As Callum got to his feet she could see his reflection in the window and knew he was casting around for a way to make this right. He’d never liked loose ends, he was used to being able to fix things, including those he’d broken himself. People found it easy to forgive him: colleagues, family, friends, no one ever had a problem believing that he hadn’t meant to hurt them, because he wasn’t someone who deliberately hurt anyone. Even when he’d set out on an affair with his wife’s best friend he wouldn’t have been doing it to cause pain to Joely. That wouldn’t have been his intention at all. In fact he probably hadn’t as much as thought about her until after the crime had been committed. That was the way those things usually went, wasn’t it? Satisfy the insatiable urge now, deal with the consequences later.
Yes, that was definitely the way it went.
‘Joely,’ he said softly.
‘For God’s sake, Callum,’ she cried angrily, and grabbing her phone she answered an incoming call when she probably shouldn’t have.
‘Yes, this is Joely. I’m fine. How are you?’ It was the publisher who’d given her the new assignment. As he spoke she was so aware of Callum watching her and listening that she missed most of what was being said.
When she was finally able to ring off, she put the phone down and turned around. Callum was holding his coat but making no move to put it on.
‘Was that about your new project?’ he asked.
‘Yes, if you must know.’
He nodded, waited and finally accepting she was going to say no more, he attempted a smile. ‘I hope it goes well,’ he said, and after more moments of awkwardness he left.
Now here she was on a train staring out of the window watching fields and hedgerows passing by in a frantic blur, and feeling thankful that it wasn’t possible to read someone’s thoughts, or see inside their hearts. She wouldn’t want anyone around her to know why she was so glad to be escaping London, while feeling utterly desperate to return.
The train plunged into a tunnel, turning the windows into mirrors and she gazed at her ghostly reflection seeing some of what others saw, she supposed. A normal, non-threatening woman the wrong side of forty with soft honeyed curls and a smattering of freckles over a delicate nose.
Callum used to say she was beautiful. ‘When I put my arms around you,’ he’d say, ‘I feel as though I’m capturing the impossible, because no one can capture the ethereal or the magical, and yet here you are.’
He could be very romantic, if a little corny, could Callum.
She wondered how he described her now, apart from as his ex. He might say he’d opened his arms and she’d simply flown away, the way ethereal things did. No, he wouldn’t be so whimsical or poetical about her these days. In fact, he probably didn’t talk about her at all if he could help it; it wasn’t a subject he and Martha would be comfortable with.
What did it feel like when he put his arms around Martha? Could he actually get them all the way round? You’re being a bitch, Joely. Martha wasn’t fat, exactly, she was strong-boned with masterful shoulders and sturdy legs. Her attraction would be of a more earthy nature, so did he feel as though he was embracing a tree, perhaps? Or a small truck?
Slagging her off isn’t going to change anything. He chose her; you didn’t try to stop him, so now you have to live with it. Just like you have to live with everything else.
They emerged from the tunnel and she watched the world outside rushing by, rushing, rushing into the past. There it went, like her life, her marriage, her dreams. There one minute, gone the next.
‘Excuse me, can I get you something from the buffet?’
Joely started. The handsome man opposite was looking at her, clearly expecting an answer.
‘Uh, um, no, I’m fine thanks,’ she stammered.
He smiled and wound his way through to the next car, tall, athletic in black jeans and matching t-shirt that looked as though it had swirled out of a glossy magazine with him in it. She wondered why she hadn’t asked for a coffee when she was dying for one. Now she wouldn’t be able to have one at all.
What she could have though was a few minutes imagining her return to London with the handsome stranger as her main squeeze (she could hear Holly cringing, ‘no one says that any more, you muppet!’) glowing with happiness, as radiant as a new bride fresh from an exotic and erotic honeymoon, and totally over all the shabby misery the ex-husband and ex-best friend had inflicted, because she had a much better life now.
Yes, that was a fantasy she could happily run with to distract herself from her own guilt, the part she’d played in the breakdown of her marriage because it had never been put into words.
Or she could try to use up the time testing out various scenarios that might crop up over the next few weeks in order to prepare herself for all eventualities. She wasn’t nervous about her new assignment exactly; in fact she was quite excited by it, and grateful that it had come her way at this time when she’d so badly needed the distraction. Regrettably, her heartache was coming too, there was no leaving it in a cupboard at home, or burying it in a time capsule to be dug up by strangers a century after her death.
Before leaving this morning, in a fit of despair and utter stupidity, she’d composed a text to Callum: I’ve told Holly she can get me on my mobile if she needs to. If you happen to come to your senses while I’m gone please know it’s already too late. You’re stuck with Martha and her moustache.
She hadn’t actually sent the last two sentences, but it had given her a momentary satisfaction to see them there until she’d realized how pathetic they made her look. Although Martha really would have a moustache if she hadn’t shelled out for several sessions of electrolysis some years ago.
And she was definitely fat.
What are you talking about, Martha, you’re absolutely not fat. You’re curvaceous and sexy and totally scrumptious, which is what all men love – and honestly they don’t look at ankles.
What a wonderful best friend she’d been, always ready to stretch the truth to make Martha feel good about herself.
Callum had texted back: Are you going to tell me where you’re going? Are you all right?
She hadn’t replied to that, mainly because she wanted him to feel intrigued and worried and guilty and altogether sick of himself for breaking up their home and their family and taking their daughter with him.
‘I think it’s best if I go,’ Holly had sighed when Joely had gone into her room the day they’d left to ask her to stay. She’d seemed unfocused, earbuds in, suitcase half full, decisions in progress.
‘But why? This is your home. I’m your mother.’
Holly turned to regard her own lovely face in the mirror, innocent, almond shaped eyes, exquisitely wide sculpted mouth, silky blonde hair drawn over one shoulder. So much beauty and sophistication in one so young, except Joely wasn’t fooled. No matter how grown-up and worldly she looked, or liked to believe herself to be, at heart Holly was still a child.
‘Is that who you are?’ Holly asked, still gazing at her own reflection, not at her mother’s.
‘Holly, please …’
‘It’s best I’m with Dad.’
Joely wondered what she’d done to alienate her daughter, what had happened to the closeness they used to take for granted, the easy laughter, shared clothes and long-into-the-night confidences. These days she was almost impossible to get close to.