No Turning Back

by Susan Lewis

  His head stayed down as he looked at their hands.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she murmured, pulling away. ‘Who is she? Is it someone I know?’ When he didn’t answer she could feel herself falling apart as she made herself ask, ‘Do you love her? Is that what you’re saying?’

  His eyes came back to hers, and seeing so much guilt and unhappiness she leapt to her feet. ‘No!’ she shouted. ‘You might think you do, but it’s just a phase, an infatuation. It happens to men sometimes when they reach your age.’

  His voice was shredded with emotion as he said, ‘It’s not a phase.’

  His certainty was like a vice crushing her heart. She turned away, then back, her eyes glittering with confusion and pain. ‘It has to be,’ she told him.

  Unable to look at her, he said, ‘I never wanted this to happen … I … I’m so sorry. I wish I could change things, but I love her and I can’t go on doing this to you, or to her.’

  Devastated by his concern for someone else, someone who mattered as much – more – than she did, she felt herself starting to recoil and scream inside. Whoever she was, he cared for her so much that he was prepared to walk away from his marriage, turn his back on everything they’d shared and built together, like none of it mattered any more. ‘Tell me who she is,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Please, I have to know.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, you do.’ But it was a long time before his eyes returned to hers, and when he said the name she reeled so hard that it was as though the world had crashed to a terrible halt and the ground was falling away. She reached out a hand to steady herself. She felt nauseous and panicked and so afraid she didn’t know what to do. But it must be a different Patty, it had to be, because her sister, the only person in the world whom she loved and trusted more than Don, would never do this to her.

  ‘We’ve fought it,’ he said brokenly. ‘Even when we knew we couldn’t give each other up, we still tried …’

  ‘Stop, stop,’ she cried, putting her hands out as though to block the words. ‘You have to stop. Patty’s my sister. She’d never … She couldn’t … Oh God, please, Don, tell me it isn’t true. This is a nightmare. I have to wake up now. You have to make me wake up.’

  ‘Eva …’

  ‘No! Don’t!’ she shouted, unable to bear the sorrow in his voice. ‘I can’t listen to any more. If you mean this, if it’s true … Oh God! No, no, no. Please don’t let it be.’

  As she dropped to her knees he came to gather her in his arms, and sitting her down again he took her hands in his. ‘Eva, listen to me,’ he said softly.

  ‘I love you, Don,’ she sobbed desperately. ‘We have so much together, our home, our lives, our marriage … You can’t just throw it all away.’

  Looking down at their joined hands, the diamond solitaire he’d bought her, the wedding ring, he tightened his grip as he started to speak, but she suddenly jerked herself away.

  ‘How long?’ she demanded shrilly. ‘I want to know how long it’s been going on, and please don’t lie.’ Realising what she was saying, she broke down again. ‘Oh God, you’re a liar, a hypocrite. You’ve been cheating on me while I’ve trusted you … Jesus Christ, you even let me talk about having a baby? How could you have done that?’

  There was nothing he could say in his defence.

  Slamming her fists into him, she cried, ‘Tell me how long.’

  Pushing a shaky hand through his hair he said, ‘It’s hard to say when it really started … I mean, I’ve always had a rapport with her, you know that …’

  Her face slackened with shock. ‘Are you saying it’s been going on the entire time we’ve been married? Please don’t …’

  ‘No, of course not,’ he interrupted. ‘I’d never have married you if I’d felt the way I do now. It was you I loved then, and I still do, but what we have …’

  ‘What we have means the whole world to me,’ she told him, as though being reminded of it would make a difference to him.

  ‘I know,’ he said gently, ‘and it always did to me, but with Patty it’s … different.’

  ‘Different how? What does she give you that I don’t?’ Her hands went to her head. Patty, her Patty. How could this be happening?

  ‘Eva, I can see what this is doing to you, so please don’t make me say any more.’

  ‘No!’ she cried shrilly. ‘I want to hear how she makes you feel. I need to know what I’ve done wrong, why you love her more than me.’

  ‘You haven’t done anything wrong. I swear, you’re not to blame.’

  ‘Is it my scars? Do they repulse you? Is that …?’

  ‘Oh God, you know that’s not true. They never have, they never will.’

  ‘Then tell me what I did wrong,’ she yelled, her head thudding with confusion and fear.

  ‘Oh Eva,’ he groaned, his eyes closing in despair.

  ‘If you tell me then maybe I can put it right.’

  ‘Oh Jesus Christ,’ he choked, covering his face with his hands.

  As his pain intensified her own she stood staring at him, too distraught to know what to say or do next. In the end she said, ‘You still haven’t told me when it started.’

  He took a breath that shook and broke as he tried to speak. He wiped a hand across his face and tried to make himself look at her. ‘I guess four or five years ago,’ he finally managed.

  Her heart contracted with so much shock that she clasped her hands to it. ‘You mean … You’ve been sleeping together …?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ he cut in quickly. ‘That was when I realised, or I guess accepted, that my feelings for her were … what they are. But I never did anything about it. I couldn’t, wouldn’t. She’s your sister, and nothing in the world would have made me want to leave you then. I told myself the feelings would pass, that they were an aberration, a phase as you said …’

  Horrified to think of all that he’d managed to hide from her, and for so long, she said, ‘So you stayed with me out of pity? Maybe you even married me out of pity.’

  ‘No! It wasn’t like that, I swear.’

  ‘Did Patty know how you felt?’

  ‘Not then, no.’

  So he’d suffered in silence, wanting her sister while pretending to want her. How could she have not known? ‘When did you decide to tell her?’ she asked wretchedly. ‘I suppose when you fucked her.’

  Flinching, he said, ‘Nothing like that happened until after her marriage broke up.’

  So they had slept together. Why had she even doubted it? The mere thought of it was worse than the knife that had once torn into her flesh. It made her want to run and scream, do anything to try and block it from her mind. ‘So until then you what? Just talked about it?’

  ‘Sometimes, but not often.’

  ‘And during those times, did you kiss?’ Why was she asking this? Did she really need to know?

  ‘Eva …’

  ‘Did Reece know? Is that the real reason he left?’

  ‘No, but he knows now.’

  ‘How? Who told him?’

  ‘He saw us together a few weeks ago. Since then he’s been trying to make Patty break it off, or tell you, or leave Dorset …’

  Reece, her champion? It hardly made sense. Nothing did. ‘But she can’t do either because she can’t leave you?’ she stated accusingly.

  His head went down again and realising what agonies they’d been through, loving her and knowing they were hurting her, made her wish she was dead. ‘So let me get this right,’ she said breathlessly, ‘you didn’t sleep together until after her marriage broke up, so it was all right to cheat on me, but not on Reece?’

  His face turned paler than ever. ‘It was never all right, not ever,’ he told her fiercely. ‘Eva, I swear I didn’t set out to hurt you …’

  ‘Of course you didn’t, you’re the one who despises men who cheat on their wives, so I expect you despise yourself now.’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘But not enough to make yourself stop?’

  His eyes were racked with
guilt as he looked at her. ‘I’ve tried, believe me, and so has she …’

  She turned away, unable to look at him any more. ‘Who started it?’ she demanded, the words seeming to strangle her. ‘Who made the first move?’

  Taking a breath, he let it go slowly. ‘I was with her one day,’ he said, ‘about three months after Reece had gone. You know how hard the break-up hit her …’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t understand why any more, because she had you.’

  ‘No, she didn’t have me. I was – am – married to you, and how she felt about me didn’t make losing her marriage any easier for her, in some ways it made it even harder.’

  Unable to deal with Patty’s feelings, she pushed them from her mind as she said, ‘So you were with her one day …’

  His eyes went down. ‘She’d got herself into a terrible state about Reece and how she felt about me … I didn’t know until I turned up at the cottage where I was supposed to be checking the alarm … She was there, and she just couldn’t hold it together. I tried to comfort her and …’

  ‘Oh God,’ Eva groaned.

  He allowed a few moments to pass. ‘It wasn’t planned,’ he told her, ‘neither of us meant it to happen, but …’

  She wanted to shout, but her voice was like a distant lonely echo inside her head as she said, ‘So the lies, the pretence, your affair has been going on for almost three years?’

  His wretchedness was crushingly evident as he said, ‘Yes and no. Most of the time we’ve avoided being alone together, and it was a long time, perhaps as long as a year, before anything physical like that happened again and … Oh God, Eva, I’m sorry,’ he cried as she started to break down again.

  ‘No, don’t,’ she sobbed, as he came to take her in his arms. ‘To think of you … All this time … I trusted you, Don, and loved you. And all the time you’ve been making love to me, telling me you love me … It was all a sham …’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ he told her earnestly. ‘Being with you, loving you, sharing our lives, has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.’

  ‘But it’s not enough, or it’s not what you want any more. So I have to try to forget that I love you, and that my sister has betrayed me … Oh God, oh God,’ she choked into her hands. ‘I can’t bear this. I don’t want to be without you. You mean everything to me, both of you …’

  ‘And you do to us, which is why this is so hard.’

  As the ‘us’ resonated its awfulness through her, she fell against him, sobbing more desperately than ever. ‘I’ve been such a fool,’ she wept. ‘Why didn’t I see what was happening?’ Lifting her head she looked helplessly into his eyes as she said, ‘I trusted you, that’s why I didn’t see it.’

  Knowing it was true, he tried to pull her head back to his shoulder, but she pushed him away.

  ‘The other night, when she texted me,’ she said, ‘I suppose it was meant for you?’

  Unable to deny it, he merely looked at her.

  Her eyes closed as yet more agonies of betrayal swept through her. ‘So you went out and stayed with her practically the whole night, while I thought you … Did you make love to her that night?’

  ‘Eva, it won’t …’

  ‘Did you make love to her that night?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  As her breath caught on the admission, the image of them together cut so harshly through her that she started to slap and punch him with all her might. ‘That’s why you went to the guest room when you came back?’ she accused hysterically. ‘Not so’s you wouldn’t disturb me, but because your conscience wouldn’t allow you to get back into our bed. I’m right, aren’t I? Tell me I’m right.’

  ‘It was both,’ he confessed, touching a hand to his bloodied nose.

  ‘And all the times I’ve wanted to see her and she’s said she can’t because she’s with Coral, she was with you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably, sometimes.’

  ‘Because it’s not Coral who’s been having an affair, it’s her with you.’

  As she smashed her fists into him again he grabbed her hands. ‘Eva …’

  ‘Let go of me!’ she shrieked, trying to wrench herself free. ‘Everybody knows, they’ve all been lying, feeling sorry for me …’

  ‘Only Coral knew …’

  ‘And Reece.’

  ‘Please come and sit down,’ he implored. ‘Let me pour you some more wine.’

  ‘I don’t want any fucking wine,’ she seethed, sending her glass smashing against the window.

  As he continued to stare at her she felt something move against her, and finding Rosie and Elvis looking up at her with worried bewilderment her heart started to break all over again. He was going to leave them too, because they didn’t mean enough to him either to make him stay. Dropping to her knees, she put her arms around them and wept into their adorable heads as he went to clear up the glass.

  ‘Are you going to her now?’ she asked when he came back to the table. ‘Is she waiting for you?’ Then, as another realisation dawned, more shock exploded in her heart. ‘Oh God, this is why she wanted to talk to Livvy, isn’t it? She’s telling her, while you tell me.’

  He didn’t deny it.

  Her eyes closed as she thought of Livvy and how hard she would find this. She wished she could go to her, but right now she wasn’t able to go anywhere. ‘So Patty didn’t have the courage to come and face me herself,’ she said dully.

  ‘She’ll come, if you want her to, but we – I thought I should talk to you first.’

  As his words fell around her like dust, she turned to look through her reflection into the night. ‘I think you should go,’ she said after a while.

  Stunned, he said, ‘We need to talk …’

  ‘What about? Haven’t you said it all?’

  ‘I don’t want to leave you like this.’

  ‘I don’t care what you want,’ she cried. ‘It’s about what I want now, and I want you to get out of my house, because this is my house and you don’t belong here any more. No, don’t touch me,’ she seethed as he came towards her. ‘It’s all a lie, an act you’re putting on, but you don’t have to bother now. You’ve told me you’re leaving, that you’re in love with my sister, so go to her. Go now and don’t ever come back.’

  As she slammed out of the kitchen she was shaking so hard that she fell against the wall, banging her hands against it and willing him with all her heart to come after her – but the door didn’t open and she couldn’t make herself go back. Then the nightmare got worse as she heard him speaking, and certain he’d called Patty, she flung the door open ready to tear the phone from his hand. He looked up from Rosie and Elvis, and seeing the tears on his cheeks she lost control again.

  ‘Don’t speak to my animals,’ she screamed. ‘Don’t even touch them. They’re mine, do you hear, and you have no business even being near them.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, backing away.

  Going to stand in front of them, she glared at him across the room. ‘Why aren’t you leaving?’ she shouted. ‘Why are you still here?’

  Putting his face in his hands, he shook his head. ‘Do you really, honestly want me to go right now?’ he asked helplessly.

  No, she didn’t, she never wanted him to go, but what she said was, ‘I’ll send your things over to the barn, so you won’t have any need to come back ever, and you can tell Patty that I don’t ever want to see her again either,’ and snatching up his car keys she threw them into his face before going to wrench open the conservatory door to make sure he left.

  Livvy was staring at her mother in horrified disbelief. The room seemed to be closing in around her as the rain outside beat the windows, and the heat from the fire scorched the air. The words her mother had just spoken couldn’t be true, yet the terrible angst on Patty’s face told her they were. ‘So now I know what’s been wrong with you,’ she said, sounding as dazed as she felt, ‘and frankly, I wish I didn’t.’

  ‘Livvy, I’m sorry,’ Patty responded s
hakily. ‘I didn’t mean it to happen, neither of us did …’

  Livvy’s eyes flashed. ‘Then why the hell did you let it?’

  Patty flinched. ‘I know you’re angry …’

  ‘Angry?’ Livvy spat incredulously. ‘Angry doesn’t even begin to do it. I’m disgusted, ashamed that you could do something like this to your own sister … This is going to totally devastate her, I hope you realise that.’

  ‘Of course I do, and believe me, if I could change it …’

  ‘You can, and you will,’ Livvy told her, her voice shaking with rage, ‘because if you don’t you’ll be losing me too.’

  ‘Livvy …’

  ‘No! I am not going to stand by and let you think this is all right, because it fucking well isn’t.’

  Wincing, Patty raised her hands and let them drop again. She didn’t know what to do or say, how to explain herself, or to comfort her daughter. All she knew was that nothing Livvy said tonight could make her feel any worse than she already did.

  ‘You have to end it,’ Livvy insisted fiercely.

  Patty nodded, then shook her head. ‘Darling, we’ve tried …’

  ‘Then you have to try again. And next time make it happen.’

  ‘Listen, you know yourself that we don’t choose who we fall in love with. It just happens and the harder you try to make it stop …’ Why was she saying this? Why was she trying to justify it when it was completely unjustifiable?

  ‘Whatever you say, it has to stop before Eva finds out,’ Livvy told her forcefully. ‘She can’t know about this …’ She fell silent as her mother’s stricken eyes came to hers. ‘Oh my God! Oh my God, please tell me you haven’t …’

  ‘Don’s talking to her tonight,’ Patty whispered.

  ‘Then you have to stop him! You can’t let him do it, Mum. He’s not yours, he’s hers …’

  ‘Oh enough, Livvy, please,’ Patty implored, putting a hand to her head. ‘I know he’s not mine, but it doesn’t change the way I feel …’

  ‘And what you feel matters more than what you’re doing to Eva?’

  ‘No of course it doesn’t matter more, but to go on lying to her …’

  ‘You wouldn’t have to if you stopped seeing him.’