The First Mistake

by Sandie Jones

  ‘Ah-ha,’ says Mr Yahamoto in answer, making her jump. ‘The email is in. We’re ready to go.’

  The printer in the corner of the room spews into action and he goes to it, retrieving the document he was waiting on.

  ‘So, here we have the papers for you to sign,’ he says, carefully lining them up in order as he presents them to Alice.

  ‘As I understand it, you are the sole owner of AT Designs?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says croakily, before clearing her throat. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Mr Nathan has explained everything to you regarding the covenant?’

  Alice looks to her husband beside her, who nods and puts his hand on hers.

  ‘Excellent. So, I need you to sign here, here and here,’ says Mr Yahamoto, demonstrating with a pen, before he offers it to her. She declines and reaches into her bag on the floor for her ‘lucky pen’, the one Tom had given her to celebrate signing the contracts on their first house. It was the one she’d used for anything important since, superstitiously believing that it would bring her joy and luck. Her fingers clasp around its embossed silver case, feeling the weight as she lifts it out.

  ‘Could I borrow your pen after all?’ she says to Mr Yahamoto, apologetically. She places her pen on the table, watching it wobble as it finds its place.

  ‘Of course,’ he says, handing her his bog-standard biro.

  She scrawls her signature wherever a pencilled cross is marked.

  ‘So, this signifies that you have now exchanged, and ten per cent will be transferred to the vendor.’

  Alice smiles tightly, still toying with the cheap biro in her hand. How significant, she thinks, that the most monumental of decisions for Alice and Tom Designs has been signed off with a pen other than the one Tom gave me.

  ‘Completion will take place next week, but we have all the papers we need to do that, so I do not anticipate there being any problems.’

  ‘It’s been a pleasure,’ says Alice, standing up from the table and offering an outstretched hand.

  ‘The pleasure is all mine.’ The lawyer bows, then holds the door open for them. ‘Ah, Miss Alice,’ he calls out, just as she steps into the lift. ‘Your pen. You forgot your pen.’

  ‘Keep it,’ she says as the doors close.

  32

  The champagne has gone to Alice’s head. She didn’t feel it before, but now that she’s sitting on the toilet, its seat heated, she’s finding it difficult to focus. She’s trying to concentrate on the back of the door, but it’s moving, as if she’s on board a storm-tossed boat. She reaches out for the toilet paper, but it’s not quite where she thought it was – her hand a few centimetres short.

  ‘Shit,’ she says out loud, wondering how many drinks she’s had and wishing she’d had just one less. She likes the way alcohol numbs her nerve endings, which normally happens sometime between glasses three and four. But she feels like she’s had a bottle, and some.

  Then she remembers the tablets she took to calm her nerves on the plane, not thinking for a second that the double dosage would do anything other than send her to sleep, which they had. But now she can’t help but wonder if it was a good idea to drink with them in her system.

  The operating instructions for the toilet seem to be swaying in front of her eyes and she snorts with laughter every time she pushes a button and it does everything apart from flush.

  ‘You have had far too much to drink,’ laughs Nathan as she weaves her way back to the table.

  ‘I thought we were celebrating,’ she slurs, sitting down heavily on the chair being pulled out for her.

  He reaches across the table, taking hold of one of her hands. ‘Shall we go to the room?’

  ‘Ooh, is that an invitation, Mr Darcy?’ she asks loudly, starting to get up again. The heel of her shoe buckles beneath her ankle and Nathan moves in to steady her.

  She knows she’s lost the ability to moderate her volume level. ‘When I get you upstairs, I’m going to—’

  ‘Ssh,’ laughs Nathan. ‘I’m not sure everyone in the restaurant needs to know.’

  When they get out of the lift she shrugs off his attempt to steer her down the corridor towards their room and leans against the wall as he struggles with the key card.

  ‘I’m going to keep you up all night,’ she says, moving towards him and grabbing hold of the lapel on his jacket. She wants this, needs this. It had been weeks since they’d had sex.

  ‘I want you to make love to me like you’ve never done before,’ she says as she kisses him, her tongue teasing his, her teeth biting down softly on his lips.

  ‘What’s brought this on?’ asks Nathan, arching an eyebrow.

  She can’t tell him that for almost ten years, it’s been Tom who’s been at the forefront of her mind. Wondering if he can see her, refusing to really let herself go, for fear that it will hurt him to see her give herself to another man.

  She hates herself for only half loving Nathan all this time, because that’s what she’s done. Whilst she has been pining for a man who slept with another woman, fathered another child, she’d missed out on giving herself, in all entirety, to the man who deserved it most.

  ‘I’ve been such a fool,’ she says, as tears well up in her eyes. ‘Will you ever forgive me?’

  ‘For what?’ Nathan asks warily. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Nothing, that’s the problem,’ she says. ‘I’ve not done enough.’

  He looks at her quizzically as she pushes him against the back of the door, her hands reaching down to the zip of his trousers. It’s hardly surprising that he’s ready for her and his tongue responds, his own need for release evidently as urgent as hers.

  ‘What was that all about?’ he says afterwards, as they lie on the plush carpet.

  ‘That’s how it should have been all this time,’ says Alice, her own body still shuddering with the after-effects.

  Nathan rolls onto his side to face her. ‘What’s changed?’

  ‘Everything,’ she says, honestly. ‘Everything feels different.’

  His brow furrows. ‘Because of the deal? Or because you’ve been brave enough to come away?’

  She almost expects him to say, I told you that the world wouldn’t end, and silently thanks him when he doesn’t.

  ‘I just think that this is the start of a new phase in my life,’ she says, relieved that the drunken fog is beginning to clear.

  ‘Well, this is a new approach I could grow to love,’ he says, smiling. ‘If it means sex like that . . .’

  Alice laughs. ‘I mean it, things are going to change. I’m not always the wife you deserve, the mother my children need or the businesswoman I know I can be.’

  ‘I think you do a pretty good job,’ he says, ‘considering.’

  ‘Considering what, though?’ she asks. ‘That I had a breakdown when my first husband died?’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ she says, ‘and I agree with you. I don’t want what happened to define me. I’m sick and tired of being that person. Even when I pretend that I’m not, I know that deep down I still am.’

  He nods.

  ‘So, I just want to say that I’m sorry, and from now on I’ll give myself to you wholeheartedly.’ She leans in to kiss him. ‘I love you,’ she says, before inviting him to take more.

  ‘I could get used to this new wife I’ve got,’ he says, as he lifts himself up off the floor. ‘But just let me go to the toilet first.’

  Alice sighs and watches his naked body as he walks into the bathroom as if seeing him for who he truly is, for the first time. She’s lying, sated and content, when Nathan’s phone pings from the inside pocket of the jacket he’d thrown to the floor in his urgency to get his clothes off. She wouldn’t normally look, but it might be the girls trying to get hold of them. Forcing herself to stay calm, curbing any irrational thoughts that something must have happened to them, she reaches across to retrieve it.

  She looks at the message, then looks again, her ey
es blurring the words beyond recognition. She thinks she knows what it says, but closes her eyes, to give them a chance to unsee it.

  I need you. Now xx

  The blood that so recently felt warm as it coursed its way around her body turns icy cold. She scrolls up and down, looking for any evidence of who she’s fighting against in the battle for her husband’s affections. But there’s nothing, other than the anonymous phone number it’s been sent from.

  She hears the toilet flush and needs to think quickly, but her heart is racing so fast that it’s making her hands shake. She fumbles to take a screenshot and sends it to herself, before deleting the message she had read and the one she sent. Nathan comes out of the bathroom just as she manages to put the phone back into his jacket.

  ‘Are you still on the floor?’ he asks, laughing. He holds a hand out to pull her up and it takes all her strength not to recoil. How could he profess his undying love? How could he swear that he’s not having an affair, when all along he’s been sneaking around, living two truths? How could he let her sign the deal today, knowing that he’d lied to make it happen? The thought makes her feel nauseous.

  ‘So how about we do that all over again?’ he breathes into her ear as he stands behind her, guiding her towards the bed. She can feel him, but her desire of just a few moments ago has been replaced by a rage so incandescent, so ferocious, that she fears she might do something rash if the wrong instrument should fall into her hands. She clenches her fists in an effort to stop herself tearing him limb from limb.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she manages, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Well, the new you didn’t last very long,’ laughs Nathan, as he gently lowers her onto the bed. ‘I’m pretty wired, would you mind if I went to the bar?’

  She’s sure she’s stopped breathing. Was he honestly seeking her permission to cheat? Because that was surely what he was about to do. She had no idea who the woman was, but it seemed as if she could be here, in Japan. She tried to put aside how warped that made Nathan. What had he gained from dragging her all the way over here apart from getting her to sign the contracts, which she could have done in London? Had he brought his wife and his mistress to satisfy his sick ego?

  She shivers involuntarily as she recalls how she’d waxed lyrical to Nathan about everything she’d done wrong, how she wanted to change and give him what he deserved. He must have been laughing at her the whole time. What a fool she’s been.

  As soon as Nathan’s out the door, Alice gets up and frantically goes to the minibar, breaking the miniature Bombay Sapphire cap in her impatience. She doesn’t even think twice about drinking it directly from the bottle. It burns her throat as she pours it into her mouth neat, grimacing at the taste.

  She knows it won’t bring answers, but it makes things just a little bit easier to bear until she makes her next move.

  Her phone is sitting on the bedside table, its new content making her feel as if it’s somehow complicit in Nathan’s chicanery. She picks it up, staring unmoving at the screensaver picture of Sophia and Olivia poking their tongues out. Negative thoughts crowd her headspace, each battling for supremacy. It feels as if her whole world is balancing on a precipice. She needs to talk to someone. She needs to talk to Beth.

  Her thumb hovers over the number, stored under Your Best Friend in her contacts. Alice can’t help but smile at the memory of Beth changing it, unbeknownst to her, when she went to the ladies in the pub. The next morning, on her way to school, Your Best Friend had lit up the phone screen. Alice hadn’t been able to get out of the car for laughing. What she wouldn’t give to be laughing with Beth now. Couldn’t they just go back to how they were? Pretend it never happened?

  Alice dials, before immediately stopping the call, choosing instead to log on to Facebook in the hope that Beth has posted a cryptic message that will somehow make everything all right again. All she needs to say is that she got it wrong, that of course it’s not the same Tom, how could it be? But there’s nothing other than an advert for the school fete this coming Saturday. Alice remembers she’d promised to man the face-painting stall, but that wouldn’t be happening now.

  With a shaking hand, she types in Tom Evans and waits as it collates all the one thousand and forty-five Tom Evanses listed. She hopes and expects that since her phone call to Facebook to inform them of the error, there will now be one less. But his face is still there, staring out at her as if everything is how she believed it to be, and all she wants to do is reach into her phone and gouge his eyes out.

  She clicks on his profile and a new photo fills the screen. It feels as if she’s been kicked in the chest – the air rushes out of her as she looks at it through a blurry haze. An attractive woman, whom she’s never seen before, has her arms wrapped protectively around a toddler. The pair, both with fur-lined hoods and red-tipped noses, pose against the backdrop of a snow-covered mountain. Below, Tom has written, My Girls – My World.

  33

  ‘He can’t be alive,’ says Alice out loud, still poleaxed on the bed. ‘He just can’t be.’

  But then she remembers that this time last week, she’d also thought it was impossible for him to have loved another woman and fathered another child.

  She shakes herself down. She can’t deal with this right now. She needs to find Nathan.

  She moves around the room, picking up the clothes that had been carelessly discarded as their lovemaking had built in momentum. The lace knickers that had lent themselves perfectly to being peeled off by Nathan’s teeth now look sordid, the expensive black dress that he’d sexily unzipped, teasing her back with his fingertips as he did so, now makes her feel cheap as she slips it back on.

  She squeezes her feet back into her three-inch heels in a desperate bid to get out of the confines of the room, where the air feels like it’s being sucked out. She doesn’t know whether she wants to find Nathan or kill Tom a second time as she walks unsteadily down the corridor, forcing a smile at the hotel employee in the lift.

  If she knew where she was going, and what she was going to do when she got there, it would help, but right now, all she knows is that her paranoid fears about her husband having an affair have finally been proven, and she needs to decide what she’s going to do about it.

  The bar is just as busy as when she’d sat there enjoying a bottle of champagne with Nathan before dinner. She’d felt excited then, finally buoyed by optimism for the future. Now, she has a lump in her chest and a sickening sensation swirling in her stomach.

  Despite her trepidation, she strides in with her head held high, trying desperately hard not to look how she feels; panic-stricken. She surreptitiously takes in everyone there, not sure if she wants to see Nathan or not. If he’s here, she will need to go to him and ask what the hell is going on. If he’s not, she’s got an even bigger problem on her hands. Where is he? And who’s he with?

  She thinks back to the earring and bouquet, and the bill from this very same hotel. She’d let Nathan convince her that the charges for cocktails, room service and a couples massage had been a mistake. He’d promised her that he’d never seen the earring before and that the florist delivering the bouquet was a million-to-one coincidence. How had she allowed herself to be played? Maybe because knowing the truth about Tom had made her look at Nathan in a whole new light. One in which she refused to believe that he was like her cheating first husband.

  The realization that one man she loved would do that to her is hard enough to take. Now that she’s faced with the prospect that both of them have makes her question what she’s doing wrong. All she’s ever done is love them the best way she knows how. How could that not be enough?

  She holds her breath as she looks around the bar, willing Nathan to be there, because right now, that is the lesser of the two evils. If he isn’t, she doesn’t want to go where her mind will undoubtedly take her. She doesn’t want to acknowledge that whoever just sent him that text might be in Japan.

  Does she live here? Is this where he met her? Has she got s
omething to do with the site? Is that why he’s so keen to do it, so that he can spend more time here, be with her, knowing that Alice wouldn’t be keen to travel? She wonders if her announcement that she was going to come had surprised him. He wouldn’t have been expecting it, that was for sure. Had she scuppered his plans? His chance to be with her? Perhaps not, because as she fruitlessly scours the faces in the bar, she’s hit by the realization that he’s gone to her anyway.

  She orders a Baileys with ice – the first drink she can think of when the bartender asks. The man playing Sinatra on the piano looks over and gives a cheery nod. She smiles weakly and sips her liqueur, resisting the urge to knock it all back.

  Despite being in a strange city, on the other side of the world, where Alice’s imagination could so easily concoct a horror story about what could have happened to Nathan, there’s no part of her that’s worried about his safety. Perhaps because deep down, she’d hazard a guess that it’s not his safety that’s being compromised – it’s his morals.

  ‘May I?’ asks a gentleman, indicating the stool next to Alice.

  ‘Of course,’ she says, smiling, her subconscious having already registered in that split second that he’s attractive.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ he asks in an American accent.

  Her first instinct is to say no, but then she wonders, why not? Why shouldn’t she accept a drink from this handsome man? Why shouldn’t she enjoy his company and flirt with him a little? She might go even further if the opportunity arises. Panic rises within her as she contemplates the idea of going to bed with the man in front of her. As exciting as the prospect may be, she cannot even begin to understand how people who are married, who are supposed to love their partners, can cheat. Her heart palpitates at the mere thought of it.

  ‘I’ll have a G and T please,’ she says. ‘A double.’