My Husband's Wife(62)

PRISONER’S RELEASE OPENS GATE FOR MORE BOILER LAWSUITS, screams the headline on the corner news-stand.

‘Well done,’ says one of the partners, who’s never bothered to give me the time of day before.

‘You did a good job,’ nods my boss gruffly.

There are balloons on my desk. A bottle of champagne. And a stack of messages. None from Tony. How will I ever face him again? Yet he is the one who should be ashamed.

‘We’ve had a flood of calls from potential clients who want you to take them on,’ adds my boss. Then he pats me on the back: a laddish pat. ‘But we’ll talk about that later. Why don’t you have the rest of the day off to make up for all those extra hours you put in?’

Coming home from the office at lunchtime is virtually unknown in law unless you’ve been ‘let go’. But my heart is heavy. There’ll be no getting out of the talk with Ed this evening. Everything, I think as I turn the key, is such a muddle.

‘Ed?’ He’s in his jeans instead of the usual office suit. A half-eaten bowl of mushy cereal is on the table, surrounded by charcoal sticks and sketches. His feet are bare. ‘Have you come home early from work?’

‘No.’

There’s a slur to his speech, a smell to his breath. At the same time I notice the half-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the side.

‘I’ve been sacked.’

Sacked?

For a minute, all kinds of possibilities flash through my head. Upsetting a client? Having an argument with his boss?

‘They found me working on this when I should have been doing proper work.’

He says the word ‘proper’ with finger gestures, making sarcastic inverted commas in the air.

I glance down at the drawing in front of him. Little Carla smiles up at me. It’s always little Carla smiling. Or dancing. Or riding her bike. He’s lost in a world of make-believe.

‘For God’s sake,’ I explode. ‘How on earth are we going to manage without your pay? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?’

‘I need to know what our future is,’ Ed continues as if I haven’t spoken.

‘I don’t know.’ I want to scream. ‘I can’t think after what you’ve just told me.’

‘You said you’d talk about it when the case was over. We could have thrashed it out last night, but you were more interested in trying to redeem our neighbour’s love life before our own.’

What can I say? It’s true. I brush past him, making straight for the bathroom. You’ll get a low after the case, Tony had warned me. It’s like coming off a drug. Winning is an addiction. ‘I need some me-time,’ I say, locking the door behind me. Then I sit on the edge of the bath while I run the taps. Hot. Cold. Hot.

After Sarah Evans, I’m never going to look at a bath in the same way again.

Just as I can never look at Ed in the same way.

Or myself.

Desperately, I force myself to consider the options.

If I leave Ed now, I will be alone. Scared. With an uncertain future.

But if I stay, we might be able to start again. Providing Ed really means it about not caring for Davina any more. But can I trust him? And can I trust myself?

A decision has to be made. One way or the other.

A coin. Daniel used to toss a coin when he didn’t know what to do. I pick up a magazine that I’ve left by the side of the bath. If I open on a page with an odd number, I’ll leave.

If it’s even, I’ll stay.

I open the magazine at a feature on how to make Sunday family suppers. There’s a picture of a happy family sitting round the table. The picture and the print swim before my eyes. Sunday suppers. Normal life. The kind we could have had if Daniel hadn’t come into our lives.

I glance at the page number.

Then I walk out of the bathroom door. Ed’s not sketching any more. He’s simply staring into space with blank empty eyes.

‘Do you want to start again?’ I ask.

He nods. There’s hope in his eyes. Fear too.

I feel exactly the same.

Then I take my husband’s hand and lead him into our bedroom.

During the next month, I try to get back into normal life but it’s not easy. My workload seems dull after the thrill of getting Joe Thomas released, even though everyone in the office, including my boss, regards me with a new level of respect. And still the work comes pouring in.

‘They want Lily to do it,’ says the secretary when my boss allocates himself one of the meatier cases, involving a newly married young man whose father-in-law (an eminent CEO) allegedly hit him on the head with a bottle of Merlot. Fifty stitches.

Yet instead of being jealous, as I feared, my boss nods. ‘You’d better have a room of your own if you’re going to be so popular.’

People ring to ask if I can represent them. A woman whose elderly father was burned by a boiler wants me to take on her case. Solicitors I’ve never heard of ring to congratulate me. A woman’s magazine wants to interview me as ‘a rising lawyer’. Questions about health and safety are being asked in the House of Commons.

But inside my head, it’s hell. Ed and I may have agreed to start again but it was never going to be as simple as that. I have to force myself to believe him when he says he’s ‘having a quick drink with Ross’. Supposing he’s really seeing Davina? For his part, Ed resents me getting back late, laden with files. But then, out of the blue, he will bring me a cup of tea when I’m working into the small hours and kindly tell me not to ‘overdo it’. And now he’s at home during the day, he’s started doing the housework while searching for a new job – something I’m sure his traditional parents would be shocked at. He doesn’t do it as well as I would, but I appreciate the gesture.