Ordinary Joe. Jon Teckman

you heard about Benny?’ she warbled as she put the glasses down on my desk with barely a second glance. I prayed I hadn’t left any labels anywhere that could identify their source as London EC1 rather than downtown Manhattan. ‘Course, you have – you were with him, weren’t you?’

      ‘I only know what he’s told me,’ I lied. ‘He denies anything went on out there. He reckons it’s a couple of his mates at Buddy’s place winding him up.’

      ‘I didn’t think he had any mates over there,’ Polly replied, ‘and you were there. Surely you’d know if he’d shagged Olivia Finch.’

      ‘I wasn’t with him every second, Poll. And I certainly didn’t spend the nights with him. Askett Brown can still run to a separate room for each for us, you know.’

      Polly smiled. ‘Yeah, but you must have seen if he was talking to her or anything. Did you speak to her again? You didn’t set them up, did you?’

      I was probably blushing as I conceded that I had indeed spoken to Olivia at the party but had definitely not introduced her to Bennett. It felt like a police interrogation as Polly probed me for more inside gen she could feed to her colleagues. If information was power in the City, good gossip was like the uranium at the generator’s core. God forgive me, but I couldn’t resist adding: ‘But we didn’t leave the party together so I suppose anything could have happened after I left.’

      Polly shook her head thoughtfully. ‘In some ways I can believe it – you know, given what a bastard he is – but for the life of me I can’t see her going for him, can you? She seems such a beautiful person and he’s a complete and utter tosser. And if he had done it, wouldn’t he be bragging about it rather than trying to cover it up? He’s not usually so coy about his out-of-office activities, is he?’

      ‘I see your point,’ I replied, wondering if she had stumbled upon a fatal flaw in my hastily constructed plan, ‘but, remember, at the end of the day he is a married man. And I don’t think Buddy – or Bill Davis – would be too pleased if they found out what’s happened. I mean, what’s alleged to have happened.’

      ‘Well,’ said Polly as she scooped up her new sunglasses and made to walk away, ‘whether it’s true or not, Amanda has gone completely fucking ape shit. God knows what Mrs B. will say when she finds out.’

       MILL HILL, NORTH LONDON

      I left the office before five that evening, citing jet lag as the reason I couldn’t put in the usual twelve-hour day. I’d like to say I left early because I was keen to get home to spend some quality time with my family after being away for a whole week. That may even have been partly true. But the main reason was that I wanted to be well out of sight before Olivia woke up in LA and went online to see if her lover had replied to her latest e-mail. I was trying to outrun the Internet.

      I also had an important mission to attend to. After kissing Natasha and the kids ‘hello’, I sprinted up the stairs to our bedroom, pulled open the top drawer of my chest (we had matching ‘his’ and ‘hers’ furniture throughout our bedroom – identical cherry-wood chests of drawers, wardrobes, bookshelves and bedside cabinets all arranged in perfect symmetry) and started searching frantically for the smoking gun – the comedy socks that could pin the crime of my adultery on my weak, sloping shoulders. After a few minutes of fruitless excavation, an untidy pile of balled socks, odd socks, boxer shorts and briefs had spread across the floor by my feet.

      ‘What on earth are you doing?’ I heard Natasha say and looked round to see her standing in the doorway, leaning against one side like a drunken sailor against a lamp post. ‘What are you looking for?’

      ‘What?’ I replied as if my wife had been addressing me in Serbo-Croat. ‘Looking for? I’m not looking for anything. I just thought it was high time I gave my underwear drawer a bit of a clear-out. There’s stuff in here I haven’t worn for years. Look!’ With some reluctance, I picked up a couple of pairs of perfectly good socks and a few of their unmatched cousins and threw them without ceremony into the waste-paper bin. Then I bent down and picked up the rest of my collection of undergarments and stuffed them back into the drawer. ‘That’s better,’ I said, straining to push it shut, and still wondering where the hell the incriminating items might be.

      ‘Are you feeling OK, love?’ Natasha said, a look of genuine concern spreading across her face. ‘Touch of jet lag? You do remember that I’m supposed to be going out this evening, don’t you? I’ve got my book group. Would you rather I cancelled? I haven’t actually managed to finish the book so I’m not too bothered about going.’

      ‘No, you go,’ I said, ‘I’ll be fine. It’s about time you had a good night out.’

      ‘I’m not sure I’d call sitting with a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals discussing the latest Booker Prize-winner a good night out, but thank you. I could do with getting away from this place for a bit. Are you OK to get the kids’ tea sorted while I get ready?’

      ‘Of course,’ I said, kissing her on the cheek as I brushed past her in the doorway. ‘No problem.’

      Following Natasha’s instructions, I went down to the kitchen and started to prepare the children’s tea, mixing up an off-white, glutinous, cheesy sauce which I then threw over some quick-cook pasta and doled out into their favourite bowls. As I sat down to watch them spooning the goo in the approximate direction of their hungry mouths, the realisation suddenly struck me: the evidence I was looking for would still be in amongst the dirty washing I’d brought back from New York. Leaving the children to eat, I sidled into the utility room to continue my search. It didn’t take me long to sift through the pile of laundry stacked up by the machine and find the guilty parties – my pair of black socks with the brightly coloured cartoon and the slogan picked out in red letters: ‘Have a Silly Saturday’. I rammed them into my trouser pockets – one to the left; one to the right – then raced back into the kitchen just as the first spoonful of cheesy pasta hit the wedding picture of my parents-in-law that hung above the breakfast bar, the product of Matthew’s poor aim or, to be fair, Helen’s quick reactions in dodging the projectile he had aimed at her. His second salvo caught his sister square in the middle of the forehead.