Seeing Other People (2 page)

I started to panic. All I wanted was to go back in time and erase the last twelve hours of my life; maybe even the last twenty-four so I could undo ever meeting up with Bella. Why had I made such a fool of myself that I’d had to take her out for coffee to apologise? Why had I acknowledged her texts instead of ignoring them and going home to my wife? Penny would never forgive me if she found out. Her dad had cheated on her mum half a dozen times before he finally ran off to Canada with one of her mum’s best friends when Penny was fifteen and so she knew first hand how much destruction cheating caused. ‘I’d never forgive you if you did that to me,’ she’d said to me on the night she told me about her dad back when we were students, ‘If you ever cheated that would be it.’ And even now after kids and the whole of our adult lives together I had my doubts whether her opinion had changed. As emotional as Penny was sometimes there was a steely pragmatism about her – a legacy of her teenage years – that made me seriously wonder whether in fact she might be capable of calling quits on us if she thought that there might be any chance of history repeating itself.

This was all too much. My head was spinning. I needed to get out of there, to put distance between me and the scene of the crime. I checked the room one last time to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything and realised that my watch was missing. I must have taken it off at some point but it was nowhere to be seen. It had been a thirtieth birthday present from Penny and losing it would take some explaining; still, I knew I’d have no choice but to mark it down as a casualty of war. Watches could be replaced; the kind of scorn I’d receive for getting caught in the process of sneaking out of Bella’s bedroom would not be easily forgotten. After all other than sleeping with someone who wasn’t my wife, leaving Bella like this was the worst thing I’d done to date in my career as a human being. Aside from her obvious lack of judgement when it came to men, from the little I knew of her she seemed like a decent person and certainly didn’t deserve being made to feel cheap. She’d hate me forever. But given the damage I’d wreaked in less than twenty-four hours she’d be better off hating me than having anything more to do with me ever again.

At the front door I caught my reflection in the mirror. I looked old, drawn and haggard. Just as I was about to look away out of the corner of my eye I could have sworn for a moment that I saw Fiona Briggs standing behind me. Not the adult Fiona whose photo had been displayed in the church vestibule on the day of her funeral but rather the eighteen-year-old one complete with the spiral perm she thought made her look like eighties teen pop sensation Debbie Gibson. She was wearing a snow-washed denim jacket covered in pin badges, white T-shirt featuring the cover of The Cure’s
Boys Don’t Cry
album, black leggings and brown monkey boots, the exact outfit that she’d been wearing on the day in the student union when I’d told her I was with Penny. I rubbed my temples and blinked hard. The image was gone. All I could see was my own reflection. I hurried out of the door, closing it quietly behind me. This was ridiculous. I was so tired and my mind was undergoing so much turmoil that now on top of everything else I was seeing images of my dead ex-girlfriend. I needed sleep. Preferably in my own bed in my own home so that I could forget that this day had ever happened. I couldn’t do that of course, not without Penny wondering why I was coming home at six in the morning and taking the day off work just because of a hangover. No, if I wasn’t going to raise alarm bells unnecessarily there was only one option: I’d have to find out where I was, wait for the tube to start up again and then wander the streets until it was late enough for me to roll into work for the day. My heart sank. I had meetings to attend, features to write and a working lunch with a high-profile PR. How would I manage to get through any of that when I’d be thinking about what I’d done to Penny and the kids? I’d blown my life into smithereens for something that I couldn’t even remember doing and I hadn’t a clue how I was ever going to begin to put it back together. How on earth had I got here?

One week earlier

1

I suppose in a way it all started with the news of Fiona Briggs’s death.

My wife Penny, a senior social worker, had just arrived home from work. A problem had come up at the last minute which was why, once again, she was late.

‘Bad day?’ I asked as she came into the living room and slumped down into the armchair without taking off her coat.

‘The worst,’ she replied, kicking off her shoes. ‘Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I got shouted at by Martin, learned that I have got half a dozen staff reviews to do before the end of the month, and then a case that I thought would need an hour to close ended up taking all afternoon. To top it all the new junior had a meltdown and it took me two hours to calm her down and persuade her not to leave.’ She rubbed her feet. ‘Everything OK here?’

I thought about filling her in on my day as that had been no walk in the park. I worked as deputy editor of
The Weekend
, the Saturday magazine supplement of the
Correspondent
, a mix of culture, fashion, celebrity interviews and lifestyle features, and today it had been announced that due to budget cuts we’d all have to reapply for our own jobs.

‘Everything’s good, nothing to report. Haven’t heard a thing out of the kids since they went up at eight. Do you want me to heat up your tea in the microwave? I made my signature rice and chilli.’

‘Thanks, that sounds lovely, but do you mind if I give it a miss? It was Mary’s last day at work today and I’ve done nothing but pick at cake all afternoon. I think I’ll just get off to bed if that’s OK.’

‘Yeah that’s fine,’ I replied even though it wasn’t. Since she’d gone back to work after a seven-year career break to bring up our kids Rosie, aged ten, and Jack, aged six, things had been tough. It was the need for money that had forced her back to work rather than a desire to fulfil herself through her career. The truth was we’d eaten through every last bit of our savings making sure she could be there for the kids when they were very young and now the money had run out.

Back when it had been just the two of us we could easily cope with the stresses and strains of a household where two people worked but now with two primary-school-aged kids added into the mix it was a struggle to keep all the balls in the air. Every day required military-style planning: who was dropping off at school, who was picking up, who was cooking tea, who was helping with homework, and it only took one thing – like Penny being called into an impromptu meeting five minutes before she was due to collect the kids – for all of our lives to be thrown into disarray. And as much as I tried to pick up the slack, with a sprawling seemingly never-ending job like mine it was virtually impossible. The truth was that the pressure was all on Penny, and while she never forgot anything to do with the kids – the lunches, the homework, the parties and playdates – she occasionally forgot us as a couple. And while I understood everything, from her missing specially prepared meals because of late-running meetings through to the evenings I spent alone on the sofa while she caught up with paperwork at the kitchen table, it was hard not to feel just a little bit neglected. I couldn’t say anything though because it wasn’t her fault. She was working really hard for all of us and I was a big boy, I could handle it, besides which I had a plan. A month earlier I’d applied for the editorship of
Sunday
,
the
Correspondent on Sunday
’s
magazine supplement, and in terms of pay and prestige it was about as good it could possibly get for someone like me. If I got the job it would be the answer to all my and Penny’s problems: I’d get a rise and we could afford for her to go part-time or even give up work altogether.

Penny stood up and kissed me goodnight and was about to leave the room when the phone rang. We exchanged wary glances. Good news never comes via a late-night phone call.

‘It’s your mum,’ said Penny, handing me the receiver.

‘Hey Mum, everything OK?’

‘I’ve got some bad news,’ she replied. ‘I’ve just had a call from the uncle of that girl you used to go out with when you were young, you know the one, Fiona Briggs. Well, she died apparently, some sort of accident while playing tennis.’

‘Tennis? What kind of accident can you have playing tennis that can kill you?’

According to my mother Fiona had been playing tennis at her local club and was struck on her temple by a ball which briefly knocked her unconscious. She insisted that she was all right and determined to play on and eventually won the game but fainted an hour later in the tennis club showers hitting her head on the corner of a tiled bench. She was in a coma for a week but never regained consciousness. They couldn’t make any funeral arrangements until after the coroner’s verdict but that came in yesterday – death by misadventure – and the funeral was at St Thomas’s next Tuesday. According to Fiona’s uncle my name was down on a list of people she wanted to be there. My mother paused. ‘Is that something people do these days? Make lists of who they want at their funeral like it’s a birthday party?’

‘No, Mum,’ I replied, ‘but it is a very Fiona thing to do. She was a control freak of the highest order.’

My mum sighed, as though I was speaking gibberish. ‘Well, I don’t know about that but he said that if you wanted to pay your respects you’d be more than welcome.’

Fiona Briggs.

Dead.

By tennis ball.

There should be a name for it when the first person you ever slept with dies. There should be a word that communicates the fact that a little part of your history is gone forever. That she was a complete and utter nightmare of a girlfriend and that my buttocks clenched at the very thought of her was neither here nor there. She might have been one of the most obnoxious and controlling human beings I had ever had the misfortune to encounter but she was my first, and I was hers, and as such we would always be inextricably linked.

I was never quite sure how I started going out with Fiona. Looking back it was almost as if one moment I was a carefree sixteen year old enjoying a lazy summer of messing around in the park with my mates and then out of nowhere Fiona appeared with her big hair and fashionable clothes reeking of the designer perfume Poison by Dior. In no time at all I was coupled with Fiona with no means of escape. Nothing I did was good enough for her, she hated my friends and wasn’t all that keen on my family either. During the eighteen months we were together – in which time I endured daily bullying, belittling and deriding at her hands – I attempted to split up with her on at least a dozen separate occasions but it never seemed to stick. Every time I raised the topic of ending the relationship Fiona would invariably dangle the prospect of my gaining access to her underwear to dissolve my resolve and because I was seventeen and shallow it worked every time. Finally however, a fortnight before we were due to go to university at opposite ends of the ­country I received a handwritten note pushed through my parents’ letter box:

Dear Joe,

This is the most difficult thing I have ever had to do but I do it all the same because deep down I know you will understand. Of late I have been giving great consideration to my future. Although I care for you deeply I feel we have been growing apart for some time now, and therefore think it’s best that we end our relationship sooner rather than later. Please always think fondly of me.

Yours faithfully,

Fiona xxx

PS. Please do not try to change my mind.

It was all lies of course. Two days later my friend Tony saw her in WHSmith in Swindon town centre hanging off the arm of Ian Mallander, who was five years older than her and worked at the local B&Q. By rights, I should have been hurt by the deceit she’d employed to get rid of me but I was too busy celebrating to give it a second thought. Finally I was a free man, one who was about to go to university to study English Literature with hundreds if not thousands of members of the opposite sex some of whom I was pretty sure would have sufficiently low standards to actually consider sleeping with me. And I wasn’t going to be satisfied with sleeping with one girl with no standards: no, I was going to sleep with as many girls with no standards as would allow me into their beds and only when I had reached double figures would I even contemplate becoming embroiled in another relationship.

At least that was the plan. Two days into my university career I was attempting to inveigle my way into a group of female modern language students at the freshers’ night disco when I’d felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see Fiona’s best friend, Sara, accompanied by a pretty, dark-haired girl wearing a vintage floral tea dress and lace-up ankle boots. I couldn’t tear my eyes from this girl. Something about her was so warm, inviting and strangely familiar that all I wanted to do was get to know her.

‘Sara,’ I said, forcing myself to sound pleased to see her even though I loathed her as much as she had patently loathed me. ‘How funny to see you here.’

‘It’s not that funny,’ she said sharply. ‘You knew I was coming to Sheffield because I told you and where else would a first-year student be on freshers’ night?’

‘Good point,’ I replied, hoping that Sara’s friend hadn’t taken me for a complete idiot. I flashed a hesitant smile in her direction and got an equally hesitant one back. ‘Hi, I’m Joe, I didn’t quite catch your name.’