‘You are so good. I’m so glad you’re here,’ I told her.
‘Ditto. Great to have another blow-in for an ally,’ she reminded me of our common ground.
The line moved along slowly, until eventually the disabled cubicle became free. We both went in. I heard a toilet flush next to us and the clipping of heels approach the sinks as I sat on the loo myself. Two women began to talk as they washed their hands. ‘You should just tell her,’ one voice said.
‘What’s the point?’ said the second voice, which I recognised from less than an hour earlier.
‘She should know what he’s like. Right now, she thinks the sun shines out of his arse. It will do no harm to bring both of them down a peg or two.’
‘They deserve each other,’ the voice I recognised as the frog from earlier replied.
‘I heard she left her husband for him,’ the first voice said.
Jane stood blocking door as I stood up from the loo. She shook her head at me in a silent plea not to go out and confront them, knowing that it wouldn’t do any of us any good and they would probably thrive on the drama of the situation. ‘She did. The daft bitch,’ the frog confirmed in a superior tone.
‘You should tell her you spent the night with him last Thursday,’ the first said as the blood drained rapidly from myface. I looked at Jane for her to dismiss the accusation, hoping she would brush it off with her hand as nonsense. Instead, she looked at the floor, refusing to meet my eye.
‘Why would I bother? Let her find out the hard way.’ And with that, the two of them clip clopped off out the door back into the party.
My knees were suddenly weak and unable to support me. I fell back down to a sitting position on the toilet seat, quivering hands covered my mouth in horror. If I’d been there by myself, I might have dismissed it as bitterness or lies, but Jane’s reaction confirmed my worst fears.
She knelt in front of me, holding my hand as I sobbed ugly tears of distress, mascara smudged my fingers as I hastily wiped them away.
How could I have been so stupid? Deep down, I knew he was too good to be true. I knew it wouldn’t last. I hadalwaysknown love like this never lasts. I’d gotten so caught up in the moment, wishing it to be true, willing it to be different for me, for us, the real deal.
‘Jane?’ I asked her when I could compose myself enough to utter her name. She refused to meet my eye still.
‘Please? What is it? Tell me. Please?’ I begged her, make-up running down my face. I couldn’t give a shit about appearances now. My insides were crushed, smashed, irreparably broken. Nausea rose to my chest, suffocating me. My breath came hard and fast as my shattered heart pumped furious blood through my veins.
‘Maybe it was nothing’ Her hesitation spoke volumes.
‘Please, tell me, whatever you know. I need to know,’ I pleaded. She obviously knew something.
‘Her car was outside his house last Thursday night.’ Her gentle lull was apologetically. ‘Look, it could have been nothing. I thought it was odd at the time. She has a personalised numberplate; you’d know it anywhere. I know they have history. It could still be nothing,’ she attempted to reassure me.
‘Whether or not it was nothing, and let’s face it, it doesn’t look promising, the worst thing is that I had to hear it from her. If it was innocent, why wouldn’t he have told me?’ I wiped my face with the back of my hand, fresh tears immediately replaced the ones I’d removed.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, sympathetically. ‘You need to ask him.’
‘What time did the car leave?’ I was desperate for all the facts, even though it made me sick picturing it, picturing her in the house which I was soon to be calling my home. The house we made love in. The house we had cooked in, planned our future together in and shared our hopes and dreams in.
‘That’s the thing Lucy…’ Jane looked really awkward, wring her hands together.
‘Oh God, what is it?’ I stuttered, pre-empting what she was going to say, although every single cell in me willed her not to.
‘It was there all night.’ She confirmed what I already knew. I had known something wasn’t right that last Thursday from the second I texted him from the hairdressers. He was never as unreachable as he had been that night. I heaved over the toilet, bringing up my dinner.
‘I’m so so sorry,’ Jane said to me gently rubbing my back. ‘I would never have told you if she hadn’t said it. It’s none of my business. And you never know, it could be something perfectly innocent,’ she said, but her natural suspicion leaked through in an undercurrent reflected in her tone. She’d made her feelings on cheating crystal clear when she told me about Michael Maloney. We’d laughed at the time, but we were both equally horrified his wife took him back. If it were Jane’s husband, she’d have his head on a spike. I was under no illusion.
We emerged from the cubicle to the quietness of the empty toilets. I caught sight of myself in the mirror above the hand basin. I was a mess, make-up everywhere. I’d aged about ten years in five minutes and my hair looked like it had been dragged through a bush backwards. I didn’t give a flying fuck about any of it.
My heart was shattered into a million pieces as my mind continued to torture me with images of her in John’s house; her hands on him, the two of them laughing at me. It struck me hard in the gut – karma. It was only what I deserved.
‘You’ve got to help me,’ I begged Jane.
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.
‘Go get the key card off John. Tell him I want to freshen up, that the wine’s hit me a bit, but I’ll be back when I’ve fixed myself. Tell him you’re going to touch up my make-up for me. Just get the key card. I need to get into that room.’
