by Terry Tyler
I hadn’t seen her for some time; she looked older, so much more sophisticated than when I’d first seen her, back in 2009. A little more than four years before. Then, she was just a pretty girl. Then, I was under the illusion that she’d wanted to marry Robbie but he’d turned her down. I thought I’d won something she wanted. I went hot with embarrassment, thinking how smug I’d felt at the time, little knowing that she was the one he wanted, and I was second best.
Now, she looked as though she had a personal stylist and hair and make-up artist on attendance all day. She was so confident and glossy, taller than me, just as slim but with a better figure, and she had amazing hair, like Cheryl Cole’s in those L’Oreal adverts when everyone kicked up about her having hair extensions, except that Erin’s wasn’t extensions and it wasn’t made more beautiful by clever photography, either. So clever to have all that glamorous hair hanging down her back, but then wear a severe black trouser suit. Unlike me, though, she didn’t have a neat little blouse peeking out of the top. Under the double breasted jacket was nothing but smooth, brown skin, set off by the gold chain around her throat.
Erin Lanchester was charming and friendly and interested in everything I had to say, and nothing she said or did made me think that she was anything other than my husband’s employer and friend, but when we sat down to have coffee on the dark green, soft velvety sofas by the open fire, Robbie sat next to her, not me.
I met so many people that morning, but that stuck in my mind throughout.
I couldn’t help it, I challenged him about it over lunch.
“I’m sorry, Amy, I didn’t think. I just get used to it; when I’m discussing stuff with her, and Will and Cecilia, it’s where I always sit. Please, please don’t read anything into it.”
We ate in the bar of a hotel called The Huntsman. “Do you have lunch with Erin here?” I asked.
“No.”
“But you do have lunch with her?”
“Rarely. Mostly she just sends her secretary out for a sandwich to eat while she’s working, or has business lunches.”
“So you do have lunch with her sometimes.”
“Occasionally, yes.”
“Well, when you eat with her where do you go?”
He wiped his mouth and nodded out of the window. “Hampton’s. Wine bar, over there, across the square.”
“Why didn’t we go there?”
“Because I thought you’d like this better.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because it’s more—oh, I don’t know. More traditional. I thought it was more your sort of thing.”
“I don’t see why. Aren’t I trendy enough for the wine bar, then?”
He laughed, and squeezed my hand over the table. “Don’t be daft.”
I peered across at Hampton’s. It looked really smart, the sort of place I’d feel a bit nervous about going into. “Do you and her have your special table?”
“Well, we usually sit in the same place.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Habit.”
“So it is your special table. Did you sit there when you were going out with her?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I can’t remember. Probably. Yes.” He laughed again, and shook his head. “What is all this? You’re not going to get all silly about Erin again, are you, honey? I wouldn’t want it to spoil our week.” He was still smiling, but I knew I was getting on his nerves.
“Not unless I’ve got anything to be ‘silly’ about,” I said, and stirred my spoon around in my lobster bisque. “Can we go there tonight?”
“Sure. Great idea—tell you what, why don’t you meet me there at five-thirty?”
After he’d gone back to work I had a poke around the town then went back to the flat to relax and freshen up. No bath, horrible. I hate those silly wet rooms. I washed my hair again to make it bigger, put on more make-up than usual, and a smart black dress.
He was late. I spent a very long twenty minutes sitting at a table with a glass of wine trying to look as if I hadn’t been stood up. When he eventually turned up he’d obviously been in a big rush, and kept apologising.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said, “Erin just got the architect’s plans up for a new leisure complex we’re building out at King’s Lynn, and we were a bit excited about them, so we wanted to get the client on the phone, but his secretary thought he’d gone home and—oh well, anyway, I’m here now!”
While I was waiting on my own he was with HER. He was in the office being excited about some drawings with Erin, when he knew I was waiting for him.
“You could have phoned. Or texted. Or just told her you had to go.”
“I didn’t notice the time.”
“You must have been really looking forward to meeting me, then.”
“Amy,” he said. “Don’t.” He ordered more wine and brought the menu over, and I had to say it, didn’t I? I just couldn’t keep quiet.
“So where do you sit when you come here with her?”
He was glancing down the menu, but he looked up and nodded over to the far window, the way he’d done when we showed me this place from the window of the hotel, earlier, as if he didn’t really want to tell me. “Over there.”
“So why aren’t we sitting over there?”
He shut his eyes. “Because you got here first and you were already sitting here.”
“I want to sit over there.”
“We’re okay here, aren’t we?”
“I want to sit by the window.”
“We’re sitting by a window.”
“I want to sit by THAT window.”
Why couldn’t I just shut up? Ever since I’d started taking those pills, my mouth had felt out of control.
“It’s just a window.”
“It’s got a better view. Is she entitled to a better view than me?”
“Erin,” he said, “pack it in.”
“My name’s Amy.”
He put his hand to his brow. “Oh fuck.” He looked up. “Listen. Slip of the tongue, I’ve been talking to her all afternoon, that’s all. You know what it’s like, we all do it.”
“Sure.” I felt tears rush to my eyes.
“Please, please don’t get upset,” he said, holding my hand across the table. “Look, we’ll sit wherever you want, and we’ll have a lovely evening together, okay? Please, just stop upsetting yourself.”
“I’m not upset.” I looked at the menu, but I didn’t see the words. “You order for me. What does Erin usually have?”
“I don’t know. All sorts. She’s not that interested in food.”
“How weird, for a woman. Well, as she doesn’t care what she eats, do you order for her?”
“Occasionally, if we’re discussing something to do with work and she can’t be bothered to think about what to have.”
“What, you’re so wrapped up in your conversation that she can’t even break off to look at the menu? Must be fascinating, then, what you talk about with her.”
“It’s work.”
“What, all the time?”
“Most of the time, yes.”
“But you talk about other things, too.”
“Oh, I suppose so, sometimes.”
“So what do you talk about?”
He put the menu down and just stared at me. “Amy, are you going to stop it, or are we going to go home?”
My home was Stenfield Lodge, but he called that characterless bachelor pad ‘home’, now.
I shut up.
It was the pills, I was sure it was.
We had quite a nice night but it all seemed forced, just like the Valentine’s Day meal. I asked him to tell me about what he’d been doing all day, but I knew he was leaving bits out, telling me in simple language, as if I wouldn’t understand. Which I didn’t, half the time. He presumed I knew about stuff I didn’t, and who people were when they were just names, so it was hard to take it all in.
When we got back to his flat I felt like a guest. I wanted to go home, but
I wanted him to come with me.
I was determined that we would have a good week, though, so I gave myself a good talking to.
I made it be okay.
In the day times I pottered around the town, and in the evenings he took me out. On Wednesday night we met up with some of his friends from the office and they were all very nice to me, but I didn’t get the feeling Robbie was proud of me. When we went to bed in his bachelor bedroom with the plain white bedclothes, we had sex each night, but it was the wrong time, so although it was nice to be so close and have his attention, I felt all flat afterwards. I can’t fault him, he really did make an effort but I still felt depressed.
I felt depressed because an effort needed to be made, you see. Because it didn’t come naturally.
We managed to get through the week without arguing, but then I went and ruined everything on the Friday, just before we went home.
He’d come back to the flat early, to pick me up so we could drive back to Norfolk. We were having a cup of tea before we left, and he flipped open his laptop because he was waiting for an e-mail.
“Aha! At last!” he said, skimming his eyes down it. Then he rattled away on the keys, looking very pleased.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing much, just boring work stuff.”
“Well, tell me. Don’t shut me out.”
He looked up. “Okay. It’s confirmation from the North Norfolk Council about building regulations governing the re-routing of an existing electrical supply.”
“Oh.”
“Told you it was just boring work stuff.” Then he said, “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“E-mail from Raine. I’ve been so busy this month, I haven’t sent her my usual.”
“Your usual?”
“Yeah, I keep her up to speed once a month about how Dad is.”
“You write to your dad’s former mistress?”
“Yeah. I promised her, after they met last year. Dad likes me to keep in touch with her, too; obviously e-mailing is beyond him now, but I can let her know what’s happening with him.”
I don’t know why, that just got to me. “This all goes on behind your mum’s back?”
“Well, yes.”
“Robbie, she would have broken up your mum and dad’s marriage if she’d had the chance. And she’s married, too. It’s like—well, it’s like you’re condoning infidelity. His AND hers.”
“Don’t start all that again. It’s old history. She’s a very nice woman who cares about Dad, that’s all, and it’s the least I can do.”
“I wonder if her husband knows she writes to you about him?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
And then I went and said it. I had these pictures in my head of poor Mrs Dudley at home, arranging flowers like she does, and the cuckolded husband sitting on his own watching telly, while Raine and Jim slobbered all over each other under crumpled sheets. The man in the bed looked more like Robbie, though, and I felt all hot and angry. I couldn’t stop those words coming out of my mouth. “I wonder how he’d feel if he knew that while he was waiting for her to come home, she was rolling around in bed with some dirty old man who’s losing his marbles.”
Silence.
He closed the laptop without logging off, something he never, ever did. Then he just sat there.
He wouldn’t even look at me.
“So that’s what you think of my father.”
Oh my God.
“Oh, God, no, I’m sorry, Robbie,” I started, “I didn’t mean it, I was just upset, because you think it’s okay to behave like that, and it makes me think that you’ll make up an excuse about why it’s okay to be unfaithful to me, too, and—”
“Cut it. You can’t take it back.” He took his mug through to the kitchen and emptied it into the sink, washed it out slowly and carefully, picked up his laptop and his jacket and opened the front door. “Shall we go?”
He didn’t speak to me all the way home, apart from to tell me to shut up when I started trying to apologise and explain myself again. When I couldn’t stop crying he ignored me. I started rambling on, for the first time telling him all my insecurities, how I hated hearing about big passionate affairs because they made me feel uncomfortable and scared and inadequate, but he behaved as if I wasn’t there. When we got home he dumped his bag in the hall and went to the pub.
I just sat and cried. Then I got up, sorted out all our clothes and toiletries, put mine and his stuff into the wash, and cried some more.
He came home very late indeed, stinking of drink.
He got into bed with his back to me.
I reached out to him, touched him on the shoulder. “Robbie, please –”
He flicked my hand off, and left his arm outstretched behind him, pointing at me, warding me off. “Don’t say another fucking word,” he said. Five minutes later he was snoring.
He thawed over the weekend, but I don’t know if this was because he understood why I’d reacted the way I did, or simply because it was easier to live in a house with someone if you weren’t rowing with them. I was aching for him to smile and laugh with me and kiss me and tell me he loved me, but all I got was polite, distant conversation; oh, it was awful. On Sunday night we were lying in bed with the light off, and I dared to ask him if he still loved me. He just let out this big pretend snore, to make me think he was asleep. Then it was Monday morning and I was alone again.
I haven’t told him about the anti-depressants. I haven’t told anyone. I feel ashamed. I have a lovely house and a lovely husband and plenty of money, and I’m depressed. I don’t know if the pills are working or not. They can’t make Robbie love me again, can they?
I rang Beth up and told her about the Prozac. She was cross; she said I’m not depressed, I’m just unhappy and I haven’t got enough to do. The doctor had no right to pump me full of chemicals, she said. She reckoned I ought to stop taking them, but I daren’t.
Then she said, “why don’t you come and stay for a few days? Come in two weeks’ time, we’re having a bit of a party on the Friday night—and no, don’t start saying, ‘oh but Robbie comes home on Fridays’. I’m sure he can get his own dinner. Make him come home to an empty house, for a change; he might appreciate you more.”
I don’t think he will. I think it’s gone to far for that.
I think last night he was trying to have the conversation I dread more than any other.
He asked me if I thought we’d got married too young. He started saying things about us moving in different directions, and wanting different things. I just looked at him and said, “yes, sometimes, but you’re my husband and I love you, and when you’ve made a commitment to someone you stick by them through the difficult times until you come together again.” After that he didn’t dare say any more.
We haven’t had sex since the week I spent in Eltham.
I don’t want to stay with Beth, I want to be here with Robbie in our house. I don’t want to be all bright and jolly like you have to be at parties, but if I don’t go she’ll give up on me; I know I make her impatient because I’m so feeble.
There will be a few people I know there, anyway. Toby Blount is coming down, Beth said. I’m so pathetic, clutching onto one person who I never even used to like, just because he showed me a bit of kindness a few months ago. I don’t see why Robbie can’t come after work, too, especially as Toby will be there, but he says it will ‘do me good’ to do something by myself, instead of always thinking of myself in relation to him.
“Just be Amy for a few days,” he says. “Not Robbie’s wife. It’ll do you good.” How will it do me good? Like taking fish oil capsules and reading a newspaper every day? I’m scared he wants to get me used to being ‘just Amy, not Robbie’s wife’. Like, a trial run for when he leaves me.
Oh well, at least getting ready for my trip means I’ve got something to do today and tomorrow.
I’m just hoping that when I come back on Saturday, he’ll have missed me even
a tiny bit.
I’ve got a lump. In my boob. The right one. I felt it this morning when I was showering.
Okay, I’ll be honest. I’ve thought I felt it before but I pretended to myself that I hadn’t. I just avoided touching that bit. But I felt it this morning by accident and it’s got bigger, I’m sure it has.
I looked it up on the internet, and it ticked all the boxes. The ones I didn’t want it to tick, I mean.
I know in my bones that it’s malignant. I saw the word, and it leapt off the screen at me. It was saying, ‘this is what it is’.
I’ve read up everything I can. People have to have them removed. I read pieces by all these smiling people saying how it hasn’t affected their marriage, and their husbands saying they still find them as beautiful as they ever did, with pictures of them standing together laughing, all loving and happy as if breast cancer is the best thing that ever happened to them.
But what if your husband doesn’t want you even when you’re whole?
Robbie used to say that he liked my right one the best. That was ages ago, of course.
I’m terrified. I don’t know who to tell. Oh my God, I’m so scared.
I can’t go to the doctor because he will confirm it. Once I go to him, there will be no getting away from it.
I might die.
I can’t tell Mum and Dad, they’d be too upset.
If I tell Robbie he’ll hate me even more, because if I’m ill he won’t dare leave me.
It would keep him with me, but I keep thinking about what he said about duty versus passion. With only one boob I would definitely be duty, wouldn’t I?
I’m glad I’m going to Beth’s now. I couldn’t bear to sit here brooding about it. I can’t tell Robbie, I just can’t.
Report taken from North Norfolk Chronicle, Monday April 7th
STENFIELD WOMAN FOUND DEAD AT OXFORDSHIRE PARTY
A young Norfolk woman, Mrs Amy Dudley, 24, was found dead after she fell from a first floor balcony during a party held at a house in Cumnor, Oxfordshire, on Friday night.
Mrs Dudley had been visiting the owners of the house, Mr Anthony Forster and Ms Beth Odingsell. The balcony was attached to the room in which she was sleeping during her stay; witnesses say that she went upstairs at about 10 pm to phone her husband, Robert Dudley, who was in a restaurant in Eltham, Hertfordshire. Her body was discovered approximately 15 minutes later. The coroner confirmed that she twisted her neck on impact with the ground below, causing death to occur instantly.