Page 25 of The Life She Could Have Lived

YES

‘I think I’ll hear today, about the job,’ Anna said.

Edward looked up from his toast. ‘Let me know,’ he said.

Ellie, who’d started as a publicist alongside Anna almost a decade ago, had moved to another publisher, and Anna had applied for her role.

It was a bit of a stretch, given that Ellie had been promoted a couple of times while Anna had stayed where she was, but she knew she could do it.

Both boys were at school now, and she felt like it was time to give her career a much-needed boost.

Anna was distracted as she walked Thomas and Sam to school for breakfast club; she was distracted as she caught the Tube to the office – she couldn’t settle to the paperback in her bag or the Metro .

When she’d booted up her computer and got herself a coffee, she sat down at her desk and settled in for a long day of waiting.

But as it turned out, she didn’t have to wait at all.

Deborah walked past her desk and asked her to come in at exactly five past nine, and Anna followed her, hoping this was going to be a day that she’d look back on, as one on which her life had changed for the better.

Deborah ushered Anna into a small meeting room, the same room where the interview had been held. She waited for Anna to sit down, and then she started to speak.

‘Thanks, Anna. I’m always keen to promote from within, so I’ve thought about this appointment long and hard. But I’m sorry to say that, on this occasion, we’ve gone with someone from outside the company.’

Anna felt as if she’d been punched. The interview had gone well, she’d thought, with none of those moments you look back on later and feel annoyed about. And she could do the job, she knew she could. All she needed was to be given a chance.

‘We really appreciate your role in the team,’ Deborah was saying, ‘and we hope you’ll be with us for many years…’

‘Is it because I’m older?’ Anna asked.

Deborah looked taken aback. It was as if she’d had this speech planned, and hadn’t anticipated any interruptions.

‘I can assure you, age doesn’t come into it,’ she stammered.

‘Or because I have children?’ Anna pressed.

Deborah didn’t have children. She was in her fifties and single. She liked to say that she was married to her job. The publicists she hired never had children either. Like Anna hadn’t, when Deborah had hired her.

‘Absolutely not,’ Deborah said firmly. ‘Look, I know this is a disappointment and I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I won’t stand for accusations like that.’

‘How old is the person you’re hiring?’ Anna asked. She knew she should stop, should say thank you and walk out meekly and get back to the job she still had, but something was pushing her onwards, making her ask the questions that she would normally keep inside .

‘I don’t see why that is relevant,’ Deborah asked.

‘I’m going to leave,’ Anna said, standing.

‘Good idea, why don’t you take the day?’

‘No, I don’t think you understand. I’m going to leave. I resign. I’ll write a proper letter and serve my notice but I’m done here.’

She left the room before Deborah could say anything else. She gathered up her things and walked out of the building before she could change her mind.

She felt furious and sad about the job, but it was all mixed with an odd sense of freedom.

She was in the middle of London, without Edward, without the kids, without work.

And it was barely half nine. She could go anywhere, couldn’t she?

She could pretend to be anyone. She could pretend she wasn’t a mum in her late thirties with no job. She sent a message to Nia.

Can we please have lunch? Any time that suits.

She didn’t have to wait long. She never did, with Nia.

Sure. The Dog at one?

So now she had something to anchor her, and she’d be able to eat a greasy sausage sandwich and tell her best friend all about the unfairness of being passed over for the job, and they would imagine the person who’d been hired instead, a pretty blonde, twenty-three years old, with no commitments.

But there were over three hours to fill before that.

Anna headed for the National Portrait Gallery, which she’d passed hundreds of times, promising herself she would go one day, on her lunch break. The day had finally come.

As Anna walked around the gallery, seeing people standing back and taking in the art, as if they had all the time in the world, she felt a shift in herself.

She was always rushing, always trying to be a better mum or a better worker or a better wife.

Always balancing, juggling. She never had a moment to just be.

So that was what she did for the next couple of hours.

She just walked around that building, up and down stairs, looking at familiar and unfamiliar faces, really studying them.

By the time she went to meet Nia, she felt much more at ease. So it took her by surprise, at first, when Nia exploded in rage. And she’d only told her about not getting the job at that point. She’d said nothing about walking out.

‘What the hell? You are perfect for that job and they should know that. All those years you’ve been sitting behind that desk, wasted.’

‘Wasted?’ Anna asked, starting to laugh.

‘I don’t mean wasted, like, drunk. Unless you’ve been keeping that very quiet. I mean you’re wasted in that job. You can do so much more.’

Anna appreciated the fact that Nia was her loudest cheerleader.

But most of all, she felt tired. Had she done the wrong thing, storming out like that?

Was she wasting her time trying to reach for something more?

It was enough, wasn’t it, to look after two children and keep a house going, all those things that needed to be remembered?

Birthday presents and dentist appointments and the pile of washing that never went down.

Wasn’t it enough to do all of that and have a job, to bring some money in to help pay the mortgage?

Did you have to be constantly stretching yourself at work, too?

Did you have to always be living up to your full potential?

Couldn’t she just have a nap? Often, Anna noticed the gap that had existed between her and Nia since she’d had children, and just then, it yawned wider.

‘It’s just, it’s like a kick,’ Anna said.

‘Like you say, I’m sure I can do that job, and they all rely on me so much but they don’t think of me wanting to step up because of the kids.

Sometimes I have to leave early or take a day off because they’re ill and all that, and it’s just easier for them to hire a bright young thing who won’t care what they pay her and doesn’t have any other commitments. It’s just… annoying.’

‘It’s more than annoying,’ Nia said. ‘It’s just plain wrong.’

‘Well, then you might be happy to know that I’ve left.’

‘Left?’

‘Resigned, quit, walked out.’

A smile spread over Nia’s face. ‘Have you, really?’

‘I really, really have.’

Anna hoped Nia wouldn’t ask her what she was going to do next. And Nia didn’t. Instead, she went to the bar and came back with two glasses of fizz.

‘Champagne?’ Anna asked.

‘Well, cava. Kev doesn’t get a lot of requests for champagne, especially at lunchtime.’

They lifted their glasses, chinked them together and drank.

‘Do you know it’s my tenth wedding anniversary today?’ Anna asked. ‘Does it feel like a decade to you?’

Nia shook her head. ‘Wow, ten years. It’s probably time for me to admit to you that I threw up in the bushes outside the reception venue.’

Anna laughed. ‘I’ve always known that. The barman told me.’

‘Wow, so we really haven’t had any secrets from each other. So what are you doing to celebrate, you and Edward? Want me to look after the boys?’

Occasionally, Nia looked after the boys, and when Anna and Edward returned, they were always high on sugar and doing something borderline dangerous, like playing a game where you couldn’t touch the floor and had to go from sofa to coffee table to armchair by any means possible.

They loved Nia, because she never said no to them and she never had to deal with the consequences.

Anna shrugged. ‘No plans,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know whether he’s remembered.’

‘Well,’ Nia said, raising her glass. ‘Here’s to you.’

After a beat of silence, she pulled a face.

‘Did I tell you that Ellen and the boss are a thing now?’

‘No!’

‘Yes, after all those formal warnings and what have you. I try not to think about whether they incorporate office roleplay into their bedroom activities. I only found out a couple of weeks ago but I think it’s been going on for a while.’

‘Do they know that you know?’

‘Yes, it’s common knowledge now. Sometimes he gives her a bit of a grope when he passes her at the photocopier.

And then he has a quick look around to see if anyone’s noticed, and I bury my head in my keyboard and wish I was dead.

Anyway, she’s floating around the place now and I think I preferred it when she hated men and was furious all the time.

The other day I came out of one of the toilet cubicles and she was there in front of the mirror, redoing her lipstick.

I don’t even want to think about why. And she turned to me and asked me if I’d noticed the colour in the sky that morning, the pink clouds.

I didn’t know what to say. You know what I’m like in the morning, I barely open my eyes before I’ve had three coffees.

I just washed my hands a bit hastily and rushed out of there. ’

‘Love,’ Anna said. ‘Who’d have thought it? I’d have put money on you being the one most likely to meet someone in your office.’

‘Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? You never can tell. ’

When Nia went back to her office, Anna headed home.

She let herself in and revelled in the quietness of the house.

She had a long bath, reading a book that was nothing to do with work, and then she moisturised her body from head to toe.

It was the kind of thing she never had time to do.

When it was time for school to finish, she thought, briefly, that she could have cancelled after-school club and picked up the boys, but it was so rare for her to have a day to herself that she tried not to feel guilty about taking it.

Soon enough, it was time to collect the boys and hear about their days and then Edward was home and all four of them were in the bathroom, chatting as the boys took it in turns to shower and clean their teeth.

‘Reuben’s tooth fell out in assembly,’ Sam said.

Anna looked at him. ‘That’s exciting,’ she said. ‘Did he keep hold of it?’

Sam shrugged. Some days, he came home with endless stories and other days, this sort of minor detail was as much as she got out of him.

‘Did you know that half the parents don’t know what digraphs and trigraphs are and they’re going to invite you all in to learn about them?’ Thomas asked.

Edward and Anna shared a look. Hers said ‘you’re going to that’ and his said ‘no, you’re going’, and it made her laugh, the way they could have a conversation without words.

After stories and kisses, they left the boys to go to sleep.

‘You go through to the living room and sit down,’ Edward said. ‘I’m doing dinner tonight.’

It felt nice, being cared for like that. She turned on the TV and watched something mindless about a family who were trying to lose weight. Sam came into the living room after about twenty minutes, sucking on his snuggly and holding his bear beneath his arm .

‘I think there’s something in my room,’ he said sadly.

‘What kind of something?’ Anna asked, standing up.

‘Something a bit scary.’

‘It’s probably sleep,’ Anna said, steering him back up the stairs.

Sam looked up at her, puzzled. They were in the doorway to his bedroom. Anna could hear soft snores coming from Thomas’s room, next door.

‘At night, sleep comes into your room. It’s dark and it’s mostly invisible, and then when you’re ready, it gobbles you up for the night. Didn’t you know that?’

Sam shook his head, and Anna lifted him into her arms and kissed his forehead.

‘Just let it come,’ she said. ‘If we fight it, that’s when things get difficult. We need sleep to be able to play and go to school and do all the things we like to do the next day.’

She laid him down in his bed and he turned on his side and pulled the cover up to his chin.

‘Night night, baby.’

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, Edward called out that dinner was ready, and she saw that he’d set the table and bought a nice bottle of wine and there was a small, square box next to her wine glass.

‘What’s this?’ she asked.

He was serving up pasta into two bowls.

‘Happy anniversary,’ he said, handing one of them to her and leaning forward to kiss her lips.

‘I thought you’d forgotten,’ she said.

He pretended to be wounded and then laughed.

‘Ten years,’ he said, and they were both quiet as they sat down.

Anna was thinking about what a length of time that was, and how they’d spent it, and she wondered whether Edward was doing the same.

Whether he had regrets, or thought about a different kind of life.

Anna reached for the box and flipped it open. Inside, there was a ring. Not an eternity ring, to be worn with her engagement and wedding rings. It was a delicate band with a tiny knot that looked a little bit like a heart. She looked up and saw that Edward was watching her.

‘I just saw it and thought you might like it,’ he said, and there was something almost timid in his tone, and Anna thought how funny it was, that after more than a decade with someone, you could still see a side you didn’t expect.

‘I do,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ She slipped it onto the ring finger on her right hand and held her hand up to admire it. It was lovely. Elegant. Perhaps more the woman she’d like to be than the woman she was.

‘I have to tell you something,’ she said. ‘I didn’t get the job. And I walked out.’

Edward put a hand to his forehead. ‘I forgot to ask, I’m sorry. Wait, you walked out?’

Was he annoyed? The money he earned was more than enough for them to live on. And hadn’t he always wanted her to give up work?

‘Yes. I’m just fed up of being relied on but not valued. I work hard for them and I’m good, and it’s not enough.’

Edward smiled. ‘Good for you.’

Anna was pleased that he didn’t ask her whether she had a plan, what she was going to do next.

‘I’ll find something else,’ she said.

‘You don’t have to,’ he said. ‘But if you want to, I know you will.’

He held up his glass then, and Anna picked up hers. ‘Here’s to the next ten years,’ he said.