I Invited Her In. Adele Parks

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СКАЧАТЬ some nosy curtain-twitcher, desperate for the gory details on the death of her marriage.

      I consider redrafting but don’t. I press send without over-thinking the invite.

      She probably won’t accept. After all, she is famous, I don’t doubt she has countless people she would rather stay with. More exciting people than me. Trendy, waiflike women, men with groomed beards and abs. Don’t get me wrong: I love my life, I adore my family and am proud of our home, our own little enclave but, when all’s said and done, we’re not especially interesting to anyone other than each other. We like it that way.

      I have loads to do today even though I’m not working. My at-home days are far busier than the ones in the shop. Even though I have two full-time members of staff and three part-timers reporting to me in a thriving store, it’s never as much work as being at home. However, I find that as I am cleaning the kitchen floor, loading and unloading the washing machine and scrubbing the hard water marks off the shower door, I can’t get Abi out of my mind. I have thought of her often enough over the years but usually, when I’ve done so, I’ve deliberately pushed thoughts of her away. She is intrinsically linked with such a difficult time. No matter how fabulous the result of that time is (and Liam really is a fabulous son) it isn’t easy thinking about being pregnant and having to leave university. I’ve never wanted to think about her. Her path was so different to mine, I just found it easier not to dwell on what might have been.

      But everything is different now.

      Throughout the day, I keep checking my phone to see if she’s responded to my email at the same time as telling myself she absolutely won’t have. A shiver of excitement skitters through my body when I see her name once again in my inbox and I feel jubilant when I read her reply.

      Mel, Angel!

      I’d love to visit! Send me your address. I’ll be with you on 22nd Feb.

      All love, A

      A. Just A. I remember that’s how she’d sign off her notes when we were at uni. Assumptive and intimate all at once. The twenty-second. Thursday. Just three days away. Wow, I’m flattered and excited. She’s coming to see me more or less straight away. A pit-stop in London and then up to see me. I can hardly believe it. Thursday isn’t an ideal evening to have guests – the girls have ballet. Oh well, I suppose they can skip a week. My eyes dart around the hallway where I happened to be standing when I checked my phone for emails. There is a jumble of boots, shoes, sandals and wellingtons tumbling out of an over-full wicker basket in the corner; they look as though they’re making a bid for freedom. We have five coat hooks on the wall, one each. There are about five coats hung and slung on and over each hook. The light grey carpet was a mistake. Who chooses light anything for a family hallway? Well, I did because I saw it in a lifestyle mag and it looked amazing. In all the time we’ve lived here, we’ve never had the carpets cleaned. That’s probably a mistake, too. The paintwork could also do with a freshen up. We’ve got cats – they rub against the walls which, over time, leaves grubby marks. In fact, because of grimy handprints or general wear and tear, most of our rooms look like they’ve been stippled, an effect that hasn’t been popular since the 1980s – and with good reason.

      I’d better get to work.

4

       Abigail

      Abigail was always honest with herself. She’d had enough life experience and counselling to understand and appreciate the value of developing a high level of self-awareness. It was essential to be completely truthful with herself because there was no one else with whom she could ever be completely so. She found people were less enamoured with the truth than they believed themselves to be.

      So, as she packed her suitcases, she had to admit he had never lied to her or misled her. Not about the baby thing. He’d always been very clear, laid out his stall. No babies. Not then, not ever. She’d accepted as much, even told herself it was what she wanted, too. She decided to work hard at her career instead. That was fulfilling. Very much so. For a time. Quite some time. But that hadn’t panned out exactly as she’d thought it would. How she deserved it to. A gap had opened up in her life.

      She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror, puffy eyed, gaunt. She really needed to pull herself together, put some make-up on. She was likely to be recognised at the airport. She was a face. Someone.

      Maybe not a name – people didn’t always remember her name – but certainly a face.

      People were forever saying, ‘I know you from somewhere. No, don’t tell me.’ She’d smile, wait a beat and then she would tell them because it got awkward if they really couldn’t place her or, worse still, mistook her for someone who worked in their hair salon, or whatever. That had happened once or twice. So, she’d smartly say, ‘Oh, you’ve probably seen me on TV.’ Although she’d say it in a way that suggested nonchalance, as though she couldn’t think of anything more obvious, more dull, than the fact she worked in TV. Then they’d whoop, or hug her, squirm, self-conscious about their own ordinariness and her extraordinariness. They’d invariably ask for a selfie.

      People would kill for a job as a chat-show host, a TV presenter. Admittedly, it was only state-wide TV, not nationwide. Abigail’s show ran in the afternoons, rather than at primetime – breakfast or evenings – but still, people would do anything for that job.

      You had to, in fact. Do anything.

      And she had. Anything and everything Rob had asked of her.

      When Abi arrived in the US, she was seen as nothing more than Rob’s wife: a young, extremely attractive, clever-enough wife. Even if she’d had the combined IQs of all the CEOs of the FTSE 100 she probably wouldn’t have been noticed for anything other than her looks – Rob and Abigail didn’t mix with the sort of people who wanted anything more from women than beauty. They thought she was charming. That’s what they said, often: ‘she’s so cute’, ‘so charming’, ‘so sweet’. It was a good thing that the Americans had always loved British accents. It gave her an edge. Stopped her falling into obscurity. Rob’s colleagues and their wives lapped it up. Say, ‘vite-a-min,’ they’d demand. ‘Say sked-ual – no, say tuh-may-toe.’ And she would. She was doing her job. Cute, charming, sweet corporate wife. Even though it wasn’t the 1950s.

      ‘Vitamin, schedule, tomato.’

      ‘Isn’t she just adorable? She should be on TV. Rob, put her on TV,’ they’d say.

      They never asked Rob to perform like that, yet they hung on his every word. So, he wrote the scripts, she read them. She didn’t resent that. She loved it. She was grateful when he did as they suggested, when he put her on TV. The higher he rose, the higher she did. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. She was always telling herself as much.

      He wrote the script for their private lives with the same autocratic approach, and she regurgitated it. Now, with hindsight, as she scrabbled around his desk drawer to retrieve her passport, she wondered whether she was overly willing to be repressed.

      It worked, for quite some time. But then it stopped working because her time ran out. To have had a chance at longevity she would have had to secure an anchor job with one of the five major US broadcast television networks by the time she was thirty. She didn’t manage that. There were younger, thinner, leggier, keener women waiting in the wings. Always. She couldn’t resent it; it was a system she’d played. She’d given it her best shot. It hadn’t panned out. СКАЧАТЬ