The Adultery Club (4 page)

Despairingly I tug the shingle at the bare nape of my neck. How long does it take hair to grow? Five millimeters a month? I’ll be an old maid before I look presentable again. No man is going to go near me, I’ll turn into a dyke divorce lawyer, I’ll never have sex again except with hairy women wearing Birkenstocks. Maybe I’ll join the Taliban. At least if you’re stuck under one of those black sheets no one’s going to know if you have spots or a bad hair day.

The moment I rejoin Amy, she starts on again about Terry, and I wonder if she even noticed I was gone.
Dear God, if I ever get a boyfriend again, which appears to be increasingly unlikely, please strike me down and cover me with unsavory rashes if I ever end up like this
.

I glance at my watch. I should be heading over to Fisher Raymond Lyon for the old sod’s retirement party now, anyway. Hardly the most exciting Friday night option—although sadly the best offer I have on the table as of right now—but I couldn’t exactly turn him down when he invited me at my bloody job interview. And it probably
is
a good
idea to “meet everyone in an informal setting” before I start there next week. See them all with their hair down—or even their pants, if what I’ve heard about family lawyers is true.

Astonishingly, given my current run of luck, it’s actually stopped raining by the time we finish our drinks and leave. I walk with Amy to the tube station—resisting the uncharitable but reasonable urge to throw her under a train—and then carry on alone down Holborn toward Fisher’s, my breath frosting in the icy night air.

It’s a five-minute walk that in these heels takes me twenty, so it’s past seven by the time I get to the office block that houses the law firm. To my surprise, the entire building is in near-total darkness. I press my nose to the opaque glass front door: Even the security guard has buggered off for the night. I’m puzzled: Fisher told me the party was here at seven, I’m sure of it.

As I straighten up to leave, someone shoves the door open from the inside, almost knocking me out. The suit doesn’t even glance at me as I mutter something about an appointment and slip into the warm foyer before the door slams shut. I rub my bruised temples. Lucky I’m not a frigging terrorist, you supercilious git.

I take the lift up to the fourth floor and squint—a little more cautiously this time—through the glass porthole in the door to the Fisher offices. Just the cleaner, moochily waving a duster over the receptionist’s desk.
Shit. Now what?

I wait a few moments, then irritably thump the lift button to go back down. Looks like it’s just me, my remote, and a Lean Cuisine tonight, then. Marvelous. I’m having the most misspent misspent youth since Mother Teresa.

I hit the button again. Someone must be loading the lift on the second floor; it’s been stuck there since forever. The
back of my neck prickles, and I shiver. Offices at night creep me out. Too many thrillers where the girl gets it behind the filing cabinets. All those shadows—

The door suddenly opens behind me and I jump about fifteen feet.

A lawyer strides out of Fisher’s and is almost through the stairwell door before he even notices I’m there. He pauses, outstretched hand still on the chrome push bar.

“Can I help you?” he asks curtly.

“I’m looking for Fisher Raymond Lyon. Am I on the right floor?”

“Yes, but I’m afraid the office is closed for the night. Did you want to make an appointment?”

“Oh, I’m not a client,” I say indignantly. Shit, do I look like a sad divorcée? “I’m a solicitor. My name’s Sara Kaplan—I’m starting work here next Monday.”

“Ah, yes, of course.” He switches his briefcase to his left hand and sticks out his right, practically breaking my fingers with his grip. Right back at you, I think, squeezing his hand as hard as I can. “Nicholas Lyon, one of the partners. I’m afraid I was detained on a difficult case in Leeds when my colleagues interviewed you; I do apologize. I understand you come highly recommended from your previous firm.”

News to me. I didn’t realize they were so keen to get rid of me. “Thank you. I’m very much looking forward to working here.”

“Good, good. Well, welcome to the firm. I’ll look forward to seeing you on Monday.”

God, he’s anal, he couldn’t be more restrained if he was strapped to a gurney—but bizarrely, he’s kind of sexy, too. Can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the mouth: very full lips, and a kind of Douglas dent in the chin. Good-looking
too, though he’s quite old: forty at least. And clothes that went out with the ark. Suspenders, for Christ’s sake! But at least he’s tall. And that mouth. I bet he’d give great head if someone taught him right—

“Miss Kaplan, did you just want to drop off some paperwork, or was there something else?”

My cheeks burn as if he can read my mind. I realize my hand is floating aimlessly near my shorn neck again, and quickly turn the gesture into an earring fiddle. My lobes are going to fall off if I don’t get used to this haircut soon. “Um. Well, it’s just that Mr. Fisher invited me to his leaving party, and I thought it might be nice to meet everyone before Monday—”

“Oh, I see. Yes, of course. It’s not here, though, it’s over at the Italian restaurant across the road. I’m just going over there myself.”

He presses the button and we stand staring in mutual fascination at the steel door while the lift takes its own sweet time. Well, this is fun. I’ve felt less awkward playing Twister. He’s kind of gawking at me out of the corner of his eye, probably wondering why the fuck his colleagues hired me and vowing never to go away and leave them to their own devices again. I can tell I am
so
not his kind of woman. Bet he likes them small and dainty, with long girly hair and little nubbin breasts. He’s just got that old-fashioned air about him. Poker-straight back like he’s ex-military, and that nondescript short-but-not-too-short haircut my father’s had since before I was born. At least he’s still got hair, I suppose; actually it’s thick and dark, it’d probably be curly too if he’d just let it grow a bit. And his eyes are amazing; they’re a rather boring, wishy-washy gray-blue color, but they scream
“bedroom!” Mind you, the rest of him is so buttoned-up I bet he’d have a heart attack if he knew.

Surreptitiously I clock his left hand.
Naturellement
. I guarantee the wife’s never worked. I can see it all now: she probably started out a size eight but is more like a sixteen now, irons and starches his shirts by hand, cooks him homemade steak-and-kidney pie and has sex by numbers every Saturday night while she plans the menu for their next dinner party. Two preteen kids, boy and girl, of course, unremarkable private schools, tennis and violin lessons, newish Volvo on the drive, one modest skiing holiday a year—upmarket but not
too
smart—and two weeks every summer somewhere sunny but not packaged: northern Cyprus, maybe Malta. God, save me from death by domesticity.

The lift finally arrives and naturally he waits for me to go first, shooting me this freaky look as if I’m an alien who’s just pitched up on his front lawn after a short sojourn at Roswell. I’d love to get in his trousers just to shake him up a bit. I bet once you got him going he could be a dirty bastard in bed; the funniest part would be watching him find out.

Clearly I am never going to get the chance to put my theory to the test. Lyon edges to the far side of the lift, puts a London bus width between us as we cross the road, and shoots off to the far side of the room the moment we reach the restaurant. Either he’s terrified of women or the radioactive waste I ate for breakfast is repeating on me.

I grab a glass of tepid house white from a passing waiter. From the look of it, the law firm has taken over the restaurant for the night. Most of the tables have been pushed back out of the way, which means everyone’s standing around in self-conscious knots not knowing quite how to juggle drink,
canapés, and handshakes. The knack, I’ve discovered, is not to bother with the canapés.

I’m just reaching for my second glass when the old guy, Fisher, pounces from behind a pillar covered with plastic grapes. Bloody lucky he’s leaving, I think, as the dirty git kisses me on the cheek and cops a quick feel of my bum at the same time. Hasn’t he heard of sexual harassment suits? Mind you, I suppose you take it where you can get it when you hit sixty and bugger the risk.

I network for a bit, letting Fisher’s paw roost between my shoulder blades as he introduces me first to a fiftyish battle-ax called Joan Bryant, their scary-looking “sleeping” partner—she should be so lucky, she’s got a face like a slapped arse—and then to David Raymond, a rather skittish lawyer who looks younger than me but is probably early thirties. You can tell just by looking at him that never in a month of Sundays would he ever be called Dave. I’m guessing his father was the original Raymond on the firm’s letterhead.

The conversation turns to the pig’s ear the Government has made of its latest legislative proposals for no-fault divorce. Joan immediately—and predictably—says the whole premise is a logical impossibility, since divorce is always the man’s fault, and then glares at David as if she’s going to eat him and spit out the bones, like Gollum. David gives a sickly grin and feebly starts to point out that there are always two sides to every story—oh dear, not in
divorce
, David, what are you, a frigging marriage counselor? There’s only ever one side: the side paying us—but he subsides into pale sweaty silence when Gollum licks her lips.

Fisher slides his meaty palm down my spine and rests it comfortably on my arse. “C’mon, c’mon, let the new boy speak. What do you think, Sara?”

“I guess quickie no-faulters could be a good idea,” I muse, resisting the urge to grab his wrinkly dick to even things up a bit. “You’re more likely to get repeat customers if you can recycle the exes quickly.”

“Contested, drawn-out divorces bring in more fees,” Gollum snaps.

Fisher laughs uproariously. “You girls are two of a kidney,” he splutters. “Fees first, everything else later.”

I barely have time to register this monumental insult when a rosy-cheeked dumpling in creased Laura Ashley—Fisher’s long-suffering wife, I presume—sidles over and gently extracts him from temptation and my waistband. I like her instantly. Mrs. Fisher looks like every little kid’s ideal mother, all pillowy soft bosom and warm forgiving hugs. Couldn’t be further from mine, then, if she tried.

My parents married tragically young—seventeen, the pair of them—and had me six months later. Hmm, you do the math. My mother likes to relate the “nightmare” of giving birth to me to anyone who’ll sit still long enough: the agonizing three-and-a-half-day labor, the emergency Caesarean, the hemorrhaging, the next-of-kin consent forms, the hysterectomy, the works. Makes you feel kind of guilty from the word go just for existing, really. So anyway: I’m
it
, their one shot at immortality. At least Dad has his job to distract him—he’s a financial adviser—but my mother’s never worked; I’m her entire focus, and to be honest, it can get a bit wearing. She’s always buying me things: a Louis Vuitton handbag for my birthday, Gucci loafers for Christmas; I still get a stocking filled with goodies collectively worth more than I earn in a year. I’m not really complaining; but you get nothing for nothing, not even from your parents. Every time I find myself in a financial scrape—which is pretty much
whenever I walk past the Gap—my mother bails me out, then beats me with it for months afterward. She doesn’t do it to be nice, but to control me. Dad doesn’t approve, but he never interferes; there’s no question who wears the trousers in our house.

I toss back the house vinegar and glance round idly for Nick. He’s standing in the furthest corner of the room—and staring intently, almost fixedly, at me. I feel a jolt of recognition at the hunger in his eyes. As soon as he catches my gaze he blanches and looks away, but it’s too late. You
know
when a man wants you.

I’m shocked. I would never have thought—he doesn’t seem the type. Not your usual kind of player. In a previous age I’d have cast him as one of those medieval monks who wore a hair shirt to mortify the flesh and got out a cat-o’-nine-tails whenever he had carnal thoughts. Actually, for all I know he’s a paid-up member of Opus Dei. I’ve read
The Da Vinci Code
too, you know.

He looks so appalled, I almost want to go over and tell him not to worry. He
is
hot, especially with that suppressed slow-burn thing he’s got going on. But off limits. I might borrow the odd unattended husband from time to time, but I never do office romances—it’s always the woman who gets screwed. No way do I intend to end up like Amy in four years’ time.

But I can’t deny it’s going to make encounters by the coffee machine at playtime more interesting. And if he’s got the hots for me, it’s not going to do my career any harm either, as long as I tread carefully—

God, that makes me sound like a calculating witch, and I’m really not. It’s just that in this business men get to play the Old School Tie card all the time, whereas women have
got nothing but the wits—and body—God gave them. You don’t often see women reaching down to give their younger sisters a hand up the career ladder the way men do. I’d never sleep my way to the top, but a little flirtation—that’s all, I swear—to oil the wheels of fellowship never did any harm. Hey. You play the cards you’re dealt.

A middle-aged woman suddenly flusters into the restaurant, her head bobbing frantically as she tries to find a face she recognizes. Probably a clerk’s wife. She’s missed brushing a bit of her rather wild, dark hair, and it’s all bed-heady at the back. No coat, safe, dependable little black dress to the knee, discreet early-marriage jewelry—big on sentimentality, small on diamonds—and a battered bucket handbag the size of the Channel Tunnel. Lovely dark eyes, though, and she’s reed-thin, lucky cow. But—oh, God!—she’s forgotten to change her shoes. Oh, poor bitch. She’s standing in the middle of this snotty Italian restaurant in a pair of pink slippers.

No one else seems to have even noticed her arrival. I grab another glass of house white from a nearby tray and shoot over.