‘But couldn’t you have had an abortion?’
‘I could, but I didn’t want one. Johnny wanted me to, of course. He was horrified when I told him I was pregnant, but I assured him I’d be no bother. I wasn’t trying to trap him or anything. I promised I’d have absolutely no contact with him ever again, and I didn’t want any money either, said I’d never intrude on his life in any way, that once the baby was born he wouldn’t see me for dust. Well, he wasn’t happy about it, of course he wasn’t, but what could he do? I was absolutely determined to keep it.’ She sipped her coffee, two hands cradling the mug. They were trembling.
‘Well,’ she whispered, gazing at the carpet, ‘Peter was born, and Johnny sent some flowers to the hospital, he didn’t come to see us, but that was fine, I didn’t expect him to. Then a few months later I had this awful shock. Peter had been having all sorts of tests, routine they said, and only because he didn’t seem quite as advanced as other babies of that age, but then the paediatrician at the hospital called me in and gave me this terrible diagnosis. Mum was with me, and when we got home, sobbing our eyes out, she persuaded me to tell Johnny, said it was only right; that it was unfair to keep it from him. Well, I didn’t want to, but she insisted, and I was in a hell of a state, so I rang him at work.’ She gulped. Brought her eyes up from the carpet to meet mine. ‘I couldn’t believe it. Twenty minutes later a black cab drew up and he was on my doorstep, his face as white as a sheet, and when Dad let him in, he cried. I’ll never forget it. I came downstairs and he just stood there in the hall, leaning against the wall, the tears streaming down his face. We all cried then. We came up here, Mum, Dad, Johnny and me, and we sobbed. Then after a bit Johnny got all forceful and said he wanted to live with me, said he couldn’t possibly leave me with a disabled child, that he wanted to share the responsibility. He said it was all his fault and we’d get through this together, bring him up together. We were all astounded, of course, and Mum and I both said don’t be ridiculous, what about you and Claudia, and Dad said it was an outstanding offer but one he’d regret later so totally out of the question. We were all astonished. But Johnny kept on, he wouldn’t drop it, kept insisting he was moving in. Well, Dad got cross in the end and said, “No – listen, lad, it’s just not practical.” I can hear him now. “You’ve already got a family,” he said. “You can’t just leave one for another, and our Nina here’s a grown woman. She knew what she was getting into when she had the baby.” Then he held out his hand to Johnny and said that most men would run a mile from an illegitimate baby, let alone a disabled one, and he appreciated the gesture.’ She gulped. ‘But Johnny wouldn’t shake his hand. He said it wasn’t a gesture. He was adamant. Said he wanted to be involved, fully involved, and swore he’d devote his life to Peter and me. We were staggered, of course, but all so grief-stricken and confused, especially coming on top of Martin.’
‘Hang on,’ I said, bewildered. ‘Who’s Martin?’
‘My brother. He’s fourteen now, but he’s been in a wheelchair all his life, so it seemed like history repeating itself. Anyway, we let Johnny have his say and thought that in the cold light of day he’d probably change his mind, but later that night he arrived, with all his bags, ready to move in, but still as white as a sheet, as if he’d seen a ghost.’
In a flash that night came back to me. The night he’d left me. Is it serious? I’d asked, crouched down amongst my paint pots by the front door in the hall. ‘It wasn’t,’ he’d replied, ashen-faced and sweeping past me with his suitcase, ‘was never meant to be … but now … yes.’
‘Anyway,’ Nina went on, ‘I said, “Oh, don’t be a fool, Johnny. Go home, go back to Olivia, I’m going to give up teaching and look after Peter full time. You don’t need to worry about me,” but he wouldn’t have it. He persuaded me to take the job at St Luke’s –’
‘Yes – How the hell did you end up there? At Claudia’s school!’
‘That was Johnny. He got me the job. The Montessori I’d been teaching at closed down and reasonably paid private nursery jobs are like gold dust in London. He made a few discreet inquiries and found out that they were looking for someone in the nursery. At first he didn’t tell me Claudia was there and I felt really terrible when I found out, but Johnny said it was fine. You know how he does, with that winning smile of his – “It’s fine, Nina, don’t worry about it! Claudia’s going up to the senior school soon, and anyway, no one will make the connection. No one will ever know who you are.”’ She grimaced. ‘Naïve, of course.’
‘Just a bit!’ I exploded. ‘I found out on bloody day one! Along with the rest of the world!’
‘I know, and I knew you would, but you know Johnny. Likes to think he’s Mr Fixit, Mr Control Freak.’
I knew Johnny. Did I know Johnny? No I didn’t recognise this man. This wasn’t the man I married.
‘Second rate,’ I muttered, moving unsteadily back to the sofa and perching shakily on the edge. ‘This is second-rate stuff. Sneaking around, betraying his wife – go on, do it, Nina, take the job. Olivia will never find out.’ I felt sick.
She leant forward. ‘Ah, but Johnny would say he was being honourable. He’d say he was honouring his commitment to us.’
‘But what about his commitment to me!’ I shrieked.
‘I know, I know.’ She gazed down.
The blood rushed to my head. ‘And you didn’t even bloody want him!’
‘Oh yes I did!’ she said sharply, jerking her head up. ‘I just never thought I’d have him, that’s the difference. I’d told myself for years it was unthinkable. Unimaginable. What – Johnny McFarllen? The Johnny McFarllen? The one I’d gaped at and admired for years, run to the window to catch a glimpse of since I was a child, breathing on to the glass to see him draw up beside his father in the convertible Lagonda? Blond, gorgeous, languid, laughing Johnny, with his lovely lazy, sexy smile, Johnny from the huge house, from that big, powerful family, with all that wealth, that opulence, that joy? Oh no,’ she shook her head vehemently, ‘it wouldn’t be true to say I didn’t want him, I just never believed it possible before.’
‘Until you trapped him with a disabled child,’ I snapped.
‘I told you,’ she said patiently, ‘I didn’t want him to stay. I told him to go home, we all did. Then when he wouldn’t, when he moved in – well, I told myself not to fall in love with him. Told myself it wouldn’t last, that he’d be gone, but how could I help myself?’ Her eyes appealed to me. They were very round, the blue exactly in the centre. ‘You know how he is, how he lights up even the most dismal, the most mediocre of lives – well, think what he did to mine!’ She swung her arm around. ‘Look at me, look at this place! I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, thought I was walking on air!’ Her pale eyes were bright with emotion now, sparkling. She lowered them to her mug.
‘But then, as the weeks went by, and living together in this cramped flat with Peter screaming all hours of the night, needing constant attention and massaging, and my parents running up and down the stairs to help – well.’ She grimaced. ‘You can imagine. He’d sacrificed himself at the altar of “care” and hadn’t realised he wasn’t sacrificial material. He thought he’d been “called”, thought it was his duty or something equally crappy – God’s will if you like – but he couldn’t do it. And if anything,’ she said sadly, ‘he’d made it worse. His fine gesture had worsened the situation.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I became infatuated with him, and previously I’d never allowed myself to do that. But he was with me every moment of the day now, you see, every night. I couldn’t help it. He could see it too – my obsession. I couldn’t hide it.’ She gulped and picked at some ancient pink nail varnish on her fingernail. ‘About a month ago, after Claudia went missing, and after he’d seen you at the concert with someone else, I felt him slipping away. Like sand through my fingers.’ She stopped picking and clasped her hands tight. ‘I panicked. And the more I tried not to, the worse it became. I’ve always had a nervous, r
espiratory thing, a bit like asthma, and when I’m worked up I can hardly breathe. It’s all psychosomatic, of course – panic attacks they’re sometimes called – but I had to admit myself to hospital to be put on breathing apparatus. Well, what with Peter being so ill, Johnny thought it was outrageous, total histrionics, especially when I strolled out a couple of hours later, right as rain. He thought it was a ruse, thought I was attention-seeking.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘But I wasn’t, that’s how it’s always been with me. How anxiety takes me. And then there were the notes.’
‘Yes, he said …’
She reached under the coffee table to a magazine shelf below and took out an old Cosmopolitan. She opened it and handed me two pieces of scruffy paper. They’d been torn out of a cheap, ring-bound notebook, and on the top one, in scrawled, capital letters was written: ‘KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT OR THE KID GETS IT.’ The second one read, ‘GOOD GIRL. YOU KEEP QUIET.’
I read them again, frowned, then raised my eyebrows at her. She shrugged.
‘I have no idea. Dad’s convinced it’s one of his mechanics. We found out he’d been involved in passing on some cannabis to teenagers and Dad had to sack him. I occasionally work downstairs in the office, and Dad thinks this guy may have thought I overheard him doing a deal one day on his mobile phone.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Johnny’s convinced I wrote them to myself, though; thinks it was some kind of neurotic attempt to keep him. You know – oh gosh, I’ve got a disabled son and his life’s being threatened. Johnny, you’ll have to stay now.’
‘But you didn’t.’
She shook her head sadly. ‘No. I didn’t.’
‘And was this what you came to tell me? That night when you sat on my terrace?’
‘No, this hadn’t happened then. I came to tell you about Peter, and about how long the affair had been going on. I wanted you to understand where I was coming from. Why I needed Johnny so badly. That I wasn’t just some scheming opportunist who’d briefly got her claws into someone else’s man, some ghastly husband-snatcher.’
I regarded her for a moment clutching her mug, in her pink slippers, with her pale, unmade-up face and her round blue eyes. I cleared my throat.
‘But you are, Nina. That’s exactly what you are. Because in the beginning that’s precisely how it was. Just a bit of fun, a roll in the sack, with someone else’s husband. Oh, you’d never met her, the wife, but sod it, who cares? Some up-tight rich bitch who was probably as frigid as hell and deserved all she got, and anyway, you’d known him all your life, hankered after him for years, so somehow, it seemed all right. Somehow, it seemed justifiable. But when the shit began to hit the fan, when the “fun” had some terrible repercussions and you gave birth to a disabled child, you began to think you were entitled to some dignity. Well, I don’t think so. You’re still the same person, Nina, all that’s changed is your situation. You’ve gone from being a fun-loving mistress to a single mother, only your task as a mother is harder than most. I do pity you, Nina, if pity’s what you’re after, but funnily enough,’ I gave a shaky little smile and reached down for my bag, ‘I pity me and my daughter more.’ I swung the strap over my shoulder and gripped it hard. I made myself look at her, stared at her coldly, but her eyes couldn’t meet mine. They fled to the floor. After a bit, I stood up, turned, and made my way to the door.
‘Are you going to tell him we’ve had this conversation?’ she said in a small voice.
I paused, leant against the doorframe for a moment. For support. ‘I don’t know,’ I replied without turning round. ‘To be honest, Nina, I don’t know what I’m going to do.’
And with that I left the flat.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I drove home in turmoil, my mind racing. The heavy, oppressive weather had finally broken while I’d been in the flat, and a fierce storm had erupted overhead. The windscreen wipers danced at top speed in a manic fashion as my brain cells, at an equally accelerated rate, attempted to clear the chaos in my mind. As I tore perilously around the Finchley back streets, heading blindly for the M1, my insides heaved with revulsion. A love child. A six-year relationship. Not a quick fling with a local girl he’d picked up on a whim since we’d moved house, but a long-running affair with someone he’d known since he was a child. Someone he’d been seeing when we lived in London, sneaking out to sleep with from the office. A mistress – yes, that was the word, that was her job description – who’d been a huge part of his life, had had a role in his life, almost as large as mine, for God’s sake, and for a hell of a long time.
Gripping the wheel tightly and totally ambushed by tears, I swerved violently to avoid a lorry as I careered on to the motorway. But how much did this really change things? I thought wildly, wiping the tears desperately with the back of my hand. How much did it actually matter? A lot, my head suggested grimly, but my heart was set on damage limitation. Not necessarily all that much, it declared, defiantly. After all, there was no rule book to consult here, no scale at which one’s emotions were deemed to be stretched to the limit and must legitimately snap. This was a purely personal thing. How much could I take? How much could I, Olivia McFarllen, put up with? Or, to put it another way – I squared my shoulders – yes, how strong was I, surely?
Now some women, I was sure, couldn’t take adultery in any denomination. One whiff of Chanel on the pinstriped suit and they’d be off, a child under each arm, divorce petition clenched between the teeth, Harvey Nichols account right up to the limit, heading for those wide open spaces. Some, on the other hand, having suspected for years, might quietly have got used to the idea. Got used to all those late meetings and seemingly needless overnight stays in provincial hotels, but having taken a long hard look at their children, at the roof over their heads, at the clothes in the cupboards, the food in the fridge, had decided – Christ, he’s only a man, for heaven’s sake. What d’you expect? At least he can fix the boiler; at least his armpits don’t gush too much; at least he makes good money and, let’s face it, if it wasn’t him it would be some other bugger, so let’s hammer out some sort of modus vivendi here, shall we? Let’s be a big girl and take it in our stride. I gripped the wheel tight, sniffed hard and let out a long, shaky breath. It all came down to personal choice really: how humiliated and betrayed was one prepared to be to preserve one’s world, and how much extracurricular sex was one prepared, metaphorically, to swallow?
Now Nina, no doubt, was hoping I couldn’t swallow this at all. She was hoping I’d gag on this latest sensational dollop, spit it out – and Johnny with it – right back on to her plate, where quick as a flash, she’d pick it up and run with it. She was no doubt hoping our conversation had persuaded me he was a cad of the highest order and was, even now, kicking off her fluffy slippers, rolling on her nylons and preparing to glide seamlessly back into his life to pick up the pieces. I gripped the wheel fiercely. Well, we’d see about that.
I realised, though, still gulping down the tears, that on a less emotional level, if I was going to take this on the chin, I needed to deal with the practicalities. Peter, for instance. I caught my breath. Christ, Peter. How much of an impact would he make on mine and Claudia’s lives? Well – no more than he had up to now, surely? I thought desperately. I mean, I’d know about him, be aware of his existence, but I’d never have to see him, and Nina was clearly determined to be totally self-sufficient. She didn’t seem the type to arrive in her clogs on our doorstep, with Peter wrapped in a shawl, demanding ten thousand a year and the right to the McFarllen surname, so in actual fact, what difference did this new revelation make? Oh, it made me hysterical and upset, I knew that from the amount of tissues I was getting through, and the number of stares I was getting from lorry drivers who peered curiously down from their cabs at this pitiful woman dissolving behind her wheel, chucking lighted cigarette butts out of the window every few minutes, but temporary hysteria aside, precisely how torn apart was I going to be on a long-term basis? Just how traumatised was I?
I slowed down a bit and sank back
in my seat. The rain was abating and I turned the windscreen wipers down from manic to relatively sober. As I wiped the mascara from under my eyes with a shaky finger I noticed that the tears were drying up slightly too. Yes, now that the storm was over, I could surely assess this in a rational manner. Assess whether or not I’d actually taken so much already that this was just another well-aimed blow that had stunned, but not entirely knocked me for six. A body blow, but nothing critical.
Ten minutes later, with thoughts still jostling furiously for position in my mind, I pulled up in my drive and instantly realised my mistake. God, how stupid! Why on earth had I come straight home? Why on earth had I raced, instinctively, back here when what I really needed was time to think, hours – days in fact – to let this sink in? Now I literally had minutes before I had to confront it all, confront Johnny.
Feeling hot and panicky I fumbled for the ignition, quickly started the car again, and was about to plunge it into reverse and charge out backwards – when I realised it was too late. I’d been seen. Johnny was actually in the drive and was, even now, walking towards my car at the same time as yelling something furiously over his shoulder to Claudia, who was running after him in floods of tears. As I turned off the ignition and slowly opened my door, I spotted my mother and Howard in the porch, looking distinctly shaken, and slinking, heads down, towards their car.
I got out. ‘What’s going on?’
Howard and my mother stopped, mid-slink, and Mum came scuttling towards me.
‘Oh darling, this is all my fault,’ she breathed, putting an anxious hand on my arm. ‘We just popped round, you see, on an impulse, to see you all together again, and we had a lovely cup of tea in the new kitchen with Johnny and Claudia, but then stupidly, well, I went and put my foot in it, just as we were leaving.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Well, I brought up the business of the schools,’ she hissed, wide-eyed. ‘You know, the boarding business. I gather Johnny didn’t know.’
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