Getting Rid of Matthew (5 page)
O
N BARTHOLOMEW ROAD,
Sophie was struggling to understand what the last twenty-four hours had been about. She was waiting for Matthew to breeze through the front door and tell her it was all a joke. After their row, she had known there was something seriously up with him, but she'd assumed it was work. Matthew had a way of hitting out at those around him when he was wounded, and she had convinced herself that he had messed up a campaign or been voted off the board or asked to take early retirement. Maybe he had developed a gambling habit and had blown all their savings. Or he was just feeling his age and kicking out against it as he sometimes did. She knew he took aging very badly, as if it were a personal slight, happening only to him. But there was nothing that had happened in the last fifteen years that had prepared her for this.
It had flitted through her mind that they'd get through this. It could take years and hard work, maybe counseling. They'd present a happy front while they repaired their marriage from the inside out and, one day, eventually, it'd be forgotten. She'd even heard people say that their relationships ended up stronger after they'd gone through something like this, although at the moment it was hard to see how. Then she'd heard him talking about arranging visits to see the girls and coming back to get the rest of his possessions, and she'd realized he really was going. This was it. After all these years, it had come to a straight choice between her and another woman and the other woman had won.
She knew that she had to put on a brave face for the children, but she also knew that they'd heard the shouting match that went on last night, though they were pretending they hadn't. Despite her best efforts, Claudia caught her crying in the bathroom.
"Where's Dad?"
"I'm not sure, darling. He's gone away for a bit."
"Is he ever coming back?"
"He's coming back to see you and Suzanne, of course he is," Sophie said, hugging her daughter. "He'd never not want to see you."
Suzanne stomped in, aggravated at being left out.
"What's going on?"
"Apparently Daddy's being a bit of a cunt," said Claudia, who'd been practicing, and had a feeling she might be allowed to get away with it at the moment.
"Isn't he, Mum?"
Sophie laughed, despite herself.
"Yes, sweetheart, he is, a bit. And don't say that word."
There was still a day to go before it was time to go back to work. Matthew set about unpacking his bags and boxes, mainly to put his things in piles on the living room floor, although Helen managed to clear out one drawer in the bedroom. Among other things, Helen noticed, he seemed to have brought a pile of washing. She forced herself to offer to put it into the machine.
"No, no," he protested, "I can do it myself."
They were being very polite and on their best behavior, as if they were two strangers who had found each other through a "roommate wanted" ad. Helen realized she couldn't remember how they'd ever used to have fun together, if indeed they did.
Matthew's mobile phone rang. His sister, Amanda. He took it in the bedroom and Helen could hear his muttered, defensive conversation. When he came out, she felt genuinely sorry for him, because she guessed he'd had a sisterly dressing down. Fuck, thought Helen, how am I ever going to explain this to Mum and Dad? When the ringing started again, at about six o'clock, Matthew made a joke about throwing the phone out the window, then went white when he looked at the caller ID.
"It's Suzanne."
Helen knew a reaction was expected, but she was struggling to place quite who Suzanne was in Matthew's overstuffed family, so she settled on an expression which she thought said "Really! How interesting," but which in fact read as blank.
"My daughter."
He sounded hurt that he had to remind her.
"I know! Answer it."
More shuffling off into the bedroom, more low voices. Despite herself, Helen couldn't resist listening in. She heard Matthew comforting and reassuring Suzanne, who was obviously in pieces. He was trying to convince her things would be no different between them.
"You and Claudia can come over here whenever you like. You can meet Helen and hang out with us at the weekends."
Ignoring the slightly disturbing fact that Matthew had just used the expression "hang out," Helen went straight for the big scary thought at the heart of what she'd just heard. Never in any of her fantasies about life with Matthew, post-Sophie, did she factor in his children. There was no doubt she felt bad for them in a way she'd never imagined she could. She didn't want them to lose touch with their father, but couldn't he go and visit them somewhere? Take them to the zoo and then McDonald's for lunch, like part-time fathers always did in films?
Move back in with them and pretend nothing had happened?
It had never been a decision for Helen not to have children, it was something she had always known. The responsibility was too much, the potential for fucking it up too great. Besides, she wanted to make something of her life, be ambitious, carefree, spontaneous—everything her parents weren't. It had occurred to her that maybe that was one of the reasons she had allowed herself to be suckered into a relationship with a married man, because the last thing he was ever going to do was put pressure on her to have a child. It just hadn't occurred to her that she might end up having to be a stepmother to
his
children.
A
T LUNCHTIME THE NEXT DAY,
Helen went out to meet Rachel in a café on Berwick Street, having kept out of Matthew's way pretty successfully all morning. They'd decided the previous night that it wouldn't be a good idea to let the office in on their little secret at this stage, something Helen felt grateful for—how would she ever have explained to her colleagues that she had been shagging the boss for the past God knows how many years, but just somehow failed to mention it? They'd traveled in to work separately, Matthew in his large impractical car and Helen on the overcrowded underground, and had only passed in the corridor once, so far, with a friendly-but-businesslike hello.
"I feel guilty about his family."
Rachel snorted. "Since when? You hate Sophie."
Sophie had been on the Women We Hate list for some years now, even though Rachel had protested that she had no feelings about her either way. Helen had countered that she herself had no problem with women who'd had therapy, either, but that she had allowed Rachel to keep them on the list for all this time.
"I don't know Sophie," she replied now.
"Never stopped you hating her."
"Which is why I feel guilty. Stop trying to make me feel worse."
"Well, send him back to her, then."
So Helen explained how she'd tried to broach the subject of him going back, and how clingy Matthew had become, and how he'd burned all his bridges because of her, so she had to try to make it work.
Rachel wasn't convinced. "How flattering to have a man want to spend the rest of his life with you because he doesn't think his wife'll take him back if you throw him out."
"It's not like that." Helen knew it pretty much was.
"Well, it sounds like it."
They sat in grumpy silence for a minute or so, then Helen softened.
"I think he really loves me. And, like you said, it's what I've always wanted. I just need to get used to the idea, that's all."
What Helen loved most about Rachel was that she never once said, "I told you it'd all end in tears."
* * *
In forty-eight hours, Sophie had gone through crying, anger, disbelief, and hatred, and ended up back at crying again. She'd dealt with endless calls from Matthew's family, all phoning to say how dreadfully he'd behaved, but all, without exception, leaving her feeling as if it must have been somehow her fault. Suzanne had more or less said this outright to her. Claudia, slightly more touchingly, had taken her mother's side—not that Sophie was encouraging either of them to choose—and had declared she'd never speak to her father again.
What the girls knew was that Daddy had moved out, that he had a new friend, and that he was living with her now. Sophie was trying to spare them the gorier details, while examining them herself to try to make some sense of what'd gone on.
If the truth be told, Sophie shouldn't have been surprised by what had happened to her, having, as she had, stolen Matthew herself from the first Mrs. Shallcross all those years ago under very similar circumstances. Because, oh, yes, Sophie had been a mistress, too, once, before a wedding and children and a bit of history had blurred this fact from people's memories—even her own, sometimes. Sophie had been thirty, Matthew forty-five, as was his wife. It hadn't passed Sophie by that Mrs. Shallcross the first was exactly the same age that she herself was now when Matthew had moved on.
Matthew had told her that his marriage to Hannah was dead and had been for a long time. He'd stayed with her, he'd said, at first until his son Leo left home, in an effort to do the right thing, and since then from habit. Hannah knew, he'd added, that their relationship was over and in fact she wanted it that way just as much as he did. There hadn't been anyone else in all that time, but then he hadn't met anyone like Sophie. He couldn't pass up this chance for happiness just because—on paper—he had a wife. Hannah would be the first to say as much. He'd made it sound so plausible.
Sophie had often wondered, since then, what it was that made her give in to him. There was something about the fact that he was married that made the relationship less real, less scary. She had known from the off that she couldn't have the whole of him, and so it wasn't an issue. She'd had no expectations that he would turn out to be the love of her life and so she'd put no pressure on him to prove that he was. By the time he asked her to marry him, six months later, she was hooked. Hannah, he'd said, understood and indeed was delighted for him.
It was only after he'd moved his stuff into her two-bedroom flat in Muswell Hill and the wedding plans were well under way that she'd realized that this was a bit of an exaggeration. In fact, it was an out-and-out lie. Hannah was not delighted for him, and she didn't understand. Indeed, when Sophie had opened her front door one day and faced a hysterical, abuse-hurling, middle-aged woman, she'd realized that Hannah hadn't even known until a few days ago, when Matthew had walked out. She had tried to persuade Hannah to at least come inside and talk, but understandably, Hannah preferred to stand on the front doorstep, calling her a whore and a slut in front of all the neighbors. Matthew conveniently was out at the time, playing golf with a friend, oblivious to the havoc he had caused.
For some reason—Sophie could no longer remember why—she had forgiven him. It had taken a while, but he'd somehow proved he was serious by filing for divorce and throwing himself into his new life, in that way that Matthew had of making whatever he was doing at the time seem like the most exciting thing in the world. The wedding had had to be postponed of course, until he was officially a free man, but when it happened it was moving and beautiful and everything she'd ever dreamed of. She'd forced herself to forget all about his inability to be honest and Hannah's near breakdown on her doorstep. She'd thought she'd succeeded.
Now she was the one watching him walk away.
* * *
Matthew wouldn't tell her exactly how old Helen was. When she asked, as all women would, "Is she younger than me?", he'd blustered and wouldn't give her a straight answer. In fact, the only details she'd managed to wring out of him were these:
Her name was Helen.
He'd met her through work.
She had a flat in London.
She wasn't married.
They'd never had sex in Matthew and Sophie's house (for some reason, this had seemed of prime importance to her).
She was younger than Sophie—the blustering had given that away.
He'd been seeing her for "a while," although, when pressed, he wouldn't elaborate on exactly what "a while" meant.
* * *
Matthew and Sophie's courtship had been a whirlwind affair. She was the accountant in the office where he was then working—clearly Matthew could only look in a ten-meter radius when looking for a mistress. Six months of clandestine meetings in the conference room, then a proposal. Looking back, she could see now that this was his midlife crisis. His only child had left home, he was left alone with his wife to face up to getting older, just the two of them for probably another forty years, and he panicked.
Sophie had never believed in karma or fate. She was far too sensible to buy into anything so New Age. But even she had to admit that there was a certain poetic justice in what had just happened to her. She was paying for what she did to Hannah. She wondered what Hannah would think when she heard, whether all these years later it'd still feel like a small victory. Whether she, herself, would have stopped caring by the time Matthew—inevitably—did the same thing to Helen.
E
VERY DAY HELEN WAS DISCOVERING
things about Matthew she never knew before, and most of them weren't good.
He dyed his hair. Truthfully, she'd worked this out already, but seeing the bottle of Just For Men in the bathroom cabinet meant he had given up all pretense, at least to her.
He wore slippers. Not flip-flops, not an old pair of moccasins. Slippers. With a fur lining.
He made a roaring noise when he yawned. How had she never known this before? Had he never yawned in front of her in over four years or was he just keeping a lid on the sound, knowing how mind-numbingly irritating it was?
He laid out his clothes for the next day at work before he went to sleep at night. Helen didn't know why this was so annoying. In fact, it was probably quite sensible, but it just felt so…comfy…like something his wife used to do for him or something they taught him at boarding school. Helen had to resist the urge to rumple them up or to swap them for something different to confuse him. Once he'd picked out his outfit he wore it no matter what, so if he went to bed on a wintry night but woke up in the sunshine, he'd still put on the sweater that was hanging there waiting.
His car had a name. A name. His. Car. Had. A. Name. Helen knew this was probably down to his kids, the kind of cutesy thing that families did, but when, one day, he forgot where he was and said to her, "Let's go in Delia," she stared at him openmouthed for so long that it crossed his mind she might be having a stroke. She finally pulled herself together enough to ask him not to anthropomorphize inanimate objects in front of her ever again. Ever again.
"Sorry, Helly," he'd said, slightly sheepishly.
"And don't call me Helly. I hate it when you call me that."
"I always call you Helly," he'd replied, petulantly.
"Exactly."
It wasn't going unnoticed that Matthew was a little distracted at work. His shirts looked a bit, well, crumpled, for starters. And, at Wednesday's morning catch-up meeting, he'd looked panic-stricken when he'd realized that he had left a client's strategy, which he had drawn up over the Christmas break, on his computer at home.
"I'll ring Sophie and get her to e-mail it over," offered Jenny helpfully.
"NO! No…she's not there. No one's there at the moment. I can remember the key points."
His years of experience meant that he sailed through the meeting with the client, without giving away that he was making it up as he went along, but he knew Jenny had noticed that something was up, and his efforts to overcompensate by being extra nice to her for the rest of the day simply convinced her that she was right.
* * *
That night Helen looked around at the mess that used to be her living room.
"You forgot your laptop?"
She dug around in the nearest box.
"You remembered a…toy car…but you forgot your computer?"
"It's vintage. A collectible."
She rummaged about some more.
"There's hundreds of them in here. Are you eight years old?"
"They're worth a fortune."
"What are you going to do, open a shop? Jesus, Matthew."
He looked hurt and she felt bad, but irritation got the better of her and she turned on her heels and left the room. She had a long bath, and when she came back into the living room Matthew's stuff was tidied away neatly into a corner and he was in the kitchen rustling up something unspeakable-looking in a wok. He waved a spatula at her proudly when he saw her come in, as if to say, look how clever I am.
"It's nearly ready. Chinese, how does that sound?"
"Fantastic."
He had only been there a few days, but Helen was longing to be left on her own with a microwave curry. She wanted to loll about in her pajamas with no makeup on, eating and watching the TV. She wanted to neck back glasses of wine at her own pace, not go through the tortured niceties of "Do you want another glass?", "I don't know, do you?", "Well, I will if you will." Her parents used to waste whole evenings that way. Politeness, that great substitute for passion.
She sat down to eat. The conversation was stilted. What did they ever used to talk about, for fuck's sake? Helen was reduced to making appreciative noises about the (disgusting) food, while Matthew valiantly tried to fill the silence with the kind of talk about work they had always successfully avoided.
Helen had had enough.
"Why don't I put the TV on?"
"While we're eating?" he said, as if she'd just suggested having a dump on the table.
"Just to help us unwind a bit. Something mindless, so we can forget about work. We don't have to."
"No, if you want to, then put it on."
"No, no, it's fine, not if you don't want it on." Oh, fuck, she thought, here we go. "You first," "No you," "No you," "No really you," for the next forty years.
"You're right," he said. "What's wrong with putting the TV on? It's just, Sophie and I never liked the kids watching…" He trailed off, as if he'd said too much, then got up and switched on the television in the corner. They finished their meal in front of
Emmerdale,
in silence. Helen hadn't had the heart to say, "Switch channels, there'll be something better on the other side."
Over the next couple of days Helen realized that, however much she was secretly starting to feel uneasy, Matthew was simply going to refuse to admit that he'd made the wrong decision. The only way for him to cope with the momentousness of what he'd done, not to mention the guilt, was for him to believe that it had all been for the sake of a great love he was powerless to ignore.
So, when she served up undercooked pink chicken with burned fries for dinner, he smiled and said, "I'm going to have to teach you to cook," like she was eight years old.
When she told him she quite fancied the eighteen-year-old boy who served in the deli down the road, he laughed so much she was afraid she'd need to resuscitate him.
When she shaved her legs in the bath and left the tiny hairs clinging around the rim, she caught him whistling to himself as he cleaned it out.
And the more he worked to show how much he loved her, the more she found herself perversely trying to put him off. Maybe it was a test—like an adolescent pushing the boundaries; maybe she was subconsciously trying to make herself as unattractive as possible to test the limits of his devotion. Or maybe, she thought, she was trying to push him away because she didn't want him anymore. It was a thought too harsh to indulge. She thought of herself as enough of a bitch already; this would push her over the edge, even in her own eyes—lure a man away from his loving family and then kick him back out again, as if the competition was all and the prize irrelevant. You love me the most, I win, now fuck off.
So she tried to play nice, but the stubborn child in her wasn't having any of it.
She stopped shaving her armpits altogether. And her bikini line.
She told him she'd once caught chlamydia from a man whose name she never got around to asking.
She told him she had a mustache she had to have waxed off every six weeks.
She told him she didn't feel like sex and he just said "Fine."
She picked holes in the way he dressed.
She stopped brushing her teeth.
And combing her hair.
And plucking the stray hag-whisker that grew out of her chin.
She bought a packet of incontinence pads for women and left them lying about in the bathroom.
And all the time, Matthew just kept telling her that he loved her and said, "Isn't it great that we're finally together" and "This is it now, you and me, forever," and other such Mills and Boon classics.