“Happy one-month anniversary, all my love, Jon.”
19
Susan
Friday
Heat floods my body as the implication hits.But wait. Wait. Maybe it’s for me? A present? It doesn’t feel like a present. It feels like something lost. Something lost by someone else. And “happy one-month anniversary” is not what you say to your wife of six years. No box, no bag, no bow. It’s not a present, and it’s not mine. I sit for the longest time on the side of the bed, staring at the bangle, wondering what to do. Confront him? Get peace of mind? But what if I don’t like the answer or the outcome…? What if he’s been building up to tell me something? What if this—me confronting him—is the impetus he needs to break away, to leave us?
In a daze, I move to my side of the bed and put the bracelet in my top drawer, underneath my copy ofDaisy Jones & the Six. The melatonin is back in his night-stand—there’s no hope of sleep now. I’m numb. I want to shut it all out, to unknow it, and I want to know everything, immediately. On my phone, I click into my banking app and scan our joint credit-card bill. We each have our own credit cards and bank accounts, but it’s worth a try. I scroll back and back, through groceries and petrol, and then there’ssomething—a charge for€24 at the Marker Hotel in Dublin city center. The cost of two drinks? He’d know not to put a hotel room on our joint account—that thought makes me physically ill—but if he tapped with his phone, his Google Pay app could default to the shared credit card and he might not think to change it. Was that what had happened here?
I sit, thinking. He’s working late more than he used to, and there have been overnight trips, like the one to New York. And he’s taken up running…which, when you think about it, is the perfect cover. A solo activity you can do any time—late in the evening after work, weekend afternoons, early mornings. It’s a much better alibi than saying you’ve joined a book club or a football team, because those involve other people, and your partner might bump into someone who blows your cover. Not so running. You arrive home sweaty and tired and get straight in the shower. And Jon, who has never run for a bus in his life, has taken to it with gusto.
But surely he wouldn’t do this to me? Jon loves me; I know he loves me. There has to be some other reason. Some explanation. My brain scrambles, trying desperately to find it. But I keep coming back to the bangle. The inscription. The running. The late nights. The distance between us.Oh Jon.
I feel like I might cave in, collapse. I want to turn back the clock, I want my only worries to be stupid embarrassing messages and broken windows. Jesus. What do I do? Do I tell Greta and Leesa?
Leesa would tell me to leave him immediately. She loves Jon, but she loves me more. Greta would be more circumspect. I can already hear her in my head.Think about Bella. Think about the cost of divorce. Think about the house; you’d have to move. She’s not wrong. Jon is the big earner—head of legal in GS Bank. My teacher salary doesn’t come close.
My phone beeps with a text from Leesa to say her daughters, Maeve and Aoife, will be over this evening too. There it is, normal life going on. My fingers hover over a reply. But I can’t. There is no world in which I can imagine telling her what I’ve just found. If I tell them, I can’t untell them.And I’d have to deal with it, confront him. No. I need time to process without noise from my well-meaning sisters. I text a reply: Sure, looking forward to it, and hot tears roll down my face.
I don’t know how long I sit there. A babble from the crib pulls me back to reality. God, Bella’s facing being raised by separated parents…then again, she’s so young, it would always feel normal to her, like it did to me. My dad left when I was a newborn; I don’t remember him at all. And it’s fine, I don’t miss him, my mother was more than enough, but I never wanted this for Bella…Wait. I sit up straighter. Would Jon want custody? Knowing what he knows, would he want Bella with him? He’s fully aware it was never real; I was never actually going to hurt her. But once you admit something like that—the fear that you might hurt your child—you can’t unsay it. The only people who know are Jon, my GP, my counselor and the other anonymous members of the parenting forum—the ones who gave me the support and advice I needed when I couldn’t admit any of it to people I knew in real life. They’re the ones who sent me to my GP, who in turn got me medication, counseling, and encouraged me to tell Jon. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Greta and Leesa, and three months on, with the intrusive thoughts mostly gone, there’s no need. But Jon knows. And up until this morning, I trusted Jon with my life. Only in the very far recesses of my mind did I ever think, “He could really use this against me if we ever broke up.” The merest whisper of a half-thought. Until now.
20
Susan
Friday
Greta and Leesa are already here when Jon arrives in from work this evening, which means I don’t have to face him on my own. I honestly don’t know if I could have found a way to act normal. But they’re here, they’re noisy and it’s easy to hide. They greet Jon and I notice that he and Greta exchange a look. The paranoid part of me wonders for a moment if she knows he’s seeing someone. Surely she’d tell me, though? And it’s a leap to think a small, possibly imagined glance means something so huge.
Leesa makes room for Jon at the table, telling him about some restaurant he must try, and he hides his irritation. I know he doesn’t love to find a houseful of people waiting for him when he gets in from work. Well, tough, I think, with a visceral flash of anger, inching my chair a little away from him.You absolute fucker.Just as quickly, the anger gives way to immense sadness and I have to fake a bathroom trip to hide my tears.
• • •
Calm and dry-eyed again, I come downstairs and pop my head around the living-room door. Leesa’s kids, Maeve and Aoife, are on the couch, ostensibly minding Bella but mostly looking at their phones and wondering,I imagine, how long until we order the takeaway. In the kitchen, Greta asks me about my trip to the garda station. I’d all but forgotten it over the last few hours, and telling them is a good, if small, distraction.
“It’s not that they think I had something to do with it, obviously,” I add, “but I’m connected to both cases so they needed DNA to exclude me. Which it will, because I wasn’t there.” I force a watery smile.
Jon gets up to put on the kettle. There are shadows under his eyes, but otherwise he looks pretty much the same as he has for the fifteen years I’ve known him. And yet, he’s a completely different person, a stranger. How could he do this?You know how,says a little voice in my head.It’s not the first time. It’s not. But the last time we hadn’t been together very long. This time we’re married. We have a baby, for god’s sake.
Leesa touches my hand. “Are you OK?”
“Yep. Just the DNA thing rattled me.” I rearrange my face and glance over at Jon again.
He’s staring at the boiling kettle, but now reaches for a bottle of Malbec and four glasses. Something draws my attention to Greta, and I realize she’s watching Jon too. Again I wonder, does she know something about his affair? Of course not. I’ve only just found out myself. And she’s my sister; she’d tell me.
Jon places a wine glass in front of Greta and starts to pour but stops and points at a bottle of pills she’s left on the table. “Are they the ones you can’t drink on? I can make you a green tea?”
This breaks my heart. He is always kind to my sisters, even when I know he’d prefer a quiet house. But what does any of it matter when the manners and politeness are hiding lying and cheating?
“Nope.” Greta looks up at him. “These ones actually reduce the effect of alcohol, so make it an extra large.”
“Oh really?” He picks up the bottle to read the label. “Naltrexone. Are they prescription?”
She nods. He’s still scrutinizing the bottle.
“Wow, I didn’t know things like this existed. I wonder why they don’t make it available over the counter, let people go out for a few drinks but get less drunk? Fewer fights, less aggro?”
