Page 96 of We All Live Here
“So what are you going to say to him?”
Eleanor and Lila are at the launch of a new makeup brand. Eleanor gets sent enough free makeup to open a small branch of Boots the Chemist, and Lila is always happy to accept free stuff, especially as she has no clue what she should be wearing anymore. They are standing in a Georgian room with floor-to-ceiling windows while young people, who are clearly off-duty models, hand round champagne and tiny canapés of mostly unrecognizable food. Around the edges of the room people stand in front of illuminated mirrors, trying out the free testers to a soundtrack of ambient music. Eleanor is currently blending three different shades of foundation on Lila’s cheeks, pausing and frowning while Lila looks longingly as tiny portions of fish and chips in paper cones pass by, just out of reach.
She has spent a week trying to work out what she will say when she sees Gabriel Mallory. She has ignored his texts, the last two of which have suggested they go out for dinner—in one he calls herdolcezza—and she has invented a work deadline to avoid doing the school pickup. She had felt wretched for two days, then woken up clear-headed, with just a slow-burning anger, at him for his duplicity and at herself for not picking up on it.
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it a bit”—it has actually consumed her every waking moment—“and I just want to ask him what he thought he was doing. I mean, how the hell did he think Jessie and I wouldn’t ever meet?”
“And she’s only the one you know about.”
This thought has not escaped Lila. She keeps thinking of the way he had described his late wife as “seeing things that weren’t there,” the way Victoria’s parents no longer want to speak to him. She waits as Eleanor gets a cotton bud and runs it carefully under her eye.
“I thought I might write a letter. Just telling him how awful he’s made me feel, and how I’d assumed we were all too old for this kind of rubbish.”
“Spoken like someone who has never been on a dating app.”
“Is that what they’re like?” Lila blinks at Eleanor in horror.
“It’s pretty much a jungle out there. If the jungle was full of duplicitous, preening, toxic chancers, that is. The actual jungle might be preferable. Oh, no, not this shade. You look like someone offLove Island.”
“Do you think a letter is a bad idea?”
Eleanor picks up a lipstick and unscrews the lid, testing it on the back of her hand. “The problem is, you’re treating him like someone who (a) will bother to read it, and (b) consider their own accountability. Everything you’ve told me suggests he won’t do either. Close your mouth.”
Lila waits as Eleanor applies the lipstick. “So he just gets away with it?”
“No. Not least because you tell Jessie. Oh, yes, that looks better.” She leans back and nods with approval.
This is the weird bit. Lila wants to tell Jessie. She had liked her instinctively. She is clearly not to blame for any of this. She feels a kind of sisterly responsibility toward the fellow single mother, the fellow dupe. But when she thinks about starting the conversation, she feels clammy with anxiety. What if Jessie doesn’t believe her? What if she blames Lila? She was clearly seeing Gabriel before Lila was. What if this creates yet another layer of drama in the school playground? The thought of everyone knowing this latest humiliation—the Philippa Grahams and the Marjas seeing she has been betrayed by yet another man—is too much to bear.
Eleanor turns Lila’s seat so that she can see herself in the mirror. She looks, she thinks distantly, actually pretty good.
“I just…I just don’t know if I can face it.”
“Moody Blush? It’s very subtle on you.”
“No. Telling Jessie.”
Eleanor rolls her eyes. “And this is how the patriarchy continues.”
“So now I’m responsible for the oppression of all womankind?”
“If you don’t tell her, you’re responsible for the oppression of two.”
“Ugh. Why are we somehow responsible for the fallout of men behaving like arseholes?”
Eleanor doesn’t say anything.
“What?”
“I’m not sure you’reentirelyabove blame right now.”
“I did say sorry to Jensen.”
Eleanor shrugs. “Sounded like a pretty flimsy apology to me.”
“You think I should have said more?”
“Uh…yes?”
