Free Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon Page A

potential source of gossip, didn't even try to pretend she wasn't listening in.
    Sophie gave Matthew his laptop.
    "I thought you might need this."
    He lowered his voice, but not enough that he couldn't be heard by Annie.
    "How are the girls?"
    For fuck's sake, Matthew, thought Helen, take her into your office, don't make her have this conversation in public.
    Sophie's voice was shaky and barely audible.
    "Missing you, of course."
    "Tell them I miss them, too," he was saying, and Helen was practically blushing at the humiliation Sophie must be feeling.
    "Phone them and tell them yourself."
    And Sophie left him standing there with her dignity (almost) intact.
    It was all around the office in minutes. Helen kept her head down at her computer, but could practically feel a Mexican wave of whispering traveling around the room. Eventually, Jenny came and sat on her desk.
    "Have you heard?"
    For a moment, Helen considered standing up and shouting, "Yes and it's all because of me. I'm the reason his wife was crying and his shirts aren't ironed and his kids are going to grow up without a father." But she settled on "Heard what?"
    "Matthew and his wife have split up. He's moved out—no one knows where."
    She took a dramatic pause for a reaction. Helen contorted her face into something she hoped would pass off as surprise.
    "How sad."
    "I knew there was something up with him. Oh, my God!" Jenny's stage whisper reached a squeakier pitch. "You don't think he's gone off with someone else, do you?"
    "How the fuck would I know?" said Helen, a touch too defensively.
    "Imagine. I mean he's so…old. Hey," she shouted across at Reception, "what if Matthew's been shagging around?"
    Annie gave a visceral shudder. "Grim."
    Great, thought Helen, who for some reason had always believed that her female colleagues found Matthew rather attractive. Absolutely fucking great.
    * * *
    "They can never find out it's me."
    Helen and Matthew were eating dinner at the kitchen table again. This time she'd cooked; fish fingers, oven chips, and frozen peas, a meal she was secretly hoping might make him yearn for Sophie's grown-up dinners.
    "I mean it, Matthew, we can't ever tell anyone at work."
    He'd gotten his puppy-dog look back, the one which made Helen want to kick him.
    "Are you ashamed of me?"
    "Of course I'm not, I just don't think it'll do either of us any good."
    "But I want to show you off. I want everyone to know how much in love we are."
    She felt sick.
    "Tell you what, why don't we just wait a bit and then we can tell them we got together after you left Sophie. It'll be cleaner like that. Otherwise, everyone's going to think I'm a rampaging bitch."
    "OK," he agreed reluctantly. "I suppose we could wait a month."
    "Let's make it two." She put her hand over his and smiled at him, thinking, OK, I have two months to work out what I'm going to do.
    * * *
    It was nearly two weeks since Matthew had moved in and Sophie's only contact with him had been the excruciating laptop moment. She knew enough about Annie to know that the news would be all around Global by now if it wasn't already, and her stomach turned over as she imagined the mock concern for her that would be peppering Matthew's colleagues' conversations. She was in the anger phase now—how dare he allow her to be humiliated like that, and more to the point, what was wrong with her, worrying about whether he needed his computer? It was none of her concern now—so when he called to say he needed to get more of his stuff, she thought about telling him where to shove it. But that wasn't her. He asked if he could come when the girls were going to be there and Sophie gave him a time on Saturday afternoon when she could go off to the supermarket and they need only have the bare minimum of contact.
    He arrived promptly at two and hesitated on the doorstep, unsure whether to ring the bell or just let himself in. Sophie could see him through the venetian blinds on the kitchen window, hands in his coat