To my own wonderfully imperfect women:
Polly, Emily M., Dolly, Shami, and Emily S.
ELEANOR
“Eleanor.”
She sat up because she hadn’t even been aware of answering the phone and the night was still black and nothing made sense. Her head spun, and she dropped it forward to make it stop, which allowed other things to fall into place.
“Robert?”
“I’m sorry to wake you.”
“What time is it?”
“Just after four.”
“My God, has something happened?”
“No. Well, I don’t know. Nancy’s not here. I must have fallen asleep when I was reading, because I’ve just woken up and she’s not back. And her phone’s going straight to voice mail.”
The streetlights were seeping in through the cracks in Eleanor’s curtains, and she tried to focus on the strip of artificial light, as if it meant something.
“You don’t know where she is, do you? I mean, she didn’t by any chance come back to your place after dinner, did she?” His voice sounded like overstretched elastic.
“No—no she didn’t.” She swung her legs out of the bed, and all the irritation she’d felt for Nancy the night before, for ages really, sloshed around her body. “Look, I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Oh God, you don’t have to…”
“It’s fine, Robert. I’ll throw on some clothes and get in the car.”
The elastic in his voice snapped. “Oh God, do you think, then … I mean, should I call the police?”
“No. Wait for me.” Eleanor pulled on her jeans as she spoke, and her irritation mutated to anger. She wanted to pick up something and hurl it against the wall. She wanted to scream into Nancy’s perfect face. She wouldn’t let her get away with this. She would recount everything, every last painful second, she would spare her nothing.
* * *
As she drove the few miles between her small flat and Nancy’s large house, Eleanor calibrated all the words she would say to her friend when she saw her next. How she would demand that Nancy stop playing these stupid games with them all and just bloody own up to what she’d done, so they could get on with their lives. Over the years, Eleanor had watched Nancy constantly create little dramas in her life, culminating now in this big one, and she couldn’t help wondering if it was to add interest to a life that wasn’t nearly as full as it could have been. She wondered sometimes what it must be like to occupy Nancy’s brilliant brain but never put it to any tangible use. Nancy could really have been or done anything, yet she had so often failed to commit to anything wholeheartedly. It sometimes felt like Nancy had written herself out of the story of her own life, and surely that was an act of sabotage.
Eleanor stopped at a red traffic light, and three teenagers tripped across the road, their arms interlinked, their faces creased by laughter. And then she just felt sad because they almost felt like a message from her past, or a rip in the seam of time, because they could have been Eleanor, Nancy, and Mary from more than twenty-five years before.
One of the girls turned as they passed the car, and her gaze locked with Eleanor’s, her smile faltering for a moment before she was pulled back into the conversation by her friend. They looked like the students Nancy, Mary, and she had been when they’d met, on almost the first day of their first week at Oxford, amazed at their luck in finding one another so soon. Eleanor wondered if the girls were going back to a messy house in which they’d laugh about the night they’d just had before talking about the people they were going to become, the loves they would experience, the lives waiting for them to step into.
As she started driving again, she tried to remember what it was they’d felt so certain they’d accomplish. She supposed she’d not swerved too far from her path, although she’d imagined herself running Oxfam and sitting on committees by now, instead of working with the small aid charity she’d set up. Mary had wanted to stay in the world of Greek gods forever and had her eye on a life of academia. In actuality, Eleanor thought, Mary’s life more closely resembled the punishment of a Greek god, with her terrible marriage that seemed to have sucked the life out of her, although she did undeniably adore her children, who were now not even children, and where the hell did time go. It was hard to even remember what Nancy had wanted to be. Eleanor thought it had to do with journalism. Maybe editing a newspaper had been her ultimate goal, although it all seemed so unlikely now, as the idea of Nancy ever being satisfied enough by anything seemed so implausible.
Nancy and Robert’s house was lit up like a Christmas tree. Eleanor could tell from the road that he must have been into every room, and now the place shone out of the dark street as if ready for a party. Robert’s face showed up in the rounded living room window, and he opened the front door as she came up the steps, where they hugged a greeting, him drawing her in as he always did.
“Shall I make some tea?” he asked as they went down to the basement kitchen.
“I’ll do it. Sit down,” Eleanor said.
He did as he was told, folding his already crumpled body into a chair and rubbing his hands in his eyes, creasing further his rumpled skin. His blond hair was a mess, sleep ravaged, she thought, and it spiked her familiar tenderness for him.
They sat together and sipped their tea, neither of them saying anything. Neither of them wanted to be the one to say it, neither wanted to know or tell. For a second, Eleanor thought, they could have just been a couple, an early start at work beckoning, their comfortable house settled around them.
“Do you know where she is?” Robert asked finally.
“Not exactly.” Eleanor cupped her hands around her mug and tried to imagine how she was going to say what she knew.
“But there is someone else, isn’t there?” He looked straight at her with his question.
“Oh God, Robert, I could kill Nancy.” She couldn’t be the one to tell Robert, but then again she couldn’t lie to his face.
“How long has it been going on?”
“You need to have this conversation with her.”
“But I can’t. She’s not here.”
Nancy had been putting her in impossible situations for most of their lives, Eleanor thought, but this was perhaps the worst. She might not forgive her this time. “Oh, Robert, I’m so sorry.”
“Did she go to him last night?”
“After we met, she said she was going to meet him. I didn’t know beforehand, I promise.”
“It’s not your fault, Eleanor.” But his voice was harsher than she’d heard before. “Do you think that’s it, then? Have they run away together?”
“I really don’t think so. She’s been trying to end things with him, but he hasn’t been taking no for an answer.” For the first time, Eleanor felt a seam of fear in her belly because Nancy had been wanting to end the affair for a while now and she couldn’t imagine what this other man could have said to make her change her mind like this. Nancy wasn’t mean. She wasn’t the sort of person not to come home to her husband of more than twenty years. Eleanor spoke again to allay her fears. “She’s hardly told me anything about him, beyond the fact of him. She was upset last night. She really has been trying to finish things.”