by Sarah Rayner
“You sneaky bitch!” He got to his feet.
“Not half as sneaky as you.”
“What does one phone call prove?”
Maggie stopped unpacking and turned to face him. “Do you want me to walk out right now? Because you’re sure going a long way toward making that happen. Fran would be more than willing to have me.”
“No, don’t leave, please. I had to call Chloë about work! She’s the editor on a really important project of mine.” He sounded desperate.
“Oh, yeah,” said Maggie. “Very important project, I’m sure. You had to call her at home, didn’t you? In case you’ve failed to notice, Jamie, I am not a complete dunce. You were going to see her, weren’t you, and not going to play squash at all? Then when I insisted you come home, I threw your plans so you had to cancel. In fact,” she was really getting going, “I bet you saw her on Friday night, didn’t you, to make up for it? That’s why you weren’t here then when I called.”
“You called here on Friday?” Distractedly, he picked up her hairbrush.
“Yes.”
“You never left a message.”
“Seemed rather pathetic. Wife leaving message while husband’s out shagging another woman.”
Jamie said nothing and stood tugging hairs from the brush. After a while, with obvious reluctance, he said, “You’re right.”
Confronted with the truth Maggie didn’t feel sick or faint. Instead, she felt a ghastly sense of relief. At least she hadn’t imagined it; her judgment was sound, she wasn’t going mad. Yet she had to clarify. “Are you in love with her?”
Jamie stared at his shoes. “No.”
“Look at me when you answer! I need you to look me in the eyes and tell me that. Because if you don’t love her, then I’d like to know why on earth you would want to risk jeopardizing everything you’ve got. And if you do—” She stopped.
What if he does? What then? She panicked. It might mean that he doesn’t love me anymore; then he’ll want to leave me, Nathan, our home.
He looked up with those horrible, beautiful, hazel eyes that had cast a spell on her for so many years. To her surprise, they were full of tears. “I suppose I do,” he said at last.
Maggie sat down on the bed, afraid her legs wouldn’t hold her upright. This was it, then.
The end.
“But I still love you,” he added. Sitting down next to her, unsure as to how near was appropriate. “I love you, too.” He appeared as if he might take her hand, and thought better of it.
She wasn’t sure whether to see this as a glimmer of hope, or as hollow words designed to soften the impact of what he’d just admitted. A consolation prize. There was only one question left. “Do you want to split up?”
“No! No! I couldn’t bear it! I love you! I love Nathan! I didn’t mean it. It doesn’t mean half as much to me as you do. I couldn’t bear to lose you. Please!”
“What do you mean you didn’t mean it? Sounds like you bloody meant it to me. How long has it been going on for? How often have you been seeing her? Is she a good fuck? A better fuck than me?”
“No! I told you! It’s all been a terrible mistake. Once I’d started I couldn’t seem to stop.”
“Was she with you in New York?”
A pause. “Yes.”
“Did you see her on Friday?”
“Yes.” In a whisper.
“Did you fuck her?”
“Maggie, please.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“The night after you made love to me?”
Silence. She was acutely conscious that they were sitting, with only a few inches between them, on the marital bed. Yet they seemed a mile apart.
She continued, “Can you imagine how that makes me feel?”
There was a long pause, then Jamie cried, “I don’t know what got into me, Maggie, honestly. I’ve never done anything like this before. It’s something that happened, then, before I knew it, I couldn’t seem to stop, and she … she…”
“She what?”
Jamie seemed at a loss for words. “She was so … so … up for it.”
“Up for it! I bet she fucking was. An older man. Her boss. Someone else’s husband. Every editor ought to do it at least once. Great copy, after all.”
“It’s not her fault.”
“Do me one favor, Jamie. Allow me to hate her. You might be in love with her, but excuse me if I’m not. She’s done something I would never have done.”
“I know.”
“Though see where it’s got me.”
“I really am sorry,” he whispered, his face contorted. He looked as if he hated himself.
“It’s not just about being sorry,” Maggie said. “It’s about trust. I trusted you, Jamie, and you broke that trust. Smeared it over the whole of New York. Jesus—you even allowed me to meet the girl and ask her for work! What a sucker I feel about that now. No wonder she was so odd.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, you know.” His voice was so quiet she could hardly hear him.
“But you have, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it. What’s more, in the process you’ve turned me into something I hate—a paranoid, whining, nag of a wife.”
“You’re not, Maggie. None of this is your fault.”
“Well, it’s someone’s. And if I’m not to blame, and neither is Chloë, it’s got to be you.”
“I agree,” he admitted. “I’ve fucked up.”
“You can say that again.”
“What can I do? How can I make this better? Is there anything I can do to make you forgive me?”
“One thing is certain. We can’t carry on like this.” Maggie was amazed at how together she was sounding, how matter-of-fact. Despite this dreadful situation, she was empowered by understanding the full picture. The uncertainty, the suspicion, the anxiety had been worse.
“What do you want me to do?”
He was still sitting there, awkward, unsure. After everything, he was asking her to do the deciding. To Maggie the answer was obvious. She’d had the entire weekend to think about it and for all Jamie’s muddle, the options were black and white.
“You have to choose,” she said getting to her feet once more to add impact to her words. “It’s her or me. You’ve got to finish it with Chloë and make a go of this marriage, and come to Relate, or that’s it between us. Simple.”
“And what about Nathan?”
“What about him?”
“You’ve said yourself this isn’t just about me and you; it’s about him.”
“You should have thought of that on Friday when you were sticking your dick in someone else. It’s a bit late to come over all moral on me now.”
“He needs a father.”
“That’s precisely why I’m willing to give it one more go. If it weren’t for him I don’t know what I’d do. But he needs a proper dad, not a philanderer, someone he can respect, learn from.”
“I want to be that for him, Maggie, truly I do.”
“Well, prove it then.”
“I guess it’s one of the reasons I work so hard—”
“There’s more to being a good role model than being some professional big shot. Come to that, he needs a mother who’s not a doormat, someone he can be proud of, someone with principles.”
“Nathan is proud of you,” said Jamie quietly.
“Hmph.” She was hardly in the mood for flattery. “If we stay together, it has to be on my terms, and we’ve got to do it properly. I’m certainly not staying around here like some pitiful suburban housewife, letting her husband carry on with all sorts behind her back, purely because she’s got a huge house in the country that—heaven forbid—she might have to forgo if what was truly going on came out in the open.
“This way if he ever does find out—which I hope he never has to—at least my son will see that I didn’t sit back and ignore everything. No, I’ve had time to think about this, and I’m absolutely clear. I can’t compromise anymore. I feel like I
’ve been letting things slip for ages, and it’s more than my sense of self is worth to carry on doing it. If I catch you fucking around with Chloë again—or anyone else come to that—I won’t give you another chance. This is it, Jamie. End it. Or this marriage is over, and you’ll be the one that has to go.”
37
I was used as a punching bag for my parents’ rows, the place they’d come to when they needed to get rid of some aggression. One minute I’d have my mum in tears, telling me what a worm my dad was; the next my dad off-loading how Mum didn’t understand him. I was ten years old. And I don’t agree with people who say children fail to grasp what’s going on—they understand more than we think. I knew these demands were making me grow up emotionally in a way most other kids at school didn’t have to. Not in a good way—I felt ashamed of the situation at home, embarrassed by my parents’ constant arguments. There’s a lot more acceptance of divorce these days but when I was young there was a stigma attached. And that hurt. In fact, that’s made me very wary of commitment myself—because I associate it with upset and pain. So here I am at forty, still acting the carefree bachelor, unwilling to settle down.
Chloë was at her desk, reading Craig Spencer’s article, “Broken Homes, Broken Children?”
It could be me talking, she thought.
So soon after her discussion with Rob, it was like pouring alcohol on an open wound, forcing Chloë to think about Nathan once more.
Is he feeling the effects of all this? she wondered. Is he aware of more than James and Maggie realize? He’s only six, isn’t he? Poor little boy.
James didn’t talk much to Chloë about his son—he probably appreciated she found it hard to hear—but her conscience was increasingly nagging her. Their affair was becoming messier and messier and she was beginning to feel that the good times weren’t worth it. If she was honest with herself she knew she should try to cool things, if not finish the affair altogether. Certainly she was aware she should talk to James, yet knowing what she should do and actually doing it were very different. Plus the magazine was making increasing demands on her time; she had been glad of that—it allowed her to procrastinate.
James had responded to the one text she’d sent with the explanation he was also too frantic to communicate at length but that he’d meet her on Thursday. Which was today …
“So, how’s it shaping up?”
Chloë started; Vanessa had come up behind her. “It needs cutting,” she said, unwilling to reveal the article’s true impact on her, “but Craig’s delivered an excellent piece.”
“I gather the research groups are set up for next week. So you’re positive we’ll have a complete dummy magazine to show them?”
“Yes. This is the last of the features to come in. We’ll be raring to go.”
“Should be fun,” said Vanessa.
Chloë found it hard to imagine Vanessa having fun, but agreed. She too, was looking forward to seeing how readers responded to her baby. Secretly, she was confident. Her love life might be a disaster zone, yet professionally everything was coming together very well indeed.
* * *
In her heart, Chloë knew that if she was committed to breaking up with James it wasn’t wise to meet him at her apartment. It would be less risky to meet on neutral, preferably public, territory. She also knew that she shouldn’t have replenished her lipstick, doused herself in perfume, and she certainly shouldn’t have put on her best knickers. Rob would have plenty to say about that, she thought.
Still, her roommate would have been proud of the way Chloë kicked off the conversation when James arrived. She sat him down in the kitchen with a cup of tea, not wine, and took a chair opposite, several feet away. She glanced across at him in his familiar navy suit: his shirt needed ironing and the dark hair she loved looked in need of a cut. He seemed worn out.
“I’m beginning to feel all this is a bad idea,” she said.
“Oh?” He looked up at her, his hazel eyes mystified. Then he seemed to glean from her expression that she was poised to say something serious and he frowned.
“Yes.” Chloë nodded. She’d rehearsed this, to help her come out with it more easily. “I don’t just mean in terms of your marriage, but also for me.” She bit her lip, then rushed on, “I’m worried about Nathan. I suppose I’m even a bit worried about Maggie. I’m worried I’m going to get really hurt…” Yet just when she knew she should say, “So that’s it, it’s over,” she began to cry.
Suddenly the thought of not being involved with him anymore, of not being able to look forward to their evenings together, not having any romance in her life, not having someone to daydream about, share special moments with, laugh at her jokes, banter with, chat about to those few of her friends whom she’d taken into her confidence, seemed too much to bear.
If I break up with him, I’ll never go to Louisa’s with him again, or share dinner with him in any restaurant, anywhere, she realized. He’ll never come around here again. I’ll never go to New York with him, go sightseeing, swig champagne. I’ll never get to see his face in such intimate close-up. I’ll never make love to him ever, ever again …
And it wasn’t as if she could cut him out of her life, which was how she had handled gut-wrenching breakups in the past.
Instead I’ll have to see him every day, she thought. I’ll have to work with him—as the launch of the magazine gets closer our professional dealings might well be more frequent, not less.
At last she could see what Rob had warned her about: the situation was too much for her to handle. No matter what she did, there was no way she could come out unscathed.
“Hey, Chloë,” said James softly. He leaned over and squeezed her knee. “Please don’t cry. I can’t bear it when you cry.”
“Sorry,” said Chloë, sniffing, aware that her eyeliner must be running. She’d always striven not to weep in front of him, knowing how uncomfortable overemotional women often made men feel. “It’s just—I hate the thought of not seeing you again, ever—”
She choked, her voice breaking as she fought against the tears. She looked up at him. His face was anxious, concerned.
He’s so lovely, she thought. I like him so much.
“You will see me,” he said. “You’ll see me at work all the time.”
“That’s not what I mean. We won’t be close, we won’t be able to talk, not in the same way.”
“I’ll always care about you—you’re very special to me, you know that.” He took her hand across the kitchen table. “Perhaps we can be friends, do you think?” But his voice cracked as he said the words.
This only made Chloë cry harder. “I don’t want to be friends!” she gasped, knowing she should remove her hand but not doing so.
“No, it was a stupid thing to say.”
“You never were my friend. I never felt about you the way I feel about a friend—it’s different, what we’ve had.”
“I know.” James seemed so unhappy, too.
“I don’t make love to my friends.”
“Glad to hear it,” said James, and he smiled at her, as though trying to encourage her to do the same. But she was too upset for this to work. Perhaps at a loss as to what else to do, perhaps as a farewell gesture, perhaps to try to heal things, James began to stroke her hand, gently at first, in a way that brought back memories of the very first night they’d spent together, of when they’d first seduced each other in the nightclub on Broadwick Street. And then, of course, he moved up her arm, and she leaned into him, and he kissed her, and soon she climbed onto his lap for comfort, intimacy, to be closer to him again in that unique, special way. And then he wanted to make love and so did she and she knew Rob wouldn’t be back till much later, so she whispered this to him, and he lifted her skirt, and she unzipped his trousers, and he pushed aside those newly put-on knickers, and she pulled down his boxers, and they made out like that, in the kitchen, supposedly one last time.
38
The phone rang while Maggie was rereading a pri
ntout of “What the People of Britain Really Eat,” an article she’d written for the Observer. She’d invited an MP, a homeless young man, a model, a doctor, and a single mum living on benefits to keep a food diary for a week.
That’s good timing, she thought. I hope it’s someone I feel like talking to: I’m ready to take a break.
“Hi, Mags.”
Although she could scarcely hear him, she knew that voice at once. “Alex! I haven’t heard from you for ages. It’s a dreadful connection. Where are you?”
“On the M25. Coming up to junction nine.”
“You’re really near!”
“I know. I thought I’d call on the off chance you’d be in. I’ve just had a meeting at a site in Tunbridge Wells, and I was going to go back to the office, but it hardly seems worth it now.”
Maggie looked at the clock. It was four fifteen. By the time he’d driven back into London it would be time to go home. “No, no, I’m here. Why don’t you stop by for a cup of tea? We’ve got some cake I made for Nathan’s birthday too. I’m sure he won’t mind if you have a piece.”
“Ooh, goody.” Maggie could almost hear Alex’s mouth watering through the phone. He had always been partial to her cakes. “I’ll be with you in about fifteen minutes.”
Perfect. Enough time to run upstairs and make myself presentable, she thought.
It was November, and a bit nippy, so she’d been sitting at the kitchen table in her oldest jeans and a snug red fleece. Casual attire became her, but her rather daft pink slippers with pom-poms would have to go. She pulled on a pair of boots instead, and put on some makeup. She had just dabbed her wrists with Chanel No. 5 when the doorbell rang. She charged back downstairs.
“Hi!” she said, not bothering to contain her pleasure.
“Hi.” Alex stepped into the hall. Dressed in a sweatshirt and muddy jeans, with a leaf in his hair, he was as scruffy as ever, she noted fondly. “You look well.”
“Do I?” She was surprised but flattered. She’d been worried that the strain of the last few months must show.
“Mmm.” He stood back to admire her. “Slimmer? Fitter?”