The Secrets of Married Women (27 page)

‘I have to get back to the station, Jill,’ he says, almost with affection. ‘Don’t worry yourself. Leigh and I…’ He doesn’t finish. He tosses the money on the table, glances at me with finality and shakes his head, as though he just can’t be bothered to finish the sentence, or he doesn’t feel he should have to.

I watch his confident, unfaltering walk as he cuts a path around tables. A few faces look up as he passes them.

The next day comes and goes and the wrongness of my confrontation takes roots and grows in me. Go to see Neil! Why did I do that? Rob was right. What did it accomplish? Nothing, except to infuriate Leigh. Because I’m sure he’ll tell her. And this makes me nervous.

Rob keeps asking me what’s the matter. ‘Been up to anything?’ he’ll say, narrowing his eyes. I go into work and am useless. The good thing is Swinburn is off on holiday. Torquay is being blessed with his presence. (I hope he’s staying in one of those Fawlty Towers guest houses with Basil after him, doing the goose-steps walk). So at least I don’t have him glaring at me with those large, Nazi eyeballs. Only a lot of phone calls, and a lot of accounting to do, and a couple of urgent billing matters that he’s left instructions for me to handle. ‘He discovered you made an accounting mistake just before you went off sick,’ Leanne whispers, as though she shouldn’t be telling me.

‘Mistake? Shit. I did make a couple, but I’m sure I fixed them. What sort of mistake?’

‘No idea. He wouldn’t say.’

‘Well, what did he look like? Was he furious?’

She shrugs. ‘If he was he didn’t say anything. But I’m sure he’ll let you know about it, if it’s anything.’

Damn it. I’ve never made mistakes in my job until recently. I’ve always had such pride. Well, I suppose if it’d been anything major he’d have delighted in telling me.

Rob and I seem to heal. Or rather, since the news of Leigh’s infidelity we haven’t had a wrong word between us. He doesn’t look at me strangely. All that business about the mobile phone and my mood seems to be off his mind. And, strangely enough, the business behind the mobile phone and my mood, seems to be off mine. Even though I still have the dim feel of him in my body. And he’s there, waiting to be my next thought, if I let myself.

When I come home in the evening, Rob’s got dinner made. He heaps spaghetti alla puttanesca onto two plates. The M&S box sits torn up on the counter. I love him for it. But the pasta, me, him… it all feels too easy, this returning to normal.
Affairs are easy,
didn’t Leigh say?

We’re just eating and I am counting my blessings yet again, when the phone rings. I pick up and I hear two words. ‘You bitch.’

‘Leigh!’ My heart falls. He’s wasted no time telling her.

‘You unimaginable, double crossing bitch! And to think I thought you were my friend and I could trust you!’

This verbal hail of bullets sends me collapsing onto the kitchen chair. ‘Oh, Leigh I…’

‘Don’t Leigh me you cow! You went to see him to tell him to leave me! After I’d told you I loved him! That I was ready to leave my family for him! You went to break us up!’

‘It wasn’t like that…’ I’m cut off by her screaming.

‘Like you’ve got some right to start telling people how to lead their lives, you hypocritical little cow. You of all people!’

She goes on bawling me out, but I’m thinking only one thing. I knew I should never have told her. I feel the need to say nice things, to get on her right side again.

‘He’s ended it now!’ She’s sobbing. ‘Do you realise what you’ve done? He’s gone back to them. Doesn’t want to see me again. Won’t even give reasons. He was furious that I told you, and even more furious that I hadn’t told him about Wendy and the tests.’

‘Well, maybe that’s his reason. I mean, the possibility that his wife has cancer and you knew about it while you carried on with him—it is a big enough one.’

I feel her seething. ‘Even Wendy’s says it’s more than likely not cancer.’

My refusal to dignify that makes her silent. Then she says, ‘Well I suppose you’re happy. You’ve really done it for me, haven’t you? Tell me Jill, what am I supposed to do now?’

‘Forget about that idiot! Start focussing on your marriage. Start appreciating Lawrence instead of plotting ways to cheat on him.’

‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘I’ve already told him I’m leaving him.’

~ * * * ~

‘That was Leigh,’ I tell Rob when I put the phone down.

‘Glad you clarified that. I was wondering.’

Rob opens his arms for me, holds me till I stop shaking. ‘She’s already told Lawrence she’s leaving him! She was screaming. She hates me.’

‘I take it you didn’t keep your big nose out then,’ he says. My head gently bounces off his shoulders as I shake it.

In bed, Rob holds me and says I’m a good person and I tried to do the right thing. Then he scratches his chest, and says the dog’s giving him fleas. His parting words before sleep are: ‘You better prepare yourself because something tells me you’ve not heard the last of this. What do they say? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’

~ * * * ~

For the next few days Leigh’s call haunts me. She’s right to hate me. What sort of hypocrite am I? Me, a cheat, betrayed a friend who had an affair because I didn’t like her choice of partner. And I did it with complete disregard for what this would do to her. And despite what Rob says, I do believe she thinks she’s in love with him. And I believe her when she says she really did intend it to end and she never wanted to hurt Wendy. Some people are just naive to think they’re never going to get found out. But what troubles me most is that never for one minute did I consider that the affair might blow over, that Leigh would finally see sense, or Neil would dump her, and life would go back to normal again. I never even gave it time to happen. I just barged right on in there and messed everything up.

‘Don’t feel too sorry for her Jill,’ Rob tells me. ‘People who cheat on their partners don’t deserve you losing sleep over them.’ We’re in bed again, and he knows I can’t get this off my mind.

My heart falls. ‘But people stray for all kinds of reasons, Rob. Surely they deserve some empathy; the benefit of the doubt.’ He loosens my tightening grip on his chest hair.

‘Not when they’ve been unfaithful. You should be mad she ever told you any of this, when you were Wendy’s friend too. She should never have put you in this position.’ And he’s right. She shouldn’t have. But she did. And I can’t use that to justify betraying her. But somehow, I suppose I have.

The next phone call I get, some time the following afternoon, is from Wendy. I see her number on my call display and think Oh God.

‘Why did you tell him I’ve been for tests?’ she asks me, in a subdued tone which is as close as Wendy will ever get to telling you off. ‘He said he bumped into you in town. That you happened to mention I was seeing a doctor.’

He lied. And now, by default, I have to. Again. Neil must know that I chose to confront him rather than tell Wendy. So he’s using that. He’s using me. Expecting I’ll keep up the story. That I’ll lie to protect my friend, and somehow save his bacon in the process. So my first instinct is to stick it to him and tell her the truth. ‘Wendy…’ I take a bracing breath, then I suddenly see sense. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I know I’m a big idiot. It was inexcusable of me. It just slipped out.’

There’s a silence. I hate lies. Even the kind ones. ‘I’m not sure how it really happened actually.’

‘It’s alright,’ she says. ‘I’m not hauling you over the coals.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No. Worse things could have happened, couldn’t they?’

Really? Like what?

‘I better go though. I’ve got to clean this house and then get some dinner on, and there’s a job in a solicitor’s office I’m thinking of applying to. Half of Newcastle is probably going to apply for it and get rejected, so I might as well be one of them.’ Her humour sounds strained. We say bye. It bothers me as soon as I put the phone down. I know Wendy. If she were really furious with me she’d be ‘strained.’ Then she’d probably freeze me out of her life. So I quickly call her back and apologize again and check that she’s still my friend. I feel her smile. ‘It’s alright Jill. Like I say, forget about it.’

A few days later I have to go through to Sunderland to take a piece of cushion flooring I bought for my mam and dad’s bathroom, because my mam has been weeing on the carpet in there. I’m just coming back and am stuck on the A1 in traffic. Immediately ahead of me, a BMW has just rear-ended a VW hippy van. Out of the van pours a sorry sight. A fat young girl and guy who look like two packs of sausages with heads on. The father, a tattooed ball of blubber with a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale in each hand. And the granny, one of those hardened council-estate hags with smoker’s hair, whose face is gradually capsizing into the space where she used to have teeth. And they’re ganging up and laying in to the poor, civilised victim in the BMW. I thrust the heel of my hand onto the horn. The noise feels nice. They all stop their argy-bargy and look at me, probably wondering what my problem is. I leave my hand there, blaring, staring at them with an intensity that equals the noise I am making. Then it hits me. Oh n! How am I going to explain to Wendy that Leigh and I have fallen out? What’s Leigh going to say to Wendy about it? Our stories won’t match. I stop blaring on the horn and put my head in my hands.

The dispute is over. Somebody behind blares their horn at me because I’m still sitting there not moving. I’m just slipping into second gear, when I see it. In the oncoming lane, zooming up to pass a slow-moving Nissan Micra, is a beaten-up white VW Golf. I don’t see his face. Just a blur of dark skin and hair.

My knuckles become stricken to the wheel as I attempt to drive in a straight line. Of all the cars on the road in Sunderland, what on earth were the chances of that? How many more times in my life is this man going to just coincidentally appear?

I get home, safe but hardly sound. Kiefer is going scatty for a walk because I never took him to Pause for Paws today. I’m hungry but I’ve not been to the store and don’t know what we’ve got in for dinner. All the strands of my togetherness unfurl again. Our answer machine says we have four new messages. What if he saw me and now he’s ringing? Maybe all that commotion across the street made him look over. I can’t breathe. I go around the sitting room doing a quick nervous-energy tidy, picking up newspapers and potting them in the waste paper basket, one-hundred percent convinced it’s his voice on that machine. Then I press
play
. The first is from Rob, saying he’ll be late home so not to bother with dinner—maybe we can go out—that he loves me, that he’ll see me soon. Every time I hear Rob’s voice, loving and trusting, I fill with a glorious reprieve, a fawning inner gratitude to a God I never knew I believed in until now. If Leigh were going to ring Rob to get her own back on me, she’d have done it already. Knowing her and her anger at me, I can’t see her waiting five days, trying to decide whether to. So with each day that passes, I am one step removed from my worst living hell. The second message is from Mrs. Towers from the puppy obedience class that Leigh very thoughtfully recommended to us. Talk about poetic timing. And the third message is Lawrence. The distress in his voice! ‘Did you know this was happening Jill? You’re her friend, are you really going to tell me you didn’t know? All those times you went out, were you talking about this all along? Or maybe she never did go out with you. Maybe you covered for her while…Maybe there were no exercise classes all along.’ He sounds beside himself. But even when he’s mad he sounds gentle, which makes me bleed for him. ‘She’s gone!’ he says, as though to himself, in disbelief. ‘Neil doesn’t want her now, and I told her I certainly don’t. She’s moved in with Clifford.’

Her gay boss?

He sighs, as though he might cry. ‘ Molly’s howling and won’t eat, and since Leigh recently bullied me into taking contract work, I’m now on a project deadline and I can’t get to it because Molly’s howling and won’t eat. My client’s pissed off. I’m pissed off, and I’m confused, and I miss her and I hate her and I still love her, and I don’t know what to do, and I had my parents over but they didn’t really help and they’ve gone home now and everywhere I look I’m finding beer bottles in weird places, and I want her back! I want her gone. I want her dead. I don’t want to live without her… I—I’m so confused.’

He stops abruptly.

‘Argh,’ he adds, as though he’s worn himself out. ‘Don’t bother ringing back. You’re as bad as she is.’

I wonder if she’s told him. I quickly press
delete
.

The last message is from Wendy, a total contrast to Lawrence’s. ‘Hi Jill,’ she says, her voice flat. ‘Give me a ring will you.’