Cake and Confidences
Imagined from a rather startling fragment of conversation overheard in a coffee bar.
There is a certain type of woman I only seem to see in upmarket shopping malls. Expensively dressed, flawless make up, well supervised hair. I don’t live in the area where they live, I don’t eat in the same restaurants or go to the same events. Perhaps they are some different species that David Attenborough should investigate, a rare shy creature usually only mixing with its own kind, venturing out only to shop, and never to be seen in open countryside without being inside a shiny metal casing (with the latest registration). There were two of the slightly older kind, hair more formally set, make up a little on the thicker side, sitting at the table with the only vacant seats in the store’s coffee bar, but they sociably moved their shopping bags with a smile for Anne and me to sit down.
They continued their conversation, oblivious of our presence. We were two jeans and anorak nothings, to be ignored like the furniture. So we couldn’t avoid listening Could we? Could we?
“What made you first suspect? Lipstick on his collar?”
My éclair stopped in mid air on its way to my mouth.
“Oh nothing like that, he was much too careful. He is a solicitor after all. Knows how to cover his tracks! I was going through his credit card statements, bills and so on. Just routine. Doesn’t trust computers, still likes everything on paper, keeps them locked away in the drawer of the desk in his study. I’ve always had the a key of course. Anyway, I started to see receipts for restaurant meals, meals that I certainly never had.”
“That could have been clients of course.”
“Him, Mr Tight Fist? I don’t think so. Do you drink champagne with clients, do you take them to hotel rooms?”
“Oh gosh, there were hotel rooms”
“Oh yes, when he was supposed to be visiting his mother, Lodge meetings, Chamber of Commerce. All those boring things he moaned about being obliged to endure!
“Did you face him with it then?”
“Oh lord no, I wanted to catch him out, something concrete, something he couldn’t wriggle out of, so I started waiting outside the office, watching, following. It was that bit of a secretary, very unoriginal.”
“So what did you do?”
“I hired a firm of detectives of course, and had him properly followed. Hard evidence.”
“So then, did you confront him?”
“They were all for it, but I wasn’t having that. ‘working late’ was what he was doing a lot of, strangely. The office didn’t seem to be that busy. So I waited, and I went in, caught them at it.”
“No”
“Yes”
“What actually…?”
“Oh yes, and on his desk”
“Not the Victorian walnut veneer with the leather top, and the gold inlay”
“Exactly that, the big one, walnut with the red inlaid leather top and the gold inlay. Well, it would have to be the big one to take the weight I should think. He’s not as slim as he used to be”
“How awful. That was your father’s desk wasn’t it?”
“Yes Poppa would be turning in his grave if he knew what business was being done on his desk these days”
“What on earth did you say?
“Nothing, just took some photographs and left”
“You actually took photographs?”
“Well I didn’t ask them to smile did I? I certainly didn’t want to stay in that room longer than I had to. But phones are great these days aren’t they? They don’t seem to need much light to get a good picture”
“And him, a solicitor too, the pinstripe suit … who’d have thought ..”
“Yes, I’ll have to get a new solicitor now, for the divorce”
“You are going to divorce him then. Oh Celia, it’s awful, you’re taking it all very well, were you not dreadfully upset?”
Celia’s voice lowered, the laughter stopped.
“It wasn’t the first time Lou, not the first time. There have been others. But when Momma and Poppa were still alive … they never liked it you know, my marriage, so how do you admit that you’ve made the biggest mistake of your life? I did have some pride in those days. And there was the children then, young children to think of …
And then a wicked chuckle-
“… and then there were Caribbean holidays and the store accounts to consider!”
“What will you do for money now, pet, will you manage?”
“ Well Poppa left everything between the three of us, Momma, my brother Jacob and me. The business, the house actually everything belongs to me and my brother now that Momma has passed. Makes me quite the independent woman.”
“Ha! So you can give them both the sack, that will give you some satisfaction”
“Oh no, I don’t think so, he is a very good solicitor, and I don’t know anything against her .. as a secretary, that is. Business is business Lou. I have asked Jacob to sell that desk though. ”Time we updated the office, get something smarter, I told him, more modern and smaller, less substantial! I thought IKEA”
Laughing they both gathered up their shopping bags and left, ignoring us, the two unrecognized sharers in their private lives. We gazed at each other, amazed, flecks of cream and melted chocolate on our fingers and round our mouths, our cappuccinos frothless cold and grey. “I’ll get us some fresh” I murmured, and made my way to the counter in the faint trail of perfume left behind by Lou and Celia.