A Family Recipe

by Veronica Henry

  ‘Not fair?’ Laura frowned.

  The girl pointed her spoon at Dom. ‘He’s having an affair.’

  For a moment no one spoke. Laura frowned. Dom rolled his eyes.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ said Dom. ‘Are you coming down from last night or something?’

  ‘I heard you on the phone while your wife was in the toilet.’ The girl’s eyes were blue and cold. ‘I’ve been thinking about us too. All last night.’

  Dom scrumpled up his napkin. ‘She’s a nutter. Let’s go.’

  Laura didn’t move. The girl waved her spoon again.

  ‘Laura’s going to be all over the place for a few days because of Willow, but I need to see you.’

  Laura’s mouth dropped open. The detail in what the girl had said was all the proof Laura needed. She stared at Dom.

  ‘Come to the house first thing. There won’t be anyone there until nine.’

  Laura looked incredulous. She grabbed her bag and jumped off her stool.

  ‘Have you got any idea what you’ve just done?’ Dom asked the girl, who shrugged.

  ‘Given her a chance to find someone who’s not cheating on her?’

  ‘I was talking to my lawyer.’

  The girl just raised an eyebrow. Dom turned to Laura, desperate.

  ‘Laura – she’s taken it totally out of context. I was talking to Antonia Briggs – there’s conveyancing stuff we need to sort out before the flats go on the market. The leaseholds –’

  ‘Trust me,’ said the girl. ‘She might be his lawyer but she’s going through more than his fine print.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ said Dom. ‘Come on, darling. Let’s go. You’re lucky I’m not calling security.’

  He took Laura’s arm but she shook it off.

  ‘I know you’re a flirt,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘And I know you’ve probably got a higher sex drive than I have. And I know you come into contact with loads of women. But do you know what? I always trusted you. I never doubted you for a moment.’

  ‘You are seriously going to believe some stalky drug-crazed weirdo at a service station? She twisted everything I said. I told Antonia to come to Wellington Buildings because there’s stuff she needs to look at. I told her to come early because I don’t want the team hearing my business. Surely that makes sense? It’s not some seedy hook-up, which was what she made it sound like.’

  ‘Laura’s going to be all over the place?’ Laura quoted the girl back at him.

  ‘I was concerned. I know how anxious you are about Willow and what a big deal this is for you. She made it sound as if I think you’re an inconvenience. I meant that I might be a bit preoccupied for a week or two.’

  Laura thought for a moment. What Dom was saying sounded plausible. It was certainly the version she wanted to believe. It had been wrong of the girl to interfere, and she did look like a troublemaker – someone who thrived on drama.

  ‘Give me your phone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you really expect me to believe you, you’ll let me see your phone.’

  Dom sighed and handed his phone over. Laura examined it.

  The last number he had called said A Briggs.

  Laura flipped through to see if they’d exchanged any texts. There were none. Dom swallowed.

  ‘You see?’

  ‘Maybe you’re just very efficient at deleting incriminating evidence?’

  She went to hand him his phone back. He laughed in semi-relief and went to take it, but at the last moment she snatched it back.

  ‘Wait.’

  Laura typed in a text and sent it.

  ‘What have you written?’ asked Dom. He looked tense. More tense than he should be if he was innocent.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Laura, staring at the screen.

  The seconds seemed eternal while they waited. Nothing. No response.

  ‘Come on, Laura. This is silly.’ He held his hand out for the phone, just as it chirruped a reply.

  Laura read the reply and blinked. Dom couldn’t tell anything from her expression. Then she held the phone up so he could read the exchange.

  Dom: Can’t wait to see you xx

  A Briggs: See you later xxxx

  ‘You’re nothing but a cliché,’ said Laura, and stalked off.

  ‘Well done,’ Dom said to the girl. ‘That’s a twenty-year marriage you’ve just stuffed up.’

  ‘No,’ said the girl. ‘You did that quite well for yourself.’ She swung her canvas bag covered in badges onto her shoulder and slid off her stool, disappearing into the crowds.

  Laura stumbled back into the toilets, pushing past two other women and heading for an open cubicle. She would never usually queue barge, but she needed to barricade herself in.

  ‘Hey,’ said one of them, but she slammed the door shut.

  ‘How rude,’ she heard the other one say, but she didn’t care.

  She folded her arms against the cubicle door and rested her head on them.

  She tried to remember what she knew about Antonia. She’d heard her name, of course. There were lots of people on Dom’s team. Most of the actual workmen were blokes: the carpenters, the electricians, the plasterers. But there were plenty of women involved too. His bank manager, for a start. His web designer, his garden designer, his planning officer … She’d never worried about any of them for as much as a second. She had thought their marriage was as rock solid and watertight as the house they lived in.

  She knew Antonia had worked pretty closely with him on the conveyancing of all his deals. There were endless issues: searches and covenants and indemnities. Laura had heard her name bandied around for at least three years. She felt a bit sick as she racked her brain for clues as to when the relationship could have gone from personal to something more. Had she misread the signals or hadn’t there been any? Had she been totally unobservant or just too trusting? She felt her past reconfigure, every moment called into question. Had everything been a lie? She felt foolish, and had no idea how she was supposed to proceed.

  All around her she could hear people talking, the sound of flushing and taps running and dryers blasting out hot air. She couldn’t stay in here for ever. But what was she supposed to do? She just wanted to un-know what she’d learned. Carry on living in blissful ignorance. Her initial reaction was to call Sadie, who was after all her best friend, and an expert in affairs of the heart, including extra-marital ones. Although Sadie had never been married, she had certainly been the other woman. Not recently, but when she was much younger, and she had been badly burnt on more than one occasion. She would have opinions, of that Laura was certain.

  But Sadie was fiery and tended to stoke fires rather than put them out. Laura wasn’t sure she could cope with the inevitable drama. Then another, more terrible thought occurred to her.

  Maybe Sadie knew about the affair. Maybe the whole of Bath knew, except Laura. She felt her cheeks flush. Was she the only person not to know her husband was playing away? After all, wasn’t it usually the wife who was the last to find out? She’d heard of other instances. Bath was rife with dinner-party speculation and school-gate insinuation. She usually ignored the whispers. She certainly never passed any of them on. Laura wasn’t the type to thrive on tittle-tattle. It made her feel uncomfortable. If people started talking about others behind their backs, she withdrew from the conversation or changed the subject.

  ‘You’re such a saint,’ Sadie would complain if she chose to ignore a juicy snippet. ‘Everyone loves a gossip.’

  ‘Well, I don’t.’ She would remain firm.

  Now, she imagined the rumours that might have been circulating about Dom and … Ugh. She couldn’t give the woman’s name headspace or even begin to imagine what she looked like. The very thought made her heart start to hammer.

  She looked up at the ceiling. Oh God. Here they came. The symptoms she dreaded. She tried to empty her mind of what had just happened and focus instead on something positive: a still, calm lily pond, tranquil and verdant,
a waxy white flower opening its petals. She couldn’t lose it in here, in a public toilet with no one to help her. She certainly wasn’t going to call on Dom for assistance.

  Breathe. Stay calm. She kept the voice in her head firm and steady. She’d been doing so well. It had been months since her last panic attack. She wasn’t going to allow them back. It was all in her mind. She was in control. She had the power to dictate how she felt.

  Eventually, as she breathed, she felt her pulse subside and her nausea settle. Shaking slightly, she pulled the car keys out of her bag. Dom was in the habit of giving them to her rather than putting them in his pocket.

  She left the cloakroom and slipped out of the service station by a side door, then hurried as quickly as she could to the car. Before she could think about it too much she reversed out of the space and headed for the exit.

  As she drove through the hordes of people heading back to their cars, she passed the girl who had dropped the bombshell. Her head was down and she was texting as she wove through the car park. Laura slowed down and wound down the window.

  ‘Hey.’

  The girl looked up.

  ‘I don’t know if you did the right thing,’ Laura told her. ‘You’ve either done me a huge favour or ruined my life. But I don’t think you should make a habit of interfering in people’s lives like that.’

  The girl looked defiant. ‘If any man cheated on me, I would never forgive them. I’d want to know.’

  Laura looked at her pale face, her bitten nails, her tattoos, and thought, for all her principles, she hadn’t a clue. ‘Life’s not always that straightforward, you know. I’ve got two daughters about your age. How do you think they’re going to feel?’

  The girl opened her mouth, then shut it again, and for a moment she didn’t look as sure as she had been. She was obviously headstrong and used to voicing her opinions. And not used to someone like Laura questioning her.

  Laura wound the window up. There was little point in carrying on the conversation. The damage had been done. The exchange had made her feel anxious again, and she felt tears nudging their way out of her eyes. She wiped them away with the heel of her hand. She wasn’t going to cry. Not yet. All she could think was thank God the girls weren’t at home. She wouldn’t have been able to hide what had happened from them. She felt sick all over again at the thought of them knowing. They worshipped Dom. All of them did.

  Then she spotted Dom coming out of the automatic doors. She saw him clock the car and begin to run, an expression of anguish and panic on his face. He waved at her wildly, but she put her foot down, holding her breath until she reached the inside lane of the motorway. She was going to drive home without him. At least that way she could think about what had happened and make a plan. She wasn’t worried about leaving him stranded at the service station. That was his problem.

  She didn’t look back.

  7

  Antonia had woken up that Sunday morning with a heavy heart and a slightly sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Today was the day she had to put her decision into action. She knew from experience that once her mind was made up it was best to get on with it.

  She was proud of quite a few of her achievements. She was proud of the four A levels she got despite her school being in special measures and being endlessly bullied for wearing glasses and being a spod.

  She was proud of getting her Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award. She had gone to St James’ Palace to collect it: a four-hour bus journey from Somerset to London and back. Her parents didn’t come because they couldn’t leave the shop, and Antonia didn’t protest that surely, just once, one of them could have left the other to manage. It was a small pet shop in a small seaside town. The worst that could happen was someone might have to wait in a queue to buy their cat litter. But no one in the Briggs family ever imagined they might come before anything with four legs.

  She was proud of her job as a conveyancing solicitor. She was proud of the flat she had bought in a leafy square in the centre of Bath. She was proud of the Ikea kitchen she had put in herself with just a tiny bit of help from an electrician.

  She was not, however, proud of her affair with Dom Griffin.

  Whenever she saw Dom, she felt an extraordinary clash of conflicting emotions. There was a top note of shame. In the middle was a deep affection, fed by her desire to nurture and protect him, because she knew better than anyone he wasn’t all he pretended to be and he needed looking after. And the base note was the most powerful feeling of all – the one that made her giddy and quite unsteady on her feet. It blazed through her, hitting her in the guts (or perhaps not quite her guts; the feeling was a little lower than that), taking her by surprise every time. If she were to put a name to it, she supposed it was lust. Whatever it was called, it was dangerously addictive and overrode all of the other sensations.

  Antonia wasn’t the type of girl to sleep with a married man. Prior to Dom, her lovers had all been carefully considered, and even then the word ‘lover’ was something of a misnomer, as love hadn’t come into it. Her last tryst had been the dullest of relationships: occasional trips to the theatre or dinners out, with the evening ending in perfunctory sex which had left her baffled as to why they bothered. Or, indeed, why anyone did.

  Now she knew.

  People would be surprised if they knew the truth. On the outside, Antonia was navy blue and buttoned up. Even her name was buttoned up: Briggs, a hybrid of brisk and priggish. She never wore clothes that were too tight or too short or heels that were too high. Knee-length skirts, white blouses, nude tights and low-heeled court shoes. Brown hair tied back in a ponytail. Tortoiseshell glasses for reading the smallest of the small print. Antonia was entirely appropriate in everything she did. She was efficient, ambitious and happy in her own company.

  Apart from choosing a manual Golf over an automatic (traffic in Bath was terrible, and an automatic was almost essential if you weren’t to drive yourself mad), Antonia rarely made mistakes. So it was ironic that the mistake she made this time last year was such a monumental one.

  It didn’t affect her work because Antonia had an enviable ability to compartmentalise and the minute she walked through the door of her office she switched to business. Her personal phone stayed in her bag and her mind didn’t wander.

  But yesterday afternoon, she had finally faced the truth: she had fallen in love with Dom. And she knew that, because when he had told her he was driving to York with Laura, she had felt jealous. Jealous that he and his wife were going to be exploring a strange city together and sharing a hotel room. Even though the reason for them going there was entirely practical and reasonable.

  Antonia had been shocked by the depth of her jealousy, and by the fact that she had spent all of Saturday wondering what Dom was doing, if he was having fun, where they were having dinner. It was as if while Laura was in Bath, in the family home, she was no threat. But take her out of that place and she became competition.

  Jealousy was a new experience and was infinitely worse than the shame Antonia already felt, and it helped make up her mind. She already knew someone – or more than one someone – was going to get hurt if this affair continued. It didn’t matter if it was her, because if she got hurt that was her own silly fault. But there were likely to be innocent victims and she didn’t want that on her conscience. Added to which, the relationship could go nowhere other than where it already was – she had never ever hinted to Dom that she wanted him to leave Laura. Because she didn’t. The idea of being responsible for breaking up a marriage appalled her. And every day that went past was a day nearer to the day they got caught out. So it was time to stop.

  What she was going to have to do was going to be painful, because the love she felt for Dom was a deep, caring love. It wasn’t an electric, fizzing, superficial passion. It had far more meaning and stamina. It was a good love, and that was going to be difficult to sacrifice.

  She had felt her love more deeply than ever in the past week, because Dom was dreading Willow going
away to university and she had been desperate to take his pain away, but she couldn’t. Twice in the past fortnight he had cried in her arms at the prospect, because he couldn’t cry at home, he told her. He couldn’t admit to his wife how terrifying he found it. He had to put on a brave face for Laura, who had a tendency to be highly strung. Antonia knew much of Dom’s life was spent heading off his wife’s anxiety.

  She longed to be the person who made it all right; the one that he turned to in order to fill the hole left by Willow. But it wasn’t her place, and the fierceness of her longing brought it home to her once and for all.

  It had to stop.

  She got out of bed straight away – one of her rules was to get up as soon as she woke up; she just didn’t see the point of lying there unless you were actually ill – then made her bed, shaking out the duvet, plumping the pillows, smoothing the bottom sheet and tucking it in firmly. She had read somewhere that making your bed straight away set the tone for the day. And then when you came to bed at the end of a long, hard day it was a pleasure to climb into.

  As she plumped up her pillows and settled them back into place she thought: We all deserve better. Laura deserves better. I deserve better. Not better than Dom, because she thought she would never find anyone who came close. But a better situation. And Dom deserved to be set free. She knew he would never have the balls to end it, that she had become a habit he didn’t have the strength to break.

  They both recognised they couldn’t get away with a clandestine relationship for ever. They had a strict regime. Once or twice a week, at about six o’clock, just after she got home from work, she would buzz him into the building, where he could be visiting any of the people that lived in the six flats. He always made sure the stairway and hall were empty before tapping on her door. Antonia knew categorically that no one had ever seen him go into her flat. And before he left, she checked the stairway again before letting him out.