The Sister-In-Law(25)

Okay, I’d had a drink, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been swimming, but even then, in my tipsy anger, I couldn’t help but wonder, if he thinks it’s so dangerous, why is leaving me here, alone, slightly drunk in deep, dark water?





CHAPTER TEN





I swam to the shallow end of the pool, and pulled myself out. It felt dark and lonely, the slightly frivolous excitement I’d felt only minutes earlier now smashed. I felt foolish. I’d wanted Dan to be so carried away by passion that we made love in the pool, or outside. I’d tried to be who I thought he’d wanted me to be, and I hated myself for it, for trying to be who I wasn’t.

Until Marilyn I’d been happy, I’d even learned to quite like myself. I wondered, as I had for months now, how I compared to her. Did Dan look at me and wish I was her, did he scroll through his memories of Marilyn, and use them like porn to turbocharge his desire when with me? And did I come up short?

I don’t know why I’d been so surprised that he’d fallen for her. They were together twenty-four/seven; she worked on the money side, and he on the business. She was important to the growth of Taylor’s and had ways and means of making their money go further. She also happened to be pretty, seventeen years younger and three children lighter. It might have been predictable to anyone on the outside (anyone, apparently, except me) that they were falling into each other’s arms. But then I’ve never been good at guessing surprises – from Dan’s marriage proposal fifteen years before, to the surprise party he threw for my fortieth birthday. But the fortieth fireworks and Tiffany bracelet paled into insignificance when he said he’d been having a six-month affair with the accountant. Yes, Dan always had the ability to take my breath away.

But this wasn’t the first time. About three years before, he’d had a fling with a stewardess he’d met on a business flight to Dublin to look at some properties – apparently her name was Carmel. I’d heard him on the phone to her, when we were on holiday in Greece that summer. It was horrible, I’d been so hurt, so disillusioned. And later, much later, he told me about her, said she’d been a fling, nothing more, and he’d had to say he was leaving me because she was threatening to kill herself. But eventually he finished it, and that’s when all the trouble started.

‘She won’t accept it was nothing,’ he’d told me. ‘She’s been calling me at work, making things difficult – texting me at all hours.’ Dan explained that she was a fantasist, virtually a stalker, she couldn’t leave him alone and he was genuinely worried about me and the kids being caught in the crossfire.

I was devastated. I’d ranted and raved and cried and beat his chest with my fists, leaving bruises and hating myself for becoming that woman. But as Joy, who’d been aware of the calls to work, pointed out, we had two young children, were both exhausted from sleepless nights, so it was no wonder he’d strayed – we weren’t connecting. Dan said it was a terrible mistake, he’d learned his lesson and it would never happen again.

So I bought it, deciding it wasn’t worth losing a marriage, splitting a family, for a silly mistake. Besides, I had my own problems by then, and I didn’t want anyone discovering what I’d been hiding, so accepted what had happened and tried to make my marriage work.

But it wasn’t plain sailing. There’d been some calls to our landline at home, and when I picked up, nothing, just silence, it was really creepy. I couldn’t be sure, but I assumed it was Carmel trying to make contact with Dan; he said to ignore it but I found it quite distressing. One day when Joy had popped round to see the children the phone rang and again I was greeted with silence. By now I was so freaked out by this, I wanted to cry.

Joy saw the way I was. ‘Is it her?’ she asked quietly.

I nodded.

‘Tell her you know about her, he’s told you she’s nothing – and you’re pregnant.’

‘I know everything,’ I repeated, trying not to let her hear the tears in my voice, while my heart beat out of my chest. ‘Dan’s told me you meant nothing.’

Joy was silently urging me on, smiling, her hand on my arm.

‘I’m pregnant with our third child,’ I added, trying to compose myself.

There was a slight noise on the other end, it sounded like crying. I put the phone on speaker so Joy could hear.

‘He told me he was single… I didn’t know he was married,’ she said then through tears.

‘Tell her she’s a stupid little girl… tell her to go away and he doesn’t care, never has,’ Joy was whispering at my side. ‘Threaten her with the police.’

‘Go away, you stupid little girl,’ I repeated. ‘And if you don’t stop this now, we’ll go to the police and report you for harassment,’ I added, then slammed down the phone.

God bless Joy. She was on my side and wanted my marriage to work as much as I did and, what’s more, was prepared to get rid of anything that might endanger that. After that incident with the first girl, Joy had said, ‘Don’t let Dan’s midlife blip ruin everything.’ She was right, of course, so in the same spirit of onward and upward, I was now here, trying to make good out of the second, more recent affair. But, in truth, it had been agony, and in the weeks after I found out, I became very anxious. I imagined them together in the office, having secret trysts over lunch, and if he was late home, my anxiety was through the roof.