The Infidelity Chain (3 page)

‘It’s all right,’ I tell the young lady who’s very kindly (and rather bravely) run out from the flat
next door to see who’s being murdered, ‘I know him. I didn’t mean to cause a panic; he made me jump, that’s all.’

‘Someone was leaving the building as I arrived,’ Dan apologizes. ‘They let me in, so I didn’t buzz up first.’

He saunters past me into the flat before I have a chance to gather my addled wits. I can understand what my daughter sees in him. He really
is
dishy: his eyes have that lovely blue David Essex twinkle, I remember I had
such
a crush on him when I was Cate’s age – David Essex, obviously, not
Dan—

‘Cate’s not here,’ I blurt.

‘I know that,’ Dan says. ‘I came to see you.’

My heart beats faster. It’s just the fright.

‘How did you know where I was?’

‘I – followed you,’ he admits.

‘You
followed
me?’

‘I thought I was going to lose you when you hopped in that cab,’ he adds unrepentantly. ‘And I do mean hopped. What happened to
your shoe?’

‘Never mind my shoe! Why are you following me?’

‘I’ve told you. I wanted to see you.’

‘You can’t.’

‘And yet here I am.’

He folds his arms and watches me put on the kettle and hunt about for teabags and sugar (tea: first refuge of the discombobulated). He smells of
smoke and trouble. I try not to think about how good his kiss tasted last Saturday: cool and sweet like home-made lemonade. I’m not manic at the moment; I’m very definitely in my right mind. There’ll be no stripping off and streaking
down Marble Arch this afternoon. Absolutely no kissing of daughters’ boyfriends, no matter how close they stand or how delicious they smell, even if they run their fingers down my spine in a way that makes my insides turn to liquid and my heart
beat faster than a – a – than a—

‘Dan, stop,’ I gasp.

It’s so long since anyone just
touched
me. The children all think they’re too old, even Sam,
you know how they get once they go to school; and when William and I stopped having sex, the cuddles and hugs stopped too. I can’t remember the last time he even held my hand.

Dan’s lips feather the nape of my neck. ‘Don’t you like it?’

‘No – yes – that’s not the point!’

His erection presses the small of my back. An answering pulse beats unexpectedly between my legs. The long-forgotten sensation makes me giddy,
and without really knowing what I’m doing, I’m spinning willingly in his arms, pulling him closer, fitting my body to his. His mouth meets mine, his kiss ripping along my nerve endings, jolting my body awake.

It takes every ounce of willpower to break away.

I clutch the sink. This is insane. It can’t happen. We can’t possibly do this. He’s half my age. I’m married. He’s
my daughter’s boyfriend—

‘Oh, my God! Cate!’

‘This has nothing to do with her. I’m very fond of her, of course, but it’s always been about you, Beth, from the first moment
at Eithne Brompton’s show, I should never have—’

‘No! Outside! It’s Cate!’

‘
What
?’

‘Look! I’d know that silly backpack anywhere. She must be coming here! Oh, God, she mustn’t find us together! Go,
go!’

‘I can’t. She’ll see me.‘

‘You’ll have to hide! Quick, the bedroom!’

‘Beth, this is ridiculous—’

‘You followed me here, Dan! How do you plan to explain that? Or do you want to tell her we’d arranged a secret rendezvous?’

I fling open the bedroom wardrobe. It’s crammed not just with clothes, but with boxes of files and papers, the work William brings home. I
panic. Cate hasn’t spoken to me all week (and now that the mania has passed, how can I blame her? If my mother had done that to me, I’d never forgive her either).

If she finds me here with her boyfriend, she’ll never speak to me again, no matter how innocent the explanation. Although frankly I’m
hard pushed even to think of one that doesn’t sound very damning indeed.

‘Under the bed!’ I cry, shoving Dan’s head down.

Still protesting, he nevertheless slides beneath the bed. I thank God we have an old-fashioned brass bed in the
Bayswater flat, rather than an expensive modern divan like we have at home. You couldn’t hide a piece of paper under that, never mind a young man in a, well, rather
obvious
state of
arousal.

Keys rattle in the front door. Dan sticks his head back out. ‘Beth, I really don’t—’

I throw myself flat on my stomach, wriggle under the bed and clamp my hand over his mouth.

Cate’s voice echoes down the hall. ‘Hi, it’s only me.’

I feel sick. It’s too late. She’s seen us. Oh, how am I ever going to—

Dan shakes his head, and prises my fingers loose. ‘Phone,’ he mouths.

He’s right. I squirm further under the bed, out of sight.

‘Well, I did it, Fleur, I went to see her – no, for real, I swear—’

Dan smooths his hand along my hip, snaking beneath my blouse. At a time like this!

‘ – you’ll never
believe
what happened,’ Cate says. ‘It was total drama!
I’m in the middle of telling her – oh, really nice, actually, and she was wearing these really cute boots, all swirly orangey purply colours – anyway, so we’re talking, and suddenly she goes all weird and—’

I hear her moving about the flat. What on earth is she doing here, anyway? I didn’t even know she had a key to the apartment.

Dan nudges me. I twist round, and he dangles a lacy black basque an inch or two above my face with a grin.

‘It’s not mine!’ I hiss indignantly.

He puts a finger to his lips, as Cate’s chatter stills.

‘Hang on,’ she says, ‘thought I heard something.’

I daren’t breathe. Through the gap between the edge of the coverlet and the floor, I see her silver trainers return to the bedroom. Oh,
God, if she finds us now – I shouldn’t have panicked, after all, there is a perfectly innocent – well, not innocent exactly, but nothing
happened
—

‘No, must have been next door. Look, I’d better get going. I only came here to nick some cash from Dad’s desk, he’ll
never miss it. I’m supposed to meet Dan at the Tate in an hour—’

Dust is getting up my nose, and I suddenly feel the urge to sneeze. I cover my face with my hands, as Dan shakes with suppressed laughter. How
can he find this funny? Doesn’t he care about Cate at all?

In a sudden moment of clarity, I realize that whatever
Graduate
-style nonsense is going on between us,
I’m no Mrs Robinson. No matter how much I’m attracted to Dan, even if I could bring myself to betray William, I could never hurt my daughter.

‘–I haven’t asked her yet. She’ll only say no, like she always does. I hate her, Fleur. She’s such a hypocrite. She
bangs on about what’s good for me, she’s only thinking of me, blah blah blah, then she goes out and, like, ruins my entire life. I can’t wait to get away from her—’

The front door slams. Dan prods me, but I don’t move.

You don’t expect gratitude from teenagers. They’re supposed to hate you; if they don’t, you’re not doing your job.

How much easier it would be to be a bad parent and say yes. Yes, you can pierce your navel, have a cigarette, stay out till two a.m. on a school
night, sleep with your boyfriend at fifteen. But you say no, and deal with the tantrums and ‘I hate you!’ because you love them and want to protect them. You want to save them from the mistakes you made.

Of course I haven’t always got it right. Children don’t come with instructions. You muddle your way through in a mixture of trial and
error. All right, lots of error, in my case. But I always thought, until now, I was doing all right. I made their packed lunches and ironed their school uniforms and read them stories and stayed up all night when they had earache. I took them to ballet
and football, cooked nourishing meals and picked up wet towels. I’ve never been a jam-tarts-and-finger-painting kind of mother, but I’ve always been there when they got home from school, and I never missed a sports day or school play, even
when I wanted to curl up in a ball under the duvet and never come out.

The irony is, before I actually had babies, I wanted to be a mother
so
much. No one ever tells you how
dull and repetitive it is (although to be fair to Clara, she did try. I just thought she meant mothering
me
). But I did everything I was supposed to. I did the best I could.

To learn from my own daughter that I’ve comprehensively failed in the most important job of my life is almost too painful to bear.

‘Come on, Beth. She’s gone.’

I crawl out from under the bed, brushing dust from my clothes. Dan looks shame-facedly pleased with himself, a little boy nearly caught
scrumping. I’m horribly ashamed of the whole farcical episode.

‘So,’ he smiles, twirling the corset around one finger, ‘want to tell me about this?’

‘I told you, it’s not mine—’

We both suddenly realize what that means. I snatch it away from him and shove it out of sight down the side of the sofa.

Set against the conversation I’ve just overheard, the fact that I have cast-iron proof of my husband’s affair seems almost
irrelevant.

‘I’m sorry, Eithne,’ I say, ‘please don’t shout at me any more. I didn’t mean to let you
down. I wanted to be there. I did
try
. I know you went to a lot of trouble to arrange it for me, and it was terribly sweet of you, but I think we both know I’m not really cut out to be an artist. I never have
been. I’ve got a little bit of a knack with a paintbrush sometimes, but that’s all it is. Clara’s right, I was getting above myself, thinking I could have a show and actually sell my paintings. I’m just a housewife, at the end of
the day. This isn’t one of those lovely Cinderella films where the dull little mouse suddenly turns out to be an amazingly talented genius and gets discovered. This is real life, and the truth is, I’m not a star, and never will be. It was
silly to think I could be anything else. I
am
sorry, Eithne. Now can we please forget all about shows and paintings and just be friends?’

There’s nothing very unusual about William not coming home all night. He often stays in London when he has to entertain
clients in the evening, and I know he’s very keen to get that young lad from the boy band signed to Ashfield PR.

But this time, it’s different. This time, I know he’s not with his lawyer, or some teen pop star,
but the owner of that very glamorous black corset.

I stare at the ceiling. It’s one thing to suppose, in theory, that your husband may have had the odd fling here and there. After all, eight
years is a long time to expect a normal red-blooded man to go without sex. There must have been – perhaps on trips abroad – and of course there was that upsetting business in Cyprus, though I never had any actual
proof
—

There was that pretty English teacher, who seemed strangely keen to discuss Ben’s progress at school in her own time. And I’ve always
wondered about that striking Titian-haired doctor who helped look after Sam when he was little. William talked about her endlessly, and then very suddenly never mentioned her again. There were others before that: secretaries, PAs, assistants who came and
went over the years. All rather lovely girls, who looked at William adoringly and blushed whenever he walked past and then, after a while, abruptly left without working their notice. Little Carolyn worships the ground he walks on. It’d be
impossible not to suspect that there must have been, at times, something with one or two of them.

But knowing is very different from suspecting. Knowing keeps you up all night, and leaves you no place to hide.

‘You’ve only yourself to blame,’ Clara says sharply, when she turns up (uninvited) for breakfast the next morning and prises it
out of me. ‘You’ve driven him to it with your selfishness and moods. Why the poor man stays with you I have no idea. The fellow’s a saint.’

I put the kettle on the hotplate.

‘Of course, he’d never have married you in the first place if you hadn’t got yourself caught. You’re lucky
he’s not a bolter. Not like your father. When I think of what I put up with from that man, and look how he repaid me.’

‘Toast?‘

‘You’re just like him, you know. Weak. I could tell as soon as you were born. You were a difficult, fretful baby. The doctors said it
was just colic, but I knew.’

‘There’s some home-made marmalade from the tea shop in town,’ I say brightly, ‘so much better than the supermarket stuff.
Lovely big pieces of peel.’

‘I hope you’re taking your pills, Beth. Poor Cate. She’ll never forgive you, you know.’

Carefully, I put down the breadknife.

Then I go outside, walk quietly to the orchard at the end of the garden, and smash flowerpots against the low stone wall until I no longer want
to murder my mother.

When I’ve finished, I sweep up the broken shards and spilled potting soil, wrap them in old newspaper and put them neatly in the dustbin. I
don’t need my mother to remind me how lucky I am to have William. Infidelity is no reason to end a marriage. Sex isn’t love.

As long as he doesn’t actually
leave
. I couldn’t let that happen.

I’m not quite the pushover everyone thinks. I can fight for what I want, in my own way. I got William, didn’t I? Any niggling doubt I
might have felt about that was wiped out the instant Ben was placed in his arms and I saw the love light up his face. I knew then I’d been right: we were meant to be a family.

I’m not so proud of what I did when he was in Cyprus. But I had no choice. I thought he was going to run out on me – silly, really.
Still. It all worked out in the end.

The thing is, I know William better than anyone. I know he needs me just as much as I need him.

When he finally comes home a little before six in the evening, I can tell immediately from the careful way he shuts the front door that
he’s in a towering rage. No one knows his moods like I do.

He storms into the kitchen and flings something on the table.

‘You know what this is?’ he demands.

Fortunately, he doesn’t wait for me to answer. ‘D’you want to know where I found it?’

I suck air.

‘Down the side of the sofa in London!’

He waits, clearly expecting something more than gawping astonishment from me. But until ten seconds ago, I thought the undergarment in question
belonged to his mistress. If
he’s
asking
me
—

‘Whose is it?’ I gasp.

He looks at me as if I’m an imbecile. ‘Cate’s, obviously!’

Cate’s? Cate’s! Oh, why didn’t I think of that?

‘You know what this means?’ he rants. ‘Our daughter is running off up to London and having sex with that bloody gypsy in my
bed!’

Cate’s!

Cate and Dan.

I’m not jealous. Just concerned, as any mother would be.

‘
Our
bed, surely, William?’ I ask mildly. ‘And they all have rather long hair these
days, dear, it doesn’t necessarily make him a gypsy—’

‘Our daughter’s been sneaking off behind our backs, dressing up like a hooker to indulge that hippy’s perverted fantasies, and
all you can talk about is his
hair
?’

I wonder curiously if he’ll actually froth at the mouth.

‘She’s seventeen, Beth. Seventeen!’

‘Yes, darling, I know, I was there the night she was born—’

‘Who knows what else he’s dragging her into – drink, drugs – she’ll end up with a criminal record! That’ll
put paid to Oxford – she’d have made a wonderful doctor – before we know it, she’ll be pregnant, stuck on her own in some appalling council flat with kids leaving syringes on the stairs and dealing drugs – that boy’s
not going to stay around, you can see it in his eyes, shifty, I’ve thought that from the moment I first—’

‘William,’ I say firmly, ‘please stop pacing. I’ll speak to her. Well,’ I amend, ‘once she starts talking to
me again, obviously.’

William growls and retreats to his den. I lift the saucepan off the hotplate, add a knob of butter and mash potatoes for the shepherd’s
pie.

As a mother, I expected to feel many things when I discovered my daughter had started having sex; but relief wasn’t one of them.