by Woolf, Emma
He was leaving for Saint Lucia the next morning. Not ten days hiking in Snowdonia as he’d told me.
He wasn’t going alone “to clear his head’ as he’d told me. He was taking that woman he works with, Lily.
She bought a flat in London at the end of last year and he seems to have paid for some of it.
He wants to leave me (maybe I knew that already) but he doesn’t know where to go. She doesn’t appear that keen on him moving in.
So there we are. All my suspicions are confirmed, but worse. Every time he’s told me he’s been working late or staying up in London, he’s been with her. He’s been lying for months now, maybe even years, and it took just a few hours, sitting on the tarmac, our departure delayed, while the boys watched movies, to get the whole truth. Texts, emails, photos, bank statements, flight itineraries and hotel confirmations, everything in his phone.
I guess he thought he’d left it at home or at the office because it kept working for several hours—by the time we landed in Florida, it was locked, and I chucked it in a bin. I didn’t want to look at any of it ever again. I had all the proof I needed.
So now what? It’s May, and I’ve known since the end of February. For the first few days in Florida, I didn’t know what to do. I needed time and space to think. We stayed for a week in Orlando with my mum and dad, taking the boys and their cousins to Disney World. Then me and my twin sister went down to Miami for a four-day spa break on our own. We got tipsy on the first night, sitting by the pool drinking cocktails, and it all came out—God, it was a relief to tell Polly. She understood completely, everything, she always does. In fact, she confided that Andrew had an affair a few years back. She did it properly: checking his satnav, hacking into his emails and credit card details, even following him in the car on the “long bike rides” he claimed to be taking at weekends. She never confronted him, and after a while, she said, “It petered out. The girl moved on to a new job, and Andrew settled back into family life.”
Should I do the same? Wait it out?
I never told Harry I had his phone—presumably he thinks he lost it at the airport and it was never found. If I tell him, I have to make some decisions. I have to file for divorce, or forgive him and try to repair our marriage, or something . . . and I don’t know what. Half the time I don’t feel vengeful or determined or any of the things a betrayed wife is supposed to feel: I feel defeated. I don’t want him to leave. I’m scared of what happens next. I hate his constant lies, but is it better to have a dishonest husband than no husband at all? I like our life. I like our big house, and two cars, and living where we do. The boys love their school, and all their friends are in the area. Admittedly, I don’t have many friends, but I have tennis and bridge and the WI to keep me occupied.
Which is why I haven’t done anything yet. Hearing Poll admit that about Andrew helped, because it reminded me that what Harry is doing is not my fault. It’s not just because I’m menopausal and past-it, not just that Harry has fallen out of love with me—according to Poll, “it’s what men do.” Anyway, she clearly did the right thing since they’re still together. Maybe this thing with Lily (it hurts even to type her name) will just blow over, peter out, whatever.
At the moment I’m an emotional wreck—I’m not sleeping and my self-confidence is at rock bottom. Does she know that? Does the “other woman” ever think about that? I wonder. It’s Harry I should be angry at, and yet it feels easier to channel my hate towards this unknown girl.
It was the day after James’s birthday, and Lily had stayed the night with Cassie and Charlie in Victoria. They had thrown a dinner party for James and Su-Ki, a few of their closest friends, plus the family.
Cassie and Charlie had bought the place in Victoria shortly after their wedding the previous spring, but there was still a lot to be done. It was a large flat, but it needed a facelift, if not a complete overhaul. Lily had agreed to help out with painting, so the post-birthday breakfast found them blearily studying colour charts and assessing the way the light fell.
Cassie had ambitious plans for the flat and had put together a “mood board”: swatches of fabrics, torn-out magazine images, even scribbled lines of poetry, to inspire her design choices. It was all about balancing the morning sun with the afternoon shadows, according to Cassie. To Lily, looking at the dark, peeling walls, the mood board didn’t make sense. What the flat needed, surely, was a lick of white paint?
She teased her sister, affectionately, at the breakfast table: “How did it come to this, Cass—are you reading Good Housekeeping now? Next you’ll be stitching birthday cards and stuffing mushrooms!” After toast and marmalade, and several rounds of tea, they finally agreed on the colour scheme for the hallway. Charlie was dispatched to Homebase, with lists of paint colours and strict instructions from his wife. Left alone, Cassie and Lily drifted around the flat and began to analyse the light and shade situation (lots of shade, not much light).
“Well . . .” Lily tried to sound positive. “It’s a basement flat, so you don’t get huge amounts of sunshine. Maybe it’s best to stick to light colours, white and light blue, maybe dove grey?”
“Oh no, that’s a myth about light colours making a room feel larger. For this space”—Cassie gestured around the tiny dining nook—“I see reds and ambers, nurturing, warm tones for the heart of the home.” She worked as a marketing consultant in financial services, but she loved to immerse herself in “projects.” Lily could tell she’d been heavily influenced by her honeymoon in Peru and the interior design magazines—hence the mood board—and this was her latest creative outlet. She loved her big sister for her enthusiasm and determination, even if she did want to paint her basement flat all sorts of unsuitable South American colours.
“OK,” Lily said brightly. “I see what you mean—a kind of Incan vibe? You were going to show me those rugs you brought back from Machu Picchu, weren’t you. Let’s go and unpack some of the boxes.”
As they started opening the cardboard boxes which had been stacked in the spare room, conversation turned to Lily’s recent holiday with Harry.
“That’s a pretty big deal, isn’t it, spending a fortnight in the Caribbean together? I don’t even know how he manages it,” Cassie said. “I’m sorry, but if Charlie was away for two weeks with another woman, I hope I’d realise . . .”
Lily looked at her big sister. Cassie was unpeeling brown tape from a large box, peering in and pulling out some books. “Nope. No rugs here. We should have labelled the boxes; I told Charlie we’d never be able to find anything—I can’t believe we’re still unpacking. It was all such a rush, selling both our flats, and the wedding, and then going away.”
“Cass,” Lily spoke in a way that made her sister look up. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.” Lily wasn’t quite sure what she was going to say, but she went on: “You know me and Harry? I’m worried. About us—about him, really.” She found her eyes filling suddenly with tears.
Cassie dropped the books back in the box and rushed to her sister’s side. “Are you OK? I didn’t mean to sound harsh about Harry. What I just said was unbelievably crass, I’m so sorry. I’m not judging you, you know that, right?”
Lily nodded. “Of course, Cass. It’s fine, you haven’t said anything wrong. I didn’t want to fall into this cliché. I thought we could just be friends, he was married—unhappily he claimed, but married all the same. And I’ve always been clear with him about my feelings, that I love him, but I don’t want him to destroy his family.”
“But I thought you said he was always threatening to leave?”
Lily nodded. “He does. He talked a lot about that in Saint Lucia. But I can’t talk about it with him, Cass. I can’t tell him how much I want us to be together, a real couple. I’m so confused; I’m hiding my feelings even from myself.”
“What do you mean, hiding your feelings?”
“From the very start, I was determined not to become dependent on Harry, not to
expect him to leave his wife for me. We all know this scenario, and it ends badly. I’ve never allowed myself to dream of a happy ending—that doesn’t happen with extra-marital affairs; the mistress doesn’t win. I’m constantly trying to bury my real feelings, even from myself, because I know this relationship can’t happen, shouldn’t happen.” She paused. “I have to stay strong or it will break me.”
“I get it,” Cassie said. “Maintaining your independence is a way of protecting yourself from the hurt.”
“That was the theory, yes. But it hasn’t worked out like that . . .” Lily hesitated. “The thing about Harry is that he’s so extreme.”
“Extreme how? I’m worried about you, Lil.”
“No, it’s OK. He’s not violent or anything. But he gets severely depressed—usually when we’re apart—he was pretty bad over Christmas. And he drinks and takes very strong medication, and other drugs, to cope with it all. And the back pain, and the marriage problems.” Lily shook her head. “I’m probably catastrophising, but I worry that things are spinning out of control.”
“Oh, Lil,” Cass said. “You went into it with your eyes open, or so you thought, and now it’s got really serious . . .”
“Exactly. I’m not blaming Harry for any of this, but I definitely can’t let him abandon his wife to live with me. That was never part of the plan. And, Cass, it scares me, the intensity of his feelings, the terrible despair he goes into. I’m stuck between destroying another woman’s life and destroying my own.”
She shook her head and went on, “The irony is that when he’s calm, I love being with him. At the start, before Frankfurt and before we started sleeping together, it was amazing. The most wonderful connection, friendship, enjoyment; we’d talk about books and life and everything.”
“I remember, back at the start, you were head over heels for him.”
“I was! I still am! But the more he talks about leaving his family, the more anxious I feel. If only we had space to breathe, both of us; if only our relationship could have developed normally.”
“Lil, it sounds like he’s close to some kind of crisis. I think you need to make it absolutely clear that you don’t want him to leave his wife.”
“And those two young boys! Not that young, but thirteen and fifteen is young enough. I don’t want to be part of breaking up a family.”
Cass nodded, staring into space. “We know all about that, don’t we?”
Lily finally wrote to her father in March. She had hesitated for years about asking Celia, but only a few days after their conversation at Christmas, she had Claude’s actual address. Talking to her mother had been less painful than she’d expected—exciting, even, to hear what her parents had been like as a young couple. Except, now that she had this vital piece of information, she wasn’t sure what to do with it.
Celia had scrawled the address on a piece of blue paper. “I don’t have an email or mobile for him, darling,” she said. “That shows how long it’s been since our last contact. There was a telephone number, but I rang it a few years ago and it was disconnected. Perhaps the area codes have changed. You could probably find the new number on the internet, if you wanted.”
“OK, thanks, Mum,” Lily said. “I’ll look online—or maybe I’ll just write.” She wondered why Celia had tried to ring him.
She tucked the piece of paper beneath her passport in her bedside drawer. From time to time, she took it out and studied the address. She thought of the letter she might write; she weighed words in her mind. For now, it was enough to have the possibility of writing: even though she wasn’t any closer to finding him, she felt as though the first stage had been completed. She was happy and settled in her new flat. The break in Saint Lucia had done her good, and Harry seemed calmer too—less desperate, less reckless.
The arrangement with Lady Archer downstairs was working out too, and they soon established a close friendship. Susan didn’t need Lily’s help or demand her company, but they were useful to each other in different ways. When Lily went to do a big supermarket shop in her mum’s car, she would pick up double quantities of bottled water, kitchen rolls, and washing powder—the boring, heavy stuff—for which Susan reimbursed her. In return, Susan’s cleaning lady came upstairs once a week and did a “quick whizz round” Lily’s flat, although her whizz-round with her vacuum cleaner and mop was far more thorough than any cleaning Lily did herself. Cassie often marvelled at how sparkling the kitchen and bathroom were, and grumbled at the state of her own flat.
Susan was interested and caring, but not intrusive. Lily enjoyed their conversations about politics, family, the weather, or just trivial gossip from the glossy magazines they passed on to each other.
Lily had also taken to gardening, which Susan encouraged. A young man came to cut the grass every few weeks, but there was still plenty of weeding and tidying to be done. In her Camden flat, she’d had no outside space, only a window box, so having an entire garden was a revelation. She wasn’t exactly green-fingered, but she was learning. And Susan enjoyed seeing the garden, neglected since her daughter had left, coming back to life. She’d missed the sound of laughter and voices around the place.
As for her sisters, they couldn’t believe how lucky she was. “If you weren’t my sister, I’d really dislike you,” Cassie said. “In fact, I’m seriously jealous. How can my little sister afford to live in Belsize Park with such a beautiful flat and all this space?!”
“Basically, Susan has lots of money and not much time—and Lily has lots of time and not much money,” was Olivia’s analysis. She was absolutely right, and it suited them both.
Celia, who’d become a devoted gardener since her children had grown up, fell in love with Susan’s garden too. On milder afternoons, Lily and her mother dug borders and planted bulbs, pruned the rose bushes and tidied the large terrace. When she was home, Susan joined them outside, and the three women chatted about flowers, children, men, cooking, and life.
One early spring evening, Susan’s gentleman friend arrived in his chauffeur-driven car—they were sure he was a high court judge or former cabinet minister—with an elegant set of patio furniture. He seemed to know his hydrangeas from his hyacinths and was enthusiastic about the latest garden plantings. They had drinks outside and discussed plans for fruit trees, maybe even a vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden.
Lily sometimes sat on the terrace alone in the early mornings with a cup of coffee. It was still chilly but she liked to gaze at the garden and imagine the people who had passed through it over the decades. One morning, some lines from childhood floated through her head: “And all the lives we ever lived, And all the lives to be, Are full of trees and changing leaves . . .” Was that her father’s voice? Once she had remembered them, she heard these lines over and over, spoken in a low, deep voice.
There were other ways in which Susan and Lily helped each other—taking in parcels or letting in workmen. Lily was happy to feed Susan’s cats when she went away, and her presence upstairs helped keep burglars at bay. When Susan had a party with caterers and there was food left over, she always brought it upstairs. “Well I’ll never get through all this, my dear, and you know I can’t abide waste. Besides, when would I eat it, I’m never home!”
It was true: with her House of Lords duties and endless stream of friends, Susan had much the busier social life. Lily found it exhausting just to watch her rushing in and out of taxis, to her gallery openings and blow-dries and manicures, concerts, board meetings, and the various arts committees on which she sat.
One Saturday morning, Lily woke up and knew that she would write to Claude. She dressed in a white T-shirt and grey jeans, pulled on a baseball cap, and grabbed a pen and paper. She walked to her favourite café on Haverstock Hill, bought a mocha flat white, and found a quiet corner table.
Dear Claude,
Excuse me for writing out of the blue. It’s Lily, your daughter. I live in London, as do the others, Cassie and Olivia and James, and we’r
e all fine. Mum’s fine too. Here’s my address and email, just in case.
“Just in case” what? She didn’t know what else to say, so she simply signed off, awkwardly:
Best wishes from Lily.
Why was she writing to him? Would he care about her now when he hadn’t cared decades ago? Something in the spring air enabled her to swallow the bitterness she had felt for years. She just wanted to let him know that she existed, that they all existed. Beyond that, she wasn’t sure.
It was curiously intimate, her own handwriting on notepaper. An email would have been less revealing, a phone call too sudden, even confrontational. She looked at the letter for a long time before she put it in the envelope. She walked to the post office and bought a stamp for the US, then hesitated at the letterbox outside Belsize Park Tube station.
She hadn’t told the others about contacting Claude, not even Cassie. They never discussed it much growing up, although from their rare conversations Lily knew that they shared her sense of rejection. James seemed angry when their father’s name came up, whereas Olivia was vague and avoided the subject. They were all confused. Nothing had been explained to them, and they didn’t want to press Celia for details. Whatever had happened between them, she had obviously been deeply hurt. As young children, they had been protective of their mother for precisely this reason. Even hearing Claude’s name brought a veil of sadness into Celia’s eyes; they saw this and didn’t know what to do.
James had never met his father—Claude had left when Celia was pregnant with him. Cassie had been eight at the time, Lily five, and Olivia just two. Lily sometimes wanted to ask Cassie what she remembered of him. She had only hazy memories: a tall man who threw her in the air and caught her in his arms, bear hugs and rough wool sweaters, but then she wondered if these were father images she’d absorbed later from books or television. Shouldn’t she remember any more about a man who had been there for the first five years of her life? She strained to recall some specific details and felt like a failure when nothing came. Once in a while, that low voice in her head, those lines of poetry: “And all the lives we ever lived, And all the lives to be, Are full of trees and changing leaves . . .”
