The Guilty Couple(11)
I was wary of Nancy when we first met fifteen years ago. Not only was she the loudest person in the restaurant with a cackle that made the other diners openly stare, she was the first woman Ian had introduced us to since Helena, his previous girlfriend, had died eighteen months earlier, and Nancy had some pretty big shoes to fill. Dom and I both adored Helena, a diminutive blonde from Manchester whose lust for life made her presence fill every room she entered. They’d been together for only two years when she was involved in a car accident on the M6 as she travelled home to see her parents. She died at the scene. Ian was heartbroken, as were we.
Ian Ritchie is Dominic’s best friend from uni and he’s one of those people you warm to within minutes of meeting them. Jovial, unpretentious and scruffy, he’s not the sort of person I would have expected to be friends with Dominic but their relationship works. They’re like a double act when they’re together – quoting from films and feeding each other lines with Ian playing the fool to Dominic’s straight man. I was hugely nervous the first time I met Ian because I knew how much Dominic valued his friend’s opinion, more so than his own parents’, but Ian put me at ease immediately, pushing a shot of tequila into my hand after a hearty hello.
I felt protective of Ian’s heart after he lost Helena and Nancy’s ebullience made me worry she might not be serious about him, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. She was warm, kind and funny and when she looked at Ian I could see in her eyes how much she loved him. By the end of the meal I adored her and I hoped she felt the same about me.
‘Here you go!’ She hands me a glass of champagne and takes a seat on the sofa beside me. ‘I want to know everything. How do you feel? How was prison? Have you seen Grace yet? Have you heard from Jack?’
‘I’m fine, prison was pretty awful and … what else did you ask?’ Unlike Ayesha, whose calm manner and soft voice have an almost soporific effect on me, Nancy’s loud voice and machine-gun conversational approach can either make me feel energised or steamrollered.
‘And Grace?’
‘I’m seeing her tomorrow, a supervised visit to the zoo with Dom’s parents.’
She raises her eyebrows. ‘That’ll be nice.’
We both laugh. She’s met George and Esther. She knows what they’re like.
‘So, how are you anyway?’ I ask. ‘How’s Ian?’
‘He’s good. Still busy with work. On top form, as always.’
‘And you two? Are you still happy?’
‘Depends what we’re talking about.’ She laughs and takes a sip of her champagne but her gaze swivels awkwardly away. I don’t have to ask what the source of conflict is in their marriage: it’s me. Ian didn’t go to my trial, and he didn’t make contact with me afterwards. It breaks my heart to think that the man I adored, who made me cry with laughter and hugged me like I was his favourite person in the world, has taken Dominic’s side. But why would he do otherwise? Dominic’s his best friend. And Nancy’s one of mine. I can only imagine the arguments they’ve had. Weaker marriages would have collapsed completely under the strain.
‘Anyway,’ Nancy waves a manicured hand through the air, ‘tell me about Jack. Have you heard from him at all?’
Nancy, Ayesha and Dani were the only people I told about my affair with Jack. Nancy was there when Jack and I first met, at the Louise Hayward exhibition in my gallery. She saw how he looked at me, how he smiled, how he spoke. I think she liked that Jack put a smile on my face. Whenever I saw her afterwards she’d tease me, asking if I’d had another visit from the handsome art connoisseur. When I told her I hadn’t seen him since, she read the lie on my face. When I confessed that I was falling in love she didn’t judge me once.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I haven’t heard from Jack.’
The last time I saw him, we had lunch at the Shard. I’d made up my mind to tell Dominic everything when I returned from a Paris art fair three days later. Grace would be away at Brownie Camp and Dominic and I would have the house to ourselves for a few hours. The guilt I’d felt since my first kiss with Jack had grown so large, so heavy, it was as though a new organ had grown in my belly, and I wanted it gone.
Dominic had become unbearable in the months before I began my affair with Jack. Our marriage been limping along for years – neither happy nor unbearable but in a lacklustre limbo in-between – but when he lost our savings it imploded. It wasn’t just money for holidays or a rainy day that he’d thrown at the stock market. It was money we’d both saved so we could buy our own home and cut the apron strings with his mother and father. We had enough for a deposit on a modest house with just enough left for Grace’s future and for me to put into my gallery. Dominic wanted our own place as much as I did but he hated that we had to be careful with money in order to save. He wanted to be like the partners at his company: flying away on exotic holidays, putting their kids in private school, driving the best cars, wearing expensive watches and ordering Cristal champagne without a second thought. I guess that’s why he did what he did. When he confessed we were in a restaurant in town. It was my birthday but, instead of giving me a present after we’d finished our meal, he handed me that bomb. I’m fairly certain he timed his confession so I wouldn’t make a scene. I didn’t. I was too shocked to speak. I said nothing as he paid for the meal and I stared mutely out of the window during the taxi ride home.