“Okay, I’ll be five minutes,” says Rachel, giving her the benefit of the doubt one last time, because it suits her to believe that her life isn’t about to be driven off a cliff.
“Come in,” says Ali tearfully as Rachel knocks on her bedroom door. She’s pulling a comb through her wet hair. “Thank you, I just don’t know what to do with it.”
“What do you want to do with it?” asks Rachel.
Ali throws the comb on the dressing table in frustration.
“I just wanted a bit of volume, but my stupid hair is just so thin and fine … it won’t do anything.”
Rachel doesn’t think she’s ever seen Ali’s hair do nothing. “So, why don’t we try drying it and pin curling it?” she says, picking up the hair dryer. “That way, we can take the clips out once you’re dressed.”
Ali nods gratefully.
“Are you okay?” Rachel asks hesitantly, knowing that it might be the key to opening the can of worms she so fears.
“Mmm,” says Ali. “A bit emotional, but okay other than that.”
Rachel deftly separates a section of hair and secures it with a bulldog clip. “But no last-minute jitters?”
“Oh no,” says Ali, attempting to smile. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Will’s the one for me. You know when you know, don’t you?”
Do you? wonders Rachel. Are you ever 100 percent sure that you’re doing the right thing? She remembers her own wedding day not being quite the occasion she’d spent the best part of twenty years imagining. In her dreams, in fact in the drawings she’s sure she still has somewhere, she pictured herself emerging resplendent from a white horse-drawn carriage, in a dress that resembled a meringue, about to marry her Prince Charming. But instead, it had been a rushed affair in a registry office, with her squeezing herself and her burgeoning bump into an unflattering tent-like monstrosity and waddling to the local pub afterward. Though, as much as she regretted the unexpected haste of the day, she never called into question her love for Jack or whether he was the one for her. Besides, she was five months pregnant and the man she’d always thought she was going to marry was on the other side of the world.
“You’ve got yourself a good man,” says Rachel now. “He won’t let you down.”
Ali raises her eyebrows. “I don’t know that you can ever be entirely confident about that. Even with the ones you thought you could put money on.” She laughs wryly. “In fact, they’re the fellas most likely to disappoint you.”
Rachel looks at her in the mirror. “Have you been disappointed in the past, then?”
“I’ve been hurt before,” says Ali. “Pretty badly, but it was my own fault.”
“How come?”
“I loved someone who wasn’t mine to love.”
Rachel momentarily stops what she’s doing, wondering if this is when Ali’s going to confess to an affair with her husband.
“Is this the married man you were talking about the other night?” she forces herself to ask.
Ali nods. “Except I didn’t know he was married until I’d fallen in love with him.”
Rachel can’t help but backtrack to when she’d first met Ali, the same night that Will had been introduced to her. She remembers her waxing lyrical about Jack; cooing about him having taken her under his wing; telling her how he was going above and beyond the call of duty. Had that included inviting her into his bed? Had they already been sleeping together by then? Perhaps her gushing praise had been a clumsy attempt at overcompensating for the fact that she’d just found out he was married, and was about to meet his wife.
As much as she tries, Rachel can’t for the life of her remember how she’d ended up at the pub that night. She so rarely mixed with Jack’s work colleagues or attended any functions, so there must have been a reason. Perhaps she’d surprised him, thinking it would be a treat, but it had resulted in him having to explain to his uninformed mistress that he had a wife in the wings.
“Do you know, it’s three years to the day?” says Ali, interrupting her thoughts.
Rachel raises her eyebrows questioningly.
“That Will and I met,” offers Ali in answer.
“Today?” asks Rachel.
Ali smiles and nods.
Of course, thinks Rachel. Three years ago next week would have been Jack’s fortieth birthday. The night she went to the pub, she’d been in London shopping for his present, and had called to ask if he wanted to meet for dinner before going home. He’d said Will had just got back from Vietnam and he was going to have a quick drink with him.
“Great,” she can remember saying. “Can I tag along?” So, she had invited herself.
“So, what happened to the married man?” asks Rachel, unable to stop herself from needing to know more. She hadn’t realized she was such a glutton for punishment.
“Oh, I broke it off as soon as I found out,” says Ali, seemingly surprised that Rachel would even need to ask. “But even after you’ve ended things, it doesn’t mean that your feelings automatically stop, does it?”
If it’s Jack she’s talking about, Rachel wonders if he feels the same. Whether he’s still holding a torch for her, even though its burning embers ought to have been extinguished by the arrival of Will.
Is that what’s happening here? Are they both still reeling from an unfinished love affair, and choosing different ways to deal with it? Is Ali’s incessant flirting and Jack’s non-compliance their way of navigating their way through the debris of a relationship that has left them both broken?
“I don’t know how you can cheat on someone you promised to love and cherish,” says Ali. “And I don’t know why a wife would put up with it.”
Rachel feels like she’s being sucked into a vortex, spinning out of control, not knowing which way is up. Her hands tremble as she picks up another section of Ali’s hair, unable to believe that she has the audacity to point the finger at her for Jack’s indiscretions. She should just yank her head back and scream that it takes a strong woman to stand by an unfaithful husband, or one who didn’t have a clue anything was going on until twenty-four hours ago.
“Did the wife ever find out?” asks Rachel, her voice shaking as much as her hands. Were they really going to conduct this conversation here, like this, referring to her in the third person?
Ali’s eyes never leave Rachel’s reflection. “I’m not sure,” she says. “But you always have an inkling if something’s going on, don’t you?”
Is it Rachel’s imagination or was the “you” emphasized? She looks at Ali smiling sweetly in the mirror and tightens her grip on the hair coiled around her hand. She imagines slamming Ali’s head into the dressing table, demanding to know what she’s doing with Jack. When she admits to cheating on Will, Rachel will promise to keep her secret, just so long as Ali doesn’t divulge what she saw and heard last night. They both have a hold over each other, and if Rachel has to make a deal with the devil to release herself from Ali’s grasp, so be it.
“Ow,” cries Ali, pulling away from her.
“Sorry,” says Rachel, coming to her senses and loosening her grip.
“So, you don’t think you’d know if something was going on?” says Ali, rephrasing the question.
“It’s not always that clear cut,” she says, trying desperately hard to keep her voice measured. “I’m sure that there are lots of factors, that on their own don’t add up to much, but when they form a much bigger picture…”
“So, whether you’re the naturally suspicious type, you mean?” asks Ali.
Rachel had never considered herself to be mistrusting, of anyone or anything, least of all Jack.
“I guess that’s part of it,” she says, playing along to see where this takes her. “Though, I would also imagine that sometimes, it’s about whether you want to know.” That, perhaps, is the category she could be accused of falling into. But is that really a crime? Wanting to hold onto the husband you love by living in staunch denial of what’s really going on?
“Wouldn’t you want to know?” asks Ali, definitely emphasizing the “you” this time.