After You Left(43)

He downed the rest of his beer. ‘People don’t break that easily, Evelyn. That’s a myth people invent when they want to imply everybody else is as weak as they are. Are you going to live your life making excuses, rather than facing up to the fact that you want to be your own person?’

Had he hit on the essence of it? Perhaps she should never have married anyone. Perhaps she would have been better off being free to make her own choices, to forge new paths to new destinations, even if they were the wrong ones. She wasn’t necessarily going to do any of it. But maybe she just needed to know she could.

‘So what about me, Evelyn? If you’re convinced that people can be broken, if you go back to him, you break me.’

The difference between the two situations was so obvious and irrefutable that she couldn’t stop herself from saying it. ‘Yes, but we’ve been a married couple for nearly twenty years. I’ve barely known you – properly known you – for five minutes.’

He bore the weight of the put-down quietly. She could see hope fading in his expression. ‘So he wins because he won in the first place? He got you first?’ He was defeated: a boxer losing consciousness in the ring.

‘It’s not about someone winning me. It’s about me not wanting to live my life knowing that I did a wrong thing. I wish I could be different, but I can’t.’

He was staring at his empty beer bottle. They didn’t speak for a while. ‘Then where do we go from here?’ he finally asked, quietly, as though he feared the answer.

‘Well,’ she stared at him, her eyes burning with tears. ‘I think we go nowhere.’





SIXTEEN


Alice

I had almost forgotten I’d ever rung Rick. I was so wrapped up in thinking about my conversation with Evelyn, over tea. Her telling me about her perfect week with Eddy. His being ready to leave his wife for her. The story just keeps echoing in me . . . Now that I see Rick’s number on my call display, though, I have to wonder what’s taken him so long. Has he lain low to work out what to say? Maybe he was never going to call back, but Dawn bullied him into it. Has he conferred with Justin?

When I pick up and say, ‘Hello, Rick’, I sound like I’m walking a tightrope two hundred metres above ground.

‘Alice!’ he says, brightly. ‘I’m so very sorry I’m only just ringing you back. Dawn’s mother had a stroke five days ago. It’s pretty bad, and we’re running backward and forward to Cheltenham General . . . What with that, and working and taking care of the kids, it’s been all systems go, and I haven’t had a chance.’

Relief makes me audibly sigh. I tell him I’m very sorry to hear about Dawn’s mother. We exchange small talk. Then I say, ‘I’m sure you can appreciate this is a very difficult conversation for me to be having, but I need you to tell me where he is, please.’

I can feel his hesitation, his puzzlement. Then he says, ‘Who?’

I’m puzzled too, now. ‘Justin.’

Another pause; somehow, I don’t think he’s acting. ‘Well, what do you mean, where is he?’ he says.

I try to stay composed. Threads of my sanity are knotting themselves and I’m trying to unravel them, otherwise I’m not helping myself. They were friends from their Oxford days. They had shared the same house, studied together, raised hell together, were both Blues for rowing. I can’t imagine there’s anything Justin won’t have shared with his best friend. I explain what happened briefly and neutrally.

He makes a couple of astonished noises, then says, ‘You’re kidding!’

It truly hadn’t occurred to me that he might not know.

I tell him about the short message exchange, about my chat with his secretary. ‘It’s been nine days. Nine days and I am none the wiser.’

‘I don’t know what to say. Alice . . . My God.’ Then, after a hesitation, he says, ‘You believe me, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I tell him, after quick thought.

‘I knew you’d both be back by now, but I haven’t had a chance to ring him, what with everything that’s been going on.’

‘I would really like you to tell me what you were both talking about when you stood outside in the rain at our wedding.’ I’m trembling. Hearing the words come out of my mouth somehow doesn’t make the situation any more real.

‘Alice, I . . .’

‘Please don’t tell me it’s nothing, Rick. I know you were talking about something. I’d really appreciate you being honest with me.’ I have the sense that perhaps Dawn has walked into the room. Of something being whispered. ‘Has he met someone else?’ I ask. ‘Is that it? Has there been some sort of affair?’

He lets out a huge sigh. ‘God, Alice! Look . . . No. It’s not like that. And I don’t know why he took off and left you. You’re going to have to ask him . . .’

‘But I can’t ask him because he’s not talking to me and he’s not here.’

‘I know. And I’m sorry.’

‘But?’ I sense one coming.

A whisper in the background. It’s a second or two before he replies.

‘But I do have some idea what it’s about. I’m just not comfortable being the one to tell you.’