Six years ago, they had moved into this house. It was less than two miles from their first home, but it was larger and was near a park. They had bought the house for exactly half of what it was worth now. Robert had said it would be a fabulous investment; he had been right then. He was right most of the time.
She had once loved that about him, loved his absolute confidence and self-assurance. She didn’t think she had ever once heard him express any doubts about what he was doing and the direction he was taking their lives. But what she once had accepted as confidence, she now recognized as arrogance.
There was nothing of his in the living room. It was rarely used, a habit she’d picked up from her mother: a room kept aside as a “good room” for visitors, where the children never ventured. Kathy smiled at the irony. What was the point of a living room that wasn’t lived in? A chunky black leather suite dominated the room and made it seem smaller than it was. She’d never wanted the suite and would have preferred something lighter and brighter. But when they’d bought it, Robert was still entertaining at home, and he thought the dark leather sofa and love seat set gave the right impression, one of prosperity and success. The china cabinet against one wall had been her mother’s, and was filled with a mismatched assortment of Waterford crystal and Wedgwood china. She had never gotten around to completing any of the sets and doubted if she ever would now. The cabinet also housed a collection of Hummel Dolls, also inherited from her mother, which she kept meaning to sell on eBay. She doubted she’d ever do it, but it amused her to go online and see how much they were now worth. There was no television in the room—in fact, it was probably the only room in the house, with the exception of the bathrooms, which didn’t have a TV set in it.
The family room, which led directly into the kitchen, was where they spent the most time. To the left of the black marble fireplace, an enormous fifty-inch flat-screen television took up one corner, along with the Blu-ray player, Brendan’s Xbox, and Theresa’s Wii. Speakers connected to a surround-sound system trailed around the floor. Discs were scattered on the floor alongside the television. Robert would want some of those, though she was sure he hadn’t watched any of them, and probably never would. He was always buying DVDs for “a rainy day” or for when he got a few hours of free time. Lately he’d had no free time, or if he had, he was too busy, and she realized now just what he’d been doing....
She veered away from that thought. She didn’t want to go there just yet.
The couch here was older, the seats slightly bellied from years of wear, though she’d had it reupholstered recently. When it had been re-covered, it had looked brand new for about a week. She’d been promising she’d get rid of it for months now and had a vague idea about looking for a new couch in the February President’s Day sales.
On top of the fireplace was the hideous 1930s clock that Robert had inherited from his grandfather. Kathy hated it, with its yellow, nicotine-stained paper face and a mechanism that whirred and clicked just before it struck the hour, reminding her of an old man grinding his teeth. Robert would want that, and if he didn’t want it, he was going to take it away with him, because she wasn’t going to tolerate it in her house.
Her house.
Her home.
Hers.
She was the one who spent the time in it, day in and day out. She cleaned it, cared for it, turned an empty shell of a house into a loving home for Robert and her children. She knew every nook and cranny, every squeaky floorboard, every crack in the paint; she knew where the cobwebs gathered, the taps that dripped, and which windows stuck. This was her home. She had decorated it. She had cared for it. She had nurtured it. And she wasn’t going to give it up.
Hers, hers, hers!
She shivered suddenly, chill air trickling down the back of her neck; it frightened her that she was thinking like this. But as she began to examine the past and try to establish a future, she was forced to look at words like “separation” and “divorce.” And that meant looking at words like “his” and “hers,” words that she’d never considered before. It had always been “theirs,” even during those terrible days six years earlier when she’d accused him of having an affair with Stephanie. She’d never once thought of divorce then.
Kathy took a deep breath. Rose was right. Before she even started to journey down that road, she was going to need evidence. Strong, incontrovertible evidence.
She walked into the small dining room, which was filled with a large dining table and eight chairs. One of the chairs was mismatched, from the time one of Robert’s obese clients had broken the original and they’d been forced to replace it with the closest match. The family ate there on special occasions, but there had been few of those of late. It had last been used last Christmas and would be used again next Wednesday for Christmas Day dinner. Now it was covered with the remnants of Theresa’s handmade Christmas cards.
Kathy wandered back into the kitchen and automatically cleared the cups from the table. She stood by the sink and ran them under the tap, rather than popping them into the dishwasher. She wanted—needed—to be doing something with her hands.
She glanced at the clock and wondered what time Robert would get home tonight. Then she remembered that he was going to be late; he was meeting a client. A client. Or at least that’s what he had told her. She stopped, frowning. He had said he was taking . . . whom? Jimmy. He was taking Jimmy Moran to Top of the Hub.
Or was he?
“Information, what listing please?”
“Top of the Hub. It’s a restaurant. In the Prudential building.” Her voice surprised her; it sounded strong and confident, loud in the silence of the kitchen. She hadn’t realized she was going to make the call until she found the phone in her hand, her fingers tapping out the number for directory assistance. Isn’t this what suspicious wives around the world did, she thought bitterly: check up on their husbands?
“Please hold and I’ll connect you.”
Didn’t his lie spill out into everyone else’s lives? Friends would lie for him, colleagues would lie, and now here she was, about to add to the fabric of little white lies that surrounded his affair.
“Thank you for calling Top of the Hub. This is Elise. How may I help you?”
“Yes, hello. I’m just calling to confirm a reservation. Robert Walker for this evening, seven thirty. Party of two.” It was her best professional voice, efficient, slightly bored. She’d played the part often enough in the early days when Robert was setting up the production company, pretending to be his secretary in an effort to convince clients that it was more than a one-man, one-woman operation.
“I don’t have a reservation here under Walker.”
Her lips went dry, and her mouth was suddenly filled with cotton. At the corner of her right eye, a muscle began to twitch uncontrollably. “Try R&K Productions.” Once you discovered the first lie, she thought bitterly, the rest followed easily enough.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, nothing under that name either.”
Ma’am. Even over the phone they could tell she was no longer a “miss.” Kathy felt painfully old. “Well, thank you for trying. Let me get back to my boss. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation.”
There was no reservation at Top of the Hub. She wasn’t surprised with the discovery; she hadn’t expected that there would be. Of course, it could be a simple mistake on Robert’s part—but Robert rarely made mistakes. Maybe it was a different restaurant.
Or he’d lied to her. And he was meeting his mistress. As he had on every other red flag day.
CHAPTER 7
Kathy Walker stood outside the door to her husband’s study. She rested her hand gently on the doorknob, but hesitated, reluctant to turn the handle and step into his domain.
To cross the boundary, both figuratively and literally.
The events of the past few hours had moved so swiftly that it had left her little time for contemplation. Less than twenty-four hours ago, she’d seen the red flag against that woman’s name on her
husband’s phone, and she’d jumped to a conclusion. Maybe she was wrong. Her head desperately tried to convince her heart that maybe it was entirely innocent.
And her heart told her it wasn’t.
She had known, because she had suspected for a long time that something was amiss. And once you suspected, wasn’t that the first indication that something really was wrong? If you knew—truly knew, without question, without hesitation, without doubt—that your partner loved you, you would never suspect him of having an affair. But Kathy wasn’t convinced that Robert loved her anymore. Liked her probably, was used to her certainly, even tolerated her, but loved her? No, she didn’t think so.
When she had seen that red flag, lots of little things, lots of half-formed questions and slightly curious incidents started to form themselves into a convincing truth. And now, for her sanity’s sake, she needed proof.
But once she stepped into his room, once she crossed this line, there was no going back. Even if she found nothing inside, even if she discovered evidence that completely exonerated him, and even though he would never know that she had been searching, things could never be the same between them again. She would be betraying his trust.
He’d betrayed her once.
The thought crept, icy and bitter, into the back of her mind. Betrayed her with the same woman. Or so she believed. She’d had no proof then, no concrete evidence, just fears and suppositions.
And she needed to know the truth.
With no further hesitation, Kathy Walker pushed open the door and stepped into her husband’s study.
It had originally been the second largest bedroom in the house, and at one stage they’d planned on giving it to Brendan when he got older. Robert had claimed it when they first moved into the house, set up his computer and his files, his bookshelves and his computer-editing suite, and even back then she had known Brendan would never get the room.
The room was a perfect square, with a large double window looking out over the back garden. Robert loved it because it was so quiet. A row of filing cabinets took up the left wall, while a drafting table was placed directly in front of the window. Robert preferred to first sketch out the storyboards for his scripts, whether they were for a documentary or an ad, rather than just using a computer program. He felt more creative that way. A custom-built long, blond wood table took up the entire right wall. It held all the office equipment: printers, faxes, scanners, a twenty-seven-inch iMac, and a space where the shiny MacBook Pro laptop usually sat, alongside the digital editing suite where he spliced images, dialogue, and music into the advertisements that were R&K’s bread and butter. When they had first set up the business all those years ago, they had sent everything out for editing. Now, with the advances in technology and the invention of Final Cut Pro, it was possible to do most of the editing in-house on a powerful home computer.
She rarely came into this room—it was very much Robert’s domain—but she was always struck by how incredibly neat it was. It was an aspect of his personality that she found contrasted sharply with the real man. In his daily life and his personal appearance, Robert was always slightly dishevelled, slightly scattered. She’d once thought it was part of his charm. He’d turned up on a date more than once wearing odd socks, and he still had the boyhood habit of incorrectly buttoning his jacket. Lately however—even before she’d become suspicious—she’d been aware that he’d started taking care of his appearance. She’d noticed some new shirts with strong vertical stripes in the closet, along with a couple of new silk ties in bright primary colors to match them. A sharply styled new suit in a dark, Italian wool-silk mix had appeared behind his row of classic Brooks Brothers suits. She remembered the brand: Forzieri. It had sounded so pretentious, and when she had looked it up online later, she discovered that it was. Since when did her husband invest in luxury Italian suits? When she had first met him, his idea of dressing up had been wearing a blazer from the Gap. Recently, he had started getting regular haircuts. It wasn’t that long ago that he’d sat on the edge of the bath while she trimmed his hair with her sewing scissors.
When had these changes started? And why hadn’t she given them a second thought when she first noticed them? Perhaps, because she just hadn’t been paying attention. Or was it that she wasn’t interested?
Kathy stood in the center of the room and looked around. She was looking for something. She just didn’t know what she was looking for. She’d know it when she saw it: It would be another red flag item.
She started with the papers on his desk. A neat pile was stacked in a wire basket to the left of his computer. She knew from experience that he’d notice anything out of place, so she’d have to take care to leave everything exactly as she found it. She turned the basket upside down, emptying all the papers onto the desk, facedown. Then, she went through them, one by one, replacing them in the wire basket, right side up.
Invitation to a product launch . . . letter from a client . . . art student looking for a job . . . Visa bill . . . invoice from a secretarial agency . . . speeding ticket . . .
Kathy stopped. Robert had never said anything to her about getting a speeding ticket. It was a hundred and fifty dollar ticket issued in Jamaica Plain last October 31, at 11:12 p.m. He had been going forty-five miles an hour in a twenty-five mile an hour zone. She sighed as she put the ticket back into the basket; that was an expensive ticket. And it was going to bump up their insurance even more. She knew why he hadn’t said anything to her about it. Like most men, he was incredibly vain about anything related to his driving and probably felt embarrassed.
The next sheet of paper was a complaint from Tony O’Connor. Now there was a name from the past. She remembered Tony. He’d been one of their first clients. He had a number of small carpet and tile shops scattered across Massachusetts and employed R&K to do his deliberately cheesy advertisements. Tony insisted on being the star of his own commercials, and his over-the-top, hard-sell delivery had made him a local celebrity. Despite R&K’s commercials helping to nearly triple his profits, Tony always complained, even when he’d signed off and approved an ad. Some things never changed. Shaking her head, she put Tony’s letter in the basket on top of the speeding ticket.
And stopped.
Something cold settled into the pit of her stomach. She picked up the ticket and looked at it again. October 31. Halloween. She remembered last Halloween because there had been some trouble in the neighborhood. A group of older boys, whom Brendan sometimes hung out with, had gotten some unbelievably powerful fireworks and had set them off into the early hours of the morning. Fireworks were illegal in Massachusetts, but were legal to purchase in New Hampshire and Connecticut. The boys had picked up the fireworks just over the border in Seabrook, New Hampshire, and had set them off in the park near the house. She clearly remembered sitting on the bed with Brendan and Theresa on either side of her, watching the colorful explosions of light. The noise was incredible—a mixture of what sounded like gunfire, crackles, and tremendous explosions. A bonfire blazed in the distance, and showers of sparks filled up the sky. Even in the bedroom behind the closed triple-glazed windows, the air had tasted of burnt rubber tires. At one stage a spent rocket had fallen on the roof, then rolled and clattered off the tiles. The three of them had jumped in unison, thinking the roof was coming in.
The three of them . . . because Robert had not been there. She’d remembered being almost grateful. He would probably have wanted to go out and argue with the boys, and God knows how that would have ended up. That night he had been in Connecticut having dinner with a prospective client; he’d stayed over and come back the following morning.
But how then could he get a ticket in Jamaica Plain at 11:12 p.m.?
Because—stupid—he had not been in Connecticut.
Because—stupid—he had been driving through Jamaica Plain.
She quickly rifled through the rest of the papers. Something else had bothered her. Yes. There was a Visa bill. Why was it here? She took care of the bills. In the ea
rly years of their marriage, Robert had looked after all the bills, and they’d ended up paying interest on more than one occasion because he’d forgotten to pay on time. Now, she paid all the bills and utilities. They had two platinum cards, one with Bank of America and one with Wells Fargo. They ran all the house expenses on the B of A card, and the business expenses on the Wells Fargo card.
Kathy turned over the Visa bill again. It was an MBNA Platinum card. She frowned; she hadn’t known they had an MBNA account, and why had she never seen it before? Then she realized the bill had been sent to Charles Street, which was the office address in the city. It seemed to be entirely for Internet purchases: books, CDs, computer stuff. Kathy hadn’t known Robert bought anything online except for the occasional book from Amazon, and they tended to be work-related titles. There was nothing unusual in the bill . . . until she turned the page. There were three items listed on the second page. A purchase from QVC that came to $320. A bouquet of flowers ordered online from ProFlowers that came to $95 dollars. The most recent entry was for L’Espalier, the French restaurant in the Back Bay that Kathy had been dying to go to. It was for $210 dollars, and that expense had been incurred just over two weeks ago, on Tuesday, the third of December. Last night, looking at her husband’s phone, she’d noted that the Tuesdays were usually red flag days.
She looked at the few pieces of information her cursory search had revealed. He had a credit card he’d told her nothing about; he had purchased a meal at a posh French restaurant two weeks ago when he’d supposedly been working; and—most damning of all—she was able to place him in Jamaica Plain in October, when he had told her he was in Connecticut. She also knew for a fact that he was not having dinner at Top of the Hub this evening.
What more evidence did she need that he was having an affair?
She hurried through the rest of the documents. But there was nothing of any interest in them. Robert was, by nature, a cautious man, and she was more than surprised that he’d left the incriminating papers on his desk. Kathy started to get angry; he was obviously counting on her docility and stupidity, or else he had so little respect for her that he thought that even if she did come into his room, she wouldn’t notice. She had a sudden temptation to rip every file out of the cabinets, shred them, then pile them up in the center of the floor and let him come home to an unholy mess. She wanted to pin the speeding ticket and the Visa bill to the bulletin board above the computer.
The Affair Page 4