by Janey Rosen
“Don’t go,” he rasps. “You’re overreacting. Just calm down and come upstairs with me.” He commands me as he commands Scarlett but he’s intoxicating, edgy and the danger only exacerbates my excitement.
His study offers a welcome sanctuary and an air of normality again. We sit side by side on a leather love seat, and he takes my hand in his and rests it on his lap.
His voice is earnest when he speaks. “Since Libby died, it’s been so lonely here Elizabeth. Scarlett … supports me, she’s my companion, she looks after me and keeps me sane.”
“But if you have her… why do you need me?” I ask dejectedly. Suddenly I feel as though I don’t belong anywhere; not with Alan, not here – I feel lost, cast adrift like a small boat drifting at sea.
“I do need you Elizabeth, more than you appreciate. I know you need me too, you don’t realise it yet but you do. You have to trust me to know what you need, if you go back to him – to Alan – you’ll never be happy.” His finger gently tilts my chin so that I’m looking into his eyes, such dark brooding eyes it’s impossible to read his emotions.
“I know what you need.” He does know me and right now he seems to be looking right into my soul.
“There’s just so much… weirdness in this house,” I say. “It’s not normal Sebastian, to have that women here – all sexy subservience. I don’t understand why you want me when your needs are probably being met by… by her.”
“I don’t force her to stay, she’s paid a decent wage, probably more than your staff earn. Yes she’s attractive, but I told you I like to surround myself with beauty. It’s nothing more than that. Trust me.”
It sounds so lame to me now, when he says this.
“Are you telling me she is nothing more to you than a maid?” I ask sceptically.
“There was a time when she was more. A very brief time,” he confesses, his eyes hooded and his tone hushed. “I stopped that pretty quickly, but I think she’d like more.”
“I see. Is that when you gave her the choker?”
“Yes. She chooses to wear it now, it’s not something I’ve thought a great deal about, but I understand why it would upset you. I’ll tell her to remove it.”
“It’s not just the bloody choker, Sebastian. Don’t you see that?”
He runs a hand through his hair, his face pensive.
Looking at him, I question why I’m here. I seem to be adding more complication to my already overly complicated life, which was not my intention.
“Look, Sebastian,” I take his hand in mine, “I’m not sure why I’m here, what I was looking for, but… it’s not me, this whole ‘affair’ charade isn’t me. I’ve had the most amazing time, really, but now I want to get home and see the kids.”
He looks crestfallen. His dark eyebrows knit into a frown, his eyes veiled with hurt and coldness, he pulls his hand away from my grasp.
“You don’t even comprehend what you need, and you’re certainly kidding yourself if you think you can just go back to your little life in Dorset with Alan” he says malevolently. That confirms my decision to leave.
He stands on the stone steps to Penmorrow looking remorseful, like a scolded little boy.
“Don’t go.”
“I have to, Sebastian. I’m so mixed up right now. I’ll call you.”
We embrace, and I leave. Goodbye Sebastian.
9
The journey home gives me sufficient time to reflect on the last twenty-four hours. The fact that I’m driving home a day earlier than planned is confirmation of the mistake I’ve made in staying with Sebastian, although I wonder how I will explain my early return to my mother and to Alan.
Fifty minutes into my journey, my phone bleeps to signal a text message and I pull into the next services to pee and to check the message. It is from Sebastian.
I wish you hadn’t have left. Text me when home. S
Still no kiss I note, even after what we did together but I’m strangely relieved to receive his message, reassured that I haven’t blown my relationship with him after all I said to him, after leaving as I did. Goodness knows why I care, he’s clearly one screwed up cookie. So am I though, we are both completely fucked up in our own ways. I text back.
Leave me alone please, I need to sort things at home and don’t need you complicating things for me x
His reply arrives even before I pull out of the service station, onto the motorway.
Text me when home.
So bloody exasperating.
I arrive at my mother’s house late in the afternoon. The dark winter evening is already threatening to close in and the stillness in the air signals the onset of the first frost of winter. I park my car and walk up the familiar pathway to my mother’s home. It has never been my home or somewhere I grew up so I feel no real attachment to this house, other than my mother lives here so it always holds a homely atmosphere and smells of mum’s perfume and lavender soap.
Mum opens the door and ushers me in to the warmth of her home. “I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow dear, is everything ok?” she asks. So intuitive, she looks at my face and clutches me into her embrace as I crumple and sob on her shoulder.
“Sshh, whatever’s the matter love?” she sooths. “Didn’t you like the spa? Has something happened to Alan?”
Where do I begin? How do I tell her about my lies, my deceit, about Sebastian and his dark life?
“Oh mum,” I wail, “I’ve not been to a bloody spa.” She looks confused but I continue, “I’ve been to stay with a man I met at a business event recently, oh God it’s such a mess…I really like him but he’s even more screwed up than me!” I exclaim.
“I’ll make a brew, and you can tell me all about it. The kids are upstairs, so we won’t be disturbed.”
My mother sits me down and brings me a cup of hot sweet, milky tea – mum’s answer to all crises, despite knowing I take black coffee. We talk for quite some time about Sebastian but I am careful not to divulge any details about Scarlett or the porn. I just tell her that I realised that an affair is not for me. I love my kids too much to put them through a messy separation. She seems reassured that I’m not going to run away with this man and it’s been good to talk and get these feelings out.
It’s nearly nine o’clock when I pull in to our driveway with Joe and Bella. The lights are on in the front sitting room and I can see the silhouette of Alan watching television.
Shutting the front door behind us, I call out to him that we’re home. I think I hear a grumble from the sitting room in response, but it may have been the television. I hang my coat on the peg behind the front door and step into the room to see Alan. I’m eager to gauge his mood, as that will confirm whether or not he is suspicious of my whereabouts this past twenty-four hours. I need not have worried as he barely acknowledges me.
Joe still loves his bedtime chats and I welcome the return to normality. Kissing him goodnight, I turn out the light and check on Bella who is engrossed in Facebook, apparently chatting with a boy called Kyle and so I close her door and leave her to it.
In the sitting room, Alan’s watching a documentary on quantum physics – frankly I’m amazed he understands the data presented although I suspect he’s not paying attention to it. Sitting on the armchair next to him I try to concentrate on what the presenter is telling me but it’s way over my head.
I’m restless as thoughts of Penmorrow, cellars and Sebastian fill my mind until they become a jumbled cacophony of images. Looking at Alan, I can’t comprehend how removed his life is from Sebastian’s and I resent my husband for his lack-lustre persona and meek disposition.
Alan picks up the remote control and presses the button to silence the television. He turns to me and I notice a flush in his cheeks and wonder if he’s been drinking and then I smell the whisky.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he spits. Astounded and panicky, I look wide-eyed at him and feign a look of innocence and surprise.
“At the spa Alan, where the hell do you think I’ve
been?” I counter.
He laughs then, a deep, guttural belly laugh, which is not based on humour but some dark sense of irony.
“You lying fucking bitch, I know you’ve not been to a bloody spa. I called every sodding spa on the south coast!” He takes a deep gulp of whisky from the crystal tumbler, which I see had been on the hearth next to his feet along with a near empty bottle.
“What I don’t bloody get,” he continues, “is why you came back early – in fact, why you came back at all? If your life here is so bloody terrible, why don’t you bugger off with whatshisname and do us all a favour?” The bitterness resonates through every word he speaks to me. He looks so forlorn, downbeat and totally defeated as he looks at me now contemptuously.
“Alan, I… I don’t know what to say,” my response is pathetic. I am a deer caught in the headlights knowing my fate but unable to change it. I know we’re over but the guilt I feel, and bleakness of our marriage consumes me, and a tear winds it’s way down my reddened cheek.
“Don’t bloody say anything, I don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth. I’ve done everything I can to support you with your business, the kids, this house… I couldn’t have done more…” He stares despondently into his empty tumbler.
“I know love,” I reply, “we’ve just grown apart. We want different things out of life.”
My phone bleeps in the kitchen - we both hear it and Alan tuts irritably.
“Probably lover boy, you’d better answer it.” He reaches for the whisky bottle and drains the remaining alcohol into his glass, while I walk into the kitchen and take my phone from my handbag.
Presuming you’re home now Elizabeth? You didn’t call as I asked. S
I slip my phone into my pocket and retreat to the upstairs bathroom so that I can reply in private without antagonising Alan further.
Not replied as just got home, things awful here. Pls don’t text me, leave me alone!!
The phone whooshes as the message is sent and a sense of relief washes over me, with the knowledge that I have made the decision to end things with Sebastian, at least until such time as Alan and I have talked about our marriage and made rational decisions. I really don’t need any more complications.
Sitting on the edge of the bath, I stare at my phone screen, waiting for a reply from Sebastian, which doesn’t come.
Downstairs, Alan has finished the bottle of whisky and is slurring his words now.
“So, watcha gonna do now that I know all aboutcha little love affair huh?” he’s very drunk and there is little point continuing this discussion until he sobers up.
“Look Alan, why don’t we get some rest, talk tomorrow. I’ll finish work early and maybe the two of us can pop down to the Crown for a drink. Just the two of us, we can talk then?” I try to rationalise and calm him but can see the anger bubbling beneath the surface in my husband’s face.
“Mum?” Joe has crept downstairs and is standing in the doorway looking anxious. “I heard Dad shouting.” He looks at Alan, seeking reassurance that everything’s ok, but we both look blankly at him unable to find words to reassure him.
I take Joe upstairs, tuck him into bed and kiss him. Lying next to him on his narrow bed, I listen to his breathing settle as he falls asleep. Gazing at my sleeping son, I wonder what I’m going to do but then I hear Alan striding up the stairs. He throws open the door.
“I wanna talk to you…NOW!” he hisses. A sense of foreboding crawls through me, starting in the pit of my stomach.
“Downstairs” I whisper so as not to disturb Joe.
Alan’s in the kitchen, pacing across the floor from the table to the sink, I can see the anger in his face and I suddenly feel afraid and unwilling to argue further tonight as I see his anger escalate.
“What the hell’s this?” He throws my mobile phone down onto the kitchen table and places his hands on his hips. I pick up the phone, the screen is black and I raise my eyebrow questioningly.
“It’s my phone Alan, what’s your problem?” I ask defiantly.
“The fucking ‘problem’ ish the messages on there.” He is now very drunk and slurring his words. “Ish that Him, that tosser from the hotel you were with?” Oh no, he’s read my text messages. Mentally slapping myself for not locking my phone with a passcode, I desperately think of an excuse to explain the texts but knowing that there is no plausible explanation I can proffer, I opt for the truth.
“It’s not what you think, Alan,” I try the gentle approach. “I’ve only seen him once since you saw us having lunch at the hotel. I stayed there last night…” Alan’s eyes widen as the enormity of what I tell him sinks in, and I fear he is going to have a heart attack.
“How could you do this to us? What about the kids?” He is swaying now, his fury burning and the alcohol destabilising him. “What the fuck are you playing at?”
I start to cry through humiliation, guilt and genuine remorse at the distress I’ve caused my husband; this wasn’t my intention. I had merely wanted to do something for me rather than for everyone else, to find myself - ‘the real Beth Dove’, whoever she now is.
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t. So… where do we go from here?” my question seems superfluous now as it is evident Alan will not forgive me and so it seems inevitable now that we will separate.
“I’m outa here. Shit Beth you can do what you want, but I wanna see my kids…”
Sobbing, I go to him forlornly, try to hug him and he receives my embrace with an iron-rod back but to me, the hug is a farewell gesture and a shrug to our past, all tenderness is lost.
It doesn’t take Alan long to throw a few clothes and toiletries into a suitcase. He’s leaving me but before he goes, he kisses Joe’s cheek as he sleeps, and whispers something to his slumbering son. Then he knocks on Bella’s door. She removes her headphones as he enters her room and turns off her music, then I hear my daughter and husband talking in hushed voices. Shortly after, he leaves our home with a slam of the front door and I feel desolate.
I decide to go to bed – tomorrow I can worry about what I’m going to do. Right now I feel exhausted.
10
On Monday morning Joe is quiet and pensive as I drive him to school. Bella refused to travel with us, instead choosing to take the bus to school and there had been no point in arguing with her, she has her father’s mulishness.
At nine o’clock I arrive at my office, business as usual. Ruth has her head buried in a stack of paperwork but looks up over her reading glasses as I arrive.
“Beth, how was your weekend? “ she asks. I roll my eyes and sigh, giving her a look that says ‘don’t go there.’
“Coffee, love, that’s what you need, and then I want a full low-down on what you’ve been up to missy.” she has never been the most diplomatic of my friends but she’s the most determined, and so it will be that she will insist on a full account.
Over coffee, I tell Ruth about my fight with Alan and she listens sympathetically, without interrupting. When I have finished, she sighs heavily then gives me a tight hug.
“I’m so sorry you’re going through this shit, Beth. He still won’t go to couples counselling?”
“Not a hope, Ruth. God knows I’ve tried and tried. It feels like it’s really over.”
“I’m so sorry, love. So, if you didn’t go to a spa, where did you go?”
I tell Ruth about my visit with Sebastian at Penmorrow. She is shocked and, I think, rather disappointed at my infidelity but that soon turns to curiosity, and she’s now attempting to extract the finer details from me.
“OK, so you’ve explained why you went and I kind of get that Beth, but tell me what happens now? Are you going to see him again?”
“Absolutely NOT!” I exclaim. “He’s so complex, Ruth. He lives alone in that huge mansion… oh not entirely alone of course; he has a live-in housekeeper who is twenty-something, beautiful and sexy… and he tries to tell me that there’s nothing going on any more, she is just staff but shit, she had an S&M ma
gazine… When she caught us in the staff quarters, with the magazine, she looked at me as though I was intruding on her and Sebastian!”
“Whoa, slow down. What do you mean ‘any more’ and S&M? You mean they were an item? And you mean the whole bondage thing?” she is enthralled and appalled in equal measure.
“Oh yes. Whips, the lot, and if she’s in to that, and he clearly knew about it, then there has to be something strange going on there. He says they were fleetingly an item, but I’m not convinced. I nearly forgot, he gave me the most beautiful choker.” I lift my bag from the floor and fish around amongst the paraphernalia to retrieve the choker. I pass it to Ruth who studies it closely.
“Beth, it’s rather sexy,” Ruth admires the delicate ribbon and is evidently impressed by the sparkling diamond cluster. “Are these real?” She tilts the jewels toward the window and marvels as they sparkle.
“They’re real, Ruth. Do you know what the bizarre thing is, though?” I don’t wait for a reply, “Scarlett wears a choker too. Tell me that’s not weird. They don’t have diamonds, but it’s the significance of the choker that worries me.”
“That’s weird, yep.” She places the ribbon on the desk. “Beth, just don’t complicate things any more than they are. Give yourself some space.”
My phone bleeps. I snatch it from my bag and turn my back to Ruth as I open the message, which disappointingly is from Alan.
Staying with Mike. Will get Joe Saturday at 11 and have him for the weekend. Bella can come too if she wants. Alan
“Shit. It’s Alan,” I tell Ruth. “He wants the children on Saturday, he’s staying with Mike – you met him last year at the BBQ, he’s a good friend to Alan so I’m glad he’s staying with him.” I’m also glad Alan hasn’t done anything stupid. Mike will help him through this, which in turn, means my anxiety decreases.
“That’s good, love. At least you know he’s ok,” she reassures me.
My phone bleeps again, I swipe my finger across the activating button and it wakes, revealing a message from Sebastian.
