Perfect on Paper

by Gillian Harvey

Genres: Marriage & Divorce; Humor & Satire; Small Town & Rural; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

'Charming and relatable' SOPHIE COUSENS

Totally relatable, totally uplifting, totally a must-read' TRACY BLOOM
'Brilliantly funny and engaging' NICOLA GILL
'The perfect escapist read' EMMA MURRAY
'Hilarious, uplifting and relatable' JESSICA RYN
'Fabulously funny... a perfect escapist read' ANNA BELL
'Heartwarming, funny and completely relatable, I couldn't put it down!' LUCY VINE

It's time to shake things up a little...

Clare Bailey's life is perfect. Successful career, loving husband, two kids and a gorgeous townhouse. At least, that's how it looks from the outside.

In fact, she's never felt more invisible. Her boss barely remembers her name, her husband is distracted by his new TV job and her daughter has never found her more embarrassing!

But when she's given a chance to turn her life upside-down she wonders whether she should risk everything she loves for a life that's more than just 'perfect on paper'...?

Praise for Gillian Harvey:

'Just the escapism we need right now' EVENING STANDARD

'A perfect weekend read' GRAZIA

'Funny and uplifting' BELLA

'Made me laugh out loud so many times!' Lucy Vine

'Feel-good, funny, and very relatable' Anna Bell

'Funny and honest' Elizabeth Buchan

Release date: May 13, 2021

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 336

Sample

Chapter One

‘And congratulations to Will for yet another win in court!’ Nigel concluded, the harsh light of the meeting room bouncing off the sheen on his bald head, giving him the appearance of a haloed monk. ‘Well done.’

The four of them clapped obediently as Will stood and gave such a smug little bow that it was all Clare could do to stop herself from leaping over the table and smacking him in the chops. His epic court battle over Mrs Jones’s sprained ankle had netted the firm about two hundred pounds in costs – the sort of money her department made before breakfast. Yet for some reason, news of his win had bumped her presentation to the bottom of the meeting’s agenda.

‘So, I think that’s it!’ Nigel concluded. His leather chair let out a flatulent creak as he stood up, and he stared at it pointedly for a second to make sure everyone knew exactly where the sound had come from. Then, looking at his watch, he announced ‘time, two p.m.’ in such a formal way that she had to look around the table to make sure he wasn’t pronouncing someone dead.

‘Um,’ Clare raised her voice slightly. ‘Um, Nigel, I thought I was going to go through the last quarter’s figures from conveyancing.’ After all, my department does make about seventy-five per cent of our turnover.

Nigel glanced at her as if noticing her for the first time. ‘Er, oh … yes, of course. So, all good?’

‘Yes, we’re, actually we’ve—’

‘Great, great,’ Nigel waved her away as if he was swatting a small fly, rather than dealing with one of his longest-serving members of staff. ‘Do you want to jot it all down in a memo and I’ll give it a proper look through?’

‘Of course,’ she replied, her knuckles whitening against the folder she was clutching.

Because the fact they’d smashed their target for the third time running was absolutely not as important as the fact that Will had won Mrs Jones’s claim against the builder who’d left a plank of wood lying in the street for her to (lucratively) tumble over.

‘It’ll get better,’ Ann said, once Clare was back in her office, adopting an American accent that made her sound like a character from a US law drama, ‘when you start taking homeowners to court and suing their asses rather than helping them move from A to B.’

‘Yep,’ Clare grinned, ‘I guess actually coming into the office and slogging away just isn’t as sexy as strutting around the courtroom in a sharp suit.’ She tugged at the edge of her washed-out blouse, rather self-consciously.

‘Look, don’t worry about it. They’ll realise soon enough when they come to balance the books,’ her friend said, rubbing Clare’s shoulder briefly.

Would they though? Clare wondered. She’d been ten years in the job, four years as associate, and still Nigel seemed to take her presence, her Saturday morning paperwork sessions, her endless evening phone calls, for granted.

Will had joined the firm six months ago, newly qualified and over styled – a man-boy who clearly imagined life as a lawyer would be just like TV drama Legal Minds. Tailored suits, high-profile courtroom drama, glamorous women offering themselves up over tequilas in shady bars after work. Maybe in Hollywood, or even Chicago, Clare thought; but things are a little different in the Home Counties.

Nigel, her boss, and a lover of litigation, had recently taken Will under his wing, evidently having earmarked him for greatness, or at least a future partnership in their small firm. ‘He told me he sees me as the son he never had,’ Will had remarked to her recently.

‘That’s lovely,’ she’d replied, not really knowing what was required of her in the conversation. Or whether she should mention that Nigel actually did have a son, who was a successful accountant.



‘It’s not as if Nigel’s even going to read my memo anyway,’ she griped later to her husband Toby, as they shared an after-work glass of red in their kitchen. ‘He’s too caught up in the whole courtroom thing – he goes to watch Will perform, you know. His rising star.’

‘Yeah.’ Her husband stared at his reflection in the glass-fronted oven and smoothed a stray strand of hair back into place. ‘Tricky.’

‘Toby?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Can you maybe look at me when we’re talking?’

‘Sorry.’ He turned towards her, his blue eyes looking slightly panic-stricken. ‘It’s just … well, I’m having such trouble with my fringe. It’s hard to focus on anything else – you know?’

She’d started to wonder whether her husband’s recent promotion was all it was cracked up to be. After a few comfortable years presenting a section of the breakfast show on regional TV, he’d recently been offered the chance to be a third wheel on the national programme.

This meant two or three days a week he’d disappear to London in the early hours – sometimes picked up by a sleek black car, other times driving in himself to ‘beat the traffic’. He’d become obsessed with what he referred to as his ‘brand’ and begun to ask himself ‘what would Toby do?’ out loud when he was making important decisions such as whether to wear daring red socks or stick to his habitual grey.

One day in three he might get a shot at doing a piece to camera. Last week, he’d interviewed a woman who believed she was in love with her pot plant.

‘Don’t you see?’ he’d said to Clare when she’d made a joke about it. ‘This is a foot in the door of serious TV journalism! There’s talk of me getting my own weekly section.’

‘Your fringe looks fine,’ she said now, impatiently, as he continued to fiddle with it.

‘Are you sure? It’s not too nineties?’

‘No! Anyway, what do you think I should do?’

There was a silence.

‘Lasagne?’ he said at last, his tone uncertain.

‘What?’

‘Lasagne.’

‘Toby! I wasn’t even talking about … I was talking about work for God’s sake!’

‘Sorry! Sorry,’ his hand returned to his fringe. ‘Look, I was listening. It’s just …’

‘But you weren’t, were you?’

‘Yes. You were worried about your, um, work problem. Well …’ he paused for so long she thought he might have fallen into a coma. ‘I think you should do what you feel deep inside, you know, what your gut tells you,’ he continued eventually, patting his lower stomach for emphasis.

‘Hmm,’ she said, wondering what would happen if she really let her gut speak for her. Irritable bowel syndrome – a side-effect of being a successful but busy solicitor – meant that she was always acutely aware of exactly what her gut wanted to say, and was often desperately trying to prevent it from expressing itself in the middle of the office.

‘Anyway,’ Toby continued, ‘try not to worry.’ He patted her leg and began rearranging his fringe again in the reflection. ‘It’s only work.’

What happened, she wondered briefly, to the attentive, mildly ambitious man she’d married fifteen years ago? The boy with a guitar who’d wooed her when they were at university? The man who, until he’d been catapulted into the realm of Z-list celebrity, had been her soulmate?

In six short months he’d started a regime of ‘self care’ that would befit a top model. Special shampoos, endless face creams – she’d even caught him plucking his nose hair with the tweezers she reserved for her eyebrows.

‘That’s disgusting!’ she’d said, grabbing them from his hand. ‘Get your own!’

He’d looked at her, tears in his eyes. ‘But I’m shooting tomorrow.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, you don’t have to cry about it!’

‘I’m not!’

Now he had clearly been thinking so much about his fringe that he’d forgotten to actually pay attention to what she was saying. She wasn’t even as important as a little bit of hair.

‘What I feel inside about what?’ she challenged.

‘About, you know … the work thing.’ His face – always an open book – registered almost pure panic.

‘Toby,’ she said, sitting forward slightly. ‘You haven’t been listening to anything, have you?’

‘I …’ he began indignantly.

Just then, the door slammed and Alfie arrived home from football practice. Looking taller than he ought to for his fourteen years, he loped into the room. ‘What’s for dinner?’ he asked.

It wasn’t even, Clare thought, as she furiously stirred the gravy, that she expected much of her family. Just vague acknowledgements from time to time that she was there, that she existed. Even their daughter Katie, who until she’d turned twelve six months ago had been Clare’s little sidekick, seemed recently to have been flooded with the kind of hormonal indifference towards her that ought by rights to be reserved for girls who at least had the good grace to be in their teens.

Looking up now, Clare caught a glimpse of her reflection in the chrome of the extractor. A blur of beige skin, slightly red nose – which always seemed to happen when she was stressed – and limp brown hair that she’d spend ages volumizing every morning with mousse and a hairdryer just to have it gradually reduce over the course of the day like a disappointing soufflé, or a cake that had been removed too soon from the oven.

Toby wasn’t the only one who needed to dial-up the self care. But she couldn’t afford the time to groom herself! Who could slap on face packs or get manicures when they were juggling hundreds of balls? She wasn’t Dynamo, or Houdini, or Angelina frickin’ Jolie.

‘Katie,’ she called. ‘Any chance of a hand with the cutlery?’

Silence.

Eventually Clare laid the table herself, flinging the knives and forks down with slightly more aggression than was probably necessary. As a small act of revenge, she gave Toby the dodgy fork; one of the prongs was bent after Alfie had tried to use it to press the reset button on an old mobile.

That’d teach him.

‘Dinner’s ready!’ she said at last, and suddenly it seemed the collective family deafness was cured as they all came to the table, carefully laying their phones next to their plates as a kind of shield in case they were actually expected to converse with one another.

‘Well, this looks nice,’ Toby said brightly as she plonked his plate of cottage pie and carrots down in front of him. ‘Only …’

‘Only what?’

Clearly Toby hadn’t sensed the tone, as he carried on talking.

‘Only … I’m sure you said you were going to make lasagne?’

Chapter Two

‘Come on, come on,’ Clare hissed and turned the key in the ignition again. Not even a flicker of life. She glanced at her watch and felt a wave of panic. She couldn’t be late today – she barely had enough time to get everything done as it was.

Two minutes earlier, Toby had purred out of their driveway in the new silver Mercedes he’d insisted he needed to keep up with the others in the studio. ‘They’ve given me my own parking space,’ he’d said when making his case for the purchase a few weeks ago. ‘It’s got my name on it. Well, my initials … I can’t park a Volvo next to Samantha’s Bentley!’

The cost of the finance had meant Clare had had to delay upgrading her battered Scenic. (‘It’ll be fine,’ Toby had told her knowledgably. ‘There’s plenty of life in the old girl yet … And the car too! Eh!’)

Which was, of course, exactly the kind of joke that goes down well when you’re trying to convince someone you need to sign up for forty grand’s worth of credit.

While she was still reeling from the hit to their bank account, he’d then asked his PA at work to help him choose him an entirely new wardrobe from shops whose names Clare had never even heard of. ‘I just can’t wear my old stuff,’ he’d said. ‘It’s not current enough, not with it enough!’

When she’d seen the receipt, Clare had nearly thrown up. She could have managed a reasonable second-hand car at least with the money he’d splashed out on what his PA had assured him were the ‘latest trends’.

Clare wasn’t too sure what she made of the floral shirts and pointed shoes his twenty-five-year-old PA, Hayley, had picked out, but she’d had to admit Toby looked pretty hot in his new ensembles. He’d lost weight recently: the trousers hung flatteringly on his bum and the shirts, when tucked in, accentuated the fact that the paunch she’d used to tease him about had all but disappeared.

In fact, although his head was somewhere else, the rest of him had begun to resemble the Toby he’d been when they’d first met – young, toned, energetic – only with fewer band T-shirts and more floral cuffs.

She’d probably have been flattered if any of it had been for her. But whenever she made a move, he seemed to almost jump away – as if she’d electrocuted him rather than pinched his bum. Yesterday she’d sidled up to him when he was pouring coffee and he’d nearly tipped the lot over his hand.

‘Hey!’ he’d said, a little too crossly for her liking. ‘Not in the kitchen!’

For a man whose foreplay – back in the days when they’d used to have a normal amount of sex – had often involved coming over and dry-humping her bum when she was loading the dishwasher, this had seemed rather rich. She’d begun to get a little suspicious of Hayley, who seemed to have more say over Toby’s life than she did these days.

The kids had left at eight this morning, both sloping off to the school bus. Both resisting a goodbye kiss. There had been a time, Clare thought grimly, when the little buggers could hardly be prised off her at the school gate. Suddenly the thought of even a quick peck on the cheek before they went off was not only undesirable but – as Katie had put it the other day when she’d actually managed to land one on her daughter before she’d left the house – ‘disgusting’.

Clare counted to thirty and tried the key again. Still nothing.

It was quarter to nine. She’d been cutting it fine to get in for half past as it was. Now she was definitely going to be late. She stepped out of the car into the freezing air and grabbed her battered tote bag full of papers from the passenger seat.

One advantage of living on a main road, she thought as she walked along as best she could in her narrowest heels, was that there was at least a regular bus service into the town centre. The stop was only a five-minute walk, and if she was lucky there might be a bus along quickly enough for her to still make her meeting at ten.

As she rounded the corner, she saw three others waiting by the stop. Two youngish studenty types of the sort that invaded the town in droves between October and June, and a chubby, grey-haired man in a raincoat, from which protruded (rather worryingly) a flash of bare leg followed by a pair of wellies.

The papers strained against the bag and she moved it into her arms, cradling it like a child rather than letting it burst its seams and spew her work all over the pavement. Why wasn’t she one of these women with an appropriate bag for every occasion? Why always the tote bags? she wondered briefly. The other day, she’d emptied one out on her desk and an old pair of bikini bottoms and a battered pair of goggles had fallen out along with her paperwork, two chewed pens and a scattering of sand.

She really needed to go shopping. Perhaps Toby’s PA could pick her out something ‘on trend’. If there was any money left in the kitty that was. Probably with Toby’s attempt to keep up with the Piers Morgans of ITV draining their joint account, a decent bag was probably once again a distant dream.

She thought again of Toby’s man-makeover, the fact he’d thought nothing of splashing the cash on himself, whereas she felt guilty buying a new pair of shoes and was carrying legal documents in a bag that was more suited to tins of sweetcorn. They’d used to be on the same page about everything but now it was as if they had completely different priorities.

Usually, when her ‘work bag’ was flung on the passenger seat, she didn’t really think about it. But walking along the road clutching a bag bursting with important files made her painfully aware of just how unprofessional she must look. Even the potential flasher in his raincoat was holding a leather briefcase.

The traffic that passed her as she walked was constant, and little drips of rainwater began to pepper her tights as drivers flicked the edges of puddles and sent tiny droplets skyward. Suddenly she was aware that there was the noise of a larger vehicle approaching. She glanced over her shoulder and saw to her relief it was the town bus.

The stop was just a few metres away – she’d made it. Deftly stepping to the side as the vehicle hissed to a stop, she even managed to avoid the slightly larger slosh of water it sent up as it pulled over at the stop.

See? The day was beginning to turn around already.

The two students got on, waving their cards briefly at the driver before turning their attention again to their phones. Mr Flasher was next, his coattails flapping dangerously as he stood on the step in the slight breeze.

‘Got a pass, mate?’ the driver asked him.

‘Sorry?’ Mr Flasher leaned forward and cupped his ear.

‘I need to see your pass, innit.’

‘You … if you what?’

‘Can see your PASS!’ Clare said loudly, fed up with waiting.

‘Oh, can you? I’m so sorry!’ Mr Flasher pulled his coat more tightly around him. ‘I thought the coat was covering everything.’

Then it was her turn. She lifted her foot towards the step, only to have the bus doors hiss shut so close to her face that the rubber seal almost touched her nose. ‘Wait!’ she said, smacking her palm against the door. Surely the driver had seen her?

The man in the driver’s seat was in his twenties, hair slicked back under a cap and sporting a beard so bushy it could well be home to several endangered species of wildlife. He wore a pair of slightly tinted glasses, and as she banged on the door again, she saw the white of a music pod in his ear. ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘Hey!’

Without even a flicker of acknowledgement, he pushed the gearstick forward and the bus pulled away, its heavy wheels sending a cold slug of rainwater into one of her shoes.

Gasping, she stepped back, nearly colliding with an elderly woman in a red jacket who had arrived while the others were boarding. ‘Sorry,’ Clare said, stumbling slightly and nearly dropping her bag. ‘Can you believe that? He was wearing earphones too. Are they allowed to do that? Surely, it’s unsafe!’

The old woman regarded her with a steady gaze. Buoyed by the attention, Clare leaned conspiratorially towards her new confidante. ‘Well, he’s got another think coming,’ she said, feeling anger still bubbling inside her. ‘Let’s just say I’ve memorised his number plate and I’ll be getting on the phone to his boss.’

The woman’s watery blue eyes looked back at her for a moment, as if digesting what she had said. Then, seeming to realise that Clare was expecting some sort of response, she nodded sagely and raised a gnarled finger to tap the side of her nose. ‘Spring onions!’ she said, looking eagerly at Clare. ‘Spring onions and a dash of red wine! That’s the secret. That’s the secret!’



Typically, Nigel was in reception when she arrived late, bedraggled, and twenty-two pounds fifty poorer after having to call a cab. ‘I can’t help the traffic,’ the driver had protested when she’d questioned the fare. ‘I have to make a living you know.’

‘Everything all right, Carol?’ Nigel asked as she entered the building, tote bag sodden, hair stuck to her head, tights a riot of muddy polka-dots.

‘Yes,’ she said, not bothering to correct him. ‘Yes. I’m sorry I’m late …’

‘Oh!’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘I hadn’t realised you were.’

Luckily, she managed to get to her office and slip her tights off under the desk (thankfully, she’d shaved a couple of days ago so although her legs felt like sandpaper, they looked smooth enough) before Stefan Camberwaddle arrived. Which, bearing in mind the way the day had started, was an almost inconceivable win.

While the bread and butter of her work was sorting out transactional minutia between ordinary homeowners, she’d begun to take on more and more commercial work in recent months. After ten years of purely residential conveyancing it was a relief to tackle some different issues and landing Stefan as a client had been a real boon. She’d handled his personal house move – involving a particularly complicated right of way – about six months ago and now he wanted to involve her in his business. His multi-million-pound property flipping business.

When he’d said the word retainer on the phone, she’d almost wet herself. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Will, she’d thought. It’d be a tidy bonus in her pocket and surely at last the chance of a promotion? Nigel had been hinting to her about a potential partnership for the past two years.

After a little bit of diligence with a comb and the hand-dryer in the work loos Clare had also got her hair to more or less behave, and had even applied a slick of slightly strange tasting lipstick from a tiny stump she’d found in the bottom of her tote, so by the time Ann showed Mr Camberwaddle in, Clare was looking almost entirely human.

‘Hello Mr Camberwaddle,’ she said, rising to her feet and extending a confident hand for a shake. ‘How are you?’

‘Stefan, please,’ he said, then smiled, revealing teeth that were so shockingly bleached she jumped involuntarily. ‘Is everything OK?’ he said, no doubt feeling the jolt from her shaking arm travel up his. ‘You look very white.’



‘Ohhh, two million of business, ohhh, two million of business,’ she sang under her breath as she strode confidently to her boss’s room an hour later. Somehow the phrase had become set to the tune of the hokey-cokey and stuck in her head on a loop.

Nigel’s door was slightly ajar, so she knocked lightly and stuck her head around the gap. Inside, Nigel was bent over his desk, his face so close to the notepad he was writing on that had she been in the chair opposite, she’d have been tempted to draw a second face on the top of his bald head.

Luckily, it was Will, not she, who sat in front of the boss. And he seemed to have had no such temptation. Instead, he was talking about advertising. ‘Business cards on reception desks in. . .