She heard a low murmur in reply but could not pick out the words. Then a switch being flicked, doors opening. Victor’s voice in the kitchen, saying something about the Scotch. He must have moved into the bathroom. She heard him say, “Oh fuck!” Then feet coming up the hall.
They came fast but the moment seemed to go on for ever. Them coming towards the door, as she sat there behind it, her hand clutching the robe around her in the dark. Terribly afraid, waiting to see what they would do.
She had a sudden irrational fear that Victor would rush in and attack her. For a moment she wanted to call out but she couldn’t make a sound. She just sat petrified, her heart nearly choking her.
And then the light snapped on and there were two people in the doorway. The first figure stopped and cried out in alarm. But Gaynor was looking past him at the tall woman. She gasped as she took in the short pink skirt and high heels, the odd thought passing through her head that the top didn’t match, that the whole look was tarty, that Victor would never let her go out looking like that…
And then Gaynor looked up into the woman’s face, saw who it was and screamed.
22. Hermitage
A stunning texture and finish
Victor came into the kitchen in a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. His hair stood on end and he hadn’t shaved. Gaynor looked at him with a mixture of disbelief and pity. She poured him a coffee. “Why don’t you go and have a shower?” she said. “It will make you feel better.”
He took the mug from her. “I will in a while.” He leant out and touched her shoulder briefly, tentatively. “You’ve been very good about this,” he said. “Really.”
“I still can’t believe it.”
She felt as though she was in some sort of nightmare. However hard she tried, she couldn’t get her head round it. She’d woken this morning, back in her own bed, just wanting to feel normal again but clouded by a deep sense of unreality.
“I’m sorry.”
They still hadn’t properly talked about it. Her head was full of questions while her mind shied away from the answers she didn’t want to hear.
“Who was that bloke? The one you brought home.” She remembered the look on his face when she’d started shouting. He hadn’t been able to get out fast enough. They’d heard his footsteps almost running down the hall of the flat and the slam of the front door. Then there’d just been her and Victor. Her huddled in shock and horror in the chair, him standing in front of her in full make-up and heels.
“I was just going to make him a coffee. That’s all. I don’t want to have sex with men. It’s not about that.”
“What is it about?
“It’s about…” He fiddled with the handle of his coffee cup, suddenly diffident. “It’s about being treated like a woman. He fancied me. He knew I was a bloke but he fancied me as a woman. I liked that feeling. I wasn’t going to do anything.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She’d ranted and raved. Filled with rage at his deception, followed by a strange relief, and then a deep fear. The flat had seemed small and claustrophobic – filled with the sickly stench of perfume and face powder.
“How can I trust you, Victor? How can I know you’re telling me the truth? You’ve lied and lied to me. I’ve been to hell and back wondering what you were up to. Do you have any idea how you’ve made me feel? Do you know what it was like, thinking you were seeing someone else?”
He sat down and put his head in his hands. “I know and I’m sorry. But I wouldn’t do that to you. Not that sort of betrayal.”
For a moment her stomach twisted in guilt. That was the word Sam had used about what they had done. She pushed thoughts of Sam away – it was too painful and confusing. She had to sort out where she was with Victor.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he was saying. “I didn’t know what you’d do.”
She sat down opposite him, so many questions moving around her head, her exhausted brain still trying to make sense of the few answers she’d had already.
“Why did you stop having sex with me then? The only time you ever really seemed to want to was when Lizzie was here with the saris...” She stopped. “Is that why? ’Cos you’d been dressing up?” She looked at him, stricken. “Can you only make love to me now if you’ve got a dress on? Is that why you don’t want me any more?”
He shook his head. “It’s not that – though yes, it is exciting to wear feminine clothing, or imagine I am.”
“And I thought it might be me turning you on,” she said bitterly.
“It was you.”
She got up and walked across the kitchen to the kettle. “Yeah, so much so that you kept avoiding me.”
“Look.” He held his hands out in front of him as if begging. “I’ve been confused, I’ve been feeling guilty. I didn’t want you to see my legs…”
She looked at them bewildered.
“I’d shaved them once,” he said, embarrassed. “Just to see how it felt – and I was afraid you’d notice. I tried to keep away from you till they’d grown back.” He gave a self-conscious laugh. “I was going to tell you we were trialling hair removal cream – that the girls in the office did it to me for a laugh.”
“You’ve got very proficient at making up the stories,” she said grimly. “What else have you lied about?” She turned on the cold tap. “I want to believe you, but you haven’t got a very good track record, have you? You’re telling me all this stuff now but I’m afraid of what you’re not saying…”
Victor sounded earnest. “I’ll be honest from now on. I promise. I’ll hide nothing. I’ll tell you how I’m feeling, what I’m doing. Maybe we can work out a compromise.” He looked at her pleadingly. “Maybe, if I don’t do anything you’re uncomfortable with. I’ll just do it in London, never here. I’ll spend more time at home with you. There are other guys – you know, with families and children and they work it out…”
“Do their children know?”
“Some do.”
“Are you going to tell Chloe?”
His face clouded. “I don’t know yet.”
“Well, you need to think about these things – we both do.”
“Do you think you can…?”
She looked at him and an awful certainty came over her. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “There’s something I need to do first.”
She sat on the edge of the bath and breathed deeply. However much you imagined how you would feel in a given situation, however sure you were that you would have certain reactions, you could never really know. Nothing had prepared her for how she felt right now.
Her heart seemed enormous in her chest. She was in the grip of a dozen emotions and couldn’t have named one of them. She shivered and pulled her dressing gown from the back of the bathroom door, pulling it round her, over her sweatshirt and jeans. Wrapping herself up.
As she went slowly downstairs, images chased their way across her memory. Sam here, casting off this very dressing gown, Chloe triumphant in the wine bar courtyard, Victor staring wide-eyed at her, lipstick smeared across his startled mouth. She felt she had to carry herself very carefully, as though she might split apart at any moment.
Victor was still at the kitchen table. Winter sunshine sent low beams across the soft sheen of the wood. She glanced around her at the gleaming kettle and toaster, the high-tech espresso machine, the designer tiles. She looked and it was all at once familiar and utterly strange, like someone else’s kitchen. Her husband looked up miserably.
“There’s something you need to know before we decide anything,” she said. She felt tremulous. “It’s the most incredible timing.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. “I can’t really believe it should happen now but it’s a sort of miracle, too.”
Victor sounded exhausted. “What are you talking about?”
She’d imagined saying the words so often – imagined her excitement and joy. Now she just felt scared. For a moment she couldn’t speak at all and picked up her cup wit
h its inch of cold coffee. She swallowed.
“Victor, I’m pregnant.”
He sat bolt upright. “You can’t be.”
She smiled. “Yes, I am. I know. I thought it was like all the other times, too. That’s why I wasn’t going to bother but I just did a test and…” She grinned at him, the whole ludicrous truth of it sinking in. “I’m pregnant!”
She waited, watching him, and as she did so, fresh fear crept in. She’d imagined all sorts of reactions but not this one. He stared at her, going red and seeming to struggle for words. Then he went white again and his mouth hardened. He stood up and stepped back from her, eyes like flints.
She said, uneasily: “I know it’s a shock, I wasn’t expecting it either. I never thought for a moment…”
“Whose is it?”
She stared back. “Yours.”
Inside her heart thumped. It had to be Victor’s – for God’s sake, there was only the once with Sam. You didn’t get pregnant doing it once – not in real life.
He looked at her contemptuously and his voice was cold: “No, it’s not. Who have you been screwing, Gaynor? Jesus – you were so suspicious of me – kept accusing me of having another woman, when all the time it was you. You’re the one who’s been sleeping around!”
“I haven’t!” Her voice rose.
Once didn’t count, did it? She felt her own conviction grow. She was upset – they’d got carried away. Sam said so. He’d said they should put it behind them, move on.
“This baby’s yours, of course it is,” she said, frightened. “We made love that night Lizzie was here and that other time before, when we’d been shopping. My periods have been all over the place. I don’t know quite when it would have been but…”
“It’s not mine.” His voice cut through hers. “Don’t lie to me, Gaynor. I’ve been through hell too and I have just been as honest with you as I know how. Don’t insult my bloody intelligence. What have you been doing?”
His face was working in pain and anger. He threw the newspaper to the floor and banged his fist on the table. “Who is it?” he roared suddenly. “Who the fuck is it?”
“Nobody.” She shook her head, heart hammering, not knowing what to say.
“I thought,” he said, suddenly sinking back into a chair, speaking quietly again, “that there might just be a small chance. That maybe I could somehow work through who I am and have my other feminine life and still have you as my friend, my wife, who knows. I was so afraid of telling you but I still thought, clung to the hope that perhaps if I did it right, once you’d got over the shock, you might understand. Because once we were good, weren’t we? We had something…”
She was silent – gripped with a sudden shame.
“But now, I find you were cheating on me all along.” Victor’s voice was cold. “You’ve been lying. You’ve been having an affair and you stand there and tell me...”
Rage filled her. “Hang on,” she said furiously. “Hang on a bloody minute. You’re the one who’s been dressing up in fucking suspenders for months on end – you’ve lied and lied. You’ve been going out with other MEN for God’s sake. How faithful is that? What could you have given me?” She clutched her stomach in panic.
“Nothing,” he snapped back. “I’ve told you and told you, I haven’t had sex with anyone. You obviously can’t say the same.”
“I can.” She hesitated. Wondering for a moment whether to tell him. To say it was only once. But surely it had to be Victor’s baby. She thought wildly about DNA testing. She tried to remember where her cycle had been when she and Sam had made love. Her mind was a blank.
“This is your baby,” she said again. She felt sick. Never for a moment had she thought the announcement would lead to this.
“It is NOT!” He banged his hand down hard again, making her cup tremble in its saucer.
“How can you be so bloody sure?” she yelled back.
He stared at her. He looked like nobody she knew. “Because,” he said, suddenly icily calm again, “five years ago I had a vasectomy.”
23. Trebbiano di Romagna
Unexpectedly bitter
“Oh Christ.” Sarah put her arms around Gaynor. “I can’t believe it – how absolutely awful.”
“Bloody bastard!” Lizzie pulled the cork from a restorative bottle of Macon. “Wait till I see him.”
Gaynor blew her nose. “You know, I think I just might have been able to put up with him prancing about in a frock once a week, it might have worked.” She gave a bitter laugh. “We could have gone on girly shopping trips together and swapped mascaras.” She snorted, half-crying again. “Bloody hell, I can’t get my head round this.”
“I should think not.” Lizzie looked mutinous. “I’ll tell you what I’d like to do with his mascara. The creep.” She glanced around Gaynor’s kitchen. “Where is he now?”
“I don’t know – gone back to London I suppose. How could he do that to me, how could he?”
Lizzie poured wine into three glasses. “All that time making you worry he had another woman and was buying her racy little numbers, and he’s bloody wearing them himself!”
“Well, I suppose he was afraid of what you’d do if you found out.” Sarah tried to be reasonable. “And you can understand that. Lots of women would be horrified if they knew their husband…”
Gaynor shook her head wildly. “It’s not that. It’s not the dressing up – I could forgive that, I think – he can’t help how he is. It’s the betrayal. The vasectomy. All those years, when he knew I was desperate for a baby.” She burst into fresh tears. “Don’t you see? He’s stopped me having a baby.”
Lizzie took a swallow of wine. “Except he hasn’t, has he? You’re pregnant, honey – and you need to start thinking what you’re going to do about it.”
Gaynor shook her head as a fresh wave of pain overcame her.
Sarah asked gently. “What does Sam say?”
“He didn’t, really – he just said if I was pregnant then … He just made it clear that he wouldn’t be very happy. He said he thought I couldn’t, and I said I probably wasn’t anyway, and…”
“You haven’t told him?”
Gaynor shook her head again.
“Well,” said Sarah. “That’s the first thing you must do. Go and see him now.”
“I don’t know.” Lizzie was doubtful. “He sounds a bit of a flake to me. I don’t think you want to go through all that again, do you? It will only drag you down. Look – if you are going to keep it… plenty of women bring up babies on their own…”
Sarah frowned. “Of course she’s going to keep him or her. And yes there are plenty of single mothers about, but it isn’t ideal. And neither are most things. It’s a matter of compromise. I thought Paul was the love of my life – well he was, but…”
Lizzie interrupted her. “Gaynor’s lived with enough depressives to last her a lifetime. It’s better to have a child on your own than hook up with some half-hearted father who doesn’t give a shit.”
Gaynor tried to get a word in. “Oh no, he’s not like that
– he’s been a wonderful father to his kids. He’s really…”
Sarah was still talking. “Richard’s not perfect. He’s frightened and he has all that baggage with Tania. But he’s a good man. He’s lovely with Charlie, and if there’s one thing that being with Paul taught me is that sometimes you just have to hang on to the good things. If Sam…”
Lizzie gave an incredulous laugh. “I don’t believe this. You were the one who told her to forget him and make it up with Victor!”
“I didn’t know then,” Sarah said heatedly. She turned to Gaynor. “If you’d told me, if I’d known you were pregnant...”
“I didn’t know myself.”
“Well, everything’s different now.” Sarah was firm.
“But does Gaynor want someone who can’t cope?” Lizzie persisted. “If he’s going to go into a decline every time things go a bit wrong, that’s no good, is it?”
“You
don’t know him,” Gaynor cried in frustration. “He’s good and he’s strong. It freaked me out the first time I saw him on a bad day but he fights it – he gets through. Perhaps if he were with me all the time...perhaps a baby would…”
“Totally finish him off,” Lizzie said flatly.
Gaynor sat back, deflated. “Yes, maybe,” she said.
Sarah glared at Lizzie before turning to Gaynor. “You won’t know until you tell him.”
Lizzie, unperturbed, topped up Gaynor’s glass and held the bottle out to Sarah. “Are you sure you don’t want one?”
Sarah waved it away. “I’ve got to get down to the wine bar and start the prep for tonight.” She spoke to Gaynor. “Walk down with me and go and tell him.”
Gaynor shook her head. “I did. He didn’t want to know.”
“You didn’t – you said you might be and then you backtracked. You’ve got to tell him you are pregnant for sure, and it’s his baby.”
“No.”
“You must – it’s his right. You owe him that.”
Lizzie poured more wine into her glass. “Bollocks to his rights – she owes him nothing.”
“I think …”
“Stop it,” Gaynor exploded. “Just stop! This is my life and my baby – mine and Sam’s.”
“Tell him then,” said Sarah doggedly.
“I don’t want to!” Gaynor shouted. She looked at Sarah in sudden panic. “And you mustn’t either. Or you!” she added, turning to Lizzie.
Lizzie made a face. “I won’t! I think you’re better off without either of them, sweetie.”
Sarah scowled at her. “Just because you have a problem with relationships.”
Lizzie took another mouthful of wine. “I don’t have any problem, thank you. I get shagged when I want to and I don’t have all this crap to put up with.”
Gaynor brought her hand down sharply on the table top. “Listen! I don’t want him to know. You’ve both got to promise me.”
Lizzie nodded. Sarah looked troubled.
“Please, please, promise.” Gaynor was crying again. The thought of Sam’s face the last time she’d seen him gave her a physical pain.
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