by Tom Butler
Saying nothing wouldn’t work, he thought, so as he walked homeward, he conjured two versions of what he might say and rehearsed them in his head.
‘I’ve decided that it would be such a shame to let what you did ruin our lives, so I am going to forgive you. I can never forget, but I can forgive. Everything can go back to the way it was before, but you will understand if that doesn’t happen straightaway. The children must never learn of what you did, and I’m sure, in time, we will be stronger as a family unit. I’ve never stopped loving you, my Angel, and I can’t imagine life without you.’
The other version followed quickly on, and he was practically reciting it as he saw the turning into his deserted street and the light shining from his bedroom window.
‘I wish I could say that I’m going to forgive you and that I want this to be a warning to us and for us to pledge that nothing or no one will come between us. But I can’t do that. And I can’t go on loving somebody who has betrayed me. Whilst I do not want the children to suffer, I cannot see any way we can continue to live under the same roof. I should be the one throwing you out onto the street, but the children need you, so I have decided to move out as soon as I have found a place to live. I see no future for you and I as everything we strived to build has been destroyed by you, all because of one night of passion that you thought you’d gotten away with. I’ll speak to the children and best make them understand my decision.’
He was walking up the gravel path and getting his key ready to open the door.
His mind was still in turmoil.
He made himself coffee in the kitchen and saw genuine remorse in Angelica’s tear stained eyes. She hadn’t asked him where he had been or what he had decided to do. She hadn’t even argued when he told her he was walking the children to school without her in six hours’ time. She deserved that, she thought. It was a punishment to be endured. His way of letting her know the immensity of what she had done.
In keeping with changes about to happen in his life, Michael dispensed with both milk and sugar in his preferred beverage, and the coffee tasted bitter, but from now on, that’s how it was going to be. He had let his waistline go of late, and perhaps other changes were needed too. He had stopped going to the gym and ate too many meals, so he decided there and then that there would have to be a completely new regime. Decisions like that were instant and easy to make rather like new year resolutions, but he did possess the necessary willpower, and he would carry them through.
Any decision to be made where Angelica was concerned wasn’t going to be so easy. He could see that she wanted to talk, to plead with him and try in some ways to make amends, to reassure him that as a couple they could get through this and still be happy for themselves and for the sake of the kids. It happened on the TV practically every night if you hopped channels enough which; when he was bored he sometimes did.
Angelica read books about romance, steamy love affairs, infidelity and jealousy, so perhaps she really did know how he was feeling inside. There was maybe only a thin line between fiction and fact, but the line had been too easily crossed. Had they not had what he considered to be a solid marriage, he might have understood and been less likely to judge her. He might even have been tempted to stray himself.
There had been ample opportunities. Flirting wives whose husbands sometimes lived on other planets, professional women who might have wanted to manipulate him. The occasional younger temptresses who liked smart older men in three-piece pinstriped suits or just a random customer off the street with a sad tale to tell as to why she needed to sell the family home.
Anyone one of them or more.
But Michael was not like that. He loved his wife, loved showing her off and making others green with envy. Loved showing the photo of her and the children he carried around with him everywhere he went. Loved every inch of his Angel, the girl who had come to his rescue at the concert and stayed in his life ever since. Why would he want smoked salmon when he already had caviar? Why would anyone with what he had even think about other women. He might look and admire, but then so did most red-blooded males. It was what men did right back into the stone ages and had helped to keep the world revolving.
The bitterness of the coffee perhaps now matched his mood. She was sitting on the sofa, hoping he might settle into his chair instead of aimlessly ambling around looking at all four walls to avoid looking at her. She had on the expensive silk wrap he had bought her last Christmas, belted tight at the waist and not loosely as she would have preferred. He always said how sexy she looked when wearing it and how hard it would be for him to keep his hands off her. She wondered if it was a mistake and whether she should change into something to match the occasion. Something sombre, mundane.
‘Michael,’ she said, desperate to converse. ‘I need you to know something. I need you to know how happy you make me and what happened was no reflection on you. You and the children are my world. A world we built together. Please don’t let a moment of sheer madness by me come between us and shatter our world.’
Artistic words, he thought. He couldn’t expect anything less from her. He could see that she meant them and that any man with a forgiving nature might comply. Even as a teenager trying to get off with a girl, he couldn’t remember rejection. Nor when he was older and got stood up by an accounts clerk from another branch of an agency where he worked.
But that’s what he felt now. He was fifty in two months’ time and should have been old enough and wise enough to cope. But in his head he was still only half that age, and that was the problem. Angelica had made him feel like that, and the kids had reinforced it. He didn’t want to be so near to being middle aged; he wanted to be young and alive, to defy the aging process.
But his world had been cruelly shattered, and though the shockwaves hadn’t fully been absorbed yet, he knew that he would never be able to forgive. It simply wasn’t in his nature.
He did sit down and at last he did look at her.
‘When this wretched girl was telling me, I kept saying to myself ’Not my Angel, not my Angelica. Never in a million years. Just shows how well I know you. Perhaps I’ve never really known you.’
‘You know me. You know I love you. You must,’
‘Do you? Do you really love me?’
‘Of course I do, with all my heart.’
He paused then said it. ‘So why did you hop into bed with some toy boy and then claim it meant nothing. By doing that, you ruined her life too. You ought to be together and made to suffer for what you have done.’
‘But he told me they had split up. He tricked me, Michael. He was very persuasive. But I should have stopped him; I wanted to. I don’t know what came over me.’
‘A much younger guy with a big dick came over you. Let’s get that straight right from the start. And if you are saying that he forced you, I’m ringing 999 now.’
Angelica was almost standing.
‘I’m not saying that. Don’t ask me why I allowed it to happen because I can’t answer. I hated myself afterwards. It was the worse feeling I’ve ever had. Please say you believe me.’
He could almost hear the actor in the movie or the soap star saying those immortal words ‘I don’t know what to believe any more.’ It would have sounded pathetic, but it would have been true.
She was in no mood to give up. Her tears were for real.
‘Michael, whatever it takes, I will put this right. If you love me like I think you do, we can survive this. Say you won’t do anything yet. Punish me however you want, but I really need to keep this family together.’
He didn’t give it that much thought.
‘You, this isn’t all about you. What about me? Did you ever stop and think about me at any time? What exactly were you thinking about when you had another guy inside you, or was it so far off the scale you simply couldn’t give a fuck? What were you really thinking, eh, tell me, I’d like to know.’
The anger inside was re-emerging; it was slowly eating him up.
‘I
wasn’t thinking anything,’ she said. ‘I’m so ashamed, Michael. It was mad, impulsive, the most stupid thing a person could do. You and the children make me so happy. I know that I should never have agreed to go there that night. I wasn’t thinking straight at all. I’m so sorry.’
She wanted him to open his arms like he always did. To hug away her demons and reassure her. But she could see he was pushing her away. It was too soon.
They both needed sleep if they were going to get through the next day in reasonable shape, and maybe she could talk to him, and he might be more receptive tomorrow night. She would tell the children they were getting a treat by allowing their Daddy to escort them to school; everything had to appear the same otherwise. It was Wednesday and baking day. They would know straightaway that something was wrong if she didn’t bake them cakes as usual. Her heart wouldn’t be in it for sure, but brave faces were a parental must when adversity struck. She simply couldn’t and wouldn’t let them down. They were as precious to her as life itself even if she had discoloured it with a few minutes of sheer lunacy.
She had to hold on to the dream in her head that one day what had happened would become a forgettable bad memory, and the Swan household would remain strong and intact. The alternatives were unthinkable.
For Michael, the rehearsed speeches were stored away. He was too tired to think of anything other than to take things one day at a time. At the very least, he owed that to his children.
******
Chapter Seven
Three weeks had elapsed since that terrible night. Angelica had worked on Michael with more artistic words, but they were still worlds apart. He had said very little, sleeping on the sofa without alarming the children and once even roughing it with a sleeping bag in the car. Almost every morning, he walked James and Mary to school usually after Noah’s friend Ashley had called for him, and they went off like conspirators together. Any lost hours, he made up at the office, making sure he got home late and insisting he ate alone.
No one suspected a thing, and even Angelica thought that in time her husband would suddenly say he had punished her enough and take the first steps back to normality. But his head wasn’t right. At night, he would lie awake thinking about Natasha Gibson and more so Daniel Sutton.
He wished now in hindsight that he had taken an address or telephone number from Natasha Gibson, so that he could track her down. It hadn’t occurred to him to do so at the time because, in all honesty, he didn’t want to believe what she had told him was true, and he had wanted her out of his office and his life as quickly as possible. It riled him that he hadn’t a clue how to trace her. How else could he find out where Daniel Sutton lived or where he might be contacted. A week ago, he had made a spurious phone call to the college and pretended to be a London solicitor trying to trace the whereabouts of one of their recent Adult Education art students.
‘Mr Sutton is a beneficiary in a client’s will, and we currently have no address for him,’ he had said, making it sound all so convincing. ‘We would hate for Mr Sutton to miss out and not receive what’s due to him,’ he had gone on, hoping for a helpful, sympathetic ear. There was no immediate rebuff from the college secretary but when she asked for it to put into writing for identification purposes he conceded it was pretty much hopeless to pursue it and thanked her for her time.
Asking Angelica directly for the information had crossed his mind. He might have been able to trick her by reassuring her that allowing him to speak to Daniel would somehow absolve her, paving the way for reconciliation. It might help to lay to rest the nagging fear that one day this Daniel might suddenly turn up and sweep her away from him despite her protestations that there was no underlying relationship. That it truly had been nothing more than a frantic, unpremeditated ten minutes of meaningless sex in the darkness of his bedroom.
Michael was not a man of violence. If anything, he was cowardly. He had never had the stomach for a fight in the physical terms. And it seemed a crazy notion to think he might get the better of someone half his age even though the thought of this person screwing his wife might ingrain in him hidden strength in the name of revenge. But he knew that was an unlikely option, and yet it was this that was stopping him from moving on, rejecting all attempts by the guilty party to talk about it logically or even consider any form of counselling.
At work, he had tried to remain professional, and as luck would have it both, Harold and Solomon were too wrapped up in their own lives to notice any change in him other than the hours he kept which didn’t greatly inconvenience the day-to-day running of the firm. They were both family men having helped bring up five children between them and recognised that modern parenting skills meant an end to any imbalances over who spent the lion’s share of time with the children and employers draconian attitudes towards fathers in general.
There had been occasions when he had taken the boys and Mary to meet childless spinster Bev at the office, and she had been proud to be adorned with an unofficial “Auntie” tag, lapping up their inquisitiveness and bouncing Mary on her knee with great gusto. His bosses looked the other way in allowing this, but the not-so-kindly Solomon nevertheless passed some comment about not wanting to branch out into the realms of operating crèche facilities just as though to make a point to his distracted employees.
Of late, and for very good reasons, Michael had not distracted anyone at work by having his children in tow as he had been in no mood to show them off, wanting them all to himself as though they were the only things worthwhile left in his life. Angelica understood this and was in no position to deny him anything relating to them, even if it meant she felt somewhat excluded and ostracised by the extra attention they received from him. This was another form of punishment and not such a big price to pay compared to the drastic and unthinkable alternatives. It would have to be endured, and perhaps for some time to come.
Another two weeks had soon gone by, and it was now the Easter school holidays. Normally, Michael would have had a week off and taken his family to Devon or Dorset, but he made an excuse that this year he wasn’t allowed time off, a white lie that troubled him, what with the children geared up and expecting a trip to the seaside. He did take a day out to take them to Twycross Zoo without Angelica for whom he invented a mysterious bug, and he made sure they were spoilt rotten and told her everything they had done on their return, rubbing salt into her wounds. The air of pretence wasn’t easy to maintain, but though Noah had picked up on the changes of routine and the raising of voices, he failed to see that they were of any great significance and certainly didn’t dwell on them. Adults were adults, and as nothing ever said or done seemed to hurt anyone, what did it matter. Life went on the same as always.
Ashley’s parents were always shouting at each other, though not in a bad way. He thought it was both funny and entertaining at the same time, whereas Ashley just shrugged it off, blanking it out the same way as he did when they tried to tell him off about something he had or hadn’t done. Often they would say things like ‘I bet Noah doesn’t speak to his parents like that’ or ‘when they tell him to tidy his room, he just goes and does it.’
Noah would smile back at them, and Ashley would pretend he was listening by laying on an appropriate expression. He knew it was all designed to embarrass him into doing what they wanted him to do, and though it often worked, there were times when they were simply wasting their collective breaths.
Michael had spent more time with Noah of late. Last month, he had attained two complimentary tickets from a satisfied customer and taken his eldest son to see Leicester City play Ipswich Town at the impressive Walkers Stadium. They had made a whole day of it, leaving early in the morning to have a look around the city centre, having lunch at MacDonald’s and then going to a Harvester pub for a meal on the way home.
Noah had loved it, and it was something he had done to make Ashley green with envy. They had gone ten pin bowling after the meal and got back much later than Angelica anticipated, but though annoyed, she had said
nothing and actually thanked Michael for giving Noah a day to remember. That seemed to open the way for them to talk as Angelica wanted to broach the subject of their sleeping arrangements. Michael had been struggling with back pain aggravated by the sofa, and she thought the time right to shoehorn the topic into what was at least a semblance of a conversation. What harm could it do if it meant him having a pain free, comfortable night’s sleep.
He did think about it. It did make sense. But nothing else did, what she had done to their marriage made no sense at all.
‘I would rather sleep on a bed of nails,’ he had said as though he meant it. Then he went on further to distinguish her hopes by saying, ‘Don’t even think it will happen one day because it won’t.’
‘I was only thinking of you, Michael. You’ve suffered enough,’ she had replied, not giving up easily.
‘And you would know all about suffering, I suppose,’ he had said.
‘I’m prepared to put up with whatever you decide. I know you deserve better. I’m in no position to make demands on you anymore, but it’s tormenting me to think what I’ve put you through.’
At no point did he think he would raise his voice. It had been a good day out with Noah, a real lad’s day out and not even Angelica would spoil it. But there was still so much pent up anger; how could he possibly keep a lid on it now.
At least she had him talking to her again. That was something.
‘Today made me realise what’s really important to me,’ he told her, heavily immersed in thought. ‘Not us, not what we’ve got or what we once had, but the future of those who are dependent on us. Seeing Noah today made it all seem clearer. If I can’t give him and his brother and sister a proper start in life, I will have failed, and that’s all I can focus on at the moment. Don’t imagine I can ever go back, and don’t ever think that playing happy families will be anything else but a lie,’ he paused for breath. ‘We have to focus on the children and nothing else. We don’t have anything else. So don’t delude yourself, Angelica. Talk as much as you want, you won’t get me to go any other way. Do you understand?’