The Secrets of Married Women

by Mason, Carol

  The Secrets of Married Women

  A Novel

  By Carol Mason

  The Secrets of Married Women. Copyright © 2007, 2012 by Carol Mason. All rights reserved.

  First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Hodder and Stoughton, an Hachette Livre UK Company.

  Kindle Edition: February 2012

  Cover design by Streetlight Graphics.

  LICENSE NOTES

  All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  DISCLAIMER

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are a work of fiction or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Reviews for The Secrets of Married Women

  “Full of realistic emotional twists. The character’s reactions to the challenges they face are frank and unmelodramatic; there is a refreshing honesty about the numbness that comes from discovering an infidelity, and the shame that comes with perpetrating one. Equally affecting are the counterpoised sources of sadness in Jill’s life. Her marriage has faltered because she and her husband can’t have children and yet she must be a mother to her own parents in their old age; it’s a poignant combination.” The Telegraph, UK

  “What really goes on behind closed doors. Carol Mason unlocks life behind a marriage in this strong debut.” Heat Magazine, UK

  “Mason’s writing is absorbing. While reading a spicy bit about Leigh’s affair while taking the bus to work, I rode past my stop.” Rebecca Wigod, The Vancouver Sun

  “This poignant novel deals with honesty, forgiveness, love and the realities of modern-day marriage.” Notebook Magazine, Australia.

  “There is a fresh and vital edge to this superior debut novel. Mason has much to say about relationships. Her women have resonant characters and recognizable jobs, which give depth to their messy lives. A bittersweet narrative and ambiguous outcomes make this much grittier and more substantial than standard chick-lit fare.” The Financial Times, UK

  “It’s got the raw realism of someone writing about a world she knows. A grand little book for the festive fireside.” The Irish Evening Herald, UK

  Table of Contents

  Reviews for The Secrets of Married Women

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  ‘I’m having a gone-off-Lawrence crisis,’ Leigh curls a lip at me as we pack deeper into the busy Pitcher and Piano bar down at Newcastle’s Quayside, holding our wine glasses above our heads so they won’t spill. Beyoncé is singing Crazy in Love. ‘After all these years of marriage, Jill, the sex is so tired. I tell you, he’s got a set-piece routine. It never varies. I can predict his next move before he does it.’

  I look at my good friend who always tells it like it is. Her Botoxed face is like a bare white china plate. The usually lustrous hair, haggard from its recent dye-job, hangs black and straight and heavy, like curtains at the crematorium. And she’s wearing the sort of mid-life crisis dress that gets you the type of attention you really don’t want—a skin-tight, one-sleeved, zebra-striped number that she bought on our last shopping outing with our other friend, Wendy.

  ‘You know, last night in bed we were kissing, he was trying to get me going, and I felt…’ she looks at me in frank exasperation, ‘…nothing. I might as well have been kissing the sheet.’

  I have chuckle and, despite herself, she does too. ‘Oh Leigh! All marriages get a bit flat.’ Say nothing of my own. Rob’s face fades up in my mind’s-eye, bringing a dim sadness that I sharply blot out. We’ve forced our way over to the window, hoping to grab a table, but they’re all taken. Funny, we’re at that age now where rather than eye the men, we eye the seats.

  ‘I don’t care about all marriages Jill. I just care about my own. I know people say you should look at somebody who’s got it worse than you—the poor chap with no legs when you’ve got two—but I just think I’m not even forty and I’m already losing it for him, and it frightens me. It really does.’ She sends a dour gaze across the black expanse of the Tyne river. I can’t believe the change in her. Just minutes ago she was cackling in affectionate despair over Lawrence’s obsessive compulsive disorder (one of her favourite rants; that and his unusual obsession with Christmas) telling me how he comes to bed after checking the front door’s locked forty times, only to leave the back one open, and she wants to smother him with his pillow. But the smile is wiped clean off her face now. She’s on a marriage-bashing roll. ‘I tell you Jill, I’m really resenting him lately. I mean, I work long hours, putting up with all kinds of petty egomaniac bullshit and he gets to stay home and watch Oprah. A big drama for him is if the superstore is having a 2-for-1 and he forgot to clip the coupon.’

  ‘But you’re the one who suggested he give up his graphic design job and become a househusband,’ I remind her. Leigh earns a packet marketing a trendy line of locally-made leisure wear made popular by a famous footballer’s wife. She loves barking orders, and Lawrence has a nervous Stan Laurel obedience about him that makes him infectiously cute and annoying at the same time.

  ‘I know it was my idea that he gave up his job. I thought it’d help his disorders if he didn’t have so much stress. But I honestly imagined he’d get more done with his day. But he just sits around reading Eckhart Tolle and saying he wants to find himself.’

  ‘Disorders? Plural? He’s only got one!’

  ‘Maybe in your opinion.’ Her eyes twinkle at me over the rim of her glass before she takes a sip.

  I shake my head, playing like I’m aghast with her. It’s one thing to poke a bit of fun, but I don’t believe in jumping on the bandwagon when friends criticise their loved ones. Take Rob for instance. Rob is far from perfect; he leaves his banana skins in the plant pot and his shoes on the duvet. It’s fine for me to find fault with him, but woe betide anybody else who does. It’s hot in here and my throat’s already tired from having to shout to be heard. ‘Oh Leigh! You love Lawrence! He’s an absolute sweetheart! He does everything for you, all you have to do is ask. He’s always there for you, he’s a great listener and you’re the best of friends.’

  ‘But the sweeter he is, the more he’s turning me off.’ Her gaze follows a girl’s bum that’s hanging out of hot-pants with the word Fatz—Leigh’s brand—written on them in pink sequins. ‘I don’t want to have to ask him all the time to do things Jill; he’s not a child. I just wish he’d be a bit more proactive rather than wait for my orders. It’s not even like his routine ever varies, yet there’s always about four things he forgets to do.’ She sighs, takes her eyes off the girl’s backside. Eminem tells us we have to lose ourselves in the music, and we get pushed farther into the corner, away from the seats. ‘You k
now, I swear, even when Lawrence hugs me, he leans on me rather than supports me.’

  I daren’t smile because her gaze drops like a sad heart before she meets me frankly in the eyes. ‘The thing is, I don’t respect him like I used to. He annoys me, so I pick on him. And the more I pick on him the less I want to have sex with him.’ Leigh can be a peaks and valleys person but I’ve never seen her quite this fed up. ‘Mind you, nothing ever puts him off. But I suppose that’s men for you.’

  I wonder how she’d react if I said well, you’re lucky, at least you’ve still got a sex life... But I came out tonight to forget about certain things, not to be reminded of them.

  ‘You don’t feel like that with Rob, do you? Like you’re going off him?’

  ‘No.’ I hesitate. More like the other way around. ‘But we have our problems. Everybody has.’ Funny how you can make anything sound like nothing if you say it casually enough. But Leigh is one of those people who view their friends’ marriages through rose-coloured spectacles. If you tried to tell her that things were a little bit crap at the moment, she’d automatically think that your situation pales by comparison to her own. Her attention has already moved on to coveting a passing tattooed bicep.

  ‘Oh Jill, sometimes it staggers me how different Lawrence is from the men I’ve had in my past,’ she shakes her head in haggard disbelief of her own fate. I’ve heard this line many times. Leigh first saw Lawrence in a swimming pool; he was feeling his way crab-style along the gutter because, he told her later, he was terrified of deep water. The next was in an aerobics class; thirty legs were kicking in one direction, and one in the other. When she says stuff like this I often think she’s apologizing for him and trying to say I have had more masculine men than Lawrence. Men you yourself would fancy (because this is so important among friends). She looks at me now with those sometimes-a-little-bit-roguish eyes that you can’t quite read. ‘I’ve been looking up old boyfriends on the Internet. I’ve sent a few emails, got a few replies, rekindled the odd little flirtation.’

  I don’t know why this shocks me so much, but it does. ‘You haven’t!’

  ‘Why? Haven’t you ever done that? Googled your exes?’ Then she quickly adds, ‘Oh no you won’t have, I forgot. Because Rob was your only boyfriend.’

  ‘But that doesn’t make me a bad person,’ I joke. It’s odd though, but sometimes I can’t picture a time when I wasn’t married. I mean, I know it’s not quite been ten years yet, but I do sometimes wonder was there life before Rob, or was there Rob before life? And I’m sure he must think the same way, which is even more of a disturbing thought. I look around this place that’s lithe with sexy guys and girls, hormones roaring through the roof. ‘Do you think you’d ever have an affair?’ I ask her. ‘I mean, really go through with it.’

  Her eyes come back to mine with that cryptic business in them again. ‘An affair? Oh! Me? Never! Jill, I had so much screwing around in my single days. Maybe it’s different for you. You’ve only ever been with one man so you could be forgiven for being curious. But affairs are so sleazy. It’s awful. And besides, I’ve too much to lose. I have a child. You don’t understand what it’s like when you’re a mother, Jill.’

  Leigh sometimes makes tactless comments that make me feel like I’m a member of a very limited club of childless pariahs, and it wounds me more than I can ever let on. Rob and I just found out a few months ago that we can’t have children. Leigh’s the only person I’ve told, because Rob, for some strange reason, doesn’t want anybody to know yet. It’s not as though having children was all Rob and I ever yearned for. But since when was life so logical that this would make everything uncomplicated and okay?

  ‘So how’s Molly then?’ I ask, while we’re on the topic. Molly’s her eight-year-old, a rising Charlotte Church who’ll grab the phone off her mam and bleat Somewhere Over the Rainbow in your ear when you’re trying to have a conversation, which can be annoying.

  ‘Brilliant,’ she says, because Molly’s clearly not what she wants to talk about right now. Her wiry green gaze buzzes around the room. ‘Oh, God, look at these two. We’ll never look like that again will we?’

  I stifle a yawn and glance at the two dolled-up ten-year-olds in Madonna corsets that she’s referring to. The age rant; I’ve heard it a million times. Honestly, sometimes you can go out with Leigh feeling quite okay about yourself and then you go home and want to stick your head in the oven and slow-roast your own eyeballs. ‘Why? Would you want to be that age again?’

  ‘I’d kill my own mother to.’

  ‘Well that’s not saying much!’

  She smiles at me. Leigh’s mother is a nut who met all Leigh’s ‘dads’ by doing prison visiting. Then Leigh found out she had a twin sister—her mother kept Leigh and gave the other baby away. Leigh recently tracked her down and went to a coffee shop in Leicester to meet her—with Wendy and me in distant supportive tow at a nearby table—and the woman stood her up; something she won’t have mentioned now.

  ‘Honestly, though, do you even see one guy in here looking at us Jill? I tell you, not one has. Not even baldy by the bar who looks like he got that suit free when he bought the tie. Mr Divorced In Polyester. It’s so depressing!’

  ‘Well somebody should just give us a lethal injection and serve us up for dog food.’

  ‘I know!’ she says, thinking I’m being serious, and I just about scream. It’s the one thing I’ll never understand about Leigh. She’s bright, she’s got a brilliant job, a doting family, yet the only thing she seems to measure herself on is how many men look twice at her.

  We swell and collide with the pressing tide of bodies. I’m hot, and considerably underdressed, in my leather jacket, cargo pants and beige draw-string T—something I’d wear to run errands. But getting glammed up on a Friday night to come to a busy bar that’s full of singles, when I’m married, just makes me feel like a big fraud. A bead of sweat makes down my spine and my big toe and my calves are now in a serious gridlock cramp in these three-inch, knee-high black boots—my token nod to glamour. Donna Summer’s singing Hot Stuff now, and, as if on cue, two young lads latched onto beer glasses walk past us, and one of them—the cocky one with the muscles and sun bed tan—gives me the eye. Then his mate looks at Leigh and goes, ‘Neh. Not her!’

  A flaming colour rushes up Leigh’s white neck. ‘Did you hear what he just said?’

  ‘Oh come on, Leigh, they’re drunk. Don’t waste a minute thinking about it!’

  ‘Well the good-looking one certainly likes you.’ Her eyes do a quick sweep of me.

  ‘Oh come on, lads his age would have anybody.’

  ‘But not me!’ She turns away, takes a shaky sip of her wine. I’m stunned to see tears.

  ‘Oh Leigh, I didn’t mean it like that!’ I can’t believe how fragile she’s being. I want to say, why do you care what two horny teenagers and a lonely-heart with a hair-weave think of you? There are bigger things to worry about. But instead I tell her I’m bursting for the toilet. I take off, cutting a mission around shoulders, backs, boobs, boob-jobs, biceps and beer-glasses, and barge into the ladies’ loos where I immediately get gassed by a million cans of hairspray. They’re all bombarding the mirror, lifting their boobs, adjusting their thongs, fluffing, puffing and perfuming, or lining up at the condom machine, ranking the merits of strawberry versus peach flavour. What am I doing in this awful place? I left this scene behind me when I was about sixteen. I should be out with my husband, or at home, snuggled on the settee between him and the dog. There was a time when Rob and I never went out separately on Friday or Saturday nights. We could still see friends, but the rule was we had to see them together. It was a lovely little claim we had on each other; our friends all said it was sweet. Tonight though, as I was leaving, hovering there, hoping for some comment that I looked nice, I got the distinct impression that Rob couldn’t have cared less about the weekend rule, he was probably just pleased I was off out so he could get on with his date with the television.

  I queue
for the toilet, then I queue at the mirror to wash my hands and get lethally elbowed by a back-combing twelve-year-old Britney Spears. Between all these pluming heads I manage to catch a glimpse of myself standing quite still. My short, blonde ‘do’ that I have to keep Frizz-Eased so as not to look like the Jackson Five. My new tiny, trendy tortoiseshell glasses that replaced my older, clunky ones, that replaced painful years of vanity in the form of contact lenses. And my touch of long-lasting cherry lip-gloss. I don’t look half bad. I don’t think I look thirty-five. But among this sea of fresh young faces, I can see that my own has been hardened by a few too many of life’s hard knocks.

  ‘So, I wonder if Wendy’s having a nice night out.’ I pass Leigh another glass of wine. Our friend Wendy is at her husband’s work function tonight. If she’d been here, Leigh would never have ranted on like that about Lawrence, because Wendy’s got such a great marriage that makes a grasping part of your self-esteem want to build your own up, not blacken it. ‘So what do you think?’ I elbow her. ‘Will Neil look like James Bond in his tuxedo?’

  The old sense of humour I know and love returns. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But he’ll look better with it off.’ Wendy’s hubby, Neil, is a hunk. Plus he’s a top policeman, and he only has eyes for his wife. ‘But I’d rather you didn’t get me started on that thought track if you don’t mind. It’s a bit like dreaming of a chateaubriand when you’ve got to go home to a pale, squidgy, thawed-out pork sausage.’ She rolls her eyes back. ‘Hard choice. Hard, hard choice. A select roast extravagantly carved from the heart of the finest beef tenderloin, versus… the pulverised toenails and entrails of… Miss Piggy.’

  ‘Stop it!’ I tell her, and we chuckle.