with Venetia. He’s not with Venetia!
I feel like doing a little dance on the pavement. Relief is flooding through me. How could I have thought he was up to anything? I’m so paranoid. I’m so stupid! I’m going to go home and totally trust him from now on….
“Ms. Bloomwood?”
The guy from the print shop has come out and is peering at me, shading his eyes from the sun. Damn. Maybe this tree wasn’t such a great hiding place. I forgot my bump would be poking out.
“Becky?” Luke swivels and stares at me in astonishment. “Is that you?”
I feel my cheeks turning beet red as the three men peer at me. “Er…hi!” I say brightly.
“I’ve got a mock-up of that business card, if you’d like it.” The print shop man is advancing on me.
“Thanks!” I swipe it from him. “I’ll let you know.”
“Becky, what are you doing here?” Luke is coming toward the tree.