The First Mistake(85)
He turns on a kilowatt smile. ‘Honestly, nothing. That woman, your friend . . .’
‘Her name’s Beth,’ hisses Alice. ‘Why do you find that so hard to say?’
‘Beth,’ he says, slowly and deliberately, ‘looks just like a girl I used to know.’
‘An ex-girlfriend?’ presses Alice.
Nathan’s head drops. ‘Yes, actually she was. Back when I was in my early twenties.’
‘So what happened?’
‘We were together for a few months, had a great time, but then . . .’ His voice trails off.
Alice waits. She’s not going to help him out.
‘Then we split up, and about a year or so later, I heard she’d died in a car crash.’ He looks up at Alice imploringly, but she feels nothing.
‘Funny, you’ve not mentioned that before.’
‘It’s not something that’s ever come up,’ he says. ‘The woman downstairs just looks so much like her – that’s all.’
‘Beth,’ Alice says, her voice strained.
‘Yes, Beth,’ he repeats. ‘It gave me quite a fright.’
‘So much so that it made you drop the glass you were holding?’
‘Well, yes.’
Alice watches as he takes his trousers off and finds another pair in his immaculately organized wardrobe.
‘So, you and Beth don’t know each other?’ Alice can’t believe that she’s pursuing this line of questioning. That she could honestly think that her second husband is also having an affair with her best friend. Because that’s what she’s thinking, if she’ll just allow herself to admit it.
‘What? No, of course not.’
‘You’ve never seen her before in your life?’
‘Well, I don’t know, maybe. If she’s perhaps been at school when I’ve been there . . . I don’t know.’
‘You’d better go and get your daughter a new birthday cake,’ Alice says, her eyes narrowed.
‘Yes,’ he says, raising his eyebrows and attempting to laugh. ‘Honestly, you couldn’t make it up, could you?’
No, Nathan, you couldn’t, thinks Alice.
41
‘Okay, so are we all here?’ asks Alice, commanding the attention of the team as they gather in her office the following morning.
They nod their heads in unison.
‘As you know, we’re completing on Japan this afternoon, so it’s going to get pretty hectic around here over the next few weeks, and I just want to double-check you’re all on board and ready.’
Mumblings of agreement reverberate around the office and Lottie lets out a squeaky whoop of excitement and then covers her mouth, as if it was entirely involuntary. Alice smiles, thankful for the humour it injects into the otherwise tense proceedings.
‘You may well get excited, Lottie, because you and I are going out to Japan at the end of next week to see the site.’
Alice watches with glee as Lottie’s mouth drops open.
‘When . . . when was that decided?’ stutters Nathan.
About the same time that I decided to take back control of my life, Alice thinks. Which, if she hazarded a guess, happened somewhere between six and seven o’clock last night. Right around the time that Beth had given her a kiss on the cheek and whispered. ‘Let’s never allow a man to get between us again.’
After Nathan had gone to bed early with a migraine, apparently brought on by the party, Alice had poured herself a large glass of red wine and sat at the dining table, with the lights dimmed. She’d imagined herself sitting there for hours, as her brain frantically tried to work out what was going on. But as she waited for the normal irrational thoughts to start mocking her, her mind became perfectly calm. Suddenly, the muddied puddles were replaced with crystal clear pools that she could see her reflection in, looking like the person she wanted to be. Happy and content, without the artificial support props of alcohol and antidepressants.
She used to be that person once, back when life was simpler, before she allowed men to cloud her judgement and dictate her path. Well, no more. She was not going to allow the men she loved, who she thought loved her back, define who she was, and what she could be. This was her life and she was going to take it by the horns and own it.
She’d picked up her full glass and poured it into the sink, mesmerized by the swirls of dark burgundy as the water carried what had become her cornerstone away. Surprised by the power that surged through her as she did so, she systematically opened the remaining six bottles, some she’d only bought earlier that day, and drained them.
When she went up to bed, her tablets, which made her sleep just that little bit easier and smoothed out the rough edges of her paranoia, called out to her from where she hid them behind the bubble bath she never used in her medicine cabinet. She allowed them to goad her for a little while as she alternated between looking at them, thinking she needed them, to looking at herself in the mirror and knowing she didn’t.
She credits both those decisions with how in control she feels this morning, and the team seem buoyed by this new sense of confidence and authority. Everybody, it seems, apart from Nathan, who is still sitting there in a haze of confusion.
‘I’m also going to organize some meetings with fabric houses and furniture makers,’ Alice goes on. ‘See if we can make some new contacts, build new relationships. We’re going to need people onside once we get started.’