TWNS-2-6-Kindle Master

by Alexander, Nick

  So, yes, he remembers this photo being taken. He had been jerked out of his worried daze by the flash of the camera. “Don’t look so sad, it may never happen,” Catherine had said. But it already had happened. Sean just hadn’t known what that meant for his career quite yet.

  Eventually he had started rowing, and not only had the hard physical effort of it diminished his stress levels enormously, but it had given him the opportunity to socialise with one of the partners who was also a rower, and with him on-side, the situation had eased.

  Eventually the client had accepted a new composite cladding for the building which cost less than a third of the original marble, and the supplier of the marble had agreed to take half of the financial hit. So the whole business had just melted away like an ice cube on a hot day, leaving Sean wondering why he had been so worried about it in the first place.

  Cassette #16

  Hi Sean.

  I’ll bet you don’t remember this one. It’s a pretty ordinary photo, after all. I only took it, I think, because I had a new compact camera and I wanted to finish the film off. But it is, as it turns out, very evocative of a certain time and specifically of another thing we never spoke about: your affair.

  Just so you know this from the outset, I never knew for sure who it was with; in fact I’ll go as far as admitting that I was never one hundred percent sure there was someone else. But back around the time this photo was taken I thought I was pretty sure, at any rate.

  It was partly my fault, I suppose. I hadn’t been “putting out” since April was born. Oh, we’d done it once or twice, but it had become rarer and rarer for the simple reason that I no longer enjoyed it. As I was never very good at faking these things, you had slowly stopped trying.

  Some nights I’d wake up and realise that you were doing it on your own at the far side of the bed, and I’d feel horribly guilty. But even then it was somehow beyond me to roll towards you and join in. And then after a while, once I’d realised (or convinced myself) that you were having an affair, I had a whole new reason not to join in – seething resentment.

  The thought crept up on me, really, without me even noticing it. To start with, you were distant, distracted. And then you seemed sad whenever you were at home. It was like you always wanted to be somewhere else. That was the impression I had.

  And then one day, I woke up and realised that I knew. It was as if I had realised in my sleep.

  I did all the usual cliché things. I went through your pockets; I checked your wallet for receipts while you were in the shower. But there was nothing I could point to and say, “What the hell is this?”. So I watched and waited and got angrier and angrier.

  I got scared too. I became terrified that you were going to leave us. I used to cry about it some days while you were at work. I used to imagine myself turning up at Mum’s with April and having to explain that, like all of Mum’s own relationships, it was over – that, like mother, like daughter, I had failed. I used to try to picture the type of woman you were seeing and I’d always imagine some clever, young, vivacious, rich degree student and then feel overwhelmed by the knowledge that there were hundreds, thousands even, of women in Cambridge for whom I’d be no competition at all.

  Things changed a bit when you started rowing, at first once a week, and then twice, and then three times. You suddenly seemed happy again. Sometimes you seemed almost unreasonably happy. Ecstatic, I suppose, is the word.

  I decided, God knows why, that you’d replaced your extra-marital adventure with sport. I convinced myself that you were coming back to us. But then I became doubtful again and wondered if you were really rowing at all.

  One particular morning it all got the better of me, so I waited for you to leave and then bundled April into the pushchair and almost jogged with her down to the river.

  You were there, in a racing eight, looking red cheeked and sweaty, whizzing down the river at quite a shocking speed. So I felt reassured, for a while.

  I discovered, too, that it did me good to get out of the house first thing. So the race down to the river and back became a regular morning adventure for April and me. Sometimes we would see you and sometimes we wouldn’t. Amazingly, you never noticed us. I suppose you were too busy being shouted at by that horrible woman cox with the megaphone. April only ever once mentioned seeing you rowing and, surprisingly, you didn’t seem to think anything of it, so I got away with it.

  But then, one morning, all my certainties fell to pieces again. Because I saw Maggie was rowing too. You both looked ecstatic, and again it felt like a realisation of something that I had always known.

  I sat a way back from the boathouse and I watched until you got back, and then I watched until you left.

  Maggie was running her fingers through her hair, still damp from the showers, and you were laughing at something she had said. And then you put your arm around her shoulders and squeezed her.

  I cried when I got home and then I sat and tried to reason with myself all afternoon.

  When you got home that night, I suggested we have Maggie and Drunken Duncan, her boyfriend of the moment, round for dinner. I just wanted to see how you’d react.

  “Oh, she’s split up with Duncan,” you told me nonchalantly. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

  “No,” I said. “You didn’t.”

  “Well she has,” you said. “But we can still invite Mags around if you want.”

  I was left wondering how I’d get out of that one.

  • • •

  Sean pushes the dictaphone to the far side of the table and covers his eyes with his cupped hands. He feels like he wants to weep, but realises, after a moment, that the tears are not going to come.

  He feels angry, too. For how could Catherine possibly have convinced herself he was having an affair with Maggie?

  OK, perhaps he can see how that could have happened. They had been close over the years. Perhaps, at times, too close.

  But why on earth hadn’t she simply asked him? He could have put her mind at rest. He could have saved her months of anguish – years, perhaps. Now he does know, it’s too late to tell her the truth. And that feels devastating.

  • • •

  On Thursday evening, Sean is invited to join a group of friends for a pub quiz at The Brook.

  Quiz night had once been a fairly regular occurrence and Sean can’t quite work out when that ceased to be the case, nor why. Certainly, he hasn’t seen any of the gang since Catherine died, but now that he thinks about it he can’t remember having been out with them for a while before she died either, so perhaps the two are unrelated.

  Whatever the reason, he accepts the invitation. He’s grateful for any kind of distraction at the moment and is looking forward to seeing his old friends again.

  When he gets to the pub, five familiar faces are already lined up along a bench seat, drinking.

  Sean buys a round of drinks for those whose glasses are nearly empty and then sits down on the other side of the table, feeling, for some reason, as if he’s being interviewed.

  “So!” he says, scanning the smiling faces. “It’s been ages. I was trying to work out how long it’s been and why we never do this anymore.”

  Jim, the youngest of the group, glances along the row and then shrugs and says, “We’ve all been too busy, I guess. You know what it’s like, what with work and the kids and everything else.”

  “Sure,” Sean says.

  “How have you been?” Pete asks.

  “OK,” Sean replies. “You know.”

  A silence falls over the group. Everyone sips their drinks.

  “The missus saw you out in Grantchester,” Pete says.

  “Sylvia?” Sean says. “She should have said hello.”

  “You were with someone,” Pete says, coyly. “I don’t think she wanted to interrupt anything.”

  Sean frowns. “I was with Maggie,” he says.

  “Maggie, was it? Fair enough,” Pete says.

  “And her partner,” Sean adds, f
urrowing his brow and smiling in amusement. “Dave, his name is.”

  “Ah,” Pete says, sounding disappointed. “Oh well.”

  After another awkward silence the talk turns to Jim’s wife who is pregnant again, and then to Pete’s upcoming retirement party, and then finally to their standard staple: football. And it’s a relief for Sean to have an hour of mundane, everyday conversation.

  It’s strangely calming to discuss things which really don’t matter, he realises, but it also occupies his mind so that it doesn’t go hunting under rocks. Because Sean’s pretty sure there’s something lurking in the shadows here that he doesn’t want to see.

  By ten-thirty, when the quiz ends, they’re all pleasantly drunk. But despite their alcohol intake they have done well, in no small part due to Sean’s grasp of eighties pop music. When the results are tallied up, it is their group that has won. First prize. An eighty pound bar tab for future use.

  “Yay!” Pete says, raising one hand in a victory gesture and almost knocking over his pint in the process. “Result! Third time in a row! We rule!”

  Despite his attempts at not thinking about it, the truth that has been tugging at Sean’s sleeve, trying to get his attention, finally takes centre stage. Because evidently, the group never stopped coming to quiz night. They simply stopped inviting Sean.

  Sean makes his excuses and leaves the table, but a shadow must have crossed his features because when he stands and heads for the bathroom, Jim, who has always been one of the more sensitive souls in the group, follows him.

  Side by side in the urinals, Jim says, “I’m glad you’re back, mate. We missed you.”

  “I never went away, though, did I?” Sean says. The alcohol has loosened his tongue.

  Jim clears his throat. “No,” he says. “Sorry about that. It’s just, you know…”

  “No,” Sean says, buttoning his jeans. “I’m not sure I do.”

  “It’s just, you know, when Cathy got ill,” Jim says awkwardly. “It was a real downer and no one knew what to say, really.”

  “Right,” Sean says.

  “And then Pete’s missus went and got cured and everything. And she started coming out with us, for a while. And it seemed… I dunno. It just seemed a bit awkward, really. To be rubbing her good health in your face, like.”

  “Right,” Sean says.

  “It was nothing personal,” Jim says. “It was nothing against you. It was just, we… I dunno really.”

  Sean washes his hands and dries them on the roller towel.

  “Still, you’re back, now,” Jim says, slapping him on the shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Sean says, sounding unconvinced. “Yeah, I’m back now.

  Snapshot #17

  35mm format, colour. On a pub lawn, two women in summer dresses lie either side of a handsome man with slicked back hair. He’s wearing a waistcoat and rolled up shirt sleeves. A small girl stands behind them holding a glass of orange juice. Of the four people in the photo, only the man is smiling.

  Ouch, Sean thinks, the second he sees the photo. Because something had gone wrong that day between Catherine and Maggie. Despite the summer sun and the alcohol, the ambiance had been bitchy and glacial, so difficult, in fact, that Sean had been forced to abandon the whole mission and drag Catherine and April away.

  It was a shame because Sean, for his part, had been feeling on top of the world. The Marble Drama, as it had come to be known, was over, and he was working on a new sheltered housing project out in Chesterton. The building did not require cladding.

  Maggie had met Stephane, the man in the photo, and was as happy as he had ever seen her. Actually, thinking back on it, now, Maggie had been unreasonably, hysterically, irritatingly happy, and he had thought that it was this that had put Catherine’s back up that day. Of course, knowing what he knows now, she must still have been fuming, quite simply, over their supposed affair.

  But Catherine should really have felt reassured. Because Maggie could only talk about one thing. Stephane. Bloody Stephane. She had talked about him for weeks at work and she had talked about him that day, as well. Stephane who had a gym in his London flat; Stephane who knew all the best restaurants. “And guess who bought me these gorgeously tasteful earrings? Why, Stephane, of course!”

  If the truth be told, even though he hadn’t even considered having an affair with Maggie, he had, once Stephane came along, felt vaguely jilted. There was something about the guy that just really annoyed him.

  Cassette #17

  Hello, honey.

  So here’s a photo of Maggie and me with Stephane keeping us from each other’s throats by lying in the middle. He actually seemed to think that all the bitching that was going on was funny. Perhaps he thought we were fighting over him. He had that kind of outlook on the world. And look at little April there scowling at the back. She looks like she’s about to glass him with her orange juice. God though… I had forgotten how good looking he was.

  I had worried about you and Maggie for most of the summer. Your moods seemed to be all over the place and I was constantly trying to decode if you were still having a dalliance behind my back or not.

  Once I knew that Maggie had split up with Duncan, I avoided her like the plague. It was bad enough that you worked together and rowed together. I was damned if I was going to be the one to organise little get togethers for you both at the weekends.

  But it was a difficult time, that’s for sure. I suspected you of being unfaithful during every instant that you were out of my sight, but whenever you were late and I invented an excuse to phone you, you were always there, perfectly reachable at your workstation, and unless you and Maggie were doing it there in the middle of the open-plan office (which I did manage to visualise, by the way), I couldn’t work out where or when you might be doing it.

  By September, when this photo was taken, everything except my own lingering paranoia was back to normal. You seemed calm and interested in home life. It was as if nothing had ever happened. I suspected you were very good at pretending that nothing had ever happened. And when I went down to the river and saw that Maggie was no longer rowing, I was able to convince even myself that it was over.

  And then we met them, that sunny September day on the green outside The Fort. Maggie was with Stephane, her French banker, or trader, or whatever they call them, that we had all heard so much about. He was beautiful and smooth and stunningly well dressed, if perhaps a little oily in that way that Latins sometimes can be. Does that sound racist? I don’t mean it to. I’m sure you know what I mean. Anyway, Maggie was clearly in love with him and frankly I could understand why.

  You behaved most strangely around him. It was as if his very presence upset you, and I deduced that you were jealous. Maggie had dumped you for shiny, wealthy, bilingual Stephane, and I felt angry on your behalf while being still angry on my own account, mixed with a dose of what I suppose one can only call jealousy.

  He only ever wore those expensive double-cuffed shirts, and braces, and waistcoats, and stunningly sheer suits. I’ve always had a bit of a secret thing for a man in a suit, but more of that another day. He was whizzing Maggie up and down the country on mini-breaks in that open top BMW of his, and neither of them were tied to home by a petulant daughter. April, you will remember, was at her absolute worst back then so I was feeling jealous of pretty much anyone who didn’t have kids. But Stephane, well, he pressed just about every jealousy button that I had.

  The feeling soon wore off, because as we all know, Stephane turned out to be a bombastic, arrogant nob.

  Do you remember the champagne incident? It just came back to me.

  We met up in a pub somewhere, it was around Christmas, I think. And you ordered a beer only to find that Stephane, who was at the bar, had cancelled it for you. He had ordered a magnum of some ridiculously expensive champagne for us all and couldn’t even imagine that anyone would rather have beer.

  You were quite assertive and explained, very calmly, that you didn’t like champagne but that y
ou did, very much, like Harvey’s IPA.

  And Stephane just laughed. He made this shooing gesture with his long manicured fingers, and said, in that smooth French accent of his, “Nonsense. You will like this Champagne. Believe me!” We all looked at each other and no one said a word, and then, while he was pouring the Champagne, Maggie mouthed, “Sorry”. Or perhaps, looking back, she mouthed, “Help!”

  It’s a horrible thing to admit, but I was glad he had turned out to be such an arsehole. I was still angry with Maggie, but not, surprisingly, as angry as I should have been. Perhaps I was already starting to doubt myself.

  • • •

  The tapes trouble Sean all week. Looking back on his relationship, so many things, so many of Catherine’s seemingly inexplicable mood changes, suddenly make sense. Stupidly and, he now realises, in a rather macho way, he had assumed that his wife’s ups and downs were simply part and parcel of living with someone. All men know that women are mysteries, don’t they? Everyone knows that women are from Pluto and men are from Mars or whatever it is.

  But perhaps he should have tried harder to understand. Perhaps he should have forced her to open up and tell him what was wrong. Perhaps he should have sat her down and refused to budge until everything was out in the open.

  Then again, there were plenty of times when he had tried. Catherine had been perfectly happy for him to assume that her moodiness was normal even as she berated him for being a macho man when he did. Lord, if he had been told one small truth for every time Catherine said, “Oh, don’t mind me, I’m all over the place at the moment,” then there would have been no secrets at all. So it’s a shame. They wasted precious time tip-toeing around each other when clearly all that was required was a good heart to heart. And now it’s all over. There is no more time.

  On Friday morning, as Sean pulls up his chinos, his iPhone makes a spectacular leap for freedom from his trouser pocket and lands in the flushing rapids of the toilet bowl. Sean looks on the Internet for tips and doubtfully leaves the device in a sealed packet of rice for the weekend, but when, by Sunday afternoon, it’s still refusing to resuscitate, he walks into town to drop it at the Apple store. It’ll be “sorted”, the genius tells him, by Tuesday.