Behind Her Eyes

‘You look lovely today,’ Sue says, almost surprised, as I take off my coat and hang it in the staffroom. Adam said the same thing – in the same tone – his small face mildly confused by my silk blouse, new to me from the charity shop, and straightened hair as I shoved toast into his hand before we left for school this morning. Oh God, I’ve made an obvious effort, and I know it. But it’s not for him. If anything it’s against him. War paint. Something to hide behind. Also, I couldn’t get back to sleep and I needed something to do.

Normally, on mornings like this, I’d take Adam to breakfast club and then be first at the clinic and have everyone’s coffee on before they got in. But today, was, of course, one of those days when Adam woke up grumpy and whining about everything, and then couldn’t find his left shoe, and then even though I’d been ready for ages, it was still an irritated rush to get to the school gates on time.

My palms are sweating and I feel a bit sick as I smile. I also smoked three cigarettes on the walk from the school to the clinic. Normally I try not to have any until coffee break time. Well, I say normally. In my head I don’t have any until coffee, in reality I’ve usually smoked one on my way in.

‘Thanks. Adam’s at his dad’s this weekend so I might go for a drink after work.’ I might need a drink after work. I make a note to text Sophie and see if she wants to meet. Of course she will. She’ll be itching to see how this comedy of errors turns out. I try and make it sound casual, but my voice sounds funny to me. I need to pull myself together. I’m being ridiculous. It’s going to be way worse for him than it is for me. I’m not the married one. The pep talk sentences may be true, but they don’t change the fact that I don’t do these things. This is not normal for me like maybe it is for Sophie, and I feel totally sick. I’m a mess of jittering emotions that can’t settle on one thing. This situation may not be my fault, but I feel cheap and stupid and guilty and angry. The first moment of potential romance I’ve had in what feels like for ever and it was fool’s gold. And yet, despite all that, and the memory of his beautiful wife, I also have a nugget of excitement at the prospect of seeing him again. I’m like a ditzy, dithering teenager.

‘They’re all in a meeting until 10.30, or so Elaine upstairs tells me,’ she says. ‘We can relax.’ She opens her bag. ‘And I didn’t forget it was my turn.’ She pulls out two greasy paper bags. ‘Friday bacon butties.’

I’m so relieved that I’ve got a couple of hours’ reprieve, that I take it happily, even though it’s an indication of how mind-numbing my life routine is that this Friday breakfast is a highlight of my week. But still, it is bacon. Some parts of a routine are less demoralising than others. I take a large bite, enjoying the buttery warm bread and salty meat. I’m a nervous eater. Actually, I’m an eater whatever my mood. Nervous eating, comfort eating, happy eating. It’s all the same. Other people get divorced and lose a stone. It worked the other way for me.

We don’t officially start work for another twenty minutes, so we sit at the small table with mugs of tea, and Sue tells me about her husband’s arthritis and the gay couple next door to their house who seem to be constantly having sex, and I smile and let it wash over me and try not to jump every time I see someone’s shadow fall across the doorway from the corridor.

I don’t see the ketchup drop until it’s too late and there’s a bright red dollop on my cream blouse right on my chest. Sue is there immediately, fussing and dabbing at it with tissues and then a damp cloth, but all she achieves is to make a great chunk of the material see-through and there’s still a pale outline of washed-out red. My face is over-heating, and the silk clings to my back. This is the precursor for the rest of the day. I can feel it.

I laugh away her well-meaning attempts to clean me up and go to the toilet and try and get as much of my shirt under the hand dryer as possible. It doesn’t dry it totally, but at least the lace trim of my bra – slightly grey from the wash – is no longer visible. Small mercies.

I have to laugh at myself. Who am I kidding? I can’t do this. I’m more at home discussing the latest storyline of Rescue Bots or Horrid Henry with Adam than trying to look like a modern, sophisticated woman. My feet are already aching in my two-inch heels. I always thought it was something you grew into, that ability to walk perfectly in high heels and always dress well. As it turns out – for me anyway – there was a small phase of that in the nightclubbing years of my twenties, and now it’s mainly jeans and jumpers and Converse with a ponytail, accessorised with life-envy of those who can still be bothered to make the effort. Life-envy of those with a reason to make the effort.

I bet she wears high heels, I think as I adjust my clothes. More fool me for not sticking with trousers and flats.

The phones are quiet this morning, and I distract myself from the clock ticking steadily around to ten thirty by highlighting the case files on the system for Monday’s appointments, and making a list of those coming up in the rest of the week. For some – the more complex cases – he already has copies of their notes, but I want to be seen as efficient, so I make sure the full list is found. Then I print out the various emails that I think might be valuable or important or forgotten by the management, and then also print out and laminate a list of contact numbers for the hospital and police and various other organisations that he might need. It’s actually quite calming. The-man-from-the-bar is fading in my head and being replaced with my-boss, even if his face is mashing up rather alarmingly with old Dr Cadigan, who he’s replaced.

At ten, I go and put the print-outs on his desk and turn the coffee machine on in the corner so there will be a fresh pot waiting. I check that the cleaners have put fresh milk in the small fridge hidden in a cabinet like a hotel mini-bar, and that there’s sugar in the bowl. After that, I can’t help but look at the silver-framed photos on his desk. There are three. Two of his wife standing alone, and an old one of them together. This one draws me in and I pick up it. He looks so different. So young. He can only be maybe early twenties at most. They’re sitting on a large kitchen table and have their arms wrapped around each other and are laughing at something. They look so happy, both so young and carefree. His eyes are locked on her as if she’s the most important thing on the whole planet. Her hair is long, but not pulled back in a bun as it is in the other pictures, and even in jeans and a T-shirt she’s effortlessly beautiful. My stomach knots. I bet she never drops ketchup on her top.

‘Hello?’

I’m so startled when I hear the slight Scottish brogue that I almost drop the photo, and I struggle to straighten it on the desk, nearly unbalancing the neat pile of papers and sending them tumbling to the floor. He’s standing in the doorway, and I immediately want to throw up my bacon roll. Oh God, I’d forgotten how good-looking he is. Almost-blond hair with a shine I’d kill for on my own. Long enough at the front to be able to run your fingers through it, but still smart. Blue eyes that go right through you. Skin you just want to touch. I swallow hard. He’s one of those men. A breathtaking man. My face is burning.

‘You’re supposed to be in a meeting until ten thirty,’ I say, wishing a hole would open in the carpet and suck me down to shame hell. I’m in his office looking at pictures of his wife like some kind of stalker. Oh God.

‘Oh God,’ he says, stealing the words right out from my head. The colour drains from his face and his eyes widen. He looks shocked and stunned and terrified all rolled into one. ‘It’s you.’

‘Look,’ I say, ‘it was really nothing and we were drunk and got carried away and it was only a kiss, and, trust me, I have no intention of telling anyone about it, and I think if we both do our best to forget it ever happened then there’s no reason we can’t just get along and no one will ever know …’ The words are coming out in a gibbering rush and I can’t stop them. I can feel sweat trapped under my foundation as I fluster and overheat.

‘But’ – he’s looking somewhere between confused and alarmed as he quickly closes the door behind him and I can’t blame him – ‘what are you doing here?’

‘Oh.’ In all my rambling, I’ve forgotten to say the obvious. ‘I’m your secretary and receptionist. Three days a week, anyway. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. I was putting some things on your desk and I saw …’ I nod to the pictures. ‘I, well …’ The sentence drains away. I can hardly say I was having a really close look at you and your beautiful wife like a crazy lady would.

‘You’re my secretary?’ He looks as if he’s been punched hard in the guts. ‘You are?’ Maybe not his guts. Maybe somewhere lower. I actually feel a bit sorry for him.

‘I know.’ I shrug, and pull some no doubt godawful comedy face. ‘What are the odds?’

‘There was another woman here when I came in last month to talk to Dr Cadigan. Not you.’

‘Older, slightly uptight-looking? That would be Maria. She does the other two days. She’s semi-retired now, but she’s been here for ever, and Dr Sykes loves her.’

He hasn’t moved much further into the room. He’s clearly having a hard time getting this to sink in.

‘I really am your secretary,’ I say more slowly. Calmly. ‘I’m not a stalker. Trust me, this is not great for me either. I did see you yesterday when you popped in. Briefly. Then I sort of hid.’

‘You hid.’ He pauses. The moment seems endless as he processes all this.

‘Yes,’ I say, before adding to my shame with, ‘in the toilet.’

There’s a long pause after that.

‘To be fair,’ he says eventually, ‘I’d have probably done the same.’

‘I’m not sure both of us hiding in the loo would have served the right purpose.’

He laughs then, a short unexpected sound. ‘No, I guess not. You’re very funny. I remember that.’ He comes behind his desk, looking down at everything I’ve laid out there, and I automatically move out of his way.

‘Anyway, that top print-out is a list of the files you need to go through for Monday. There’s coffee on—’

‘I’m really sorry,’ he says, looking up with those gorgeous blue eyes. ‘You must think I’m a bastard. I think I’m a bastard. I don’t normally – well, I wasn’t there looking for anything, and I shouldn’t have done what I did. I feel terrible. I can’t explain it. I really don’t do that sort of thing, and there are no excuses for my behaviour.’

‘We were drunk, that’s all. You didn’t really do anything. Not really.’

I can’t do this. I remember the shame in his voice as he pushed away from me and walked off in the street, muttering apologies. Maybe that’s why I can’t think too badly of him. It was just a kiss after all. It was only in my stupid brain that it was anything more than that. ‘You stopped, and that counts for something. It’s not a thing. Honestly. Let’s forget it. Start from today. I really don’t want to feel awkward any more than you do.’

‘You hid in the toilet.’ His blue eyes are sharp and warm.

‘Yes, and one way to stop making me feel awkward would be never to mention that again.’ I grin. I still like him. He made a stupid, in the moment, mistake. It could have been worse. He could have come home with me. I think about that for a second. Okay, that would have been great in the short term, but definitely worse in the long.

‘Okay, so friends it is,’ he says.

‘Friends it is.’ We don’t shake on it. It’s way too soon for physical contact. ‘I’m Louise.’

‘David. Nice to meet you. Properly.’ We have another moment of awkward embarrassment, and then he rubs his hands together and glances back down at the desk. ‘Looks like you mean to keep me busy. Are you local by any chance?’

‘Yes. Well, I’ve lived here for over ten years if that counts as local.’

‘You think you could talk me through the area? Problems and hot spots? Social divides, that sort of thing? I wanted to take a drive around, but that’s going to have to wait. I’ve got another meeting this afternoon with someone from the hospital, then early dinner with the other partners tonight.’

‘I can certainly give you a rough outline,’ I say. ‘Layman’s view as it were.’

‘Good. That’s what I want. I’m thinking of doing voluntary outreach work on some weekends, so it would be good to have a resident’s perspective on possible causes of addiction issues that are specific to here. It’s my specialism.’

I’m a bit taken aback. I don’t know any of the other doctors who do outreach. This is an expensive private clinic. Whatever problems our clients have, they don’t tend to suffer from underprivilege, and the partners are all experts in their fields. They take referrals of course, but they don’t go out into the wider community and work for nothing.

‘Well, it’s North London, so in the main it’s a very middle-class area,’ I say. ‘But south of where I live there’s a big estate. There are definite issues there. High youth unemployment. Drugs. That kind of thing.’

He reaches under his desk and pulls up his briefcase, opening it and taking out a local map. ‘You pour the coffee while I make space for this. We can mark out places I need to see.’

We talk for nearly an hour, as I point out the schools and surgeries, and the roughest pubs, and the underpass where there have been three stabbings in a year and where everyone knows not to let their kids walk because it’s where junkies deal drugs and shoot up. I’m surprised at how much I actually know about where I live, and I’m surprised about how much of my life comes out while I talk him through it. By the time he looks at the clock and stops me, not only does he know that I’m divorced, he knows I have Adam and where he goes to school and that my friend Sophie lives in one of the mansion blocks around the corner from the nicest secondary school. I’m still talking when he looks at the clock and then stiffens slightly.

‘Sorry, I need to stop there,’ he says. ‘It’s been fascinating, though.’ The map is covered in Biro marks, and he’s jotted down notes on a piece of paper. His writing is terrible. A true doctor’s scribble.

‘Well, I hope it’s useful.’ I pick up my mug and move away. I hadn’t realised how close together we’d been standing. The awkwardness settles back in.

‘It’s great. Thank you.’ He glances at the clock again. ‘I just need to call my …’ he hesitates. ‘I need to call home.’

‘You can say the word wife, you know.’ I smile. ‘I won’t spontaneously combust.’

‘Sorry.’ He’s more uncomfortable than I am. And he should be really. ‘And thank you. For not thinking I’m a shit. Or at least not showing that you think I’m a shit.’

‘You’re welcome,’ I say.

‘Do you think I’m a shit?’

I grin. ‘I’ll be at my desk if you need me.’

‘I deserve that.’

As things go, I think as I get back to my desk and wait for my face to cool, that could have been a whole lot worse. And I’m not at work again until Tuesday. Everything will be normal by then, our small moment brushed under the carpet of life. I make a pact with my brain not to think about it at all. I’m going to have a decadent weekend of me. I’ll lie in. Eat cheap pizza and ice cream, and maybe watch a whole box set of something on Netflix.

Next week is the last week of school and then the long summer holidays lie ahead, and my days will be mainly awful playdates, using my salary for my share of the childcare, and trying to find new ways to occupy Adam that aren’t giving him an iPad or phone to play endless games on, and feeling like a bad parent while I try and get everything else done. But at least Adam is a good kid. He makes me laugh every day, and even in his tantrums I love him so much my heart hurts.

Adam’s the man in my life, I think, glancing up at David’s office door and idly wondering what sweet nothings he’s whispering to his wife, I don’t need another one.