Communication Error – a tragedy
Jane was usually sick after every meal. Married to Martin, a senior bank executive, Jane was used to the good life. They were a very respectable couple and she needed to maintain her figure and looks to play the part of the corporate wife. She didn’t work because Martin was a very traditional man and believed that a wife should look after the home, and Jane always aimed to please. When she was in her mid-twenties things had been so much easier. She could eat anything she liked and didn’t put on an ounce, regardless of whether she exercised or not. Her skin was radiant and flawless as a model’s and Martin had been so proud of her. Twenty-something years later and how things had changed!
Jane stood in the master bedroom of their six-bedroom luxury home on the West Common in Harpenden, one of the most exclusive areas of Hertfordshire, only a 30-minute commute from Central London. She was wearing just a bra and knickers as she faced herself in the full-length mirror and sighed. Her hair was dark and glossy, thanks to a very good (and expensive) hairdresser in London, but it didn’t disguise the toll that the years had taken on her face. Not that she looked bad, she looked amazing for forty-five, even Jane had to reluctantly admit that she wasn’t too bad compared with most women her age, but she couldn’t ignore the fine lines around her eyes that Botox couldn’t completely erase, the very slightly crêpey texture of her skin when she pinched it. At least her body wasn’t too bad. Not as supple or athletic as it used to be, but she was still a size 8-10, which was commendable at her age. Still. That was of little consolation. She worried that Martin would soon begin to look elsewhere. Mid-forties is prime mid-life crisis territory for a successful man and he was still incredibly attractive – men do that, they grow into their looks. An old man is distinguished. An old woman is just an old woman. If she’s having a good day. Otherwise she might be a hag, a witch, a crone – you get the idea. Jane continued to stare at her reflection, sighing again.
Martin sat at the large desk in his Canary Wharf office and stared blankly out of the fiftieth floor window. He couldn’t believe he’d just been fired and that a security guard was waiting outside the office ready to escort him off the premises. He’d made millions of pounds for them, no, tens of millions. The ungrateful bastards. How could he have been so stupid? He’d kept electronic copies of important documents as insurance but they were still on his computer and the company had locked him out of it before he’d had a chance to download or email them. What would he tell Jane? Never mind the current state of the economy, a criminal record and very public disgrace wouldn’t help his chances in the job market. He tried to quickly tot up their monthly outgoings. The mortgage was £10,000 a month, nights out and holidays worked out at another £10,000 averaged over the year and Jane cost him at least another £5,000 in clothes and beauty treatments. It sounds like a lot but if you go to Harvey Nichols or Harrods and take a look at the clothing you’d be surprised that the amount was so low. A simple tweed jacket could be upwards of £500 and you were talking thousands for something for a special occasion. Plus there was the French beauty regime that Jane had read about in the Times which was tailored to your skin and cost £2000 per month. It also meant travelling to Paris every other month to pick up the various lotions and potions. Jesus. That had been her 45th birthday present and she’d begged for it. Supposedly a six-month course but he suspected it would be longer than that. All those costs added up to at least £25k per month without even thinking about any of the finer details. His income covered the outgoings but didn’t allow for much in the way of savings, the only capital they had was tied up in the house. How did they ever get like this? How had they become so profligate? What on earth was he going to do?
Martin had met Jane at the London School of Economics in 1986. He was studying Economics and she was a Politics undergraduate. They’d clicked together in the student bar over a pint of bitter and a heated discussion about the evils of Capitalism and Socialism respectively, poles apart in their ideologies but like the old adage about opposites attracting, they were intensely drawn to one another and soon became inseparable. Fellow students thought it was hilarious that the rampant capitalist and the radical socialist had hooked up, but it worked well for them. At least for a while. He’d admired her drive, her idealism, the way she cared about other people and that she didn’t give a fig about her looks. Her lack of vanity served only to intensify her natural beauty. She was like Bianca Jagger with her dark glossy hair and intensely brown, fiery eyes, naturally chic regardless of what she wore.
They got married in their final year, much to the amazement of their peers and families, marriage being very unfashionable among students, but they were so in love that they wanted to cement their relationship as soon as possible. No one had considered that a union of Left and Right could be so romantic and the wedding reception, with its wildly differing guests, made for a very entertaining evening indeed.
After they graduated Martin had gone to work for a friend of his father in a small investment bank in the City, and Jane had started as a freelance journalist for various small magazines and left-wing journals. They set up home together in a small flat in Islington. This was when it was still a run-down, low-rent district, however it was people just like Martin and Jane moving in that elevated it to its present position as prime real-estate gold. As Martin progressed at work his income increased and Jane found herself playing the hostess more and more often. She began to become more well-groomed, taking care to choose her clothes to suit the occasion, according to the client that Martin needed to impress. She spent more time at the hairdresser, so that her locks were always lustrous and shiny, whether styled up for a serious dinner or down for something more low-key. Martin was always so proud of her and never failed to say so. He was grateful to have such a perfect spouse, and the compliments of his colleagues and clients served to remind him how lucky he was.
As Martin became more successful, they moved first to a larger apartment, then to a small house, then to a townhouse, and finally to leafy Harpenden in Hertfordshire, with the intention of starting a family. Jane had by this point stopped working and was a full-time corporate wife, the envy of Martin’s colleagues and friends. Her wardrobe was the stuff of most women’s dreams and she no longer considered the cost when shopping, she didn’t need to with Martin’s bonuses being so large.
They were both thirty-three when they decided that the time had come to start their family. They tried so hard and it just never happened. At thirty-eight and after the fourth failed attempt at IVF they decided to leave it. Adoption never crossed their minds, if it wasn’t meant to be then it wasn’t meant to be.
Jane was psychologically scarred by her inability to bear a child. It was her one failure as a woman and in particular as a wife, never to be a mother, and of course it meant that Martin could not become a father. You see, it was her fault and not his, or at least it was her body’s fault. It rejected his sperm, how could that be? Yet, it was so. She started to become paranoid that Martin would look elsewhere, to find a younger, fertile woman to begin a family with, one whose eggs wouldn’t be repulsed by his DNA. Martin threw himself even further into his work and Jane made sure she was the best corporate wife that a woman could be, to give him as little reason as possible to look elsewhere. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, she loved him so much, the poor thing. She became focused on maintaining her youth and beauty, the only weapons she had at her disposal and that she would lose if she wasn’t careful. She went to Harley Street and investigated minor surgery to try to hold back the years, a little Botox here, a mild chemical peel there, teeny bit of lipo around the hips where some help was needed. Throwing up her meals was just a small aid to being slim – she wasn’t a fan of the gym you see. Over the years she perfected the art of quietly vomiting after every meal. She didn’t even need to put her fingers down her throat anymore and she was always careful to brush her teeth afterwards. She had vast numbers of tiny toothbrushes that she’d picked up from amenity kits on plane
s from all the flights she’d taken in Business and First Class with Martin. Perfect handbag size. It’s funny how these little things can come in handy for the most surprising reasons. Bulimia is much more common than people imagine. Plenty of women want to keep their weight down and exercise is such an effort. Far easier to throw up a little after a big meal. It’s nothing really. In fact if you overeat just enough to make yourself feel slightly nauseous anyway then it’s even easier. Go on, try it, you’ll see.
Martin sat at his desk, still thinking, he’d been thinking for almost half an hour now and the security guard would soon be telling him to leave. When had things gone wrong? When he started out in the bank Jane had been working as a journalist, but being freelance the work wasn’t constant and to an extent she could pick and choose what she did, particularly with his salary coming in. As he became more successful she’d gradually stopped writing, but that had been her choice hadn’t it? Martin would have been perfectly happy for her to continue to work, but she preferred to be his rock, his support. Didn’t she? And Jane was so good at it too. She cooked restaurant quality meals at home, she was sparkling and witty and just a tiny bit flirtatious with his clients. She was perfect. She didn’t seem to miss her old life and he was always telling her how beautiful she was. He didn’t take her for granted the way other husbands might. He would always say how slim she looked in whatever outfit she was wearing, how it made her look so attractive, that her skin was wonderful and she still looked so young. And she seemed to love being complimented. Over the years he’d noticed that Jane had become rather more shallow than her younger self. She seemed to become obsessed with youth, always trying new treatments, finally settling with the excruciatingly expensive “facial treatment system” that necessitated her bimonthly trips to Paris, at huge expense themselves of course because she was hardly going to travel there in standard class.
Jane just wasn’t the person that he’d married. She had become a shallow remnant of herself, but he felt that it was his fault. He’d encouraged her to become this glossy woman for the sake of his career. He loved her immensely though. It’s like Alzheimer’s, where the person you love is no longer that person, but you don’t stop loving them because they’ve changed. You learn instead to love the memory of them, the living ghost, because it’s better than the alternative which is to live without them.
It was his love for her and the sacrifices that she had made for him that led him to commit fraud at work. She had given up her own career to support his, and she made so much effort for him, that he wanted to reward her, and she loved nice things so much. He didn’t want to disappoint her, he couldn’t bear the thought of her having to make do with anything other than the best. So he started to siphon off a bit of money at work, just a little, here and there. Of course a little soon isn’t enough and becomes just a touch more. The mistake he made was to take just a bit too much from the account of a minor celebrity, a minor celebrity with a particularly eagle-eyed accountant. Not only had the bank sacked him but the celebrity in question wanted to press charges, hence the very public humiliation to come. Financial disgrace he could just about handle but the shame of all and sundry knowing what he had done was almost too much to bear. The tipping point for him was Jane. She would never cope with it. He had to try to protect her from the disgrace, and as he thought about it only one option came to mind.
While Martin was contemplating all this at the office, Jane was at home, having just had a bowl of miso soup for lunch. Miso soup. It has no consistency whatsoever but practically no calories either and if it’s good enough for Keira Knightley it was good enough for Jane. It also meant she didn’t need to throw it up afterwards. Jane was thinking about the forthcoming weekend, it was their 25th wedding anniversary, a great milestone for any couple. Martin had wanted them to go away to a luxury hotel for the weekend but Jane had insisted on staying home so she could cook a romantic meal for the two of them. She wanted to show Martin that she didn’t need a 5-star hotel or a Michelin-starred meal for the occasion to be special, she was happy to cook for her husband and celebrate quietly. Martin had said that she should go into town and buy a special dress for their anniversary meal. He liked her to wear expensive things and look good and as Jane got older she felt that she needed more costly details to hide her aging looks. Sparkling sequins detract from the slight sag of the breast, diamonds take the eye away from leathery décolletage, a gold Rolex focuses attention away from aged hands. This was what Jane believed anyway – you only have to watch old reruns of Dynasty and Dallas to see the truth of it. She willingly walked their materialistic road because she thought it would prevent her from losing Martin.
Martin came home that night at the usual time and made no mention of having lost his job, or of the scandal that was about to hit the two of them like an articulated truck smashing into an open-top Jaguar. As always he sent Jane a text when he arrived at Harpenden station, so when he arrived at the house she would be ready with a dry martini – complete with an olive on a silver cocktail stick. They were like a glamorous couple from the fifties, the financially successful husband, the adoring Stepford wife. Of course as we now know it was all based on a fiction. Martin was a fraudster and they were about to lose everything. The sadness of their predicament was that each of them was unaware of the depth of their love for the other. Martin only committed fraud to maintain their luxurious lifestyle, because he thought Jane needed and deserved it. Jane only lived a shallow, materialistic life because she thought she had to if she were to keep Martin from straying. He would have been happy living back in their one-bedroom flat in Islington with an overweight, unkempt left-wing journalist Jane; she would have been happy in that same flat too, living with Martin the middle-manager.
Their problem was communication, as it is in so many relationships. Take a look at your own, if you’re lucky enough to be in one. Do you ever argue and realise that you simply haven’t understood each other? Are you ever alone together and you realise that you aren’t actually saying what you mean or what you want to say? That you can’t say what you want to say? Maybe you’re scared of the reaction you’ll receive, or you’ve been lying for so long you can’t stop. Something for you to ponder on.
Martin slowly opened the grand front door.
“Hello Darling, I’m home!” He tried to sound as upbeat as possible, to disguise the anxiety that was knotting his stomach like an angry snake.
“Darling, your martini’s on the mantelpiece” Jane called from the kitchen, “I’m trying out a new delicatessen so let me know what you think of the olive.” These were the little things that helped to make her such a good wife, the attention to detail. How many women would ever think about the type of olive, let alone whether their husband might have a preference?
Martin walked into the drawing room and picked up the Baccarat crystal glass of gin from the marble mantelpiece. It was covered in fine water droplets because Jane kept cocktail glasses in the freezer to ensure his martini would be ice cold, just as he liked it. She always bought Noilly Prat, his preferred vermouth, and made it super-dry, swirling it around the glass then pouring the excess away. He was almost overwhelmed with sadness as he considered the perfection of the cocktail and everything it meant.
Jane entered the room carrying a small tray of hors d’oeuvres and wearing a comfortable dark blue knee-length wraparound silk dress by Issa, similar to the one worn by Kate Middleton when her engagement was announced. Jane knew she looked amazing in it.
“What do you think of the olive darling? I think they’re better than the last lot and the man at the deli said that they’ve been grown by the same family in Tuscany for over a hundred years. Nice?” Jane didn’t notice that Martin’s hand was shaking very slightly as he held the glass.
“Absolutely delicious darling, you’ve surpassed yourself yet again. Best martini I’ve ever had. Historic, even!” Martin laughed brittly. They always used “historic” when something was good. It was their little “in joke” because they
both enjoyed reading Michael Winner’s column in the Sunday Times and even sometimes visited hotels or restaurants on his recommendation.
Jane laughed with him. He always complimented her on her martinis and she was pleased that he liked them so much. She felt a brief, warm glow of contentment whenever he complimented her. She was like a dog when its master gets home, eager for love and attention. Whenever Martin was nice she forgot for a moment her fears over losing him. She didn’t stop to think that he never did anything but compliment her. They never argued. Simply never. Some might say that was the sign of a good relationship but in fact it is the opposite. It isn’t possible for two people to be so attuned to each other that they never argue. It simply means that they are being dishonest, not saying what they are feeling, lying in order to paper the cracks in their relationship.
“Dinner will be ready in ten minutes, darling,” Jane said, “so why don’t you put your feet up and I’ll call you when it’s ready,”
“Thanks, dear. I’ll be in the study then. I have a some paperwork to look over tonight so I’ll make a quick start on it,” Martin paused for a second while sipping his martini, lost in thought, then added “I love you, Jane,” and looked at her with a sad smile on his face.
“Yes darling, I know you do. I love you too!” she responded, bemusedly, herself pausing then adding: “Is everything alright?”
“Yes, of course, just a tiring day is all. I was thinking maybe I don’t tell you often enough that I love you. You know I do though, don’t you?” he questioned.
“Oh Martin, don’t be silly! Of course I do! You tell me all the time!” Jane laughed, but the laugh was slightly hollow. He was acting very strangely. He was clearly worried about something for him to declare his love out of the blue like that, and why look at her so sadly when saying it? Perhaps tonight was the night? Was he going to tell her that he’d fallen in love with someone else and was leaving her? A fist of ice appeared to grip her heart suddenly. She quickly regained her composure and said, “You go and sit down then, I’ll call you in a few minutes.”
“Yes, dear,” he replied, and turned to walk back to the hall which the study led off, carrying his martini with him. Jane watched his receding back as he left the room, then herself turned and went back into the kitchen.
Martin walked over to his desk, took a little bunch of keys from the top drawer, then approached the grand cabinet that stood along the whole of one wall of the study. Inside the base of the cabinet was a locked metal box which contained a Walther PPK pistol that his father had been issued with at the end of World War Two and managed to hang on to. Martin had kept the pistol since his father died in the nineties and it still had ammunition with it. He hoped it would still work.
The rib of beef was cooked to perfection and Jane left it to rest while she finished making the prawn cocktails. Perfect retro seventies bliss, although Jane had foregone complete authenticity by using huge, gorgeous tiger prawns rather than tiny anaemic frozen ones. As she spooned the delicious prawn mixture into crystal bowls lined with lettuce she felt Martin come up behind her and whisper “I love you Jane” into her ear. She smiled to herself, but before she could respond there was a flash in her head then nothing.
Martin looked at the body of his darling wife lying on the marble floor of their kitchen, blood and grey matter oozing from the entrance and exit wounds in her skull. Her face was unharmed, thankfully, her skin unblemished and smooth, her eyes looking at nothing. He lovingly stroked each eyelid closed and sank down next to her, put his arms around her – still warm and supple – and wept.
As he raised the gun to his own head he whispered one last time, “I love you, Jane”. Then a flash and nothing.