His Other Lover (5 page)

The free-falling hurt and confusion was almost unbearable and it froze all of my anger. I just stared at him lying there and, despite knowing for how long and how much I had loved him and how he had broken it all, how he had ruined everything that was so precious and real to me, had taken it all away without giving me any say in the matter—despite that, and knowing he had been so careless with us and our lives—when I should have been outraged and angry, all I saw was him simply lying there, breathing softly. All I wanted—all I
needed
—was to be in bed with him. To hold him and have him hold me.

I wanted to blot her out, have it not be real.

So I went and got into our bed and felt the warmth begin to spread through me as I pressed silently up against him. In his sleep, the chill of my skin made him shift gently, but he eased his back into the crook of my body. We fitted together and as he slid back into deep and restful sleep, I tried not to get tears on his back.

I attempted to force away the image of him lying in bed with her. There was someone out there so powerful, with such a pull on his heart that he had forgotten about me and risked it all for something with her.

My hands reached out and I clung helplessly to him.

B
y 4:07 I’ve given in and have quietly put the TV on, but I’m so paranoid about waking Pete that I’ve got the sound down so low I can barely hear it. Despite a relentless search, there is nothing worth watching on over thirty channels. Finally I settle for a repeat of a property show and lean back into the sofa, pulling my dressing gown tightly around me as the pictures flicker and light up my tired face. I must look appalling. Oddly, though, I can’t say I feel very much worse for two nights of no sleep, just more numb, perhaps.

Yesterday morning, however, I had felt raw when my eyes opened to the sound of heavy rain. There was a deep, taut knot in my tummy that somehow seemed to have been there since before I woke up, and a pulsing ache raged behind my dry eyes.

I had lain completely immobile in our bed, my mind already running blindly down corridors. I stared through the chink in the curtains at the chimney pots and roofs and wondered what I was going to do about what I had found on his phone and in his study, and how it was going to be all right. The alarm clicked on and I automatically reached out and slapped my hand down on
it. Pete stirred, but we stayed in silence; me afraid to say any of the hundred things I wanted to, him barely awake. Finally he heaved himself out of the bed and, seeing him leave the imprint of his body behind on the sheet, it was all I could do not to shout hoarsely after him, beg him to come back and hold me while I cried and cried.

So I just lay there, very still, listening to my boyfriend move around our house as if nothing was wrong. After the shower stopped there was the hiss of the iron steaming over his fresh shirt, a clatter of a cereal bowl, breakfast TV, the gush of the tap and whir of his electric toothbrush. All I could do was stare at the ceiling and wonder how this could be happening. Finally he appeared next to me.

“Are you okay? How come you’re not getting up?” He looked at me in concern.

I rolled my head listlessly toward him. “I feel sick,” I muttered, which wasn’t a lie.

“Poor baby.” He sat down on the edge of the mattress. “Would you like some water or anything?” He reached out and stroked my face.

I wanted to grab his hand, to hold it to me fiercely and smack it away both at the same time. I shook my head. “No, thank you.”

“Are you going to work today?”

I shook my head again. “Will you phone them for me and tell them I won’t be in?”

His face clouded over slightly before he smiled sympathetically and said, “Yeah, sure.” I suddenly realized my being ill was inconveniencing him in some way. Had he been planning to see her? Just as the horrific thought occurred to me that she might have already been in my house, in our
bed
, he said that he was
sorry but he had a meeting that he couldn’t move so he wouldn’t be at home all day.

I shrugged wordlessly and turned my head away from him because I could feel tears flooding my eyes and I didn’t want him to see me cry. He leaned over and kissed me lightly on the forehead.

“I’ll be back this evening. Try to get some sleep and call me if you want me.”

I didn’t look at him, I just heard the bedroom door close quietly.

He bounded downstairs and then the front door slammed. As I heard the window frames rattle, a flood of panic set in. I hadn’t asked where he was going, or who the meeting was with! I leaped out of bed, grabbed my dressing gown, rushed to the spare-room window and watched him drive down the road. I wanted to ring him straight away, tell him to stop the car, turn around and come back. Stay with me, comfort me, tell me I was wrong.

I craned my neck for the last sight of him as the car turned right and then slipped out of view. He was gone. Where was he going?
Where was he going?

I started to weep and leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the window, forcing my eyes fiercely shut. But as I did, Liz seeped unwanted into my mind, smiling smugly. I gasped out loud with the pain. My eyes flew open; anything, anything to get her out.

It was pouring outside; straight, determined rods that battered off the leaves. There were no signs of life in the street apart from one small bird miserably hunched on a branch, trying to keep dry.

I could still see her, laughing, sparkling in her dress. I
couldn’t believe I’d actually spoken to her last night. I dashed to the phone and dialed with shaking fingers. I had to know that it had definitely been her. I had to.

It rang and I waited with a thumping heart, willing her to pick up.

“Hello?” said a female voice.

“Hello,” I said, forcing the tremor out of my voice. “Sorry to disturb you, I know you’re probably a bit rushed, but I wanted to catch you before you left.”

“Well, you’ve got me, Mia,” said Pete’s mother. “How can I help?” she asked in the tone of voice that starchily meant, “I’ve got a hundred and one things to do, so hurry up.”

“It’s just this wedding,” I said carefully. “When Pete spoke to you last night I wanted him to ask you if there’s a gift list, but I don’t think he did, did he? I was going to ring you back, but it was a bit late, so I just wanted to check this morning before you went.”

There was a bit of noise in the background and she said bossily, “Not that one, Eric, that’s the hand luggage bag. Oh just leave it! I’ll do it in a minute!” Then she snapped back to me. “I didn’t speak to Peter last night,” she said irritably.

“Last night?!” I forced a merry laugh. “Listen to me! I meant morning. When you
last
spoke to him…”

It was painful, it really was. I can’t believe that someone as sharp as her didn’t realize that something was wrong. She probably would have done if she hadn’t been so distracted, but she had other things on her mind than her son’s girlfriend wittering on about wedding presents.

“I told him to tell you not to worry about a gift. I bought one from the list several weeks ago and put our names on it. Didn’t he say anything?”

“No, he didn’t.” I tried to sound bright. “He is dreadful! Well, thank you for that.”

“Not at all,” she said with a slight snort, to indicate my mistake at thinking she made the effort for me.

“Well, thank you anyway. Have fun on safari,” I said as sincerely as I could manage.

“Thank you,” she said stiffly, and hung up.

I sat there in the silence of our room. Funnily enough I felt no better at all for having the irrefutable truth that he lied to me last night. He had called her from
our
phone. On
our
bill.

I didn’t know what to do next. I just sat there thinking this must be what being in shock felt like: a numb, empty, frozen space.

Sinking back on to the bed, I heard the crinkle of paper. Reaching into my dressing-gown pocket, I pulled the receipt for the hotel out and stared at it. Room service that I never had. I wasn’t paying for that too. I suddenly felt irrationally angry. I wasn’t having it! How did people think they could get away with things like this?

I dialed furiously and a very well-spoken man answered. I told him in no uncertain terms that an error had been made on our bill and I wanted him to sort it out immediately. He apologized smoothly and asked me to hold while he checked his records. Then he came back and said kindly, no, madam, there was no error, a bottle of champagne had been correctly charged to room 105. Angrily I told him that was ridiculous. When had it been signed for and by whom? It certainly hadn’t been me! He asked me, in a slightly less kindly tone, if I could hold the line again.

I clutched the receiver tightly to my ear as thoughts jostled for room in my head. An affair, Pete was having an affair. What
had I done wrong? How long had it been going on? I stared at the rain and waited.

“Hello, madam. I’m sorry to have kept you.” The clipped voice sliced into my thoughts and dragged me back to the room.

The champagne had been signed for at 4:30 in the afternoon by Pete, apparently. I explained hotly I knew that was not possible, because I was definitely having a massage at that time and I think I might have noticed if my boyfriend had drunk an entire bottle of champagne. But then, just as I was about to ask to speak to the manager, a horrible, dreadful thought slammed into my head. With a sickening sense of foreboding I asked slowly where he was when he signed for it.

The man sighed and said he couldn’t possibly say, all he knew was that they had a signature and it was charged to our room.

Hating myself for asking, and with my eyes squeezed shut, I asked him tremulously if I could give him a name, and could he tell me if that person was staying in the hotel at the same time as us? There was a pause while he digested the implications of my suggestion. Softening, he gently said no, madam, he could not divulge that information. There was an uncomfortable silence and then I said, “Please…I need to know.”

“I’m so sorry, madam. I wish I could help you. Is there perhaps anything else I can do for you?”

I thanked him flatly, but said no, no there wasn’t. With palpable relief he wished me a good day and then he was gone, out of my life forever.

But I couldn’t leave it there. With my heart starting to hammer and a leaping, visible pulse fluttering at my wrist, I took a few deep breaths and called back. This time a woman answered. I said as calmly as I could that my name was Liz Andersen, I had stayed in the hotel the weekend of the 7th and 8th and I
thought I had left a necklace behind—I just couldn’t remember what room I had stayed in. The lie came remarkably easily to me. Not at all, madam, she assured me, she would just be one moment. She disappeared off the line and I held my breath for what felt like eternity, willing and silently pleading with God that I was wrong. The phone clattered as she picked it up again and cheerily informed me I had been in room 315. What was the necklace like?

I didn’t say anything, I just clicked the phone off and it slipped from my hands.

I shut my eyes and tried to breathe. She had been there on our weekend away. She had been at the hotel.

My head started to spin and everything became light and nauseous at the same time.
She’d been there.

Had he slipped out of the room that night when I was asleep to go and find her? Was she waiting with their bottle of champagne in room 315, or did they drink that while I was packed off for my massage? No wonder he didn’t mind about not having sex with me…he was upstairs fucking someone else.

It made me retch. I didn’t want to get it on my pillow, so I leaned over the edge of the bed and tried to aim on some magazines…but nothing came out, just bile. I hadn’t eaten anything so there was nothing to come up.

I hung there and gasped, eyes running, a string of spit dangling from my lip.

Then I remembered him sitting in the dark room at the gallery, staring up at the screen, transfixed, gazing at her as the music played. Her eyes boring into him, her smile not faltering. I thought that day out was for us…had it been just so he could see her on screen? Even though he was getting her in the flesh?

I retched again, my body still confused and going through the motions. Again there was nothing there.

Spitting on to the magazines, I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, pushed my hair out of my face and waited, wanting to make sure I was all done. The airbrushed face of a cover model pouted back up at me. Perfect skin, eyes all false, just like Liz.

I could see her again, all makeup and costume, waving down at him from the stage, throwing him a rose. Had she known I was at the hotel too? She must have. Had she pitied me? Had she even thought of me at all? The fucking bitch. The fucking
whore.

The intense anger and jealousy seemed to rise from the pit of my gut, right from the core of me. I jumped up violently and crashed off down the hall to his office. Flinging open the door, it bashed back off the wall, chipping the plaster. I wanted to know more about this woman who I now suddenly hated more than anyone on the face of the earth. I paused on the threshold of the room. I had no idea of what it was I was looking for but whatever it was, I was going to find it.

Descending on his desk, I started to rifle through the piles of papers, sending them crashing to the floor. I crunched over files, not caring as they sprung open, spewing out pages. I heard discs snap under my determined feet, kicked his DVDs out of the way. I pulled books off the desk; papers were fluttering in the air like confetti—I didn’t care about the mess, I just wanted to know
everything.

My search didn’t take long. For a man who was careful enough to delete his call lists and make sure he had no explicit texts on his phone that would prove anything, he was heartbreakingly bad at hiding other huge giveaways. All I had needed to know was that I had to look for them.

First of all there was the program. I stared so long and hard at her face that the page went blurry and I had to restrain myself from ripping it out. After another exhaustive and reckless search I found bills for two credit cards I didn’t even know he had (the disadvantage of leaving before the post arrives and him always being at home to intercept it). And then I found a card. It had a small puppy on the front. Inside, in big, floral show-off writing it said:

I sat down heavily. What had he done? Bought her a puppy? Moaning slightly, I rocked back and forth on the spot, hugging my knees into my chest trying to force the pain out. Had he taken my dog out with his bitch? It was sick!

I lost the plot completely then and wrecked his office. Jumping to my feet, enraged, I grabbed his Stanley knife and punctured his desk with pock holes and mad slashes. I swept everything off the desk, I ripped up the card into tiny shreds. I violently tore up some of his papers, the sound of it ripping through me. I stuck the knife through a picture of him and me on his desk. I sliced the blade through the program, screaming and screaming, flinging books around and kicking his chair over.

Then I heard Gloria barking downstairs and I stopped, breathing heavily, a light sweat on my brow. I could tell she was frightened; I could hear her scratching and whining, she knew something was wrong.