It was all too much. Too much adrenaline flooding through my veins, too much blood roaring in my ears. But worse than that, it was too damn much to finally hear Adam’s secret coming from the lips of a woman who’d never made any pretence about the fact that she hated me.
Without asking, Claire reached for the bottle of wine and refilled her glass before fixing me with the kind of stare a scientist gives a bug, right before they dissect it.
‘This goes back to what happened on the weekend of your wedding, at that place on the river.’
‘Sonning,’ I said softly, my thoughts softening as I thought of the picture-perfect location where we’d chosen to get married. But this was no fairy story, you only had to look at the face of the narrator to know that.
‘Josh told me he was going to go and see you that weekend, before it was too late, before you became someone else’s wife.’ Claire gave a small, humourless laugh. ‘I don’t know if he was looking for my approval or some other nonsense like that, but I told him straight up that he was making a huge mistakeandan idiot out of himself.’
‘That was supportive of you,’ I said, my voice heavy with sarcasm.
‘Hell, what did you think I was going to do? He was all set on doing the big Hollywood romantic gesture. He was going to be that lovesick idiot hammering on the glass of the church or leaping up out of a pew when they ask if anyone has any objections to the marriage.’
She leant forward, elbows on the table, putting her face uncomfortably close to mine.
‘I tell you who did object.Idid. I objected that he couldn’t think straight where you were concerned. He never could. He still can’t,’ she added with a bitter twist of her lips. ‘Anyway, you know better than I do how it all went down. I know he got there two days before you were due to get married and ...’
She gave a shrug, and I heaved a silent sigh of relief that Josh obviously hadn’t told her exactly what had happened on that weekend, when my future could have been rewritten.
Claire shifted on the unforgiving kitchen chair, but I was too close to finally learning the truth to even think about moving this conversation elsewhere.
‘I know Josh must have been pretty persuasive, because he phoned me that first night to say he thought everything was going to work out.’ Her nose wrinkled, as though she was hearing the news all over again. ‘As you can imagine, I wasn’t best pleased.’
‘I don’t suppose you were.’
‘But then, just twenty-four hours later, he was someone totally different: driving away from that hotel with his heart in pieces ... and that’s down to you.You’rethe reason he’s hidden himself away in the middle of nowhere for all these years.’ I took the blow, maybe I even deserved it. But nothing could have prepared me for what she said next. ‘But the person I blame even more than you ... is your husband.’
‘Adam? What’s Adam got to do with any of this? He didn’t even know that Josh was in the area that weekend. I certainly never told him.’
Claire blew out her cheeks, as though sometimes she truly couldn’t believe how stupid I was.‘Of coursehe knew.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Because your husband set out to find Josh and told him something – probably theonlything – that would ever have made him back down and walk away.’
My brain was still grappling with the fact that Adam had known our wedding had been in jeopardy, so it took several seconds before Claire’s words finally landed in the frozen area of my chest where my heart used to live – before it had relocated to my throat.
‘What did he say? What did Adam say to Josh?’
For a split second there was a look that was almost sympathy in Claire’s eyes, before it was blinked into oblivion.
‘Adam told Josh that you were pregnant. That you were both ecstatic about the news but that you were keeping it quiet until after the wedding. But he thought Josh had the right to know what was going on, given your history together.’
‘What? What are you talking about? Adam never said that to Josh. Why would he?’
‘I don’t know.’ Claire’s lip curled in a snarl. ‘But I do know that Josh was devastated that you hadn’t told him yourself. That after all those years of friendship, you’d let your husband be the one to do it.’
‘But Iwasn’tpregnant. I’ve never been pregnant.’ Unconsciously, beneath the cover of the table, my hand went to my belly.
‘Well, that’s as may be. But your husband certainly managed to sound convincing. He even offered to show Josh the ultrasound photos on his phone.’
I was shaking my head in denial. What Claire was saying was unbelievable, and so out of character for the man I’d married that she had to be wrong. She had to be. But for the first time that night I heard Adam’s voice in my head.No, she’s not, baby. She’s telling the truth.
‘Josh came to see me the following day,’ I said, my voice dull and flat. ‘He said he’d made a mistake. That he’d not been in love with me after all.’
‘Yes, well, he would have said that, wouldn’t he? Becausehewas being honourable.’ The accusation hung in the air like a sword. ‘Josh did the noble thing and walked away to let you raise your perfect little two-point-four family in peace.’
‘But why would Adam have lied to Josh?’ I asked, searching for the answer in the kitchen Adam had painted, with the dripping tap he’d never got around to fixing, and the shelves he’d put up that weren’t perfectly straight.
