The Stepmother (13 page)

A
fter meeting Kaye
, I know I can’t put it off any more. I can’t let her be the one who mentions it before I do.

Matthew is in a good mood the day after she’s been round because Aston Villa have won, so I think I’ll seize the opportunity. We stay in bed late, and it is like when we first met, and I have real hope.

I decide to cook an amazing meal, slipping out that afternoon to the best butcher’s on the high street to buy him veal, planning to make a huge cheesecake with chocolate and caramel sauce…

But someone gets to him before me.

W
hen I walk
in from the shops, my hands curled freezing round the basket, planning on a hot shower, a ton of subtle make-up and my most alluring outfit – that Ghost dress maybe, the clinging burgundy one that Marlena made me buy two summers ago in the Lanes – an ashen-faced Matthew is waiting for me.

Later I will cringe thinking about my crass naïvety; about why on earth I ever thought it would be all right.

‘What is it?’ I panic. ‘Is it one of the kids?’ I check for my phone automatically. ‘Is it Frankie?’

‘No.’ He is terse. ‘It’s this.’

He shoves his own phone into my hand. I squint at the screen, but without my glasses, I can hardly read it.

‘What?’

He grabs it back, propelling me through the kitchen towards his laptop, shoving me down in front of it like a naughty child. He brings up his email and the link…

And of course all the time I know really.

There is the headline on the article – and a big photo.

The photo of the two of us – me and Otto. The back of my head, my hair tied up. Otto leaning towards me…

An article about my affair with a fifteen-year-old called Otto Lundy, a pupil at Seaborne Academy –
my
star pupil. The photo that started it all.

‘It’s not true,’ I say immediately. ‘Why were you Googling me?’

‘I wasn’t.’ Matthew sits heavily at the table. ‘Someone sent me the link.’

‘
Someone
? Who?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t recognise the address.’

‘Can I see?’ I ask, but he shuts the computer.

‘It’s not really relevant. What’s relevant, Jeanie, is: is it true? And why didn’t you tell me?’ He looks like he might cry.

I’ve never seen him like this before, and it is physically painful. It is all my nightmares rolled into one. ‘Matt, please…’ I lean towards him, but he ducks away.

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

‘I did,’ I mutter. ‘Sort of. I tried, honestly…’

‘You bloody well didn’t.’ He is getting angry now. ‘You most definitely didn’t. You said you’d had a breakdown after an allegation of misconduct. You said you were cleared—’

‘I
was
cleared,’ I say. ‘Absolutely.’

‘So why didn’t you tell me the whole truth?’

‘I – I tried. I really did. And it’s not true anyway.’ I am speaking with an icy calm – born of terror, I think. ‘I swear it’s not.’

‘But I don’t understand. Didn’t you think I’d find out everything at some point?’

‘Yes. And I tried, Matthew.’ I try to take his hand, but he pushes me away. ‘Please! I swear I tried.’

‘Oh come on!’ He grimaces. ‘You’re a liar, Jean.’

‘I’m not.’ I hear my voice crack. ‘I tried to tell you months ago. Don’t you remember the email I sent? You didn’t read it, but I tried.’

‘That was a feeble attempt.’ He sits looking away from me.

There’s something very disconcerting about someone refusing to even glance at you whilst you’re pouring out your heart. But I ploughed on regardless. ‘I thought you knew,
honestly
. And when I realised you didn’t, I panicked. I didn’t want to lose you, Matthew,’ I say, my voice shaking. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’

Now he does look at me. It isn’t reassuring at all.

I cry. I can’t help myself. The tears are hot and strong and constant. ‘I couldn’t tell you because when I realised – too late – you didn’t know, I loved you so much by then; I was so in love with you, I couldn’t bear to risk anything.’

He still won’t look at me, though I go to him now, try to make him meet my eyes.

‘I was so frightened of losing you, Matt. I’m so sorry – really, I feel awful. I
know
I should have told you sooner – but apart from that, I’ve done nothing wrong – really. Not in the grand scheme of things.’ The sobs that have wrenched me are passing a little.

The thing I can’t say is that after the bloody devil that was Simon, I’ve never let myself love anyone except Frankie and Marlena the way I love Matthew. So the stakes were really high. So high. Too high. But I keep trying.

‘Can you see that?’ I am desperate for his approbation. For his forgiveness. For his understanding about what so nearly ruined my life. The thing that, until I met him, I thought was the end of me. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong at Seaborne. They just said I did.’

‘So tell me now,’ Matthew speaks at last, flatly, ‘
exactly
what happened. Explain it all please.’

The thing that may still ruin my life.

‘I need a drink.’ I wipe my eyes, dry mouthed with fear.

He pushes an open bottle of red wine across the table, but I want to stay sober. At the sink, I pour myself a glass of water, looking out into the darkness.

I don’t know if I’ll be packing my bags in the morning.

Once I’ve drunk the water, I turn to him, and in a low voice I tell him everything it would have been wiser to say
before
we made our vows. In a great long rush of a speech, I explain the series of events that led to the incident, in my last job but one, when Frankie and I still lived in Hove, near the sea that I both loved and feared.

‘I see,’ Matthew says after I’ve finished talking. That is all he says. I stare at him. Waiting. Feeling him processing.

But he doesn’t say anything else. He just gets up and walks out of the room.

‘Matthew…’ I start.

‘I need some time,’ he says over his shoulder, the door banging behind him as he goes.

I hear the front door slam and his car screech away.

I sit at the table and think about what has been sent to his email.

Later I realise it is the same article that I’d been sent six weeks ago: the poor photocopy that I’d hidden away. It is exactly the same one.

The one that so mysteriously vanished from my dressing-table drawer.

W
hen he comes back
, slightly calmer, when he asks a few more questions, I think Matthew
does
believe I am innocent; that I was unfairly accused.

He believes what I repeat, sweating with anxiety, pacing up and down: that the photo was taken by a student with a grudge, from the most incriminating angle.

And it is the fact he seems more sorrowful than angry now that is almost worse than when he’d shouted.

‘Why didn’t you just tell me?’ he keeps saying, increasingly drunk as he ploughs his way through the red wine – until I want to scream:
Why do you think
?
Didn’t you hear what I said?

Eventually we go upstairs, very subdued, and when I get into bed, he rolls away from me as I try to cuddle up to him.

I lie sleepless again, staring blankly into the night.

Have I left it too late?

W
hen I wake
, Matt’s already left for work. I fell asleep so late, I’d not heard him leaving, and I feel disoriented as I haul myself out of bed. There’s no note from him, no text.

Frankie has gone to London, I remember, to sort his passport out. He’s leaving for France soon.

It’s Agata’s day to clean the house. I feel awkward and embarrassed when she’s here – but fortunately I’m going into the college, so I’ll miss her today. And at least that’ll be a distraction.

I’m really looking forward to it actually.

O
n the drive
into town my phone rings.

It is the college: an extremely harassed-sounding vice principal on the line.

‘Hi, Lesley,’ I say, hoping she isn’t going to reschedule. ‘How are you? I’m nearly there actually—’

There is a slight pause, then she says, ‘I’m going to get straight to the point, Jeanie. I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to withdraw the job offer.’

I feel like I’ve been gut punched.

‘Hang on please.’ I veer into a bus stop and turn off the engine.

Lesley is talking to the air as I pick up my handset again, trying to say the other teacher has decided to stay – but I know it is a lie. Obviously it is a lie – meant to spare my blushes.

‘And this is definitive?’ I ask, but I already know the answer.

When I hang up, having muttered various ‘Oh don’t worry, I quite understand’ type platitudes, I switch off my phone and just sit.

What else is there to say?

Eventually a bus hoots behind me. Absently I restart the car, driving blindly into the countryside, following a road I don’t know.

I don’t know anything round here: anyone or any place.

I park the car beside the old canal. I walk down the towpath to the water’s edge, past a clutch of houseboats in varying states of upkeep. I stand on the bank, staring into the murky depths.

How can I clear my name and start again properly when people believe something that isn’t true? When
everyone
believes it, except those closest to me? I am tarnished forever.

And if I lose Matthew too, if that happens – how can I ever live a normal life again? How can I live with that loss?

W
hen I finally go home
, hours later, Matthew is back.

‘You’re early.’ I reach up to kiss him, but he pulls away.

‘I had to come back. The alarm company called, saying it was going off.’

‘Oh?’ I put the kettle on, overcome with lethargy. ‘Agata must have forgotten to set it when she left. I’ll remind her next week.’

‘You won’t. Agata’s resigned.’ He is grim. ‘She’s not coming back.’

‘Oh, God, really?’ I am surprised by the velocity of his statement. ‘Why?’

Personally I’m not bothered. Telling Matthew I’ve lost my job before I’ve even started is worrying me far more than Agata’s resignation. It seems like some odd admission of guilt to say they don’t want me – especially as he’s already so angry. And I’m more than happy to do the cleaning myself; my first job out of school was cleaning offices at nights, paying to put myself through college. Underpaying some Eastern European isn’t high on my agenda of social arrival.

‘Because of this.’ He shoves a note at me, handwritten in a childish scrawl:

‘From Scarlett? What does she mean?’

Scarlett has obviously been here whilst I was out. Her pencil case and her fluffy pink pen are on the side; they weren’t there earlier.

‘No – it’s from Agata.’

‘When what’s okay?’ I get the teapot down. ‘Do you want tea?’

‘For Christ’s sake, woman.’ He slams the note down furiously, making me jump. ‘We’re lucky she didn’t call the police.’

He has my full attention now. ‘Why on earth would she do that?’

‘Why don’t you ask your son?’

‘Why?’ My skin has gone clammy. ‘What’s he meant to have done? I don’t think they’ve even met…’

And Frankie isn’t here anyway. He is in London, shopping for vinyl, staying for a few days with Marlena, as his passport is taking longer than he’d hoped.

‘You don’t want to know.’ Matthew is about to leave the room. I scurry after him.

‘No, I do! Matthew, what
is
it?’

‘All right,’ he says. ‘But don’t blame me when you don’t like it.’

Grabbing my hand, he drags me up the stairs to Frankie’s room, at the opposite end of the landing from ours. ‘It’ll make you sick, Jeanie.’

‘What?’ I cry, terrified now as he throws open Frank’s door, his fingers still clamped round my wrist.

Below the huge poster of a dishevelled Kurt Cobain, the clown’s face Frankie uses as a screensaver blinks and winks at us, and I shiver, jamming my feet into the carpet like a child would. ‘Please, Matthew…’

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you!’ Matthew pulls me across the room.

‘You’re hurting me!’ I remonstrate. ‘I won’t run away; let me go…’

Dropping my wrist, he jabs at the laptop’s keyboard.

The hideous clown disintegrates, leaving behind an image of a girl: peroxide haired, wet lipped and naked apart from some kind of leather thing wound round her waist, a girl who doesn’t look much older than Scarlett, who looks barely conscious, having sex with a…

‘Oh my God.’ My voice is barely more than a whisper, so stunned am I. For a moment I can do nothing but stare in horror. ‘Please switch it off.’ I feel really sick.

‘Too fucking right: oh my God.’

‘But – I’ve
never
known Frank to use porn,’ I say – and then stop. That isn’t entirely true. ‘I mean, he’s just not the kind of boy to be into this type of – depravity…’

‘Really?’ Matthew’s expression is scornful. ‘And what kind of boy would that be anyway? What teenage son would divulge this little penchant to his mother?’

‘But we’re so close, me and Frank.’ I stare at my husband, willing him to believe me. ‘I trust him, Matthew, and you should too. I just need to talk to—’

‘Oh come on, Jean,’ he says. ‘The evidence is irrefutable. Agata was hysterical! We all know your precious son can do no wrong in your eyes, but you’re going to have to face facts.’

‘That’s not fair,’ I protest.

‘Isn’t it?’

We stare at each other, and the feeling in my stomach is one of lead, a weight that says: this is not good; this is not good at all.

‘Face it, Jeanie…’ he starts again, but I don’t want to hear it.

‘All
right
, Matthew.’ For the first time ever, I walk away from him, out of the room. ‘I’ll talk to Frankie when he gets back.’

‘Yeah, you will.’ Behind me the door slams, and Matthew stalks past me, down the landing, into his study. The threat in his voice shakes me. ‘I think,’ he says, over his shoulder, his voice seeming dangerously quiet, ‘that’s a very good idea indeed.’

Then he shuts his door in my face.