My Husband's Wife(61)

That night, Carla’s pain grew worse. In her dreams, it became a red-hot stick, beating her inside. Someone was holding it. Maria. Lash, lash, against her body.

‘Maria!’ she called out. ‘Please stop. Let me play!’

‘It’s all right, little one.’ Mamma’s voice floated over her. ‘The doctor is coming.’





23


Lily


By the time I come back from Hampstead, it is nearly seven o’clock. Ed is sitting at the kitchen table, working on a sketch.

‘We won,’ I say.

He starts, and I can see that he’s been so involved with his work that he’d forgotten today is verdict day. Then he collects himself. ‘Wonderful,’ he says, leaping up and throwing his arms around me. ‘We must celebrate! Open a bottle.’ His face tightens. ‘Then we can have that talk you’ve been promising.’

My hand shakes on the fridge door at the thought of the conversation ahead. My heart sinks. The Pinot that had been there at breakfast time is gone. No guesses as to who drank it. But I don’t feel up to having an argument.

‘We’re out of drink,’ I say shortly.

‘I’ll go round to the off-licence.’ He’s trying. I’ll say that for him.

‘Let me.’ Even though I’ve only just returned, I’m already feeling claustrophobic. My heart is juddering so badly at what I must do that I simply have to get out of here.

As I make a move, I see a man through the window, striding towards the front entrance. His hat is firmly down over his forehead but there’s something about that walk that looks familiar.

I close the front door behind me and step into the corridor.

My eyes struggle to understand what they’re seeing.

The man who was striding towards our apartment building and who is now twirling Francesca round and round in the air (while little Carla watches in her white pyjamas) is Tony.

‘I love you,’ I hear him say, as he puts her back down. ‘We won the case! Wanted to tell you before I went home!’

Coincidences are one of those things which sound contrived until they happen in real life. During my short time as a lawyer, I’ve already seen so many. Most of them tragic. The father who ran over his toddler by mistake on the day his new baby was born. The grandmother who was held up at knifepoint in the dark by her adopted son, neither aware of the connection at the time. The woman who had a child by a nightclub bouncer, who turned out to be the father who’d left before she was born – he, unaware of even having a child.

And now Tony and my neighbour.

I am disappointed. And fiercely, overpoweringly angry. How can someone uphold the law when they are acting immorally themselves? Such hypocrisy.

Perhaps it’s also because I remember my mother’s grief when she found out about my father’s affair. An affair which must have been quickly extinguished, because after that row, my parents appeared to carry on as normal. After Daniel’s death I doubt either of them had the energy for love, or for fighting. But it marked my mother. She never spoke to my father the same way again. Part of me thinks she somehow blamed his infidelity for Daniel’s death. Since then, I’ve tried to forgive my father. But you can never really put back the pieces of a fractured family.

That’s one of the reasons I let rip. ‘How could you go off with someone else’s husband? Don’t you have any shame? As for you, Tony, if I see you again with this woman, I will tell your wife.’

Of course I wouldn’t really tell Tony’s wife (who I’ve never actually met). That would only cause more hurt. But I’m so angry, I don’t really think about what I’m saying.

‘What was all that noise out there?’ asks Ed when I return.

I tell him what happened.

My husband looks up from his sketch. It’s a nose. A cute, pert, turned-up nose. Just like Carla’s. ‘You don’t think you should have stayed out of it?’

‘No.’ I turn away. ‘It’s not fair – either on her or Tony’s wife and children. Or Carla. Tony was carrying on with Francesca when we were looking after her. Her mother choosing a man over her child! And how on earth did he meet her?’

‘You seem more bothered about them than us.’ Ed looks nervous. I know he wants to talk, and I owe it to him. ‘Shall we open that bottle?’

‘I forgot to get it.’

‘Then I’ll go. This is finished now.’ He lays a hand on my shoulder. ‘I think we both need a glass, don’t you?’

As he shuts the door, something Tony said during the case comes back to me: ‘There are times when you’ll find yourself swearing that blue is black. You’ll truly believe it yourself. We all do it. It’s not that lawyers lie. It’s that they twist the real facts to make another world that everyone else believes in too. And who’s to say that won’t be a better world?’

When Ed comes back, I am in bed. Pretending to be asleep.

In the morning, I wake before my husband and leave a note.

Talk tonight. Promise. Sorry.



It is a relief to get back to the office the next day, where I can attempt to block out the confused look on Carla’s face which is preying on my mind. The phones are ringing like an orchestra. People are rushing everywhere. The place is going mad.