The Lies We Told(66)

‘It’s all so sordid,’ she cried, ‘so humiliating. How could he do it to us, Beth? To me and Emily? How could he?’

I don’t think she meant to tell me so much. I think it was like a dam breaking, that it was a relief to confide in someone. She said she couldn’t face anyone finding out, her family, her friends, I think she only talked to me because I was so removed from her personal life. And people have always said I’m a good listener, perhaps she felt safe unloading it all on me. Eventually she stopped crying. ‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘I’m due to see a patient any minute.’ She took a gulp of breath and dried her eyes, but she looked so hopeless still, so crushed.

‘Do you want to meet for coffee tomorrow?’ I asked her. ‘We could go somewhere in town, if you like, away from the hospital, I mean.’

I wanted her to see that she could trust me, that I’d keep her secret, that nobody from work would find out. I thought she was going to turn me down but to my surprise she looked at me gratefully, ‘Are you sure?’

After that, we fell into the habit of meeting up once a week or so. We’d go for coffee in an out-of-the-way place in town, or sometimes I’d go to her lovely house, The Willows, when Oliver wasn’t in. We were unlikely friends, but friends we became. I honestly think I was the only person in the world she could talk to. And I thought how strange and sad life is, that someone like Rose with all the grand and important friends she must have, had only me, a near stranger, to confide in. How different people are, aren’t they, from how they first appear? I tried my best to comfort her because I felt so sorry for her. She told me that she wanted to forgive Oliver, that he knew he’d made a horrible mistake, that he regretted everything.

‘Can you forgive him, though?’ I asked, surprised. I tried to think how I would feel if it were Doug cheating on me. I didn’t think I would be able to get past it, to be honest, not if we had a baby.

A strange expression came over her face and suddenly she didn’t look quite so vulnerable any more. In fact, she looked quite fierce. ‘I will not let that bitch destroy my family,’ she said, and she sort of spat the words at me and I remember being shocked. ‘I will not let that happen,’ she said.

A week or so later she came looking for me on the ward. She looked dreadful, I could tell something was very wrong. She pulled me into an empty office, her face deathly white. ‘She’s pregnant, Beth,’ she said. ‘Nadia. The girl my husband has been fucking.’

I’ll never forget her saying that word. I’d never heard her swear before, she just wasn’t the type. But she said it with such bitterness, such venom. My hand flew to my mouth. ‘Oh no!’

‘She’s due in two months!’ she cried. ‘Two months! Oliver said he’s only known a month, that he couldn’t face telling me before, but he’s lying, of course. And now she’s started calling the house. She won’t leave us alone. She said that unless he leaves me for her, she’ll tell everyone about their affair.’ She shook her head in dismay. ‘His career will be over, Beth, we’ll have to leave, everyone will find out at the hospital – everyone will know. All our friends and colleagues and family … oh, Beth, what shall I do? Everything, our lovely life, our lovely family, it will all be ruined! It will be so humiliating, so utterly humiliating.’

She was beside herself. I tried to comfort her the best I could, but I didn’t know what to say. After that night I didn’t see her for a while. She took some time off work and then, what with one thing and another a few weeks slipped by, though I worried about her constantly. Occasionally I’d see her but she was always busy or rushing off somewhere. When, finally, we did arrange to meet I thought she seemed calmer, more resigned to it all, as though she’d begun to come to terms with it a bit. I knew the girl – Nadia – was due to have her baby in late March, and when the date came and went I was surprised when Rose didn’t ask to meet me. I assumed she’d decided to accept it, to get on with her life.

And then, one night, at around nine o’clock when Doug and I were just settling down to watch TV, there was a knock on the door. We looked at each other in surprise and when I went to answer it, Rose and Oliver were standing on our front step, Emily beside them asleep in her buggy. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘What’s happened?’ They looked so odd, staring back at me like that, their eyes so big and frightened.

It was Rose who spoke first, and her voice was strange, not like her usual one at all. ‘Beth,’ she said. ‘You have to help us. You’re the only one who can.’





25


Suffolk, 2017

For a long moment in the living room of The Willows, no one moved, as though frozen by Oliver’s words. It was Tom who spoke first. ‘What?’ he said faintly. ‘She’s your what?’

At this, Rose made a low moaning sound and dropping her head began to cry bitterly into her hands. Nobody moved to comfort her. Clara looked at each of their faces, shock reverberating through her. This, surely, was some sort of joke? She glanced at Mac, but he, too, was staring at Oliver in astonishment.

‘Before you were born, when Emily was still a baby,’ Oliver said, ‘I had an affair with one of my students.’ He paused and his eyes met Clara’s until, embarrassed, she looked away. ‘I was a stupid, weak fool, and I have no excuse, I have no defence. I know now that it was the very worst mistake of my life and I have regretted it every single day since.’