The Adultery Club

by Tess Stimson

  “I used to have it this way, before we met,” I said steadily. “But you never let me cut it. You always insisted I keep it long.”

  “Did I?”

  He didn’t even remember. Oh, dear God, when will the pain stop?

  I smiled sadly. “You used to insist on a lot of things, Nicholas.”

  I got back into the car and sobbed for the entire hour it took us to drive to the beautiful country manor house in Kent that Trace had booked for the weekend. To his great credit, he never once indicated that he was anything other than thrilled to be rubbing my back as I sniveled and hiccuped like a child. I don’t know if I’d have been so phlegmatic if the boot had been on the other foot and it had been Trace bawling his eyes out over an ex-girlfriend.

  When Nicholas rang last week to ask if I could keep the children this weekend, I was thrilled. Monday to Fridays are such a slog, getting the girls ready for school, cleaning, laundering, helping with homework; it’s the weekends with them that are the real treats. Well, usually. I’ve really missed them the past few weeks when they’ve been with their father. Nicholas and I are clearly going to have to come to some sort of arrangement to divide our time with them more fairly; perhaps a midweek visit and alternate weekends. Oh, Lord, the horrid, soul-destroying business of divorce.

  Trace and I extended our original romantic reservation at the farmhouse in Normandy to include the children, and I had thought it might be the perfect time to introduce them properly to Trace. Not just as Mummy’s friend, but as—well, Mummy’s friend.

  It started to go wrong the moment we got into the car. First the nonstop battery of questions—“Why aren’t we going to Daddy’s this weekend? Doesn’t he want to see us? Are we going next weekend? Why don’t you know? Can we ring and ask him? Why can’t we ring? Can we ring later? When?”—and then the sulks, punctuated by demands to stop the car every five minutes for the lavatory, a drink, to be sick. When Trace finally insisted that everyone do up their seatbelts and hold their bladders and their bile until we got to the Eurotunnel train, Sophie muttered, audibly, “You’re not our father. You can’t tell us what to do.”

  Once in France, it just got worse. The girls hated the farmhouse: the sheets were scratchy, the room too cold, the food too foreign; they were bored, they couldn’t watch television, they had nothing to do. Did they want to go to the beach? Duh, raining! Well, how about a nice long walk along the river? I’ve got your anoraks, in some places it’s shallow enough to paddle in—oh. All right. Maybe a pony ride, then; wouldn’t that be nice? It’ll be dry in the forest, under the trees. They’re very friendly, you can feed them if you—well, what do you want to do? No, I’ve told you. Your father is busy this weekend. I don’t know what he’s doing. No, I can’t ring and ask him. No!

  When, on Sunday, the owner of the pension apologetically explained that her mother had been taken ill, she was extrêmement désolée, she couldn’t cook us our lunch after all, c’est bien dommage, she’d quite understand if we wanted to leave early—we all leaped at the chance.

  The drive home has been the only peaceful part of the entire trip, I think ruefully, glancing at the sleeping children in the back.

  Trace carries the bags into the house, while I rouse Sophie and Evie, who stumble, drowsy and grumbling, up the garden path, and carry Metheny, still sleeping, upstairs to her bedroom. She doesn’t wake even when I undress her and lay her gently in her cot.

  For a long moment, I stand looking down at her, my hand resting possessively on the side of the rail, moonlight gilding the plump curve of her cheek, warm as a ripe peach.

  Our last-chance baby: named for the jazz guitarist Nicholas loves so much. She still isn’t yet two. What happened to us? How did it all go so wrong, so fast?

  I sink onto the window seat, watching Trace unloading her pushchair from the car below. He looks so competent and assured, it’s as if he’s being doing this for years. But he hasn’t, I remind myself. He isn’t the father of your children. However much you have, at times, wished he were.

  Kit was right when he said I hadn’t got over Trace when I met Nicholas. That I loved Nicholas, I had no doubt. But I didn’t give myself time to heal. I simply papered over the cracks, and threw myself headlong into Nicholas; used him, perhaps, to get over Trace and so started everything out on the wrong foot from the beginning. When Sophie was placed into my arms, even as Nicholas and I gazed at each other in awe at what we had made and I drank in her pink-and-white perfection, greedily, a tiny part of me wondered what my lost baby would have looked like: how it would have felt to give birth to Trace’s child. Once a year, I slipped away to the tiny Catholic church in Salisbury to light a candle for him—it was a boy, I’m sure it was a boy—and thought of Trace. Every time Nicholas and I ever had a row—and we were married ten years, of course we rowed—a secret, black part of my heart turned, disloyally, toward Trace. Wondered if he would have canceled a skiing trip because of work, or failed to buy a single Christmas present again, or undermined me with the children: whatever silly, domestic niggle had triggered the fight. My internal calendar observed his birthday, the day we met, the date we parted. I followed his exploits in the gossip columns, telling myself the ugly swirl of jealousy was maternal frustration at his refusal to grow up. I never acknowledged it, even to myself; but he was as much a part of my marriage as I was, an undercurrent always tugging, tugging me away from Nicholas.

  If I hadn’t been so focused on Trace, on his sudden physical presence in my life after a decade of imagining, I would have seen what was happening with Nicholas. Perhaps, even, in time to stop it.

  I reach up to close the curtains. Trace glances up as he locks the car, smiles, lifts his hand. He really is startlingly handsome.

  All these years, I’ve secretly believed Trace was my soul mate, wrenched from me by Fate. I’ve thought of Nicholas as the sensible choice, the husband of expediency, the safe, steady, reliable option; loving and loved, of course, but not passionately, not in the wild, untamed way I had loved and was loved by Trace.

  But Trace and I weren’t destroyed by jealous gods. The rather prosaic truth is that we were never right for each other. I was always convinced I didn’t deserve him—which is why I was so ready to believe the worst. And he just wanted to fix me.

  Nothing has changed. He is still racing around, bending life to suit him by sheer force of will. And if I no longer feel inadequate, I can see how wildly unmatched we are. Have always been. I don’t want a savior; I want a partner. A friend, an equal. I want Nicholas.

  My hand shakes. All this time I’ve spent missing something I never had, letting what really mattered slip through my fingers.

  Nicholas is the love of my life, not Trace. It is Nicholas I love with a real passion, born of years of loyalty and laughter and shared love; of tears and hardship, too. Frustration and joy, contentment and boredom: That’s what makes up a marriage, that’s what real love is all about.

  I close Metheny’s door softly. It’s not that I don’t love Trace: I do. But not enough to make this work, however easy and safe it would be for me.

  He glances up as I walk into the kitchen and pushes a mug of tea toward me. “Here, thought you could do with this—”

  My eyes fill. This is going to be so hard.

  “No,” I say softly.

  He knows immediately that I am not talking about the tea. A shadow crosses his face, replaced in an instant by his usual, easy smile. “It was just a bad day, Mal,” he soothes. “A bad couple of days. It doesn’t mean anything. Next time, it’ll be easier—”

  “No.”

  Outwardly relaxed, smiling still, he leans back against the sink. Only by the whiteness of his knuckles can I see that this is just an act.

  “Why don’t I go home and give you a call in the morning?” he says, his voice carefully neutral. “It’s late, we’re all tired, and it’s been a long journey. Perhaps next week we should—”

  “Trace,” I say gently. “This isn’t going to work. Us.
You know that as much as I do.”

  His eyes darken. A muscle moves in his jaw, but he doesn’t speak.

  “You know I’m right,” I press. “We’re just too different, Trace. We want different things. It’s been fun for you playing at being a husband and father these last few months, and you’ve been wonderful with the girls, but it isn’t you,” I say. “Not yet, anyway. We don’t really fit into your life. I’m not the person you should have on your arm. You should be escorting some glamorous, leggy model up the red carpet, not an old married woman like me.” I touch his arm; he doesn’t respond. “That life isn’t me, Trace. Never was. It was exciting for a while, but it’s not my world. And this world”—I spread my arm, taking in the paintings Blu-tacked to the kitchen wall, the anoraks slung over the backs of chairs, the Lego in the fruit bowl—“this isn’t yours. We’ve both been stuck in the past, seeing each other the way we were thirteen years ago. But life has moved on since then. We’ve moved on.”

  “I’d learn all of this,” he says, painfully. “The nappies and the Pony Club and the rest of it, if that’s what you wanted.”

  “It isn’t that—”

  “Nicholas,” he says heavily.

  “Nicholas,” I agree.

  We both know there is really nothing more to be said.

  Trace heaves himself away from the sink.

  “I should go,” he says awkwardly. “There is—there’s someone I should call. Someone—nothing would have happened if—anyway. I said I might ring. And I should go.”

  We both know there isn’t anyone. But there will be.

  “Friends?” he asks, his voice catching slightly.

  “The best,” I whisper.

  For a long time after he’s left, I sit at the kitchen table, wondering if I have made the worst mistake of my life, pushed away the man I love for a second time. And then I finger the wedding band on my finger, and I know that however terrifying it is to let him go, I’m right. I care too much for Trace to condemn him to life as second best. And for as long as I’m in love with my husband, that’s all it would be.

  Four days later, Nicholas files for divorce.

  I can’t believe he’s done this. Actually gone to a solicitor, sat in an office, and regurgitated the story of our marriage to a virtual stranger, sifted through the dirty laundry of our lives together for something to fling at me, to make this outrageous charge of unreasonable behavior stick.

  How could he? How could he do this to me?

  I bury my head on my arms, the ugly legal papers scattered over the table in front of me. I can’t bring myself even to read them through; the first paragraph was enough. I can’t bring myself to move. I know I should eat, get dressed, clear up the kitchen, but I’m unable even to summon the energy to lift my head from my arms. Thank God for Liz, answering my howl after I opened the morning post and called her, dashing over to take the girls to school.

  It’s real. It’s really over. He isn’t going to come back, throw himself at my knees, and beg me to forgive him. He’s left me, and he’s going to marry this girl.

  A bloom of hatred wells in my heart, and as suddenly dies, unable to find purchase. My despair and grief are so all-consuming, I have no room for anything else.

  Suddenly I can’t stop the tears. I keen like a wounded animal, crying for hours until I have no tears left, and still I weep, dry, wracking heaves. Darkness oozes through my soul. I cannot even imagine how it might feel to smile.

  Hours later, dimly, I register the sound of a car on the gravel outside. A minute or two passes, and I become aware of a presence behind me. I look round and see Sara standing outside my kitchen door.

  It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore.

  I open the door, then retreat to the safety of the Aga, wrapping my dressing gown tighter about my body.

  She takes a huge breath. I realize she’s nervous. How strange. I can’t imagine feeling nervous, or anything else, ever again.

  “Do you want him back?” she asks.

  She makes it sound as if she’s returning my ball. This landed in my garden, and I was just wondering—

  I stare at her for a few moments, at this girl—no, that lets her off the hook too easily, as if she is too young to know any better, as if she isn’t responsible for what she’s done—this woman, I think, this woman who has so casually picked up my life, shaken free what she wanted from it, and cast the rest aside. An angry red spot, like an insect bite, disfigures her chin.

  I put the kettle on the hot plate of the Aga. “Tea?”

  She hesitates, then nods.

  “It’ll take a while. It’s not like an electric kettle.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I’m sorry I’m not dressed. I wasn’t expecting—”

  “I know. I should have called, but I thought you wouldn’t see me—”

  “I wouldn’t,” I say, “if I had a choice.”

  “No.”

  The silence spreads.

  I gesture to the table. “Why don’t you sit down. I’m sorry about the rabbit, one of the children let it out this morning, I haven’t been able to persuade him to go back in his cage.” I rub at a patch of eczema on the inside of my left wrist. “I can’t say I blame him, I wouldn’t want to be cooped up in there all day myself, I’d let him wander around in the garden but something might get him. Last time he was let outside he was nearly eaten by next door’s dog—”

  “Evie?” Sara hazards.

  “She wanted him to go organic,” I say, sighing.

  She smiles. Ambushed, I smile back.

  We’re like tourists, trapped in a foreign land, trying to find common ground—“From which part of Wiltshire? Oh, how extraordinary, my son’s godfather lives not far from you”—so that we feel less alone. Safety in numbers. The kettle boils; I busy myself making us tea, choosing two mugs that aren’t chipped, setting out milk and sugar on the table. Hurriedly, I heap the divorce papers into a pile, and hide them beneath one of Metheny’s paintings.

  The link between us, such as it was, dissolves.

  “What did you mean,” I ask abruptly, “when you asked if I wanted him back?”

  The grandfather clock ticks loudly in the hall. Somewhere beneath my feet, Don Juan scrabbles, his claws clicking on the stone floor. I don’t like her perfume: strong and synthetic. It makes me feel slightly sick.

  “I need to know,” she says finally, staring into her mug. “I can’t make a go of things until I do. I don’t want to come home every night wondering if he’s gone back home to you.” The strap of her bag slides off her shoulder and she pushes it back. “That’s all. I just want to know it’s over between you.”

  She isn’t here to put things right. She hasn’t come to apologize: If you want him back, here you are, he’s yours. She isn’t going to tell me it’s all been a terrible mistake. She’s here for reassurance: that I won’t steal him back from her.

  A bubble of hysterical laughter rises to my lips. I cover my mouth with my hand.

  “You expect me to help you?” I demand incredulously.

  Her cheeks stain. “I know it seems ridiculous, me coming to you. I know you must hate me. I’ve given you every reason. But you have Trace now,” she pleads. “You don’t need Nicholas anymore. Can’t you let him go? Can’t you let him be happy with me?”

  I lean both arms heavily on the sink, my back toward her. “I’m not stopping him.”

  “But he needs to know you’ve moved on. He can’t shut the door otherwise. You have to tell him—”

  “I don’t,” I say coldly, “have to do anything.”

  She swallows hard. I pull the edges of my dressing gown a little closer.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I didn’t mean it like that. Of course you don’t have to say anything. It’s just—I don’t understand. Your marriage was dead, you have a new life now, I know you must be upset that things worked out as they did, but it wasn’t my fault—”

  I spin round.

  �
�What makes you think my marriage was dead?”

  “But—” she flounders. “But there’s Trace—”

  “No,” I say tightly, “there isn’t. For a few weeks, perhaps, after Nicholas left, he filled the gap. Or rather, tried to. Nothing, actually, can mend the rip in my heart that losing my husband to you has made. Nothing.”

  She bites her lip. I’m suddenly reminded how young she is; how little she knows.

  Old enough.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” I demand fiercely. “Do you? The damage you’ve caused? Do you know what it’s like to listen to your child sob herself to sleep in the next room because her father’s left and she thinks that somehow it must be her fault?” My body trembles with anger. “Do you know what it’s like to face her in the morning and see the accusation in her eyes, because you couldn’t protect her from this pain? You’ve taken away from my children the one thing I wanted to give them more than anything else: a happy, stable home.” I close my eyes, misery rising in my throat like bile. “You’re not a mother; you can’t know. They’ll carry the scars with them for the rest of their lives. They’ll take this baggage with them into every relationship they ever have. A mother wouldn’t do this. A mother wouldn’t smash three little girls’ childhoods just for the sake of a quick roll in the hay.”

  She seems to shrink back in her chair with each word, as if I’m pelting her with rocks. Good, I think bitterly. Let it hurt. Good.

  “You think my marriage is dead because he slept with you?” I challenge. “Well, let me tell you something, Sara. Marriage is hard work. Very hard work. If you don’t both put everything you have into making it a success, it fails. Sometimes it’s wonderful and romantic and everything you ever dreamed it would be when you stood at the altar and made your vows to love and cherish until death parted you. And sometimes,” I say, my voice hard, “it’s dull and frustrating and difficult and you can scarcely bear the sight of each other. Sometimes you bore each other to tears. It only takes one trip, one stumble, and it can all come crashing down.”