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

a moment. A moment to compose myself. I was majorly pissed off with Dan for being late. Now I’m almost grateful. He might have noticed my agitation, questioned me. Answered the phone himself, God forbid. Even though he never, ever does that, there’s no knowing that he won’t, one day. And then my dirty, guilty secret would be out – and what the consequence of that would be I don’t dare imagine.

In the reflection, I see you making your way out, pausing as if wondering whether to approach me, then thinking better of it and proceeding on your way to retrieve your boys and go home. I appreciate that you actually read the party invite and know what time it ends. Rousing myself to action, I hand out more black bags and instructions to the agency girls; there are plates and wrappers and napkins that need clearing. I hate mess. And the process of tidying, of sweeping detritus into trash sacks, is a good signal to guests that it’s time to start thinking about leaving. Nevertheless, there are people in this room I know I’ll be – politely – throwing out hours after the end time stated on the invitations. It’s as if they haven’t got homes to go to, nor anything better to do.

There’s another shrill, piercing ring and my heart stops – and then I realise it was just a clanging glass, not the phone.

When I’ve calmed down again, I make my way around the room, collecting discarded mugs of tea and half-empty glasses of prosecco. To take my mind off the unanswered phone call, I think of you, imagining your life and what has brought you here to this sleepy backwater. I wonder if you work, if you have a job. I suspect not. You seem to be just like me: someone who’s put their own career to one side in order to facilitate that of their husband. Dan didn’t bat an eyelid when he asked me to go on his first posting to Hong Kong, even though he knew it would mean me having to kiss goodbye to my TV job, the career I was so intent on, that I’d worked so hard to wheedle my way into. I was moving up the ladder, about to take on my first assistant-producer role. But it was either go with Dan or lose him so I did what countless women have done through the ages and gave it all up.

The thing is that it was obvious from the very start that Dan was going places. Literally. We must have lived in a dozen countries in our first fifteen years together. But of course I don’t just mean geographical moves, I mean that Dan was headed for the top from the beginning. He only has one default setting and that’s himself as a major success story, acing everything, outplaying everyone. Dan always has Dan in the number one slot and everyone else fitting into the adulatory queue behind him.

I very soon realised that if I wanted to keep him – and I did, I really, really did – I had to fall in line.

In Hong Kong, we lived on The Hill along with every other overpaid ex-pat. The apartment was beautiful, all sparkling glass, stainless steel, and polished tiles. There was a swimming pool in the complex, and a gym, and the majority of the wives just hung around there most of the day. There wasn’t much else to do while the men were at work and it was so hot, so relentlessly, hideously humid, that often I joined them, feeling sapped of all energy, stripped of the inclination to do anything constructive.

My idea that I’d find work once we’d settled in fizzled away, burnt out like the whizz-bang fireworks the Chinese love so much. Any job available locally was paid at local wages which were laughably low and anyway they weren’t appropriate for women like me. I’d have had to speak Cantonese, for a start. Plus Dan had a constant round of client entertaining and evening dos that I needed to accompany him to and preparing for those so I that I lived up to his high standards and expectations – tailor-made dresses, haircuts, spray tan – took up a huge amount of time.

As the weeks and months passed, I gave up on even pretending I was ever going to get gainful employment. And anyway, Dan poured scorn on any such suggestion. He simply couldn’t understand why I would want to work when he made more than enough money for both of us. He constantly urged me to relax, to enjoy myself.

‘All I want is you here waiting for me at the end of a long day. What’s the point of both of us being stressed at work when there’s no need?’

He didn’t understand that I required more than that. Perhaps I didn’t understand it, either. If I had, surely I’d never have got involved, never have done the things that, unbeknownst to anyone but me, blight my life to this day.

Sometimes, I even manage to convince myself of that.

Chapter 5

Susannah

I have to literally drag the boys out of the bus but I insist we’re leaving despite all their protestations; I’m weary and I need to go home. And anyway, the party invitation clearly stated 4-6pm and I don’t want to outstay my welcome. Retracing my footsteps back through the house towards the front door, I pop into the kitchen where a group of immaculately groomed women are clustered around the Aga. I ask them if they know where Charlotte is so that I can say goodbye. As one, they exchange knowing looks before the blondest of them all says, ‘She’s just gone to see if that was Dan pulling up in the drive.’

There’s a pause when it seems that none of us knows what to say next.

‘He’s just a little bit late, you see,’ continues the woman, with a strange expression that is half