Agent Provocateur (3 page)

Grace sometimes thinks of the time when she was working for Eddie, in a nine to five type of role, but it seems like another life. She didn’t enjoy the industry, the rigid hours, the confinement to an office full of people who were equally as fed up as she. However, sometimes she misses the normality, and sometimes she can barely remember it.

Eddie and Occasional Oliver are not just her lovers, but they are also her friends. They are the ones she calls if she is having a bad day, or a bad night; they are the people she trusts. If someone analysed her relationships, they would probably say that she has to have more than one man because her rota of lovers is her protection, the armour she wears on her heart. They would also say that they stop her from being alone. Because without them, that is exactly what she is. A mad woman, alone with her fish.

Grace doesn’t believe there is anything wrong in the way she has chosen to live her personal life. She is no longer sure that she is capable of falling in love, so she is doing what she needs to do to keep her happiness. She isn’t trying to hurt anyone, and she always says that if that were going to happen, she would walk away from him. Nevertheless, she is a young, single woman with an unusual career and lifestyle.

Oliver finally decides what he wants to say. ‘You didn’t call me back last night.’

‘Sorry, but I was working and I got in late.’

‘So you nailed another bastard?’

‘I did. I need to call Nicole, who will have to tell his wife.’ Nicole has a golden rule: she doesn’t start work until ten every morning. She says she needs to exercise before work, and that is the earliest she can make it.

‘Poor cow.’

‘I know, and the thing is he was such a prat. He was this arrogant prick who carne on to me with hardly any encouragement. It makes me really sad that he has this lovely wife at home but he’d rather be in a bar chasing skirt.’

‘You even sound like a man.’

‘I’ve been around too many cheats.’

‘Anyway, tonight? My trip was cancelled at the last minute.’ He knows how Grace needs to keep things at arm’s length and acts accordingly.

‘Yeah, OK.’

‘Don’t sound too keen.’

‘Sorry, Olly, I’m just a bit tired.’ Grace thinks she slept well, but she is finding it hard to shake off the sleepy feeling she woke with.

‘If you didn’t spend half the night trying to trap men, you might not be tired.’ She detects disapproval in his voice, which always riles her.

‘I was not out half the night.’

‘Maybe, but you do have an amazingly tacky job.’ She should have known that he was dying to say that to her; he always needs to make one comment at least.

‘Olly! You know how I feel about what I do. Don’t start.’

‘Sorry. I’ll come round after work?’

‘Not before eight.’ Because he has annoyed her, she decides to annoy him.

‘But I was going to finish early.’

‘Shame. Bye.’ She puts the phone down with a smile.

After another coffee, she types up a report of the previous evening to email to Nicole, and she listens to the tape. She shudders at his voice, dripping with – what is it? Desperation, lust, greediness. Then she removes the tape, puts it in a padded envelope and addresses it to Nicole, who will send a courier for it. At five minutes past ten she dials Nicole’s number.

‘It’s me,’ Grace says.

‘Morning, honey. So, the spider went for the trap.’ Nicole likes to use what she thinks is ’spy speak’. It always makes Grace want to laugh.

‘Yes, he did. Have you spoken to his wife?’

‘She called me last night; couldn’t wait until today. I told her that he went for it and I’d call her today to see if she wanted a copy of the tape and the report. Poor woman was beside herself. Kept me talking for hours. I didn’t get to sleep until gone two.’

‘Poor thing. I’ve emailed you a full report and the tape is sitting here waiting for you to send a bike.’

‘Well, she does want the report, obviously, but I think she’s made up her mind to throw him out. Apparently she doesn’t want her daughter growing up thinking all men are cheats. Anyway, you’re pure gold, Gracie. So, how are you?’

‘I’m OK. Tired, for some reason.’

‘Darling, chasing cheating men is a tiring business, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,’ Nicole laughs.

‘Don’t I know it. You know, I would just like one to tell me to bugger off.’

‘Well, one of my other girls did get turned down, if that’s any consolation.’

‘No, really?’

‘Yeah, but I think she went a bit wrong with the tactic. Anyway, I’m going to take you to lunch soon, because you sound thin.’

‘How can I sound thin?’ Grace tries not to be too attached to Nicole, because of the work connection, but she is.

‘You just do. And when we have lunch we’ll natter about your quest for a faithful man. Also I’ve got something else I want to talk to you about.’

‘OK, Nicole, I’ll look forward to it.’

When Grace puts the phone down she feels sad, because she doesn’t want Mrs X’s daughter thinking all men are cheats, but she also doesn’t want to think that herself. But they are, aren’t they? Or is there still hope?

A couple of hours later, after organising her files and her upcoming jobs, she breaks for lunch. She makes herself a salad and she eats it in the sitting room, where she sits on her sofa, facing her fish tank.

‘You guys might be a bit aggressive with each other but at least you aren’t lying cheating men.’ She smiles at them.

Chapter Two

‘Johnny, stop it. I’ll be late,’ Betty Parkin begs unconvincingly, through her giggles.

‘OK, fine. Go to work.’ Johnny sits up in bed, and folds his arms, dropping Betty like a stone on to the mattress.

‘Well, maybe I can be a bit late …’

Johnny turns to face her. ‘Really?’

‘Oh, well, the buses were a nightmare and the tube was stuck in a tunnel for hours.’

‘Choo choo, here comes the train. Get the tunnel ready and switch on the green light.’

Giggling hopelessly, Betty obliges.

An hour and a half later she runs, breathless, into her office.

‘Sorry, Hannah,’ she says to her assistant. ‘It was the train.’ And at her private joke she bursts out laughing. Hannah looks at her oddly. Although she is used to her boss’s early morning euphoria, she still doesn’t understand it. Nor, she suspects, does she want to.

‘Betty, when you’ve composed yourself, Fiona wants to see you.’

‘Thanks, Hannah. Anything else?’

‘There’s some messages on your desk, but nothing much.’ Hannah turns back to her computer screen and Betty takes her coat off, flings her bag on her chair and goes to her boss’s office.

Betty has been working at
Modern
Woman
magazine for six years, and now she is a senior features writer. She climbed up from work experience girl, and now is enjoying her job almost as much as she enjoys her marriage. She also has a lot to be grateful for. After all, it was her job that gave her Johnny.

She and Johnny have been together for four and a half years, and married for just under two. They are still honeymooners, which Betty thinks is unusual after so long. She fell in love with Johnny almost instantly when she went to interview him for a feature in the magazine about personal finance. She still laughs now when she thinks back.

One of the topics chosen for features was the financial independence of young women. It was considered the short (and somewhat boring) straw. Then she met Johnny, an independent financial advisor with a lot more than just ISAs going for him. She managed to string the feature out long enough to get him to ask her out and she has never looked back. Neither has he.

From the word go, they were seen as the perfect couple. Friends envied the way they went so well together. Even now, that envy lives on. Betty and Johnny enjoy each other, and although they acknowledge they are sometimes a bit sickening, sometimes a bit smug and definitely far too happy, there isn’t a damn thing they can do about it. Nor anything they want to do about it.

Everything has gone their way ever since their first meeting. Their relationship, although not without rows, has been relatively flawless. The proposal was perfect: he went down on one knee whilst they were on a weekend away in Barcelona. They bought a small but lovely house together and got a cat, Cyril, from the cats’ home. They had the wedding of the year: one hundred people, a church and a sumptuous sit down meal -and it didn’t rain, even though it was September.

Betty, however, is not without her demons. She sometimes feels like two people: Betty at work, Mrs Parkin at home.
Modern
Woman
is a magazine aimed at independent career women, and although there is room for husbands and boyfriends within that definition, Betty sometimes wonders if she still fits that mould. She loves her job and would mourn it if it went, but she is not as independent as she used to be. She doesn’t leave her husband at home and go for wild nights out with the girls, she hasn’t been to a club in years, and she is more interested in buying things for the house than clothes shopping. She dresses well, she looks the part, but she just doesn’t always feel it. She worries sometimes that she will be seen as a fraud: ‘You are too devoted to your man to fit the modern woman profile, off you go.’ But at other times she thinks she is a modern woman – just one who has landed on her feet and seems to have it all.

She is good at her job; she is a good writer. Before Johnny she used to be the whole
Modern
Woman
package. She tried out men, she discarded men, she speed dated, she two-timed, and she had longish relationships where she called the shots. She was an independent modern woman. Her career was more important to her than anything; she would cancel dates for work without a second thought. But then Johnny happened and everything changed. Betty admits that to herself. She cannot explain what happened, or why it happened. She fell in love and her life turned itself on its head. This she tries to keep from work. It is her secret, her terrible secret. When she is at work she will ogle male models, she will talk about sex, she will be the way she was. But she knows, deep down in her heart, that she isn’t that way anymore. Work Betty is a very different animal to home Betty.

Her social life outside work revolves around being married. It wasn’t a conscious decision to drop her single friends, but it just seemed that activities involving either just herself and Johnny or other couples – dinner, theatre, movies, parties -seemed to consume all their time. She sometimes worries that it was a decision, albeit a subconscious one, to slide her single friends out of her life, but she pushes the thought away, and likes to think that maybe they slid her out.

She not only feels contradictions between her home life and her work life, but she feels guilty for being so happy sometimes, although she is not sure why.

‘Morning, Fiona.’ She smiles as she plonks herself down in the large leather chair, which swamps her small frame. ‘How are you?’ She sometimes wonders if she will ever be editor. Fiona works frighteningly hard, horribly long hours, but she does have a really cool office. It’s quite large, with a massive glass desk, two large leather chairs, a sofa in the corner (for naps), and framed
Modern
Woman
covers all over the walls. There is also a television, which is the thing that Betty covets the most. Catching
Neighbours
at lunchtime, or the news, or even the Channel 5 afternoon movie would be fab. She is sure that Fiona does exactly that. The only problem is that Fiona is feared universally throughout the magazine. She and Betty put on a friendly facade, but Betty is aware that Fiona could eat her for breakfast and throw her up by midmorning.

‘Hi, Betts. How are things?’

‘As good as they were yesterday.’ Her boss is older than she is (Betty is thirty one), but decidedly single, or actually divorced, something that slightly scares Betty. She thinks that if she even hears the word she might be contaminated with it.

‘How’s the cat?’

By the same token that divorce scares Betty, the mention of marriage scares Fiona. So she never says Johnny’s name to Betty. In fact, Betty thinks she seems to deny his existence. Fiona is anti-marriage. When Betty told her that she was marrying Johnny, Fiona really lost it.

‘What the hell do you want to do that for?’ she screamed, and she didn’t speak to Betty until after she got back from her honeymoon. Betty tried to be understanding. Fiona had a terrible experience with her ex-husband, who was sleeping with her best friend and a number of other women before she discovered his multiple infidelities. A nasty divorce followed and Fiona nearly fell apart under the strain. However, now she copes with it by hating men and hating marriage. Betty doesn’t think it is exactly healthy but she feels more loyalty to Fiona than is necessary and she always humours her rants.

‘Cyril is fine.’

‘Right, then, down to business. I have a fantastic assignment for you.’

‘Oh, good.’ Betty is dying to get her hands on a good story, after spending the last month making up embarrassing sex stories. She wants to write a proper feature, one which demands research.

‘You’re going to spend some time with a woman.’

‘What woman?’

‘A honey trapper.’ Fiona sits back in her chair and folds her arms.

‘What on earth is that?’

‘Her job is a little unorthodox but not as rare as you might think. She tests men’s fidelity. Women hire her to go to a bar, for example, and be the sort of temptation to see if their men fall for her or remain faithful to them. They call it honey trapping. Putting temptation under a man’s nose and seeing how he reacts. Most of the time she is hired by women who have good reason to suspect their men are cheats, but other times she is hired by paranoid women.’

‘But she must be really twisted to make her living that way.’ Immediately Betty dislikes this woman, and is shocked by that fact. Normally being a professional, she doesn’t judge and she certainly doesn’t hold opinions on her subjects. She ignores the dislike and concentrates on Fiona.