“Do I get one of those too?” asked Adam.
Nessa put Jill down and kissed him on the cheek.
“Did you have a good time?” he asked the sisters.
“Absolutely,” said Cate.
“I’ll help with your bags.” Adam made to pick up her case.
“It’s OK, Adam,” said Bree quickly. “Cate and I will get a taxi. She’s coming to my place before going to her apartment.”
“I don’t mind dropping you there,” said Adam.
“It’s a bit of a squash,” Bree told him. “And it’ll be much quicker for us in a taxi.”
“Sure?”
“Yes,” said Cate. “Thanks anyway, Adam.” She turned to Nessa and hugged her. “Take care. Give me a call tonight.”
“Will do.” Nessa hugged her back.
“Mind yourself,” said Bree. “Call if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” said Nessa. “See you soon.”
They walked out of the terminal together, then Cate and Bree hopped into a taxi while Adam, Nessa and Jill went to the car park.
“I missed you,” Jill told Nessa. “Did you bring me home a present?”
“How did I raise such a mercenary daughter?” Nessa asked. “Don’t you care about anything except a present?”
Jill smiled at her.
“When we get home,” said Nessa.
“It was a quiet enough week while you were away,” said Adam. “I was busy, of course, but nothing new there. Your mum rang this morning, asked for you to phone when you get home. She wants to hear more about your holiday—she said you were doing a lot of thinking. I put her right and told her you were doing a lot of drinking!” He laughed.
“Not enough,” Nessa told him. “But I enjoyed being away with Cate and Bree. We might go again sometime.”
“It’ll be a bit different next time,” said Adam. “If Cate has excess baggage.”
“Adam!” Nessa sounded furious. “A child isn’t excess baggage!”
“Cate doesn’t have a child,” said Jill.
Nessa said nothing.
“Is she going to have one?” asked Jill.
“Yes,” said Nessa eventually.
“Great! It takes ages, though, doesn’t it? Mrs. Slater says it’s months of hell.”
“Does she?” Nessa turned to look at her daughter in the backseat.
Jill nodded. “Mr. Slater says it’s the wages of sin.”
Nessa laughed. Adam grinned. Jill looked pleased with herself.
There were fresh flowers in the Waterford glass crystal vase. Nessa turned to Adam.
“Where did they come from?”
He looked pained. “I got them today. To welcome you home.”
“Why?”
“Because we missed you. Didn’t we, Jill?”
“We kept having to have takeaways,” Jill told her. “Because Dad’s actually quite useless in the kitchen.”
“Are you?” asked Nessa.
“I suppose I’d manage,” he said. “If I absolutely had to. But we did well on Burger King and pizza deliveries.”
“Oh, God, Adam, you didn’t feed her exclusively on fast food, did you?”
“Not exclusively,” said Adam. “I bought a couple of ready-meals from the supermarket and we had those too.”
“I’m glad you’re back, though,” confided Jill. “I like Burger King but not all the time.”
“It’s good to be missed,” said Nessa.
“Oh, you were definitely missed,” Adam assured her. “Definitely.”
She curled up on the sofa and switched on the TV. Jill was asleep in bed, thrilled with the new jeans and the Lara Croft–logoed PVC bag that Nessa had brought home for her.
Adam walked into the room and sat down beside her.
“So what was it like?” he asked.
“What d’you mean?”
“You and your sisters. Did you fight all the time?”
“Why should we fight?” asked Nessa.
“Because there always seems to be two of you against the other one,” said Adam. “You know, you and Cate fussing about Bree, Bree and you pissed off with Cate and Finn over their extravagant lifestyle—that sort of thing.”
“Bree and Cate feeling sorry for me because I’m the older, married sister,” said Nessa. “Whose husband is having it off with a few other women.”
“Sorry?” Adam looked at her.
“You heard me. And you lied to me.” There was a part of her that didn’t want to have this conversation now. A part of her that never wanted to have this conversation. But they needed to have it. And she couldn’t pretend anymore.
“What?” Adam looked uncomfortable.
“You said that the Annika woman was a touchy feely kind of woman and she was your client and that you didn’t go around sticking your tongue down people’s throats.” She spoke quickly. “But you lied.”
“I certainly did not,” said Adam. “That’s exactly the sort of woman she is.”
“And what about the other woman?” asked Nessa.
“Other woman?”
“Oh, come on Adam, stop pretending. The one in the apartment block near Monkstown.”
Adam stared at her in silence. She looked back at him, her gray eyes clear and steady.
“What the fuck is this all about?” he asked finally. “What are you getting at, Nessa?”
“How many women are there?” she asked. “How many touchy feely women who kiss you but you don’t kiss back?”
“There aren’t loads of touchy feely women,” he said.
“So the other ones are the ones you kiss?”
“Nessa—”
“I want to know,” she said. “I want to know exactly about this Annika person and I want to know about the woman in Monkstown and I want to know about any others too.”
“There aren’t any others,” he said.
“But there’s Annika and the Monkstown lady.”
“Regan,” he said eventually.
“What?”
“Regan,” said Adam again. “That’s her name.”
Nessa felt a cold ball form in the pit of her stomach. If she’d held the faintest hope that there had been some terrible misunderstanding, it had now evaporated.
“So we have Annika and Regan and nobody else.” Her voice shook.
Adam clenched his jaw. “That’s right.”
“And your relationship with them is…?”
“Nessa, you’ve got to understand that I love you,” said Adam tautly. “I always have and I always will. And I love Jill too. I’d die if I didn’t have you and Jill. You’re the most important people in my life. It’s simply…” he sighed. “I like women. You know that. I get on better with women than with men. I enjoy their company. I enjoy their conversation. It’s so different from work stuff and domestic stuff and the kind of things that can get you down. I need a break from that.”
“You need a break from me and Jill so you go to Annika and Regan.”
“It’s just sex,” said Adam. “It’s nothing to do with love.”
She could hardly breathe. She’d imagined this moment ever since Cate and Bree had told her about his second woman but she hadn’t imagined how she’d feel when he told her it was true. And now he’d just admitted that he had sex with other women because he liked it. He hadn’t even tried to deny it. He was looking at her defiantly, waiting for her to argue with him. But she couldn’t speak. She didn’t know what to say. He was a stranger to her. The man she’d married, the Adam she’d loved and cared about and made love to with such enjoyment herself, had been replaced by someone who thought that having multiple affairs was a normal sort of thing to do. She felt as though she’d mistakenly walked onto the set of Jerry Springer.
How could it have happened, she wondered.
“You know I had lots of girlfriends before you,” said Adam. “But when I met you, I knew you were the only one for me. I don’t want to be married to anyone else, Nessa. I love you.”
�
��But you have sex with other women?” She could barely speak the words. She’d thought that he was having affairs with other women but this seemed worse, somehow. She was trying to get her head around the fact that he thought that he was being perfectly reasonable. And if that was how he thought, then there was a huge part of him that she just didn’t understand at all. Affairs at least had emotions attached. He was simply talking about sex.
“It’s a no strings thing,” said Adam. “It doesn’t affect how I feel about you.”
“Well it sure as hell affects how I feel about you!” She was suddenly angry.
“I understand how you feel right now,” said Adam. “I wouldn’t have had you find out for anything, Nessa. I know that you probably hate me at this point. But I love you. I love our marriage. I love our daughter. I don’t want to ruin what we have.”
“And what exactly have we?” asked Nessa.
“We have a marriage that works,” said Adam. “We get on well together. We enjoy each other’s company. We love our daughter. We have a nice home in a nice neighborhood and we have all the things we want. You look after me. I look after you. We’re a partnership, Nessa, and that’s so much more important than anything else.”
She stared at him. He was saying the kind of thing that she’d said to herself over and over when she thought of him being unfaithful to her. And when she’d said it to herself it almost sounded reasonable. But listening to him say it, it sounded sad.
“So when you’re making love to me, what are you thinking?” asked Nessa.
“Sorry?”
“Are you thinking that you’d rather be with one of your women for sex?” she asked. “Are they better at it than me?”
“No.”
“So why don’t you just make love to me more often?”
“Nessa, you don’t want to make love every time we go to bed. Some nights you fall asleep before your head hits the pillow.”
“So does yours,” she said.
“That’s different.”
“This is all a load of shit,” she said. “You like the excitement of being with them, don’t you? The variety?”
“I won’t deny that,” said Adam. “You know I like different experiences and I do like different women. But I only love one woman. And that’s you. How can I make you believe that?”
“And if I said that I’d leave you?”
“I don’t want you to leave me,” said Adam. “You’ve got to understand, Nessa. Sex and love are completely different things.”
“I know that they can be,” she said. “I also know that they can be the same.”
“I make love to you and I have sex with them.”
“You’re having sex with all of us,” she said. “You could be picking up all sorts of disgusting diseases.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m careful.”
She thought she was going to be sick.
“I know it seems terrible to you, I understand that, Nessa. I feel terrible myself right now. But you’ve really got to see that it isn’t an emotional thing with Annika and Regan. They know that. I know that. It’s fun, that’s all.”
“Fun?” She stared at him. “You’re ruining my life and you think it’s fun?”
“Nessa, think about it properly. You know that men aren’t meant to be monogamous—think of all those damned magazines you read about how faithless we are. Loads of men have mistresses. Think of politicians. Think of royalty. Think of anyone you like! It doesn’t mean that they don’t love their wives.”
“That’s crap,” said Nessa.
“President Mitterrand,” said Adam triumphantly. “Both his mistress and his wife were at his funeral. There can be room for both.”
“You’re saying to me that you want to stay married to me and stay seeing other women too. Are you mad, Adam?”
“You make it sound clinical when you put it like that.”
“Don’t you remember Fatal Attraction?” she demanded.
“Ah, but Jill doesn’t have a rabbit.” He smiled cautiously at her.
“Adam, I don’t know you at all.” Whatever reasoning she’d thought he’d use, whatever excuses she thought he’d make, they weren’t the ones he was using now.
“I’m the same person you married,” said Adam. “And, if it makes you feel better I’ll stop seeing Annika and Regan.”
“But there’ll be others.”
“No,” said Adam. He put his arm around her and she flinched. “If it upsets you that much, then there won’t be anyone else. I love you too much to throw it all away. Honestly.”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
“I promise you,” he said firmly. “I really do, Nessa. My marriage is the most important thing in my life. The rest—it’s exciting, sure, I admit that. But it’s not everything to me.”
“How many?” she asked. “Since we were married.”
“I don’t know.” He grimaced. “Not that many, honestly. I didn’t keep count. But you didn’t know and it didn’t bother you. So the only thing that worries you now is being aware of it. If you hadn’t found out—” He looked at her questioningly. “How did you find out?”
“By accident.”
“Both times?”
She shook her head. “Bree followed you to Monkstown.”
“The little bitch.”
“I asked her to.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew. And when I asked you about Annika I knew you were lying.”
He sighed. “I nearly told you. But I couldn’t.”
“Because you knew that I’d hate you for it.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I love you. And I don’t want you to hate me.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?”
“Why do you love me?”
“Because you’re pretty. You’re a good mother. You’re a good wife. I like living with you.”
“It doesn’t sound much.”
“It’s a lot,” said Adam. “One of the guys in the office left his wife and moved in with another girl. Only it didn’t work out. Being involved and being married are very, very different.”
“But she was good at sex.”
“That doesn’t last,” said Adam. “The other stuff is more important in the long run.”
“Yet you were perfectly prepared to jeopardize our marriage for the sex.”
“I didn’t think I was jeopardizing it,” he said. “I was careful. And it wasn’t as though I didn’t treat you well at home. I always did.”
She remembered how well he treated her. How good he’d been the night of Bree’s accident. How he’d made her tea and had cancelled his golf and hadn’t made a fuss because he knew how upset she was. He was a good husband. He was a good lover.
And he was a fucking liar.
“I can’t live with you anymore, Adam,” she said.
“Don’t be stupid,” he told her. “Look, I know this isn’t easy. I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t ever want you to know. But it’s not the worst thing in the world. We can get through it. We’re perfect for each other.”
“I was such an idiot,” she cried. “I wanted to believe that! I really did. I lived all my life trying to keep things perfect. But it was all a sham, Adam. It was never real.”
“It was real enough to me,” he said.
“How could it be?” she asked. “When you needed other people?”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “You know I love you, Nessa. You know I do.”
“But I don’t love you,” she told him. “I did once, but I don’t now.”
“I suppose those bitches put you up to this,” he said angrily.
“What?”
“Your sisters. This sudden ‘all girls together’ holiday. You probably spent the whole time plotting and scheming and talking about me.”
Nessa shook her head. “They didn’t tell me until halfway through. Until the night you left Jill to be collected by the babysitter while you we
re at an executive meeting.”
He said nothing.
“Which one of them?” asked Nessa.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Which?” she said more fiercely.
“Annika,” he told her.
“You are such a shit.”
“Look, Nessa—”
“It’s over, Adam.” She got up from the chair.
“Where will you go?” he asked.
“I’m not going anywhere.” She looked at him the same way as she looked at Jill whenever the little girl had driven her to the end of her patience. “Why should I? I haven’t done anything wrong. You’re the one who’s going, Adam. I’ve made up my mind. I’m throwing you out.”
36
Mars in Cancer
An emotional commitment to see things through.
It was definitely easier in the movies, thought Nessa, as she sat on the edge of the bed. In the movies you could throw someone out of the house and they’d go. But Adam had simply looked at her and told her that he wasn’t leaving the family home without some kind of court order. He said that he loved her and he loved his daughter and that everyone knew it. She’d gritted her teeth and told him that he could hardly call it a family home when he spent most of his time out of it having affairs with other women. And that, no matter what he said, he couldn’t possibly love her if he was having affairs with other women. To which he’d retorted that they weren’t affairs and that he’d apologized for hurting her and that he was perfectly prepared to change so why wasn’t she?
They’d never raised their voices to each other in the past. They’d disagreed but they’d never shouted. But this time she yelled at him that he was a sick bastard and that she’d clearly been out of her mind when she married him.
Eventually he’d stormed into the spare bedroom and had closed the door firmly behind him. And she was left sitting on the bed in the bedroom that they’d once shared and wondering why it was that everyone else’s marital break-ups seemed to be so simple compared to hers.
John Trelfall had moved out as soon as Paula had played his girlfriend’s message to him on the phone. He might have denied the affair at first but he’d buckled afterward and he’d moved into an apartment a couple of miles away. But Adam didn’t seem to have any intention of moving into an apartment a few miles away, Adam had drawn lines in the sand and Nessa knew that it wasn’t going to be easy to move him.
He's Got to Go Page 42
