“I have to try to make it work.” I sounded so wooden, but I was holding on by my fingertips. “We have children…a house…history…” It sounded weak, even as I was saying it. “Please just accept it.”
“I love you!” he said desperately, as if that could magically make everything better. Maybe if this was a fairy tale it could have.
“I love you too…Goodbye, Anders.” I put the phone down softly and only then did I allow myself to crumple.
Chapter Eighteen
I HEARD JACK COME HOME around two hours later, and I hauled myself off the bed, washed my face in the bathroom, then I went to find Jack and tell him everything. There was no point in putting it off anymore. Although this would probably end it, all I could think about was how it had begun, our marriage at least.
My parents and close relatives had flown over for the wedding. The dinner to introduce them to Jack’s parents had been interesting. My parents as usual had been lovely, though slightly emotionally detached. I think that’s why I was an only child; they had me because it was the “done thing” for their generation, but they found out that they had little interest in children so didn’t bother again.
My father was a doctor who worked long hours, and my mother the curator of an art gallery. They lived their lives consumed by their own passions and interests but with no friction. They were glad for my happiness, but they would have been equally satisfied if I’d been marrying an impoverished goatherd, as long as it was what I wanted. They’d seemed rather startled by Jack’s parents but too polite to comment, for which I was grateful.
The wedding was extraordinary, or at least the bits I can remember. It all went by in a blur, and it is like I have only small fragments of it committed to memory. I can remember nothing of what the minister said in the beautiful old stone church, just that he was there, Jack beaming at me from the front, and that so many of the guests were wearing hats. I’d felt an overwhelming happiness at marrying someone I loved so much and that the world was a beautiful place, particularly the lovely part of Gloucestershire where we had been.
The marquee had been set up on the lawn next to the formal gardens, and inside there’d been a vision of abundant white and green flowers in the soft light of a summer afternoon. I cannot recall the food or the speeches or who exactly had been there, though there had been an unspoken divisive undercurrent of the Australians being “them” while the English were “us.”
I’d felt bad that my relatives hadn’t been invited to the dinner dance later, despite having traveled so far, but supposedly that’s the way it was done. I have flashes of clarity, like at the dinner dance, moving in Jack’s arms to our song—Leonard Cohen’s darkly beautiful “Dance Me to the End of Love”—and the fireworks later on. But my clearest memory is sneaking off with Jack later in the evening and running away like delinquent children into the hedge maze, giggling from the champagne and sheer joy of it all. We’d gone deeper into the maze, and Jack had led me to the fountain in the middle. We’d sat on the sandstone edge and drank from the bottle of champagne Jack had brought with us.
“Hello, wife,” he’d said, smiling his beautiful slow smile.
“Hello, husband.” I’d smiled back and leaned over, kissed him gently on the lips, and then snuggled closer to him, his arm around my shoulders. At that moment, I’d known a pure happiness and contentment so perfect, and I had thought the rest of our lives would just be an extension of that feeling. God, we’d been so happy.
“Jack, we need to talk.”
“That sounds ominous!” He put down the paper and, smiling, gave me his undivided attention. There was no other way to say it than straight out.
“I had an affair with Anders Larsen. It’s over now.”
“What does that mean exactly?” He looked confused.
“We slept together, more than a few times.” I raised my head to look at him.
“When? Where?” he barked.
I guess he deserved the details, though I’m sure he wasn’t going to like it once he had them.
“In the chalet hotel in France, and we met up at his hotel here in London when he was here for business until a bit over a week ago.”
He looked at me, shocked.
“Why?” His face crumpled. “Why would you do that to us?” He didn’t try to hide his devastation. I had a good clear look at what I had done to him, this man I’d promised to love forever.
“I don’t know.” I broke down. “There is no good reason that I can give you, and I’m sorry for that. It’s never happened before.” I hesitated, knowing he deserved something, even though it would only hurt him more. “It’s been a while since we were…intimate. I think I wanted someone to pay attention to me, as well as the physical side.”
“So, it’s my fault because I didn’t pay you enough attention or provide enough stud services!” he shouted, roused to immediate anger and bitterness at my criticism.
“Well, maybe I just needed to have sex with someone who wanted to be there, rather than treating it like an odious chore!” I said hotly, my deep-seated hurt and resentment turning on him in a flash.
“Maybe if you didn’t ask all the time, we could be more spontaneous and enjoy it more.” His voice was sarcastic and angry.
“All the time! We have sex maybe once every few months! Most people have sex at least a couple of times a week!”
“Where did you read that? Some women’s magazine?” he said bitingly.
“You bastard!” Tears pricked behind my eyes.
“So, what you’re saying is, if we don’t have sex based on your imaginary quota system, then it’s okay for you to go and sleep with someone else?”
“No!” I wailed. “I was just…”
“I gave you everything,” he said furiously, fists clenched. “A house, money, freedom to do whatever you want—work, not work—and this, this, is what you do?” He took a deep breath. “I think I need some space to calm down. I’m going to go back to the office, and I might spend the night at the club.” He left, slamming the door behind him. I heard the front door shut with force, and I let the grief in. I knew I deserved it, and part of me welcomed the penance of pain.
It was a hard and lonely few days with no sign of Jack. I couldn’t call him at his club; I could only leave a message there which he was unlikely to return, and his mobile was switched off. I miserably went about trying to work, but my output was dismal. On the fourth day, I was in my study, trying to distract myself, when I heard his keys in the door. I jumped up and met him in the hall.
“Do you want a divorce?” he asked with no preamble.
“No, I don’t think so. Do you?”
“Then, why did you do it?” he asked, his voice full of pain. He ignored my question.
“I don’t know. It just happened.”
“Once just happens. The rest wasn’t an accident.”
“I don’t know why I did it. Maybe it was trying to reclaim a younger me, maybe I wasn’t happy with our sex life, maybe I just did it because it felt good. It could be all of those things! I did it. It’s done and over with. I can’t undo it. The question now is can we get through this?”
“I need more time to think it through. I’m going to stay at the club for a few more days. I’ll call you when I’m ready.” He went into our bedroom and packed a bag with more clothes and then left again. For the first time since they left, I was happy the twins were away so they didn’t witness this, or us trying to cover it up.
The only bright point was when Crispin called to try to blackmail me.
“Come to room one-twelve of the hotel. I expect you in thirty minutes,” he barked.
“Actually, you can go fuck yourself, and I hope your diseased and repellent dick falls off afterward.”
“W-What…?” he spluttered.
“I told Jack about Anders, and if you ever call me again, I’ll tell him what you tried to do.” I slammed the phone down and smiled tightly. That had been more than a little satisfying.
; Two days later, Jack came back.
“Are you back for more clothes?” I asked tentatively.
“No,” he said shortly. He couldn’t even look me in the eye and talked to a point on the wall over my shoulder. “I’ll move into the spare room while we figure out what to do.”
I nodded, miserable for hurting him so badly, and left him alone, which was what he clearly wanted.
I did everything I could to try to make him happier. I cooked his favorite duck ragu for dinner, bought him some new shirts and ties from his favorite tailor, took his suits to the dry cleaner, and got his car washed and vacuumed. The house was spotless and gleaming, and the silence between us continued. He thanked me, using the smallest words possible, and still didn’t look at me. I was determined not to push him into talking and to give him some space, but it was hard.
We were into the fourth week of me killing myself to show him how sorry I was, and there was no thaw in his treatment. He generally ignored me, and we ate in silence, only the loud clicking of cutlery disturbing the silence. Finally, I broke over the lasagna.
“Are you going to talk to me?” My knife landed against my plate with sharp crack.
“No.”
“You want to stay like this for the rest of our lives?”
“Frankly, it’s an improvement. You should have gone and fucked someone else years ago.”
“Stop being an arsehole. It’s not like I didn’t try to talk to you about our problems—”
“What?” he shouted, interrupting. “When did you tell me you were unhappy?”
“You don’t think that not having sex for months on end was a bit of a red flag?”
“Not this again!” He snorted dismissively.
“What more do you want me to do?” I started to cry, despite my efforts not to.
“Nothing. I don’t want you to do anything.” He pushed away from the table and walked out.
Jack didn’t come home for dinner the next night. I tried calling him, but the phone just rang out. After trying five times, I gave up and ate in front of the television in an attempt to distract myself. Unable to sit there waiting any longer, I put on my running shoes and went out for a walk. Jack was still not home an hour later, and I went up to bed, where I tossed and turned until I heard him come in around eleven. I fell into a restless sleep and woke up unrefreshed to find him already gone. It became our new routine.
Jack didn’t stay out every night, but he would never call to tell me that he wouldn’t be home. He never answered my calls anymore, so I stopped trying to call him. He would either press the end button, hanging up on me mid-ring, or would just let it go to voice mail. Finding the positive became increasingly hard to do. The hostilities escalated, slowly but steadily. I tried to remember why I wanted to stay in this marriage. Jack was dismissive and cold; I was hurt, guilty, and resentful. What exactly were we trying to save anyway?
I remember talking to a friend years ago who was getting divorced and asking what she thought was the breaking point. She said it wasn’t any one thing in particular, but many small things over time wearing away the base of affection that underlies a marriage. All the trivial hassles and stresses of raising children and having jobs and mortgages are temporary blights that will eventually stop attacking your relationship and you will be fine, as long as your base is still there.
But these things stop you from being able to see clearly what lies beneath, and she said she hadn’t realized that there was nothing left until it was too late. Their base was gone, and they didn’t like or even respect each other anymore. There was nothing to try to save. Not that it didn’t hurt, or that the process of breaking up wasn’t brutal. Would it be better or worse if you still loved your partner? The love I felt for Jack was still there, despite everything, but this couldn’t go on. Whatever feelings for him I had left were slowly dying.
“Jack, I know you’re still angry, but if you’re never going to forgive me, then there is no point in putting us both through this.” I looked over the table at him as he ate his veal scaloppini, too upset to touch my own food, worried about how he’d react to my ultimatum. “I love you, but this is just making us both miserable. We would be better off apart.”
“I love you too,” he said. “I want to forgive you, but I’m still really angry.” His eyes reddened, and he looked away, blinking.
“I understand.” I nodded.
“I’ve been speaking to Mother and Father. They’re getting older, and it’s getting a bit much for him to run everything. I was thinking that it might be time for us to move up there.”
I nearly choked on the mouthful I had finally taken.
“They’ll move into the Old Manor, and we’ll live in the Hall. A change of scenery might do us a lot of good.”
“You want us to go and live with your parents?” I gasped. “Seriously? Are you giving up your job?” To commute from Gloucestershire to London every day was not possible, no matter how keen you were.
“We’ll sell the house and buy a flat here, and I’ll come up on the weekends.”
“So, it will be just me living with your parents?” To say that sounded like a terrible idea was an understatement. “You’re doing this to punish me.”
“Look at it as a show of faith. I’ll know if you agree to this that you do really want our marriage to work.”
“What about you? If I agree to this, will you go to marriage counseling? I’ll give you time to learn to forgive me; I just needed to know that it won’t be like this forever, especially if we’re living at the Hall. This can’t go on indefinitely.”
I knew I was at fault for the major event, but it didn’t just come out of the blue. How much hurt has to accumulate before you do something to relieve your pain? Anders had not only made me feel better when I was with him, but he’d forced me to face what my relationship with Jack had become. But that wasn’t being entirely fair. It was more than that; it was not only for how he made me feel. It felt wrong, but I missed him. I had to stop thinking about him, though, if there was any hope of putting my marriage back together.
“Absolutely not!” Jack retorted. “It’s bad enough that you go off sleeping with other men. Why should I be punished twice?”
I smarted from his unnecessary reminder but showed no reaction.
“This is too much, for both of us, and we’re not getting very far on our own. I’m tired of going over and over the same stuff. If you’re not willing to go, then we might as well call it quits now.” I sounded so calm, but inside I was quivering with panic. I felt a tingling coldness, like I was going to faint, the same dread that happens in that first awareness that you’ve hurt yourself badly, before the pain even hits, but you know that it’s going to get a lot worse.
“Fine, I’ll go.” He threw down his cutlery and stalked from the room.
The next morning, I rang Bats’ therapist and made an appointment. The earliest I could get was the following week. I sent the appointment through to Jack’s phone. I wasn’t going to rely on him remembering if I told him, not that I felt like chasing him down right now. If it was on his phone calendar, it would sync with his work computer, and he’d have no excuse, or at least not the “I forgot” or “I didn’t know” ones. He’d have to put some thought into it, some creativity, and that alone might mean he’d turn up, solely because he couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to. God, I was so cynical.
Chapter Nineteen
WE BARELY SPOKE IN THE DAYS leading up to our first session. I think we were both honing our opening arguments. We sat in the narrow waiting room on plastic chairs with slightly padded seats, not that they helped much with the comfort level. Maybe the accumulated angst of all the couples who had sat here before had seeped into the furniture. From the industrial gray of the walls to the fluorescent lighting, the whole place had a dismal feel. An attempt had been made to cheer up the look with a framed poster of Monet’s Garden at Vetheuil, but even the original would have struggled to brighten up these surroundings.
A small thin woman came out and introduced herself as Faye and led us into another room. Closing the door behind her, she indicated that we should take a seat in the group of three chairs provided. I snuck a glance at Jack, who seemed a bit more relaxed, probably because she appeared quite normal. Faye sat down in a chair facing us.
“I’d firstly like to tell you that I’m not here to tell you what to do or to fix your problems. My role is to find out where you both want for your relationship to go and help you get there. I’ll work hard with you, but you both need to be committed for this to be successful,” she said, and I now picked up a soft Welsh accent.
“Kate, let’s start with you. Can you tell me what brought you here?”
“I had an affair.” There was no point in trying to avoid it. “I’m here to try to see if we can work things out.”
“Jack, why are you here?”
“She made me.”
“You walked in here on your own, so there must be a reason for you to come to counseling.” She gently pried away at his defensive attempt at humor and left him time to answer.
“I don’t want to get divorced,” he said after a long pause. “I want to know why she did this to me.”
“All right. So, we want to explore why Kate went outside the marriage and the issues that led to this. That is our goal. What about an end point? What do you both want at the end of these sessions?”
Jack and I stared blankly at her, but she squared her shoulders at our lack of self-awareness and plowed on. After a good ten minutes, we came up with our finish line: we would work toward resolving our issues of trust and individual needs in the marriage so that we could achieve our ultimate goal of reconciliation. It sounded impressive. It also sounded exhausting.
“There is a lot of work to do for you to repair your relationship, and you need to both be committed to work at it.”
“But I’ve done nothing! She was the one who had the affair.”
“I hear what you are saying, Jack, but something must have been not right before the affair for Kate to want to be intimate with another man,” she explained with not even a hint of exasperation. “Are you both committed to working at this?”
Saint Kate of the Cupcake: The Dangers of Lust and Baking Page 16