‘Josie, my love!’ Russell said, in his warm, soft Durham voice. ‘I’m so sorry!’
‘I just can’t believe this isn’t some dreadful nightmare and I’m going to wake up any minute, Russell!’
‘I told Ben he was mad, going after Olivia when he had you, but he wouldn’t listen.’
‘But she’s having a baby too, Ben’s baby. And why her, not me?’ I choked, which was not at all what I intended to say, but it just sort of fell out of my mouth and flapped about in the air, dying. ‘I—oh God, I can’t believe this is happening to me! What am I going to do?’
Mary came back on. ‘Look, Josie, stay calm, take deep breaths. I really do think Ben is starting to regret it now and that it was an infatuation for him more than anything—and of course he wasn’t thinking about the future. I don’t suppose he was thinking at all. And now, the more possessive she’s getting, the more he backs off. If you play your cards right, he’ll come back, you’ll see.’
‘Come back? I don’t think the Ben I loved ever existed in the first place, except in my imagination!’ I yelled hysterically and then threw the phone away from me as if it had stung my ear. It hit the wall and fell to the carpet, still quacking, so it wasn’t broken—unlike me.
I hurled the bottle of medicinal herbs at the wall too, for good measure, and then followed that by flushing all the pretty jade-green pills, together with my hopes and dreams, down the loo.
I sat on a kitchen chair, huddled trembling against the stove, listening to the slow tick of the clock as the afternoon wore on into early evening.
Everything was the same—and yet totally changed. Could this truly be happening, or was it just a nightmare? I thought of the day Ben carved ‘Ben&Josie4ever’ underneath the old bridge, when we were teenagers…Of how Granny, not long before she died, had said she wished she could have seen us married, but at least she knew we would always be together.
The cuckoo clock clattered into action and I realised that any minute now he would be home—and what could I say? What was I going to do?
The Ben who would return was a different man from the one I knew, or thought I knew. I wanted the old one back but instead, like some horror story, what would appear at my door would be a ghastly travesty that only looked and sounded like him…
I wished I hadn’t thought of that one. Shivering, I got up and grabbed a bottle of sloe gin and had a swift gulp straight from the bottle. It burned its way clear down to my diaphragm but didn’t warm me. I wasn’t sure anything ever could.
Chapter Eleven
Over and Out
Sloe gin should be treated with caution, though there is nothing better for shock than a glass of this seemingly innocuous, pleasant-tasting spirit.
‘Cakes and Ale’
‘Josie?’ Ben called, opening the front door and then switching on the kitchen light. Then he spotted me huddled down in the wheelback chair by the almost-dead stove.
‘Why are you sitting in the dark? Are you ill?’ he asked, his brow wrinkling in quick concern as he strode across to me, then stopped dead as I leaped up and stood behind the chair, making it a barrier between us.
‘Don’t—don’t come near me! Don’t touch me,’ I said tightly.
‘What on earth’s the matter, darling?’
‘I had a phone call from Olivia Taunton—you know, the rich, elderly art collector you told me about? The one who’s been stalking you? Only it turns out that you’ve been stalking each other.’
‘Oh God!’ he said, the warm colour draining from his face.
‘It seems the relationship isn’t just a figment of her imagination after all, though I didn’t believe it until Mary and Russell told me it was true. She seems to have acquired you as easily as your art, doesn’t she? And perhaps I should call her Sugar Mummy now, since I expect she’s given you lots of things you’ve never had.’
‘I—no, it wasn’t like that, honestly!’ he blustered. ‘Money never entered into it. It was just that…well, I fell for her and it was like a fever in the blood: I couldn’t help myself’.
‘So that makes it all right, does it? No one forced you into it, Ben—you’re supposed to be an adult, after all. And according to her, you told her our relationship was platonic, almost brother and sister.’
He shifted uncomfortably under my accusing gaze. ‘No, I swear I never said any such thing and I made it clear from the start that I’d never leave you. Olivia always said she didn’t want commitment anyway, only lately she’s changed her mind about that and the more I’ve tried to shake her off, the clingier she’s become.’
‘That’s probably because she’s pregnant!’ I hadn’t realised my voice had been rising until the last word ended on a shriek that echoed round the kitchen.
Ben sank down into the rocking chair and said quietly, ‘Oh, darling, I’m so sorry! When I found out about the baby and realised that was what she’d wanted me for all along, I came to my senses and tried to finish with her. I hoped you’d never have to find out.’
‘Yes, and you even went to the extent of telling me she was stalking you, in case she spoke to me!’
‘I was just trying to protect you, Josie, and Olivia is deluding herself if she thinks I’m going to leave you for her. It was only ever a physical thing. I don’t love her. I’ve come to my senses now and I know I belong here with you. I promise I’ll never, ever, do anything to hurt you again.’
I stared at him in astonishment. ‘You mean…you imagine we can just pick up our lives as though all of this…this betrayal never happened? You’re so obviously not the man I thought you were, Ben Richards! Just be grateful that Sugar Mummy seems to want you all to herself, because as far as I’m concerned, she can have you.’
He reached out as if to touch me and I snatched my hand away. ‘Don’t dare come near me!’
‘Josie, I can’t bear to see you upset, you know I can’t. Please, please forgive me?’ he wheedled softly, like a small boy who’d shattered a window with his football, instead of the man who’d broken my heart. ‘You need me and I need you. This affair was just an aberration, something I should have got out of my system in my teens. It doesn’t change my love for you—nothing could change that. I always looked forward to coming back home to you, and I always will.’
‘Then you should have thought of that before—only you didn’t think, did you? You just did what you wanted, like you usually do. And you know what the final, most humiliating thing about it all is? She’s having the child I never managed to conceive, which means I’m the barren one, not you. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll ever get over that.’
His brows knitted, as if he was struggling to understand. ‘But, Josie, if having a baby means that much to you, we could try—’
‘No, we couldn’t try anything now. It’s all way, way too late,’ I said with weary finality. ‘I want you to leave.’
‘Leave?’ He looked blank for a moment and then his face cleared. ‘You mean you want me to go and stay with Mark and Stella tonight? Perhaps that’s a good idea, then tomorrow we can talk it all through when you’re over the shock and feeling more reasonable and—’
‘No, I want you to leave the house, this minute, and not come back! I’ll never be in such a reasonable state of mind that you can talk away the affair, or fathering a child with another woman.’
‘Josie!’
‘This is my house and you aren’t welcome in it any more,’ I said with finality.
‘Look, Josie, how about if I spend the night in the studio, then see how you feel in the morning? I can’t let you do this to me—to us!’ he said pleadingly, hazel eyes full of hurt—and maybe a dawning of astonishment at finding that suddenly he could no longer twist me round his little finger.
‘There is no “us” any more. You can sleep in the studio tonight if you must, but I want you gone by morning. I’ll pack your stuff up and put it outside the back door for you to collect—and you’d better send someone to clear out your studio too, before I’m tempted to make
a funeral pyre of it.’
‘I know you wouldn’t do that,’ he said, but he didn’t sound too certain of it, which enraged me even more. He’d never really known me if he actually thought I could do that…and, come to that, it was clear he had never quite twigged how desperately I wanted a baby either, despite all the times I’d tried to discuss it with him.
‘Get out!’ I yelled, because something volcanic was starting to build inside me and suddenly I was on the verge of hysteria and looking over into the abyss.
He got up silently and left by the back door to the garden, carrying the overnight bag he’d arrived with, and as I slammed and locked the door after him I saw the lights in the studio go on and his tall, familiar shape moving about inside.
Sitting on the bottom step of the stairs I gave way to such deep, wrenching sobs that I frightened myself. It was a long, long time before I could stop and by then I was quite hoarse.
I heard the side gate squeak later. Ben was probably off down to the pub for something to eat, and maybe a drink or two to sweeten the idea of sleeping on the old ottoman in the studio, which was lumpy, to say the least. And it would be pretty chilly down there too.
Not that Ben’s comfort mattered to me any more…though when I thought of life without him, my future seemed to stretch in front of me like a long, lonely road. Could our past have been a total sham? Was it truly me he loved and had I, perhaps, been at least to some extent to blame by staying in Neatslake instead of going with him on his trips to London? Perhaps this Olivia had, siren-like, lured him onto the rocks…
For the first time in my life I did the classic suspicious wife thing and went through all his pockets, and then, after hesitating, the small tin box in which he kept odd papers and old treasures, which normally I wouldn’t even think of touching. I sat down on the patchwork bedspread and opened it up.
There, right on top, was a picture of me in the garden, wearing the old straw hat that was Granny’s and smiling into the sun. I remembered when he’d taken that one, suddenly appearing between the bean canes with his camera. Under it were all the letters and cards I’d ever given him, photographs of us together, Valentine’s cards I’d made him…
If our love didn’t mean anything to him, would he have kept all these mementoes of our life together?
I lifted up one corner of a particularly large Valentine’s card I’d constructed out of paper doilies and foil sweet wrappers as a teenager (his to me, that year, had been burned into a slab of driftwood), softening with the memories…And then under it I hit paydirt.
‘Dirt’ was the operative word. Olivia, it appeared, had been in the habit of shoving an explicit little missive into his pocket after his visits, for him to read on the way home, reminding him of what he was missing while back in Neatslake. It was obvious, too, that Ben had talked to her about me—and not in a terribly flattering way either, since she referred to me as ‘your comfort blanket’, something he clung to simply from habit. In fact, the notes made Neatslake sound like a rest and relaxation facility, with me in the nanny role, where he could retire until he was ready for yet more energetic and innovative sex games.
Any slight sentimental wavering vanished. Shoving everything roughly back into the tin box I went back downstairs and opened the first bottle of wine to come to hand, which was apple, and had downed a couple of large glasses by the time someone knocked at the door a little later.
I ignored it, until Libby opened the letterbox and shouted through it. ‘I can see you, Josie. You’d better let me in right now, because I’m not going away!’
I jerked open the door. ‘I really don’t want—’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, enveloping me in a warm hug, which said a lot, because she’s not a terribly huggy person, usually. ‘Harry just called to tell me he’d heard you arguing with Ben and then crying for ages, and he was really worried. He said he didn’t want to come between a man and his wife by interfering—not that you are, of course, but the next best thing—so I said I’d come and see what was the matter. Tell Auntie Libby all.’
She held me off, looking at me with worry in her blue eyes. ‘You look terrible! What is it?’
I burst into tears again and she guided me over to the table, where I slumped down in a chair. ‘Ben’s been having…having an affair!’ I choked.
‘I thought it might be something like that.’ She poured some more wine into my glass and one for herself. ‘Now, just take it slowly and tell me everything.’
I did, every last word I remembered, including the phone call from Sugar Mummy. I’m not sure it was entirely coherent, but she got the gist.
‘So I threw him out and he’s staying in the studio tonight, though I’ve told him I want him gone by morning. I’ll start packing up his stuff in the house shortly and put it outside. It can all go in the studio until he fetches it, or has it collected, and the sooner the better!’
‘Look, Josie, I know you’re upset,’ she said, handing me a wad of tissues from her bag—she’d obviously come prepared. ‘But it does sound to me as though he was just madly infatuated with an older, sophisticated woman. Probably great sex, you know?’
‘Obviously not,’ I said coldly.
‘I expect he was flattered when she showed interest in him too. But once that wore off, and he realised he risked losing you and all his home comforts, he tried to back off. If you throw him out now, he’ll probably take the easy option and move in with this other woman, so if you want him back, don’t do it.’
‘But, Libby, she’s having his baby, that’s the worst thing of all! And when I told him he started to say if it meant that much to me we could try and see if there was anything we could do to start a family, so he can’t ever have been listening to a word I said on the subject.’
‘He liked being the centre of your world. He didn’t really want to change that, Josie, however he justified it as concern for you. But to keep you now, he’ll clearly do whatever it takes.’
I knew she was right. ‘I thought I knew him as well as I know myself, and now it seems I was totally deluded. He didn’t even seem to think having an affair was wrong. He was just sorry I found out and got upset about it!’
‘I don’t suppose he did think any of it through, because thinking isn’t his big thing, is it? I mean, he may be an artistic genius, but he isn’t terribly bright otherwise.’
‘He didn’t need to be,’ I said. ‘He was loving and strong, supportive and understanding…or I thought he was all those things.’
‘It’s easy enough to hug someone and tell them everything is going to be all right,’ she pointed out, ‘or leave little heart-shaped messages about the place.’
‘He left me a tin of chocolate sardines last time he went to London—that should have told me something was fishy.’
‘Perhaps his subconscious was trying to confess?’ Libby suggested. ‘But actually, apart from being so self-centred that he took the way you created the perfect environment for him to work in as his God-given right, he always gave me the impression he truly loved you. In fact, I’m sure he does love you, in his way, that’s why he doesn’t think the affair is important. He doesn’t love her, it was just sex.’
‘There must have been something missing in our relationship or he wouldn’t have done it,’ I said miserably. ‘Perhaps it’s partly my fault, Libby?’
‘I don’t know how you work that one out, you daft bat!’ she said forthrightly.
‘But I’ve been burying my head in the sand. I could see he had another life going on in London that he was enjoying, while mine revolved more and more around Neatslake. And he started buying me all sorts of expensive electrical things, like the bread-maker, which were totally alien to the sort of life we were trying to lead.’
‘Well, you can’t blame him for wanting to give you a few labour-saving devices, can you?’
‘You said you saw him in a wonderful suit in London and he used to come back in designer jeans sometimes, so perhaps he got hooked on having ex
pensive things? I mean, I know he’s always used that allowance from his parents to buy himself electrical gadgets and other non-essential stuff, but apart from that he’s always seemed to be as dedicated to living a green life as much as I was. He’s so not the man I thought he was!’
‘None of them are. Like I said, you have to keep your eye on the ball the whole time.’
I looked up, drawn out of my own woes. ‘Not Tim—he’s mad about you!’
‘Well, no, but he’s a bit dim, like Ben, so some other woman might decide to try and grab him if I don’t watch it,’ she said affectionately. ‘They probably would have done already, if he’d had any money.’
‘Well, it’s too late now for me and Ben. I don’t want him back.’
‘Think about it first, Josie,’ she said earnestly. ‘Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face by sending him right back into her arms.’
‘I’m not, and I did start to wonder about whether I might forgive him in time—until I found some notes from her in his keepsake box. He’d obviously described me and our relationship in hugely unflattering terms, because she was spelling out all the things she would like to give him that he didn’t get at home, and they made me feel quite sick. I know now that I don’t want him near me, ever again.’ I shuddered. ‘I’m just sorry I wasted the best years of my life on him.’
‘Right…’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I see what you mean. He’s not only betrayed you, he’s betrayed everything good that you had together by talking to her about your relationship. But I still don’t know how you’ll manage without him. He’s been the centre of your universe for ever.’
‘I’ll survive. The house is mine and I don’t want any of his money. He can keep it. And I’ve still got you, haven’t I, my BFF?’
‘Yes, best friends for ever,’ she agreed. ‘You know I’ll always be here for you.’
‘And I’ve got Harry too. I hope he wasn’t too upset?’
‘He was a bit, but I’ll go there on my way home and soothe him down,’ she promised. ‘You and Ben splitting up will worry him, of course, but so long as I can assure him you aren’t lying on the floor, overdosed on peapod wine, he should be OK.’
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