People would kill for a job as a chat-show host, a TV presenter. Admittedly, it was only state-wide TV, not nationwide. Abigail’s show ran in the afternoons, rather than at primetime – breakfast or evenings – but still, people would do anything for that job.
You had to, in fact. Do anything.
And she had. Anything and everything Rob had asked of her.
When Abi arrived in the US, she was seen as nothing more than Rob’s wife: a young, extremely attractive, clever-enough wife. Even if she’d had the combined IQs of all the CEOs of the FTSE 100 she probably wouldn’t have been noticed for anything other than her looks – Rob and Abigail didn’t mix with the sort of people who wanted anything more from women than beauty. They thought she was charming. That’s what they said, often: ‘she’s so cute’, ‘so charming’, ‘so sweet’. It was a good thing that the Americans had always loved British accents. It gave her an edge. Stopped her falling into obscurity. Rob’s colleagues and their wives lapped it up. Say, ‘vite-a-min,’ they’d demand. ‘Say sked-ual – no, say tuh-may-toe.’ And she would. She was doing her job. Cute, charming, sweet corporate wife. Even though it wasn’t the 1950s.
‘Vitamin, schedule, tomato.’
‘Isn’t she just adorable? She should be on TV. Rob, put her on TV,’ they’d say.
They never asked Rob to perform like that, yet they hung on his every word. So, he wrote the scripts, she read them. She didn’t resent that. She loved it. She was grateful when he did as they suggested, when he put her on TV. The higher he rose, the higher she did. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. She was always telling herself as much.
He wrote the script for their private lives with the same autocratic approach, and she regurgitated it. Now, with hindsight, as she scrabbled around his desk drawer to retrieve her passport, she wondered whether she was overly willing to be repressed.
It worked, for quite some time. But then it stopped working because her time ran out. To have had a chance at longevity she would have had to secure an anchor job with one of the five major US broadcast television networks by the time she was thirty. She didn’t manage that. There were younger, thinner, leggier, keener women waiting in the wings. Always. She couldn’t resent it; it was a system she’d played. She’d given it her best shot. It hadn’t panned out. Suck it up.
Rob was doing very well for himself. He was not subject to a time limit; men could get old and stay successful, interesting. At that point, he was concentrating on syndicating out his shows, although her particular show was never picked up. On occasion, she privately wondered how much effort he put into selling it. He often reminded her that it didn’t really matter whether her show got picked up or not – they didn’t need the money and he did need her at home.
Or at least, she liked to think he did.
She’d have had to have been way bigger for the chance to grow old gracefully in front of a TV audience. Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, and Diane Sawyer had been allowed. That was about it. It was her own fault. Sometimes she’d lie awake at night, alone, even though he was sleeping next to her, and she’d admit that she’d never had the necessary commitment to her career. Not one hundred per cent. She’d drawn lines. She had principles. She wouldn’t, for example, appear on TV shows that were solely designed to humiliate people. She hadn’t gone to university to rip the shit out of those with less education, money or fewer chances than she had. She played fairer than that. And although she did watch her weight (that was just common sense, right?), she wasn’t prepared to starve herself. Eating tissues was not her idea of fun, and while she’d had Botox, that was to help with her migraines (mostly). She’d resisted plastic surgery (at least on her face), and had only had a little augmentation to her breasts. She was not prepared to sleep with anyone other than Rob, because she loved him and respected herself. But it limited her career options in a business where the casting couch was still being bounced upon. In the past couple of years, she’d found she was not even willing to go to absolutely every party she was invited to, to make small talk with strangers, on the off-chance one of them (out of, say, fifty thousand) might offer her an opportunity. It was exhausting. Soul destroying. She found that neither the canapés nor the conversation ever quite filled her up. She used to do that sort of eternal mingling and mixing willingly, hopefully. She couldn’t really explain it, but more and more, she found she preferred to stay at home and snuggle up with a good book (which was handy really because there was rarely the option of snuggling up with Rob – he still seemed to like the parties).
Now, as she pulled the door of her luxurious LA home shut behind her and clumped down the path towards the waiting taxi, she wondered whether maybe she should have gone to the parties. Dragged herself there.
The question of other women had raised its ugly head time and again throughout their relationship. As he became increasingly successful, increasingly powerful, she became increasingly paranoid, increasingly jealous. He said there was no reason for her to be like that. To check through his emails, his phone records, to hire private detectives. But he would say that, wouldn’t he? He would say that she was the only woman he’d ever truly loved, or wanted. It didn’t have to be true. Just convenient.
It sometimes felt it was like an incredibly fast version of that arcade game, Whac-A-Mole, where moles appear at random and the player must use a mallet to hit them back into their holes. Other women kept popping up. She’d have to slam them down. Bash them back into their places. Thwack, thump, slap. Take that.
It was exhausting.
She’d had enough.
‘What are you doing?’ asks Ben as he carefully edges in the door, through the hall, past the paint-splattered sheet that I’ve put on the floor to protect the carpet. It’s a thoughtful act. Lily walked right over it and inadvertently stood in some wet paint; paint that is now trailed throughout the kitchen and sitting room. I’ll get a wet cloth and sort that out later. He loosens his tie, a gesture I always think of as sexy. At least, part of me thinks that he looks sexy, another part of me clocks that he looks worn out; unfortunately, both of those things are overwhelmed by my own sense of panic and exhaustion. Ben is a financial director in a small software company. I’m certain what he does is important, crucial maybe – it’s just not very comprehensible, at least not to me. Even so, I do normally ask how his day has been.
Today I snap, ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’
‘Painting the hallway.’
‘Give the man a prize.’
‘But why?’
‘It needed painting.’
‘Have the kids been fed?’
‘I asked Liam to do some fish fingers and beans for the girls.’
Ben makes his way into the sitting room. I hear a blast of CBeebies as the door opens and then the excited shouts of the girls as they fling themselves at him, demanding cuddles, desperate to off-load their news. I wasn’t very receptive to their chatter about the trials and tribulations, triumphs and trade-offs that occurred at school today. When I picked them up, I more or less frogmarched them home, then stuck them in front of the TV until Liam arrived back and could take over. He’s a good kid. I feel a bit guilty that neither my kids nor my husband got the welcome they deserve today. I have nearly finished a first coat on the hall walls. The