Page 81 of Always the Bridesmaid

He doesn’t prefix with a good morning because frankly, Marty isn’t particularly well mannered, but he is asking standard questions that anybody else in the firm might ask me on my first few days back from holiday.

I ought to have rehearsed a response but my mind has been elsewhere. Since turning my head to face Charlie in bed and realizing that he wasn’t Danny. He wasn’t my husband. He was a man I had wanted to go to bed with, had desired, and whom I was ultimately going to hurt.

That night, that week, our entire time together had been some of the best time I’ve spent in my life.

The few men I’ve slept with since Danny meant nothing to me. They satisfied a drunken, physical need and no more. Those times, I still felt shame but nothing like I feel now.

I feel like I’ve let down Danny’s memory. I know I haven’t had an affair but it sure feels close. And it’s worse than that: I’ve not cheated on a relationship that was ending or fractious, I’ve cheated on my husband, whom I loved deeply, whom I still love.

This time, I have also hurt another man. A good man. A wonderful man. Different in every way to Danny, except that he means so much to me.

I went to King’s Cross on Friday morning. I saw him standing there, tired, a little disheveled, coffee in hand, waiting. I saw him with his back to me, through the windows of two parked trains. When he started to turn in my direction, presumably looking for me, I was cowardly and hid behind a brick pillar.

I waited until he left the platform and when I was sure I would be out of sight, I left too. I headed straight back to my hotel, packed my bags, checked out early and went to my airport hotel, where I spent the rest of the day in bed.

Charlie didn’t deserve more excuses from me. He didn’t deserve ramblings about my husband. The band-aid had already been ripped off and to apply another one, just to rip that off too, would have been unfair.

So I left him in the train station, alone. And as punishment, I spent the day alone, the weekend alone, and if I had a choice, I would have spent today alone, too.

‘Fine, thanks,’ I tell Marty. ‘The wedding was gorgeous.’

Thankfully, Marty goes on to talk about himself, and I walk with him to my desk, which is nestled in a pod with three other secretaries outside of Drew’s office. I let him monologue at me. I make noises and gestures in the right places, making him think I give a damn about whatever he did at the weekend.

Drew is sitting behind his desk. I can see through the glass walls of his office. He glances my way, holding up a hand in greeting, and I notice that he is speaking into a headset, taking a call.

Relieved to put off our meeting for now, and relieved that I’ve arrived before the other legal secretaries, I set down my things, start up my laptop and turn on the large monitor the laptop is plugged into. I take off my shades and replace them with reading glasses in a bid to hide the dark-grey clouds underneath and the red vessels on the whites of my eyes. Then I start working through my full inbox, trying and failing to concentrate.

The problem with being a staple figure in the office for as long as I have been is that everyone knows you and likes to know your business.

I’ve had an abysmal day, full of people bouncing up to me, sprightly as hell, asking about my trip.

Everyone since Marty has received the same response.

‘Fine, thanks. The wedding was gorgeous.’

An hour before lunchtime, I got a notification from my calendar telling me there was a leaving lunch for one of the associates who’s going on maternity leave. I remember getting the initial invitation – I even made suggestions as to the best place to host the event – but I sent an email on the back of that notification today, declining the event on grounds of having too much work to do.

Thankfully, Drew was busy for most of the morning, so we had limited interactions and he spent the afternoon prepping a client who has been subpoenaed to appear in court later this week.

I left work at five thirty on the buzzer. As soon as I got back to my apartment, I stripped out of my tailored dress and put on my comfy loungewear. I heated up a carton of soup that I’d grabbed on the way home, which promised me two of my five a day, and now I’m sitting on the sofa, forcing myself to eat it despite having had no appetite all day.

Succession is re-running on my television, though I’m not watching it. The voices of Logan and Roman are merely providing some presence in my empty home, some background noise to drown out the voices in my head.

I discard what is left of the soup and put my crockery in the dishwasher to turn on when I have a full load.

I lie back on the sofa and pick up my phone, opening the photos app.

Charlie was completely on top of taking selfies of us and I’m grateful for the memories because I was so engrossed in sightseeing that I kept forgetting to take pictures. Of course, now most of my London memories involve him and that’s a catch twenty-two.

I had such an amazing time with him that I want to look back and remember our time together fondly but looking at these pictures is a slow form of torture. A reminder of what I did to him, a reminder of what I did to Danny.

As if a secondary thought, I start scrolling back quickly to find pictures of me and Danny, to look at our memories together, but before I get too far back, I see a picture of myself. I’m standing on the back of the open-top London bus, the wind blowing my hair away from my face, looking up at the sun. Charlie must’ve taken it without my knowing. I wonder if he knew then that we would end up in bed together. He never gave that inclination. He said he wanted to be friends, but he must have cared about me. Our night together couldn’t have felt as deep, as meaningful as it did, if he hadn’t been into it.

When I close my eyes, I see him standing at platform nine and three quarters. Waiting for me.

I hate myself.

I scroll back to pictures of Danny and me. Drinking cocktails on Manhattan rooftops, frolicking on a beach on vacation, playing with Cady when she was a girl, laughing with his arms around Drew and me.

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