Got You Back

by Fallon, Jane

  They took it slowly at first. James was separated from his wife and he had told her he wanted to give this new relationship the best possible chance, to do everything right, which included taking their time. They had to make sure they were doing what was best for both of them before they took any big steps. Katie had found this a little difficult, not to mention unnerving, at first but she knew it meant James was taking their affair seriously, that he was considering her as someone he could spend his life with. So she accepted it when he had to leave to go down to London on Wednesday mornings and didn't return until Sunday nights. She had never questioned why he didn't invite her to go with him: she knew that while he was away he was having to lodge with friends until he found a permanent base, and that their small flat was barely big enough for the two of them, let alone James as well.

  After a couple of months he had moved his toothbrush and a few other bits and pieces into her tiny girly bathroom. Gradually his clothes had begun to take up space in her wardrobe and his books and papers crept across the dining-table. She loved the feeling that his possessions were enveloping her, marking out his territory like he was a tom cat spraying the boundaries. She lived for the Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays when his belongings were joined by their owner. She understood why he couldn't be with her all the time — he had his practice in the city to think about — but he had recently begun to hint that one of these days he might give up his London work altogether and she thought there was a promise in there somewhere that the two of them might live out their happy-ever-after in the countryside together.

  Katie had had a series of careers and had never found the one that totally suited her. Recently, following a couple of years of night classes, she had set herself up practising acupuncture and aromatherapy massage, seeing clients several times a week in her house. The fact that more often than not the appointments turned into ad hoc therapy sessions suited her. She loved to feel she was helping people. She knew she was a good listener and she had a positive outlook on life that her clients found uplifting. It was taking a while to establish some regulars but she had known it would, alternative therapies not being something which the locals took to easily.

  Ironically, if Katie had ever trained in the psychological therapy she now found herself having to practise on others, she would almost certainly have deduced that her behaviour, passively accepting that she was in a relationship with a commitment-phobe who seemed happy to keep their liaison a part-time venture, stemmed from her rather low self-esteem. That this made it impossible for her to risk confronting James or even suggesting that she move all her clients to the beginning of the week so that she could spend the latter part in London with him. That, deep down, she knew that the fact that he was a lodger in his friends’ flat was just an excuse. Rather, she had convinced herself she was the victim of an irresistible force, hopelessly ensnared by love. Like Juliet with her Romeo or Cathy and her Heathcliff, she was powerless to stop what was happening. She was happy to wait it out. James was a careful man. He needed to make sure that the time was right before he made any big gestures.

  5

  The following morning Stephanie's alarm woke her at six forty-five. For a moment she didn't know why she had set it for such a ridiculous hour and she nearly turned over and settled back down to sleep, but then her heart plummeted as she remembered what had happened.

  ‘Turn it off — turn it off!’ James was flapping an arm in her direction, eyes still closed. He hated early mornings.

  She crawled out of bed. It was nearly light outside and it was promising to be a beautiful spring day, not that she cared. She went into the bathroom down the hall, plucked, shaved and exfoliated, then buffed with the spiky body brush that had been hanging redundantly on the back of the bathroom door for months and which, she thought now, she may have used to clean the grime off the sink once. Then she carefully made up her face — not the usual wave of the mascara wand that was all her everyday routine consisted of but the full deal, from foundation to shimmering highlights on her browbones. It seemed important for her self-esteem that she look her best today. She was dressed and ready by the time she heard Finn moving about. She fed Sebastian some grey-looking cod out of a foil tray, gave Goldie his unappetizing brown pellets and tried not to think about why she was doing this, trying to leave the house an hour earlier than usual to avoid seeing her husband.

  ‘Wow, you look amazing,’ Cassie exclaimed, when Stephanie opened the front door to her at ten to eight. ‘Important day?’

  ‘Something like that,’ she said, trying to smile.

  ‘What's happening?’ Finn demanded.

  Stephanie ruffled his hair. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But Cassie just asked you if you had an important day and you said yes. Why is it important?’

  ‘It just is, that's all.’

  ‘But why?’ Finn never rested until he had answers to his many questions.

  ‘Have you got your lunch?’ Stephanie said, trying to distract him.

  ‘Stop changing the subject. Why is today an important day?’

  Stephanie was at a loss for words. She just wanted to get out of the front door and go before James's alarm clock woke him at eight.

  Luckily Cassie came to her rescue. ‘Every day's an important day,’ she said, steering Finn away from the front door so Stephanie could leave.

  ‘Exactly,’ Stephanie said, picking up her bag and starting to go through the routine check list. Phone, keys, money. It was all there.

  ‘That's stupid,’ Stephanie heard Finn say as she went down the steps. She realized she hadn't kissed him goodbye and ran back up.

  She turned to leave again, waving to Cassie who was herding Finn towards the kitchen. Just as she was going out of the front door James appeared at the foot of the stairs. Stephanie tried to make it look as if she hadn't noticed him, but in her panic she dropped her bag and half the contents spilled out on to the hall floor.

  ‘Morning,’ James said, rubbing his eyes. He shuffled sleepily towards the kitchen, then did a double-take.

  He'd noticed how good she looked. She'd still got it. She put on her huskiest voice — why would he want to look at another woman? ‘Morning.’

  He looked her slowly up and down. ‘What are you all made up for?’ he asked, smiling. ‘You look like you're going to stand in a shop window in Amsterdam.’

  She knew he was expecting her to laugh, to come back with something equally biting, but she just couldn't. Couldn't, or couldn't be bothered? She wasn't sure. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Good, well, I'll see you later.’

  ‘’Bye, love,’ he called, as she left the house.

  ‘OK, so you have two options.’

  ‘If I'm right.’

  Stephanie and Natasha were spending the morning browsing the womenswear floors at Selfridges to get ideas for the three customers they had agreed to dress for the BAFTAs (would-be film actress who wanted to look as if she had her own style, ageing soap star who was worried the press had guessed she was a lesbian and wanted to look as feminine as possible, and a reality star who hadn't yet managed to secure an invitation but who wanted to guarantee getting her picture in the morning papers by showing as much flesh as possible, even if she had to go and stand in the street outside naked).

  ‘If you're right, which, of course, you need to establish first. But if you are, you have two options. Either you confront him or you don't. That's it.’

  ‘And if I don't? Then what?’

  ‘I don't know. You bury your head in the sand and hope it'll go away.’

  Stephanie sighed. ‘What do you think I should do?’

  ‘If it was me I'd cut his bollocks off then ask questions later.’

  ‘It has to be someone in Lincoln.’

  ‘What about the people he works with up there? Any idea what they're called?’

  ‘I think the receptionist is called Sally. I remember her from before we moved. I never speak to her, though. I just call his mobile if I need to get hold of him. And there's
a veterinary nurse called Judy, who's been there for ever.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘The other vets are both blokes, I think. Simon and Malcolm… Something like that anyway,’ she said, realizing she wasn't entirely sure she knew who James worked with, these days. ‘Simon has a wife called Maria. We think Malcolm's gay.’

  ‘And where does he stay when he's up there? No landlady called Krystal or Kira?’

  ‘No landlady at all. There's a flat above the practice. He gets it for nothing.’ She stopped suddenly, causing a young mother with a baby in a buggy and several bags of shopping to narrowly avoid crashing into her. ‘Sorry,’ she said to the woman, who tutted loudly and made a big show of walking around her.

  ‘This is crazy.’ Stephanie turned back to Natasha. ‘It's one text. Since when did I become the sort of woman who assumes her husband's having an affair just because he's got one strange text? It's probably just someone having a joke.’

  Natasha exhaled loudly. ‘Can you honestly tell me you don't think he's capable of it?’

  For a moment Stephanie felt as if she was going to cry. ‘You obviously think it's possible.’

  ‘I just don't think it's impossible, that's all.’

  ‘If it's true, there's no way I can pretend everything's OK. There's no way I'm going to let him get away with it.’

  ‘You need to find out for sure what's going on first,’ Natasha said. ‘Then we'll work out what to do.’

  So, that night Stephanie waited till James was asleep. Till his familiar rattling snore filled the bedroom. She tiptoed round to his side of the bed and gently lifted his mobile from the table. Pausing briefly to check that he was still oblivious, she crept out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen. There, she thought about putting the kettle on, delaying the awful moment when she would have to stoop to spying, when the bond of trust between her and James would be damaged for ever. But she knew she had to do this quickly, before he rolled over on to his side and her absence woke him.

  She turned on the phone and immediately the new-message-received light came on, with its accompanying beep. Stephanie's fingers hovered over the ‘read’ button. Did she really want to do this? Open this Pandora's box? But she was certain that this message — which could only have been sent after James had turned off his mobile as they'd climbed into bed at nearly midnight — must have been sent by someone with a more than professional interest in her husband. She held her breath. Fuck it. Here goes.

  Night night my lovely boy. Sweet dreams xxx

  She looked to see who the message was from. K.

  Stephanie nearly gagged, she wasn't sure whether from the trauma of having her suspicions confirmed or from the nauseating cuteness of the text. James had always been the kind of person to hate the soppy, twee language of couples in full romantic mode, as was she. It had been one of the things they'd had in common, the way they would mock their friends who gave each other pet names and exchanged baby talk. For a while, a few years back, they had started to call each other ‘Snookie’ and ‘Cuddles’ for their own ironic amusement but after a few weeks Stephanie had realized that if they weren't careful those names might stick and they would inadvertently have become the people they were mocking, so they'd stopped. She scrolled through James's contacts until she reached ‘K’. The number was for a mobile and not one that Stephanie thought she had ever seen before. She had no idea who this woman was — except that, whoever she was, she was happy to steal someone else's husband.

  Stephanie turned the mobile off before she succumbed to the urge to trawl back through the old messages to see what other exchanges there had been. She had all the evidence she needed. Looking for more would be like poking a stick into an already painful wound. She waited for the tears to come. She'd seen this kind of thing happen to women on TV, and they invariably broke down, weeping and wailing and then eventually beating their husbands on the chest with their fists. But, she felt bizarrely calm. She had thought about leaving James before, of course, in the way that all halves of couples sometimes do, trying to imagine themselves being reinvented, starting again and not making the same mistakes, but she had always known she couldn't have gone through with it. She would never have hurt him like that.

  Natasha hadn't even protested when her phone had rung at one thirty in the morning.

  ‘It'll be Stephanie,’ she'd said to Martin, and she'd taken the handset downstairs so as not to disturb him too much. She knew that Stephanie calling at this hour meant only one thing — she had her proof.

  ‘So?’ she said, not bothering with ‘hello’.

  ‘Well, I wasn't imagining things.’

  ‘Oh, Steph, I'm so sorry.’

  ‘I just… I…’ Stephanie said, and then her voice cracked and she stopped as if she didn't know what to say next.

  ‘It's OK,’ Natasha said, knowing it was anything but. ‘It'll be OK. It's better you know. At least you can make plans now, decide what to do next.’

  ‘I just don't know how he could do this to us.’

  ‘Because he's a bastard. What other explanation can there be? You have to remember it's nothing to do with you and it's everything to do with him, OK?’

  ‘What am I going to do?’

  ‘Honestly?’ Natasha said, warming to her theme. ‘You have to make him suffer.’

  ‘What's the point, though?’

  ‘The point is that you get to feel better while he gets to feel like shit. Come on, you must be able to think of something that'd hit him where it hurts.’ Natasha was a firm believer in not letting people get away with things — shopkeepers who gave you change for a fiver instead of ten pounds, men who tried to grope you on the tube, queue-jumpers, errant husbands.

  ‘Like what? Cut the sleeves off his suits, something like that? He's only got three, it would hardly ruin his life.’

  ‘Way too unoriginal. It's been done before, as has distributing his vintage-wine collection to the neighbours with their morning milk and leaving his mobile plugged into a premium-rate sex chatline all night. You need something much bigger. Much more real.’

  ‘This is crazy.’ Stephanie sat down miserably. ‘I'm not going to play games.’

  ‘Well, whatever you do you can't just sit back and let it happen.’

  ‘I need to find out who she is,’ Stephanie said. ‘That's what I need to do first.’

  On Sunday morning she helped James pack his bag as usual for the three nights he would be away, finding him ironed T-shirts and clean socks, checking whether he had his iPod and razor. She had studied him closely while they'd had breakfast, but he'd seemed exactly the same as ever. He was nearly always distracted these days so she didn't know what change she had expected to see in him.

  It was a glorious day, sunny and breezy, and they had agreed to walk through the park and past the zoo before he left, so that Finn could see the wolves and the wallabies and, in the distance, the heads of the giraffes. She watched James walking ahead, talking animatedly with Finn, and couldn't imagine why he would be doing what he was doing and risk losing his life with his son.

  The answer, of course, though Stephanie didn't know it, was that James had never for a moment imagined he might be discovered. Such was the gulf between his life with Stephanie and his life with Katie that it had never crossed his mind that they might collide. He had no intention of leaving his wife, just as he had no intention of giving up his girlfriend. It wasn't his fault that Stephanie had grown bored of their life in the country and that she sometimes worked late, and he found Katie's dogged devotion and non-judgemental outlook relaxing. Sometimes he thought his life had become over-complicated, that the effort of having to remember to make up stories about his time in Lincoln and his exploits in London was a bit of a strain, but all in all he wouldn't have changed it. It suited him.

  Given his time again — and the ability to consider his behaviour with rational foresight — of course he wouldn't have made the same choices. Whatever he had done in his life he would never h
ave set out consciously to hurt Stephanie and Finn. But life didn't work like that, allowing you to jump cut to the future and witness the consequences of your actions. Things just happened and you made your choices as you went along, hoping blindly that everything would turn out OK. And, on balance, he thought it had.

  Just before one James kissed Stephanie goodbye, got into the car and began the long drive up to Lincolnshire.

  6

  On Sunday evenings Katie always had a welcoming hot dinner waiting for James. A homemade lasagne or a chicken and mushroom pie. She thought it was important to make home as homely as possible, to make it a retreat, a sanctuary that James would yearn to escape to after the stresses of city life. Once the food was under control she bathed and redid her makeup, lit candles and plumped cushions. On warmish nights, like this one, she laid the table in the garden, lit the gas heater and put a bottle of white wine in the cooler. She hated that one of James's two days off was always given over to travelling. He worked too hard. Life, in Katie's opinion, should not be all about work.

  Down in London he lodged with his friends Peter and Abi, and would always come home with funny stories about their latest row or some culinary disaster Abi had had. She was a terrible cook but, James said, she liked to believe she was an earth mother, nourishing those around her. He slept on the put-me-up in Peter's study and one night it had collapsed underneath him, he'd told her, waking the whole household. In the past Katie had tried to persuade him to drive home on a Saturday but it was the only day he got to see his son, Finn, who, she thought, was seven — or was it eight? She'd seen photos of him, an adorable boy with a gappy-toothed smile. Dark-haired and brown-eyed which he must get from his mother because James was fair. She loved that James wanted to spend whatever time he could with his son.