by Sue Watson
Chapter Seven
I open the first email – it’s from him to her. She’s only just started at the hospital apparently; it’s a sort of introduction, a ‘hello, I’m here if you need any help or advice’. He points out he’s only been there two months, but he knows what it’s like to be ‘the new girl or boy’ and takes an interest in the careers of young surgeons in his department.
It’s not just their fucking careers he takes an interest in.
Simon’s email is friendly but not flirty, and as far as I can see there’s no hidden agenda. Likewise, her response is equally professional. She thanks him and requests information about some surgical procedures blah blah blah.
This continues for another ten or so emails, a month or two just shooting the surgical breeze. He’s her senior, her unofficial mentor, and as the emails continue to go back and forth I can see how they have developed a working relationship. So far so good. I’m strangely torn between relief and slight disappointment – so he isn’t having an affair, it’s my imagination and I’m crazy after all? I am a ‘bunny-boiling bitch’, to quote my husband, who referred to me this way after the fracas over the bloody barmaid. Or was it when I thought he was sleeping with Sophie’s friend’s mum? I can’t remember – they all merge into one, and all of them in my head. Is this one the same, just a figment of my fractured mind?
I don’t have much time, so I skip to July, where I find the first interesting communication, and my heart drops a fraction. It’s from her. She’s asking him if they can meet for a drink. She says she has a patient she wants to discuss, an op she’s involved in with a different team the following day. She’s worried and just wants to talk to someone senior.
I open his response: Yes sure, is The Dog and Duck 7 p.m. okay? I should be out of theatre by then, if not I’ll call you. I bristle – is this the beginning? Am I mad to resent my husband going to the pub with a beautiful young woman?
He clearly has her number by now. Of course, there will be texts too, but I know he’ll be more careful with those given my previous history. Presumably he thinks emails will be safer, more hidden and, unlike texts, they don’t pop up on your phone and ping to alert nosy wives that something’s going on.
I’m just about to delve further when there’s a knock at the front door. Jen returning the boys no doubt. I wait a moment, unable to leave the unfolding story and, to my great relief, Sophie goes downstairs and answers it. I hear Jen asking where I am. Sophie’s typically vague and monosyllabic saying she doesn’t know, which usually irritates me, but on this occasion works in my favour. The boys will take advantage of the fact there are no adults around and go straight for the prohibited TV. This will buy me at least another twenty minutes before they feel hungry and roam the house searching for me to feed them.
I haven’t got long, and scroll quickly through the next few days of emails: a polite thank you from her for talking her ‘off the ledge’, as she so wittily puts it. I imagine her literally on a ledge – the multistorey car park in town would be a good spot. I see her flying through the air with the greatest of ease. She’s wearing that baby-pink coat. She lands horribly, making a real mess of the pavement, that lovely coat and her skull.
I continue to scroll through July. It proves uneventful – no sex talk or naked pics, but then again, I think people save those for their phones, don’t they? Nevertheless, I think I’d know by the emails if there was a sexual subtext, an intimate undercurrent, and there’s nothing here to see in July. Should I stop now? That was less than two months ago; what could possibly happen in such a short time? For God’s sake, he was with me and the kids in Crete for the first two weeks in August, and apart from a few arguments, a little bust-up over the hire car and his rant about the boys’ behaviour, we were okay. We had sex at least three times – it was perfunctory, a little soulless, if I’m honest, but better than the rough stuff he enjoys when we’re at home and no one can hear us. I imagine sharing this with Jen in the way she shares her sex life with me. I’m sure she’d laugh loudly about the kinky slaps, the tight handcuffs. It would make me feel better to share things with a girlfriend, get them out in the open, but I’m not sure I can – besides, it would be disloyal to Simon.
I skip through a few early August missives and then notice the emails are becoming more regular, not one a day or every two days as they have been, but several times a day. I go back and open the first one in August. It was the 2nd, the day we actually flew out to Crete. I can’t think why they would be emailing each other when he’s on holiday. He’s always strict about work colleagues not bothering him when he’s off. ‘It’s the only time I get a break,’ he says. ‘I can’t be discussing surgical procedures from a beach on my family holiday.’ But looking at this little row of beauties lined up, it seems there was much to discuss with one work colleague on our family holiday.
‘I can’t believe you’ll be gone for two whole weeks,’ her email begins, and already I see the change in tone. If that isn’t clear enough, the next comment spells it out: ‘I’ll miss you. I can’t bear to think of you away for so long.’ Bingo, I was right – and the pain I feel in my chest makes me wonder if I’m having a heart attack. Eventually I compose myself and find the strength from somewhere to read on. ‘Will you miss me?’ she asks and I recognise her insecurity. Those early days when you’re not quite sure where you stand and need constant reassurance of your position in someone’s life, someone’s heart.
He answers that, yes, he will miss her and he doesn’t know how he’s going to ‘get through’ the next two weeks, like a holiday on a Greek island with his wife and children is something to be endured. But this is merely foreplay, and before long we are plunged into my worst nightmare. As I had feared, every little twitch of my muscles, the feeling that’s been grinding deep in my bones is proven correct: my husband and Caroline are having a love affair. I am in no doubt at all – it’s in every sentence, every utterance.
The first damning email that makes their relationship very clear is when she refers to him leaving her alone in bed ‘on Sunday’, and looking at the dates this would be the day before we left to go on holiday. He’d told me he was on call that weekend. We didn’t see him for two days and when he came home on that Sunday evening ‘exhausted’ from two days of ‘surgery’, including a seven-hour heart transplant, I believed him. ‘There was a moment when the heart stopped pumping, but I manipulated it with my fingers and gave someone their life back,’ he’d said. I cringed slightly at his purple prose but forgave him because he was a hero and I loved him.
Manipulating a heart with his fingers? He was manipulating something with his fingers, and it wasn’t a fucking donor heart. I feel my own heart now, beating in my throat, as though it might rise and rise, pushing up until I vomit it out onto the clean white desk.
I don’t know if I can bear to look at the next email, but then again I can’t stop myself. It’s like watching a horror film – you know it’s going to be distressing, but you can’t tear your eyes from the sheer awfulness. I’m almost grateful for my drugged-up state. It’s like feeling the pain through cotton wool; it’s still unbearable, slightly dulled, less sharp. I want to cover my eyes as I read about my lovely holiday according to Simon; I am shocked to discover how lonely he was with us, how empty he felt, how nothing on the holiday gave him any joy. I learn that the delicious seafood we ate at a gorgeous little Greek restaurant in Chania was ‘terrible’. Apparently the kids played up and I shouted at them, which caused a row, one of many apparently. I don’t remember them. Did they happen – have I pushed them from my mind? Did I only imagine the perfect family holiday?
I find out so much from his emails to another woman. I find out, to my horror, that he doesn’t trust me with the children, that he’s scared to leave me because he doesn’t know what I’ll do. Apparently he wonders why he even married me, but suspects it was on the rebound from Nicole’s death.
The pain on reading this is excruciating. I know people lie when they are havi
ng affairs; they have to. I doubt Simon means any of this, he thinks it’s what she wants to hear. But for me it’s such a blow, like a hammer to the head, followed by a slow, scary strangulation.
All these things I would like to do to you, Caroline.
I read on, unable to tear myself away. Horror and fascination are a toxic cocktail and someone with my issues shouldn’t be doing this. I think of the saying ‘that’s where madness lies…’ and this is it. These emails are my route to a breakdown, a world of pain and confusion that will cause me to lose control, and Simon’s told me if that happens again he’ll divorce me and take the children. But here’s the proof of my madness right here – my eyes refuse to listen to the rest of me that’s screaming to stop reading, so I continue.
It seems Simon can’t bear to spend another minute with me and another without her. She’s the best sex he’s ever had and he can’t wait to leave this Greek hellhole with his family and take her up to heaven when he lands at fucking Gatwick. I take a moment to digest this; I’m completely devastated, but I’m also right, and my instinct is spot on. I just never expected to be quite so right – it’s so overwhelming, so brutal, so… intimate.
I click on more emails and, among the bitchy comments about work colleagues, the technical discussions about life in the operating theatre, I learn more interesting and agonising things about my marriage and myself.
‘Darling, I can’t bear to be apart from you this weekend,’ he opens with, on an email sent only a couple of weeks ago. It seems she’d gone to stay at her parents’ and the very thought of forty-eight hours without her made him ‘incredibly sad’. He then goes on to tell her that ‘Marianne is ill again, it isn’t her fault but I find it so hard to deal with. Last night she screamed at Charlie, she told him he was being stupid, but he’s only six. He was so upset at his own mother saying this to him. This happens when she’s off the medication. I’ve asked her time and time again to take it, but she won’t, she says it makes her tired but can’t see what it’s doing to all of us. She screamed at the boys, threatening to hurt them the other morning at breakfast – just because they wouldn’t eat their eggs. Darling, I know I should be stronger, but when she’s cruel to me and the children I just want to pack them all in the car and drive to you.’
I gasp, unable to take a breath. How could he say all this? Yes, these things happened, but not in the way he is telling her they did. It’s all about interpretation, but whose version can I trust? He’s threatened to take the children away before, but it’s always been mid-row, in the heat of the moment – seeing it written in black and white makes the threat very real.
Finally I drag my eyes away from the screen. I can’t bear to read on. I know we’ve had blips and there have been times in our marriage when understandably his love has been tested. But I thought we’d worked through all that, and despite me being a little paranoid, he’s forgiven me and we are back on track now. I can’t begin to comprehend the two of them having sex, but even more painful is the way he talks about me, revealing every little aspect of me, even the fact I take medication. I feel exposed, violated. They judge me, interpret my actions; my life, my past and my secrets are all plundered. I’m also hurt by the way he relates to her, and in this I glimpse the past, our past, and the Simon I fell in love with. I can feel and remember the warm, affectionate responses, the urgent need to make love. Tears roll down my cheeks as I watch his love fluttering across the screen like confetti. I see how we used to be and realise now how far away we are from that – and from being happy.
I’m on a tightrope with no safety net. Without Simon, what do I have?
As much as it pains me, I need to know the truth, and go back to the emails, swallowing hard, trying to focus through tear-blitzed eyes. These are more recent, a matter of weeks ago, and she asks if they can spend a weekend in Amsterdam; she’s never been to Amsterdam. He sends her a link to a boutique hotel, suggests they hire bikes and trail along the canals. I am so envious. It should be me he’s taking on romantic weekends. She says, ‘I want to see the Van Gogh Museum.’ He says they can see ‘whatever you want to – I just want to spend all night in your arms and wake up next to you.’
Caroline’s Simon is relaxed, happy, loving and kind… so kind. It’s the Simon I met at the book launch, the one who took me out for oysters and champagne, who made me laugh. The man who, in that bookshop, bought a book about ballet for his daughter and talked about her with such love I knew I wanted him to be the father to my children. Back then nothing else mattered but his blue eyes and his arms around me and waking up next to him every morning. He told me he’d love me forever. But he lied. With Caroline, my husband is the man I fell in love with, and this is what really kills me – I thought he’d gone, but he’s still here, he’s just not with me any more.
I’m scared and feel sick. If I don’t gather myself together and get a grip there’s a very good chance I’ll be clearing up vomit from the spotless white desk any minute now.
Suddenly I hear the front door and exit the emails with a vicious click. Everything disappears from the screen, like it never existed, but it did, I know it did because I saw it with my own eyes. Simon’s home. I close the laptop down quickly, my heart still thudding, my breath short, as though I’ve been running.
I quickly scan the room to check I haven’t left anything behind that will give me away and run downstairs to greet him with Elizabeth David’s garlic and rosemary crusted lamb. I will not give him up. She can’t have him.
I daren’t mention the emails, because if I do he’ll say I’m ill again. Three years ago when I’d had several ‘episodes’, he did what he felt was best for me and told me we were having a ‘date night’, and going to dinner at the new restaurant in a little village nearby. My best friend had the children and I bought a new dress specially – it was black and white with polka dots. I loved it, and Simon said he did too. I was so happy that evening as we drove along the country lanes. I remember telling him some story about something funny the boys had said – they were three then, and he laughed. He actually laughed with me at my story and I thought, yes, we’re over the hump now, I’m well again.
But we didn’t go to the new restaurant; we pulled up outside a clinic and I immediately panicked. I knew what this meant. I started to cry and when someone tried to force me out of the car I naturally hit out. The next thing I knew, I’d been sedated and was being interviewed by a psychiatrist, prescribed strong anti-anxiety pills and kept in for eight weeks of electroconvulsive therapy. This involved several sessions to send a strong electric current through my brain to trigger an epileptic seizure and attempt to relieve the symptoms of my mental health problem. It didn’t work, merely left me with side effects: apathy, short-term memory loss and a loss of drive and creativity – not to mention weeks away from my children. All this because I’d suspected my husband was having an affair with one of the mums from the school. I know Simon had me sectioned for my own good, but it was the worst time in my life and I can’t go there again, and that’s why I can’t confront him about the emails, because he’ll think I’m ill again. And this time it might actually be convenient to send me away and move Caroline in.
Simon’s in the kitchen by the time I get downstairs and already communing with his phone like it’s a life support system. He’s texting her, I know he is. She’s with us now in our lovely home, in my kitchen. He doesn’t even look up as I rush in and grab the vegetables from the fridge. I really shouldn’t have spent all that time in his office. Apart from the obvious – that I shouldn’t be snooping – I’ve now left everything until the last minute and the Chantenay carrots will take at least seven minutes to boil. Damn. I should have had the dinner ready, on the table when Simon got in. I have to show him I’m fine, in control and more capable of creating a home life than Caroline.
‘Muuuum,’ I suddenly hear coming from the sitting room. Fuck! I’d forgotten the boys. I was so engrossed in the bloody emails I hadn’t even thought about them. I’m a terr
ible mother; how could I forget my own kids?
I quickly look over at Simon, fully expecting a cutting remark about the boys being ‘plonked’ in front of the TV, but he’s still scrolling, apparently oblivious to my giant cock-up. I send up a little prayer of thanks that he hasn’t noticed and dash out of the kitchen after putting the carrots and cauliflower on and checking the roast potatoes around the lamb aren’t about to burn. I must keep everything on an even keel. I don’t want him to know I know.
‘Oh, my darlings, I’m sorry,’ I say quietly, walking in to two sleepy little boys wide-eyed in front of the TV, biscuit crumbs everywhere, jam around their mouths. Sophie must have given them that packet of Jammie Dodgers I’d hidden away at the back of the cupboard. Simon doesn’t approve of biscuits for children – too much sugar, he says, and he’s right of course, but sometimes the odd biscuit or chocolate bar keeps us all sane. I’m grateful to Sophie for giving them something, but keen to hide the evidence of her chosen child-taming tool.
‘Boys, would you like some supper?’ I ask, knowing it’s a little late for them to eat but don’t want to put them to bed hungry. They both shake their heads and snuggle further down into the sofa, weary and unable to move away from the giant screen mesmerising them. Selfishly, I don’t really want to have to go back into the kitchen with them and explain to Simon that I haven’t given them a meal. I decide to get them to bed with hot milk and text Sophie to come down and give me a hand. She knows the score. I don’t need to explain to her that we need to keep Dad out of it or I could be in trouble. Within a few minutes she’s at my side, walking Charlie, while I manhandle Alfie upstairs. We’re both gently shushing them and giggling as we go. Will I lose my children?