Paris for One and Other Stories

  "Not bad." Every evening after work, Greg travels the short journey to his father's house in order to take him a hot meal. "The car's not right, though."

  "Don't say that!" she wails.

  "I know. I think the starter motor is going. Look," he says, registering her expression. "Don't panic. I'll pop it into Mike's, see if he can give us a good price."

  She does not mention the coat.

  The girls in Marketing do not fret about starter motors or heating bills. They still disappear at lunchtime, returning to show off their purchases with the steel-eyed acquisitiveness of a hunter returning with a trophy hide. They arrive on Monday mornings bearing tales of city breaks in Paris and Lisbon, eat out weekly at the pizza restaurant (Evie insists that, really, she's quite happy with her cheese sandwiches). She tries not to feel resentful. Two of them don't have children; Felicity has a husband who earns three times what she does. I have Greg and the girls, Evie tells herself firmly, and we are all healthy, and we have a roof over our heads, and that is an awful lot more than most people have. But sometimes when she hears them talking about Barcelona or showing off yet another pair of shoes, her jaw clenches so hard she fears for her tooth enamel.

  "I need a new coat," she tells Greg finally. It bursts out of her, anguished, like someone admitting an infidelity.

  "You've got loads of coats, surely."

  "Nope. I've had this one four years. Then there's just my mackintosh and that black one I got off eBay, where the sleeve fell apart."

  Greg shrugs. "So? You need a coat, go buy a coat."

  "But the only one I like is expensive."

  "How expensive?"

  She tells him and watches him blanch. Greg thinks that spending more than six quid on a haircut is a sign of insanity. The downside of her running the family's accounts for their entire married life is that his cost thermostat is still set somewhere in the mid-eighties.

  "Is that a . . . designer coat?"

  "No. Just a good wool coat."

  He is silent. "There's Kate's school trip. And my starter motor."

  "I know. It's okay. I'm not going to buy it."

  The next morning she crosses the road when she walks to work, just so she cannot see it. But the coat has lodged itself firmly in her mind's eye. She sees it every time she catches her fingers in her ripped lining. She sees it when Felicity returns from lunch with a new coat (red, silk lining) of her own. It feels somehow symbolic of everything that has gone wrong with their lives.

  "We'll get you a coat," says Greg on Saturday when he watches her remove her arm from its sleeve with excessive care. "I'm sure we can find one you like."

  They stop in front of the shop window, and she looks at him mutely. He squeezes her arm. They walk on through several more shops and finally to Get The Look, a store her daughters like; it is full of "fun" fashion, the shop assistants are all apparently twelve and chew gum, and the music is deafening. Greg normally hates shopping but seems to sense how down she is and has adopted an uncharacteristic cheer. He rifles through the racks, holds up a dark blue coat with a fake-fur collar. "Look--it's just like that one you like! And it's only"--he peers at the label--"twenty-nine pounds!"

  She allows him to slide it onto her, and she looks at herself in the mirror.

  The coat is slightly too tight under the arms. The collar is nice, but she suspects it will look matted, like a geriatric cat, within weeks. The cut seems to stretch and sag in just the wrong places. The wool mix is mostly synthetic.

  "You look gorgeous," Greg says, smiling.

  Greg would say she looked gorgeous if she were wearing prison scrubs. She hates this coat. She knows that every time she puts it on, it will feel like a silent rebuke. Forty-three years old and you're wearing a cheap coat from the teenagers' shop.

  "I'll think about it," she says, and puts it back on the hanger.

  Lunchtimes have become a kind of torture. Today the girls in Marketing are booking tickets for a group outing, a resurrected boy band last popular fifteen years ago. They are gathered around a computer screen, checking seat positions.

  "Fancy it, Evie? Girls' night out? Come on, it'll be a laugh."

  She looks at the ticket prices: seventy-five pounds each, plus transport.

  "Not me." She smiles. "I never much liked them the first time around."

  It is a lie, of course. She had adored them. She stomps home, allowing the coat only the briefest glance. She feels childish, mutinous. And then, as she walks up the little driveway, she sees Greg's legs sticking out from under the car.

  "What are you doing out here? It's raining."

  "I thought I'd have a go at the car myself. Save a few bob."

  "But you know nothing about cars."

  "I downloaded some stuff off the Internet. And Mike said he'd take a look afterward, to check that I've done everything right."

  She gazes at him, and her heart sags slightly with love. He always has been resourceful.

  "Have you been to your dad's?"

  "Yeah. I got the bus."

  Evie stares at her husband's soaked, blackened trousers and sighs. "I'll make him a casserole so that if you can't get there for a couple of days, he'll still have something to eat."

  "You're a star." He blows her a kiss with oily fingers.

  Perhaps picking up on her subdued mood, the girls are sweet over supper. Greg is preoccupied, gazing at printed diagrams of engine innards. Evie chews on her macaroni and cheese and tells herself there are worse things than not being able to afford the coat you really want. She remembers her mother exhorting her to "think of the starving children in Africa" while she pushed mutinously at the greens on her plate.

  "I'll get that twenty-nine-pound coat tomorrow. If it's all right with you."

  "You looked lovely in it." Greg kisses her head. She can see from his face that he knows how much she hates it. When the girls have left the table, he reaches out a hand and says softly, "Things will change, you know." She hopes it is in the way that he means.

  Felicity has a new handbag. Evie tries to ignore the distant commotion as it is pulled from its box, birthed from its cotton cover, and held up for the others to admire--the kind of bag that costs a month's salary, the kind you have to go onto a waiting list for the privilege of purchasing. Evie pretends to be absorbed by spreadsheets so that she doesn't have to look. She is embarrassed by the waves of envy that steal over her as she hears the oohs and aahs of admiration. She doesn't even like handbags. She just envies Felicity the financial security that enables her to buy something so expensive without even a pang of anxiety. She thinks twice before paying for a plastic carrier right now.

  But it does not stop there. Myra has ordered a new sofa. The girls discuss their forthcoming night out. Felicity sets her bag on top of her desk and makes jokes about loving it more than a baby.

  Evie heads for Get The Look at lunchtime. She walks blindly, her head dipped, telling herself it is just a coat. Only a shallow person believed that what you wore said anything about you, surely? She counts her blessings like a mantra on one hand. And then she stops outside the other boutique, halted by the big red sign in the window. SALE. Her heart gives an unexpected lurch.

  She is inside, her heart beating, refusing to listen to the little voice in her head.

  "The blue wool coat," she says to the assistant. "How much is it reduced by?"

  "Everything in the window is half price, madam."

  Ninety pounds. Yes, it's still expensive, but it's half price. Surely that counts for something? "I'll have the size twelve," she says before reason can seep in.

  The assistant returns from the racks as Evie is pulling her credit card from her bag. It's a beautiful coat, she tells herself. It will last for years. Greg will understand.

  "I'm so sorry, madam. The size twelve has gone. And that was our last one."

  "What?"

  "I'm so sorry."

  Evie is deflated. She gazes over at the window and slides her purse back into her bag. She raises a
small, defeated smile. "Never mind. It's probably just as well." She does not go on to Get The Look. Right now she would rather stick with last year's coat.

  "Hey, you."

  She is hanging up her coat when Greg puts his head around the door. She closes her eyes as he kisses her.

  "You're wet."

  "It's raining."

  "You should have told me. I'd have come and picked you up."

  "Is the car working?"

  "For now. Mike said I actually did a good job. How amazing am I?"

  "Completely amazing."

  She holds him tightly for a minute, then walks through to the comforting fug of her kitchen. One of the girls has been making cookies, and Evie inhales the leftover scent of baking. This is what matters, she tells herself.

  "Oh. And there's something for you on the table."

  Evie glances over and sees the bag. She stares at Greg.

  "What's this?"

  "Open it."

  She lifts the side of the bag and peers inside. She freezes.

  "Don't panic. It's from Dad. For all the meals."

  "What?"

  "He says he can't keep accepting your food unless you let him give something back. You know what he's like. I told him about the coat, and you wouldn't believe it--there was only a bloody sale on. We picked it up at lunchtime."

  "Your dad bought me a coat?"

  "Don't get all tearful. I picked it out, and he paid for it. He reckoned it was the equivalent of thirty steak pies and twenty of your crumbles. He says it's actually pretty good value, given how much you do for him."

  He and the girls exchange looks. Evie has abruptly started laughing, while simultaneously wiping tears from her eyes.

  "Yeah, all right, Mum," says Letty. "No need to get emotional. It's only a coat."

  Evie walks to work. She is early; the office is almost empty. Felicity disappears to the ladies' to do her makeup, and Evie hums as she drops the marketing budgets on her desk. As she passes, she sees a statement sticking out from under the designer bag and steps back, checking to see whether it refers to a company account. It had been drilled into them at last week's meeting that no financial information is to be left out overnight. But as she looks more closely, she sees it's personal: a credit-card statement. Evie glimpses the total and blinks.

  But it really is five figures.

  "Are you coming out?" says Felicity at lunchtime. "We thought we'd try that Thai place. You can show off your new coat!"

  Evie thinks for a minute, then pulls her lunch from her bag. "Not today," she says. "But thanks anyway."

  As they leave, she turns and carefully straightens her coat on the back of her chair, smoothing the collar. And even though she is not usually fond of cheese sandwiches, Evie thinks that they taste oddly delicious.

  Thirteen Days with John C

  She had almost walked straight past it. For the last hundred yards, Miranda had been walking with a kind of absentminded determination, half wondering what to cook that night. She had run out of potatoes.

  It was not as if she were diverted by much on this route anymore. Every night after she returned home from work, while Geoff sat glued to yet another "unmissable" football match (Croatia versus some African country tonight), she would put on her sneakers and walk three-quarters of a mile along the footpath that ran beside the common. It stopped her from niggling at Geoff, while showing him that she did have a life without him. When he bothered to look up from the television, that is.

  So she had almost ignored the distant ringing sound, subconsciously filing it with the car horns, the sirens, the other background noises of the city. But when it sounded shrilly, close by, she'd glanced behind her and, registering that there was nobody else around, slowed and followed the sound down to the bushes. And there it was, half hidden in the long grass--a mobile phone.

  Miranda Lewis stood and looked down the empty path in front of her, then picked it up--the same model as her own. In the second it took her to register this, the ringing stopped. She was debating whether to leave it somewhere more visible when a chiming chord announced the arrival of a text message. It was from "John C."

  She glanced around her, feeling oddly furtive. Then she reasoned--it could be the owner, asking the finder to return it, and after a brief hesitation she clicked on it and opened it:

  Where U darling? it read. It's been 2 days!!! Miranda stared at it and then, frowning, tucked it into her pocket and began to walk. There was no point leaving it in the grass. She would work out what to do when she got home.

  Miranda, her best friend, Sherry, liked to remind her, was once a bit of a fox. If anyone else had emphasized the "once" bit quite as much, Miranda might have been offended, but, as Sherry added, twenty years ago boys had actually genuflected at her feet. Miranda's daughter, Andrea, smirked when Sherry said this, as if the idea of her mother's being remotely attractive to anyone were hilarious. But Sherry went on and on about it because Sherry was outraged by Geoff's lack of appreciation.

  Every time Sherry joined her on the evening walk, she would list Geoff's faults, comparing him with her Richard. Richard got sad if Sherry left a room. Richard organized "us" time every Friday for the two of them. Richard left love notes on her pillow. That's because you never had kids, you earn more than he does, and Richard had an unsuccessful hair weave, Miranda thought, although she never said it aloud.

  But these last eighteen months, she had begun to hear Sherry's views a little differently. Because, if she allowed herself to think about it honestly, Geoff had begun to irritate her. The way he snored. The way he always had to be reminded to empty the kitchen bin, even when it was visibly overflowing. The way he said plaintively, "There's no milk!" as if the milk fairy had not paid a visit, even though she worked just as many hours as he did. The way his hand would snake across her on a Saturday night, as routine as his washing of the car, but with possibly less affection.

  Miranda knew she was lucky to have a marriage that had lasted twenty-one years. She believed there was very little in life that could not be solved by a brisk walk and a dose of fresh air. She had been walking two and a half miles every day for the last nine months.

  Back in the kitchen, a mug of tea beside her, she had, after the briefest struggle with her conscience, opened the message again.

  Where U darling? It's been 2 days!!!

  Its awful punctuation and abbreviation were somehow offset by the desperation within. She wondered whether to call John C and explain what had happened, how she'd come across the phone, but there was something in the intimacy of the message that made it feel like an intrusion.

  The owner's phone numbers, she thought. I'll scroll through, and I'll find her. But there was nothing in the list of names. No clue except for John C. It all felt odd. I don't want to call him, she thought suddenly. She felt unbalanced by all this raw emotion, as if someone had intruded into her safe little house, her haven. She would hand the phone in at the police station, she decided, and then she registered another icon: Diary. And there it was: tomorrow's date, with "Call travel agent." Below: "Hair, Alistair Devonshire 2 p.m."

  The hairdresser had been easy to find; the name had sounded familiar, and as she looked it up in the directory, she realized she must have passed it many times. A discreetly expensive salon, off the high street. She would ask the receptionist to ask their two-o'clock booking if she'd lost a phone.

  Two things happened that made Miranda falter in her resolve. The first was the fact that, seated on the bus in traffic, she had really very little to do except look at the stored pictures. And there he was, a smiling, dark-haired man, grinning into a mug, his eyes lifted in some intimate moment: John C. She glanced at more messages. Just to see if there were any clues, of course. Nearly all were from him.

  Sorry could not call last night. W in foul mood, think looking for clues. Thought of you all night.

  Can see you in your dress, my Scarlet Woman. The way it moves against yr skin.

  Can you get away Th
urs? Have told W am at conference. Dreaming of my lips on your skin. And then a couple more that made Miranda Lewis, a woman who believed there was little in life that could surprise her, thrust the phone into her bag and pray that no one else could see the flaming of her cheeks.

  She was standing in the reception area, her ears filled with the drone of a dozen hair dryers, already regretting her decision to come, when the woman approached her.

  "Do you have an appointment?" she said. Her hair, a sleek aubergine color, stuck up in unlikely tufts, and her eyes expressed her complete lack of interest in Miranda's answer.

  "No," said Miranda. "Er . . . do you happen to have someone coming in at two o'clock?"

  "You're in luck. She canceled. Kevin can fit you in." She turned away. "I'll just get you a gown."

  Miranda was left seated, staring at her own reflection in the mirror: a slightly stunned-looking woman with the beginnings of a double chin and mousy hair that she hadn't had time to tidy since climbing off the bus.

  "Hello."

  Miranda started as a young man appeared behind her.

  "What can I do for you? Just a trim?"

  "Oh. Um. Actually, this has been a bit of a mistake. I only meant to . . ."

  At that moment her phone pinged, and with a muffled apology she rummaged in her bag to get it. She pressed TEXT MESSAGE and jumped slightly. The phone she had pulled out was not hers.

  Been thinking about last time. You make my blood sing.

  "All right, now? I've got to be honest, sweetheart. That's not the best style for you." He picked up a limp lock of hair.

  "Really." Miranda stared at the message, meant for the very person sitting in this chair. You make my blood sing.

  "You want to go with something else? Shall we freshen up your look a bit? What do you think?"

  Miranda hesitated. "Yes," she said, looking up at the woman in the mirror.

  To her knowledge she had never made Geoff's blood sing. He did occasionally tell her she looked nice, but it always seemed like something he felt he should say than something he really meant. It was actually the Arsenal center forward who really made Geoff's blood sing; quite often he would be down in front of the television thumping the carpet with excitement.