The Best of Friends by Alex Day (accelerated reader books .txt) 📕

from the drawer and spread the meringue, thickly and evenly, over the top of the key lime pie where it sits, like a blanket of the most immaculate snow, waiting to be blow-torched.

We’ve lived in so many places that sometimes I forget which came in what order, whether Toronto was before or after Tokyo, Seoul a longer or shorter sojourn than Jakarta. But I know that it was in New York that I learnt to make this dish. Pregnant with the twins and over my morning sickness, I craved it, gorged on it. I put on so much weight – well, one does, with multiples – that oh God, I was enormous by the end.

When the babies came, I swore that would be it. Both for the overeating and the other thing. There would be so much to do, I wouldn’t have a chance to get up to anything I shouldn’t. And it’s true that having twins meant that I barely had time to breathe some days, let alone go to the toilet or clean my teeth. I think about four weeks went by after they were born when I didn’t even manage to brush my hair. But it’s amazing what time you can find when you really want to. The odd fifteen minutes when both boys were asleep, ten when they were playing on their mat. Oh yes, I found the time for the thing that really mattered. Even if it was the most destructive thing of all.

Whatever else I was getting up to, though, I never neglected the children. But however well you cope with becoming a mother, something has to give and for me, as with a lot of new mums, it was sex. I was going to say that Dan did not take this lying down but sadly that’s exactly what he did. Just not with me.

He began an affair – the first of many –with a work colleague. Her name was Anaïs, which is a slap in the face for any wife for a start, with its overt connection to the erotic writings of Anaïs Nin. Perhaps Dan was missing the Far East more than I thought, because Anaïs was of Chinese heritage. She was everything I wasn’t: tiny, perfectly formed like an exquisite doll, black-haired and dark eyed. Next to her, especially carrying twins and then the pregnancy weight that took ages to shift, I felt like a galumphing moose, too tall and raw-boned, too washed-out and pale.

Whenever we met at company events – because I started insisting on accompanying Dan, despite the exhaustion and the childcare issues – she would always regard me with that supercilious gaze of hers. It seemed to me that she took a sadistic delight in deliberately standing next to me so that her petite frame would accentuate my over-large one. Sometimes she dropped hints, saying how much she admired financial acumen in a man, and how few men there were in the world who had immaculate dress sense.

I’d turn around and see Dan, master of the hedge fund world, attired in a handmade Savile Row suit that fitted his lean, athletic frame like a glove, and know exactly what she was really saying. Which was, ‘I’m fucking your husband and it’s going on right under your nose and there’s nothing you can or will do about it.’ Because somehow, I’ve no idea how, Anais seemed to understand that something was tying me to Dan, that however badly he behaved, I would cling on like a limpet to a rock. She’d probably seen it before. Most wives don’t give up without a fight.

She knew, and I knew, and Dan knew, that I would never, ever let him go. Because without him, I would have nothing, be nothing, own nothing.

In the end though, the battle was won before it had been fought. Anaïs became an irritant to Dan. I’m sure she pestered him to leave me and he had never had any intention of doing that. Like so many men, he just wanted to have his cake and eat it. I confronted him and he promised me that he’d never do it again, never take a ‘mistress’, never have someone who everyone else knew about and who made me look like a total fool. And I trusted him on that.

I really did.

However, the experience with Anaïs, as I’m sure you would understand, made me wary. So far, though, she’s the only one I’ve ever been really worried about. I understood that all of the others were mere dalliances, nothing serious, never intended to be more than a way for him to pleasurably pass a few hours just because he could. Men who are that good-looking and that rich and that powerful know that they can have who they want, when they want.

I always keep my eyes open though. I’m constantly on the lookout for the next Anaïs, always suspicious. Is it Naomi? In all truth, the jury’s still out on that one. But even if she hasn’t come along yet, there’s one thing I’m certain of.

One day she will.

And just the thought of it makes my blood boil and the urge for revenge swell in my belly. Sometimes I wonder what I would be capable of, if someone were to really come between me and Dan.

Chapter 14

Susannah

Today is the day of the tennis match. I shouldn’t think Dan’s spent more than a few seconds, if that, anticipating it. I, on the other hand, have been obsessing about it since the time and date were set. My tennis whites are laid out in my bedroom, having been retrieved from the back of the wardrobe, and I pull them on and survey myself in the mirror. Their tightness testifies to the fact that I must be the only woman in the world who puts on weight after a break-up.

Charlotte’s comment on my ‘sturdy arms’ floats across my mind and I push it away. I’m sure she didn’t mean to be