by Paula Daly
Sean gets to her first. ‘Don’t move, love. Please don’t move. I’ll carry you to the house,’ he’s saying from his crouched position. ‘Where does it hurt? Can you show me?’ He shoots me a quick look as if to ask, Is this normal? but before I can respond, Felicity is saying, ‘It’s fine, Dad.’ She’s smiling because she thinks he’s fussing, though it’s clear she is in some discomfort. ‘I’m okay to walk,’ she tells him. ‘I just forgot and moved a bit too quick.’
‘All right,’ he says, glancing at me again, still worried. ‘Don’t get out straight away. You catch your breath and then I’ll swing your legs around for you.’
He strokes her upper arm tenderly, frightened to touch her too firmly lest his daughter is hurt once more. He’s telling her he loves her and how much he’s missed her. I try explaining that she will be okay to climb out in a moment, but he’s not listening.
Before leaving France, Felicity and I practised getting in and out, up and down, and, though she needs to go slow, she can do it.
Sean kisses Felicity’s cheek and rises silently.
He turns, and again we’re face to face. And it’s only now that I see his panic is not simply down to Felicity. There is more. My first instincts were right: there is something terribly wrong here.
Go on, my eyes say to him, bulging, scared. Go on, tell me. What is it?
And with a bereft look, a look of complete despair, he whispers, ‘Natty, I am so, so sorry.’
Upstairs, Felicity is settled in bed, TV on, music on, laptop open, as I stand in the kitchen shaking. He has lost all our money is what I’m thinking. The stupid sod has been dabbling in shares and now we’ve got nothing left. I always knew it was a bad idea.
‘Spit it out, then,’ I say.
He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and, steady as his nerves will allow, replies: ‘I’m in love with Eve.’
I do a double take.
‘You’re what?’
He repeats: ‘I am in love with Eve Dalladay.’
‘After two days?’ I say. ‘No, you’re not. How can you be?’
He shifts his weight to his other foot. ‘It’s been a bit more than two days actually.’
I’m scowling at the information he’s giving but, to be honest, I feel nothing yet. No anger. More like confusion. As if I’ve been presented with a naughty toddler, and I know on some level he has done something very, very wrong, but I can’t organize my thoughts to proceed with the best course of action.
‘You love Eve,’ I say without emotion. A statement.
‘Yes.’ He’s wincing, trying to gauge if I’m playing dumb. Not sure what to expect next.
I try to get this straight. ‘So you’re saying that while I’ve been in France, tending to our sick daughter, sleeping in a hospital room, counting the hours till we could all be together again, you’ve been having a thing with my friend?’
He nods, shrinking away from me.
I roll my eyes and go to flick on the kettle. ‘I don’t believe you.’
He doesn’t press it and there’s a moment, a pause in the proceedings, during which I survey him fully. He’s pale and wan-looking, not unlike Felicity, and it occurs to me that he could very well be anaemic. I pick up the phone. I’ll call the doctor, get him booked in for some blood tests.
‘Natty, are you listening to what I’m telling you?’
‘But she’s gone home, Sean.’ I emphasize the words. ‘Eve has gone back to America. I don’t see how you can think you’ve got something together when she’s not even in the country.’ I replace the handset and move towards him. ‘Sean,’ I say gently, ‘does Eve know about this? Have you talked to her about it? Because I’m pretty sure you’re suffering from some sort of delusion here.’
My face is showing concern but, inside, I’m terribly embarrassed. What if he made a move on Eve and she had to flee? God, that would be awful. How do I go about beginning that conversation?
‘She’s staying at the hotel,’ he says.
‘Which hotel? Ours?’
‘She didn’t go back to America,’ he explains. ‘Under the circumstances, we thought it best to say that she had.’
My brow furrows in confusion. ‘Which room is she in?’ I ask, shakily, because . . . could this possibly be true?
‘What does it matter?’ he says.
‘’Cause it fucking matters, okay?’
He starts to prattle on with explanations, apologies, reasons for all of this, but I can’t hear him. I can’t understand the words pouring from his mouth. I hold up my hand to stop him from speaking, because here it comes. Here is the anger. I feel it rising. In the space of a split second I’ve gone from numb, devoid of emotion, to possessed.
There’s a thrashing, ugly creature inside of me and it needs to come out. Feels as if it’s going to split me right in two when it does. And I try to get a hold of my breathing but—
‘YOU WANKER!’ I scream at him. ‘You total fucking wanker!’
He backs away. Closes his eyes, takes the hit.
‘How can you be in love with her?’ I demand. ‘How? Tell me!’
‘I’m not sure I could explain it even if I wanted to.’
‘Try.’
‘I don’t know. People don’t choose to fall in love with other people, Natty. It’s something that just happens.’
‘What a load of shit.’
‘Neither of us wanted this, believe me,’ he says.
His words are desperate, pleading. All the clichés rolling out of his mouth in a steady stream.
‘That’s the thing,’ I tell him, ‘I don’t believe you . . . I don’t understand how, in the space of a few days, you can—’
‘It was more than a few days, and you have to believe it,’ he says intently. ‘You have to believe it, because it’s true.’
My heart is hammering. The glass vase on the kitchen worktop catches my attention. I start to eye it, feel my hand edging towards it.
‘Don’t throw that at me,’ he says tiredly, rubbing his face.
And I scrunch my eyes up tight. We stand in silence. Me, my world falling apart, and Sean, wondering if I’m going to go for him.
‘Fuck,’ I whisper, the pain beginning to swell. It continues until it has the force of a blow. A real, physical blow to the gut because, Christ, he actually means it. I stare at his face and see only resignation. He means it when he says he loves her.
How the hell did this happen? How did this happen in just over a week? Is that how long it takes for your whole life to be handed over to another person?
Now I start to cry.
‘You’ve been fucking her, I assume?’
He doesn’t answer.
‘What am I saying? Of course you’ve been fucking her.’
He nods and I screw my face up again as I try to be brave, try to thwart off another blow to the gut.
‘Jesus, Sean,’ I whimper. ‘Jesus, this hurts. Have you really thought this through, because this is really hurting me? It’s killing me to stand here listening to this.’
‘I didn’t want to tell you today. I was going to wait. I wanted to wait until you and Felicity were settled in and were more in a position to—’
‘To what? So you were going to sleep next to me? You were going to tell me tomorrow? What if I wanted to make love? What if—’
He cuts me off gently. ‘You wouldn’t have wanted to make love, Natty.’
I swallow and look down at my hands.
I feel almost ashamed, because he’s right. Even though an hour ago my need for him was desperate, primal, when the opportunity arose I was sure to have flinched when he touched me. Because I’d be worrying about Felicity. Worrying about something, anyway, because that’s who I am now. That’s who I’ve become.
I try to gather myself. ‘Is this about, you know, the past?’
He shakes his head.
‘Is this punishment for what you did for me? Is that what this is? Birds finally come home to roost?’
‘That’s unfa
ir,’ he says.
‘This is unfair!’ I cry. ‘You’re not even giving me the chance to fix it, you’re looking at me like it’s already over, no discussion, and you’re not even giving me a chance to say my side of things. Have you been that unhappy, Sean?’
‘I’ve been happy,’ he says.
‘Not happy enough, though.’
He presses his lips together into a lame, sympathetic kind of smile. ‘Sorry,’ he whispers.
‘What about marriage guidance? What about fighting for what we’ve got?’ I plead. ‘Surely we deserve some shot at this?’ My voice is starting to screech as I get more and more desperate. ‘I don’t even know what I’ve done wrong.’ I walk towards him, my face beseeching, but he steps back. ‘Tell me what I’ve done and let me fix it.’ I go to put my arms around him, but he won’t let me. He pushes me away.
‘Natty, listen, you can’t fix this. There is nothing to fix. You’ve done nothing wrong. You have been the best wife, the best mother, you could possibly be.’
‘What then?’
And he shrugs helplessly.
‘Is it because I’m not her? Because I’m not Eve?’
He won’t answer.
Turning towards the worktop, I put my head in my hands. I don’t know what to do. Don’t know how to make him stop saying what he’s saying. I feel as I did when I got the phone call about Felicity, when I thought she might die. It feels the same.
‘Please change your mind, Sean,’ I whimper. ‘You have to. I can’t do this without you.’
I feel the palm of his hand on the small of my back. It’s a weak attempt at comfort, and for the first time in my life I can sense he doesn’t really want to touch me. He’s doing it because he thinks he ought to, because he doesn’t know what else to do.
I look at him. ‘Please?’ I say again. ‘I’ll be better, I’ll do better. I’ll change, I know I’ve not been—’
‘Natty,’ he whispers. ‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’ I sob.
‘Don’t do this. Don’t make it harder than it already is.’
‘I can’t believe you’re walking away now. After all we went through together. After how hard we had to fight to keep everything. Explain to me why, Sean, because I don’t get it. I know it hasn’t been easy, we’ve had our problems, but every couple has problems.’
‘I’ve never been loved like this,’ he says simply. ‘I’ve never been wanted like this. It’s like nothing I’ve ever known. To be needed so much by someone, it’s . . . it’s as though I’ve got no option. I can’t turn my back on it, it’s too strong.’
His eyes are wet with tears and I know he didn’t want to have to tell me that.
‘Look,’ he says after a minute, trying to gather himself but still with an audible catch in his voice, ‘I promise I’ll do my best by you and the girls. I’ll make it as painless as I possibly can.’
‘Painless?’ I sob. ‘And how d’you suppose you’re going to do that? Sean, you’re my husband, not hers, does that not mean anything to you?’ But I can feel the fight draining from me as I realize it’s pointless to continue to beg. His energy is changing. He wants to get out, wants to leave, and I see I’ve lost him.
‘I love her,’ he says firmly. ‘And I can’t stop, Natty. I really wish I could, but I just can’t.’
11
SO HE’S GONE.
Alice returned home from school and Sean asked her to join him in Felicity’s bedroom, whereupon he did his best to explain why he wouldn’t be living with us any longer. Unable to face it, I sat outside the door crying quietly as Alice screamed furiously at her father and Felicity asked questions about our future. She wanted to know the practicalities: Would we stay in this house? Would Sean and I continue to run the hotel? Questions I hadn’t even thought to ask yet myself.
That was four days ago and, apart from shuffling around the house, tending to Felicity, I have remained almost constantly in bed. I’m filled by what I can only describe as a deep emptiness, a kind of non-feeling, or void. I want to cry. I want to shout and scream. But it’s as if my emotions are in standby mode.
Of course, the first night after Sean left I terrorized myself with images of him and Eve together. I drank a litre of wine and it sent my thoughts spiralling. I lay in bed, head throbbing, wondering: How did it all start? How did they go from polite enquiry about each other’s lives, gentle banter and courteous, friendly chit-chat, to actually fucking?
Did they talk about me? Did Sean confide in Eve about me?
Filled with equal parts outrage and self-loathing, I found myself thinking about France. When I was there, did they sit on the sofa, exchanging glances, waiting for Alice to go to bed? Did they watch TV, checking their watches, Eve’s legs tucked beneath her, innocently asking Alice about her day before they could get upstairs?
Did he send Eve text messages, the type he used to send me?
‘Meet you at home in an hour . . . plugs and points? Or is there time for a full service?’
Did he run her a bath? Talk about her marriage? Did he tell her she looked good naked? Better than me? (She does, by the way.) How exactly had it started?
Had they fallen in love with each other’s minds, or had Sean behaved as any warm-blooded male would behave in the company of a lone female? I mean, Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t immune; he slept with his maid. Why? Because she was beautiful and amazing? No, she was just nearby. As in inside the house.
Jude Law did the same.
These women were there, they offered it, and the men said, ‘Go on then. Why not?’
Why should Sean be any different?
My dad telephones every few hours, but I can’t speak. The muscles of my throat are taut and constricted; I feel as if I have a large pill lodged in it that I am unable to swallow. And, besides, there is nothing to say. ‘I won’t kill myself, so you can stop calling,’ I tell him this morning, and for now it seems he may ease off. I tell him I will get up eventually. Sean’s mother has been round to the house. I didn’t let her in. Put my head beneath the pillow and let Penny bang away on the front door, let her go on for as long as she could be bothered to do so. And there have been dozens of messages on the answer machine, acquaintances desperate to console me, but, again, I don’t talk. My instinct is to stay close to the wall, shutting out life for as long as it takes.
The girls are in a daze. Initially, Alice continued in exactly the way I’d expect Alice to – yelling at her father, demanding he come home this very second and witness what he was doing to us. And, in fairness, he did come. But he could only say the same thing over and over: how he hates himself for what he’s done to me, to us, how sorry he is, but there is no going back. Alice came to me crying when he’d left, her red hair frizzing up around her face, her eyes raw. ‘Has he lost his mind?’ she said. ‘He doesn’t even have a proper explanation. What’s happened to him, Mummy?’
Today is the first day I’ve eaten. I stood by the sink, breaking Carr’s water biscuits into pieces, pushing them into my mouth methodically like coins into a slot. They are the only things I can come close to stomaching without throwing up. And still I gag when I think of him fucking her.
There’s a memory I have. A memory of Eve arriving by train from Southampton a few years ago. She hadn’t been lecturing that day so she was dressed casually – sweater and jeans – but when I pushed open the door to the guest room, carrying a cup of tea, I found her crouched over her luggage in what I can only describe as burlesque lingerie.
‘You travel in that?’ I asked, marvelling at her ability to tolerate both thong and jeans on an eight-hour trip.
‘What? Yes,’ she’d answered, smiling, totally unembarrassed. ‘I find it comfortable. And,’ she added mischievously, ‘you never know who you might meet.’
She was joking, of course, but I couldn’t help wonder if that attire was in fact the norm. If it was I who was unusual in plumping for comfort over appearance. I’d told Sean about it and he laughed it off, saying she sounde
d very high maintenance, saying he found me sexy whatever I wore.
The night Sean left I couldn’t get the memory of it from my mind.
Had she left the guest-room door ajar and Sean had caught a glimpse of her? Is that how it started? Or was I being totally ludicrous in blaming Eve?
It’s so tempting to blame her instead of him, and I have to keep telling myself: ‘It’s not all about Eve.’ Sean has a brain inside his head, too. I mustn’t become one of those pathetic wronged wives, the type who say, It’s entirely the other woman’s fault. And Christ knows, regardless of what’s happened, Eve was my friend. It’s not like she’s some nameless, faceless dominatrix who tempted away my husband. It couldn’t have been easy for her either.
It’s around 5 p.m., I have two frozen pizzas in the oven for the girls’ dinner and Alice is at the kitchen table, studying. She has her GCSE examinations in a couple of weeks, but I can see her brain has turned to mush. When I walked in I found her staring at her books blankly as if everything that was once written there is now in Urdu.
‘Why don’t you hate him?’ she asks, her voice a whisper, barely audible.
‘I do,’ I lie.
‘You don’t seem as if you do.’
I smile weakly.
‘I hate him,’ she says firmly, and I think of all the times I’ve seen this scene play out in movies. The mother soothing the child, saying, ‘Don’t hate your father. You mustn’t hate him. He loves you. He will always love you.’
But ‘I know, hate him, Alice’ is the best I manage to say to her.
The doorbell rings and Alice looks up. ‘I’ll get it,’ she says, and I don’t bother arguing. It’s probably Sean’s mother, and I’ll have to talk to her eventually.
However, from the hallway I hear Alice say, ‘Oh,’ and her tone is startled, childlike. ‘Oh,’ she says again, ‘it’s you.’
