Invisible Women Read online

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For all the visible women in my life.

  ‘Art is a hard mistress, and there is no art quite so hard as that of being a wife.’

  Blanche Ebbutt, Don’ts for Wives, 1913

  PROLOGUE

  She watched the passengers coming through the glass doors, pulling their suitcases and looking around expectantly. Smiles of recognition for loved ones, business-like nods if it was just a man holding a placard. How often she had done this before, waiting at airports for one of the children to fly back, safe, into the nest. Even, in the early days, coming to surprise Matt on his return from a business trip, when his face would light up at the sight of her and she’d be glad to have braved the traffic for his sake.

  Today was different. She had no idea who she was waiting for. Not really. The last time she’d seen him, he was at that exquisite stage of late boyhood when they’re all graceful limbs, slim hips and effortless beauty. They were dancing under the trees in his garden, the music was cranked up and she’d finally come to believe what he had been telling her for years. They belonged together. Then he’d led her into the house, upstairs into the playground of his single bed.

  That was thirty-two years ago but she could feel it still, his hand on her teenage waist, the heat of his kiss and the urgent sense that he was most definitely The One, as defined by Jackie magazine. You’ll know, they had all solemnly agreed as they flicked through the pages at break time in their school uniform with regulation two-inch heels and skirts hitched up to the limit, you’ll just know when it happens that you’ve found The One.

  She glanced at her watch, she was early as usual, plenty of time for a reality check as she tried to marry up the boy she remembered with the portly figure revealed in his Facebook photos. They weren’t what they were, either of them, but she knew from the way they had spoken that it was still there. The longing that disregarded the years in between and demanded to be rediscovered right now, just as soon as his flight touched down and he’d worked his way through the alien passport queue. He’d gone American now, she’d seen the picture of him waving the little flag after the citizenship ceremony, claiming the right to bear arms and swagger around in a pair of big shorts. ‘Oh my America, my new-found-land!’ as John Donne proclaimed in that sexy poem they’d studied at school.

  He wasn’t big on poetry, she didn’t think, unless he’d acquired a taste for it during the intervening decades. He had been more of an action type, he’d be the one pushing someone down the street in a hijacked shopping trolley or deconstructing the engine of his motorbike or smashing someone on the squash courts. During a Boy Discussion between lessons, Harriet had said he was like a Labrador, in need of constant fuelling and exercise, but then she was always keen on dog analogies. Sandra had found him too sporty, she preferred moody Bryan Ferry lookalikes who hung around in linen suits, smoking cigarettes in pencil-shaped holders, which was why she had ended up with miserable Nigel. You got what you were looking for, on the whole.

  Harriet and Sandra were still her best friends, standing together in the murky chaos of middle age. All three married, just about, and wondering how to make sense of the rest of their lives now that their children no longer needed them. You go for it, Sandra had told her, when Tessa had expressed her doubts about this illicit meeting with her teenage heartthrob, you’ll regret it if you don’t, when you’re dribbling next to me in an old people’s home.

  The arrivals board announced that his flight had landed.

  Tessa felt a tightening in her stomach and her hands were sweating. There was surely time to freshen up, she didn’t want to meet him with a shiny forehead. Abandoning her prime position by the barrier, she went to inspect herself in the mirror of the nearest washroom, dabbing at her face with a powder puff and wondering how she would appear to him now, in the flesh, as opposed to the enhanced version offered online through carefully edited photographs. The hair, at least, was visibly unchanged, still chestnut brown thanks to Clairol, she wasn’t of the go-grey school, why would you do that to yourself? Face: not too saggy, wrinkles commensurate only with age and experience, and no random beard hairs. If she screwed her eyes up to fake the myopia that her lenses corrected, she could passably say that she still looked exactly the same, the way people always shrieked to each other at reunions, with varying degrees of sincerity. She stepped back to get a full-length perspective. The trusty waterfall cardigan was doing its job, rippling over the lumpy bits, but maybe black was a little funereal, especially here at the airport where people were mostly dressed in bland leisurewear.

  Too late now, she thought, as she flicked back her hair, you are where you are and you’re wearing what you’re wearing. Matt was safely away at a conference, he had no idea where she was, she’d told him she might catch a film with the girls. A big fat lie, but to her surprise she no longer felt the slightest bit guilty. Instead she was getting a delirious sense of excitement and freedom and possibility.

  The announcement board now said Baggage in Transit. She slowly worked her way to the front of the crowd by the barrier and waited.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Six weeks earlier

  ‘Don’t forget the anniversary of your wedding. Keep it up. The little celebration will draw you closer together, year by year.’

  Blanche Ebbutt, Don’ts for Wives, 1913

  On the morning of her silver wedding anniversary, Tessa Draper put on her make-up, took off her nightie and stood in front of the mirror. Did she look good naked? No, she looked like a fat fifty-year-old with a bit of lipstick on.

  This was a shame because she planned to put in a few lengths this evening before dinner. Even in her tummy-control swimsuit, she’d be a godsend to the other women in the hotel pool, a hefty piece of meat tossed to the lions. On second thoughts, maybe she’d go for the privacy of the spa treatment room. Nobody could watch her there except the beauty therapist, who was paid to be nice to her, just as Tessa was paid, essentially, to be nice to her husband. It sounded crude but that is what it boiled down to. Twenty-five years together and she hadn’t contributed a penny for most of them.

  She turned sideways and tried looking over her shoulder in a winsome Calendar Girls pose. Slightly better, but let’s not kid ourselves. Her naked days were over. As they should have been for Celia Imrie and all those other old birds. There comes a time when you should do everyone a favour and cover up.

  Slipping on her dressing gown, Tessa turned her attention to the clothes laid out on her side of the bed. Floating panels for dinner, with a bold fake pearl necklace to draw the eye to the upper chest; leggings for cliff walks with loose-cut shirts and a forgiving cardigan; a Drizabone mac to confer the swagger of a New World pioneer. Definitely not a boring old Barbour.

  Matt had pulled out his clothes earlier, before rushing out for a chemistry meeting with a potential client. Don’t forget your Bunsen burner, she’d said but he hadn’t laughed. It was alright for her to mock modern business jargon; she no longer needed to stay ahead of the game, thanks to him. Let’s face it, she wasn’t even in the game.

  She turned on the taps and poured a ge
nerous slug of Grumpy Cow uplifting oil into the egg-shaped marble bath installed at the height of their renovation folly. The builders had reinforced the floor to support its giant weight, but Tessa still expected it to go crashing through the sitting room ceiling whenever she climbed in. Lined up alongside Grumpy Cow were Lazy Cow and Horny Cow from the gift set Matt had given her. Who on earth had come up with the idea that women would enjoy the cattle analogy? Mooing round the shed in mindless subservience to their moods.

  Taking care not to streak the mascara, she dropped her head back into the water and rubbed in shampoo that promised to deliver gleaming highlights. Why bother? Matt wouldn’t notice, just as he wouldn’t notice her back fat – they slept together every night without him mentioning it – but the artifice of the weekend away required you to raise your game. You had to imagine yourself featured in the snooty hotel brochure: a successful couple enjoying a well-earned break.

  Feeling the warm water swirling round her ears, Tessa thought back to their first weekend away together, a thousand years ago when they were young and poor and happy. A bed and breakfast in Bath, they couldn’t afford a car in those days, and had sent away for free train tickets using coupons saved from soap powder packets. She remembered them setting off from their grotty basement flat in Brixton on Friday morning with their weekend bags, then counting down the hours until 5.30 on the dot, when she had raced off to the tube, ignoring the disapproving look from her boss who shouted after her about being a part-timer. There were delays on the line so she only just made it to Paddington on time, and Matt was waiting, agitated they would miss the train. He took her by the hand and pulled her, running, down the platform until they found their carriage and fell, laughing, into their seats. As soon as the train pulled out, Matt took his tie off and they splashed out on a gin and tonic from the bar, enjoying the views as they journeyed away from the unlovely city outskirts and into the gentle fields. ‘I could live here,’ said Matt, negotiating the map as they walked from the station to their bed and breakfast in a perfect Regency terrace, ‘everything is so beautiful. When we’re grown up we should definitely move here to raise our kids.’ and Tessa agreed. They were only twenty-four, everything was safely in the rosy future, fuzzy and unpredictable but there was no doubt they were in this together. The landlady opened the door and you could tell from the way she looked at them that she didn’t believe for a moment they were married. Tessa was glad she had taken the precaution of putting a curtain ring on her finger, she had guessed from the woman’s voice on the phone when she made the booking that unmarried couples would not be welcome. Upstairs, they had whispered and giggled as they slipped under the flouncy bed linen, imagining the landlady might knock on the wall if she heard any action.

  Tessa stepped out on to the bath mat and squeezed her hair dry in front of the mirror that covered an entire wall. Her basin up one end, his up the other, each accessorised by its respective grooming products. A harbinger of separate beds, perhaps, if unwillingness to spit into a shared sink was the first symptom of mutual physical distaste.

  Her phone beeped, and she smiled when she saw it was a text from Max, wishing her a gr8 weekend and to say he would be dropping off some washing soon, hope that was OK. She texted back: Fine, lol, mum xx. It was a joke between them that she still pretended to think lol stood for lots of love. Silly old woman, Luddite fool, with her anachronistic fondness for remaining a domestic slave to her children. In a post-modern way, which meant she volunteered to do it, unlike her mother’s generation who had it foisted upon them. She was exercising a woman’s right to choose, which was where we were now, in terms of sexual politics.

  Right now the choice she was exercising was in favour of Big Hair, to offset the ballast that lay below. She rubbed in some volume-enhancing mousse and walked through to the bedroom, plugging in the drier and hanging her head upside down, fixing her tinted roots in a gravity-defying upward whoosh. Take that, nature! She glanced sideways in the mirror and was intrigued to see how it wasn’t just her hair that was falling down, it was also her entire face. Her cheeks and her lips were hanging down, as if melting towards her eyes, like a facelift gone wrong.

  Her phone rang, and Tessa righted herself to take the call. Get over it, she thought, you’re fifty, not twenty-five so why wouldn’t your face show a bit of slack?

  ‘Sandra!’

  Her best friend, confidante and fellow under-employed homebird.

  ‘Congratulations on your silver wedding. May it long remain untarnished.’

  ‘Thank you. Are you standing near a mirror?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Can you do something? Hold your head upside down, look in the mirror and tell me what you see.’

  ‘That’s a funny request, I ring to wish you a happy anniversary and now you’ve got me . . . urrgh!’

  Tessa smiled down the phone at the thought of her friend confronting another unwelcome sign of inelasticity.

  ‘Weird, isn’t it? Do you think it’s time for the knife?’

  ‘Too painful. And anti-feminist.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘So, all packed up and ready to show Matt how lucky is he is to have you?’

  ‘Don’t depress me.’

  ‘What’s depressing about it? A quarter century of fidelity to the man you love. Your meal-ticket and partner in the three-legged race of marriage.’

  ‘Or a failure of nerve and fear of the unknown.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Not really, of course I’m looking forward to it. Just can’t believe I’m old enough to be doing this. I remember my parents’ silver wedding party and everyone seemed so ancient.’

  ‘Well you can tell us all about it next week. Enjoy!’

  Tessa returned to her packing and thought about the finger buffet party her parents had given all those years ago. Egg and cress sandwiches, cubes of cheese and pineapple piled on to the table, and rising above it all, the tacky silver-plated candelabra she and her sister had pooled resources to buy as a present. The best Wedgwood was brought out for the occasion, with friends and family pouring their goodwill into the swirly patterned Clementine tea cups. That was before the white plate generation, before it became desirable to celebrate your nuclear couplehood in the restrained chic of a boutique hotel.

  It had been a challenge for her to come up with a suitable gift for Matt. He already had everything he needed and would buy most other things that took his fancy. She’d settled on an electric photo frame that displayed two hundred heartwarming snaps of their life together in relaxed rotation. He could have it on his desk at work, though she found it hard to imagine it there as she’d never been to his office. He liked to keep things separate.

  The suitcase packed, she smoothed down the bedcovers – Egyptian cotton, 600-thread count, bought from the White Company after exhaustive research through linen suppliers – and wondered how to fill the rest of her day. She wanted to ring Lola, to find out how Freshers’ Week was going, but she didn’t like to intrude. The last thing she wanted to be was that needy, fretful mother left behind.

  *

  Eight hours later, Matt and Tessa were heading out of town in the stop-start traffic of the Friday exodus.

  ‘Too many people, that’s the problem.’

  Matt slapped his hand on the steering wheel. ‘I mean, what’s the point of having a fast car when the roads are so clogged up? And the minute you’re out of traffic, you hit a bloody speed trap. Who ARE all these people, where are they all going, in their horrible Ford Fiestas and Nissan bloody Micras and eco pansy people carriers?’

  He shouldn’t have made that remark to the client this morning. He’d caught Richard looking at him like he was a complete dick, but it was true. That boy didn’t look old enough to be an intern, never mind the marketing director. They had to convert this piece of business or he’d soon be out on his ear, then there’d be trouble. They weren’t exactly queuing up for him, not any more.

  ‘Pull over and let me drive,’ s
aid Tessa, in her best soothing voice, ‘then you can have a nap, you look like you need it.’

  Sleep did not figure high on Matt’s priority list. She sometimes woke in the night to find him lying on his back like an entombed archbishop, eyes open to heaven, hands pressed together as if in prayer as he pondered his next assault on the corporate ladder.

  He dismissed her offer, as she expected.

  ‘What, and get there at midnight? I don’t think so. Let’s listen to the CD, shall we? What did you get?’

  Matt’s busy life left little time for reading, so journeys were an opportunity to catch up. Tessa took two CDs out of her handbag.

  ‘Gory thriller or coming-of-age Arab thing?’

  ‘Gory thriller, of course.’

  She loaded the discs and settled back to enjoy the story, which involved detailed descriptions of butchered corpses that might have been upsetting to someone with a less strong stomach. It was odd how much pleasure could be found in vicarious depravity.

  Matt was edging up behind a grubby white van, flashing him to get out the way. Someone who couldn’t spell had traced a message in the film of dust on the back door:

  I WISH MY WIFE WAS THIS DURTY

  Tessa pointed it out to Matt. ‘Do you wish I was that dirty?’

  He ignored her and leaned across her seat, shaking his head at the van driver as they finally overtook.

  ‘Thank you!! Idiot!!!’

  The road ahead was opening up now and he started to relax, absorbing the grisly details of the story through the four-speaker Bose best-in-class surround sound system.

  She tried to answer the question herself. Did her husband, the C suite executive-in-waiting, find her sufficiently dirty? ‘You’ve got to be a C suite executive at my age,’ he’d told her recently, ‘otherwise you’re just a liability waiting to be fired.’

  ‘What’s a C suite executive?’ she’d asked him, ‘is it like en suite, where you get your own bathroom?’