Cathy Kelly - What She Wants

He certainly looked after himself, fitting in three nights a week in the gym come what may. Hope now knew he wasn’t keeping himself fit for her. But at least he was wearing his birthday tie.

‘George Clooney eat your heart out,’ Yvonne had joked the first time she’d clapped eyes on Matt at the annual building society barbecue.

Hope knew this was high praise indeed but hadn’t liked to tell her that Matt considered gorgeous George to be common and modelled himself more on Cary Grant. If his temples weren’t already greying in a distinguished manner à la Cary, Hope wondered if Matt might start bleaching them himself.

Many times in their marriage, she’d wondered how she’d ever managed to end up with Matt. Quite a few other women wondered that too, she felt, judging by the calculating gazes she got from them at parties. Hope never realized that the calculating gazes held plenty of envy for her. Convinced she was frumpy and dull, she had no idea of her own attractiveness. To her, beauty meant the glossy sophistication and superb bone structure of people like Jasmine. It couldn’t possibly mean a sweet, kind face or big anxious eyes or a soft mouth that constantly twitched up at the corners into the most bewitching smile.

Nor did Hope realize that while Matt might sometimes look briefly on the stunning creatures who flirted with him, he needed a yielding, gentle woman like Hope as his partner. The strong, glamorous women who eyed him up boldly, simply reminded him of his strong, glamorous mother, a woman who wore signature red lipstick, kept her dark hair in a sleek bob and flirted with all and sundry. Hope, who was scared of her mother-in-law and always felt deeply inadequate beside her, never realized that one of the reasons Matt loved her so dearly was because she was the direct opposite of his mother.

Hope walked behind Matt to the table, miserably thinking that maybe she should announce that her delectable husband was back on the market. She’d be flattened in the rush, that was for sure. Matt was a nine on a one-to-ten scale of attractiveness while she’d been maybe a five when they’d married. In her black dress with her hair refusing to behave and a pre-menstrual spot emerging like a beacon on her chin despite all the concealer plastered on it, Hope currently felt as if she was a two. Compared to Jasmine, she was in minus figures.

She stared at Jasmine jealously. Was she the one? No, Hope decided. Matt was a career man first and foremost. Having an affair with the boss’s wife was career suicide.

A long table against one wall was reserved for the party of ten. Dan had organized the dinner party and was now telling everyone where to sit. As the others obediently went to their seats, Hope’s prospects of a red-wine fuelled evening where her mind would be taken off her troubles vanished. Dan told her to sit in the centre with her back to the wall and she realized she was going to spend the evening hemmed in by people she didn’t like.

Lucky Matt had Betsey, the flamboyant journalist who was married to Dan, on one side. Betsey was one of Hope’s closest friends, although she was a teeny bit self-obsessed and tended to swing all conversations back to herself. Hope would have loved to have been able to sit beside Betsey and confide in her: she was almost desperate enough to do so.

On Matt’s other side, he had Jasmine. Both women were chattering away happily to the birthday boy. Hope, on the other hand, was stuck with the art director’s husband, an eternal student with a goatee and dirty finger nails, who could bore for Britain in the Olympics on the subject of the changing face of industrial architecture. Hope didn’t give a damn about industrial architecture and could see nothing interesting in Victorian glassworks.

On her other side was Adam Judd, the agency boss, who never had anything to say to her and who was now avidly watching his luscious wife, Jasmine, flirting with Matt.

Across the table, Dan smiled at Hope. She automatically smiled back, thinking ‘you pig, you’ve stuck me with the most difficult people at the table.’ Sam would have said something sarcastic to him: Hope knew she’d never dare.

Dan immediately turned to his neighbour, the agency’s commercials director, a quiet woman named Elizabeth.

Soon, she was laughing too.

Hope sighed and took another big slug of wine. She wasn’t a heavy drinker but the thought flitted through her mind that perhaps tonight was the night to get plastered and confront Matt. She’d never have the nerve unless she was drunk…

Then again, Matt would go ballistic if she got drunk and made a fool of herself. These people were Matt’s colleagues, she must make an effort. But it wasn’t easy. Tortured by thoughts of Matt’s infidelity and watching all the women at their table like a hawk, in case she was one of them, Hope was not enjoying herself. The silence at her side of the table was deafening, made all the more obvious by the machine gun rattle of conversation on the other side. Adam ate like he was starving, only speaking when he wanted butter, pepper for his smoked salmon, or the bottle of wine passed down his end. Hope gave up trying when her third stab at conversation (‘Are you and Jasmine going anywhere nice on holiday?’) was deflected with a grunted ‘no’. Adam looked grim at the notion, as if he wasn’t letting Jasmine go anywhere she’d be able to stun passing men with the sight of her in a sliver of uplift bikini.

Peter, the student, was eager to discuss his thesis whenever Hope turned in his direction.

‘I’d really like to develop the idea into a book,’ he was saying grandly in between hoovering up goats’ cheese salad, ‘but bizarrely, I can’t get anyone interested.’

Hope had tuned out by now but nodded and said ‘Really? How interesting.’ She wished she was more like Sam who could invest the words ‘how interesting’ with an iciness that would freeze the Pacific Ocean and immediately make the other person realize they were the exact opposite of interesting.

‘Funding is the problem, control of funding,’ Peter said, tapping his bony nose mysteriously. ‘It’s impossible to get funding for the really worthwhile projects like mine,’ he added pompously.

‘It is outrageous that so many commercial books get published when worthy, unsaleable books like yours don’t,’ Hope said gravely.

Peter blinked at her, unsure whether she was serious or not. But Hope’s face was the picture of earnestness.

‘Well, yes,’ he drivelled on, satisfied that Matt Parker’s quiet little wife couldn’t possibly have been mocking him. ‘You see, if you let me explain my theories…’

In desperation, Hope turned to find that Adam was now talking business to Sadie, the art director. Sadie’s eyes caught Hope’s briefly but as Adam was talking, Hope couldn’t interrupt. Adam ignored Hope completely. Just like Matt, she thought bitterly. He’d barely looked at her during the first course, concentrating on making everyone else laugh and have a great time.

‘You can see the problem,’ Peter continued as she turned back to him.

‘Of course,’ Hope said, wondering why the hell she’d been looking forward to an evening out when it was proving as thrilling as having her blackheads squeezed. She’d thought it might be more enjoyable than enduring another silent evening of telly-watching at home. But at least at home, her mind was taken off its problems thanks to prime time viewing.

‘More wine, Hope?’ asked her husband from the other side of the table, seeing no-one else had bothered to refill her glass.

She nodded glumly.

Matt’s long fingers reached across the table and touched hers. He winked at her and mouthed ‘thank you’. Thank you for being bored senseless on my behalf, she hoped he meant. She smiled weakly back with relief. He did love her, he did. She knew Matt well enough to know he was trying to make up. Even if there was somebody else, she could weather it as long as Matt loved her. Hope gave his fingers a final squeeze.