The Secret Wife(66)

She went back out to the garden to continue her planting, wondering exactly where Dmitri was found dead. It felt kind of creepy that he had died there.

Later that evening, with a bottle of Chardonnay by her side, Kitty sat on the jetty with Tom’s letter in one hand. The sunset was magnificent, all salmon-pink and mauve, and for a while she just watched. As the light faded, it felt as though she was looking through a sepia filter that was darkening minute by minute. She fetched her gas lamp, poured a second glass, then began to read.

Hey Kitty,

The weather has turned to autumn here, with rainy days and chilly evenings, and I worried you might get cold out there in the Adirondacks. It’s hard to tell from your wardrobe but it looks as though you’ve only taken summer clothes. If you want me to ship out anything else just ask.



If you’ve been reading my emails (and I hope you have), you’ll know that I’ve been seeing a counsellor for six weeks now.

Kitty’s eyes widened with surprise. Tom had never struck her as the therapy type. Wonders would never cease. She took a big gulp of wine before reading on.

I never thought I’d do something like this but it’s a fascinating process that is helping me to understand why I did such a stupid, destructive thing as to have sex with Karren Bayliss. It only happened four times and it was over long before you found the messages but that’s obviously four times too many. There are no excuses, of course, but I was feeling pretty low when I didn’t get that promotion at work and I got the feeling, rightly or wrongly, that you were disappointed in me.

Kitty frowned. She couldn’t remember which promotion he meant.

I know you’re not interested in my job and think I have basically sold out to the establishment, but moving departments would have meant a more creative role. I’d like to be involved in something to do with music, even if I’m never going to be Bruce Springsteen. Anyway, I’ve registered with an agency to try and find another job and have a few interviews coming up.

So, my dented ego was one reason for the stupid infidelity. It’s embarrassing how neatly I fit the midlife crisis criteria: approaching forty, a few pounds overweight, frustrated at work, and feeling lonely because you and I stopped communicating at some point and I miss being close to you. I won’t bore you with the therapeutic term for this kind of phenomenon. I’m just disgusted with myself for being a cliché, and most of all for hurting you, the person who means most to me in the world.



Kitty shivered, although it was a balmy evening, and refilled her glass. Tom was obviously taking the whole counselling thing very seriously, studying it as if for one of his accountancy exams.

My counsellor thinks I subconsciously left my phone where you would find it that day. She would like to have a session with us together but I explained that you are on the other side of the Atlantic and not replying to emails. Frankly I would rather you slapped me, yelled at me and smashed up my laptop than disappeared for weeks on end without any communication. It’s excruciating to be on the receiving end of the deep-freeze treatment and not know when I might see you again.

It seems a long time since we talked, properly talked, about anything. I’ve been trying to work out how long and I think it started after your parents died. We’d only been married a year and I expected you to be sobbing yourself to sleep every night, breaking down during the day, drinking too much and eating too little. Instead, what did you do? You bought that big run-down house in Tottenham and spent every waking hour doing it up: rebuilding, redecorating, fitting a new kitchen, tiling the bathrooms, more or less singlehanded. Your energy was scary but you never once mentioned your mum and dad, and if I spoke about them you left the room. Since then it has felt to me as if I’m not allowed to bring up sensitive subjects, and after a while I stopped trying – and now we find ourselves estranged.

Kitty remembered that period. The house she was doing up had dry rot everywhere, wiring that was centuries out of date and dodgy plumbing, but she had welcomed the distraction. She freely admitted that she dealt with her parents’ death by keeping busy. She thought back to the policewoman coming to the door with the news of the pileup on a Spanish motorway. She’d felt numb during the flight out to Malaga. Tom had to identify the bodies because she simply couldn’t do it. It was as if she was anaesthetised for the first few weeks and could hardly feel anything, but when she did start to feel, the pain was intolerable. It could have destroyed her. And so she had bought that house in Tottenham, with so many problems that really it would have been easier to demolish it and rebuild from scratch.



What was wrong with distracting yourself from grief? She’d got through it: that was the main thing.

Suddenly Kitty’s elbow caught the bottle of wine and it toppled and fell into the lake. She swigged the dregs from her glass then got up to fetch another bottle from the cabin before reading the rest of the letter.

Don’t think I am trying to put any of the blame for the infidelity onto you. I am a messed-up piece of shit and I hate myself for what I’ve done. Please know that I will do anything it takes to make it up to you and turn our marriage back into the beautiful, loving, fun partnership it used to be. Tell me what you want and I’ll do it. I simply can’t be happy without you, Kitty.

I hope you are having a lovely summer out there. Contact me when you are ready to talk and I’ll either fly out to you or we can meet in a place of your choice and see where we stand. Just don’t ever doubt how much I love you and how much I regret what I have done.