“Andy . . .”
“Let me finish, please, Lisa. I need to say these things to you. I love you. Very much. I want to marry you. I thought you wanted that, too. I want to set a date. Soon. Now. But if that’s not what you want, Lisa, you need to tell me now. It just isn’t fair to keep going along like this.”
He was right. It was horribly, nastily, cruelly unfair. Lisa took a deep 250 e l i z a b e t h
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breath. She was getting good at these killer opening lines. Must be her year for them.
“I slept with someone else, Andy.”
“You did what?” Why was that everyone’s standard response to something they didn’t want to hear? They made you repeat it.
“I slept with someone else.” It didn’t sound any more palatable the second time around.
“When?”
“Last summer.”
“Who was it?”
“You don’t know him. Just a guy; I met him through work.”
“Just once? Was it a one-off thing?”
“No.” She wished it was. But she couldn’t stop being honest now. “It lasted for about four months.”
“Four months . . . !” The time frame seemed to throw him more than anything else. It had been about fifty actual times, she supposed.
Fifty occasions she had told herself it was okay to cheat on Andy. Fifty individual moments of betrayal.
“I’m sorry.”
Andy didn’t speak for a minute or two. She could see the pain on his face. His eyes were moving rapidly as he went back over the last summer, looking for clues, wondering about specific days, and times.
“Did you love him?”
“No.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t just not know.”
“I don’t know, Andy, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
And then the words came. “That’s just bullshit, isn’t it, though, Lisa?
That’s just something people say, isn’t it? It’s one of the great meaning-less bullshit sayings. Of course you did. You slept with someone else,
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while we were together. You knew I loved you. You said you loved me.
But you shagged somebody else anyway. You knew what you were doing.
You sure as hell didn’t mean
not
to hurt me.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to make me understand why you would do a thing like that.”
“I can’t.”
“Try. Bloody well try, Lisa.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. “Christ. Four months. Four bloody months.” He stood up, his hands white-knuckled on the table. “I don’t know who you are.”
The front door slammed behind him. She heard the car start outside.
Reverse down the driveway, too fast. The bottle of wine was empty.
He’d had easily half of it. He shouldn’t be driving. Lisa felt a sudden stab of fear. Please God, let him not drive off too fast, angry and over the limit. He could hurt himself, or someone else. But he’d gone by the time she opened the door to go after him.
For a long while, she stood on the front doorstep, paralyzed. She willed his car to turn back into the road, but it didn’t.
Eventually she had to go back inside. She cleared the plates from the table and washed the dishes. She rinsed the bottle and put it in the recycling. The phone rang, and the panic made her feel physically sick. It was a friend, calling to wish Andy a happy birthday, and she squeezed her eyes shut, making her voice sound like everything was okay. When she’d hung up, she slid down the wall where the phone was, onto the floor, and sat there, hugging her knees.
He came home five hours later, at 3 a.m. She was sitting in the living room, staring at the blank television screen. She almost cried with relief when she heard his key turn in the lock.
“I thought something happened to you.”
“It did.”
“I know. I thought, I thought you might be hurt.”
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“I realized I should never have driven. I’d had too much to drink. I left the car, a couple of miles away. Walked back.”
“I’ll drive you over there, in the morning, to get it.” It was meaning-less trivia. He shook the offer off distractedly.
He sat down on the sofa, not next to her, but as far away as possible.
He wasn’t looking at her.
“What was his name?”
“Chris. Does it matter?”
“I think I’m entitled to ask you anything I want, don’t you?” He didn’t sound like himself. She hoped he wasn’t going to ask about the sex. She didn’t think she could bear to say it. She remembered when she’d extracted every infinitesimal detail about Karen from him. She had thought it would help. But it hadn’t.
“Andy . . .”
“You know what?” He slapped both his thighs, with open palms. It was a strange gesture. “I thought I had lots to say to you . . . when I was sitting in the car. My mind was racing with things I wanted to say to you, in fact. But now I don’t. I can’t think of a single word to say to you.”
She hadn’t expected that, and she had no idea how to react to it.
“I don’t want to see you, for a while.”
Lisa was frightened.
“I think one of us should go and stay somewhere else.”
“I’ll go. This is my fault. And Cee Cee . . .” She wanted him to know that she was thinking about Cee Cee.
“Fine.” He cut her off in midsentence.
He stood up. “I’ll sleep in Cee Cee’s room tonight.”
“Andy . . .”
“Don’t, Lisa. Please don’t say anything. I’m sorry if I’m cheating you out of your big dramatic scene, but I’m really not up for it.”
He paused at the door. “I thought we were worth more than that. I thought you were better than that.”
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Lisa didn’t remember when she’d ever felt more worthless. The diamond, still in its open box on the table, sparkled malevolently at her.
He’d already left when she got up the next morning. She’d slept, eventually, too heavily. He must have taken the alarm, when he went up last night. It was 8:15 a.m. by the time she’d opened her eyes and looked at her watch. She called work and told them something personal had come up. Her assistant agreed to let her scheduled appointments know and to hold the fort for a couple of days.
Lisa filled two suitcases with a random selection of clothes, feeling slightly like she was hovering on the ceiling watching herself do it. She didn’t know how long she would be gone. Then she realized she didn’t know if she’d ever be coming back. She sat on the bed and cried. What a bloody mess. She had practiced telling Andy, dozens of times. It hadn’t come out the way she’d wanted. But she’d still expected that there would be some relief in it, that she would feel in some way better for no longer keeping the secret. She supposed she had taken his understanding for granted. He loved her, didn’t he? He would be angry, of course, upset, understandably. But he’d start making excuses for her, wouldn’t he, the moment he calmed down long enough to remember that he loved her. She was human. Wasn’t that what she’d said about her mum? Wasn’t that what she’d say about anyone? People screwed up. People screwed people they weren’t supposed to. For the first time, sitting on the edge of the bed next to a suitcase full of her clothes, Lisa realized that Andy might not—ever—get past this. He might never understand or forgive her. This might be the end. It was colossally stupid not to have understood that before.
Mark was working from home when the phone rang. It was Jane. Damn. He should have rung her first. He’d hoped she wouldn’t ring him.
“How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
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He didn’t know what to say, and the silence was deafening.
“You left . . . you left your T-shirt here. Last week.”
“I hadn’t realized.” He knew he had, of course. He’d realized immediately.
“I was wondering how to get it back to you.”
“Right.”
“I mean, I can’t exactly send it to school with Susie, can I?” She was trying to sound lighthearted and maybe even a little flirtatious, but he knew that wasn’t how she really felt. He had the sense that this phone call had been as hard and awkward and embarrassing for her to make as it was for him to take. More so, of course. He cursed his cowardice. And wished she hadn’t called.
“Oh, just forget about it, why don’t you? It was old.”
It was Paul Smith. He knew it, she knew it. A Discovery Channel image of a wild animal chewing off its own foot to escape from a trap flew around in his head.
He was supposed to arrange another meeting. He was supposed to offer to come around and get it, or to fix lunch or dinner for an exchange.
He wasn’t ready to do that.
“It’s really nice. Seems a shame. I could . . . drop it ’round.” Why was she doing this?
He didn’t want her to come here.
“No . . . no . . . I couldn’t ask you to do that.” He paused. “Look, why don’t I come and get it?”
Her relief manifested as a laugh. “Okay. Great.”
“I’m a bit tied up with work this week. Can I give you a call next week and fix a time?”
“Sure. Sorry to have disturbed you.”
“No. No. Please. You didn’t. Thanks for ringing.”
“I’ll talk to you soon, then?”
“Yep. Soon. Take care of yourself.”
“And you, Mark.”
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Great. Now he felt like a pig again.
He hadn’t thought about whether or not he would see her again. He’d tried not to think about her at all. And he’d been doing pretty well.
The phone rang again less than five minutes later. Please God. Let it not be Jane calling back. It was Lisa. She was on her mobile phone—it sounded like she was driving. She had one of those hands-free things.
Barbara had always been going on at her about it—she said just because you had your hands on the wheel and not on a phone didn’t mean you were concentrating. She’d hated mobile phones altogether. She’d been on one of those local committees, trying to stop the phone companies from putting up a mast in the area, going door-to-door getting people to sign petitions about protecting local children. When she lost her hair with the chemo, she said she was tempted to tell people it was phone masts that had given her cancer, but he didn’t think she ever actually had.
“How are you, sweetheart?”
“I’m okay. Can I come and stay with you guys for a few days? Explain when I get there?”
“Course you can. I’m really pleased you called, actually. Amanda surfaced yesterday. She’s taking a break from the country seat; she’ll be here at the weekend. We’ll have both of you. Hannah will love it.”
He felt a brief flash of relief—he could tell them about Hannah. Get her to talk to her sisters. He wondered if Lisa would mention Jennifer. He wasn’t sure he was ready to see her yet, but he didn’t want Lisa to know anything was wrong. “Shall we look for you tonight after work?”
If Lisa thought it was strange that he didn’t mention Jennifer, she didn’t say so. “Can I come right now?”
He was surprised. Her voice sounded teary. “Yes. I’m working from home. . . .”
“I don’t want to be any bother.” She was so quiet he had to strain to hear her. She had never sounded so . . . small.
“Don’t be daft. Nothing that won’t keep. Are you okay, Lisa?”
“I’m all right.”
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Mark knew she needed to wait until she got here.
“I’ll be there in half an hour or so. Okay?”
“Okay. You drive carefully.” It was what Barbara would have said.
What Mark was doing could wait, but he needed to make a few phone calls himself, so he went back to the office to work through them while he waited for Lisa, wondering what was going on.
He felt exhausted before she even arrived. He felt that they were falling apart more now than he had last summer, when Barbara had died. It was like everything stopped working when she left them. Jennifer, then him, Hannah, now Lisa. It was like her going had upset the natural order. She was emotional El Niño. Everything was going to hell. He felt like a juggler whose brightly colored balls were speeding up, veering out of control, and tumbling to the ground.
Lisa had clearly been crying. A lot. Her face was pale beneath the angry red blotches of a prolonged bout of sobbing. Something really bad must have happened. Not an accident or an illness. That she could have said on the phone. Something inside. He was glad she’d felt she could come to him. But part of him wished, like with Jennifer, that his stepdaughters had had better friends. Weren’t women supposed to tell all to their girlfriends, not their stepfathers?
“I’d have gone to Anna’s, but she’s away.” That much was true. Anna was Lisa’s best friend from university, and she was away. She worked in fashion journalism, and she often was. She always said it wasn’t as glamorous as it sounded, but no one ever believed her. Lisa had other friends, but they were Andy’s friends, too. She didn’t want them to feel awkward, and she certainly didn’t want to tell them the truth.
“What on earth has happened?”
“I think Andy and I have broken up.”
Later that night, Mark excused himself not long after dinner and went to bed, claiming to be deeply involved with the thriller
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he was reading. He didn’t read a page. He and Lisa had talked until Hannah came home from school, but he wasn’t certain he understood everything that had happened and was even less certain that he could see how they would resolve it. Lisa had sat at the breakfast bar, and between sobs and loud sniffs, had spilled out all that had happened. The affair, the proposal, the rejection, the revelation . . . Mark was shocked, though he tried hard to keep that reaction off his face. She had been really stupid, that much was true. Andy’s reaction to being cuckolded was predictable, and deserved. It was asking a lot of a bloke—getting past that. And he saw now—now that he knew what had been going on—that she’d been stringing him along, accepting his proposal months ago, wriggling out of commitment, and then dropping this complete bombshell on him. What did she expect him to have done?