The Good Girl

by Fiona Neill

  ‘I think Harry would notice if I suddenly poured boiling wax over his cock. And wouldn’t it set hard?’

  ‘If you dip the mould in cold water it comes off like a glove. Then you can cast it in bronze.’

  ‘How do you know all this, Rach? Because of research for the script?’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone. Budgie tried it. It worked fine apart from the fact he dripped the wax all over his balls and ended up losing a lot of pubic hair.’

  ‘Please, have mercy,’ said Ailsa. She was laughing so much that tears dripped down her cheeks.

  ‘If you really want to know what’s going on, you need to get hold of his bank statements or look at his mobile phone,’ Rachel said, finishing the bottle of wine.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t find out. Sometimes knowing the truth causes even more uncertainty than the uncertainty of not knowing,’ said Ailsa. ‘Maybe if he’s having an affair I should let it run its course.’

  ‘I’m the one who avoids responsibility. Not you, Ailsa,’ said Rachel gently. ‘You always try to sort things out. I’ve always admired you for that. Ever since we were children.’

  They hugged.

  Rachel continued: ‘If you do nothing he’ll get in deeper and deeper with another woman and end up leaving you. Whatever the outcome, you need to be one step ahead. Take a look at his phone.’

  ‘I don’t know the password.’

  ‘Go to one of those shops in Camden Market. I’ll come with you if you like.’

  ‘I can’t imagine Harry getting into anything that would distract him from his work,’ said Ailsa. ‘He’s not the type.’

  ‘I’m not very wise when it comes to choosing boyfriends, Ailsa, but one thing I know from the married men I’ve slept with in my time is that there isn’t a type. Gather the evidence. If you find something suspect take a few days to get your head together. And tackle him when you’re ready. You need to be one step ahead. Men always try to lie their way out of these situations. It’s not in Harry’s interests to be honest.’

  Ailsa bided her time. Rachel got impatient. A few weeks later Harry came home from work early. ‘I’m in trouble.’ This was it, thought Ailsa, her shoulders tensing. She was organizing the fridge. Why did everyone start a new carton of milk before the old one was finished? His voice was higher than usual and taut with emotion. Could you clench your vocal cords? she wondered as she turned to face him. It was 5 February. That date was etched in her memory.

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ She wasn’t going to make this easy for him. ‘Did you kick up a fuss about the new timetable? Kath said it was having a big impact on family life.’

  Harry swallowed a couple of times, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down pathetically. He headed towards the kitchen sink and began washing a dirty mug, squeezing far too much washing-up liquid into the bottom so that when he turned on the tap, bubbles spewed onto his jumper sleeve. He literally couldn’t face her. Right use of literally, thought Ailsa. It was one of those words that were rarely used correctly any more.

  ‘I love you, Ailsa. And I love our children.’ He spoke slowly as though every word were coated with something viscous. He didn’t sound like Harry. But he had stopped sounding like Harry months ago. ‘I love our life together. But I’ve done something really stupid. I don’t really understand how it’s happened or why it’s happened but I do know that I’ve never done anything that I regret more. I’ve lost my way. I’m so sorry.’

  Ailsa sat down at the end of the kitchen table so that she could observe him from behind. She suddenly found everything about him ridiculous: his shoulder blades poking through the back of his shirt, the hair growing on the nape of his neck, the incipient bald patch, the worn heels of his shoes. Anger was a mask for pain, Rachel had told her during their most recent conversation. She longed to pick up the jug of daffodils that he had bought for her yesterday and throw it at him. She looked down at her hands. They were gently shaking. He offered to make tea but forgot to switch on the kettle.

  Welcome to my world, Ailsa wanted to tell him, because since the dinner at Kath’s she had found herself frequently distracted from basic tasks. Ben had sweetly taken to making her a cup of tea when they got home after school. The way her eight-year-old son noticed something was wrong and could complete this simple task and her forty-five-year-old husband couldn’t made her feel furious all over again.

  Harry sat down and took her hand, stroking her fingers like Ben stroked the ear of his teddy. She held his gaze until he couldn’t bear it any more. He was wallowing in self-pity.

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘There’s no mystery, Harry. You’re just another middle-aged cliché.’

  There was no originality in her situation. She knew the script: the marriage wasn’t right, it hadn’t been for ages; he had tried to talk to her but she was unresponsive, remote and too wrapped up in the children. He had finally met someone who understood him.

  ‘It’s not what you think.’

  ‘What do you think I think?’

  He looked up at her. His dark eyes were so watery that she blinked. He rubbed them and his shoulders slumped from the effort required simply to speak.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Have you fallen in love with someone else?’

  ‘It’s not that straightforward.’

  ‘I wouldn’t describe infidelity as straightforward.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘What did you mean then?’

  ‘I got involved with a student.’ It was the most direct answer he had given to a question so far.

  ‘Another cliché,’ said Ailsa, anger making her dangerously clear-headed.

  ‘Don’t worry, she’s a postgrad,’ he said quickly.

  ‘How old exactly?’

  ‘Almost twenty-six.’

  ‘So she’s twenty-five,’ said Ailsa. She thought the weeks of indecision had allowed her to dissect every possible scenario, but a new wave of anxiety crashed over her as she absorbed this unexpected fact.

  ‘I guess if you’re going to have a midlife crisis you might as well do it properly.’

  ‘She’s an old soul,’ said Harry. He regretted saying this and opened and closed his mouth as though trying to recapture the words.

  ‘With a young body,’ said Ailsa. Harry winced, putting his hand up in front of his face to try and block her anger.

  ‘I told you, it’s more complicated than that.’

  He explained that she was doing a PhD on the decrease of dopamine in the adolescent brain. When Ailsa didn’t say anything he wrongly assumed that she wanted him to continue. It was interesting research because drugs and alcohol activate the pleasure-producing chemistry of the brain, especially dopamine, and an overstimulation of the pleasure-producing pathways could perhaps eventually adversely affect normal experience of joy and affect decision-making. Especially among teenagers.

  ‘Are you trying to tell me you fell in love with her mind? Or that you were doing method science?’ asked Ailsa, enraged by the way he could soothe himself by talking about work when she couldn’t. She didn’t like the dry, sarcastic tone she had adopted, but in the face of his shame and her pain it was impossible to disguise her contempt. It occurred to her that what she wanted to feel was nothing.

  ‘I’m trying to explain why we started spending time together,’ he said.

  ‘Please, spare me your pathetic excuses.’

  ‘Things haven’t been easy between us, Ailsa.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve been spending a lot of time with your parents. You just spent the whole weekend away looking after your mother.’

  ‘She had a doctor’s appointment. Who else was going to take her?’

  ‘Your dad. Or Rachel. We hardly ever see each other. We both work long hours. We have three children. There are a lot of extenuating circumstances.’

  ‘This sounds like a well-rehearsed self-justification. Couldn’t you at least have had the decency to let me kno
w what was going on in your head before you got so involved?’

  ‘I didn’t want to burden you with more worries. You were dealing with all of Luke’s problems.’

  ‘What has Luke got to do with any of this?’

  ‘He’s put us under a lot of pressure. Caused a lot of arguments.’

  ‘So you thought the best way to deal with this was to have sex with a student?’ asked Ailsa. ‘Teenagers mess up. It’s a neuro-programming issue. That’s what you normally say. But you never apply your great theories to Luke.’ Harry was always harder on him than on Romy and Ben. She pushed this thought away.

  ‘You always try to find excuses for him. That’s part of the problem,’ said Harry.

  ‘You always find excuses for everyone apart from him,’ Ailsa retorted. ‘Your expectations are so low that he’s lost any incentive to please you. You have no idea how bad he feels about himself.’

  ‘Is that what you really think?’

  ‘I admit that Luke can be difficult but I think you’ve stopped trying.’

  ‘Please, will you just listen to me for a moment and stop being so defensive.’

  Ailsa fell quiet. Harry spoke about Luke and how difficult he found it being his father. He felt he didn’t know him and they had nothing in common. He described how he felt like an intruder on Luke’s relationship with Ailsa. He remembered how he had spent hours persuading Luke to build a Lego castle with him when he was Ben’s age and how, just as they had completed it, Luke had held it in the air and dropped it on the floor on purpose.

  Ailsa remembered this too. It was an accident, she pleaded. Harry put up his hand to stop her. He continued. Even when he was little, Luke never wanted Harry to read him a story or help with his homework. If he had a problem he always sought out Ailsa. Until Romy was born Harry thought he was doing it all wrong. She was so different. A noise that sounded like the sea echoed in Ailsa’s head. She couldn’t hear. She thought of all the tiny networks of capillaries, veins and arteries and realized the sound she could hear was the blood flowing through her head. She pressed her temples as hard as she could. Harry put his hand on her cheek and asked something. She pulled away. His touch was too painful.

  ‘Girls are always closer to their dads,’ she said as the noise faded. What about Ben? he asked. He couldn’t be closer to Ben. For the second time that evening Harry’s eyes filled with tears. Now Luke was a teenager his connection with his eldest son was even more tenuous, and soon it would be too late because Luke would be gone. He wiped his nose with his sleeve.

  ‘You can’t hold Luke responsible for your entanglement with this girl,’ said Ailsa.

  ‘I’m not. I take full responsibility for my actions. I’m just trying to contextualize. I’m trying to work out why after all these years she was the one who got to me. It’s not the first time that a student has been interested in me.’

  ‘I had no idea you were so irresistible,’ said Ailsa sarcastically. ‘How long have you been sleeping with her?’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  Harry started speaking again. She had started a postgrad course in September. He was her tutor. They had fallen for each other almost immediately but nothing had happened for a couple of months. They started going out together a couple of nights a week. He thought he was in love. He had fantasized about leaving Ailsa and the children and moving abroad with her to a university in the US or Australia. He had even checked out jobs in Sydney. It was this that really got to Ailsa. He had always dismissed her efforts to persuade him out of London. Harry didn’t notice her anger. She realized he had stopped taking her into account months ago.

  He wouldn’t stop talking. He was looking for a way out of his old life, but as the fantasy took shape he realized their entanglement was about escape. He was flattered by the way the girl desired and idolized him, and they had done some great work together. But unlike his life with Ailsa, it wasn’t real. He wasn’t in love with her. So he had decided to end the relationship.

  ‘Well, congratulations, Harry,’ said Ailsa.

  ‘I realized that in the greater scheme of things she doesn’t mean anything to me.’ He gave Ailsa a nervous smile. She didn’t smile back. ‘But that’s not all,’ he said. He was beginning to resemble one of those Dr Seuss books she used to read the children when they were little. Which one was it? She tried to remember. Either The Cat in the Hat or The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. Ailsa tried to focus.

  ‘Why would you risk your marriage and your entire family life for someone who didn’t mean anything to you?’ she asked.

  Harry couldn’t answer. His eyes shifted uncomfortably around the kitchen, resting first on the coffee maker, then on Lucifer, and finally on the daffodils.

  ‘And if it’s over why are you telling me about it now?’

  ‘Because it’s important to be honest,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the most dishonest thing you’ve said so far.’

  His eyes were again fixed on the coffee maker.

  ‘People found out. Colleagues. Her friends. It doesn’t seem fair that you don’t know and they do. Today I was called to see the vice chancellor. Obviously I have to hand her over to another tutor to supervise. All very awkward.’

  This was not what Ailsa was expecting. Now she was afraid. This was no longer simply about the threat to her happiness. Already she knew that although it would be a heavy price to pay, it was a cost she could bear. If this got out he might struggle to get another job. His children would hate him. It could blow apart the life they had built together. Damn him for turning it into a situation where she wasn’t allowed to fall apart. She tried to compose herself.

  ‘How did they find out?’ She already knew the answer to the question before Harry spoke. ‘She told them?’

  Harry nodded slowly as if his head was unbearably heavy. His whole body drooped.

  ‘I tried to end the relationship. She thought we were moving to Australia. There was a big gulf in expectations. She was devastated.’

  ‘How could you let yourself get in so deep?’

  ‘It wasn’t a normal affair.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We didn’t have sex much, at least in the conventional sense.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘We texted each other a lot. It got out of hand.’

  He finally looked up at her. His eyes were panicked, like Ben’s after he had woken up from a nightmare.

  He started explaining how the modern world held many temptations. Drugs, alcohol. Risky sexual behaviour. Sugar. He spoke fast. His pupils were dilated.

  ‘There are so many stimuli in our environment that can activate cravings,’ Harry said in a tone that sounded almost pleading. ‘My self-regulatory capacity has been seriously compromised.’ He started to explain how he had suppressed his pre-frontal cortex. ‘There are two pathways that mediate frontal regulation of emotion and I have moved from a frontal-striatal pathway associated with successful regulation to a frontal-amygdala pathway.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Ailsa.

  Harry’s head bowed until it was almost touching his knees. She again noticed his hairline had receded. It made him look so vulnerable.

  ‘The texts were sexual. Once it started I couldn’t stop.’

  Ailsa opened her mouth to speak but the words stuck in her throat. She swallowed. He offered to get her water. She shook her head. She didn’t want to accept anything from him. Their rules of engagement were already being redrawn. She resolved never again to allow herself to be in a position where Harry could cause her pain. It was, to quote Romy’s favourite phrase of the week, an inviolable truth.

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘She’d describe what she wanted to do to me. I’d say what I wanted to do to her. You know, the usual kind of thing.’

  ‘I don’t actually.’

  ‘She sent them to the vice chancellor. There was a disciplinary panel. Five people, including Kath, sat in a row examining the evidence an
d decided that I hadn’t broken any rules. They couldn’t look me in the eye. They can’t fire me. The vice chancellor said he hoped I would stay, but I could tell he didn’t mean it. Obviously the girl is really sorry, now she’s seen all the trouble she’s caused. She’s begging me not to go. I’m under such pressure, Ailsa, I don’t see how I can keep working at the department. It’s untenable. I don’t know what to do.’

  Ailsa knew instantly. She didn’t want to get divorced. Rachel would argue that she had no pride, but it wasn’t that simple when you had children and hadn’t she done an assembly on how pride was a sin in almost every religion from Christianity to Islam? She thought of all the hard work that lay ahead just to get back to where they were forty minutes ago. Her stomach cramped as though her lower intestine was slowly being squeezed tighter and tighter. Sometimes staying in a marriage required more courage than leaving it. Who had said that? Then she remembered: it was her mother.

  She must have made a noise because someone was at her side and a hand was on her wrist. It wasn’t the waiter’s because he was fluttering around with a dustpan and brush, sweeping up mozzarella salad and bits of broken plate from the floor. Harry was right: it was always a mistake to look back. Dissecting their relationship had been like picking up shards of broken glass. Piecing it back together had been even bloodier.

  Harry had endured marriage guidance therapy as part of his punishment but loathed its idiom. How does naming all these feelings help get over them? Ailsa had sobbed at the end of another searing session. The therapist wanted Ailsa to read the text messages from Harry to the student. ‘You have to know what it is that you are forgiving,’ she advised. Harry had reared from his seat to protest.

  ‘Don’t you realize that the release of cortisol under stress means that the amygdala imprints memories that have a strong emotional charge?’ The therapist shook her head. Ailsa intervened. She explained that if she read them she might never have sex with him again. And one of the few things they had going for them was the fact that even at the peak of his infatuation they had still managed to find each other attractive. Harry confessed that he had kept this from the student, a fact that Ailsa felt was significant.