And later, when we lay in bed, he pulled me to him, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. So rarely we went to bed at the same time these days. He stroked his fingers along my arm, in time with the rhythm of his breathing, and I curled up against him, all thoughts suspended. He turned his head slightly, and kissed my hair.
‘We had a nice weekend,’ he said and right then I wanted to believe that he meant it. I wanted to forget how awkward and strained it had been, and convince myself that yes it was a good weekend. I wanted to swallow the lie, whole.
I closed my eyes, safe in the warmth of his body. I willed myself numb.
And then he said, ‘I’m going to have to stay in London tomorrow. We’ve got a meeting with clients. It probably won’t finish till late.’
I did not speak. I did not move. I lay there, rigid in his arms, as the fear that I had suppressed all week came racing back through my veins.
When you love someone, and are married to them, and have given birth to their children; when you have slept with them, night after night, and been so close to them, you think they will be there forever. You think that you know them and that you will always know them. You think you are bound.
By Friday I could bear it no longer. All night I had lain awake on my own, thinking about David staying in London, torturing myself with what ifs. I couldn’t face the weekend, not knowing. I couldn’t face being alongside David for two whole days with these doubts, these suspicions, gnawing away at me.
I needed to know I was wrong.
On Friday, Sam and Ella were both out. I had the house to myself for most of the afternoon.
With shaking hands I took that piece of paper out from under the fruit bowl and put it down on the table – not that I needed to see the number; I’d got it memorized in my head. I put my mobile phone on the table too. I wasn’t going to use the house phone. I’d thought of that. If I used my mobile, whoever answered wouldn’t have a clue who was calling. I sat there at the table for a while, bracing myself. What would I say? What would phoning this number prove, or not prove?
I still hoped I was being foolish, that I’d got it all wrong.
I took a deep breath. I keyed in that number, and pressed dial.
Straight away I was connected to an automated voicemail. The phone didn’t even ring; whoever owned it was on a call. And that felt like a reprieve, a chance to cop out, to stop this nonsense. ‘Leave it there,’ I told myself, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I had to know whose number it was. So I dialled again, and again I got that voicemail. I took another deep breath, and let it out slowly. I counted to ten. I dialled again.
This time I got through. A woman’s voice said, ‘Hello-o,’ lilting the word slowly over three syllables. I dropped the phone as if burnt. She could be anyone, I told myself. She could be anyone. She was still there; I could hear her, faint and tinny, speaking into my kitchen. ‘Hello,’ she said again. ‘Anyone there?’ I held my breath, all plans of making excuses, of pretending to have dialled a wrong number, gone now. She muttered something, then silence. I counted the seconds till I was sure she had gone, my heartbeat booming in my ears.
She could be anyone, I told myself again, but I knew. I just knew.
I found myself hunting through his wardrobe like a madwoman, checking his pockets for proof, for receipts, sniffing his jackets for the scent of another woman’s perfume. I went through his underwear looking for I don’t know what; I counted out the condoms in the drawer in his bedside table, examining the box for recent disturbance because apart from that disastrous occasion on Saturday night it certainly hadn’t been disturbed recently on my account. I packed the condoms for our weekend away, grabbing a couple and sticking them in my wash bag – how many were left in the box then? Seven condoms I counted now but for how long had there been seven? I knew I was being ridiculous. He wouldn’t use condoms from this box on her, sneaking them out of the house like a naughty school boy; my rational self knew that. But I wasn’t feeling rational. I was possessed by a rage I didn’t know how to deal with and rolling in and out of that rage was utter panic. How could he do this to me?
He kept his bank and credit card statements in the den, in a file underneath the computer. When I’d gone through absolutely everything I could think of upstairs I went down there, and dragged them all out. And I really scrutinized those credit card statements, and that’s where I found what I was looking for: bills for dinner in restaurants, on nights that he was away from me. Not huge bills; those he would have put on his company card, when he was entertaining clients. Bills just the right size for a nice little dinner for two.
We did not have much money. We’d stretched ourselves financially, moving here, doing up the house. I couldn’t bear that he was spending what little money we did have on some other woman. We never went out. He never took me to restaurants any more, but then how could he? There were no restaurants around here. Last weekend at the hotel was the first time we’d spent money on doing anything special together for ages, and even then when I met him at the station with my grand surprise all arranged he’d had the cheek to say, ‘Do you think we can afford it?’
I sat on the floor of the den, howling out my rage. I scrunched up those credit card bills; I tore them apart. I wanted to be the one that my husband took to fancy restaurants in London. I should have been the one. And I would have been once, but here I was, stuck out in this farce of a country dream on my own, night after godforsaken night, while David . . . wasn’t. The unfairness was unbearable; it bore into me like a drill. He had one foot in this dream of ours – of mine – but the rest of him was still there in London, with somebody else.
Now what was I going to do?
I wished I’d never heard him on that phone; I wished I’d never seen the way his shoulders and his neck had tensed so almost imperceptibly, so guiltily, when he realized I was there. I wished, now, that I didn’t know.
There is so much to be said for ignorance, for wilful blindness, for just chugging on, obliviously, with your head stuck firmly in the sand . . . but actually knowing changed all of that. How could I talk with David now, how could I live with him, sleep with him, share my space with him? How could I wash his clothes, care for his children, be here?
He had betrayed me. He had rendered my whole life a sham.
I went to bed very early on Friday night, and pretended to be asleep when he got home. I didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to have to say, ‘How are you? How was your day? And how did it go yesterday, with that meeting that ran on so late?’ I didn’t want to ask these ridiculous, false questions and hear his lies for answers. I didn’t want to hear him sigh, and tell me how tough it was, all this commuting, all this crashing in London at his colleague’s flat. I didn’t want to hear him say that he missed us, when he was away. I lay in bed with my eyes pinned shut when he came up, burning with anger. I heard him come in, and undress. I felt him creep underneath the duvet beside me. But I did not move. I barely breathed. One word, one touch, and I would have ripped him to pieces. I would have ripped out his heart.
FIFTEEN
On Saturday I got up before David, and left him in bed still asleep. There was no riding lesson that day but I had errands to run; Ella needed new plimsolls for school, Sam some new trainers and PE shorts. Things we should have got in the week, only I hadn’t been able to do anything useful with all these suspicions spiralling around in my head. But now that David was home I wanted to be out. I didn’t want to be near him at all.
I drove the kids into town, but we shopped miserably, perfunctorily. They seemed to pick up on my mood and exacerbate it. And there were no plimsolls in Ella’s size in the school outfitters, and of course there was nowhere else to try.
‘I need them for Monday,’ she wailed. ‘I’ve got to have them.’
‘Well you can’t have them if they haven’t got any,’ I said, too eaten up with my own worries to care about a pair of plimsolls.
‘I could try and order you a pair,’ the shop assistan
t said doubtfully. ‘But it will take a week or so.’
‘A week!’ Ella screeched. ‘What am I supposed to wear till then?’
‘You’ll have to wear your old ones,’ I said.
‘They’re too small,’ she wailed. ‘I’ll get blisters.’
And she carried on moaning, all morning. We trudged about, trying to get the rest of our things, and then trawled around the market to buy food.
‘Can’t I just go and meet Max?’ Sam said, but if he went off with Max I’d have to pick him up later from Max’s house, and that would mean seeing Melanie. And I couldn’t face the sight of her, not right then.
‘No,’ I snapped. ‘I need you to help carry the stuff.’
‘You don’t normally need me,’ he muttered.
‘I do today.’
‘I could carry the stuff then go,’ he said.
And then Ella latched on. ‘I want to go and see Abbie,’ she said.
‘Not today.’
‘Why not?
‘Because we’ve still got things to get. And I’ve got too much to do.’
‘I haven’t,’ said Sam.
‘Well I have,’ I snapped. ‘And I haven’t got time to be ferrying you two back and forth. So no, not today.’
‘Just because you’re in a bad mood,’ Sam scowled, dragging his feet up the street behind me.
And so we went home. My stomach sank as I turned the car down the lane to our house, dread lodged heavily inside me. I tried to concentrate on the things I had to do: putting the shopping away, getting the washing on, organizing lunch. But I resented all these chores now. David had put his clothes from the last couple of days in the laundry basket; I saw them in there among our things and I wanted to throw them at him. How dare he come from fucking her – whoever she was – then bring me back his dirty clothes to wash? How dare he? I didn’t even want to touch his clothes – I flicked them out of the way, flinging them on the kitchen floor, kicking them aside with my feet.
He wandered into the kitchen.
He sauntered over to the counter, and started cutting himself a slice of bread. ‘What are we having for lunch?’ he asked, as if all in the world was normal.
I could not speak. My face was tight, my teeth biting into my screwed-up mouth. My heart was thumping, angry, hard and slow.
He opened the fridge. ‘Got any ham?’ he said. I turned to look at him. He stood with his back to me as he searched through the contents of the fridge. He was wearing a blue polo shirt and jeans. How relaxed he looked; how very ordinary in his Saturday clothes, his dark hair still damp from the shower. He prodded around at the food I had just bought, finding ham, finding cheese.
‘What?’ he said, when he turned around and realized I was staring at him. He plonked the food down on the counter beside the sink, having to step across his strewn socks and pants in the process. He looked down at the floor, saw those pants and socks and absently kicked them back in the direction of the washing machine and me.
And that did it.
‘Who is she?’ The words were out, thick and alien, my voice not my own.
He hesitated for just the merest fraction of a second, then carried on preparing his sandwich, his eyes on the task, as if hoping he hadn’t heard me.
‘Who is she?’ I shouted this time, so that no way could he pretend not to hear.
He flinched. I saw the colour flash into his cheeks. Slowly his hands stilled and he forced himself to look at me. He tried to smile. His eyes hovered on mine like beads on springs, flickering, unable to hold. ‘Who is who?’ he said.
I slammed my hand down on the counter, so hard I felt like I’d smashed it. ‘Don’t insult me!’ I screeched, the palm of my hand, my fingers, singing with pain.
The colour rose further in his face, then faded right back out. He folded his arms across his chest defensively, and tilted his head to one side, eyes focused somewhere on the floor. I waited for him to speak. I waited and waited. The house was silent but for the whir and click, whir and click of the washing machine going round and round.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘It doesn’t matter who she is,’ he said quietly.
‘It matters to me! And it obviously matters to you!’
‘Jane,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about this.’
‘Fine! Talk away!’
‘Calmly,’ he said.
‘Calmly?’
‘Jane, please.’ He looked at me now, spreading his arms, imploring me. ‘I didn’t want you to find out like this.’
‘You didn’t want me to find out at all!’
He sighed. He half closed his eyes, as if he was the one in pain here.
‘Who is she?’ I said again.
He bit down on his lip, sticking out his chin, while he considered whether to tell me or not. ‘Her name’s Diana,’ he said at last.
And just the sound of her name, the sound of her name on his tongue, in his mouth, flicked a switch inside my head and I felt myself crumple. Diana. Diana. How tenderly he formed the word. I started crying, uncontrollably, sobbing so hard I couldn’t get my breath.
‘Jane, please, I’m sorry . . .’
He put his hand out to me but I slapped it away. I didn’t want him to touch me. I’d wanted him to deny it. I’d wanted him to tell me there was no one, to insist, to lie. But to tell me her name, and to tell me it so easily, made it unbearably real. She might as well have been in the room. She might as well have been standing right there, draping herself all over him.
‘Please, Jane, don’t cry like this,’ he said, but I couldn’t stop.
‘Where did you meet her?’ I asked through a mouthful of tears. ‘How long have you been seeing her?’
‘Jane, don’t . . .’
‘Tell me!’ And then it dawned on me; the obvious, the impossible. ‘Is it her that you stay with when you stay in London?’
I sat on my bed. I’d cried myself into a thick, sore head, my eyes swollen and bruised. I could hear David, Sam and Ella downstairs in the kitchen, having their lunch. How could David eat? How could he move about in our house, talk to our children, function normally, now?
‘What’s wrong with Mum?’ I heard Ella ask.
And he said, ‘She’s got a bit of a headache. She’s gone to lie down.’
The liar, the liar.
I could hear them chatting. I could hear my children laughing, with David, oblivious that he had ripped their world apart.
The daylight was dipping and our bedroom cast in shadow by the time David eventually ventured upstairs. I heard his footsteps on the landing, the creak of the floorboards, and I could sense him lurking out there, plucking up the courage to come in. The handle turned, and he slowly pushed open the door.
I’d stopped crying some time ago, but I was still sitting on the bed, numb. He shuffled in to the room, closing the door behind him.
‘Can I get you something to eat?’ he asked, speaking gently, quietly, as if I was ill.
‘No,’ I said, and he loitered there, the manifestation of concern.
‘Or a cup of tea?’
‘No.’
For a long time he stood there, in front of me. I kept my eyes fixed, firmly, on the knees of his jeans.
‘Talk to me, Jane,’ he said.
I kept silent, my mouth clamped shut.
He sighed. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other; I watched the denim around his knees alternately crease and ease. I bought him those jeans for Christmas.
Eventually he sat down on the bed beside me, with his elbows resting on his knees, hands propping up his chin. And he sighed again. His presence, so close to me, was like a magnet, simultaneously pulling, and pushing me away.
‘I didn’t mean for it to happen,’ he said, and really, I could have predicted those words. Isn’t that so often the way with men – they didn’t actually mean for whatever it was to have happened? It wasn’t deliberate; it wasn’t their fault. Be it forgetting your anniversary, or not putting out the bins. Or fucking someon
e else.
‘I didn’t plan it,’ he said, and I almost wanted to laugh. Did he really think that made any difference? ‘You and me . . . we’ve grown apart, Jane. Since we moved here. I don’t feel so close to you any more. You’ve got your life here with the children, and I suppose I feel . . . well . . . just not such a part of it any more.’
I didn’t want to hear that. I didn’t want any of this to be my fault. It wasn’t me who’d gone screwing someone else.
‘Don’t try and twist things,’ I said, still not looking at his face. ‘It’s not my fault that you’re never here. But of course now I know why you always want to stay in London.’
‘It’s not like that. You know it’s not like that.’
‘I know you’re fucking someone else!’
I sensed, more than saw, him flinch. ‘Jane, it wasn’t like that. I have to stay in London for work, you know that. Diana – ’ There, he said her name again. I didn’t want to have to hear him say her name ‘– Diana listened to me. We got on well. We just grew close.’
‘Well that’s all right then.’
‘Jane, don’t be like this,’ he said.
‘Like what?’
‘So . . . cold.’
‘What do you expect me to be like?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said and he sat up straight now, hands spread open on his knees. ‘I want you to try and understand.’
‘Understand?’ I said. ‘You want my sympathy?’ I looked at him now, square in the face. His eyes were dark, small, too familiar, too filled with what he had done. My heart set itself in stone. ‘You want me to tell you it’s OK?’
He stared back at me, at a loss now. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, helpless. At last he said, ‘It wouldn’t have happened, Jane, if you hadn’t pushed me away.’
And quick as a flash I said, ‘I didn’t push you away, David. You were just too weak to stay.’
We spent the rest of the day in awkward silence, moving around each other, moving around the children. He slept downstairs, slinking up to our room to remove his things. I sat frigid on the bed as he collected his pillow and the T-shirt that he slept in; as he took the spare duvet from the cupboard on the landing. He crept about quietly, meekly, and I hated him for his cowardice. I hated him for leaving me there, alone in our bed with my misery untethered. I wanted him to comfort me, to witness my suffering, to feel it with me . . . I wanted his remorse.
The Safest Place Page 12
