About Last Night . . .

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he said as I picked the shards of china out of the messy goo and he went to get a cloth. ‘You’re a bag of nerves recently and you broke the phone yesterday.’

  Caroline had rung to ask us round to supper and I’d dropped the whole contraption on the floor, whereupon it had smashed on the tiles.

  ‘I don’t know, probably the time of the month,’ I’d said, but he wasn’t fooled. We were very close. Knew each other’s rhythms and bodies intimately, and lately, he must have been aware that I’d inadvertently been withdrawing mine. Shying away from his touch when he hugged my shoulders, or staying up to watch Newsnight or Question Time and coming to bed after he was asleep.

  ‘She’s probably menopausal,’ offered Lucy, helping to pick out bits of china and who, at fourteen, thought she knew everything. ‘It sends them all a bit bonkers apparently.’

  ‘What d’you mean, “them”? You’re one, too, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ Minna told her.

  ‘So are you, you’re a girl, you’re a stupid girl,’ yelled Nico, at which point, thankfully, a fight broke out at the Sunday lunch table, and David had to separate the protagonists who were prone to use fists – ‘Ow! He thumped my leg, Daddy!’ ‘Did not – you pinched me!’ – and underhand tactics. I was grateful for the diversion.

  ‘Anyway, what’s with the soufflé?’ asked Lucy. ‘You’ve gone all continental. We had some funny French tart last week and we like apple crumble.’

  ‘We like apple crumble! We like apple crumble!’ Nico chanted loudly until David silenced him with a sharp word – sharper than usual – and I threw them all a choc-ice from the freezer, glad of the blast of air as I opened it to cool my face.

  We’d eventually had to go to supper with the Defois because although I’d picked up the damaged phone and stuttered to Caroline – how lovely, but sadly we’re out that evening, frantically scribbling ‘theatre’ in the diary in case David who was listening should query it, then hastily booking tickets to see Noises Off which happily we’d been meaning to see for ages and even more fortuitously tickets were available for – despite all that, Caroline had rung back with another date when I wasn’t there. David had answered and put it in the diary.

  So off we’d sallied, one fine summer’s evening, around two corners and up the hill, my heart beating away under my new Whistles shirt, to our dear friends’ house. The canopy of magnolia leaves under which we ducked, nodded, it seemed, in a knowing manner as we went up the path. No doubt Caroline would create something magical and effortless as she always did, and the rest of us – please God let it be more than just the four of us, I thought as we waited on the step – would gasp and praise as something Middle Eastern and altogether more adventurous than anything I’d ever attempt arrived on a huge platter down the middle of the table, in their expansive Chalon kitchen, originals by Gillian Ayres and Rose Hilton decorating the walls, and as Caroline, in Chloé, or something similar, wafted in the background, French windows open to the billowing garden, the air full of contented chatter and laughter.

  This was indeed the scene one hour later as, after closing the oven door, she joined the rest of us – happily, Silvia and Tim and Giles and Susie were there too – at the table and we settled down to eat, and to drink delicious Margaux, and I, placed opposite Henri, tried to be as normal as possible. This moment, incidentally, in the Defois’ kitchen, one of many similar ones, sometimes appears freeze-framed in my mind as I feed sheep in bitter winds or struggle under a sink to mend a leaking tap, as the pinnacle of the Good Life. The moment the scales, thus far finely balanced, became pivotal and tipped, not entirely in my favour. Although, of course, in reality, they tipped the moment I’d walked on to that tennis court with Henri.

  We managed some small talk, or at least Henri did, but I could barely look at him. Up until then, which was probably a month after Paris, we’d texted constantly, and of course played tennis, although every moment, every ball played, had felt different and highly charged, but we’d never had to do this: perform in public. And I don’t count being with our tennis partners, who were so introspective, so wrapped up in their own hissing and snarling – Susie showing a little mettle by then – so intent on consulting pace meters strapped to their wrists, Giles wondering if they could slip in a swim before a liquid lunch (and by that I mean a smoothie), they wouldn’t have noticed if we’d kissed as we’d changed ends. This evening, however, Giles was more himself: more avuncular, the reason we all liked him. Then he ruined it by telling us proudly, as he surreptitiously pushed carbohydrates to the side of his plate, that he’d swum and cycled for three hours that morning.

  ‘Why?’ asked Henri.

  Giles blinked. ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why all this exercise?’

  ‘Oh, because it makes you feel so much better.’ Always the response, although we knew he meant ‘look’, having shed his paunch.

  ‘Caroline had a blow-dry. That made her feel better, didn’t it, chérie?’

  ‘Much. And I look better too, Giles.’

  ‘And I had a manicure,’ said Silvia. ‘Can’t tell you how much better I felt after that.’

  Our mouths twitched. Giles gaped.

  ‘Are you seriously trying to tell me you think exercise is some sort of vanity?’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly self-indulgent,’ said David. ‘You’re pleasing no one but yourself.’

  ‘Yes, but the effort is phenomenal! And I can’t exactly channel that into laying a hedge or a drystone wall or something constructive, which I imagine is what you’re getting at, in the middle of London, can I?’

  ‘You’re being teased, my love,’ put in Susie, who, if truth be known, was much brighter than her husband, who’d employed only low cunning to get where he had in the City. ‘And it’s the trumpeting of your achievements, not the doing of them, that amuses them, as if it’s something to be proud of.’

  ‘It is! Bloody hell, while you were all asleep I slipped in fifty lengths!’

  ‘Not to my knowledge you didn’t,’ purred his wife. ‘Or if you did, I slept through it.’

  We all shrieked, including Giles.

  ‘But that’s surely the point, isn’t it?’ insisted Henri, leaning in intently. ‘You could be having a lovely time making love to Susie,’ Susie pulled an appalled face, ‘and going out for breakfast afterwards in the sunshine, reading the papers, strolling through the park – enjoying life!’

  At this juncture I slipped away to the loo because this was what we had done in Paris. The morning after the fateful night we’d strolled beside the Seine, shamelessly arm in arm, stopped for breakfast at Les Deux Magots where Henri had read Le Monde and I’d flipped through Paris Match, then we’d headed for the Luxembourg Gardens behind the Sorbonne and spent the morning lying on the grass, kissing and gazing up at the sky like a couple of teenagers. Had it just been a figure of speech or had he said it deliberately, to force the issue? Because there was no doubt, Paris was not a one-off for Henri: he wanted to see a lot more of me; longed for me, his texts repeatedly said. Did he want more than an affair? No, of course not. We’d only slept together once, but he definitely loved me. Had told me so. I hadn’t responded accordingly in the park when he’d said it. It was too potent. Too incendiary. ‘Well, we’re in love.’ Eyes blazing defiantly at our respective spouses, Caroline and David. As if that negated everything else.

  Was that what I wanted? I thought, as I made my way back to the kitchen table, still alive with chatter, though not entirely. Two men were silent and watchful, and before I sat down, I caught the eyes of both: Henri and David.

  When we walked home, David was silent. He didn’t say anything until we’d let the babysitter go, Sasha, Rosie’s eldest, who, at sixteen, was deemed responsible.

  I quickly set the dishwasher and made to go upstairs, but David was in the kitchen doorway, his face drawn.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  My mouth dried. ‘Well what?’

  ‘You know what. Some
thing’s going on, Molly. I’ve known for weeks now. Especially since you came back from Paris. You haven’t been near me, haven’t let me touch you. And Henri was out there too.’

  There didn’t seem to be a way out. That’s my only excuse for hurting him. I couldn’t deny any of the things he’d just said. And a tiny bit of me, Lord knows which subversive bit, wanted to tell him because it was so huge and I couldn’t carry it around with me any longer. I’m told this is not normal behaviour, but then I’ve also been told I’m not classic affair material. Certainly at that moment I felt the admission would be better than the terrible fear of constantly feeling I’d be found out: that it would be a relief.

  It wasn’t, of course, it was dreadful. David’s gentle face was agony to watch as it contorted with the pain of something he knew, but didn’t want to have confirmed. He put his hand out to the door frame: had to physically steady himself.

  ‘Henri? You slept with Henri? You actually went to bed with him?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered as the horror dawned on me as well, not that it hadn’t already, but David’s articulation of it rendered it startlingly vivid and toxic.

  ‘My friend? Our friend? The children’s friends’ father?’

  He could not believe it, even though, as he said, he’d known, or feared. And why should he? It was cataclysmic.

  He went past me and sat on the stool at the island which somehow his legs had taken him to. I turned to look. His back was to me, hunched.

  ‘Do you love him?’ he managed.

  ‘No,’ I said, knowing this was true, in that I was undecided. Which made it a no, surely.

  ‘And he?’

  ‘He says he is.’

  ‘He would.’ He turned to look at me, his eyes hardening. ‘Why, Molly?’ He gazed at me, aghast. ‘Why throw a grenade like this into our life? You’ve ruined everything, don’t you know that? And you don’t even love him. For what? Are you that stupid?’

  ‘I – I don’t know. Infatuation, I suppose.’ God, it sounded so childish.

  ‘You mean flattery,’ he said bitterly. ‘We all joke about it. You girls flirting with him, but to be taken in …’

  ‘No, I wasn’t taken in, it wasn’t like that. It was much more than that, David.’

  ‘How much more?’ he asked with venom.

  ‘I’m just saying,’ I knew I had to be careful, ‘I wasn’t a vulnerable idiot. And I resisted – God, I resisted, David—’

  ‘Bully for you!’ he roared.

  ‘What I mean is, I didn’t just—’

  ‘Roll over? Spread your legs?’

  ‘DAVID!’

  ‘Mu-um?’ A voice called sleepily from the top of the stairs.

  We froze, appalled.

  I swallowed. ‘C-coming, Lucy.’

  As I left, he sprang up and held my wrist. ‘Shame on you, Molly,’ he breathed, his eyes burning into mine. His hand on my arm was trembling. His eyes then went deliberately to the stairs and the direction of our child’s voice. ‘Shame on you.’

  The next few weeks were something of a blur. I walked around as if I’d suffered a bereavement. I had, in a way, I’d lost David’s love. And I hadn’t realized, you see, how terrible that would be. But I also, and I’m ashamed to say this, longed for Henri. The sorrow at the demise of our hitherto happy marriage didn’t, I’m afraid, quell, or even diminish, that feeling. I had to text him and tell him, of course, couldn’t chance David bumping into him in the street. There was a pause – a hiatus of at least ten minutes. My hands were palsied as I waited. Naturally he’d be appalled – who wouldn’t be? I’d broken a cardinal rule, not that we’d made any. The text that finally arrived said: ‘It changes nothing.’ I pressed it to my heart. Knew I loved him. Knew I’d been honest when I’d said ‘no’ to David but knew now that I did.

  David wouldn’t confront him, I realized that. He wouldn’t do it to Caroline, so I just had to be patient and see what he would do. I didn’t have to wait long. About three weeks or so. Meanwhile, I’d made myself extremely busy at work, taking on more than I would normally, including a trip to Milan to cover the autumn collections, and one to New York, mostly to avoid seeing Caroline. When I returned, with my case, from Heathrow, David was waiting for me in the kitchen, the children at a friend’s house.

  ‘I’ve put the house on the market,’ he said. ‘Savills reckon it will go very quickly.’

  I sat down carefully on a stool at the island.

  ‘We can’t live here any more, you’ve seen to that. And I don’t want a divorce. I love the children too much to do that to them.’

  ‘So do I,’ I breathed. And yet I still wanted Henri. But a divorce? No. Unthinkable.

  ‘I’ve seen a house, with a bit of land, quite a lot of land in fact, in Herefordshire. It needs some work, but it’ll be a project. And I can work in Ludlow. There’s a firm of solicitors who advertised in the Gazette for a trademark lawyer. I can do it standing on my head. It’ll be a new start.’

  I nodded. This was non-negotiable, I could tell.

  ‘What about my work?’

  ‘As I say, the house will be a project.’

  Ah.

  ‘Or we can stay. You can leave me, leave this house, and set up with Henri, perhaps on the other side of London.’

  My mouth felt sticky. Drained of saliva. ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘We’ll go. To Herefordshire.’

  He nodded, if not pleased then relieved, at least.

  ‘But, David …’ I’d had some time to think about this too: about how it might happen, his dream having always been, one day, to move to the country, have a few sheep, a goat, ponies for the children. ‘If we go, if we make a new life together and if I don’t leave … well, you have to forgive me.’

  He held my gaze across the kitchen. He’d had time to think too. ‘Yes. I realize that.’

  ‘Otherwise it will be unbearable.’

  ‘I know.’

  We managed to smile at one another. Not to hug, not yet, but we would, in the fullness of time. I think we both knew, though, in that sad exchange of smiles, that things would never be the same again. I’d seen to that.

  The house did indeed go quickly: within three days of being on the market, and to sealed bids, which was exciting, and a distraction. At one point, as David put the phone down to the estate agent, we squealed with delight, forgetting ourselves. Then we remembered and it was back to business as usual.

  Quite a lot of money went towards paying off the mortgage, which was huge, we’d overstretched ourselves, but the rest we put on a deposit on the house in Herefordshire, which he took me to see, even though I knew my opinion mattered little; it was a fait accompli.

  To be honest, I was faintly appalled. The house was large and rambling, too rambling, with third-storey attic rooms which were damp with crumbling sash windows and from which, when I wrenched one open, I could see only a vast, empty landscape.

  ‘As far as the eye can see,’ said David proudly, joining me at the open window.

  ‘You’re kidding. That’s not a smallholding, that’s a farm. Who’s going to run it?’

  ‘I will, of course. We’ll have sheep. They’re terribly easy to manage. Nothing to it.’

  Famous last words.

  The next few weeks were a blur of packing up and finding schools after the summer for the children, who were, by turns, aghast, horrified and appalled at leaving their friends, but David swept all that aside.

  ‘But … don’t they mind leaving?’ Silvia had asked, astonished, as all our friends were.

  ‘They’ll do as I say,’ replied David. And they did, because they respected him and he was always firm, but they trusted him. He was a very good father. He didn’t try to sell it to them, or ask their opinion, knowing they were too young for such responsibility and pressure. That it was unfair, as we privately thought when friends canvassed their twelve-year-olds as to which school they wanted to go to. ‘Be the parent,’ David would mutter under his breath. And he was. A good one.


  Anyway, as I say, the weeks flashed by and within a twinkling, we’d gone, or were going, the removal men having advanced ahead of us that morning. David and the children and I were poised now in the road to say goodbye to our friends: Sylvia and Tim, Rosie and Jamie, Giles and Susie and, of course, Henri and Caroline. Caroline I hugged first to get it over with, feeling like Brutus, but Henri came last. His heart beat against mine as he held me tightly, but briefly.

  ‘Never goodbye,’ he said fiercely in my ear.

  I couldn’t reply. Was shocked he’d even dared to say this with David’s eagle eye upon us and – oh dear God, was Caroline watching us too? Her face a little paler than usual? Smile a bit tighter? Perhaps I was being paranoid. I certainly hadn’t had a hint of it when we’d hugged moments earlier.

  At any rate, I hopped in the car and in moments we were off, with promises to come back soon and cries that they were all to come to us, the whole lot of them, to come and stay, we had so much room, all the children too, the children, who, as we purred down the familiar, tree-lined street I loved, ran along behind us as David beeped the horn and our children waved and hung out of the windows, shouting their goodbyes.

  Minutes later we rounded the corner, then another on to the main road, and fell silent. I glanced in the rear-view mirror and caught Lucy’s eye. She gave me a hard look then turned away. I had, of course, wondered how much she’d heard that night, but it occurred to me now that it was more than I’d hoped.

  Fortunately children adapt very quickly and we were lucky in that the weather was kind and Herefordshire shone for us. We’d thrown money at the removal firm and they moved us in seamlessly. We flung open all the creaking French windows and lived in the garden, picnicking and barbecuing, David on top form waving the tongs, with excited chatter about maybe a pool, certainly the old grass tennis court could be mown and re-marked, and a trampoline, we had so much space. And despite their initial resistance, I could see the children revelling in it: exploring, running down the grassy bank to the river which snaked through the valley, certainly the younger two, and even Lucy, who’d been withdrawn when we arrived, seemed to thaw. She and I spent hours in the garden which she loved but which left me cold, but if she was out there digging and weeding and exclaiming at a new flower she’d found, I would be too, beside her, with David, I knew, passing by with a wheelbarrow, looking on approvingly.