Chapter One
I'm sorry, you must think I'm very rude. We've hardly even
been introduced and here I am telling you all about the
awful things that have happened to me.
Let me just give you the briefest outline of myself and
I'll save details like, for example, my first day at
school until later, if we have the time.
Let's see, what should I tell you? Well, my name is Claire
and I'm twenty-nine and, as I mentioned, I've just had my
first child two days ago (a little girl, seven pounds,
four ounces, totally beautiful) and my husband (did I
mention his name is James?) told me about twenty-four
hours ago that he has been having an affair for the past
six months, with -- and get this -- not even his secretary
or someone glamorous from work, but with a married woman
who lives in the apartment two floors below us. I mean,
how suburban can you get! And not only is he having an
affair but he wants a divorce.
I'm sorry if I'm being unnecessarily flippant about this.
I'm all over the place. In a moment I'll be crying again.
I'm still in shock, I suppose. Her name is Denise and I
know her quite well.
Not quite as well as James does, obviously.
The awful thing is she always seemed to be really nice.
She's thirty-five (don't ask me how I know this, I just
do; and at the risk of sounding very sour grapes and
losing your sympathy, she does look thirty-five) and she
has two children and a nice husband (quite apart from my
one, that is). And apparently she's moved out of her
apartment and he's moved out of his (or ours, should I
say) and they've both moved into a new one in a secret
location.
Can you believe it? How dramatic can you get?I know her
husband is Italian, but I really don't think he's likely
to kill the pair of them. He's a waiter, not a Mafia
stooge, so what's he going to do? Black pepper them to
death? Compliment them into a coma? Run them over with the
dessert trolley?
But again, I seem flippant.
I'm not.
I'm heartbroken.
And it's all such a disaster. I don't even know what to
call my little girl. James and I had discussed some names -
- or, in retrospect, I had discussed them and he had
pretended to listen -- but we hadn't decided on anything
definite. And I seem to have lost the ability to make
decisions on my own. Pathetic, I know, but that's marriage
for you. Bang goes your sense of personal autonomy!
I wasn't always like this. Once I was strong-willed and
independent. But that all seems like a long, long time ago.
I've been with James for five years, and we've been
married for three years. And, my God, but I love that man.
Although we had a less than auspicious start, the magic
took hold of us very quickly. We both agree that we fell
in love about fifteen minutes after we met and we stayed
that way.
Or at least I did.
For a long time I never thought I'd meet a man who wanted
to marry me.
Well, perhaps I should qualify that.
I never thought I'd meet a nice man who wanted to marry
me. Plenty of lunatics, undoubtedly. But a nice man, a bit
older than me, with a decent job, good-looking, funny,
kind. You know-one who didn't look at me askance when I
mentioned The Partridge Family, not one who apologized for
not being able to get me a birthday present because his
estranged wife had taken all his salary under a court
maintenance order, not one who made me feel old-fashioned
and inhibited because I got angry when he said that he'd
screwed his ex-girlfriend the night after he screwed me
("My God, you convent girls are so uptight"), not one who
made me feel inadequate because I couldn't tell the
difference between Piat d'Or and Zinfandel (whatever that
is!).
James didn't treat me in any of these unpleasant ways. It
seemed almost too good to be true. He liked me. He liked
almost everything about me.
When we first met we were both living in London. I was
waitress (more of that later) and he was an accountant.
Of all the Tex-Mex joints in all the towns in all the
world, he had to walk into mine. I wasn't a real waitress,
you understand, I had a degree in English, but I went
through my rebellious stage rather later than most, at
about twenty-three. Which is when I thought it might be a
bit of a laugh to give up my permanent, wellish-paid job
in Dublin and go off to the Godless city of London and
live like an irresponsible student.
Which is something I should have done when I was an
irresponsible student. But I was too busy getting work
experience during my summer holidays then, so my
irresponsibility just had to wait until I was good and
ready for it.
Like I always say, there's a time and a place for
spontaneity.
Anyway, I had managed to land myself a job as a waitress
in this highly trendy London restaurant, all loud music
and video screens and minor celebrities.
Well, to be honest, there were more minor celebrities on
the staff then amongst the clientele, what with most of
the staff being out-of-work actors and models and the like.
How I ever got a job there at all is beyond me. Although I
might have been employed as the token Wholesome Waitress.
To begin with I was...
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