The Secrets of Married Women (26 page)

Leigh suddenly looks quaky and unsure of herself again. ‘I have to tell you something pretty terrible Jill, so you’d better brace yourself. Something I’m not exactly proud of.’ She holds my eyes. I hold my breath. ‘See,’ she says, ‘thing is, I’ve not been having an affair with any client at work. There never was any Nick. It’s Neil I’m in love with.’

I sit on our chocolate corduroy sofa nursing a glass of wine. And, in the twilight of our room, with the dog snoring on the cushion beside me, I tell Rob everything.

Well not
everything.
Everything as it pertains to Leigh.

‘Keep out of it Jill,’ he says.

‘But she’s going to do something terrible, I can just tell. She’s got this mad idea they’ve been harbouring feelings for each other for years!’

‘No they haven’t! I never had the impression he was even remotely attracted to her.’

‘Well I know, neither did I.’ I mean, I know she’s always thought him gorgeous. But Wendy’s having a drop-dead gorgeous husband has always just been a bit of a giggle, something to pep up the conversation. As though if he didn’t exist we’d have had to invent him.

‘She’s obviously menopausal.’

‘I think she’s more than that. She’s ready to walk out on her marriage for him. On her daughter!’

‘I always knew she was crackers.’

‘Oh, come on! Who could have ever predicted this? Not me and I was her best friend!’ With more than a bit of irony I wonder who would have ever predicted me.

The dog stretches, yawns, pushes me with his back paws as though he’d rather have the sofa all to himself.

‘No kid wants to grow up knowing they were a product of some crap, failed relationship. And no kid wants to grow up with only one parent. Frankly I would never wish that on a kid, having been there myself,’ Rob says.

I sometimes forget that Rob’s dad absconded before he was born. Rob’s mother tried to love him even more to compensate, but, as Rob once told me,
You don’t want that. You don’t want a mam who tries to be a dad too. You want two proper parents. And you just want to be a little boy.

‘Well there’s Wendy’s lads too? What happens to her and them when he runs off into the moonlight with Leigh? What am I going to do Rob? I can’t sit by and watch Leigh do this, take Neil away from his family.’

He leans forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his spread knees. ‘Yeah you can. It’s not your business.’

‘It is my business in some ways. Remember it was me who introduced Leigh to Wendy in the first place. She says she was besotted with him from the word go. How does that make me feel? Like I somehow helped get them together.’

‘Oh stop. That’s daft. Anyway that was years ago, and they only started bonking now, if that’s to be believed. Besides, you make it sound like you’ve got some control over what Neil does. You don’t. If he leaves Wendy then he obviously wants to. And, who knows, maybe he does love Leigh. Hard as that is to believe. But either way, there’s nothing you can do to stop any of it.’

‘Well thanks Rob, but that sounds too rational and simplistic to me. And another reason why this is my business—Leigh made it my business by putting me in this position. She’s forcing me to take her side because I was in on the whole thing from the start. She thinks that gives her a right to my vote, or something.’

‘Well sod her! She thinks wrong! But I really can’t believe that you knew she was having an affair and you went along with it.’

‘How do you make that out? That I went along with it? I didn’t stand there and cheer her on!’

‘It’s the same thing though, isn’t it? If you don’t disapprove, they think you support them. I mean I wouldn’t sit there with any of my mates and listen to them talking about screwing around on their wives, would I? Or it would look like I approved. Maybe it’d look like I even do the same thing myself.’

Make me feel like crap why don’t you
. ‘But I didn’t know it was Neil, did I? She said it was somebody called Nick.’

‘No but you knew he was married with a family. You knew he was somebody’s husband. Somebody’s dad. He was somebody who was loved and depended on and was highly-thought-of in somebody’s life.’

We sit there registering my silent shame. Rob yawns. Even the dog groans like he’s clean out of sympathy.

‘I’m sure he never loved her. He probably just wanted to get his rocks off.’

‘Don’t say that! God you’ve got such a way of reducing everything!’

‘Well he must be hard up, that’s all I can think. And some blokes, when they just want to get action, they’re not too picky.’

‘I know you always say she’s poor to look at -’

‘- A mutt.’

‘Don’t have to use that word about her!’ I suppose because I know and love my friends I always see them as beautiful. ‘And how can he be hard up? He’s married! I can’t believe he said to Leigh that Wendy didn’t give him everything he needed!’

Rob lies back in the chair, clasps his hands behind his head. ‘Well, I’m sure he just added that to get it signed and sealed. You know, the sympathy vote. But maybe she didn’t give him what he needed. Maybe she’s spent her life resenting not having a career and a life of her own. You don’t know what their marriage was really like, Jill. There’s three sides to every story. His side. Her side. And the truth.’

‘There’s only two sides to this story. And hers is both of them.’

‘Well there you go.’ He looks like he’s moving to get up.

‘Where’re you going?’ I pin him there with my eyes, before he has a chance to get any ideas. ‘It’s so disappointing though, Rob. I mean, I always imagined he’d be so upright. I thought they were the perfect couple. I thought I’d actually encountered one.’

‘As opposed to us of course…’ he says sarcastically.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Well, them buggers are the worst, aren’t they? The upright ones. But he’s a good-looking bloke, I’ll give him that. I’m sure it’s hard for him to stay faithful.’

‘But just because somebody’s good-looking doesn’t make them more likely to cheat, does it?’

‘I don’t know,’ he cocks his head and studies me with interest. ‘You’re good-looking and you’ve not cheated. Have you?’

‘Well see what I mean.’ I look at the dog.

We go on and on. Forwards, backwards and in circles. The room grows darker. The dog slides off the sofa to the floor. Rob slinks farther down the chair. ‘Tell me what to do,’ I plead.

‘I have. Seventy-five times.’

‘That’s not being helpful.’

He yawns again. ‘Well, like I’ve said—seventy-five times—you can’t tell Wendy, that would accomplish nothing except destroy her. Some people would rather not know. Your only choice is to try to talk some sense into Leigh. Now can we go to bed and stop talking about this?’

‘But I’ve tried talking to Leigh.’ In the few days I’ve known this, I’ve done nothing but. And she’s not budging.

‘Well, I’m starting to sound like a stuck record but like I’ve said you’ve done your bit then.’ He yawns again, only his yawn has an ‘oh Jesus’ tacked onto the end of it. He moves to get up. Does he think this conversation’s over? I still have another ten miles of it to run.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Oh I was just leaving the country.’ He looks at me. ‘I’m going to get a drink of water.’

‘Well can’t you wait until we’re finished here?’ I know once he leaves the room I’ll never see him again. He’ll be like one of those men who go missing and all they find at the shoreline is their shoes.

He groans, sits on the floor beside the dog.

I begin my rant all over again, with renewed enthusiasm. The clock ticks loudly above the mantelpiece. Eventually there is only one voice in the room. I’m even getting sick of hearing it. ‘I can’t believe it Rob. I can’t believe her.’ Rob’s responses have trailed off to the odd jerky grunt. ‘All these years and then they suddenly start having an affair.’

‘Right then!’ he says. Meaning
right, that’s it. I’ve heard enough
. He gets up.

‘But we’ve not decided anything yet!’

‘Oh yeah? Maybe you haven’t but I did ten hours ago.’ He stretches his arms over his head and does another oh-my-God-this-has-been-an-agony-worse-than-being-eaten-by-Rottweilers groan. ‘Kiefer and me are going to bed.’ He gently stirs the sleeping dog with his foot. ‘Just keep your big nose out of this Jill. That’s my last word.’

I nod. ‘You’re right,’ I watch the dog pad after him across the floor. ‘I’ll stay well out.’

~ * * * ~

A few days later I ring Neil.

Thursday lunchtime I am seated opposite him in the stately oak-panelled dining room of the Stannington Hotel. Where businessmen lunch. Or come to have affairs. It feels peculiarly appropriate. The place was his suggestion when I rang him and said I wanted to meet him.

Across a white linen tablecloth decorated with white place settings and silver, I say the immortal words. ‘I know about your affair with Leigh.’

I could just as well have said I know where you buy all your socks. He is unflinching. Everything I’d rehearsed I was going to say evaporates into the green walls with their oil paintings of the Tyne Valley. And I see a Neil I’ve never seen before. A curious, cold bastard. Cold, like those glacial eyes.

‘And?’ is all he says to me. He quickly drinks back his scotch and soda and waves the approaching waiter away. I take it that means we’re not ordering lunch now.

‘And?’ I repeat back at him, defensively. I can suddenly picture him as a cop. If I were a person in his custody, I’d rather just skip the interrogation and be sent down for life with men who might put unpleasant things in my bottom while I was bending over to do the laundry.

‘…And you’ve come to tell me to stop seeing her.’ He adjusts his tie then sits back confidently in his chair, crosses his hands at his chest, turning the tables on me with just a stare. ‘It’s stopped already,’ he surprises me by saying. ‘I mean, it was never really started as far as I was concerned.’

This isn’t the Neil I’ve known all these years. Been on holiday with for God’s sakes!

He looks at me now. Seems to note my speechlessness, shrugs. I run my eyes over him. I’m having a hard time picturing this man with his face up Leigh’s skirt. In his own house. Bathroom. Bathtub.

‘That’s not how she sees it. She’s in love with you.’

His eyebrow shoots up, as though he’s mocking the very idea. ‘In love with me?’ Something in his expression seems to humanize again. ‘Argh, well that’s her misfortune.’

I pick up my wine glass. It feels weird sitting here drinking with him, but I need the Dutch courage. ‘You are still seeing her. She said you are. So there’s no point in saying it’s stopped.’

‘Well, frankly my friend that’s none of your business,’ he says, with a smug flippancy, and I hate him. I’d rather he’d said
Keep your nose out
. There’s a lone and crusty-looking bread bun sitting on my side plate and I feel like pelting it right between his eyes.

‘Do you know your wife might not be well?’ Around me I hear the chink of crystal water glasses being filled by up-arsing waiters. Two creases form between his eyes; the only two imperfections on his blank, impenetrable, handsome face.

‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

My pulse pounds in my temples. ‘She’s been for tests. Did you know that? Why don’t you go home and ask her how she is, how she really is.’ I bet he never does. I suppose I’ve always sensed she loved him more.

He knows I know he didn’t know. But again he doesn’t flinch. But this time his Mr Cool act seems just a touch less convincing because I can see a twitch under his left eye. ‘She’s never said anything to me about any tests.’

‘No, because she didn’t want you or the lads to worry. That’s how strong and unselfish she is. But while you’ve been busy with Leigh, she’s been seeing doctors.’ I’m exaggerating, and that feels wrong, even cruel, but somehow necessary.

He flushes under his eye sockets. It comes and goes quickly. He studies me for moments, as though he’s thinking what to say, then he says, ‘Well then it’s good she’s got such a good friend in you, isn’t it.’ And I don’t quite know what that’s supposed to mean. Then he leans to one side, slides a hand in his pants pockets, pulls out money. Then he stands up. And I realise I’ve lost. Rob was right. I shouldn’t have done this. You can’t play cat and mouse with Neil.