by Rachel Ryan
She was sitting on the side of the bed, setting her alarm for 4:30 the next morning. She wanted to get up particularly early to make up for the studying she had missed in her agitated state today.
Bren came back into the room, yawning, wearing only the worn tracksuit bottoms he slept in. His face, just washed, looked oddly vulnerable without his glasses.
“There’s something I want to show you,” she said.
He put his glasses back on.
“What’s up?”
She took the necklace out of her pocket and placed it on the duvet. In her head, she tried to construct a sentence that wouldn’t have him immediately casting aspersions on her sanity. I found this in our shed. It’s not mine. That seemed like an ordinary thing to say, but she knew he would hear, and respond to, what she was really saying: Don’t you think that’s suspicious? God, how had everything become so fraught with difficulty?
It occurred to her then that she had been quiet for a while and he hadn’t spoken. It was most unlike Bren not to speak.
She looked up and saw his expression.
Georgina knew immediately that Bren had seen the necklace before. All the color had drained from his face in a startling way, as though the brightness had been turned down on a screen. His jawline was taut and strained.
“Where did you get that?”
“I found it,” she said, alarmed. “Why? What’s wrong?”
In the long silence that followed her question, Georgina felt her alarm solidify into fear.
“Bren?” she said.
Chapter 15
They remained still as statues—Georgina on the bed, Bren standing, the necklace on the duvet between them.
“Where did you find it?” he said.
“It was in our shed,” she replied, puzzled and frightened by the look on his face. “I don’t understand. Whose necklace is it, Bren?”
Bren lowered his head into his hands. He stayed like that for a long moment. When he straightened up, his expression was completely miserable.
“It’s Emma’s,” he whispered.
“Emma’s?” Georgina repeated. And then, saying the words as they came into her mind, feeling like every idiot wife since the dawn of time but unable to stop herself: “What’s Emma’s necklace doing in our shed?”
Bren looked pained and desperate. He stood there as if he couldn’t think of anything to do but wait for her to figure it out.
Slowly, reluctantly, her mind put it together. Bren’s hiking things were still in the shed, where he had thrown them after that trip. The hiking things he had not used since the weekend of his kiss with Emma. That brief drunken slipup to which he had—so bravely!—confessed. How impressed she had been by his honesty! His integrity!
Emma’s necklace had been in their shed because it had fallen out of Bren’s bag. And Emma’s necklace had ended up in Bren’s bag because—
“You slept together.” Georgina heard her own voice, calm and factual as if she were reporting on the weather. Interesting, that she could sound like that when there was a roaring in her ears. “People don’t remove their jewelry to kiss. You slept together.”
She could see it. Emma unclasping her necklace. Putting it to the side, where it had slipped into Bren’s backpack. Or perhaps Bren had undone the clasp, while Emma held her long dark hair out of the way.
Suddenly Georgina couldn’t breathe.
Bren was shaking his head frantically, but not as an attempt at denial. As an expression of anguish. Like he couldn’t believe this was happening.
“It was just that one time, Georgina,” he said, voice desperate. “You have to believe me. Just that one night, and I swear—I swear—I cut contact afterwards. I’ve never felt worse about anything. I couldn’t bear the thought of— I didn’t tell you everything because— Jesus, Georgina, I don’t know what to say. I love you. I made one stupid fucking mistake. I love you.”
As he talked, Georgina looked down at the coiled golden chain, the dragon-green stone. She had thought the necklace odd, old-fashioned. Now she realized it was the exact kind of piece a woman with a colorful, offbeat sense of fashion might pick up in a vintage shop or flea market. A woman like Emma, with her glossy dark hair and eyes that same shade of vivid green.
There was no great mystery here, no intrigue.
This was the oldest, most predictable story in the world.
Georgina had never felt so foolish, or so small.
* * *
Back when Bren had first confessed to his “drunken kiss,” Georgina had spent hours scouring the internet for any detail she could find about Emma. It wasn’t just photos she was looking for; it was anything. Any smidgen of information about Emma’s life or personality.
Emma’s social media use was limited, most of her accounts protected with stringent privacy settings, but this only made what few crumbs were available seem even more tantalizing. A couple of profile pictures visible on Facebook. Some activity on a Twitter account Emma had used briefly back in 2009, which included such banalities as Starving!! Might order Pad Thai… nom nom.
Now, lying in bed alone at night, with Bren downstairs on the sofa, Georgina found herself rereading those old tweets like they were some magnum opus. She had no idea why it was so fascinating to know that Emma enjoyed Thai food; she just knew that it was. She wanted to know where Emma went and who with, what TV shows she watched, what books she cried at, what she talked to her friends about, and by the way, what had it meant to her when she slept with Georgina’s husband?
She looked at the photographs she had already seen so many times they were burned into her brain. Emma smiling back over a bare shoulder. A black dress. A tanned arm. Georgina knew the comments (Gorgeous hon!! Is it just me or do you keep getting younger?? and Wifey material xx), mostly from female friends, by heart.
Georgina wished she had a female friend to talk to. But she’d let her social life slide. There was no one she could call late at night. No one who would be reliably there at the other end of the phone, like women on TV always seemed to have. Like bloody Sex and the City. She had been preoccupied, with her life and her husband and her child, and she’d left so many messages unanswered it had become too late to send one of her own.
In lieu of a friend, she turned to the internet. In bed in the dark, with the lights of passing cars throwing shadows on the ceiling, she used her phone to search the words husband had a one night stand.
Many people had shared similar stories. Countless articles, blog posts, and think pieces offered conflicting advice. On a public forum, Georgina read a comment that made her stomach turn over:
Are you sure it was just a once-off? Cheaters only ever admit to a toned-down version of what they did. That way they can alleviate their guilt and get forgiveness while keeping their relationship. It’s called “trickle truth.”
She opened another tab and searched: trickle truth.
Trickle truth: When a cheater confesses to their partner but only admits minor details. More details may come out as time goes on, but they will never give you the full story. They confess just enough to remove their own guilt.
That was what Bren had done in the beginning. And it had worked. Georgina remembered her logic at the time. Surely he was being honest, she had thought; after all, he’d chosen to confess, of his own volition.
She’d been so naive.
A user who called herself SusansMama wrote:
God, I wish I’d left when I first learned about the affair. Instead of hanging around for two years of “working on it”, i.e. being gaslighted, cheated on, and driven insane. Before you make any decisions, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THE TRUTH.
Cleverusername replied:
“make sure you know the truth” impossible. Cheaters only let you see the tip of the iceberg.
The occasional comment offered a different perspective. One woman, who called herself AnonymousForThis, wrote:
I cheated on my husband when I was 25. A one-night stand. It meant nothing. I never told him.
When you are young, such betrayals mean everything. After four kids and twenty years, you know other things are more important. But why hurt him by bringing it up now? We have a good marriage. Solid. Every marriage has its secrets. Sometimes I wonder what there is on his side that I don’t know.
But most were full of dire warnings. Georgina lay in bed, phone above her face, features illuminated by greenish light, and read story after story of others who had been systematically fooled, manipulated, lied to.
Feeling sick, she added the words ex-girlfriend to her search:
ZaraT: Being unfaithful with an ex is worse. What if he’s secretly been in love with her all along?
Georgina put her phone aside. She believed that you should never Google your symptoms if you were feeling unwell, that reading a list of all the horrific diseases from which you might be dying would only trigger an unhelpful bout of hypochondria. Perhaps the same logic should be applied to infidelity. Her mind had already been alive with questions that agonized her. What had it been like between them in that hotel room? What positions did they do? Did Emma look better naked than she did? Did they hold each other after? Whisper in the dark, all guilty and intimate?
Now she felt even worse.
Was there more that Bren wasn’t telling her? How could she ever know?
Chapter 16
In the immediate aftermath of Bren’s revelations, Georgina tried to maintain her distance. She could not drop everything and rush off dramatically to stay in a hotel like a character in a movie. There was Cody to think about; there was reality. But she asked Bren to back off, to let her breathe, to save his endless apologies and self-admonishments until she was ready to hear them, and to her relief, he complied.
That was why, on Friday, she found herself out walking at dusk, having taken the observation “We’re out of milk” as an excuse to get out of the house.
She took the long route home from the shops. Late afternoon was fading into a cloudless, frost-crusted evening. Past the trees and red-brick houses, past the bookies and pubs, Georgina walked and thought, wrapped up warm against the biting cold.
Trickle truth.
Alleviate their guilt.
Never give the full story.
How did anyone handle this not knowing? It was killing her. If there was footage of the night Bren and Emma had spent together, she would watch every second of it. An unhealthy thing to wish for, perhaps, but at least then she’d know what it was she was being asked to forgive.
The main road was busy, with cars passing and a rowdy group of students drinking at the bus stop. A sudden scream caused Georgina to spin around. The person screamed again, and she realized it was just one of the drunken students. Jumpy, she chided herself.
She turned off the main road. Past the derelict house on the corner, its boarded-up windows scrawled with spray paint slogans such as Irish women won’t wait—repeal the 8th!, and onto a quieter, less well-lit street. As the bustle of the main road faded behind her, Georgina could hear the swish-swish sound the shopping bag made as it brushed against her jeans.
It had reached that precise moment when evening trembles between dusk and night. The sky was a purple so deep it was almost black. A few faint tendrils of ghost-gray cloud trailed across the rising moon.
Georgina walked briskly along. Swish-swish went the bag. Click-clack went her low heels on the concrete, the sound echoing out—
Was that an echo, or someone else’s footsteps?
Georgina glanced over her shoulder. There was nobody in sight.
She began to walk a little faster. Swish-swish. Click-clack. And—
There it was again. Footsteps.
This time she turned sharply. And saw something. Movement.
About thirty feet back, where the shadows were thick, she could have sworn she saw someone duck behind a tree.
She stood still, her heart pounding.
Why don’t you walk back and see for yourself? she thought.
And then: Don’t be silly, there’s nobody there.
And on the heels of that thought came the clearest, the one that made her gut clench:
There is somebody there, and that’s exactly why you should go straight home, right now.
Georgina took one slow step backward. Then another.
Turning, she began to walk in the direction of her house as fast as she could without breaking into a jog. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw the unmistakable shape of a person stepping out from behind the tree.
She ran the final stretch, grocery bag swinging madly. She could see her house—she was nearly there—that familiar wooden door behind which lay warmth, safety—
She ran up the short driveway, fumbling in her pocket for her keys, got the door open, half fell inside, and slammed it shut.
In the hallway she stood, heart pounding.
“Georgina? Is that you?” Bren called down the stairs.
“It’s me.” She dropped the grocery bag and put her eye to the peephole of the door. The street seemed deserted.
Being inside her own home, hearing Bren upstairs, took the edge off the fear she had felt. Fear—was that the aim? If somebody out there was trying to scare her, they had succeeded.
But she was already less afraid.
She opened the front door again. Cold flooded the warm hallway.
“Georgina? You going back out?”
Forty-eight hours ago, she would have asked Bren to come with her. Even if he’d raised his eyebrows skeptically at her story of being followed, even if she’d suspected he was only humoring her, it would have been a relief to have him by her side. But that was forty-eight hours ago. Now…
“I think I dropped something,” she replied. “Just going out to check.”
She took out her smartphone, turned on the flashlight, and strode back outside. She looked up towards that darker stretch of street, where the person had stepped out from behind the tree. She couldn’t see anyone now.
I’m not afraid, Georgina told herself, and began to walk.
She’d never noticed before just how dark this upper stretch of road was at night. Several of the streetlights were in need of replacement. Someone should write a strongly worded letter to Dublin City Council about it.
I’m not afraid.
As she walked, Georgina kept her gaze focused on the tree the person had hidden behind. The light from her phone illuminated the spaces between trees and behind garbage cans, places she had never previously thought of as corners in which someone could hide.
I’m not afraid.
But her mouth was dry as she shone the light behind the tree.
Nothing but concrete. If someone had been here, they were gone.
“Georgina,” said a voice behind her.
She screamed.
Clutching her phone like a weapon, she spun around to see Anthony. He was standing about a foot away, a very confused expression on his face.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” He was wearing a hat and scarf, and appeared to be out for a stroll. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She tried to steady her breathing. “Sorry. You just… startled me.”
“Looking for something?”
“What? No.” Her heart was beating wildly. “I mean yes. My earring. I dropped it.”
Anthony frowned. “You sure you’re all right, Georgina?” he said, more seriously this time.
“Me? I’m grand.” Georgina half laughed, a nervous habit she fell back on sometimes, and groped around mentally for a change of subject. “What about yourself, Anthony? Hey, last weekend, did we see you out digging in your garden at night?” Striving for light and jovial, she remembered the joke Bren had made at the time and repeated it: “Burying a body, were you?”
Anthony didn’t laugh. In the heartbeat of silence that followed, she knew she had said something wrong.
“Dunno what you’re talking about,” he said gruffly.
Georgina stared at him.
Anthony made an aggressive s
hrugging motion. “I’ve got a bus to catch, Georgina. See you later.”
And he strode off.
She watched him go. What on earth…
That was a lie. He’d lied right to her face. But why?
Chapter 17
Bren was waiting for her in the hall. “Everything all right?”
Georgina looked into the front room for a reassuring glimpse of Cody on the sofa, watching Zootopia for the twentieth time. She breathed in the sight of him there, safe.
“Did you find it?” Bren asked in the self-consciously attentive tone with which he’d been addressing her since she’d learned he had sex with Emma.
“Find what?”
Bren looked puzzled. “Whatever it was that you dropped.”
Georgina blinked, her brain taking several seconds to catch up. “Oh. Yeah. I found it.”
Why had Anthony lied?
“Come into the kitchen,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”
He followed her, his face all hangdog and sorry, obviously expecting the topic to be the state of their marriage.
“Something strange just happened. On my way home.” Georgina closed the kitchen door so Cody wouldn’t overhear. There seemed little point in telling skeptical Bren about figures behind trees, so she skipped ahead to “I ran into Anthony, and he said the weirdest thing.”
She recapped the exchange. When she finished, Bren gave a long exhale.
“Yeah,” he said eventually, still in that carefully contrite voice. “That’s a bit strange, all right.”
There was something unspoken in the silence that followed.
“He lied about it,” Georgina reiterated. “He outright lied. Then he got all cagey and defensive and ran off. What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know, Georgina.” Bren sounded a little more like his normal self as he went on: “Anthony’s a weird bloke. Grumpy old bastard too. I’ve been saying it for years, but you always defend him.”