My Husband's Wife(99)

‘Shh,’ soothes Mum.

Normally I don’t make a fuss. Since coming back to look after Tom, I decided it was the best way. But every now and then, I snap. Something usually acts as a trigger. Today I suspect it’s the extra place setting at the table. A reminder of the life that ended on the night I saw Ed and Carla kissing outside the hotel off the Strand. Even now, I shudder if someone casually mentions the word ‘hotel’. It’s like a trigger point, shooting me back, churning my guts, making me retch like I did back then on to the pavement, in a mixture of betrayal and disbelief.

Strangely, after those first few raw moments, there was no anger. There still isn’t. It would be easier if there were. Mum says it’s because I still haven’t worked through my feelings yet. Maybe she’s right. But if so, when am I going to? It’s been months now since Ed and I split. Yet it still feels as raw as if it had happened yesterday.

I had spent the night at a professional organization which I belong to (the University Women’s Club, which had, by chance, a bedroom available) and called in sick the next day. There was no way I could face Carla, and I didn’t put it past her to prance into the office as though nothing had happened.

Then my mobile had rung.

Ed. Ed?

‘We need to talk,’ he said. Kindly. Without the defensive tone of the previous night. Was it because he was alone?

‘Is Carla there?’

‘No.’

So he could talk! Freely. Hope ballooned up into my throat. Ed wanted me back. Of course he did! We had a child together. A child who wasn’t like most other children. Perhaps now, in the sobering light of day, Ed realized we needed to stick together for Tom’s sake.

I didn’t have my spare set of keys on me, it struck me, as I reached the door. Instead, I had to ring the bell, feeling like a stranger on my own doorstep. Ed greeted me with a glass of whisky in his hand. It wasn’t even ten o’clock.

I launched straight in. ‘Look, I’m hurt about Carla. But I’m prepared to forgive you for Tom’s sake. Can’t we start again?’

Then, rather desperately, I added, ‘We’ve done it before.’

Ed patted my hand as though I was a little girl. ‘Come on, Lily. It’s understandable that you’re scared.’ As he spoke, there was a gleam in his eye. He looked like a kid himself, one who had been caught with his hand in the sweet jar but didn’t care. He was on a high, no doubt helped by the drink. Something I’d seen time and time again during our marriage. Before long it would be followed by a plunge of mood.

You see? I know him far better than Carla. How will she cope?

‘You’re young enough to start again, Lily. You make a great deal more money than me and …’

‘How can you talk about money!’ I stood up and strode into the kitchen towards one of his paintings. It was a picture of the hotel we stayed at during our honeymoon. A picture he’d once helped me to copy, to show how colours could be mixed to achieve that subtle combination of blue merging into green. I can still remember his arm guiding mine, his touch thrilling mine. ‘Not bad,’ he had said, admiring my efforts. And to show willing, he had actually put it on the wall. Next to his.

‘We need to talk about the practicalities,’ he continued. ‘I suggest that I keep the house and buy you out.’

‘How?’

Ed was always hopeless when it came to money.

‘I’ve got an exhibition coming up. Remember? You could find somewhere in town and then we can each take it in turns to go down to Devon and visit Tom at weekends …’

‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’ I said, appalled. ‘You and that Italian bitch.’

Ed’s face darkened. ‘Don’t call her that. You haven’t shown me any affection for years. All you care about is your work.’

That wasn’t fair. It’s true that I was exhausted at night after work, but isn’t everyone? And when I had made overtures on Sunday mornings, Ed always rolled away, declaring his back was stiff or that we would wake Carla, on the other side of the wall. How could I have been so stupid?

Once more, memories of a younger Carla came back to me. The little girl who had asked me to lie for her about that pencil case. The child whose mother was really seeing ‘Larry’ instead of working.

Like mother, like daughter.

‘What are you doing?’ yelled Ed.

I hardly knew myself. Later, I vaguely recall running at the kitchen wall, towards the pair of paintings of our honeymoon hotel. Picking up his, I threw it on the floor. Jumped on it. Then, pushing my way past Ed, I flew out of the house, weeping my way along the street.

The following day, I received a letter – hand-delivered at work – starting divorce proceedings on the grounds of my ‘unreasonable behaviour’.

But there’s something else. Something I’m only now allowing myself to think. If I’m honest, Ed and I weren’t right for ages. But I couldn’t leave him because of Tom. Is it possible that, unintentionally, I had ignored the signs of affection between our lodger and my husband? Had I, unconsciously, wanted something to happen between them to give me a justified get-out card from my marriage?

So maybe the ‘unreasonable’ wasn’t so unreasonable after all.





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