Free Tess Stimson - The Adultery Club by The Adultery Club

the upper levels. Ten
    days before Christmas, everyone wants their divorce
    resolved before the country shuts down for its habitual
    two-week holiday, and half the clerks and barristers have
    gone shopping. I wish Mai realized that I want to witness
    my progeny tread the boards as much as she does, but
    someone has to keep the family in buttons and pterodactyl
    wings.
    It’s still dark and bitterly cold when Mai drops me at
    the station just before seven. A biting wind skitters litter
    on the platform and knifes straight through my clothes. I
    bury my hands deeper in my overcoat pockets and stamp
    my feet, exhaling plumes of smoke as I wait for my train.
    On the opposite platform, a young woman shivers in a

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    short denim skirt and lightweight summer jacket, her
    bare legs almost blue with cold. It never fails to amaze me,
    the level of discomfort women will endure in the name
    of fashion. I’m astonished Sara hasn’t caught her death,
    given some of the flimsy outfits in which she turns up to
    work; though she does always look very attractive. Very.
    But of course Mai has some lovely warm jumpers,
    extremely pretty, in fact. And jeans are so much more
    practical.
    The seven-eight to Waterloo pulls in ten minutes late;
    despite the early hour, the train is dense with Christmas
    shoppers heading for the bright lights of Oxford Street.
    The railways appear to farm their customers like foie gras
    geese: the more they stuff the grubby, stale carriages, the
    richer they become. By the time we reach Basingstoke,
    daytrippers are overflowing into First Class, clutching
    cardboard Starbucks beakers and perspiring in their Puffa
    jackets. One or two have the grace to look guilty, but most
    meet our eyes defiantly, grumbling loudly to one another
    that they’ve paid for their tickets and there isn’t even
    standing room in the coach. What does British Rail expect
    them to do: climb on the roof like they do in India?
    I have some sympathy with their position - battery
    hens are more generously billeted - but the disruptive
    invasion of crisp packets and chattering mobiles makes it impossible for me to concentrate on my case notes.
    I work instead on my crossword until we get to Woking,
    at which point a handsome, well-upholstered woman in
    her mid-fifties - a fellow fixture of the seven-eight train
    - enters the carriage. She is, like me, an avid enthusiast of The Times’s acrostic; over the years we’ve grown quietly accustomed to exchanging newspapers shortly after she
     
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    boards the train so that we may compare notes, returning
    them to one another five minutes before arriving at Waterloo.
    I assume she is also a lawyer or barrister, since I have
    occasionally observed her working on ribboned briefs
    herself; but since we have never actually spoken, I can’t
    be sure.
    Since all the seats are taken, I yield mine; she nods her
    thanks and takes it without fuss. How much simpler is
    life when there are certain rules and all know and adhere
    to them.
    Two teenage girls in sleeveless padded jackets and
    combat trousers - I’ve never warmed to this fashion for
    down-and-out androgyny - exchange smirks as I take
    my place in the aisle. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in
    the train window and suddenly see myself as they must
    do: a dull, old-fashioned, middle-aged businessman in a
    buttoned-up overcoat whose idea of rebelliousness is putting
    foreign coins in a parking meter. I wonder bleakly if
    this is how I appear to Sara. She can’t be more than a
    few years older than these two.
    As every morning for the last month, I feel a guilty,
    appalled thrill of anticipation as I walk into the office. I
    refuse to look at the coat rack to see if her cinnamon wool
    coat is already there.
    A loop of wilting silver tinsel is suspended like a
    hangman’s noose above Emma’s empty desk. I secure the
    limp tinsel to the ceiling as I pass -1 daren’t leave such a
    potent symbol in plain view of my less stable