“He’ll want to be forgiven Rachel. Whatever nonsense he’s been up to with this woman, she won’t hold a candle to you and the children.”
“But she must do, mustn’t she? Why else put everything we have at risk? She must mean a great deal to him. And he can’t have loved us as much as I thought he did to start something with her in the first place.”
“Life is long and complicated, Rachel. Even good people do stupid things sometimes.”
“You’re just being careful not to slag him off in case we stay together.”
“Oh didn’t I slag him off out loud? Sorry. I think he’s a selfish, self-indulgent bastard who’s obviously been thinking with nothing but his prick. But for what it’s worth, before today I always liked Gareth. And, if I’m honest, thought he was rather cute.”
“What’s weird is that when I first met Gareth I had this long standing boyfriend called Will and I was cheating on him with Gareth. I knew it wasn’t right and that I wasn’t being fair, but I was finding it difficult to choose between them.”
“So why did you choose Gareth in the end?”
“He wanted me so much more than Will. He fancied me more. He found me more interesting. And he kept telling me as much. And so I eventually dumped Will. How vain is that, when you think about it? Picking my life partner on the basis of how good he made me feel about myself! But right after I dumped Will, I wasn’t absolutely certain I was making the right choice and so a couple of times after the big break up – after Gareth and I had become official – I actually snuck back to Will and cheated on Gareth with him, like I was making doubly certain that it was Gareth I preferred. I’ve never told anyone that before. That I was once a lying, fucking cheat, too.”
“That’s not the same thing at all. That was just…a transition period, like keeping your old comfy boots when you get a new pair and wearing them again a few more times afterwards, before you break the new ones in, because your feet are hurting and miss the old pair.”
“Interesting analogy, and nice of you Jenny, but it was just plain old fashioned cheating.”
“Well it’s an entirely different thing to have a bit of post-break up sex with your ex-boyfriend while still in your twenties and not yet married and with no children. I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it.”
“But I am beating myself up Jenny. Gareth and I were happy. Good jobs, nice house, great kids, still had sex regularly, nice to each other. How could he do this to me?”
“I have no idea. Off his fucking head if you ask me.”
“Maybe I should look Will up on Facebook?”
“Don’t. He’ll probably be bald and fat and have six kids. Or maybe he won’t. Either way it’s dangerous.”
“I feel like all this is happening to someone else and I’m sat here watching it unfold, like it’s some sort of television drama. I feel completely dead inside.”
“That’s shock that does that. I’m afraid it’ll start hurting very soon.”
“You’d better get me another gin then. And my mother. I really want my mother. Ring my house and ask her to come round. Quick, else she and Felix will have swanned off to Cowbridge for the day, looking continental.”
Francesca arrives as Rachel is nearing the end of the second glass.
“My poor baby girl,” she says, putting her arms round her daughter. Finally the tears come.
*
By the time Gareth gets home, late that night, Rachel has long since conked out on gin and tears. The rest of the house is deserted. Round and about keeping Rachel’s glass topped up all afternoon, Francesca and Jenny had gone online and found a holiday cottage in Tenby, available to rent immediately. Felix had been instructed by Jenny to pack on behalf of everyone, which he had done willingly but rather nervously, having never either had children of his own or visited west Wales.
“Wellies,” Jenny had impressed upon him over the phone. “Don’t forget wellies for everyone. And raincoats. And hoodies. Plenty of hoodies. And when you’ve got all that and the children into the Transporter, come round here to pick up Francesca.”
Iris and Nora had accepted without question the explanation Francesca gave them that because their mother needed to work long hours on a big important deal, she and Felix had decided to whisk them all away to the seaside for a lovely few days. Even Oscar.
“There’ll be fish and chips and ice cream and long walks on the beach,” Francesca promised gaily, as she climbed into the front of the van.
Jenny watched as the van drove away, Felix looking decidedly uncomfortable at the right hand drive wheel, the children and Francesca grinning and waving cheerfully.
“I felt a bit like mothers in the war must have felt, lying to their children when they were being evacuated,” she told Alastair later. “Well girls and boys, off you go on your adventure and Mummy and Daddy will be right here, waiting for you when you get home. Only living in separate houses.”
“You don’t know that for sure, “ Alastair had consoled her. “Maybe they’ll work something out.”
“Maybe.”
When the gin was all gone, Jenny had folded a rather floppy Rachel into her own car, driven her home and put her to bed. She strategically placed a plastic waste paper bin on the floor beside the bed and two pint glasses of water on the bedside table.
The bin is still empty and the glasses full when Gareth gets home and peeks into the bedroom, before climbing into Nora’s bed for a sleepless night.
When he hears Rachel get up at 6am and go downstairs, he waits for a while and follows her. He finds her searching through the kitchen drawers for paracetamol.
“I’ve got a killer hangover,” she says. “Put the kettle on, will you?”
For one second, his heart lifts. Perhaps she is just going to pretend as if nothing has happened. Just let the whole sorry situation drift past them without touching them, so their lives together can continue.
Then she sits down at their battered kitchen table, the one they bought when they first moved into this house, marked over the years by their children with felt pens and crayons and forks, the legs chewed by Oscar when he was a puppy.
“Let’s hear what you have to say,” Rachel says. “And don’t try and let yourself off the hook.”
He tells it from the beginning.
When he’s done, she sighs. “If I didn’t have such a thumping head, I’d have another gin about now.”
“I’m so very sorry, Rachel. I can’t believe how stupid and selfish I’ve been. I love you very much, you and the children, and I don’t want to lose you. Please will you give me a second chance?”
“I’ve been wondering since yesterday – gosh, was it really only yesterday? – whether you’d be asking me for that or for a divorce. You didn’t actually say which it was when we finally spoke on the phone.”
“I don’t want us to get divorced Rachel. I want to be with you.”
“Make your case then.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a frigging lawyer aren’t you? Make your case. Why should I give you a second chance?”
“Because I love you and our four children, I can’t imagine life without you. I’ve made a huge mistake for which I’m deeply sorry and it won’t happen again.”
“Jeez Gareth. That was just terrible. I thought you were meant to be a good lawyer. Surely you’ve been thinking through all the angles on this since I found out. Try harder. Give me your best shot.”
He takes a deep breath.
“OK. If we split up it will be catastrophic not only for you and me to lose what has been a long and happy marriage, it will be catastrophic for our children. Our daughters will be devastated. Eloise could even mess up her A levels or one of them might end up cutting like Grace. Jake is younger and he won’t be affected as much right now but later, when he’s an unruly teen, he’ll tell you that he hates you and wants to live with me all the time. We’ll have to share our children – every other weekend. We can barely organise our diaries now when we�
��re all under one roof. Who gets Christmas Day? Birthdays? Results Day? How will we cope when one of us meets someone else? Are you going to be OK if another woman comforts Nora if she wakes up crying during her weekend with me? Or is the person who is around when Iris starts her periods say? We’ll have to sell this house so we can each get somewhere smaller. Share out our bed linen and crockery and the paintings, divide up all our photographs – the school ones, the family holidays, the ones we take every Christmas morning of them opening their presents.”
“Anything else?”
His voice softens and she can hear tears now thickening his throat. “I want us to celebrate our silver wedding Rachel. I want to go on more family holidays with you and the children, maybe someplace more exotic than Tresaith. I want us to go to their graduation ceremonies together and drive holding hands in the back of fancy cars to their weddings, see you looking beautiful in a lavender mother of the bride outfit and comfort you while you weep during the ceremony. I want to lie by your side every night, your bare skin next to mine, listening to you snore. I want to bring you tea in bed every morning and drink wine in the kitchen with you every Friday night after work. I would miss you every single day of my life if we split up.”
“Better.”
“Please don’t give up on me Rachel.”
“I need to think things through Gareth. One of the saddest things about all this – and there are so many sad things – is that I haven’t made a single major decision in my life without talking it over with you. I’m sitting here now listening to what you’re saying to me and the first, ridiculous thought that jumps into my mind is that I want to talk over with you what I should do about you. How fucking messed up is that?” She hits her forehead with the heel of her hand as she says this, tears pricking her eyes.
Gareth gets up from his chair and tries to put his arms around her.
“Don’t touch me Gareth. Don’t you fucking dare touch me. Else I might just break.”
He sits back down.
“I just want to hold you.”
“And I’m weak enough to actually want you to hold me. You! Who’s been holding someone else behind my back.”
“I didn’t mean it to happen, Rach.”
“Is that meant to make me feel any better? You didn’t accidentally cheat on me Gareth. It’s not like you tripped and found you had somehow planted your dick inside another woman. You flew half way across the world to do just that for fuck’s sake.”
Gareth drops his head in shame. “I know. There’s nothing I can say in mitigation…”
Rachel stops him in mid-sentence, holding her hand up like a policewoman directing traffic. “If you talk to me like a lawyer, I swear I will cut your cheating dick off.”
“You were the one who told me to make my best case!”
“I know I did. I’m entitled to be contrary. Right now, I’m entitled to be inconsistent.”
“You are, perfectly entitled. Please can I come over and hug you?”
“No Gareth. I don’t trust myself. I don’t want to be comforted by you. Have you make me feel better about something that you did.”
“Is there anything I can do to help make you feel better?”
“Yes you can bugger off to the Rhondda and stay up there tonight. Go tell your parents what a shit you are. That should even things out a bit, given my mother and Felix know, and Jenny and Alastair too.”
“I wish you hadn’t told anyone. It will be harder for you to give me a second chance when people we care about think less of me.”
“Tough. You should have thought of that before you embarked on an affair. As I was saying, you go up to the Rhondda and while you’re gone I’ll think about what I’m going to do. Don’t come back to the house till this time tomorrow.”
Chapter 31
Gareth drives up to the Rhondda in a haze. It’s a journey he usually loves, always cheering a little, even when he’s all on his own in the car, when he passes the sign that says Welcome to Rhondda. He doesn’t cheer today. When he pulls up outside the house he grew up in, he feels sick to his stomach at what he has to tell them.
The door is not locked when he pushes it open. It never is.
“Who’s that?” his mother calls cheerfully from the kitchen when she hears someone at the door.
“It’s me, Mam,” Gareth calls from the hallway. “The local axe murderer, come for a spot of killing before going down the Naval for a pint. You really should lock the door you know. It’s not safe.”
“Course it’s safe. We’ve nothing to nick except the telly and you’d need three people to lift that and they’d need to get past Davey, who’d guard that telly with his life. You coming into the kitchen or what? I’m putting the kettle on. If I’d known you were coming I’d have made a bit of cake. What you doing here anyway? I thought you were away in…” She stops mid-sentence when she sees his face and all the colour drains out of her own.
“Good Lord Gareth, what’s happened? Is one of my grandchildren sick?”
“No Mam, nothing like that. Is Dad in? And Davey?”
“Dad’s out the back. Davey’s at the library with Mrs Roberts from down the street, getting her new books.”
“Good. I’ll go get Dad.”
He finds his father down on his hands and knees, planting out a tray of blue and white flowers into terracotta troughs.
“I thought you were done with gardening, Dad?”
“It’s your mother that’s done with gardening. I miss it myself. It’s just a few pots of lobelia and alyssum. I’m not going to set about ripping up her beloved decking.”
“I need to talk to you, Dad. You and Mam together.”
Richard wipes his hands on the seat of his trousers and gets to his feet. Without saying anything, he follows his son back into the little kitchen where they find Carol sat at the table, looking worried. Richard slides into the chair next to her and takes her hand.
“Well, get on with it then, son. Put your mother and I out of our misery.”
Gareth takes a deep breath. “The past couple of weeks I’ve been having an affair with a woman I met through work. A client. It was her I was with when I was in Canada. To my shame I was falling for her, really falling for her…”
“This doesn’t sound too clever, Gareth,” says Richard, gently.
“Not clever at all!” His mother’s voice is angry. “Absolutely shameful. And over my dead body are you leaving Rachel and the kids and moving to bloody Canada.”
“He’s 44, Carol, and a grown man. You can’t talk to him like that. Has Rachel found out?”
Gareth nods. “Yes she has, and she’s very hurt and angry, as you’d expect and she has every right to be. The affair is over and I really want Rachel to give me a second chance. Cassandra turned out not to be what she seemed to be.”
“They never are Gareth. But you men never learn. Always think the grass is greener on the other side,”
“Like I said, Mam, I thought I was falling in love with her.”
“So what exactly happened to make you stop?” Carol asks, crisply.
“She told me the truth.”
Gareth pauses.
“Go on son,” Richard says gently. “Tell us the rest.”
“Cassandra was in a long term relationship with an older woman…”
“And that stopped you in your tracks?” Carol cuts in disparagingly. “I didn’t raise you to be homophobic! I didn’t raise you to be unfaithful either.”
“It wasn’t that Mam. You didn’t let me finish. The older woman is Beverley Allen, her business partner, and the person with whom Eloise is doing work experience over in Toronto. And Beverley belongs to us.”
“Belongs? What do you mean?
“Beverley is related to us. She’s the daughter of Idris Maddox.”
“Blow me down with a feather,” Carol says. “But that’d make her around Davey’s age wouldn’t it? In her eighties?
“Beverley’s not that old. Late fifties, maybe. Idris was fifty
something when she was born.”
“Golly, this is like something off of Jeremy Kyle!” Carol sounds excited by the drama of it all.
“It gets worse, Mam. Beverley claims that Idris isn’t only her father but also Davey’s. That Davey’s father Tommy wasn’t able to have children and that before he went out to Canada Davey’s mother asked Idris to give her a child.”
Carol’s mouth sags open and for once she doesn’t speak.
“That explains a lot,” Richard says quietly, after a while. “Why Idris never came home again. Not once, not even for his parents’ funerals. Why Gwen and Tommy didn’t like to talk about him and on the rare times they did they always sounded sad. Why Davey was an only child…”
“This doesn’t make sense Gareth. I thought you said this woman was a client. Is that how you met her girlfriend? Started cheating not only on your wife but on your…let me see now…your grandfather’s sister.
“She’s Davey’s half-sister Mam. It didn’t come about like that. I only found out who Beverley really was two days ago. She’s known who I was, who Eloise is, all along. She sent Cassandra to find me. They pretended they needed me as their lawyer. When really what they want is our bone marrow.”
“You’ve lost me now.”
Richard and Carol both look confused.
“Beverley needs a bone marrow transplant but hasn’t found a match in Canada. She’d thought she’d try her luck over here. In a gene pool related to her. And in case we weren’t willing to come forward as donors, Cassandra thought she’d add a little blackmail to the mix by setting me up for an affair.”
“You can lead a horse to water Gareth…” his father says, sternly. “This pair of women are not coming out of this story in a good light but you aren’t covering yourself in glory either.”
“You’re right there, Dad. I’m completely ashamed of myself and have put everything I hold dear at stake for—”
“A bit of skirt,” Richard finishes the sentence.
“All I can say in my defence is that it felt like much more than that at the time. Much more. I was tricked.”
Thicker Than Water Page 29