“Then...” She shrugged. “We’re adults. We can do whatever we want.”
“Good.” He kissed her. “I’ll tell you exactly what I want on Saturday night.”
Chapter Five
Five days later, after working into the early hours of the morning every night that week, Theresa wished she’d worked harder to get out of Emile’s football match. She really wanted a day of lounging about the house in her pajamas. Instead, she had to get dressed and head out into the cold to watch grown men playing a pointless game, while the crowd sang crude chants at the top of their voice. Not her idea of fun.
She even texted Emile to suggest that she could just meet him afterwards somewhere. He’d replied instantly.
Not if you want me to come with you tomorrow.
Huh.
That was sort of the point of it all. To take him home to her parents, horrify her mother, and give herself a good few years of freedom before any eligible bachelors were mentioned again.
I’ll be there.
She was directed up to the players’ box with all the other wives and girlfriends. Most of them were wearing so much makeup that she began to wonder whether it had an insulating effect against the cold breeze. More likely they were just desperate to catch the attention of the cameras, with their orange-tan faces and tight tops encrusted with bling. Mariella arrived just before kickoff, sweeping into the box and strutting down to the front row. She was even taller and slimmer in real life than in the photos Theresa had found online. Her face wasn’t beautiful, but it was arresting. There was something about the sculpted curves of her cheekbones and the surprisingly firm just of her nose and chin. She wasn’t a woman who could easily be ignored. The cameras had already found her, relaying her image to the large screens at each corner of the stadium and out onto TV screens around the country.
No one would be looking at Theresa, though the camera had caught her just at the edge of the shot. But she was content to sit unobtrusively in the back row, in her comfiest jeans and a thick sweater to protect her against the cold. She pulled out a book, rested it on her knees, and began to read.
It was hard to concentrate on her novel with sixty thousand football fans alternately cheering and groaning all around her. Theresa glanced down at the smooth green pitch where twenty-two grown men were kicking a ball around as if it mattered. Ten in blue, with their goalkeeper in green.
The program informed her they were the Tottenham Hotspur team and long-term rivals of Woolwich. The other ten wore red for Woolwich, with their keeper in black. Her eyes instantly searched Emile out, and she spotted him jogging backwards towards the goal, focused on the ball. She checked the number on his red shirt so that she could easily identify him: fourteen. Why they didn’t just go from one to eleven, she had no idea. Someone kicked the ball long, over the heads of the men in the middle of the field, and Emile dashed to meet it. But there were half a dozen players from the other team between him and the goal and all he could do was pass it to a teammate behind him.
She watched for a few minutes, until the ball had been sent towards the other goal and the action with it. As she picked up her book, one of the other women shifted her seat so that she was next to Theresa.
“Hello.” Not a natural blonde, but young and pretty enough for it not to matter, the girl smiled shyly.
“Hi.”
“You’re Emile’s wife, aren’t you?”
“I’m Theresa.”
“Kelly. It said in the paper that you’re a lawyer.”
“That’s right.” It was practically the only thing the journalists had got right, since they’d had to make most of the story up out of the tiny fragments of fact they’d been able to find out about her.
“Do you do divorces?”
“No. Corporate law.”
“Oh.” Kelly turned away to look at the men on the field. Theresa followed her gaze.
“Which one is yours?”
“Number seventeen. Keiran O’Donnell.”
“And he’s the reason you need a divorce lawyer?”
Kelly’s face crumpled. “He told me he wouldn’t see her again.”
Oh, God. This was exactly why she’d never been tempted into family law. How could you make rational choices when everything was tangled into a complicated mess of emotions? The bottom line was that men lied, and women believed them. And vice versa. At least in contract law, you began from the assumption that everyone was out to get what they could, and it was on your own head if you let them. Trust was a luxury that multinational corporations couldn’t afford.
“But you still came to watch him?”
Kelly found a tissue and mopped at her eyes. Impressively, her mascara had stayed put. Maybe they made a special kind for the wives of lying, cheating bastard football players. “He doesn’t know I know.”
“He’s not going to change, Kelly. If he’s lied once, he’ll lie again. Look, I’ll give you the number of a friend who handles divorce cases. He’ll help you.”
“Thanks.” Kelly put the note Theresa passed her into her handbag. She looked out at the pitch again and sighed. “I used to think it didn’t matter, you know, that I had to let him screw around because he was famous and rich. They all have so many women crawling around, trying to get into bed with them. He told me it wasn’t fair to expect him to turn them all down. He said that’s what they all do, and the wives have to put up with it.”
“Being rich and famous doesn’t mean you get to treat your wife like crap.”
Kelly smiled shakily. “I wish I’d known that at the beginning. Like you.”
Theresa shrugged. She wouldn’t stand for that sort of crap from anyone, but it was different with Emile. They’d agreed that it was fine for them to see other people. Discreetly at first, since he was supposed to be staying out of the gossip pages. But when the year was nearly up, it would make their quickie divorce all the more plausible. In a show-marriage like theirs, normal rules didn’t apply. None of those dangerous emotions were involved, so she would be absolutely fine with Emile sleeping around. Absolutely. She just had to get her head around the idea that he wasn’t really hers and she had to learn to share.
By half time, her feet had gone numb with cold, and her mind had gone numb with boredom. No goals had been scored and the most interesting thing that had happened was the ball being kicked into the crowd. The fan who’d caught it had tried to hide it under his seat, and a steward had to go and reclaim it. Theresa stood up and stamped her boots, grateful that she’d thought to put a pair of woolly socks on. Kelly showed her where the buffet was, and she fortified herself with a couple of sandwiches and a cup of hot, strong tea.
Forty minutes to go. She’d get through it, hopefully without losing any of her extremities to frostbite. Though she still wasn’t at all sure why Emile had wanted her to come. It wasn’t like he’d even noticed she was here. He hadn’t looked up in her direction once. She pulled her scarf more closely around her neck and reached for her book again. A gasp from the crowd caused her to glance down at the pitch. One of the players was on the ground, curled up and clutching his leg in agony.
“Emile!” She shot to her feet, heart pounding with sudden fear. What had happened? Why wasn’t anyone helping him? Theresa yelled again. Couldn’t they see he was hurt? The referee was standing a few yards away, talking to a player from the other team. As she watched, one of Emile’s teammates strolled over casually.