‘What? When?’ Serena stays very still.
‘He told me it started at that Christmas party before she died. Went on for a few months – nothing serious, apparently, just … well, just Jarvis being Jarvis and Fliss being Fliss, but I think she felt embarrassed because months later she invented this completely insane story about him raping her.’
In the distance, there is a splashing sound, as if a stone has been thrown into the lake. Serena imagines the concentric ripples stretching ever outwards.
‘She even went to the police, gave them some barely comprehensible story,’ Ben continues. ‘I had to pull a few strings there to make sure it never saw the light of day.’
‘Right,’ Serena says, sick lurching in her throat. ‘You don’t think …?’
‘God no. I mean, Jarvis is many things but not a rapist! Fliss was always lying to us to cover up some terrible thing she’d done. She’d relapsed. Wasn’t in her right mind, poor thing.’
Serena blinks. Of course. Yes. Of course Fliss couldn’t have been believed. Ben was quite right. It made sense, didn’t it? Jarvis wouldn’t have done that. Never. She tells herself that whatever tiny seeds of doubt might sprout in her subconscious have been planted by her own over-active imagination. To think anything else would lead her into a darkness she prefers not to examine. She pictures herself screening the shadows off with a white, white wall. There. All done.
‘I don’t know why,’ Ben says, ‘but I didn’t expect you and Jarvis …’
‘Neither did I. I’m sorry.’
‘I mean, it’s not ideal …’ He gives a short laugh. ‘But I’m in no position to judge, am I?’
That’s the thing about Ben. He isn’t a jealous man. He believes, with the ineffable ease of someone who has never been truly tested, that everything he is owed will eventually make its way to him. Wrongs will be righted and scores settled as though natural justice is simply reasserting itself in the presence of a golden king.
He examines a non-existent scuff on the leather of his shoe. ‘Besides, he’s always had a crush on you. How could he not?’
She feels grateful, then, for a husband who has forgiven her and who has never deliberately sought to hurt her. Whatever Ben has done, she also understands the security of her future relies on taking him back.
‘It’s over,’ Serena says. ‘It never really got started, to be honest.’
It was because I needed you, she wants to say. It was because I love you, still, even with all the wounds we’ve inflicted on each other. But the words don’t come.
The sun passes behind a cloud and their faces fall into shadow. With every second that Ben stays silent, Serena can feel the balance between them reasserting itself. It makes her both happy and sad. A return to normality. It’s what she wanted. It’s also what will trap her. And in the end, it’s all she has.
‘OK,’ he says finally. ‘I understand. I’m in a tricky position with Jarvis because you know he’s bankrolling a lot of the campaign and—’
‘I get that,’ Serena says. ‘It’s not an issue for me if he’s still in your life. We’re all grown-ups here, after all.’
She knows how to play this part. It’s what her mother trained her to do. She will stay married. Ben will stay faithless. She will accept it because the alternative would be worse. Serena wishes she knew how to be alone but she doesn’t. Any upheaval would have to be founded on qualities she doesn’t possess – on courage and self-belief. She thinks of Cosima, who embodies them both.
‘You’re amazing,’ Ben says.
She has missed making him love her.
‘Thank you. I haven’t felt it much lately.’
‘And you look incredible, by the way. Austrian broth clearly suits you.’
It’s true she has lost weight. It isn’t just the clinic. She’s been ordering some extremely effective weight-loss injections online. All she had to do was upload a picture. A search for ‘overweight woman 40s’ on Google Images had provided the necessary.
‘Can we put the last few months behind us?’ Ben says, a satisfying note of pleading in his words. She knows he needs her to put on a united front so that his messy personal life doesn’t scupper his chances to become PM. She knows, too, this gives her a transient power and that she must press her advantage now before it dissipates.
‘We can,’ she says. ‘But I’m not moving to Downing Street. It’s a hovel.’
He laughs.
‘OK. Would you consent to being there one or two nights a week?’
She shrugs. That wouldn’t be too bad. It would make it easier to see her shaman. The Pilates studios are better in London.
‘If we redecorate.’
