Girl Unknown(23)

‘Is that enough?’ Disbelief crept into David’s voice.

‘Honestly, Dave, sometimes I think it’s over between us – that I’ve had enough. God knows how many times I’ve resolved to leave her. But,’ Chris’s voice softened, ‘it’s always been Susannah. From the first time I set eyes on her. I can’t not be married to her. She’s the love of my life.’

‘Maybe sometimes you’re better off not marrying the love of your life.’

The way he said it, thoughtful and quiet, I knew it was deeply personal to him, something he’d given thought to.

‘Are you telling me you regret marrying Caroline?’

‘I’m not talking about Caroline,’ he answered quickly, and I felt myself stiffen.

‘Ah,’ Chris said, as the penny dropped. ‘Linda.’

Her name seemed to bloom in the air before me – a sudden burst of red – and I felt my hands grow cold. Understanding came quickly: David must have talked of her to Chris, confided in him in a way he had never confided in me. What intimacies had he spoken of? What admissions of love and regret had he made? That he had done this without my knowledge, behind my back, seemed to me a marked failure in our marriage. But worse than that – far, far worse – was the realization of how deeply lodged she was inside him. The love of his life.

‘Do you ever hear from her?’ Chris asked.

‘No.’

‘Ever wonder where she is? Who she’s with?’

‘Sometimes. The odd time I’m reminded of her.’

‘Tell me,’ Chris went on, his voice more incisive, ‘do you ever wonder how things might have turned out if you’d stayed together?’

The question chilled me. I found myself turning away from the possible answer.

David gave a hollow laugh. ‘We’d be like you and Susannah – an endless series of fights and reconciliations. I wouldn’t have the energy for it.’

‘But you’d have passion,’ Chris countered.

‘Yes,’ David said, in a tone of wistfulness. ‘We certainly had that.’

‘More than you have with Caroline?’

‘Yes.’ The answer was immediate. He didn’t even need to think about it. ‘Caroline is different. She’s dependable, safe.’

I’d heard enough. Sickened by this new knowledge, I had turned away, returned to the bedroom, wishing I had never left it. I slipped away to bed, and when David came up later, I held my body still, feigning sleep. He didn’t try to touch me.

How to explain the quiet devastation caused by those words? Every time I remembered the wistfulness in his voice when he recalled his lost passion, something dark opened inside me. Like the unfurling of a shadowy new fern, I felt the opening out of doubt within me. Had it all been a mistake? Our marriage, the life we had built together, our children? Everything I valued and loved, everything I had worked so hard for, I saw now it had been built on a foundation of regret. He had given up his great love. With the cool detachment I knew him to be capable of, he had weighed up his options: passion and instability versus the safe warmth of marriage to me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t escape from the knowledge that I was not the love of his life. That title was claimed by a woman I had never met, a woman whose face I had seen once in a photograph I’d found hidden among his possessions.

I think that night in the cold darkness at the top of the stairs, overhearing the conversation, was when it started for me. The moment when things began to unravel. Unhappiness swept in like the arrival of autumn on a September day. I tried to rationalize it, telling myself David had been drunk when he’d said those words, he hadn’t really meant them. But the truth of it continued to niggle at me. I told myself to be satisfied with what I had: a good husband, wonderful children, a comfortable home. It was more than a lot of people had – an enviable life. But the rot had set in. My husband had no passion for me. In marrying me he had chosen to settle. A pinched, mean voice inside me whispered: If you’re not the love of his life, what makes you so sure he’s yours? I’d never thought of myself as a woman who would have an affair. But by the time I met Aidan something had changed within me. Like a stone dislodged deep inside me, I felt the structure of my being start to crumble.

After my affair ended, David and I went through a difficult patch. Our bedroom, once a place of refuge and comfort – of love – became the arena for our hissed arguments, the to-ing and fro-ing of whispered accusations, of denial and blame. We tried to keep it from the children, remaining civil in front of them, a tight cordiality that seemed stilted and formal. Slowly, things got better. The atmosphere lightened. I still felt obliged to explain my absences, however innocent they were. I was careful of my behaviour in front of David. I found that I censored my comments when speaking of other men – friends, colleagues. I tried to find happiness again within my marriage, within my home. The stone inside me that had been dislodged slipped back into place. I was returning to myself. Normality resumed. But then Zo? had come along.

I thought about her constantly. At work, at home, in the evenings when I went out running, she was always with me, shadowing my thoughts, clouding my emotions. I considered telling someone about her – confiding in a friend – but the only person I might have told was Susannah and she was locked inside her own conjugal disaster. Any time I spoke to her on the phone, she sounded on the brink of tears. It was disconcerting, given how commanding she normally was. She had separated from Chris, finally moving out, and under the circumstances I felt I couldn’t burden her with my own domestic turmoil. Instead, I kept it to myself.