The Secrets of Married Women (23 page)

I go downstairs when I’m convinced the coast is clear, and peek out of the window. On my doormat is a big carton of ‘homemade’ soup from that lovely new place, Stockpot, that just opened in the town centre. And under it is an envelope. I open it and it’s some sort of registration papers… to Canine Obedience school. Leigh has attached a Post-It note that says, ‘They’re the best in the area. Trust me, I am now an authority!!! I’ve got you eight lessons. If the little effer doesn’t pass with flying colours I want my money back!!!’

I go back in the house, look in the mirror. I’m a weird shade of taupe and I’ve still got burst blood vessels all over my cheeks from how hard I threw up. I have good friends. For some reason this makes me sadder, especially given that I can’t confide in either one of them. I crawl back into the wardrobe and cuddle one of Rob’s sweaters again. Kiefer sits sentry outside champing through a shoe.

Next thing I know, I hear my name. I open my puffy eyes, not knowing if it’s day or night, except that I am still sat there, and Rob is crouched in front of me with the dog in a cinnamon-bun shape at my feet. ‘What the…?’ he touches my face. ‘Jill?’ his thumb dusts my cheek. ‘What’re you doing sitting in here for God’s sakes?’

Slowly coming around, I shake my head.

He pulls me into his chest, circles me in his arms. ‘This is all because of the mugging?’ He sounds sceptical.

I lay my head on him. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I’m not feeling very good.’ I wasn’t planning on being like this when he got in. I was planning on being washed and made-up and ready to do a very good impression of someone who was okay. But he has come home early. My sweet, worried husband. Of course he would.

He kisses the top of my head, plucks me up. ‘The bastard, I’d like to kill him,’ he says, of the phantom mugger, and I bury my face in his shoulder. He carries me over to our bed, where he cradles me like I’m a needy little bundle of vulnerability. ‘You’re alright now. If he comes near you again I’ll tie his feet in a knot and ram them so far up his backside they’ll come down his nose.’ He kisses my head again, as though his life depends on healing me. And I bumble something about how it’s not just the mugging, but I think I’ve come down with a bug too.

We lay there ages until he has comforted my tears away, and I’ve picked up the pattern of his breathing and I’m breathing in step with it.

Later on I tell him I want to go out by myself for some fresh air. ‘Well just take my phone and call me at some point and let me know you’re okay. And for God’s sakes don’t carry a handbag,’ he tells me.

I am pitiably aware that I don’t deserve this man. An odd change for a girl who not so long ago was so sure that she deserved better.

I walk down the Quayside, umbrella-less in the lashing rain, and stand on the Millennium Bridge overtop The Tuxedo Princess, the floating nightclub where Rob and I met. Then I drag myself up Grey Street, the street that today looks like its name, dodging squashed chips on the pavement, smelling the reek of urine up walls. A drama is going on outside of a clothing boutique between a young security guard and a pensioner who has a shirt dangling from a coat-hanger that’s somehow got itself attached to the back of her mac. I disappear down another street and come out at Fenwick’s where I order a cappuccino and am overcome with the urge to throw up again. I try to will the feeling away by being very, very still. Other than the odd crust of bread, I don’t think I’ve eaten in days. My lips are chapped, my mouth parched, and I’ve still got that ache in my pelvic region.

I walk back to the Monument Metro, get on a train with half a million single mothers and buggies, and babies with tattoos and pierced ears. I go to the end of the line and back with my head resting on the window, staring, as we pass through tunnels, at alternating light and dark. And then I go home, not having reached any sort of clarity that I hoped coming out would give me. As I walk in our front door, I register how different everything feels now, once something’s done that there’s no taking back, since I let a third person into our marriage. Rob is on the sofa, in a room with no light. He hasn’t put the telly on, and the dog is beside him chomping through a bone. The air is filled with loss.

I will win him back again. Even though he doesn’t know I’ve lost him. I get an odd comfort from this.

‘Something terrible happened while you were out,’ he says. His face is pure end-of-the-world misery.

I reach backwards for the nearest chair. Andrey has been here. I sink into the seat. It’s something equally as bad. I just know it.

‘What Rob?’ I can barely croak. My heart is hammering.

‘It’s too awful to put into words,’ he says.

‘What? For God’s sake?’ I am about to collapse with dread.

He looks at me with that face. Then he holds up one of his best leather loafers. ‘The fucker half ate it, didn’t he. Look. Two hundred quid shoes and it’s got a sodding tongue now,’ he shakes the shoe so that the sole flaps against the upper, like the mouth of a leather puppet.

I’m so relieved I could practically kiss the dog.

‘I’ll never get a pair as comfortable as these again,’ he says. Then after a few more moments of mourning his loss, he asks, ‘So how are you, anyway, after your walk?’

‘I’m fine. Really. Back to normal again.’

He looks at me with uncertain faith.

We eat fish fingers and oven chips, which he makes for us. I watch him secretly as he lines up three chips on a bun, rolls it up and stuffs the end into his mouth. Poor naïve Rob. What a higher price I should have put on his love. Then I’m a little angry at him. If only he had talked to me… If he had stopped things from getting so bad. I stare at his fingers, the upward-turning tips, his jaw, his ears, the expression of concentration as he eats. And I cannot, cannot believe that I’ve had another man inside my body, that I told another man I might have fallen in love with him.

What was I thinking?

‘I don’t want to push it, but are you sure you’re feeling better? You seem…’ He looks at me across the table. ‘Still not yourself.’

I nod. ‘I’m fine. I keep telling you.’

‘I know. And it’s not very convincing, obviously.’

I fake great interest in a fish finger. Thank God he doesn’t know. And as long as only I do, he never will.

He tells me about his weekend away. As he talks, I get a sinking thought. Shit. My mobile has my entire telephone address book on it, including Rob’s work numbers. What if the Russian copied numbers down before the phone got disconnected? If he rings Rob to tell him?

Tell him what? Why would he ring my husband? He’d have to be off his head. But what if he wants to return my bag? He might ring a friend. Or my work. I told him where I worked. What if he comes looking for me? What if he is waiting for me outside of work? No Jill, I think. Calm down. He’s not going to ring your friend or your work. He’s not going to come looking for you. You were nothing to him.

I tune back into Rob, who is looking at me strangely. I flounder, not sure what expression I am supposed to pull because I’ve not heard a word he’s said. ‘You know, Jill,’ he says. ‘I sense this is about more than the mugging.’

I focus on my food, eat like nothing’s happening. But my eyes burn from holding the tears back. Then I look up. His eyes, his whole face is filled with despair. ‘Please tell me. Whatever it is. You can tell me.’

I can’t chew. Why does he have to be so nice? So damned there for me? Unswallowed chips clag in the back of my mouth.

‘Oh God, why are you crying again?’ he asks me.

I just shake my head.

I’m going to have to tell him, aren’t I?

No. I can’t. I mustn’t. What’s the point in telling someone something that can only hurt them?

He starts to say something but stops. A frustrated sigh comes out instead. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says finally and his voice sounds choked and he clangs the cutlery down. ‘I feel like you’re about to tell me you’re leaving me for somebody else.’

I glare at him, disbelievingly. ‘Why on earth would you say that?’

He shrugs. ‘Don’t know. I suppose… I’m sorry, I don’t think that. It’s just… I’m obviously making you so unhappy. Because it’s me isn’t it? I know I’m the root cause of this.’

Sometimes I think I don’t give Rob enough credit. He gets up out of his chair, shaking his head, walks down our passageway rubbing a hand over his face, doing a sharp intake of breath. He has his shoes on. The one the dog chewed. His socked foot sits in the middle of it like filler in a leather sandwich.

I put the greasy pan in the sink and start washing it. I stare out of our window at the lilac tree that droops in blooms on the other side of the glass. I drop a glass on the floor and it shatters. I stare at it, slap a hand over my mouth, suppressing a scream. This scares the dog, who trots off with his tail between his legs into the dining room.

I hear Rob’s feet up there on the ceiling. Then it all goes quiet. He has obviously gone to bed. Rob will sleep a lot when he’s sad. When we first found out he couldn’t have kids, he’d sleep half his day away. And I’d do anything to make him get up, throw the sheets off him and yank him back from the brink of whatever it was he was balancing on. Because I didn’t want him sliding over there, being lost to me. Now I think, at least if he’s up there in that bed he’s still mine. Just knowing he’s there makes my life feel full and safe again.

I sit down and stare at the chair that Rob vacated. The few abandoned chips on his plate. The piece of fish finger on the end of his fork.

It’s no use. I can’t carry this alone. I’m going to have to tell him.

I lie awake all night analysing the pros and cons of clearing my conscience versus taking the bliss out of Rob’s ignorance. By the weekend I’m in a state of panic. If I don’t talk to somebody I’ll explode. And right this second—although my mind changes about ever two minutes—I know that the person I should least tell is Rob. Oddly enough, Leigh keeps ringing and asking what’s the matter, like she’s on a mission to prize it out of me. And it’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her. But all my instincts say don’t. So I don’t. Neither do I tell Wendy who rings and exercises her more subtle approach. In my ‘up’ moments I’m glad I’m keeping it to myself. Other times, I sit there moaning about how ironic it is that I am a good friend to everybody, yet when I need a friend I don’t have one. I mean, I do. But I have one who wouldn’t understand me, and another who would understand me too much. I don’t feel like opening up either can of worms. A problem shared is a problem doubled.

On Monday I call in sick again at work. Jan from personnel wants a doctor’s note. But I can’t face the doctor again, so I tell her I’ll see what I can do. And then I don’t do anything.

But I do put on an act for Rob. I make dinner, I smile, I chatter, I deceive not easily, but at least with a degree of accomplishment. There’s a part of me that needs to pour my soul out to Rob in his role as my best friend. But Rob’s also my husband, and this time there’s no separating the two. Then one night, over pork pies and chips, I can tell something is troubling him. Predictably, he lays his knife and fork down, and looks at me. ‘Jill there’s something that I have to tell you that you’re not going to want to hear, but I feel I have to.’ He has that face that says he’s about to drop a large bomb—the same pain on it as when he told me about his shoe. Only I know this is worse than that.

‘I’ve done something that I’m not proud of. It was very, very wrong of me…’ He shakes his head piteously. ‘I’ve thought about not telling you, but it feels like a bigger crime to keep it from you. So while you’re already annoyed with me, and disappointed in me, I might as well just be out with it...’

The pork pie sticks in my throat. My heart sounds some awful, ominous, warning beat.

He rubs the back of his head, looks at me while I hang in agony. ‘I betrayed you,’ he says. ‘I went behind your back…’ I am waiting for him to confess that he has cheated on me—remembering Leigh’s words that time—when he says, ‘I rang the coppers, didn’t I. About your phone. Right after I promised you I wouldn’t. I hung up and I rang them right away. Told them that the bastard probably has your mobile and all they have to do is ring it and they’ll have him.’

I soar. Then I sink. This is good. No, it’s bad! ‘You rang them! Moments after you rang me! Heck, what did you do that for?’

‘Because he had the balls to answer your phone after he just ripped off your bag! That really pissed me off.’

‘Oh no!’ I clutch my head between both hands. ‘Oh God! Crap! Shit!’ When I rang to cancel my phone I was held in a queue for ages. What if Rob got through to the police before I got the phone disconnected? ‘Rob, what did they say?’