With or Without You

by Helen Warner

  When he had finally composed himself, he wiped the last vestiges of tears from his eyes and made his way out of the study. He glanced nervously towards Mimi’s room, where she was getting dressed, apparently unaware of the turmoil that had erupted into the midst of her safe little world that morning.

  ‘Hey Dad,’ she grinned. ‘Poor Mum’s been hurling. Did you hear?’

  ‘I did.’ Jamie tried to smile but his mouth wouldn’t let him. ‘Anyway, gorgeous, get yourself dressed and brush your teeth, eh? And . . . I, er, dropped a glass in the bathroom, so use the ensuite until I’ve had time to clear it up, OK?’

  ‘Aw . . . can’t Tom brush his first?’ Mimi whined, as she always did every morning.

  ‘Look, just bloody well do it, OK?’ Jamie snapped, causing Mimi’s big blue eyes to widen in astonishment.

  ‘Jeez, Dad, no need to get in such a strop!’ she shot back. She harrumphed a couple more times but finally clomped across the landing and began to brush her teeth.

  ‘Come on, Tommy boy,’ Jamie tried to keep his emotions from spilling over as he went into Tom’s bedroom, to be met with the sight of his son curled up on the bed, still in his pyjamas, reading his latest Horrible Histories book. How long had he been there? Had he heard any of the awful exchange between him and Martha? Tom looked unconcerned so Jamie decided to hope for the best. ‘You need to get dressed and brush your teeth too,’ he said, his voice catching.

  ‘OK, Dad,’ Tom closed his book and smiled up at Jamie in a way that made him want to cry for ever more.

  As the children finished getting ready, Jamie made his way downstairs and into the kitchen. Martha was standing at the French doors, clutching a cup of coffee and staring out over the garden with a closed expression on her face. Jamie eyed her warily as he made his way over to the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. He took a sip and then replaced the cup on the work surface, all the time watching Martha, who seemed to be standing as still as a statue.

  He moved towards her. ‘Don’t. Touch. Me,’ she hissed, as he was about to put his hand on her shoulder. He whipped his hand away as if he had been stung and stood awkwardly behind her, unsure what to do next.

  To his relief, Mimi breezed into the kitchen. Almost immediately, she stopped dead in her tracks and looked at her parents curiously. ‘Everything OK?’ she asked, frowning with concern.

  ‘Er, yes,’ Jamie said quickly. ‘Mum’s just not feeling very well . . .’ He tailed off as Martha snorted derisively.

  ‘Mum?’ Mimi prompted, coming to her mother’s side and looking at her in concern. ‘Are you OK?’

  Suddenly, Martha seemed to snap into life. ‘Yes!’ she said, over-brightly. ‘I’m fine, darling. It’s just something’s upset my stomach,’ she added, shooting Jamie a look of contempt that only he could see.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ Mimi persisted, rubbing Martha’s back softly.

  For a second, Jamie thought Martha might lose it, as her face crumpled piteously. ‘No,’ she whispered, before shaking her head slightly and gathering herself. ‘No, darling, honestly, I’m fine. I’ll go back to bed for a couple of hours and I’ll be right as rain.’

  Mimi nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘OK, well, bye then. Love you.’ She kissed Martha on the cheek as Jamie watched her, the pain in his chest growing by the second. Then she came over to him. ‘Bye, Dad,’ she said softly, standing on tiptoes to kiss him too.

  ‘Bye, gorgeous,’ he replied in a strangled voice. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Love you too, Dad,’ Mimi called happily as she headed for the front door.

  ‘Wonder if she’d love you quite so much if she knew what a cheating bastard you are,’ Martha hissed under her breath, turning back to face the French doors.

  Jamie swallowed hard and rubbed his forehead. He literally didn’t know what the hell to do. He had to make Martha let him stay. He couldn’t leave the children. He may as well be dead without them.

  He went to the bottom of the stairs and waited helplessly for Tom to come down. ‘Tom!’ he called out eventually. ‘You need to get to school – you’re going to be late!’

  ‘No I’m not,’ said Tom cheerfully, as he skipped down the stairs. He scooped up his book bag and lunchbox and opened the door. Jamie felt a sudden urge to leave the house with him, so terrified was he of what Martha might be about to do next.

  ‘Tom!’ he called, as the boy headed down the front path.

  ‘What?’ Tom stopped and looked round at Jamie, puzzled.

  ‘I love you.’

  Something in his voice must have got through to Tom because instead of scowling, as he usually did when Jamie yelled out to him down the street, he smiled softly back at Jamie and nodded. ‘I love you too, Dad. To infinity and beyond,’ he added, before heading off once more.

  Jamie closed his eyes and tried to think what to do next. Reluctantly, he returned to the kitchen, where Martha was still standing like a statue, staring at the garden. It was as if there was a force-field around her, preventing him from getting anywhere near her. He picked up the cup of coffee he had poured earlier and took it to the table, where he sat down, watching her carefully.

  Suddenly she turned around and came towards him with all the force of a tidal wave. Before he knew what was happening, she was raining blows down on his head, swearing and screaming abuse at the top of her voice. Jamie put his arms up to try to protect himself, but he was astonished at the power of her punches.

  ‘Martha!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t!’ But she either didn’t hear him or didn’t want to stop, and the onslaught continued.

  After a while, it was as if all the fight left her body, and she slumped down onto the floor, crying as if she was in agony.

  Watching her, the tears began to course down Jamie’s face again and he knelt on the floor beside her. ‘I’m so sorry! Oh my God, I am so, so sorry,’ he put his arms around Martha and held her as she cried, rocking her backwards and forwards like a baby.

  It was nearly half an hour before either of them had composed themselves enough to get up off the floor and sit at the table, looking across at each other, exhausted and dazed. Jamie couldn’t bear the dull pain he could now see in Martha’s eyes, which normally shone with happiness and love. He shook his head, not knowing what to say or where to start.

  Reading his mind, as she always did, Martha said, ‘Just tell me everything. Who is she?’

  Jamie swallowed but his throat was so dry it came out as a cough. ‘She’s . . . well, she’s no-one. She means absolutely nothing to me.’ It was the truth, but the look on Martha’s face told him that he needed to do better than that.

  ‘OK,’ he said, taking a nervous sip of his cold coffee, his hands shaking so badly that it splattered onto the wooden table, leaving miniature muddy brown puddles. ‘I met her in a coffee shop in town . . .’

  ‘When?’ Martha’s question flew at him like a bullet.

  ‘About six months ago.’

  She half-closed her eyes. ‘So how did you go from sitting in a coffee shop minding your own business, to taking pictures of yourself having sex with her?’

  Jamie gasped at the horror of what he had done. When it was spelled out by Martha in such a matter of fact voice, it sounded so much worse than it had seemed when he was actually doing it. He shook his head and sighed. ‘Well, to be honest, it was obvious what she was after . . .’

  ‘And obvious what you were after too, I’m sure.’

  Jamie recoiled guiltily. He had been open to Debra’s advances when she’d asked to join him at his table that day. Martha was away on an assignment and he was feeling bored and disillusioned with his life. Another woman complimenting him and making it obvious she fancied him had instantly made him feel better about himself. The irony of it. He couldn’t feel worse now if he tried.

  ‘Go on,’ said Martha curtly. ‘I want to know exactly how you came to be having an affair with some old tart . . .’

  ‘It wasn’t an affair!’ Jamie cried. ‘It was just . . . sex. Not
even very good sex.’

  Martha snorted derisively. ‘Listen, you fucking bastard, you have been having “not very good sex” with some tart for six whole months. It is an affair, I can assure you.’

  Jamie put his face in his hands, unable to bear the contempt in Martha’s voice. He had never thought of it as an affair, he had just thought of it as sex. And he was telling the truth about the sort of sex it was. Debra was years older than Martha, she wore clothes which left little to the imagination, smelt of cheap, cloying perfume and had absolutely nothing that made him fancy her, except the fact that she had offered herself on a plate and didn’t want anything else from him but sex. They barely even talked and he would leave the second it was over. What he did with Debra bore no resemblance to the sex he had with Martha, which was incredible in every way.

  ‘So why did you do it then?’ Martha spat, when he tried to explain that to her.

  Again, he shook his head helplessly. He had no answer. When Debra had said, ‘I live quite near here. Would you like to come back to my house?’, why the hell did he not say, ‘No, thank you. I am a very happily married man and I wouldn’t dream of cheating on the woman I love.’

  But, as he thought back, he knew exactly why he had taken up Debra’s offer so casually. He was bored and lonely and was flattered that another woman found him sexually attractive. Martha would never find out and as it was clear that Debra was only interested in a sexual relationship, he was able to compartmentalise it as something purely physical that wouldn’t impact on his family life. In fact, he had justified to himself, it would improve his relationship with Martha if he was happier.

  They sat in silence for several minutes, each lost in their own desperate thoughts. Finally, Jamie spoke again. ‘Martha . . . I know that what I’ve done is awful. That I deserve absolutely everything that you’re saying to me right now. But please, Martha, please don’t tell the children . . .’

  ‘Well they’ll find out when we split up. And that’s what’s going to happen,’ she said, wearily but firmly.

  ‘No!’ Jamie wailed, as he burst into tears again. ‘Please, Martha, please . . . it’ll kill them. And it’ll kill me,’ he begged.

  Martha shook her head and stood up. ‘I think maybe you should have thought about that before.’ She stalked past him towards the door. Just as she was about to go into the hallway, she stopped and turned around. ‘You need to pack a bag,’ she said coldly. ‘Our marriage is over.’

  Chapter 10

  Martha was shaking so badly she could barely turn the taps on the bath. She leaned over and looked down into the water as it swallowed her falling tears, cascading into the violent dark purple rivers of the Molton Brown bubble bath. Despite the never-ending torrent of tears, she was calmer now after the violence of her earlier outburst, when she had wanted to hurt Jamie physically, just as he had hurt her.

  And it was physical, the pain she was feeling. It was as though she had been kicked in the stomach by a horse and she felt faint with shock. A million thoughts were whirling through her brain and she wanted to grab hold of just one, so that she could figure out what was going on and what she should do for the best, but she was too exhausted. In a split second, her perfect life had disintegrated.

  Jamie was everything to her. Her whole life revolved around him and the children. But suddenly it was all a sham. He was just a selfish, shallow bastard who didn’t give a damn about his supposedly beloved family as long as he was able to indulge his own whims and desires. Where before Martha had felt secure and loved, now she felt as if she was walking on shifting sands and could fall through the huge cracks at any moment.

  She stepped into the bath; it was too hot, though she liked the sensation. It told her that she could still feel. She sank down until her whole body was submerged beneath the bubbles and rested her head on the little white bath pillow at one end. The bath pillow that Jamie had bought her when she told him that she loved to read in the bath but it made her neck ache. He was always buying her thoughtful little presents or making her favourite dinner when she was feeling low. Now she wondered if he had only done that to salve his guilty conscience. If that was the case, he had felt guilty a hell of a lot of the time.

  The realisation hit her with another jolt and she flinched. Still the tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks. They seemed to flow out of nowhere and she regarded them dispassionately, as they plopped into the bubbles and disappeared forever.

  She thought back to their wedding day, as her dad had proudly walked her down the aisle towards Jamie, who had looked impossibly handsome and nervous in his morning suit, before promising to ‘cherish’ her and ‘forsake all others’. The memory of her dad’s face that day brought a fresh torrent of tears. Her mother and father’s relationship had been such a strong one. Her father would never have cheated on her mother the way Jamie had on her.

  How many more affairs had he had, and how could she have been so stupid? He must have been laughing his head off as she took on the burden of providing for the family, with all the stresses that entailed, while he spent his days having sex with anyone who came along. She had been such a bloody fool thinking that he loved her and the children, when the only person he really loved was himself.

  It was the shock that was the worst thing to deal with. If she had had suspicions about him, it might have been less devastating. But he had never given her any cause for concern. She had trusted him with every fibre of her being and would have sworn on the children’s lives that he would never cheat on her. Again, she shook her head at what a complete fool she had been.

  As the hot water soothed her aching body, her thoughts began to gather into some kind of coherent form. Memories drifted through of evenings spent eating dinner together, a glass of wine in their hands, laughing as they chatted about their respective days. Of Jamie shrugging like the expert liar he clearly was as he told her that he had ‘just mooched around town’ that day. Of Jamie occasionally claiming that he was ‘too tired’ for sex.

  As the memories began to gather pace, like a train chugging relentlessly through her brain, the anger that had abated now returned and overwhelmed her, so that she found herself roaring with rage and pain.

  The bathroom door flew open and Jamie’s face appeared. ‘Martha! Martha!’ he yelled over the noise. ‘What’s wrong?’ Instinctively, he came over to her and tried to embrace her, as he had a million times before, but she clawed at his face like a tiger, sending water spraying everywhere as she drew three perfect trails of blood down his left cheek.

  He clamped his hand to his face in shock as Martha scrambled out of the bath, still crying. ‘Leave me alone!’ she screamed, now totally out of control. ‘Don’t ever touch me again! Get out! Get out! Get out of this house! I hate you!’

  She ran into her bedroom and slammed the door shut, before throwing herself on the bed. She had never felt so alone.

  On the one hand, she wanted Jamie to pack his bag and get out. She couldn’t bear to look at his lying, cheating face. But on the other hand, she was so scared of what would happen after he’d gone. How would she explain to the children where he was? Could she bear to tell them the truth, knowing the pain it would cause them?

  They were so happy. So balanced. The trauma of this would change everything forever. How the hell could Jamie have risked jeopardising all that, she raged, as her chest tightened so much that she thought she might be having a heart attack.

  In the midst of her anguish, she was dimly aware of her mobile phone ringing. She ignored it. A couple of minutes later it rang again, and this time she sat up and picked the handset up off the bedside table. She glanced at the screen: Charlie Simmons.

  ‘Oh no!’ she sighed, swallowing hard and roughly wiping the tears that continued to fall down her cheeks. Should she answer it? Could she answer it? Before she could make up her mind, the ringing stopped. After about thirty seconds, the alert told her that he had left a message. She clicked on to her voicemail and listened as his soothing, deep voice
filled her ear.

  ‘Hi, er, Martha, Charlie here, Charlie Simmons,’ he stuttered nervously. ‘So, it appears we were snapped leaving the hotel yesterday . . . Really sorry about that. It happens so often that I forget about them, but I should have warned you . . . I, er, I hope it hasn’t proved problematic for you in any way . . .’

  Martha snorted as she listened. ‘It’s not that that’s problematic!’ she growled.

  ‘Anyway,’ Charlie continued, his cheery tone so at odds with how she was feeling right now. ‘Give me a call. We need to arrange the next interview, don’t we? And, er, I’ve got something to give you . . .’ He paused while he laughed. ‘Something I think you might like. In fact, maybe we could do a swap and you could return my sweatpants?’ He paused. ‘So, listen . . . call me. Bye.’

  Martha stared at her phone for a long while, trying to recover her composure. She hummed slightly, to see how her voice sounded. Although it seemed as though it was coming from a long way away, the shudders that had convulsed through her body had now slowed and at least it was steady.

  She went into the ensuite shower room and blew her nose. In the mirror above the sink, her eyes were small in her head, while her face was puffy. Or maybe it was because her face was puffy that her eyes looked small, she thought distractedly. Either way, she looked bloody terrible. Still, Charlie wouldn’t be able to see her over the phone, and she was grateful for that as she pressed his contact number.

  ‘Hi!’ he said cheerfully as he answered.

  ‘How did you know it was me?’

  ‘Well, there’s this really clever device on mobile phones these days, so that when someone calls you can—’

  ‘OK! OK!’ she interrupted him, smiling for the first time that morning, despite herself. She felt strange knowing that he had put her name and number into his phone. Pleased, but strange.

  ‘So . . .’ he began, slightly nervously, ‘sorry about the picture . . . I didn’t even think of how it might look. Louisa’s been on, having a massive go at me already.’