Around me, Lenny is wiping tables, noisily stacking chairs to let me know I’ve overstayed my welcome. I try to stand up, but my legs won’t work. Bumping into Luke Friedland this morning was no accident, I realise, just like it was no accident that he was standing next to me when I fell towards the tracks.
Luke Friedland downloaded my commute in order to follow me.
Who else has done the same?
Simon comes home just as I’m getting in to bed. He’s so pleased to see me I feel a stab of confusion. How can a man who loves me this much have been lying to me?
‘How was Ange?’ It occurs to me suddenly that maybe he didn’t even go and see his sister. If he’s been lying to me about where he works, what else has he been lying about? Justin’s words ring in my ears, and I look at Simon with a new watchfulness.
‘Great. She sends her love.’
‘Good day at work?’ I say. He pulls off his trousers and leaves them in a puddle on the floor with his shirt, before sliding in to bed. Tell me, I think. Tell me now, and it’ll all be okay. Tell me you’ve never worked at the Telegraph; that you’re a junior reporter at some local rag, or that you’re not a journalist at all; that you made it up to impress me, and you actually work the deep-fat fryer at McDonald’s. Just tell me the truth.
But he doesn’t. He strokes my stomach; circles his thumbs against my hip bones. ‘Pretty good. That story about MP expenses broke first thing, so it was a busy one.’
I feel wrong-footed. I saw the story at lunchtime, when I nipped out to get Graham’s sandwich. My head starts to throb. I need to know the truth.
‘I called the Telegraph.’
The colour drains from Simon’s face.
‘You weren’t answering your mobile. Something happened on my way home from work; I was upset, I wanted to talk to you.’
‘What happened? Are you okay?’
I ignore his concern. ‘The switchboard operator had never heard of you.’ I push his hands off my waist. There’s a pause, and I can hear the click of the central heating switching off.
‘I was going to tell you.’
‘Tell me what? That you’d lied to me? Made up a job you thought would impress me?’
‘No! I didn’t make it up. God, Zoe, what do you think of me?’
‘Do you really want me to answer that?’ No wonder he was so negative when I suggested putting Katie forward for work experience, I think; why he snapped when I asked him to pitch a story about the adverts.
‘I did work at the Telegraph. Then they …’ he breaks off, rolling away from me and staring up at the ceiling. ‘They let me go.’ I can’t decide if the shame I can hear in his voice is because he lost his job or because he’s been lying to us.
‘Why? You’ve been there for – what? – more than twenty years.’
Simon gives a hollow laugh. ‘Exactly. Out with the old and in with the new. A younger workforce. Cheaper. Kids who don’t know what the subjunctive is, but who can blog and tweet and upload content to the website in the blink of an eye.’ His voice is bitter, but there’s no real fight in his words, as though the battle is long since lost.
‘When did this happen?’
‘At the start of August.’
For a second I’m struggling for words. ‘You were made redundant four months ago, and you said nothing? What the hell have you been doing all this time?’ I get out of bed and walk towards the door, then stop and turn around, not wanting to stay, but needing to hear more.
‘Walking around, sitting in cafés, writing, reading.’ The bitterness creeps into his voice again. ‘Looking for jobs; having interviews; being told I’m too old; worrying about how to tell you.’ He won’t look at me; his eyes trained resolutely on the ceiling. Deep grooves form across his forehead. He is broken.
I stand watching him, and gradually my anger begins to disappear.
‘What about money?’
‘They gave me a redundancy package. I hoped I’d find something fairly quickly; I thought I’d tell you when I’d sorted it all out. But it went on and on, and when the money ran out I had to use credit cards.’ When he finally looks at me I’m shocked to see his eyes are bright with the beginnings of tears. ‘I’m so sorry, Zoe, I never meant to lie to you. I hoped I’d have it sorted in no time, and I’d be able to surprise you with a new job; carry on looking after you the way you deserve to be looked after.’
I move to sit next to him. ‘Shhh, it’s okay,’ I say, like he’s one of my children. ‘It’ll all be okay.’
Simon makes me promise not to tell the kids.
‘Justin already thinks I don’t pay my way. He doesn’t need any more reason to hate me.’
‘We’ve been through this,’ I say. ‘It’s me he’s angry with, not you. He blames me for the divorce; having to move from Peckham, leave his friends.’
‘So tell him the truth. Why should you take the blame for something that wasn’t your fault? It’s been ten years, Zoe, why are you still protecting Matt?’
‘I’m not protecting Matt, I’m protecting the kids. They love their father; they don’t need to know Matt cheated on me.’