She sat forward and tucked her hair behind her ears, pen in hand.
I woke with a start and it was like an ice pick of realisation hitting my chest. Pointed, painful and specific. Not the first time I’ve felt it. The first time was when I was in the bedroom of our house in Ledwick Green. The night I found out my husband was cheating.
It was May, a pleasantly warm evening. I’d just put away pants and socks in the chest of drawers and sprayed my neck with perfume, for no reason other than I was passing the bottle that sat on my dressing table. I was about to draw the curtains, gripping the inner edge, when Hugo’s car pulled up in the driveway. He drove in, as he always did, facing the house, and I saw him unclick his seat belt.
My first thought was to hurry downstairs and crank up the stove, encourage supper to cook quicker, and to shove the peas on to boil. Planning for a regular supper with my family, thinking of his rumbling tum, just like any other night. Only it wasn’t to be a regular supper and it certainly wasn’t like any other night.
It was the first night; the first time I had unwelcome knowledge that would change the course of my life, of all our lives.
It was also an ending; the end of family life as I’d known it.
The end of loving him in the way I had.
It was also a beginning too. But just what was starting it would have been hard to say.
I only happened upon him as I stood there. Perfect timing, as they say. I wasn’t waiting or looking or stalking or suspecting, doing nothing more than drawing the curtains to keep the soft glow of the street lamp at bay. I sometimes wonder what my life would be like today if I had not discovered his affair. It’s a thought that scares me: the idea of carrying on oblivious – smiling, cooking, working, sleeping, loving – while the whole time he snuck out, lied and betrayed me, betrayed us. I then have to remind myself that this was how I lived before this night of revelation and I had been happy in the dark. Happy and ignorant. But that’s the trouble with knowledge, once you have it, once you’re informed, there’s no going back to happy and ignorant. There’s just no going back.
I watched him release his seat belt and was about to pull the curtain when he leaned forward to end a phone call. His mobile sat in its holder on the dashboard and he lingered, just for a second. No more. His hesitation in that moment was the cypher to crack the code of a puzzle I didn’t know I had to figure out.
I was transfixed.
The fact is, I’ve known Hugo since university. I’ve known him skinny, muscled, fat. I’ve known him with a mop of curly locks, I’ve known him balding. I’ve known him to hit rock bottom when one or two bad financial decisions left the coffers empty, and I’ve known him to dance around the kitchen when the big wins have come in. I’ve known him happy, sad, up, down and I’ve loved him through it all.
I know his peculiarities, his quirks, tics, traits, likes and dislikes, and I know with certainty that he hates, absolutely detests, talking on the phone. A marvellous raconteur, he can natter for hours face to face, especially after a good supper and in front of a fire or sitting side by side looking out to sea on a blanket as the sun sinks and dusk steals the warmth from the day. Oh yes, in those situations his conversation and energy for connection is boundless, but when it comes to the phone ...
‘Bloody thing. I don’t want to be connected or available 24/7 – just because you can be doesn’t mean it’s good for us! Impossible to hide!’ That’s what he always said.
And yet, as I held the tasselled edges of my Susie Watson linen drapes, my mind on the cauliflower cheese that was bubbling in the oven and the bacon waiting to hit the skillet (butcher-bought, of course, freshly sliced and wrapped in wax paper, tied with string) I saw that something life-altering had been hiding in plain sight.
That was the other ice-pick-in-the-chest moment.
For no more than a single second he paused, reluctant to end the call, wanting to eke it out, to hear the voice on the other end of the line, to linger longer than was necessary on the driveway in his two-litre, shiny, metallic cocoon of deceit, connected to a call that might have lasted his whole journey home. Company for him as he navigated the twisty lanes to the place where his family waited for him.
My stomach turned over and I couldn’t move. Mesmerised, staring, hunting for other clues. He was smiling, happy, in a new shirt, with a recent haircut, the slow, easy pace of a man satisfied in every sense.
He climbed out of the car and looked up and when he saw me there was the vaguest flicker of unease about his eyes. As if he’d been caught, unmasked.
We ate supper. I remember Bear babbling on about a Pokémon movie and Dilly took an age to eat, forking tiny morsels into her mouth reluctantly and it really irritated me. I think I snapped at her to eat up or don’t eat at all, and Hugo stared at my uncharacteristic outburst. I remember feeling hot shame spread over my face, but at so much more than the fact I had shouted at Dilly. Although yes, that too.
My suspicion was that I’d been duped.
That I’d been displaced.
He’d chosen someone else.
I was certain of it.
I could feel it.
I then spent an hour or so in the bath, drawing up a list of possible women: Claire from the pub. Always breezy and forward, her humour full of double entendres, saucy and obvious.
Bear’s French teacher. Ms Duvall, who is sultry, sexy and with a voice like liquid chocolate and a tiny waist. I’d heard Hugo joke to Frank next door about dabbing on extra cologne for parents’ evening and how he wouldn’t mind detention with Ms Duvall. I’d laughed. He’d spoken brazenly in front of me, so obviously it had to be a joke, right? But what if it wasn’t?
My mind raced and made illogical leaps. I was so in the dark.
The girl on reception at the gym – I couldn’t remember her name? Lois? Or Lou? Super-fit. Young, strong, with a no-nonsense approach; she always seemed to have time to chat to Hugo but never to me.
Or any number of faceless candidates I’d never met at his workplace. He was, after all, a partner at the accountancy firm, and some level of power, no matter how small, was attractive to certain women.
