Tess Stimson - The Adultery Club (35 page)

by; and I know that sitting idly by is exactly what I have

to do.

Nicholas is the divorce lawyer. He has rinsed a thousand

broken marriages off and sifted through the shards,

to salvage what’s left. If anyone is qualified to talk about

the implosion of a family, it is he. And so I take his advice;

though surely he never meant it to be applied to our marriage.

“The mistake women always make,’ he said once, holding

court at a smart dinner party, ‘is to over-react. Most

husbands don’t dream of leaving their wives until push

becomes shove. Half the allure of a mistress is that she’s a

fantasy. He doesn’t want her to become his wife. Confronting

him,’ he added, examining his port against the

light, ‘is the worst thing she can do - always assuming

she wants to keep him, of course.’

And even though I could cheerfully castrate my husband

with a pair of blunt paper scissors - I can scarcely

bear to even look at him right now -1 want to keep him.

I married him and created this family with him. He

isn’t perfect; he isn’t necessarily the man I could have

loved most in this world. Not necessarily my soul mate.

But he is my husband, and I believe passionately that my

children need to grow up with their father. I didn’t throw

away everything even for Trace; I am certainly not going

to now because some silly girl has taken a fancy to

Nicholas.

The irony is that to fight for him effectively I must do

nothing.

‘Not weak at all, actually, Malinche Louise says,

when she catches me crying over an M & S lasagne one

afternoon. (‘Frozen dinners?’ she said as she walked unannounced into the kitchen, ‘either the apocalypse is upon

us or one of you is having an affair, so which is it?’)

‘You don’t think I should leave him, then?’

‘I didn’t say that Louise says, ‘though I’ve never been

of the opinion that an affair has to wreck a marriage. Sex

is just sex, after all, especially for a man. I simply said it

wasn’t weak to stay. Sticking it out like this takes a huge

amount of strength and courage. Although she looks at

me closely, ‘there’s a price to pay. When was the last time

you slept through the night? You’re looking very pale,

Malinche, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.’

‘To be honest, I can’t quite see how I could take it as

one.’L

‘Have you considered talking to the girl?’

I gape.

‘I couldn’t! What on earth would I say?’

‘I would have thought that was obvious Louise raps

back smartly. ‘You tell her you haven’t quite finished with

your husband yet, and if she doesn’t mind, you’d like him

back.’

‘Louise, he’s not a ball the children have kicked into

next door’s garden by mistake! Apart from anything else,

if I go and speak to her, she’ll tell Nicholas the cat’s out of

the bag, and then there’s no going back. The last thing I

want to do is to force his hand.’

‘He might choose you,’ she observes. ‘Most men are

cowards, when it comes down to it.’

‘But what if he doesn’t?’ I cry out in anguish. ‘What if

he’s fallen in love with her? What if he can’t decide what

to do? Louise, what if he chooses her?’

I know I’m right. I daren’t take the risk. I have to

wait and hope it burns itself out, no matter how much it

hurts. And oh, God, it hurts. It’s the hardest thing I’ve

ever done. Every time he works late, I know he’s with her. Every call he takes in his study, carefully shutting the door behind him, is from her.

I spend my days wishing for the nights to come so that

I can take off my brave face; and the nights of haunted

wakefulness longing for daybreak and the release it will

give.

The children are what keep me sane; I do my best to

carry on as normal, but it’s so difficult. My temper is

short, and my patience shorter. Little things that I would

ordinarily take in my stride - Evie forgetting to water the

herbs on the windowsill, or Sophie taking it upon herself

to iron her new school shirt and burning it - floor me

completely. I snap at them over nothing, and then I have

maternal guilt to add to my many shortcomings.

One afternoon, when we have got home from school,

Metheny backs into the Aga door just as I’m taking out a

casserole dish, and our dinner ends up all over my feet

and the kitchen floor.

I make sure Metheny is unhurt, and then scream at her

as I kick off my ruined shoes, reducing her to hiccoughing

tears. Evie and Sophie come running into the kitchen,

straight into the congealing pool of Lancashire hotpot.

When I shriek at them to move, they run back into the

sitting room, leaving two pairs of little gravy footprints

on the expensive wool carpet behind them.

I collapse onto a chair, and bury my face in my hands,

sobbing uncontrollably. Louise was right. I can’t keep

doing this. It’s killing me.

When the phone goes, I ignore it. It rings out a dozen

times, stops for thirty seconds, and then rings again.

Wearily - duty calls -I finally get up and answer it.

It is the casualty department of a hospital in Esher.

Edward Lyon has had a massive stroke, and at eighty

three, the prognosis isn’t good. His wife is by his bedside,

but of course his son needs to get there as soon as he can.

The nurse is too tactful to add, before it’s too late, but she

doesn’t need to.

Poor Daisy. Poor, poor Daisy. How will she possibly

cope without Edward? Forty-seven years together. A

lifetime.

I call Nicholas at work, but it’s after five on a Friday

night and the office answerphone kicks in; everyone must

already have left for the night. I try his mobile; it goes

straight to voicemail. I wait ten frantic minutes, get his

voicemail again, and then call Liz.

As soon as she arrives to collect the children and take

them to hers for the night, I grab a pair of shoes from the

scullery and drive hell-for-leather to the station. I can’t

punish Nicholas by letting him miss the chance to say

goodbye to his father. No matter how much I’m hurting,

he doesn’t deserve that.

It’s seven-forty by the time my cab pulls up outside

her flat. I hand the driver twenty pounds and ask him to

wait.

The door to her building hasn’t properly closed; I’m

able to go straight up to her flat on the first floor. She

answers my knock still knotting the belt of her cheap red

kimono, and I take advantage of her absolute shock to

walk briskly past her towards my husband, who is sitting,

naked from the waist up, on the edge of her large unmade

bed. If this weren’t all so awfully, horribly serious, the

dumbstruck expression on his face would make me laugh.

The air smells of sex and smoke, and I realize I have never

wanted a cigarette as much in my life as I do now.

‘It’s your father,’ I tell Nicholas clearly, ‘he’s had a

massive stroke. There’s a taxi waiting outside to take you

straight to the hospital. Please tell Daisy I’ll come when-j

ever she needs me. And Nicholas,’ the blood is pounding

in my ears, but I know exactly what I have to say, ‘there’s

a holdall with your things in it on the back seat. If you

need anything else, we can arrange it at the weekend. I

don’t plan to say anything to the children just yet. One

thing at a time.’

I walk unsteadily back into the sitting room. And,

when the vomit rises in my throat, I don’t seek out the

bathroom but, in a small but intensely satisfying act of

revenge, allow myself to be violently sick all over his

mistress’s beautiful, expensive white sofa.

Nicholas

I open the fridge door and am confronted by precisely the

same rotting fare as when I quit the flat this morning.

‘Jesus Christ, Sara! I thought you were going shopping!’

‘I was in Court all day, I told you that. When was I supposed to have time?’

I remove two putrescent tomatoes and something

that may once have been a block of cheese but which is

now a homage to Alexander Fleming, and cast wildly

about for the dustbin. Of course this is pointless, since

Sara uses supermarket plastic bags hung on the knob of

the cupboard nearest the door in lieu of the traditional

rubbish receptacle, a dustbin; a practice rendered even

more irksome when the bags leak, as they frequently do,

all over the floor. Only this morning I found myself

standing in a puddle of last night’s Chinese takeaway as I

spooned fresh coffee into the percolator.

Rotten tomato is oozing through my fingers by the

time I locate the bag and dispose of them. I swear under

my breath as I rinse my hands in the sink. Dear God, I

haven’t lived like this since I was an impoverished student

at Oxford.

Sara skulks into the galley kitchen. ‘You didn’t have to

throw out the cheese, Nick! I could’ve scraped the mould

off.’

‘And poisoned us both.’

‘Cheese is milk gone mouldy, everyone knows that. It

doesn’t go off.’

Tine.’ I fling open cupboard doors. ‘I gave you two

hundred pounds on Tuesday to go to Waitrose, and the

only thing in the damn larder is a bottle of Tabasco

and four tins of fucking anchovies. What the hell happened?’

‘I

spent it,’ she mutters.

‘On what? Bloody truffles?’

‘I left my credit card at home, and I saw these shoes.

I was going to pay you back,’ she adds defensively as I

storm into the sitting room, nearly tripping over the

wretched cat. I wish I hadn’t bought her the animal, this

entire apartment stinks of piss. She picks up the kitten

and follows me. ‘I just haven’t been to the cash-point yet.’

‘It’s not the damn money, Sara. It just would’ve been

nice to come back and find something to eat—’

‘I’m not your freakin’ servant,’ Sara spits.

‘Sara, I’ve just buried my father!’

Startled, the cat springs out of her arms. Sara deflates

like a pricked balloon, and I’m reminded, yet again, how very young she is.

Moving in with her was a mistake. I knew it even as I

unpacked the holdall of clothes Mai had left in the taxi for

me - each of my shirts carefully folded so as not to crease

- and crammed them into Sara’s overstuffed wardrobe on

cheap wire coat-hangers. I had nowhere else to go, other

than a hotel; but in the end, practicalities were the least of

it. It was the desperate need to salvage something from this

whole sorry debacle that made me agree to Sara’s feverish

suggestion. For the misery and grief I have caused to have

been for a reason.

If we work at it, it’s bound to get better. It’s just a

question of adjusting.

‘I thought there’d be something to eat she mumbles

now, eyes on the ground, ‘at the wake. I assumed you’d

just come home and we’d - you know.’

‘We’d what?’

She grinds her toe into the carpet like a small, embarrassed

child. ‘In the midst of life we are in death, and all

that. Amy said when people die, you want to celebrate

life. Oh, come on, Nick, do I have to spell it out?’

I suddenly notice that she’s wearing a very brief

pleated grey skirt and has her hair in short schoolgirl

bunches. Even as I sigh inwardly at her naivety, my cock

springs to life.:

‘Man cannot live on sex alone. Although I add, ‘I

appreciate the thought.’

She drops to her knees in front of me, unzips my

trousers and releases my semi-erect cock from my boxer

shorts. Through the uncurtained window behind her, I

can see straight into a block of flats opposite. I watch a fat

woman struggle out of a green wool jacket. She glances

up as she hangs it on the back of the door, and I realize

that if I can see her, the reverse must also hold true. She’s

too far away for me to see her expression, but the way she

snaps her curtains shut speaks volumes.

I’m not really in the mood; but the thought of being

watched as Sara kneels and sucks my hardening dick is

an unexpected aphrodisiac.

In fact, I realize, I’m about to come: too soon. I grab

her shoulders and pull her upright, then shunt her up

onto to the breakfast bar. She pulls her white blouse over

her head without troubling to undo the buttons, and I

scoop her breasts from the lacy bra and clamp my mouth

around a cherry-red nipple. She groans and buries her

hands beneath my shirt. I bite and nip, not troubling to

be careful. Her fingernails scrape and claw at my back.

I bunch her skirt up around her waist, pulling off her

panties and thrusting my fingers forcefully inside her.

She’s slick and wet, and I lick my fingertips afterwards.

Her eyes half-close as she leans back on her elbows,

opening her pussy to me.

I taste her, relishing the musky sweetness. And then I

lift her off the counter, push her forwards over the

uncomfortable white sofa, and plunge my dick into her

backside.

She gasps in shock, but after a moment’s hesitation,