Private Lives

Chapter 11

Abi spent the whole of Sunday at home with her girls. They are good at spending a day together, just the three of them, with no need for anyone or anything else. They built a den, watched a movie, did a bit of yoga, cooked. It was slow and it was simple, the perfect antidote to the intensity of the restaurant opening. Every now and then Abi could feel herself drifting back to the previous night, remembering what one of the teenage waitresses had told her, about the middle-aged couples who left abruptly, their dessert menus abandoned on the table, who went outside to scream at each other while Abi was in the wine cellar searching for a bottle. Abi had smiled even as she felt cold stones drop into the well of her stomach; they could have been arguing about anything, she told herself strictly, but she didn’t believe it. Then Margot would stick her head up in the den to complain, ‘Mum! You’re not listening!’ And she’d be brought back to the present. Saved by her girls again.

On Monday morning she keeps herself busy and heads into the restaurant. It was, Richard gloats, rocking in his leather boat shoes, a resoundingly successful evening but there is so much, of course, to improve.

Lotte pops into the restaurant briefly to refresh the flowers, fussing with the display on the reception table while Abi is on hold with an IT team.

‘You heard, did you, Abs, about the row outside?’ Lotte’s eyes gleam. Abi hates being called ‘Abs’; it makes her feel like a member of a nineties boy band.

With the phone to her ear, Abi nods. ‘Any idea what it was about?’

Lotte scrunches up her face. ‘Nope. You?’

Abi shakes her head and Lotte turns, a little disappointed, back to her flowers, plucks a couple of wilting roses from the vase before adding, ‘I’m guessing it’ll be something about Eddy – it usually is. He had an affair a couple of years ago that ricocheted around the town. So much more embarrassing with it being so public.’ Lotte shudders, then keeps talking. ‘I bet he’s been up to no good again and that’s why Anna’s not returning my calls. I never understood why she forgave him in the first place, to be honest. But anyway, I’ll keep trying and, trust me, the truth will come out. It always does. Especially in Waverly.’

Abi walks to pick up Margot from school. It’s a beautiful afternoon, gold pouring from the sky, the air fresh, the earth partying with a few more bursts of light before the long rest. A few parents glance at Abi, smiling easily when she makes eye contact, which is a good sign. There’s no problem here, she chants to herself, the row wasn’t about her. There’s no problem here.

She’s outside the school a bit early, so she thinks about going to the park opposite to sit in the sun and crunch through some of the pistachios she bought for Margot’s snack. She notices a Volvo estate indicating to turn into the car park, waiting for Abi to cross. Suddenly the driver leans forward, nose practically touching the windscreen, staring at her. It’s Rosie. Abi can tell from the way Rosie is staring at her that she knows. Rosie knows, because she’s staring at Abi like she’s the most dangerous and the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen.

Abi moves first, lifts her hand to Rosie, breaking the silent, clear channel of understanding between them. They’ll mess it all up with words now. Rosie leans over to the passenger side and opening the door says, ‘Would you get in, Abi?’

She doesn’t want to, she wants to run as fast and as far away as she can, but there’s something in Rosie’s voice, like she used her last ounce of strength to say those words. Rosie desperately needs this and so Abi reluctantly gets in.

Rosie turns the car around quickly and they drive in silence to a quiet cul-de-sac just a few yards away. It’s double yellow, but Rosie pulls in anyway. She yanks the hand brake, cuts the engine and turns to face Abi. Her skin is white, her eyes wide. She looks like she can’t believe what she’s doing.

‘I was coming early to have a quick chat with … Doesn’t matter. I didn’t think I’d see you.’

Rosie’s hair glows in the afternoon light; her eyes are darting, her mouth pinched, knitted with tension. She’s nervous. But that’s OK. Abi’s nervous, too.

‘Rosie, I …’

‘You were never a therapist, were you?’

Abi looks at Rosie before she looks out of the car. So, there it is. How simply, how easily her new life could be destroyed.

‘No, no, I wasn’t.’

Abi can’t look directly at Rosie but out of the corner of her eye she can see she’s biting her bottom lip, the surface crisp, flaky. She senses Rosie needs to keep leading, so she lets her.

‘My husband paid you to have sex with him.’ Rosie’s voice is calm, her words simple, but she’s breathing heavily.

‘Yes,’ Abi replies carefully.

Rosie lifts her hand to her sore-looking mouth and sobs briefly, into her palm, before swallowing, turning to look at Abi fully. ‘You fucked men for money.’

It’s a strange relief to have another woman say the truth out loud so plainly. Abi nods. ‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I needed the money, Rosie. Because I couldn’t exist on handouts, and I couldn’t raise my kids the way I wanted if I was working all hours for minimum wage.’

Could she tell her that scrubbing other people’s shit off toilets for ten hours a day was, for her, worse than taking men like Rosie’s husband in her arms? Would she understand? Would she try?

‘The truth is I sold sex because it was a better option, for me, than any other at the time. I know I was one of the lucky ones. It was a choice. I sold sex because I got to choose when I worked, how much I was paid, and because I got to choose my hours and, in all honesty, I was good at it. Did I love it? No, not really. Did I sometimes hate it? Of course I did. But you know what? Most of the time it was just like a lot of other jobs. It was fine. It paid the bills. It served a purpose.’

She was one of the more vigilant workers. She had to be. She’d heard the horror stories of kids being taken into care. She could never risk being arrested or spending time in a hospital because who would look after her girls? She made sure she worked legally, which eventually meant working alone, which, ironically, was more dangerous. She devised a raft of safety checks before she’d accept a new client, installing a camera outside the studio flat she rented for work, putting in an alarm button that looked like it was connected to a security company but was actually just a dummy, hiding a can of pepper spray under the mattress.

But now she realizes she has no checks or alarms against the good people of Waverly. It is another irony that she feels more afraid of women like Lotte and Anna, stuffed full of centuries-old prejudice, fascination and derision, than the men who used to knock on her door to forget their loneliness for a little while.

‘He paid you,’ Rosie repeats, carefully. ‘You had sex and now you’re here, in our lives – why? What do you want?’

Rosie narrows her eyes at Abi, who shakes her head.

‘Nothing. I don’t want anything from you. I’m here because I needed a change, just like everyone else. That’s all. I wanted this job, and I wanted my girls to have a better education, more choices. It’s that simple.’

Rosie forces a laugh, hard and disbelieving. ‘You expect me to believe that?’

Abi keeps her mouth shut, worried she’ll shout if she doesn’t. Why is it so hard for Rosie to believe that Abi could want the same things as most other people? That she too wants the chance to make changes in her life? Why is it so hard to believe that she is just fairly ordinary?

‘If you don’t want to blackmail us and you don’t want to be with Seb, this is all just really fucking unlucky?’

Abi nods, breathes out through her mouth. She notices how Rosie is watching her now, seems to be studying her mouth, her hands. Imagining all those things her mouth and hands have done, all the licking and sucking and stroking.

‘Did you never think about us? The families, the marriages you’d be wrecking?’

Abi looks at Rosie and suspects that deep down Rosie knows the answer.

‘Rosie, I was never a threat to your marriage—’

But Rosie shouts, interrupting Abi, ‘My husband paid you for sex – of course you were a threat to my marriage!’

Abi mustn’t say any more. She needs this to end. ‘What do you want, Rosie?’

Abi thinks Rosie isn’t going to answer, so she’s surprised when Rosie, her voice taut but clear, says, ‘I want to know what he wanted. I want to know what you did with him.’

‘Oh, Rosie,’ Abi says, her heart aching for them both, ‘please don’t …’

‘Tell me!’ Rosie says, angry suddenly.

Abi tells her the truth. ‘I don’t remember much.’

Rosie’s face lifts with shock before her eyes narrow, disbelieving, repulsed. ‘You don’t remember?’

‘I saw hundreds of men, Rosie. Hundreds. All kinds of men with all kinds of issues. I’m sorry to say your husband, with whatever marital stuff he had or has going on in his privileged life, didn’t make a huge impression.’

Careful, Abi, she sounds too prickly. Rosie’s jaw hangs and Abi tries to backtrack. ‘But the fact I don’t remember means it wasn’t remarkable – it was probably vanilla, over quickly.’

Abi worries she’s overdone it, but she’s started telling the truth now and doesn’t want to stop, not yet. She glances at Rosie who is frozen, appalled but gripped, so Abi keeps talking. ‘The reason I remembered him that night at yours was because of his scar.’ Abi points towards her lip. ‘My grandad was born with a cleft palate, so …’ She shrugs again.

‘Get out,’ Rosie says quietly. ‘I need you to get out now.’

Abi understands. Rosie doesn’t want Abi to see her scream or cry or do whatever she needs to do.

Abi reaches for the door handle and is about to do as she’s told but stops, because she needs something from Rosie too, and Rosie hasn’t asked, hasn’t bothered to think about Abi’s needs in all this. ‘Rosie, there’s something I have to ask of you.’

They look at each other and, embarrassingly, Abi feels her own eyes burn. They always do when she thinks about her girls, the years of lying.

‘If you’re going to tell everyone about Seb and about what I used to do, then please’ – she forces the words out – ‘please give me the chance to tell my girls before the whole town knows. Please.’

Abi hoped that saying goodbye to Emma, her old persona, meant she’d never have to tell the girls. That with Waverly, their new schools and friends, her girls would lose any interest in their old lives in London. The past wouldn’t exist any more, even to Abi, and they could all live like young children, focused only on the day in front of them.

But it isn’t up to Abi any more. It’s up to Rosie and her friends. Rosie looks away as tears rise in her eyes and Abi knows she can’t talk, all she can do is nod, which will have to be enough for now.

‘Thank you. Thank you, Rosie.’ And as Abi steps out of the car into the syrupy light she hears Rosie cry out, angry, right before the car door closes with a thud, sealing Rosie and her misery away so her sorrow won’t muck up the clean Waverly air.

Abi makes roast chicken in milk with lots of bay and nutmeg, but Diego is, as always, late and the girls are hungry, so the three of them eat without him. Half the chicken is gone, and the girls are already talking about what flavour ice cream they’re going to have with their fruit salad when Diego enters the tiny kitchen, arms outstretched, holding a bottle of what Abi immediately recognizes as an excellent Sancerre.

The girls talk over each other, Margot trying to tell Diego about her new friend Luca while Lily asks him if he’d like to see her life drawing sketches and Abi tries to shoo them away, so Diego can at least take off his jacket.

He’s here, like a human blanket; Abi wants to wrap herself in him, safe from the world. She hadn’t realized until now how much she needs her friend, how different it is when they’re at work. In a restaurant kitchen Diego is focused, concise, unsmiling – a typical chef. But outside of work he laughs loudly and easily; everyone wants to be close to him.

Diego and Abi had met in a members’ bar in central London over ten years ago. The much older men they were both with – a client of Abi’s and one of Diego’s boyfriends – knew each other from working together in a bank years ago. While the old men reminisced, Abi and Diego found themselves next to each other on a sofa and spent the evening slagging off the bar menu, drinking outrageously priced cocktails and trying to impress each other with their knowledge of food. That first night they argued about where to get the best oysters in London, told each other what their Death Row meal would be (mole poblano ‘with a twist’ for Diego, and a seafood lasagne from Milan for Abi), and the evening ended with Diego begging to cook for Abi. A week later, Diego arrived in Abi’s Zone 5 flat and, over his osso buco with fried polenta cake, they’d started planning their restaurant.

He knew about her work, of course, but gay men, Abi found, understood the nuances of sex and the complex power plays. Apart from occasionally checking she was safe, Diego didn’t ask too many questions.

Now, Diego glances around the little kitchen, nods and smiles approvingly at the Picasso poster he bought for Abi’s thirtieth a couple of years ago. Margot pulls him into a chair so she can clamber on to his lap and give him one of the mermaid tattoos he sent for her when they moved.

‘Do you like yellow or brown hair best, Uncle D?’ she asks seriously, turning his forearm over in her lap.

‘On men or mermaids?’ Diego twinkles in reply, his accent making his words rise and fall like music.

He tickles Margot, who squeals, ‘Mermaids, silly!’

‘Oh, yellow. Definitely yellow.’

‘They seem well.’ Diego is smiling as he walks back into the kitchen in his slow, sloping, graceful way, helping himself to more wine. He’s been upstairs reading Margot’s bedtime stories and then with Lily looking at her new sketches while Abi, trying to be patient, tidied the kitchen. Diego picks at the chicken carcass Abi left on the side, which she knew he’d go looking for. ‘Lil mentioned a boy – Blake someone?’

Abi nods but she doesn’t smile and her voice is strained as she says, ‘It’s her first proper crush.’

‘Uh-oh.’ Diego can tell she’s not happy about it. He wiggles his dark eyebrows at her. ‘Is he an asshole?’

Sometimes Diego sounds just like the kid he used to be, the kid who taught himself English from watching American films in the eighties in Mexico City.

Abi shakes her head because she doesn’t want to talk about Blake or even the girls. She steps towards Diego who drops a wing on the counter and opens his arms before wrapping her up, tightly. She lets her head rest on his chest, feels her body exhale, relieved not to be responsible for holding herself up. Diego kisses the top of her head, then rests his chin in the spot he just kissed and asks, ‘What’s wrong?’

And for the first time in years, Abi cries. Her fat tears soak Diego’s shirt, and he holds her and rocks her and keeps kissing her cheek, keeps muttering, ‘Baby, poor baby,’ until her tears transform into big, billowy breaths. He pours her a glass of water and helps her to the table.

‘I’m sorry,’ she mutters, wiping under her eyes. ‘I know we’re supposed to talk about work.’

Diego ignores her and keeping his fudge-brown eyes on her says, ‘Tell me everything.’

She tells him about meeting an ex-client in her new friend’s kitchen, the shock of realizing he was not only Rosie’s husband but also Lily’s head teacher. She tells him about the agreement she had with Seb and then about the row outside PLATE. She tells him about her strained conversation with Rosie.

Diego sighs, winces and says, ‘Dios mío.’ Then he asks quietly, ‘You spoken to him since?’

She shakes her head. ‘Haven’t had the chance and, besides, I don’t really know what I can say, other than beg him to keep me out of it again, which isn’t just down to him any more. What if everyone finds out, D?’

Diego looks steadily at Abi. ‘You do what you’ve always done. You tell everyone to fuck off and live your life.’

Abi smiles briefly because suddenly Diego sounds decisive and clear, like he’s at work in a kitchen.

‘Yes, but it’s not London down here, D, it’s different. I tell someone to mind their own business and then I’ve got to see them twice a day at school for the next however many years. I don’t want my life, my kids’ lives to be painful and lonely just so everyone else can learn something about tolerance.’

‘Hmmm,’ Diego agrees before adding, ‘And they’d probably be bullied.’

Diego, a gay boy growing up poor in machismo culture, knows about bullying.

Abi clasps her forehead and groaning says, ‘I think I have to go back to London, D. I don’t think I can do this …’

‘Hey, hey.’ Diego shakes his head and puts his hands on her shoulders. ‘Come on, now. I’ve never heard you talk like this – you’ve never been ashamed of who you are.’

‘Not until now. Not until moving here.’

Abi thinks about Lotte, how delighted and appalled she looked when she told her that Margot was a donor child. She’d likely combust if she found out about Abi’s past.

‘No, Abi.’ Diego holds up his hand in refusal. ‘You’ve worked too hard, too long to give up so easily. This is your time, your chance; you deserve your chance. You can’t let other people’s small-mindedness, their prejudices, stop you from doing what you have wanted for so long. It might be hard, sure, but you’ve done much, much harder things in your life.’ He pauses before he adds with a little smile, ‘Good speech, hey?’

She nods, wishes she shared his conviction.

‘But I do think if anyone else finds out then maybe tell Lily.’

Adrenaline shoots through her as she imagines the conversation. Lily pulling her hands away from Abi with a look of confusion, revulsion. What if Lily looks at her the way Rosie looked at her today? The way her own mum looked at her. That would kill her.

‘What about the restaurant?’

‘What about the restaurant?’

‘Well, if people find out about me, they might, I don’t know …’

‘Want to book a table because not only is the food magnificent but the people working there are also interesting, real people?’

Abi tries to smile at her friend’s efforts, but Diego has only just arrived in Waverly. He doesn’t understand. Abi is pretty sure Anna, Lotte and the rest would rather see her lynched for her past than help her succeed in her new life. Women, especially mothers, are never let off the hook easily.

‘Come here,’ Diego says, and they stand to hug again. He kisses the side of her head and his deep voice tickles around her ear as he says, ‘I mean it, though. You can’t give up so easily. Besides, think of all those dicks you’ve had to suck to get here.’

She whacks him in the side then and he starts picking at the chicken again while she goes upstairs to kiss Lily goodnight.