Infidelity (31 page)

43

A
fter the Blair drinks party to celebrate the first two weeks of the new structure, Selena and I found ourselves together again on the stairs heading for the after-hours exit.

‘Talked out?' she asked me with a grin that was lower voltage than usual, but still a killer.

‘Totally,' I said. It had been a gruelling afternoon and evening. Jelly and Jennifer had been generous in their praise of the implementation and everyone had seemed eager to make the new system work. There had been fewer retrenchments than Jennifer's first estimate, partly because most of those who could see the writing on the wall had found other jobs and moved on before the reorganisation took effect. The rest were mainly part-timers – students who could easily find other ways of earning their keep.

We had spent the afternoon in a series of small group meetings, encouraging people to talk about their new roles and taking some fresh suggestions on board. At five o'clock we assembled in the foyer for drinks and some rousing remarks from Jelly, including the announcement that Blair was finally going to become international in more than name: we would soon be opening an office Sydney, me at its helm, with Melbourne to follow.

At seven, I had retreated to my office and cleared out my desk, in no hurry to return to my hotel room. Running into Selena was a welcome distraction.

She said: ‘Can I buy you a coffee to clear your head? You wouldn't have to speak.'

I said: ‘According to the research, listening is more exhausting than talking. As long as you're listening attentively, that is.'

‘I'll try again. May I buy you a coffee? I need to talk a bit. You don't have to listen if you don't want to.'

‘Doesn't sound promising,' I replied, as we walked towards the cafe where we had shared lunch a couple of months ago, when the world had seemed a very different place and a future with Sarah had glowed with promise. ‘Let's see how we go.'

Selena ordered and we took our seats. Chairs were already up on some of the tables, but the barista assured us we had half an hour before he needed to close. Selena looked glum.

‘Can I take it this is about your rapper? I'm guessing the news is not good.'

‘Depends,' Selena said. ‘There are worse things than a broken heart, especially if you think you might actually have had a lucky escape as well. Neat point, isn't it? Is your heart really broken if you think you've had a lucky escape? Or is the idea of the lucky escape the world's oldest rationalisation?'

‘Too deep for me,' I said, though it was a courteous lie. The truth was, I couldn't imagine how those two notions could authentically co-exist. Not in me, anyway.

‘God spoke to him again.'

‘Ah.'

‘Told him he needed a white woman to complement his ministry. And a believer, not surprisingly. Suddenly, I didn't meet either requirement.'

‘Was this out of the blue?'

‘Are endings ever out of the blue?'

‘Meaning?'

‘The signs are always there when you look back, don't you think? Or is that just a rationalisation too?'

‘Do you want to talk about the unravelling?'

‘Tom the client-centred therapist. Yes, I do think I might want to talk about the unravelling. Not much to say, though. Quickest unravel in the history of the world, actually.'

‘A text message, by any chance?'

‘Even more instantaneous than that. More brutal, too.'

I raised my eyebrows.

‘I came upon them after one of his shows – at the very club where we'd met. Cute, eh?'

‘Them?'

‘Locked in a high-octane clinch. Licking her tonsils. Hands everywhere.'

‘In the public gaze?'

‘In a backstage corridor. I was mad enough to go round after the show. The place was packed so he hadn't seen me in the crowd. He wasn't expecting me. Obviously. I made a last-minute decision to go. As a surprise for him. Certainly was.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘But that's the lucky escape bit, see?'

‘Lucky this happened before you'd got too committed?'

‘Exactly. He was push, push, push about getting married. Like he was desperate. I wasn't saying yes or no. I was just, like, let's give this a bit of time. Let's give this thing some air. Let's see what happens. This is what happened.'

‘Also a lucky escape from a lifetime of conflict about his faith and your lack of.'

Selena ignored that remark. In her view, this had come down to the most basic of grievances – her man done her wrong.

‘I've got a question for you, Tom. Do you think God spoke to him and then, like, supplied the requisite white believer? Or do you think Stoker happened upon this bitch and God gave him the thumbs up?'

‘That's about the most hypothetical question I've ever been asked, especially from an atheist. Does it matter?'

‘I'm just wondering whether to add hypocrisy to the catalogue of his sins.'

‘I think I'd be inclined to focus on the lucky escape aspect if I were you. Less painful, surely.'

‘You should hear my parents.'

‘Furious?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘Their idol had feet of clay after all.'

‘Their idol?'

‘Didn't they idolise Stoker?'

‘Oh, they're not furious with Stoker. They're furious with me. Why didn't I marry him when he wanted me to? None of this would have happened, et cetera, et cetera.'

‘Amazing.'

‘Isn't it? My own parents.'

‘And your brother?'

‘The opposite. Totally on my side. He's got all the Stoker gear he needs to stay hot with the cool crowd for months. Plus I think he was getting pretty resistant to the man himself. Stoker was always coming round to the house and heavying him about the Lord.'

I had heard plenty of clients describe the frightening lunge from ‘I love you' to ‘I hate you'. It had always struck me as being a bit like a passion hangover – when the stimulants were withdrawn, their toxic effects took over. The swing from devotion to indifference was more common, though, and more familiar to me. When the love switch is turned to ‘off', for any one of a thousand reasons, or none, the current simply stops flowing. You don't have to hate someone to destroy a relationship – you just have to lose interest.

I suspected Selena was actually in neither category. Her talk of a broken heart sounded like code for a bruised ego. No one likes to lose someone's attention, let alone adoration, but nothing in her account of Stoker's or her own declarations of love rang true. Most so-called love affairs fizzle out, and so they should. Falling in love is an experiment and most of those experiments produce a negative result. We never learn, though. To legitimise the experiment, it has to feel like the real thing, every time.

‘So Blair's looking pretty good for a while longer, at least,' Selena said, glad to change the subject. ‘I like everything about your new system, Tom. And I feel as if I've got a proper job at last.'

‘Thanks. Everyone seems pretty happy with it so far.'

‘But, hey –
Sydney
! In my big wallow, I forgot – congratulations! Hey, that's so epic.'

I smiled. ‘It's certainly a challenge. I've never tackled anything like it.'

‘Except setting up your own practice.'

‘Well, yeah, on a much smaller scale. Kenneth has great expectations.'

‘You're sounding flat. You're not as, like, stoked as I thought you'd be.'

‘It's a huge –'

‘This is about your really, really close friend, isn't it?'

‘Partly, yes.'

‘And we're not going to talk about it, are we?'

‘I don't think so. No.'

‘I'm a good listener too.'

‘What can I say? You and Stoker have switched off each other, by the sound of it. Not quite simultaneously, but almost. Click, he's finished with you. Click, you've finished with him. All done. There's some symmetry there – sad, maybe, but neat. My case isn't so symmetrical.'

‘She's switched off and you haven't. That's tough.'

‘Thanks for the coffee,' I said, pushing my chair back. I had no wish to discuss Sarah with Selena.

‘I'm sorry you're hurting. You look as if it's deep. I'm hurting too, but I know it's not that deep. More like a bruise than a fracture. You're right about the switch-off – once I saw him in that wild clinch – bingo. End of Stoker.'

‘You wish you hadn't seen them but you're glad you did.'

‘Exactly. Can I say something else?'

‘Of course.'

‘We're going to miss you at Blair. You've been a bit of an inspiration to a lot of us. We thought we were condemned to be, like, battery hens, and you've let us out of our cages.'

‘Free-range psychologists. I like that.'

‘No, seriously, Tom. You've been what my Mum would call a real tonic.' Selena delivered her mother's line with an exaggerated Jamaican accent.

‘It's been pretty therapeutic for me, too.'

‘Will you be back?'

‘Who knows? I think Kenneth will expect me to stay in Australia for the long haul.'

We stood and shook hands. Selena wrapped me in a hug.

‘I'll see you around before you go,' she said. ‘When is that?'

‘End of next week. I've got to get back and start setting things up. I have someone already on the job in Sydney, organising the fit-out, getting computers ordered and phone lines in. The usual stuff. But I need to be there ASAP. The grand opening is on the first of September and we're supposed to be fully functional by then. Kenneth already has the state premier booked for the event.'

‘Awesome.'

‘His contacts
are
awesome, I must say. Even on the other side of the world. He seems confident of landing as much state government business as we can handle.'

‘Hey – there's a whisper you and Mr Yelland might want to send a few people out there who already know the ropes. If that's a go, my hand is up.'

‘Don't start packing yet, but I'm sure you'll be having a meeting with Mr Yelland next week. You didn't hear that from me.'

‘Yay! Isn't life an amazing thing!'

44

‘O
dd to think I won't be here next Thursday,' I remarked to Elizabeth as we settled at our usual table in the Roslyn Gardens dining room. ‘I've rather come to rely on these lunches as a kind of –'

‘Don't say ritual. Say anything but ritual.'

‘Oh, much more fun than that,' I replied, trying to keep my tone light.

‘Tom, I know you're still hurting. There's nothing I can do about Sarah. If I could intervene, I would have, ages ago. I'd marry you myself if I were twenty-five years younger.'

I placed my hand over Elizabeth's, as I had placed it so many times over her daughter's lovely hand, and said nothing.

‘This is a wonderful opportunity for you and I'm glad you're taking it. Only a fool would hang around waiting for Sarah to change her mind. She's always been a headstrong woman. And what if she did decide she wanted you again, after all? Would you drop everything and run to her? I hope not. Not after the way she's treated you.'

‘I'm embarrassed to say yes, I would. No hesitation. No question.'

‘After everything we've talked about? All that dirty linen?'

‘No question. If it's a kind of madness, I don't want a cure. I've heard bipolar clients say the same thing – they don't want to lose the troughs because they know they'd lose the highs as well. I'd give anything to have her back, and that's the truth.'

‘I won't tell her that.'

‘You're in contact?'

‘Much less than previously. She calls me in this rather flat, dutiful kind of voice. I find it intensely irritating, as a matter of fact. I get more out of Fox than Sarah. Fox visits me here, too, you know.'

‘I didn't know, but I'm not surprised.'

‘She brings Sarah occasionally. I haven't seen Sarah on her own since she buried herself down there in Littleton. I think she uses Fox as a shield. She's afraid I might bite her if she comes on her own.'

The news that Sarah was coming up to London occasionally, presumably sleeping at Vincent Square, upset me even more than the thought of her being determined to stay in Littleton.

Rather more abruptly than usual, Elizabeth looked at her watch and announced the end of lunch. ‘You have work to do, Tom, and I'm going to have a rest. No walk today, I think. I'll miss you, you know. Thank you for joining me for these little lunches. An occasional postcard would be welcome.'

I offered her my hand and she took it in both of hers and held it for a while, not looking at me.

45

J
elly and Jennifer had taken me out to lunch, and we had tied up some administrative loose ends. I had wandered around the office, taking my leave, buoyed by everyone's enthusiasm for the new system. I had had a productive planning session with Selena and another psychologist who had accepted the offer to spend a year in Sydney. I knew their energy and enthusiasm would be like rocket fuel for the launch.

On the day of my departure, I checked out of my hotel, took a cab to Heathrow and carted my luggage to the check-in, feeling desolate.

As I stood waiting in line, I felt a hand press firmly into my back, pushing me out of the queue. For one sickening instant, I assumed there was some kind of terrorist attack taking place. Before that thought could fully form, I found myself surrounded by Jelly, Fox (hugely pregnant) and E, softly humming a tune I recognised as an old Irish blessing. No words were needed.

When the music stopped, they hugged me in turn and Fox murmured in my ear: ‘No one has ever loved her the way you love her. One day she'll be able to acknowledge that again.'

Jelly was wonderfully, irreverently himself: ‘If I'd ever thought I might be going to place my destiny in the hands of a fucking Aussie blow-in, and a psychologist to boot, I'd have had my head examined, what?'

I couldn't think of a single thing to say to any of them, but they were not hanging around for a speech. By the time I had regained some composure, they had already melted into the crowd.

After check-in and security, I still had an hour to kill. This was the moment to do what I had been postponing – ring Philip and tell him how things had turned out. At least I knew he wouldn't be smug.

It took three attempts to reach him at the hospital, and I realised there wouldn't be much time to say what I needed to say.

‘Philip? Tom.'

‘Ah, Tom. Good to hear your voice. It's been too long. Whatever happened to that dinner we were going to have with your lady?'

‘I'm sorry, Philip. Things got away from me, as they do. And I'm sure you haven't been hanging around waiting for my call.'

‘Last time we spoke . . . no, we didn't speak. There was a message about a trip back to Sydney. How did that go?'

I explained that things had moved rather quickly and that I was actually at Heathrow on my way back to Sydney again to set up an office for Blair.

‘That's great.' Philip didn't have the slightest idea what I was actually doing at Blair. He was a blinkered professional, which was no doubt good for his diagnoses but not for his small talk.

‘I'm enjoying it more than I imagined I would,' I said defensively and then, beyond belief, I heard myself saying: ‘I'm looking forward to the challenge.'

‘Hey, Tom, this is me you're talking to. No pollie-speak or management-speak, thanks. You sound a bit tense. I wish I could see the look on your face. Can I guess there's more going on than the move back to Sydney?'

When you've known someone since you were six, family or not, the usual disguises – the instinctive ones – don't work, even on the phone.

‘Sorry, Philip. Yes – more going on, or perhaps I should say less. Much less.'

‘I'm sorry. All too hard?'

‘You saw it coming – I didn't.' There was no point, now, in telling Philip just
how
hard. However much I disclosed or withheld, the result was the same.

‘I was pretty rough on you, Tom, I seem to recall. I feel a bit ashamed of myself, actually.'

‘Not at all. If we can't be frank with each other, who can?'

‘So it's over? She's not going to Sydney with you?'

‘I'm afraid not. Yes, it's over, at least for the time being.' I could feel my throat constricting as I said the words.

‘Look, Tom, I do have to rush, I'm afraid. I really am sorry it has worked out like this – let's talk some more when you're settled back home. Keep in touch, will you?'

‘Of course I will. And I'll call Robert and give him an update.'

‘Please do. But Tom . . .' (I knew what this was going to be about) ‘. . . I think Mandy gave you an inkling of what she was going to do?'

‘She did.'

‘Best not to mention it to Dad. Not yet.'

‘I won't. How is Amanda?'

‘Oh, she's okay, I think. Mandy will always be okay. Haven't seen her or the girls since they moved out. It's Frank I'm worried about – I'm trying to get up there next weekend, as a matter of fact. I don't think Frank is much of a coper, but I know he is basically a good man. He'll be missing the girls. He's not an every-second-weekend sort of father.'

I was grateful for the change of subject and found it easy to end the conversation on that note.

‘Well, give Amanda my love,' I said. ‘I sent her a text but we haven't managed to speak. I imagine it's all a bit fraught at her end.'

‘Must dash. Go well.'

While I had been talking to Philip, a text message had come in on my mobile:
Mum says ur off home
.
Bon voyage. Mikey ab fab.

That was today's good news. (
Tx Fi
.)