The Christie Affair(2)

Almost the moment he returned to his chair, in walked Agatha. She rapped lightly on the door and at the same time pushed it open. Her sensible heels made the barest sound on the carpet. At thirty-six, she was much taller than me and nearly ten years older. Her auburn hair had faded towards brown.

‘Agatha,’ Archie said sharply, ‘you might have knocked.’

‘Oh, Archie. This isn’t a dressing room.’ Then she turned to me and said, ‘Miss O’Dea. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.’

Archie’s strategy had always been to hide me in plain sight. I was regularly invited to parties and even weekends at their home. Six months ago, he would at least have made an excuse for my presence in his office. Stan’s loaned Nan to do some shorthand, he might have said. Stan was my employer at the Imperial British Rubber Company. He was a friend of Archie’s but never loaned anybody anything.

This time Archie didn’t offer up a single word to explain me, perched where I didn’t belong. Agatha’s brows arched as she realized her husband couldn’t be bothered with the usual subterfuge. She gathered her composure by addressing me.

‘Look at us,’ she said, pointing to her outfit and then mine. ‘We’re twins.’

It was an effort not to touch my face. I was blushing furiously. What if she had come in two minutes earlier? Would she have pretended ignorance despite all evidence, just as doggedly as she did now?

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, it’s true, we are.’

That season nearly every woman in London was a twin, the same clothes, the same shoulder-length hair. But Agatha’s suit was authentic Chanel, and her pearls were not fake. She didn’t register these discrepancies with any disdain, if at all. She wasn’t that sort of person, a virtue that backfired when it came to me. Never once did Agatha object to the daughter of a clerk, a mere secretary, entering her social circles. ‘She’s friends with Stan’s daughter,’ Archie had told her. ‘Excellent golfer.’ And that was all the explanation she ever required.

In photographs from this time, Agatha looks much darker, less pretty than she really was. Her eyes were sparkling and blue. She had a girlish sprinkling of freckles across her nose and a face that moved quickly from one expression to the next. Finally, Archie stood to greet her, taking her hand as though she were a business associate. And I decided – the way someone who’s doing something cruel can decide – it’s all to the good: she deserves better than Archie, this pretty and ambitious woman. She deserves someone who’ll collect her in his arms with unabashed adoration and be faithful to her. As guilt crept in to discourage me, I reminded myself that Agatha was born on her feet, and that’s how she’d always land.

She told Archie, likely for the second or third time, that she’d had a meeting with Donald Fraser, her new literary agent. ‘Since I’m in town, I thought we might go to luncheon. Before your weekend away.’

‘I can’t today.’ Archie gestured unconvincingly towards his empty desk. ‘I’ve a mountain of work to get through.’

‘Ah,’ said Agatha. ‘You sure? I’ve booked a table at Simpson’s.’

‘I’m certain,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid you’ve come by for nothing.’

‘Would you like to come with me, Miss O’Dea? A girls’ luncheon?’

I couldn’t bear seeing her rejected twice. ‘Oh, yes. That would be lovely.’

Archie coughed, irritated. Another man might have been nervous, faced with this meeting, wife and lover. But he’d moved past caring. He wanted his marriage over and if that came about from Agatha walking in on us, so be it. While his wife and I lunched he would keep an appointment at Garrard and Company to buy the most beautiful ring, my first real diamond.

‘You must tell me about your new literary agent,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘What an exciting career you have, Mrs Christie.’ This was not flattery. Agatha’s career was leagues more interesting to me than Archie’s work in finance, though she wasn’t well known at this time, not in the way she would come to be. A rising star not quite risen. I envied her.

Agatha put her arm though mine. I accepted the gesture with ease. Nothing came more naturally to me than intimacy with other women. I had three sisters. Agatha’s face set into a smile that managed to be both dreamy and determined. Archie sometimes complained about the weight she’d gained over the past seven years, since Teddy had arrived, but her arm felt thin and delicate. I let her lead me through the offices and out onto the busy London street. My cheeks turned pink from the cold. Agatha released my arm abruptly and brought a hand to her forehead, steadying herself.

‘Are you all right, Mrs Christie?’

‘Agatha,’ she said, her voice sharper than it had been in Archie’s office. ‘Please call me Agatha.’

I nodded. And then proceeded to do what I did every time she made this request – for the bulk of our time that afternoon, I didn’t call her anything at all.



Have you ever known a woman who went on to become famous? Looking back, you can see things in memory, can’t you? About the way she held herself. The determination with which she spoke. To her dying day Agatha claimed not to be an ambitious person. She thought she kept her intensity secret, but I could see it in the way her eyes swept over a room. The way she examined everyone who crossed her line of vision, imagining a backstory she could sum up in a single sentence. Unlike Archie, Agatha always wanted to know about your past. If you didn’t care to reveal it, she’d create something of her own and convince herself it was true.