Downward

by White, Bethan

  And for a few days it was. The bruise was kissed better and then some. He was given a freshly made plate of pasta, all was forgiven. Megan was sorry she had sniped at him at lunchtime, she hadn’t known about his headache, poor baby. Mark was an idiot, she had a good mind to report him.

  And then she found the lipstick on his underpants and another brick fell out of the wall.

  Let Her Cry

  *

  The phone rang and rang. Where was she? Megan didn’t ring her mother like most women in her position would – what would be the point? All she would get was that smug little silence, the silence that said, ‘I told you so. Your father and I never liked him anyway. Come home, dear, and let’s put it all behind us.’ Then it would start about Kyle, had she thought of taking him to see someone. He seemed bright enough – and here the dreaded ‘I suppose’ would creep in, along with ‘of course, we love him to bits, but …’ – perhaps a child psychologist? Bearing in mind his father’s …

  So, no. Not her mother. Sam was always her first port of call. Had always been her first port of call, ever since school. Sam was one of the cool kids, always with the right clothes, the right hair, the right everything except attitude; Megan’s mother hadn’t liked her much either. Come to think of it, Megan thought, as Sam’s phone went to voicemail, that was probably why their friendship was so strong.

  ‘Sam …’ She paused. How did you begin a conversation like this? ‘Sam. I just found lipstick on my child’s father’s boxers’ just somehow didn’t sound right. ‘Sam,’ she said, trying to keep her voice level, ‘I need to talk to you about something. Can you ring me back when you get …’

  ‘Megs?’ Sam’s voice broke in. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’

  Megan should have known she couldn’t fool Sam, but she tried all the same. ‘No, I’m fine. I just thought … we hadn’t seen each other lately and I thought …’

  ‘Rubbish. What’s he done?’

  Megan tried for a laugh. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  She heard Sam expel an angry breath through her nose. She had had that habit since they were girls and it used to get her more detentions than enough at school. But now, it just meant she was on the warpath and watch out. ‘Megan,’ Sam said. ‘This is me, okay? I can tell you’re upset. I know you are not playing away from home. I know only a man can make you sound like that. Therefore, it’s Chris. So, I repeat, Megs, what’s he done?’

  And still Megan couldn’t tell her. Her mouth just wouldn’t make the sounds. She found herself sobbing into the phone as she leaned her head against the back of the settee. She could feel the texture of the fabric, she could feel the warmth of the sun on her shoulder, she could hear the birds outside. Everything from outside was working okay; it was just inside she was broken. From a far distance, as though from another planet, she heard a voice and the voice said, ‘Stay there. I’m on my way.’

  Stay there? She had no choice. Somehow, her legs weren’t working any more. She gave an involuntary jerk – Kyle! Then she remembered; today was his playgroup day. Morning, anyway. He didn’t enjoy it, the other children seemed to make him edgy, but she took him anyway, every Thursday, come hell or high water. His life was going to be full of people, most of whom would not be to his taste, but that was life, after all. Her heart broke every time she walked away, but sometimes, you had to be cruel to be kind. She decided to have a wallow in it all and the tears flowed like rain and she was still huddled into the settee cushion, her face swollen with weeping, when Sam burst into the room, all Marc Jacobs, from the skin out. There was something about Samantha Cormack that put most women’s teeth on edge – perfection on that level can be very wearing. But she took Megan in her arms, not caring where the snot and tears might land and that was why, when all was said and done, she was the person Megan had turned to for the past fifteen years and counting.

  Eventually, it was time to move into the kitchen and have a cup of coffee. Noses were wiped, eyes were dried and soon, coffee was made and enhanced with a little something to keep the cold out – not that the weather warranted that, but the cold inside is sometimes the hardest to beat – Samantha cut to the chase.

  ‘I’ve heard random blubberings from you before,’ she said, with a smile which didn’t reach her eyes, ‘but this is something on another level entirely. I know he hasn’t missed your birthday, your anniversary, any of the usual, so – what is it?’

  Megan looked into her coffee in silence.

  Samantha managed people all day long; it was what she had been born for, she often felt. So she could work a silence with pinpoint precision. When the time was right, not a second more, not a second less, she asked the sixty four thousand dollar question. ‘So, he’s having an affair, is he?’

  Megan’s shoulders went up defensively and she folded her arms across her body, shielding herself from hurt. She nodded, a tiny movement of the head which looked almost like a trick of the light.

  ‘Someone at work?’ Sam had seen it so often, though she had always avoided it herself. She never crapped on her own doorstep – as mantras went, it could do with some polishing, but it worked for her.

  This time, Megan’s left shoulder went up in a little shrug. ‘Dunno,’ she said, sounding like Kyle.

  ‘So,’ Samantha sat back and raised her hand, ready to count off the points on her fingers. ‘Yes, he’s having an affair. You don’t know who with. Or, therefore, presumably, how long it’s been going on.’ She looked across the table at Megan, whose eyes were beginning to brim again. ‘Is that right?’

  A tiny nod again, with lips set in a line.

  ‘Megs,’ her friend leaned forward this time and reached both hands across the table. ‘How in God’s name have you got yourself in this state if you don’t know for sure? You don’t know who. You don’t know when. You don’t know for how long … for all you know, there could be a completely innocent explanation. In fact, what made you think it in the first place? You know he works weird hours sometimes – surely, it can't be that.’

  Megan patted her friend’s hand and put her own into her pocket. Samantha rolled her eyes. Not another hankie, surely? How many tears did the woman have left unshed? But no. Not a hankie – a pair of Calvin Klein’s, a little frayed as to the elastic and perhaps not in the first flush of whiteness, but unremarkable.

  ‘These look like Chris’s,’ Sam pointed out. ‘I was expecting something frillier.’

  Megan looked up, her eyes harder now, not so tear-filled. ‘I know what you mean. No, I didn’t find some alien knickers in his pocket, nor the classic receipt or credit card bill. I found this.’ She unfolded the boxers and pointed. There, unmistakeable and unrefutable, was a smear of lipstick, ringing the fly.

  For the first time in many years, perhaps even ever, Sam was speechless. She had put aside her mild prejudice against Chris. After all, no one is ever good enough for a best friend, right? But this … what could she say to this? She looked up to meet Megan’s eyes and she felt her own begin to swim. Megan was a mother, a wife in all but the legal shenanigans, and yet there she sat, looking just like the little girl lost and scared in the cloakroom all those years ago. Sam got up and walked around the table and stood protectively over Megan. If Chris had walked in then, she would have gone for him, tooth and nail, for what he had done. But he wasn’t there, so instead, she just crooned to her friend, trying to take away the pain. ‘The bastard,’ she said. ‘The bastard.’ Then, again when the time was right, she stood up and stepped back so she could look Megan in the eye. ‘It’s over with you two, yes?’

  ‘There’s Kyle,’ Megan said, folding up the CKs and putting them back in her pocket.

  Samantha didn’t really do kids and Kyle was no exception. But even so, she knew that when you had them, you tried that bit harder. But surely, kids or no kids, there were some things it was hard to rise above. ‘Yes, but …’

  Megan stood up and took the mugs over to the sink. With her back to Sam, she gave her decision. It was easier to say it to th
e little back garden, with the rose struggling up the back fence, limp in the heat. ‘I’ll ask him for an explanation. If …’

  ‘An explanation?’ Samantha was aghast. ‘What kind of explanation can there possibly be for lipstick on his underpants? On a collar, possibly. A grateful client. A secretary’s birthday do. But it would have to be a bloody great letting opportunity to make anyone that grateful, wouldn’t it? Megan – you’re off your head if you let him get away with this!’

  ‘He had a migraine.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What do you mean? He gets really bad heads …’

  ‘Having a headache means you don’t have sex. Not that you do. Unless when he has a headache he doesn’t want to actually do the shagging, he just likes a nice comforting blow job.’

  Megan looked at her friend, startled. For all her attitude, Sam didn’t usually talk like that.

  ‘Don’t give me the Bambi look,’ Samantha snapped. ‘You knew what you’d have to do the minute you saw that lipstick. There are things you can forgive and there are things you can't. And this, you can't. Do you really want Kyle to be brought up by someone who comes home from work after having a quickie? Where’s the respect? You deserve more.’

  ‘But … where will I go?’

  ‘Go? You don’t need to go anywhere. He’s the one that goes.’

  ‘We can hardly afford this place as it is. If he has to find somewhere else … well, we’ll go under.’

  ‘Stop it with the “we”,’ Samantha advised her. ‘There is no “we” any more. Unless you mean you and Kyle. The sooner you sort this, the better, Megs.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him when he gets home tonight.’

  ‘What? With Kyle here? You know how …’ she just stopped herself from saying ‘needy’ ‘… time-consuming Kyle can be. I can just picture the scene. By the time he’s in bed, you’re both shattered and then it will all be too late. You’ll go to bed, he’ll probably want …’

  Megan held up her hand. ‘Okay. Okay. You’ve made your point. I’ll ring Mum to pick up Kyle. She won't mind an extra afternoon with him, I don’t expect.’ She knew as she said it that she would have to deal with the inquisition afterwards, but this situation wasn’t going to end without at least some gloating from her mother, so why worry about that now? ‘I’ll go round to the office and get him on his own.’

  ‘You’d do that?’ Samantha was impressed.

  ‘I think I have to, don’t I?’

  ‘What if it’s someone there? The lipstick donor?’

  ‘Well, that’s perfect, isn’t it? I can stand and watch when the shit hits the fan.’

  Samantha walked through into the lounge and picked up her keys and bag where she had dumped them on her way in. ‘Well, let me know how it goes, Megs.’ She held her friend close in a hug and whispered in her ear, as though Chris was in the room, smirking, covered in lipstick kisses. ‘Keep strong, you deserve better than this.’ Then, before the crying started again, she left.

  Thursday was Chris’s day in the office. When things were very busy he occasionally got called upon to do a showing, but after the flurry of Monday, the week had been fairly quiet. Mr and Mrs Perfect had passed the credit check by a whisker, but they had signed on the dotted line and everything was going ahead. By an unspoken agreement, the Pughs had been passed on to Jacintha to handle – to Chris’s amusement she seemed to think this was a good thing, but he was sure she would soon learn that the Pughs came at a price. Louise Taylor had also signed on the dotted line for number forty-three; stranger things had happened, according to Dave Stanley. He didn’t know the half of it!

  Although the office policy was to keep things open-plan – the result of a long-ago team-building exercise – there were small rooms that anyone could use if they were wrestling with how to make a crappy house in a rundown neighbourhood seem more like Versailles. Choosing the images for the website could be a mission and quiet and peace sometimes helped. So it was perhaps a good thing that Chris’s task for that Thursday midday was precisely that – making a silk purse out of the pig’s ear that was number ninety-two, Falklands Close. It seemed that every single picture included a red flag; whether it was peeling wallpaper or the corner of next door’s trampoline, this house needed serious talking-up before it could go on the market as a let. He had just managed an expert crop, leaving in the feature fireplace but removing the damp patch over the window, when there was a tap on his door.

  ‘Yes?’ He was surprised. Knocking first was not something that generally happened at Stanley Lettings.

  Jacintha stepped into the office, a plastic smile on her plastic face. ‘Your … wife …’ Did he imagine the question mark or was this just another annoying manifestation of her constant moronic interrogative? ‘Is outside. Wants a word, apparently.’

  He leapt up, his heart in his mouth. ‘Kyle?’ he said, almost as an involuntary reaction, like closing your eyes when you sneeze.

  ‘No.’ Megan had pushed Jacintha aside. ‘No, it’s not Kyle.’ In a deft movement that surprised even her, she managed to get Jacintha back over the threshold and slam the door in her face. ‘It’s you.’

  A cold hand closed around Chris’s heart and gave it a warning squeeze. He hadn’t had that many relationships before he met Megan. If he were to be scrupulously honest, he had never had anything worthy of the name before her. And yet, breakups had been very traumatic – no one likes to get the bum’s rush. He didn’t speak – he didn’t want to condemn himself without at least hearing what she had to say. It might not be … That. He still couldn’t give last Monday night’s experience a name or even a face; if he kept it in the cupboard, it might yet go away.

  ‘Have you nothing to say?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know what you’re here to say to me, so how can I answer?’

  She sighed and sat down, across the desk, like a client. The distance might work for him or against him. The next few moments would tell. ‘I want to ask you what happened on Monday,’ she said.

  The hand squeezed tighter. Somewhere in the corner of the room, behind him, in the shadow of the filing cabinet, a dog shifted, its chain rattling against its black coat.

  ‘Monday?’ If only he could make some time, some time to think.

  ‘Yes. Monday. The day you came home at gone seven, with a bruise you got from falling over. The day you had a migraine and got some special medicine from Mark that made you woozy. The day you got a nice blow job from someone.’

  The hand squeezed so tightly he could hardly breathe. ‘The day I got a what?’ He couldn’t even remember that bit. At least, not clearly. ‘I don’t …’

  ‘Remember?’ Her eyes and voice were cold. She reached into her bag and pulled out the Calvin Kleins. ‘She wears red lipstick, if that helps to narrow it down at all.’

  The underpants, as she threw them across the desk, skittered over the polished surface and slid off onto the floor. He didn’t bend down to retrieve them and neither did she. Something was wrong here. Louise didn’t wear red lipstick, but he could hardly say that now.

  ‘Chris!’ Her voice was almost a howl. ‘Say something!’

  ‘What can I say? You’ve made up your mind. No matter what I say, you won't believe me. I would imagine you’ve already passed it by Sam?’

  Her eyes flickered downwards. ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, you have. You don’t do anything without passing it by Sam. I would imagine that Kyle was planned with Sam long before he was planned with me.’ He watched her and knew he was right. ‘So, you’ve shown her the evidence, as I think we should call it, and you’ve delivered the verdict. Guilty as charged, I would imagine. Am I right?’ She didn’t need to speak. ‘Yes, I thought so. So, what’s the sentence? Move all my things out by the weekend? Never darken your door again? Have Kyle every other weekend to take to the zoo?’

  Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him, speechless.

  ‘Well, I’ll allocute, shall I? If i
t’s good enough for Law and Order, I guess it’s good enough for me. Yes, I did have sex with someone on Monday. She made all the running and I was under the influence of whatever Mark had given me so I gave in. He told me to drive carefully; he didn’t tell me to stay away from psychopathic women bearing a grudge.’

  ‘So, you’re blaming Mark, now?’ Her eyes were wide with disbelief.

  ‘No, no, of course not.’ He shook his head. ‘He wasn’t to know … Look, it’s a long story and it begins before we even met. There was this woman, we had a one night stand and she turned up on Monday as a client …’

  ‘She must have been a hell of a lay.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘A one night stand more than five years ago and as soon as you clap eyes on her again you’re at it like weasels.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that. I didn’t even recognise her.’

  Megan muttered something and reached down for her bag.

  ‘Sorry. What did you say? I didn’t catch …’

  She stood up. Speaking clearly and looking him in the face, she said, ‘I said that you are not who I thought you were. I thought you were a decent man who loved his family – that’s me, by the way, me and Kyle – and worked hard to protect and care for them. To me, that means not shagging any slag who crosses his path.’ She turned to leave then thought better of it. ‘Where did you do it, by the way? Just to complete the picture, you know.’