The Home for Broken Hearts (35 page)

“Apologize to your best friend,” Lucy said.

“That will solve all my problems?” Matt asked. “Anyway, I can’t, he’s not talking to me. He kicked me out and took custody of the PlayStation.”

“Then try again and keep trying until you get through to him. Show him you care enough to persist. Best friends are hard to find, and if you’re about to fall in love with someone, then you’re going to need him for when it all goes horribly wrong and you’re an emotional wreck. Besides, it’s karma. You need to clear up your negative karma, and as tracking down all of the women you’ve upset or offended recently would take about a million years, your only hope is to sort things out with your friend, take stock of your work, and then tell your landlady how you feel about her.”

“What if she runs a mile?”

“Life’s not all about dead certs, sunshine,” Lucy said. “It’s not all about lining up some tipsy bit of totty in a bar for ten minutes of fun—”

“Hang on—it was more like twenty—”

“It’s about taking risks, it’s about putting yourself out there, really
living
your life. And I don’t get the feeling that’s what you’re doing now. You’re treading water, and you are too nice and sweet and clever to let that happen to you.”

“Can you strike the ‘nice and sweet’ bit from that list?” Matt said. “I’m actually the dark destroyer.”

“No, you are not!” Lucy snorted into her drink. “You’re one of the nice guys. Which means two things: first, that it’s time you admit it, and second, that I can never, ever fancy you again. There’s always a bright side.”

It was gone ten by the time Matt finished chatting to the ladies of Fifi’s Cathouse, and all very nice they were, too. There were two single mothers who had discovered that this was one of the very few jobs that they could fit in around their children and earn enough to pay the bills. There were a couple of young
girls, barely twenty, who just did it for fun, one of whom was putting herself through college while she studied for a degree in medicine, and there was one woman who just plain liked the work. It was only when Matt logged off that he realized he hadn’t got any of the sort of stuff that Dan would be looking for; all the notes he’d made about the women he’d talked to were about them, their backgrounds, their motivations, even the names of their pets, in one case. He hadn’t asked a single one of them what their favorite position was. Maybe Lucy was right, either he was going gay or… Lucy had used the term
falling in love.
Matt preferred to think of it as “having feelings.” Having feelings seemed a lot less frightening than either of the alternatives.

When he finished work at last, he realized that everyone else was in the pub. He could have gone home to find out how Hannah was, and to see Ellen again. And yet as much as he wanted to, which was very much indeed, Matt decided to go to the pub again. Because as much as he wanted to see Ellen, he also didn’t want to see her. He wasn’t at all sure he was ready to be “having feelings.”

Ellen stared at herself in the wardrobe mirror. She had been staring at herself for some time now, she wasn’t sure how long except the afternoon had become evening. It was like reading a familiar word over and over again—the more she looked at it, the less it made sense. Sabine had come home to find her sprawled on the hall floor, an anxious Allegra trying to talk her to her feet.

“What’s this?” Sabine had asked, with some consternation. “Why is Ellen on the floor?”

“She has just discovered that her sister, Hannah, who last night appeared to have been rather savagely attacked, was having some kind of sexual dalliance with her late husband,” Ellen heard Allegra tell Sabine as if from a very great distance.

Sabine must have checked the time, because the next thing
Ellen heard her say was, “This is no good. Charlie will be home soon, Ellen. Do you want him to see you like this? You must get up at once and wash your face.”

Ellen had rolled onto her back and begun to laugh but Sabine was clearly in no mood for joking. She had grabbed Ellen’s hand and pulled her arm until Ellen realized that she either had to get up or have it torn out of the socket.

“Ellen, come now—you are not a lunatic, so stop acting like one.”

“Actually I am.” Ellen giggled. “I am officially mad. It looks like I am agoraphobic after all. I tried to kick my sister out onto the street and ended up nearly giving myself a coronary instead. Charlie was right, I’m afraid of the outside, I’m afraid of grass and flowers and bumblebees and… and noise and people and crowds and buses. No wonder Nick… no wonder he… You know, it all makes sense now. At least now it all makes sense.”

“I’ve tried talking to her but she’s in shock, I think,” Allegra said anxiously. “I called Simon but he’s not in the office. I really didn’t know what to do.”

“I’ll tell you what we will do,” Sabine said firmly to Ellen. “We will go to your room and wash your face and you will rest. When Charlie comes in, I will take him to the pub for tea, tell him you have a headache or something. Allegra will stay with you and you will talk about everything that’s happened and you will see that it is not so very bad.”

“Not so very bad?” Ellen laughed. “My deadbeat sister is in love with my dead husband. How can that not be bad?”

Sabine thought for a second before answering, “Well, at least he is already dead. That saves you from having to kill him.”

True to her word, Sabine had bodily escorted Ellen up the stairs and into her bedroom, propelling her into the bathroom, where she scrubbed Ellen’s face all over with a sponge, like a mother cat cleansing a kitten.

“You are very hurt,” she informed Ellen as she guided her back in the shadowy room, curtains still drawn from the night before. “And you are very shocked. And you are very tired. You should sleep and get drunk and then talk to Hannah—find out exactly what this means.”

“Do you think he had a list of things he couldn’t stand about me?” Ellen asked. “You know, frumpy, sexless, boring, meek, never goes out. Do you think he had a list like that? Of course he preferred Hannah to me. I really thought that he was the first, the only person in the world who didn’t prefer Hannah to me, but of course he did. I mean, look at her and look at me. Of course he did.”

“Ellen,” Sabine said, sitting Ellen down on the edge of her bed and crouching in front of her. “I know what it feels like to find out that the man you love is or was in love with another woman. I know it rips you in half. But think about it, you only have Hannah’s word. Nick isn’t here to defend himself. You only have her version of events, and who knows, perhaps over the last year she has made something that maybe was nothing into some grand affair—something that never was. And as for everyone preferring Hannah to you, I think that’s in your head only. If you don’t expect very much for yourself, you won’t get it.”

Ellen looked at Sabine. “Do you think so? Do you think that whatever it was that happened wasn’t that serious?”

“Its possible.” Sabine shrugged. “I’m just saying don’t fall apart. Not yet. Not until you know something that you have found out for yourself.”

“But if it wasn’t true, if it was all in her head, then she wouldn’t have been drinking, messing up at work—putting herself at risk. She wouldn’t have let what happened to her last night happen if all this was in her head. You should have seen her, Sabine, she looked like a broken doll. She kept telling me that whatever had happened to her didn’t matter, that it was just what she deserved. And I kept saying that she was wrong,
but you know, what I kept thinking, even before this, even before she told me about Nick, I kept thinking she was right. I kept thinking she
did
deserve it, that she careens through life expecting everything to fall into place around her, and that maybe this time she’d learn that this is not how it works. What sort of person does that make me, to think that when she’s been so badly hurt?”

“Ellen, sleep. Rest. I’ll take Charlie out for tea, and later, when you have a clear head, we will talk. We can make a list, look for evidence. We can find out the truth ourselves. But for now, rest. I promise you, sleep is a welcome refuge from even the worst the waking world can offer.”

Sabine had all but pressed Ellen back onto the bed and left her lying there staring at the ceiling, her head swimming in confusion. Ellen thought she must have slept for a little while at least, her body giving in willingly to the physical exhaustion that her mind fought, and she was dimly aware of the sound of Charlie’s feet on the stairs and someone opening the door to look at her. When she woke again, the house was silent, and she sat up abruptly, coming face-to-face with her own reflection in the wardrobe mirror.

Her hair, which she hadn’t brushed since yesterday, nested around her shoulders in a mass of dark tangles. Her face was creased with sleep, the seam of a pillowcase indented across one cheek; her eyelids were swollen and red. She looked like a grieving widow, and she felt like one. She felt that she had lost Nick all over again, and worse than that, she’d lost every memory, every moment they had shared together, which she had treasured so dearly. If what Hannah had told her was true, she would never be able to think about them again.

As Ellen stared at herself, she thought of the woman she had believed herself to be, the woman who was a little shy and reserved, who avoided crowds and noise and enjoyed nothing better than getting lost in a good book. A woman who was adored by the husband she had happily devoted herself to, a mother
who always put the needs of her son first. A widow who, having faced adversity, had found the strength to carry on.

But Ellen realized as she looked into her own green eyes that she was none of those things. She was a woman betrayed by her own sister, deceived and mocked by a husband who, if Allegra was to be believed, thought of her as nothing more than a possession that he could control. A husband who had not loved her, at least not for the last year of his life, and very possibly even longer than that. She was a woman who had virtually ignored her son, so caught up was she in her sorrow, a woman who hid from the world, who shut it out along with life so that she could live a virtual existence between the pages of a book. She was a coward, and a fool. A misguided, smug, and selfish fool who had allowed herself to be led into a prison cell by the hand and who, now that the door was wide open, still didn’t want to leave.

Ellen stood and pressed the tips of her fingers against those of her reflection. This could not be the story of her life, it couldn’t end like this. A thought occurred to her and she flung open the wardrobe and rooted around in the back. Somewhere, somewhere… Ellen pulled out the dress she had worn on her first date with Nick. It was a dark bottle-green, figure-hugging cotton jersey with as low a neck as she would ever dare to wear and a hem that fell just above the knee. Ellen laid the dress on her bed and smoothed it out. She had felt so wonderful wearing it, so powerful and sexy. She remembered walking through the restaurant, returning to her and Nick’s table after a trip to the ladies’ and feeling heads turn in her wake. For the first time in her life, she had felt that she was on the brink of discovering who she really was, the woman who she could be, the woman who didn’t merely watch the world go by but who took part in all life had to offer.

That night, Nick had told her that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, which was why she had been surprised when a few weeks later, she put the dress on to go to
some work function of Nick’s and he asked her to change into something else.

“I thought you liked me in this,” Ellen remembered saying, smoothing her palms over her hips.

“I do, I do like you in it,” Nick had told her, glancing up briefly from the newspaper he was reading. “That doesn’t mean I want the rest of the male population of the world to like you, too. You’re mine now, Ellen; save that for the next time we’re alone.”

Although she had always kept it as a token of that first night with Nick, Ellen had never worn her green dress again. She racked her brain and thought and thought and realized that if she wasn’t very much mistaken, that might have been the last piece of clothing that she had ever chosen on her own. Uncertain of exactly what she was doing, Ellen rummaged through her drawers. Pair after pair of sensible knickers floated onto the floor, along with firm-control bras in shades of white and beige, until she found what she was looking for. A set of underwear that she had bought to surprise Nick with the first Valentine’s Day after Charlie was born.

Things had gone off the boil after Charlie came along; in fact, Ellen recalled getting the feeling that in those early days, Nick was more resentful of Charlie’s demands on her time and her body than he was proud of his newborn son. What she was certain of was that Nick had thought of her differently after her pregnancy. He stopped looking at her in the way he used to or even touching her in the same way, his fingers never tracing the stretch marks that ran across her belly and hips, his mouth hardly ever seeking out her larger and newly shaped breasts. Ellen had been at a loss as to how to get him to come back to her as the lover she had come to depend on until she read an article in a women’s magazine, something about how to keep the lust alive on Valentine’s Day. There were several hints and tips, some involving ice cream and melted chocolate or some kind of dressing-up outfit; the
only thing that Ellen had liked was underwear. She went out and bought some sexy lingerie. It had taken her hours to find exactly the right thing, steering clear of all the bright red nylon and feather-trimmed bras that seemed to line the shops that February. Eventually, after enduring the humiliation of a fitting by a very young, very pert girl, Ellen had chosen a black lacy underwire bra and matching panties. By most women’s standards it was very tame, but for Ellen it was quite risqué. That night, as she waited for Nick to come home, she made preparations that would give them at least an hour to themselves, feeding Charlie and putting him down in his crib at just the right moment. She had timed it to perfection; the house was silent, Charlie was asleep, and as she heard Nick coming up the stairs she slipped off her dressing gown and lay on the bed in her new underwear.