The movie was turned up loud and she felt a little mean, knowing she was about to disturb his solitude, the joy of watching a movie, sprawled on the sofa in the den, probably with a very large bag of crisps and a couple of cold bottles of beer. This was quicklydiluted by the fact she was going to make him a promise of sex, kiss him hard and tell him how much she loved him. She pushed the door open slowly, quietly, not wanting to startle him, figuring she’d coo her hello and slip down beside him for a hug of reconciliation before going upstairs to read to Evie.
Ashleigh did not slip down beside him for a hug.
She couldn’t.
Because the spot on the sofa that might have been hers was already occupied. She felt a cold creep of ice through her veins and was rooted to the spot.
‘Fuck!’ the woman yelled, and let go of Archie’s hand, as Ashleigh, jolted into action, raised her palms, about to take a step backwards, on the verge of apologising for making the woman jump and for disturbing their movie.
‘Jesus!’ Archie shouted and leapt up, staggering and part falling to avoid the open bottle of wine on the floor by his feet. Although it wasn’t the sight of Jesus in the doorway that caused him to jump up and slip, slopping his overfilled glass of red all over the deep, pale rug, and splashing his chinos, the ones with the belt and fly undone. Nor was it Jesus who stared, mouth falling open, as Archie did his best to button up his shirt, his complexion wan, his lips dry, his expression one of anguish, as he rushed at the door and pushed her into the hallway, doing his best to keep her away from his guest. No, it wasn’t Jesus. It was her, Ashleigh, his wife.
‘Ash! I can ... I can explain,’ he stammered.
It was the line she’d heard in movies, the mealy-mouthed catch-all that somehow made the situation more sickening with the predictability of it.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ The woman appeared in the hallway, as if it were her who had been inconvenienced, unnecessarily alarmed. Ashleigh took a second to make mental notes about her: nice jeans, good hair, bare feet, a decent pedi withhot-pink toenails, soft sweater, a little too much foundation and a lower lid sweep of heavy kohl that made her eyes look small. Her accent was strong, distorting W to sound more like V, the T to D, and the S more Z. Germanic. German.The German.
Ah ...Suddenly it all made sense. And she felt like a dumdum, having assumed the partner was a man, a beer-loving, hairy-handed colleague, and trusting her husband, the father of their child, her friend and lover since university, who had not corrected her.
‘Go on then.’ Ashleigh folded her shaking arms across her chest as if this might help contain the pain, the raw sorrow that threatened to spill from her. She couldn’t take a full breath, felt a little high, a little wired, as if the discovery had sent her brain into overload. She held his eyeline and he looked at the floor. The coward.
‘Go on ...’ He shook his head. It was then she noticed the slight unsteadiness to his legs, the slur to his words, suggesting much booze had been taken.
‘Yes, you said you could explain.’ Her smile was brief, as this clipped, controlled version of herself that contained so much rage, so much hurt, stood her ground and spoke with clarity, knowing that in the remembering she would be proud of her stance, her demeanour, all the while battling the desire to throw up.
‘You said you were staying at your mum’s!’
Laughter burbled from her that she quickly suppressed.
‘Oh dear.’ She sucked air through her teeth. ‘I didn’t. I said she’d asked if we wanted to. More to the point, that’s not really an explanation, but a very big reveal.’
‘What’s going on here?’ the German repeated, as she placed her hands on her slender hips.Actuallyput her hands on her hips, as if fed up at having to miss a chunk of her film, to have had her cosy evening in another woman’s home disrupted.
Ashleigh turned to face her, her heart now threatening to jump right out of her chest. Archie, she noticed, had slunk back against the wall, his face strangely porcine in the dimmed light. The bloat of good living she hadn’t properly noticed before.
Probably all them croissants.
‘What’s going on is that you have mere minutes to get out of my house. Because one of two things is going to happen. Either my daughter is going to come and see you here with her dad, which I will not allow, or I will lose my shit, likereallylose my shit, and trust me, you don’t want to see that or be on the receiving end of it. So I suggest you fuck off, right now!’
‘Archie?’ The woman turned to address Archie, who looked as if he might actually topple over or had received a punch to the paunch.
‘Did you not hear me? I said fuck off, right now!’ Still Ashleigh kept her voice level, watching as the woman grabbed her knee-high boots from the floor of the den before running upstairs, no doubt to retrieve toiletries or whatever else she had been relying on to make her sordid sleepover more comfortable. Ashleigh felt unable to move her legs, her breathing loud in her ears like she was underwater. She wanted to call Guy, wanted to tell him what Archie had done! Before remembering she wasn’t talking to Guy.No Guy, no Archie ...this time she was actually a little sick in her mouth, and swallowed it, as she trembled.
‘Ash.’ Archie reached out as if to touch her and she almost jumped back. The thought of any physical contact repulsed her, especially from those fingers that had been holding the woman’s hand.
‘Who’s that lady?’ Evie asked, staring after the skinny arse that was hightailing it up the stairs.
‘Daddy’s work colleague, but she’s leaving now. Their meeting is over.’ She smiled.
‘We had a lovely day, Dad.’ Evie twirled.
‘That’s’ – he swallowed – ‘that’s good.’
‘Auntie Remy forgot to book the table, so we had KFC and cake at Nanny’s house. And Grandad got Maltesers. Bertie and I played football in the garden. Harper taught me how to do cheerleading, and Sophie was there too. She’s got a tattoo of a sewing machine on her wrist.’
To hear their child so sweetly and enthusiastically recounting the details made her stomach fold. Howdarehe do this to them, to her?
‘That’s – that’s ...’ He licked his dry lips, and she despised his drunkenness, his lack of control, his deceit, his weakness.
