April, who probably knew women who’d accompanied men who weren’t their husbands to all sorts of places, if not hospitals. No, I’d talk to her in the morning. I thought of Rachel, happily asleep in her own bed with the alarms on and Joey tucked up in his room. How could I ever tell them? Did I have to? I couldn’t.
There was nobody I could phone and tell, nobody to cry to.
38
Bea
Outside the hospital, there is one lonely taxi. I get into it and give the driver my address. I don’t look at him. I don’t want to look at anyone. I’m still shaking from the combination of shock and grief. I slept with another woman’s husband, not just another woman, but Marin’s husband, and that single act of selfishness has brought us here to the hospital. I could have just left, but that would be the coward’s way out. No, I had to stay and make sure he was all right and greet her.
‘You all right, love?’ says the taxi driver. He can see my undoubtedly white face in hisrear-view mirror.
‘Not really,’ I whisper.
‘Sorry, love,’ is all he says.
Even he can see that I am not to be spoken to.
The driver takes me to Shazz’s house because Luke was staying over with her and Raffie last night so I could rest, all of which seems like a million years ago.
I wish I’d told Shazz before what had happened last week; I can’t have her thinking I planned for Nate to come, that I made them all complicit in a lie. What happened tonight was all because of one weak moment, for the momentary sense of comfort of having another human body wrapped around me. Because that’s all it was. It’s like my brain had deserted me and all I needed was the comfort of someone to hold me and love me. All these years of saying I didn’t want anyone and then these stupid dates, all culminating in me having sex with the very last person I should ever be intimate with.
I’ve got Shazz’s keys in the same way she’s got my keys. So I let myself in, turn off the alarm, turn it on again and realise it’s four in the morning now. There’s no way I could sleep, although Shazz has a very comfortable couch in her kitchen. I take off my coat, throw my handbag on the floor and make myself a cup of herbal tea. Chamomile, although it will take more than that to make me sleep. It’s closer to morning than night – how can I sleep now? I sit on the couch, pull a throw around myself and wonder what the hell I can possibly say to my friend about this. How am I going to live with this knowledge forever? That one act of stupidity brought Nate back to my door and now look where we are.
‘Jesus, you frightened the shit out of me,’ says a voice. It’s Shazz, standing at the door to the kitchen with a baseball bat in her hand, dressed in her woolly pyjamas. ‘What are you doing here?’
I look at her and no words come, only tears.
‘Are you OK?’ She’s by my side in an instant kneeling on the floor. Putting down the chamomile tea and taking my hands in hers. ‘Did something happen?’
I shake my head.
‘No, Shazz, no; I’ve done the stupidest thing, I can’t explain. It all started with that horriblefamily-tree thing and you know how that threw me, how Luke thought I was lying to him about his dad. And I felt I’d failed, I felt so lonely. And then, I went out with Piers last week, which was fun but would never amount to anything and then Nate turned up when I had a leak in my kitchen.’ I let the tears fall onto the blanket.
‘Last weekend?’
I nod.
‘I knew you were freaked by something.’
‘He put his arms around me. You know how that feels when you’ve been lonely for so long. But I could have said no, I could have hit him over the head, I could have rung Marin up and told her.’
I start to cry properly. Shazz goes to a cupboard high up and takes out a bottle of brandy. She pours two glasses.
‘This is my medicinal brandy,’ she says, ‘it’s actually not bad, not that I like brandy, but it has a bit of a kick in it and reminds your body that it’s still alive. I think possibly because it makes your heartbeat go up, but you look like you are going to pass out, so maybe having your heartbeat go up is a plus.’
‘I can’t drink brandy,’ I say, shuddering at the look of the glass.
‘You can and you will; get it down you. The kids sleep well but you never know, any minute now they’ll suddenly erupt downstairs and want to know what’s going on. So let’s get our plan organised and sort things out.’
‘There’s no sorting out,’ I say. ‘He turned up out of the blue tonight and I told him to go or I’d phone Marin or the police. I began to and he had a heart attack with fear, so I called an ambulance and I brought him to hospital.’ Shazz’s mouth falls open. ‘And I gave them Marin’s number and they rang her and I stayed until she got there.’
‘Jesus wept,’ says Shazz.
‘And they were carrying on as if I was his wife, although I kept telling them I wasn’t and that his wife would be there. But I mean they all must have known. And then she came in, and her face, oh Shazz, her face. She looked so heartbroken.’
‘Yeah, well, I’d look heartbroken if I was married to that bollix, I never liked Nate.’
‘You know Finn’s new girlfriend? She doesn’t like Nate either.’
