I held his hand under cold water, made him a cup of tea and asked every hour or so if he was feeling better. For days afterwards, I caught him examining it, and eavesdropped on his phone conversation to Poppy: ‘It could have been very nasty.’ In due course, the scab fell away leaving a scimitar-shaped scar. ‘Poppy tells me,’ Nathan was pleased with the information, ‘that this kind of burn is listed in medical textbooks as “Housewife’s Syndrome”.’
I scrutinized my unscarred wrists. ‘What does that make you, Nathan?’
‘Experienced at ironing,’ he replied evenly.
I returned downstairs. Nathan was not in the study, so I went into the sitting room. He had drawn up a chair by the french windows and was staring out into the darkness towards the lilac tree. He was quite, quite still.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. In the kitchen, the timer shrilled. I took a step into the room. ‘Nathan?’
He sighed, stirred. ‘Yes?’ He looked at me. ‘What do you want?’
After supper Nathan rolled up his shirtsleeves and tackled the glasses that were too delicate for the dishwasher. It was late, the heating had gone off and gooseflesh colonized my arms.
Nathan worked in his usual methodical way, running fresh hot water into each glass and setting it on the draining-board. I tipped the hot water into the sink, rubbed them with a cloth and placed them on a tray.
‘Nathan, what would you say if I went back to work full-time?’
‘That again,’ said Nathan.
‘That again,’ I echoed.
Years ago Timon, my boss, had called me into his office at Vistemax. On the door, a plaque read Editor, Weekend Digest I remember in particular the emphatic curve of the ‘D’. Timon, who modelled himself on Gordon Gekko, was in a pinstriped suit and braces. ‘Look, we want you to take over from Rose.’ He had never bothered much with preliminaries.
My skirt was short, the skin of my legs was buffed and polished. My heels were high, my hair lustrous with youth. With the aid of kohl and grey eye-shadow, my eyes were darkly inviting. I had dreams of domination – not the sexual kind, but of being able to manage my life effortlessly. ‘Are you sacking Rose, Timon?’
He sent me his best Gekko look. ‘You know perfectly well that that’s what you’ve been angling for.’
The previous evening, Nathan had slipped into my bed, shuddering with emotion. He had left Rose. At that point he had had no intention of marrying me, but he craved the transcendence of the love affair. He gazed so deeply into my eyes that he was in danger of X-raying my skull, and I grew uncomfortable with the intensity. Nathan was funny, tender and much more polite than I had been used to in my lovers. ‘Do you mind?’ ‘May I?’ As we moved this way and that on my cheap, inadequate double bed, sealing his arrival, I told myself that Rose had not deserved to keep him.
Timon drew a perfect circle on his notepad. ‘Six months’ probation. Yes or no?’
‘Yes.’
I quit his office high-wired with nerves and exhilaration. Abraham Maslow had been correct when he drew up his pyramid and formulated an individual’s hierarchy of need: when food, warmth, safety and sex had been seen to, it was vital to have the respect of colleagues. And respect for oneself, of course.
Six months later, I received one of those letters: Tour probationary period has now run to its close. While we have appreciated your efforts on the Books Pages, we have decided not to appoint you. Perhaps you will consider the alternatives… etc’
This time Timon didn’t bother to call me into the office.
It took me a while to decide where to file this record of my failure. Eventually, I slotted it into ‘Family History’ in Nathan’s immaculate files, fitting it between – chronologically – the photographs of Poppy’s surprise wedding in Thailand, and the christening of Jilly and Sam’s Frieda. Nathan demanded to know why I had put it there, and I told him there was no point in not facing up to the fact that I’d been sacked. He lost his temper, cursed Vistemax and raged round the room. I watched him, my heart galloping under my pregnant bump. For Nathan, life was no longer obedient and tidy, and his family had lost its shape. I knew then that his regrets were for the loss of symmetry as much as his guilt at having cut it into bits.
Nathan placed the penultimate glass on the draining-board. Foam flecked his forearms, and his fingers were rosy. ‘Your timing, Minty. It’s late.’ Pause. ‘Why?’
Again, I recollected Deb’s nasty expression. ‘I don’t think part-time works.’
He pulled out the plug. The greasy water churned away. ‘I know it doesn’t, but the boys need you. It seems to me that you have a good balance with what you’ve got.’
‘I need to work and I think I’d do better at Paradox if I was full-time.’
He nodded, and wiped down the draining-board with a cloth. ‘You see that as your priority?’
‘I do. It’ll be OK, Nathan, I promise. It’s not so difficult. Hundreds of women do it.’ I slid my arms round his waist and made him turn to face me. ‘Surely you’re not surprised?’
‘No.’ He moved out of my reach. ‘I had an idea you might be thinking along those lines.’
Why hadn’t he said something? ‘Don’t make me sound like a monster who abandons her children. I need to do something properly. You do see?’ I thought of the ideas landing in my lap. I would nurture them, make them grow and watch them fly.
‘Don’t you put your heart and soul into your sons?’ Nathan gave me a long, slow appraisal, in which all our differences were reflected. ‘I’m tired.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Let’s go to bed.’
I tried to read beyond the set look on his face. What could I say to dissolve them? Somewhere – and I could put my finger on it – I had lost my hold on the essential Nathan, the one who had tumbled so willingly into my grasp.
I turned off the lights one by one, and the kitchen slid into darkness. ‘I’ve decided, Nathan.’
‘Well, then,’ he said, from the doorway, ‘you’ve decided.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I said. ‘Don’t make it sound as if I plan to murder you all.’
With that he swung back to me. ‘And you,’ his anger broke through the fatigue, ‘are never satisfied.’ He checked himself and when he spoke again it was with a low, wooing voice. ‘Minty, why can’t you just get on with what we’ve got? It’s good enough, isn’t it?’ He pulled me to him and buried his face in my hair. ‘Let’s not quarrel over this.’
Quarrelling spelt another sleepless night. It meant what the self-help manuals called ‘a session to settle the issues’. It meant the whole question of my work spiralling from a minor problem into a nuclear disaster. I kissed Nathan’s cheek. ‘Let’s not.’
4
Last night Rose was on television. Granted, it was one of the lesser-known digital channels, but still…
Nathan was at a Vistemax dinner, one of the many in the run-up to Christmas. On those occasions, he rolled home smelling of cigars and brandy, often with a chocolate mint in his pocket. ‘Mints for Minty.’ Tender, and pleased with himself, he would urge me to eat this fruit that had fallen from the tree of corporate life.
In the interim, I sat on the sofa with a tray in my lap and the opening credits of Rose Lloyd’s Wonders of the World for company. The twins were asleep and Eve had gone out.
I had known about the programme. Poppy had made a point of telling me about it when she phoned to ask us to Sunday lunch. ‘It’s so exciting. Mum put up this idea of presenting her Seven Wonders of the World, and they let her have more or less free rein.’ With my experience of television production companies I knew this was an exaggeration, but you could never accuse Poppy of forgetting whose side she was on. ‘She’s been all over. It’s amazing.’