The Truth Club (46 page)

‘She and I had a long talk about the whole situation, and I’ve
decided that my marriage to you is a sham. I have to get on with
my own life.’

This is a Diarmuid I have never encountered before. ‘Oh.’ I
don’t know what to say. I pull my duvet up under my chin and lie
there with the phone stuck to my ear.

‘When I saw you with Nathaniel, I knew our marriage was over.’

‘But – but didn’t you hear the messages I left on your phone? I
explained the whole situation. He was only in my dressing-gown
because –’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Well, it’s the truth.’ I feel like crying. ‘He’s just a friend, Diarmuid. That’s all he is, really.’

Diarmuid decides not to be sidetracked. ‘We’ll have to sell the
house as soon as possible. Do you want me to contact the estate agents?’

‘You’ve moved in with Charlene?’ I feel the need to confirm this fact.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re living with another woman, even though you’re still married to me.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Diarmuid says, somewhat impatiently. ‘How many
more times are you going to say it?’

‘As many times as I need to,’ I say with a note of steel in my
voice. ‘You can surely see why it may take me a little while to get
used to the idea, Diarmuid.’

‘Well, I had to get used to you running off without a word of explanation.’

‘I did explain.’ My voice has risen in anger. ‘Only you didn’t
listen. But you listen to her, don’t you? You listen to Charlene.’

‘This isn’t a competition, Sally,’ Diarmuid says wearily. ‘I listen
to Charlene because she listens to me.’

‘I listened to you too!’ I am now sitting bolt upright in bed. ‘I
listened to you going on and on about the bloody mice and your carpentry classes and how once we had a baby I’d feel more settled. I even listened to you talking about
football
. As far as I recall, you went on about new bathroom shelving for an entire
week
.’

‘But I never said what you wanted to hear, did I?’ Diarmuid
says sadly. ‘That’s why I stopped talking. You just didn’t want to
hear what I was saying.’

‘You – you could have asked me what I wanted to talk about,’
I splutter indignantly. ‘When we were engaged, we used to talk about all sorts of things.’

‘It was mainly about the wedding, as far as I remember.’
Diarmuid sighs. ‘You were determined to impress your relatives.’
This is indeed true.

‘Do… do you love her?’ I bite my lip and wait for his answer.

‘She loves me.’

‘That’s not what I asked you.’

‘She loves me, and now I suppose I love her. We kind of fit
t
ogether, somehow. We seem to want the same things.’

I stare at a picture of a lavender field in the south of France. It’s
on the wall opposite my bed. There are sunflowers, too, and a little path leading down to the blue ocean. I wish I were there. I don’t know if I can stand Diarmuid’s callousness.

‘I know it doesn’t sound very romantic,’ Diarmuid says, ‘but
I’m not like you, Sally. I don’t need some grand romance – in fact,
I don’t think I’d know what to do with it if I found one.’

I blink away the tears. I don’t want him to know I’m crying silently. It might even please him.

‘I thought you were that sort of person too,’ he says. ‘Before we married, you kept saying that you wanted someone uncomplicated. You said you wanted someone steady, someone you could trust.’

This is true too. I did want someone uncomplicated and steady,
because I didn’t want my marriage to be like Mum and Dad’s.
Their eyes had met across a crowded room, and when I was little
they were besotted with each other; sometimes I even felt excluded
by their high-octane intimacy. But when Mum met Al, she seemed
to forget all that. Their grand romance suddenly seemed terribly flimsy, like a house full of ornaments and pictures but without a
proper foundation. That’s why I couldn’t bring myself to talk to Nathaniel when I first saw him at that party. I didn’t want those
intense feelings, that flamboyance. I didn’t want to want anyone
that much.

‘I… I thought you were worried about Charlene being from South Africa,’ I say. ‘You said you were too different.’

‘We’ll work out the cultural differences as we come to them. I
did think my family might have problems accepting her –’

‘Especially your mother.’ I almost hiss the words into the receiver. ‘She’s a right bitch, Diarmuid. I don’t know why you keep making excuses for her. You always take her side, but you should have stood up for me.’

‘Yes, you’re right about that.’

I almost drop the receiver.

‘I mean, I’m not saying she’s a bitch. But she didn’t really make
you feel welcome. I’m sorry.’

Why on earth couldn’t he have said this before?

‘She was reluctant about our marriage because she wanted me
to marry Becky, even though Becky didn’t want to marry me. She
keeps forgetting that.’

I look out the window. It’s a cloudy late-July day, and it must
be windy too; I can hear my neighbours’ wind chimes tinkling in
their tiny patio garden. ‘Did you ask Becky to marry you?’ I have
to know.

There is a long pause. ‘Yes, when I was in my early twenties. I
phoned her in New Zealand. It was kind of silly. We hadn’t seen
each other since we were teenagers.’

‘But you loved her?’

‘Yes.’ Diarmuid’s voice sounds funny, sort of empty and doggedly resigned. ‘But she never loved me the same way. The
truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to love someone so totally
again, Sally.’ He sounds as if he wants to cry. ‘I think I put that part of me away forever.’

I wish he’d told me this. He kept saying he’d forgotten about
Becky, that he loved me now, not her. He lied. But, deep down, I
knew anyway.

Now I understand that distant look in Diarmuid’s eyes. Now I
understand why I never really felt I could reach him. He didn’t
want me to. That part of him was closed off and carefully
forgotten. And I know, suddenly, that many people do this; it isn’t
just Diarmuid. My parents did it with their love. They made it
into something else, businesslike, determined; the ornaments are
gone, and all that’s left is the structure. I did it too, that day I saw
Mum kissing Al. I didn’t trust love any more. I knew it was something flimsy and prone to alteration. It didn’t seem a safe
t
hing to want. And I stopped believing in the angels – I simply couldn’t summon up the faith. And when I stopped believing in them, I stopped seeing the shiny, gentle shapes floating near the ceiling. Maybe love is like that too. If you don’t believe in it,
maybe you just don’t notice it. All you sense is the contours of its
absence.

‘I’m sorry for ringing so early.’ Diarmuid’s voice sounds softer.
‘I’ve only just looked at my watch; I thought it was later. You probably haven’t even had a cup of tea. Why don’t you go and make one and I’ll ring you back?’

I find myself grimacing. Why can’t Diarmuid be bad or good?
Why can’t he be one thing, instead of this strange mixture? I want
to hate him, but now he’s remembered how much I need tea first
thing in the morning. It’s like when he asked me if I needed to buy
milk. He remembers this kind of thing. On our very first date he
gave me his jacket because it was raining.

I hang up and go downstairs. I feel like I have suddenly landed
in another country, a foreign, odd place with a stark, strange landscape. Even the kettle and the teapot and the mugs look different. They’ve lost their cosiness; they’re just things in my kitchen. The ants are still trying to get into the jar of honey. I
leave them to it.
South Africa
,
I think. Why does Diarmuid make
it sound like another planet? It would be funny, if his new love didn’t come from there.

As I pour the boiling water over the teabag, I catch a thin
reflection of myself in the glass pane in the back door. I recognise
the expression. It is my mother’s, the one she wore on the long,
lost days after she left Al. Suddenly I love my mother, in a way I
have never loved her before. She came back to us, even though
she could have left. It must have taken such courage. It must have
taken a bigger kind of love. She must have set so many of her dreams aside for us. She saved her marriage – but I can’t save
mine. It’s gone. I wish with all my heart that I could step back in t
ime and alter the part of my past that I have chosen to belong to.
I wish I had noticed my mother’s courage and faith, instead of her brief infidelity. I would have become another kind of person. And
I would have spoken to Nathaniel at that party.

The phone rings just as I am stirring in the half-spoon of sugar.
Diarmuid even knows how long it takes me to make a cup of tea.
He knows the side of the bed I prefer, my favourite Chinese takeaways and crisps and chocolate; he knows I keep forgetting to return DVDs on time. He used to do it for me. There are so many things we know about each other, small crucial details. I
used to be able to recognise the sound of his car hundreds of
yards away. What are we to do with all this knowledge? Where are we to put it now?

‘Have you got your cuppa?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘I should replace that plug on the kettle for you. It’s getting a bit loose, isn’t it?’

Don’t do this, Diarmuid,
I think.
Don’t keep pretending you’re
still in my life. You’re not, not really. You’ve wandered hundreds
of miles away. I didn’t know you could move that fast. I didn’t even know you wanted to.

‘I know how to change plugs, Diarmuid,’ I say firmly, to myself
as much as to him. I am about to add, once again, that Nathaniel is just a friend and that Diarmuid seems to have given up on our
marriage because of a misunderstanding, but he speaks first.

‘Anyway.’ His voice is calmer now. ‘I suppose I should explain
why I’ve changed my mind about Charlene.’

I don’t say anything, so he continues. ‘I’ve decided it doesn’t
matter where Charlene comes from. The important thing is that I feel comfortable with her. My family will just have to get used to
it. Charlene says there’s a kind of love you sometimes
want,
but
the important kind of love is the kind you
need
.’

I almost tell him to shut up about bloody Charlene, but her words seem wise. They seem like words I need to hear.