by Tess Stimson
My father nods slowly several times.
“I do love him, Dad,” I say, crouching in front of him. “Please be happy for me.”
“He’s a married man, love,” my father says softly. “There’s no getting away from it. You’ll be taking on a man who’s already walked away from one family. What’s to stop him from doing it to you?”
After Emma quit as Nick’s secretary, handing in her resignation the morning our affair became public knowledge, he hired a new girl. Twenty-two years old, legs up to here, the spitting image of Scarlett Johansson. Nowhere near as efficient as Emma; she seems to require a lot of direction from Nick. A lot of hands-on, one-on-one attention.
“He wouldn’t do that to me, Dad. He loves me.”
Dad sighs, and pats the bench beside him. “Sit down, Sara.”
I do as he says. For a long moment, neither of us says anything.
Then, “When you were about three or four,” Dad says, “your mother and I went through a bit of a rough patch. Things were a bit strained at home. She’d just started a new job, and I didn’t much like coming home to fix my own dinner. Caused a few rows, I don’t mind telling you.” He smiles wryly. “Don’t forget, it was different then. A man had certain expectations. It was my job to put bread on the table, and hers to make something out of it. I didn’t hold with her going out to work, and I told her so. But you know your mother. She went out and got herself a job anyway. Receptionist at some posh law firm in town.”
I stare at him in surprise.
“I didn’t know Mum had ever worked.”
“Yes, well, there’s a lot you don’t know about your mum and me.” He rubs his hand over his jaw. “I know the two of you don’t get on, and you lay the blame for everything that goes wrong between you at her door. She can be difficult to live with, I grant you that. But it’s not always been easy for her, either.”
A fieldmouse darts between the potting benches. We both watch it skitter down the center of the greenhouse and disappear beneath an upturned terra-cotta pot.
“Anyway. I used to get home earlier than your mother did, and I took to stopping by a neighbor of an evening. For a chat, sometimes a drink or two. She was married too, but her man was out late most nights. After a while, we got to be friends. Good friends.”
The words hang in the air.
“You had an affair!” I gasp.
“I suppose you’d call it that. Turned both our heads, for a while, I’ll admit. I was all for upping and leaving your mother, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Said she couldn’t do that to a little ’un like you. She was the better woman, I’ll say that. I was so head-over-heels, I couldn’t see straight.” He swallows noisily. “Went on for the best part of six months. I kept meaning to put an end to it, but I could never seem to find the right moment. And I was so angry at your mother. I never stopped to think of the damage I was causing.” He closes his eyes briefly. “And then, of course, she found out.
Caught us bang to rights—here, as a matter of fact, right in the middle of this greenhouse. Jan had come over—”
“Jan?” I exclaim. “Mrs. Newcombe?”
He nods.
“Oh, Christ,” I say, covering my face with my hands. “Libby’s about four years younger than me. Please don’t tell me—”
“Of course she’s not mine! What do you take me for?”
“Well, I’m beginning to wonder,” I say bitterly. “I can’t believe all this, Dad. It’s too much to take in. What did Mum say?”
“She gave me a second chance,” Dad says simply. “And I took it. I’ve never regretted it for a moment. Yes, she gave me a dog’s life for a year or two, and she still has her moments, but we got past it in the end. And we’ve been stronger because of it. It taught us to value what we have, and look after it. She gave up the job, not because I asked her to, but because she wanted to show that she was willing to meet me halfway.” He takes my hands in his. “Sometimes a man makes a mistake, Sara. Gets carried away. And when there are children involved, you owe it them to think twice before you tear their lives apart. I know you love this man, and you believe he loves you.” He shrugs. “Maybe he does, I don’t know. But are you sure, are you really sure, that their marriage is over? Because if you’re not, Sara, you’re ruining an awful lot of lives for nothing, including your own.”
I pull the car over and peer at my A-Z. Stapleford has to be around here somewhere, surely to God. I’ve gone up and down this section of the A36 for forty-five minutes. I must be missing the bloody turnoff.
Slamming the wheel with frustration, I move back into the flow of traffic. This is terrifying enough to do as it is, without getting fucking lost.
Nick asked me to marry him as soon as I told him I was pregnant. And despite the conversation I had just overheard, despite hearing him tell his wife he still loved her and wanted to come back, despite all my doubts and misgivings, I said yes.
I want this baby. I want his child, too. Maybe this one will be a boy. A son, someone he can take fishing and teach to play cricket or whatever it is men do with their sons these days. Giving him a child will make me just as important to him as she is. I won’t just be his mistress, I’ll be the mother of his baby. We can build on that, work at it, fashion a real relationship out of the bits and pieces we’ve got now. A child will make all the difference. He loves me, in his own way, I’m sure of it. With a little time and attention, that will grow.
But not if she crooks her finger and he goes running back. I can’t live like that. Can’t bring a child into that.
I have to know that the door’s closed for good.
Finally. I take the turning to Stapleford and sit behind a horse van, drumming my fingers impatiently on the wheel as we crawl along at fifteen miles an hour. As we stop altogether to let a herd of cows cross the road, I flip down the sun visor and study myself in the mirror. Great. A huge fucking zit, right in the middle of my chin. Just what I need.
I flip the visor back up. It’s not only a question of wanting to be sure of Nick. I never thought I’d say it, but—I need absolution. I can’t go forward otherwise. It may be impossible to turn the clock back and undo the damage Nick and I have caused, but if I know his wife is at least happy now, perhaps I’ll sleep better. Something my mother once said sticks in my head: You can’t build happiness on someone else’s misery. I guess it’s a karma thing.
What am I talking about? Of course his wife is happy now. She’s got the thinking woman’s hottie to warm her bed. I just want her to promise she’ll steer clear of my man.
Yes. The irony is not lost on me.
I reach a T-junction, and turn into a narrow track leading up a steep hill. Twice I have to pull over to allow another vehicle to pass in the opposite direction. I open the window and breathe in the dusty, grassy scent of the hedgerows as I drive. A warm breeze dips the cow parsley in my direction, and I sneeze at the sudden downdraft of pollen. I know country life isn’t all bucolic vistas and pastoral idylls, I’ve seen abattoir footage, but it seems so beautiful and meandering out here—a world away from the rush and dirt of London.
Nick’s farmhouse is the only one for several miles, bounded on three sides by fields and meadows, and on the fourth by a small copse of young saplings. It looks old and picturesque, if—as I drive nearer—rather in need of some TLC and modern wiring. No wonder he could hardly bear to leave it.
The gate is open. I park in the wide gravel space at the front of the house. My heart thumps wildly in my chest as I get out of the car. Oh, shit. Suddenly I don’t know if I’ve got the balls to go through with this.
I can’t bring myself to ring the doorbell. Instead, threading my way around several outbuildings, I peer through the grimy kitchen window at the back. Inside, it’s smaller and messier than I expected: I’d had visions of some Sunday Times Nigella Lawson supplement kitchen—all gleaming surfaces and shining saucepan racks. She is a bloody celebrity chef, after all. But the only things suspended above this ancient-looking Aga are some r
ather gray bras and several pairs of Bridget Jones knickers. The stone floor is covered with newspapers and what look like rabbit droppings, and dirty crockery is piled high in the sink. A few chipped pots of dead herbs line the windowsill.
Sitting at the scrubbed pine kitchen table, head buried on her arms, is a small figure in a filthy, ratty old dressing-gown. Her wild tangle of dark hair is unbrushed. Every now and again, her thin shoulders heave.
Oh, God, I shouldn’t have come. This was a huge mistake—
She looks up, and I feel a stab of shock. I barely recognize her. Her eyes are swollen and red from crying. Misery is etched on her face. Dark circles under her eyes speak of sleepless nights and long hours waiting for dawn to break. She looks bereft and heartsick, shrunken by grief. There’s no trace of the flirty, lively woman who drops off the children every weekend before skipping merrily down to the car and her hot new lover.
I swallow. I’ve done this to her.
She unbolts the door, and turns back into the kitchen without speaking, wrapping her skinny arms around herself. I step gingerly over a heap of muddy Wellingtons.
And then I blurt out the question I came all this way to ask.
15
Malinche
Anger can take you a frighteningly long way, I discover: far from those who love and hurt you, far from everything that’s familiar, and—it’s this last I find so terrifying—far from everything you thought you knew about yourself.
After I have vomited on Sara’s sofa, I wipe my mouth carefully on the back of my wrist. Without even glancing at my husband, now frantically throwing on shirt and shoes and jacket, or his mistress, still standing frozen in shock by the door, her cheap red kimono gaping, I walk out; and keep on walking.
I walk down New Fetter Lane toward Fleet Street, my feet starting to blister in the ridiculous gardening clogs I grabbed in haste from the scullery as I ran from the house, desperate to get to Nicholas before it was too late. Barely noticing the traffic or the fumes or the lewd remarks from hooded teenagers loitering in doorways, I concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, terrified to stop even for a moment in case I cannot start again. My feet are raw and bloodied by the time I reach the Strand, and the left turn that will take me across Waterloo Bridge, back to the railway station and home; such as it is, now.
But I turn right. I hadn’t known where I was headed, until now; but I keep walking, up Bow Street, with renewed purpose, and then, ducking through a maze of small narrow streets, I emerge abruptly in Covent Garden.
His beautiful gourmet shop is easy to find; but it is in darkness, of course, closed, and I realize with a shock that it’s after nine-thirty, late; that if he is anywhere, he will be at home now: or else out of my reach entirely. Jostled by tourists and theatergoers, I take a side turning out of the piazza, and within moments find myself in an elegant old street, lined with tall, narrow white houses; graceful, sophisticated houses that seem to close their eyes with pained expressions at the litter and the down-and-outs and the youths urinating into the street.
I mount the steps of his cottage, knowing that if he’s not in, or turns me away—we’ve barely spoken, after all, since Rome—I shall simply curl up in a corner and wait to be blown away, like the rest of the unwanted rubbish bowling along the street like urban tumbleweed.
But he is in. And when he opens the door, and I stumble across the threshold in my bare, bleeding feet, clutching the silly clogs in my hand, my hair whipped wild by the wind, my face streaked with tears I hadn’t known I was weeping, he simply picks me up without a word and carries me upstairs.
I awake to the sounds and smells of a summer a long time ago. Nancy Sinatra’s “Sugar Town” plays distantly in another room. Coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice scent the air—I sit up, realizing he has placed a breakfast tray at the foot of the bed, complete with croissants and muffins and a single white rose—and sunshine streams across the high, white brass bed from the bank of French windows, casting rhombuses of light on the hand-finished planked floor. One pair of doors are flung wide open; white muslin curtains billow in the light breeze, catching on the iron railing. Overhead, a woven plantation fan slowly turns. I feel like I have stepped into a Flake advert; all I need now is a lizard on the Bakelite telephone.
I sink back against the marshmallowy pillows, pulling the fluffy cloud of duvet up to my chin. Even my British winter pallor looks fetchingly honeyed against this much eye-watering white.
My thighs ache; there is a raw, sticky, unfamiliar throb between my legs.
Last night, after Trace ran me a bath in his clawfooted movie-bathroom tub, and soaped my back, and rinsed my hair free of vomit and street grime and tears, he took me to bed; and made love to me with such controlled passion, such gentleness, that the ice storm in my heart finally ceased blowing its frozen winds through my body.
At the thought of that erotic, blush-making sex—“Lights on,” Trace said firmly, “I want to see you, all of you, I want to see your face when you come”—I suddenly realize I’m ravenous.
I sit up in bed and pull the tray toward me. I am on my third croissant and raspberry jam when Trace comes in, toweling hair still damp from the shower. His white linen shirt and cornflower blue linen pants would look outrageously Men’s Vogue on anyone else. His feet are bare. Despite the satiating gymnastics of last night, a pulse beats somewhere in the region of where the knickers of a thirty-something married mother of three should be—which is not twisted inside out and hanging on the bedpost of her lover.
“Sleep well?” he asks, throwing aside the towel to sit on the edge of the bed.
I rescue my glass of orange juice as it tilts on the tray. “Oh, yes,” I purr, stretching lazily, “I can’t remember when I last—”
I bolt upright, nearly sending everything flying. “What time is it?” I grab his wrist to see his watch. “Eleven-thirty! Trace, you should never have let me sleep in that long!—the children!—I need to get home. And Edward, poor Edward, I must speak to Daisy, I—”
“All taken care of,” he says, “I rang Kit. He’s arranged for Liz to keep the girls until tomorrow evening, they’re all going to some gymkhana or another, having the time of their lives. And Kit checked with the hospital: no news yet, he’ll call me back as soon as he hears anything. But in the meantime, you,” he says briskly, taking the locusted tray from my lap and flipping back the duvet, “need to get up. I have plans for you today.”
His gaze lingers appreciatively. Blushing furiously, I grab back the bedclothes.
He laughs and stands up.
“I took the liberty of getting Alice—my right hand, Alice, couldn’t manage without her—to nip along to Whistles and get you something fresh to wear. Five minutes, downstairs. And don’t bother to shower,” he adds, with a wink. “You’re not going to need it where you’re going.”
I wait until he leaves the room before getting out of bed (thirteen years and three children is a little too much water under the bridge in the cold light of day) and open the bag he’s left propped against a beautiful cherrywood armoire. Alice, whoever she is, has taste, and common sense. In addition to the simple turquoise tunic and loose-fitting cropped cream trousers, she’s included some flat, non-blister-rubbing (oh, bliss!) sandals, a pretty pair of pink-and-white knickers, and a matching bra. All in the correct sizes. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she’d done this kind of errand for Trace before.
I catch myself. Of course she has. He’s hardly been living the life of a monk for the past decade while I’ve been marrying and giving birth to three infants. I catch up my hair with a clip, feeling a little disoriented by the speed things are moving.
“Come on. You have no idea how many strings I had to pull to get you in at this short notice,” Trace urges, as soon as I come downstairs. He tenderly wipes a splodge of jam from the corner of my mouth with his thumb. “Luckily the girl who takes the bookings is a friend of mine.”
That ugly twinge of jealousy again. I give myse
lf a shake. It was this kind of absurd paranoia that ruined everything last time.
Five minutes later, I’m being propelled across the cobbles toward the glass door of the Sanctuary, a girls-only oasis of spoiling I have visited only in my dreams. Liz and I always said we’d treat ourselves and book a day there for our fortieth birthdays, get Giles and Nicholas to mind the children—
A fist of pain winds me. I take a deep breath, and open my eyes again.
Dear Lord, what am I doing here? Wandering around Covent Garden in strange clothes with aches in strange places from a night of sex with a man who is not my husband while my children are somewhere in the wilds of Wiltshire and Nicholas is—Nicholas is—
“Go on,” Trace prompts, “I can’t go in with you. You’ve got an entire day, booked and paid for—massage, aromatherapy, toe painting, belly-button cleaning, the works—”
“Belly-button cleaning?”
He grins, and my heart lurches as if I’ve just driven over a humpbacked bridge.
“Well, I don’t know what they do in there, do I? I’ll see you at five, a new woman.” His eyes gleam wickedly. “Not that there’s anything wrong with the old one, if last night is anything to go by—”
He kisses my flushed cheek, and I follow his long-limbed stride as it eats up the cobbled street.
There are so many confused thoughts whirling around my head, tangling into a Gordian knot of fear and panic, that the only way I can prevent myself from splintering into a thousand pieces is by refusing to acknowledge any of them. And so I meekly go inside and submit to the pampering that has been arranged for me, deliberately emptying my mind until it’s as blank and cloudless as the sky on a sunny day.
At five, pummeled and polished and smoothed and painted, I am collected as promised, and taken straight to Michaeljohn, where my hair is smoothed and tamed and coiled on my head. And then to Gucci, where he has picked out a dress—black, thank heavens—which fits me beautifully, and is perfect for the film première (a première!) in Leicester Square, where I try not to hang on his arm too adoringly, too obviously. And then to Boujis, to dance until 4 A.M., when he finally takes me, drooping, home, and to bed; and, eventually, to sleep.