The Secrets of Married Women

by Mason, Carol

  The dispute is over. Somebody behind blares their horn at me because I’m still sitting there not moving. I’m just slipping into second gear, when I see it. In the oncoming lane, zooming up to pass a slow-moving Nissan Micra, is a beaten-up white VW Golf. I don’t see his face. Just a blur of dark skin and hair.

  My knuckles become stricken to the wheel as I attempt to drive in a straight line. Of all the cars on the road in Sunderland, what on earth were the chances of that? How many more times in my life is this man going to just coincidentally appear?

  I get home, safe but hardly sound. Kiefer is going scatty for a walk because I never took him to Pause for Paws today. I’m hungry but I’ve not been to the store and don’t know what we’ve got in for dinner. All the strands of my togetherness unfurl again. Our answer machine says we have four new messages. What if he saw me and now he’s ringing? Maybe all that commotion across the street made him look over. I can’t breathe. I go around the sitting room doing a quick nervous-energy tidy, picking up newspapers and potting them in the waste paper basket, one-hundred percent convinced it’s his voice on that machine. Then I press play. The first is from Rob, saying he’ll be late home so not to bother with dinner—maybe we can go out—that he loves me, that he’ll see me soon. Every time I hear Rob’s voice, loving and trusting, I fill with a glorious reprieve, a fawning inner gratitude to a God I never knew I believed in until now. If Leigh were going to ring Rob to get her own back on me, she’d have done it already. Knowing her and her anger at me, I can’t see her waiting five days, trying to decide whether to. So with each day that passes, I am one step removed from my worst living hell. The second message is from Mrs. Towers from the puppy obedience class that Leigh very thoughtfully recommended to us. Talk about poetic timing. And the third message is Lawrence. The distress in his voice! ‘Did you know this was happening Jill? You’re her friend, are you really going to tell me you didn’t know? All those times you went out, were you talking about this all along? Or maybe she never did go out with you. Maybe you covered for her while…Maybe there were no exercise classes all along.’ He sounds beside himself. But even when he’s mad he sounds gentle, which makes me bleed for him. ‘She’s gone!’ he says, as though to himself, in disbelief. ‘Neil doesn’t want her now, and I told her I certainly don’t. She’s moved in with Clifford.’

  Her gay boss?

  He sighs, as though he might cry. ‘ Molly’s howling and won’t eat, and since Leigh recently bullied me into taking contract work, I’m now on a project deadline and I can’t get to it because Molly’s howling and won’t eat. My client’s pissed off. I’m pissed off, and I’m confused, and I miss her and I hate her and I still love her, and I don’t know what to do, and I had my parents over but they didn’t really help and they’ve gone home now and everywhere I look I’m finding beer bottles in weird places, and I want her back! I want her gone. I want her dead. I don’t want to live without her… I—I’m so confused.’

  He stops abruptly.

  ‘Argh,’ he adds, as though he’s worn himself out. ‘Don’t bother ringing back. You’re as bad as she is.’

  I wonder if she’s told him. I quickly press delete.

  The last message is from Wendy, a total contrast to Lawrence’s. ‘Hi Jill,’ she says, her voice flat. ‘Give me a ring will you.’

  ‘Wendy!’ I say when she picks up.

  ‘Oh.’ Her voice is a mere whisper. ‘Hi there.’

  There’s a tense silence while my heart beats in nervous anticipation. ‘Wendy what’s the matter?’

  ‘Well,’ she says. ‘I know.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  She looks raw, like somebody has told her life-changing news. Her face is bare, as though the make-up has been traumatized off it. I’ve never seen my exuberant friend this undemonstrative. Wendy, but not Wendy. As though Wendy has left the building. We sit in her car around the corner from where she lives, overlooking Jesmond Dene, and a group of motley teens smoking behind a wall.

  ‘That’s why she’s been behaving so off-it at work. She comes in, doesn’t even look at me or say good-morning, goes into her office and slams the door. Clifford comes in virtually right behind her and does the same thing….’ She shakes her head, disbelievingly. ‘I came home from my doctor’s appointment. My phone rang as I was walking in the door. It was Neil, telling me I had his phone.’ She looks at me. ‘I looked at what was in my hand. He was right: the subtle difference of the orange screen versus the green…’ Her throat makes a dry crack. She clears it, looks at her bitten fingernails. ‘I didn’t feel like driving all the way there to take it to him. I wasn’t feeling great. I’d just stopped by the house to make a cup of tea. But he said he needed it, so I told him I’d bring it before I put the kettle on…’ Wendy, a level, more subdued version of herself looks at me now. ‘I happened to notice there was a message on it from Leigh.’ She leans sideways, reaches in her pocket, pulls out the phone…

  Leigh’s distraught voice fills the quiet car. ‘Neil you’ve got to talk to me. You can’t just say it’s over. This is my life here! I’ve left my husband for you, you bastard!’ She bawls. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call you that. I love you! I always have. I need you. I miss you. I miss your face, I miss your body, I miss you in my body. You can’t do this to me, you bastard! You’ve got to talk to me! Answer the fucking phone!’ By the end there she’s hollering like some mad person. It’s Fatal Attraction all over again.

  I sit there unmoving as Wendy puts the phone back in her pocket, the fine hairs on her arms standing up. The lads by the wall do a cat-call after some girls who grin as they walk past. ‘Does he know you know?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head. ‘I told him I couldn’t bring him his phone because I wasn’t feeling good. Then I rang Clifford and told him I couldn’t come into work. I didn’t tell him that I’m never coming back again.’ Splotches of red surface on her forehead. ‘I thought I heard her crying in her office the other day. I tapped on the door, asked her if she was alright. She didn’t even reply. I was thinking she must still be sulking about the stupid store opening…’ She looks at me frankly. ‘Jill, do you know what’s going on? I’m getting the feeling I’m the only one who doesn’t.’

  The last thing I want to be is any more involved than I already am. But I owe her my honesty. I grasp around in my mind for the best way of putting it. ‘I did know she was having an affair, yes.’ I talk to her hands that are clenched around the base of the steering wheel. ‘But she said it was with somebody called Nick. She said he was one of her clients. She only told me it was Neil the other day. That’s why I went to see him. I was frightened he was going to do something terrible like—’

  ‘—leave me.’

  ‘I was convinced she meant to have him at all costs.’

  She watches one of the lads idly kick the wall. She’s unusually calm. She doesn’t comment, just sits for a while—a long while—staring over the top of the steering wheel. Her chest is all that moves, a shallow rise and fall. But her pallor frightens me. Even her hands seem to have lost their tan. ‘All the times she kept telling me to tell Clifford that she was out with some client. She was obviously seeing Neil. She was getting me to cover for her while she was having sex with my husband.’ She looks at me, vulnerable and baffled. Then her shoulders shake almost imperceptibly. Her brows knit and form two vertical ridges between her eyes. ‘I don’t understand. Neil doesn’t even think she’s attractive. He says she’s brittle.’ She searches my face. The intensity of her scrutiny makes me look away. ‘How long has it been going on?’

  ‘Weeks,’ I say quickly. ‘Since June maybe.’

  ‘Weeks,’ she repeats, distantly.

  I feel as helpless as that day when Nina died, knowing no comfort can compensate for the pain she is feeling. I stare at her hands, her platinum wedding band, the only piece of jewellery she ever wears, and I don’t know what to do for her. ‘Look, do you want to come home with me? Stay with us and we’ll work out what you’r
e going to do together?’ I don’t know Wendy’s heart. Maybe she can’t leave him. Maybe they’ll have a big row, he’ll say it’s over, she’ll get a new job, never talk to Leigh again. Life will somehow mend itself, as my own seems to be doing, in a fashion.

  She shakes her head, her eyes still not moving from the scene in her mind. ‘I covered for her. I actually covered for her while she was out screwing my husband.’

  I look at her unblinking profile, the strapping, speckled shoulder nearest mine. As though she reads my helplessness, she looks at me, for a long time, still completely unable to comprehend what Leigh did. Then she says, ‘I have to go into hospital.’ She pulls an ironic smile. ‘They’ve found something wrong.’ And then her eyebrows shoot up and she gives a tiny little huff. A huff that says, completely without self-pity: Can you quite believe this?

  ~ * * * ~

  I follow Rob around the house, breathless in my distress as I tell him. The good thing, apparently, is that the cancer—carcinoma in situ—as she called it, which sounds even worse than just calling it cancer—is very early-stage. But she has to have a ‘procedure’ that’s supposed to remove the affected tissue. If it works, she’s fine. If not, she’ll have to have a hysterectomy. ‘Have my womb out,’ she said, and she put her pale hand on her belly.

  Later, Rob holds me in bed while the word ‘cancer’ circulates around us, making every other drama pale by comparison. I feel the rhythmic tickle of his eyelashes on the side of my face. ‘Rob, I feel like an evil chain letter.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ he whispers and smoothes my hair down with his stroking. ‘It’s not your fault she ended up with his telephone.’

  ‘But if I’d never gone to Neil he’d have never dumped Leigh and she wouldn’t have rang his mobile in hysterics.’

  ‘Yeah, but she’d have found out some other way. Surely you always know, deep down, if your partner’s cheating. People who have affairs always get found out, don’t they?’

  ~ * * * ~

  The next day is a reasonably quiet one at work thank God. Swinburn is back from holidays but he never mentions the error I’m supposed to have made. Nor does he ask how I am, or in any way reference my time off and the fact that I didn’t provide a doctor’s note. But in some ways all that feels like a long time ago now. I try to get Wendy all day on her mobile but it’s switched off. And she’s not home when I call the house. And of course I know she won’t be at work. I have a mountain of accounting I’ve not got done because I’ve been in la-la land, so I stay until past six to catch up. Then I drive home, after picking up the dog, subconsciously noting every small white car, my new habit. When I get in the house I try Wendy again. She’d usually be home for the lads at this time, making dinner. I’m getting a bit worried now. I have visions of her standing on the Tyne Bridge, staring into the depths of the water… a headline on the news… somebody witnessing a body, as if in slow motion, fall through the air. Rob and I are in the middle of eating when she rings me back.

  ‘I’ve thrown him out,’ she says. ‘I went home after I’d sat with you in the car. Neil came home and I gave him his phone. He went into his study, presumably to listen to his messages, then he came back out again. Seemed fine. Obviously didn’t suspect I knew a thing.’ She’s keeping her voice down, maybe the lads are around. ‘The next morning he went to work while I pretended to be asleep. Then I made tea and toast. Then when the lads went out I took four large suitcases down from the cupboard. I packed Neil’s clothes, Neil’s toiletries, Neil’s paraphernalia from his desk drawers, even Neil’s dirty laundry from the bin. Then I put Neil’s name on some packaging labels, got into my car and drove to the headquarters of Northumberland Police. I parked across the road and watched the building for a bit. Then I hauled those suitcases across the road, two at a time. I dragged them to a spot right in front of the main doors. Then I turned and…I just walked back to my car—’

  ‘—Good grief, Wendy! You didn’t!’ I am visualising this. It’s fantastic. ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘Nothing. I looked one more time at the suitcases abandoned in the middle of the street. I said, “Goodbye you son of a bitch,” and then I drove off.’

  ‘You didn’t! What happened?’

  ‘Oh, he was furious I’d humiliated him in front of people at work. I think he was more upset by that than the fact that I knew about him and Leigh. Security had to bring the cases up to his office. They’d checked them. They were worried there might have been a bomb.’ She becomes silent for a moment or two. ‘I never even thought of that Jill. I probably should have... I just didn’t want him coming home and I didn’t want to have to see him. Anyway, I don’t think he was too impressed to know that the first thing they’d seen when they opened one of the cases was a great pile of his dirty underwear. By the time he came home I’d had the locks changed.’

  ‘That fast?’

  ‘That fast. It was pointless in some ways though, because I had to let him in. To have a talk. There was no other place to have it. Your home is the only place you can respectfully hurl things at people.’

  ‘You hurled things at him?’

  ‘I did. Yes. A few.’

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Oh yeah. I aimed a few plates at him then he walked out, and you know what he said? He said, Look, I really don’t feel like being made the big villain in this.’

  ‘He didn’t say that!’

  ‘That’s Neil for you... I’ve told the lads that their dad’s gone away on business for a few days. I have to buy some time to think how to handle this with them. This is my biggest fear Jill,’ she whispers. ‘I don’t know who they’re going to blame.’

  ‘What d’you mean? Him of course!’

  ‘But I’m the one who’s thrown him out. Maybe they think parents are always supposed to work everything out.’

  We hold a silence for a bit. Then I ask her, ‘So what do you think you’re going to do now?’

  There’s a good pause before she says, ‘Cry my eyes out.’

  ~ * * * ~

  It strikes me that what I’m doing every day now is living with new information. It gets hurled at me, I intend to try to make sense of it, but it just gets pushed along the great conveyor belt in my head. Because more just keeps getting piled on board, and the wheels of my sanity have to be kept in motion.

  A couple of days tick over. Wendy clearly does her grieving in private because when I see her she’s in fully-fledged survival mode. ‘We’ve got joint bank accounts,” she tells me. ‘But it wouldn’t surprise me if Neil tried to do something devious... Do you think he can put a hold on our credit card without my consent?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue.’

  Ring the bank she writes on a to-do list, that I’m supposedly helping her compose as we sit under the Tiffany lamp of her kitchen table and she sinks three parts of a bottle of wine without even registering that she’s doing it. ‘You know I can’t even remember what accounts we have. I can barely even remember which bank we’re a member of.’ Her pale, harrowed face looks at me. ‘I’ve been this cliché of a woman that lets the man take care of all that. But it wasn’t intentional. It was mainly because I had other things to do and I just wasn’t all that interested in money.’ She is now though. She’s particularly concerned about the loss of her own paycheque. ‘What should I do? Should I ring Clifford and tell him that for personal reasons I can’t come back?’ She rests on her elbows on the tabletop, her chin in her upturned wrists.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll have to. Leigh’s living with him. I’m sure she’s told him everything.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I still think I should at least email him. He did employ me. I owe him some sort of explanation. I don’t want him thinking I’m the bad person in all of this.’

  ‘I don’t know why you keep saying stuff like this!’

  ‘I’ll think about it later,’ she says.

  We’re just going through a pile of bills when she suddenly drops a pen and stares at me through the s
oft kitchen lighting. She has black lips from the red wine. She rubs her face hard with both hands, messing her eyebrows up. ‘Jill I don’t even know where the deeds to the house are. Would you think me really stupid if I told you that I don’t even remember if Neil put the house in our joint names?’

  Some time later she rings me on my new mobile when I’m at a Manager’s function at work that I couldn’t get out of. ‘It’s all sinking in now Jill. All those afternoons when she’d come back from lunch and look at me coyly, secretively, they must have actually talked on the phone while I was in the next room, planned their shenanigans.’

  I walk outside of the functions suite, with my glass of untouched wine, to get some quiet. I remember Leigh telling me they’d had sex in her office. Wendy was at the doctor’s hadn’t she said? Although Leigh wouldn’t have known why. And that small fact makes her marginally less contemptible.