Me and Mr Jones (39 page)

‘Her name was Sophie Bloom,’ he confessed dully. ‘We weren’t together very long, only a few months. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.’

Alicia smarted. Didn’t think it was worth mentioning, indeed. They were back home now, with vinegary parcels of fish and chips still wrapped on the kitchen table. It turned out she wasn’t able to continue the conversation in the Grove Bistro after all, had quite lost her appetite for fizz and fancy food.

‘She went to France for a year as part of her degree and we broke up,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know it, but she was pregnant when she left. Pregnant with Cathy. And she never came back to Oxford – she dropped out of university and went to live near her parents.’

‘Cathy? That’s your daughter’s name?’ The word ‘daughter’ set her teeth on edge. It sounded so wrong, using the word for someone other than Matilda. Catherine Bloom. Sophie Bloom. She prickled with irrational dislike for them both. She hated them for messing everything up like this!

‘That’s her name,’ Hugh replied. ‘And that’s who I went to meet the other week, when I said I was at the gym. I’m sorry.’

‘So you weren’t at the gym, and you weren’t buying my birthday present, either. You were with
Cathy.
’

Hugh swallowed audibly. ‘Yes.’

‘I should have guessed,’ she said with a snort of derision, unable to keep the spite from her voice. ‘I should have known that sodding food mixer wasn’t the result of hours deliberating over the perfect gift.’

He coloured. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

‘And that was her, too, on the phone the other night, hanging up? The one you pretended was Izzy?’ Pathetic, she thought. Absolutely pathetic.

‘No,’ he said. ‘That really was Izzy. She overheard me talking to David about Cathy.’ He looked as if he was ill – his face greenish-pale with a sheen of sweat. ‘She told me I had to tell you, or else.’

Alicia put her head in her hands. Oh, great. So everyone knew about this wretched Cathy except her, did they? She felt so angry and muddled and hurt that she didn’t trust herself to speak for a moment.

‘I’m sorry,’ Hugh said like a broken record. ‘I’m really, really sorry.’

‘Right,’ she replied, her voice sounding as brittle as she felt.
You’re sorry. And that’s supposed to make everything all right, is it?
This was the worst birthday ever, she thought, scrubbing at her eyes. Hadn’t she known all along that forty was going to be shit? She’d certainly been proved right about that. Hadn’t taken long, had it, for the shittiness to begin.

‘I’m going to bed,’ she said, no longer wanting to talk about this. ‘And you can sleep on the sofa tonight. I feel so – so fed up, I don’t even want to see you right now.’

‘Alicia, wait,’ he bleated, but she swept out of the room, ignoring the cooling fish and chips. Let him have them. She hoped he bloody well choked.

Hugh had already left for work by the time Alicia surfaced the next morning. She stumbled downstairs, feeling the most dreadful lurch inside whenever she thought of last night’s awful conversation. Hugh had shaken their marriage to its very core with his deceit. How could she ever trust him again?

There was a note waiting for her on the breakfast table.
I’m sorry. Let’s talk tonight. I want to work this out. X

Yeah, and so he should be sorry
, she thought crossly, crumpling the note into a tight ball and hurling it into the bin. She was sorry too – sorry she’d ever believed him. And to think how smug she’d always been about their marriage: how lucky she’d felt to have snagged ‘a good one’. Turned out he was as much of a liar as Sandra’s string of exes. Worse, in fact, because he’d let the lie fester for over twenty years. What a fool she felt, now that she knew the truth.

Oh, Christine
, she thought helplessly.
What do I do now?

You carry on
, came the reply.
You keep going.

She made herself a coffee and sat at the table for a while, still wrapped in her dressing gown. Carry on and keep going, she thought sourly, curling her lip. Great. Women like her always carried on and kept going, even when they felt like screaming at the top of their voice and flinging things at their husband. Stiff upper lip, chin up, keep calm and carry on. Well, what if she didn’t want to keep calm?

She pulled a face.
I might have to disagree with you on this one, Christine
, she thought
. Besides, no offence, but what would you know anyway?

The sun was shining, so once everyone had breakfasted Alicia slapped together some ham sandwiches, wrapped up the rest of the birthday cake and took the children off to Lyme for the day – anything to get away from the house. At the beach they discovered that the tide was on its way out, so they spent ages hunting for treasures in the rock pools with fishing nets, while dogs and welly-clad toddlers paddled splashily in the shallows around them. Afterwards the four of them picnicked on the pebbles, entertained by a couple of seagulls squabbling over the remains of an abandoned blueberry muffin nearby, then the boys pestered her to take them to the fossil shop in Broad Street to spend their pocket money on yellowing sharks’ teeth and bits of old rock.

Alicia found herself eyeing passing young women, wondering if one of them was Cathy. Sod the stiff upper lip, sod trying to pretend that the conversation with Hugh had never happened. It had. She had to deal with it somehow – they all did.

Was that her, in the pink cropped jeans and gold wedges, arm-in-arm with a bunch of girlfriends, their hair uniformly long, streaked and straightened? Or was that her, in the emo make-up with a nose-stud and crimped black hair, looking too hot in black jeans and a studded leather jacket? Maybe that was her, smooching with a young man on the Cobb, oblivious to the world around them?

Oh God. It felt as if she was stumbling around a minefield, waiting for the detonation. And there were the children, completely oblivious. What would they make of the news that they had a brand-new stepsister? Her mind raced with questions, trying to make sense of it all. Would it put Lucas’s nose out of joint that he was no longer Hugh’s eldest? Would Matilda be miffed that she wasn’t the only girl any more? They would be a patchwork family now, with a half-sister stitched into the mix, changing their whole look and shape. And she would be a stepmother, she realized to her horror, a dozen gruesome fairytales springing to mind. It felt all wrong, as if she was wearing somebody else’s clothes that didn’t suit her.

She put a hand to her head, suddenly dizzy. The world seemed to be spinning too quickly, she felt confused and disoriented. She wished she could go back to the blissful ignorance of being thirty-nine, when everything had been in its proper place.

That evening Hugh seemed like a stranger when he came home. Dinner was a strained affair, with them both making polite chit-chat, yet essentially saying nothing. All Alicia could think about was how much she was dreading the ‘talk’ he had requested.

Hugh obviously felt the same. The very second after the children had gone to bed he turned to her, a weak smile on his face. ‘Gin and tonic? Wine?’

‘Not for me,’ she said, wanting to keep a clear head.

‘Probably wise,’ he said, after one last look at the gin bottle. There was a pause. ‘So,’ he said, sitting down at the kitchen table and clearing his throat.

‘So,’ she echoed, sitting opposite him. They’d sat in these seats for so many important conversations before. The difference was, in the past, such conversations had always been good ones, ones that promised positive change. Where shall we go on holiday this year? Do we have enough money for a conservatory? What should we buy the children for Christmas?

‘First of all,’ he said, ‘I feel terrible about this. I should have told you about Sophie right from the start, back in Oxford. I wish I had.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ she asked. ‘Not telling me is as bad as lying, Hugh.’

‘I know,’ he said miserably, hanging his head. ‘She . . . she broke my heart, you see.’

It was like being punched, hearing him talk about her with such emotion. Hugh usually displayed as much emotion as a house brick. ‘You loved her?’

He nodded, not looking at her. ‘Yes.’

Ouch. She wished she’d taken up his offer of gin now; she could do with a large shot of something strong to soften the edges of this hard truth. ‘More than me?’

‘No!’ Now he raised his gaze. ‘No, of course not. I can’t even compare the two experiences. With Sophie, it was . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Adoration. Teenage fantasy. You know, I’d left home, I felt like a man for the first time ever, I was—’

She didn’t want to hear any more. ‘Shagging around?’ she finished waspishly.

‘No!’ he protested again. ‘It was only Sophie – and then you. That’s it, my sum total of romantic experience.’ He seemed to shrink into himself. ‘I was naive, Alicia. I didn’t have the first clue about love. I confused it with sex, for heaven’s sake, thought that because this girl – Sophie – let me . . . you know,
do
things, that we must have this amazing relationship. Realistically, we didn’t at all. I can’t even remember what she looked like.’

‘I still don’t understand,’ Alicia said through gritted teeth, ‘why you didn’t tell me about her, though. What was the big secret?’

‘The big secret, I suppose, was that I felt an idiot for having believed I was in love at all. She finished with me that summer, the end of my first year. Said she was going to France and we should probably cool it, go our separate ways. I was crushed.’

Alicia nodded, digesting the information. ‘And then you met me when I started at Oxford the following autumn.’

‘And I realized what true love really was,’ he said. ‘Meeting you made me see that Sophie had been a mere infatuation. It never would have lasted. Whereas you – I knew straight away that you were the real thing, Alicia. I knew that what we had was special. Still is.’

Despite all her inner turmoil Alicia found herself unexpectedly moved. The house brick was really wearing his heart on his sleeve tonight. ‘So when did you find out about Cathy?’ she asked, trying to keep her composure.

‘A few weeks ago – I got an email out of the blue one evening. You might remember: I was here in the kitchen at the time and nearly collapsed with shock.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I literally had no idea Cathy existed, hadn’t given Sophie a thought since we were at university. But she knew about me.’

There was a pause, longer this time. ‘What’s she like?’ Alicia asked, not entirely sure she wanted to hear the answer.

‘She’s lovely,’ he replied, almost apologetically. ‘She’s two years into an art degree in Brighton, sweet and bubbly, a bit quirky, quite tall, long red hair and dimples . . . You’ll like her.’

Alicia said nothing for a moment, imagining this red-haired intruder first as Annie, then as Jessica Rabbit. Neither was particularly good stepdaughter material.

‘Does she want to meet the children?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘That’s okay, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so.’ She didn’t feel as if she had much choice.

There was a pause where she examined her fingernails and Hugh stared at the table. ‘Alicia . . . be honest,’ he said after a moment. ‘You didn’t want a food mixer for your birthday, did you?’

She jerked in surprise at the abrupt change of subject. ‘No,’ she admitted before she could say something more tactful.

He sighed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I feel as if I’ve got everything wrong lately. I wanted to give you something really special for your fortieth, but I just . . .’ He spread his hands helplessly. ‘I’ve got no imagination. I’m rubbish.’

He did look genuinely pained. ‘Look, it’s fine,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Really. I’m sure it’ll be very useful. But . . .’ Go on, she urged herself. Out with it. Tell him how you feel. ‘Well, it’s just that sometimes I’m worried that’s all I am to you. A boring wife who cooks and cleans and lives a sensible, safe life. And, okay, so I know I haven’t done very much to dispel this theory over the years. I
have
been boring and sensible and safe. But lately, I’ve wanted more. I’ve wanted some excitement, for you to see me as a . . . woman again. Feminine. Attractive. Not just a wife in a pinny with her hands in the washing-up every day.’

It felt quite a speech, all in all. These words had burned inside her for weeks and her heart raced as she finally released them out loud. There. Cards on the table.

To her relief, he was nodding. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Not about me thinking you’re a boring wife. I’ve never thought that. You are perfect to me. Perfect.’

His earnestness was verging on the unbearable; his sincerity without question. She opened her mouth to thank him, but he hadn’t finished. ‘When you asked last night if I’d been cheating on you, if there was another woman, I nearly fell off my chair,’ he said. ‘Why on earth would I ever want another woman when I have you? I mean it, Alicia. I’ve never meant anything more in my life. You are all I want – all I have ever wanted.’

She pressed her lips together, trying to keep her cool, but it was no good. A tear broke free from one eye and plopped onto the table. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

‘And I’m sorry I haven’t shown you that more often. I will, I promise, from now on. I’ll make you feel the most loved and adored woman that ever walked this earth. The KitchenAid can go straight back to the shop,’ he went on gruffly, getting up from the table as if preparing to despatch it there and then, ‘and I shall spend all the money on jewellery instead. Jewellery and flowers and perfume and . . . lovely things. Whatever you want.’

‘Oh, Hugh.’ She got to her feet too and stood holding the back of her chair. ‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘I know I don’t,’ he replied. ‘But I want to.’ He held his arms open for her and she walked into them. They stood there together in the kitchen, just holding each other. ‘Thank you,’ he said after a while. ‘For being so understanding about all of this. But, most of all, for being my wife. I’d be nothing without you, Alicia.’

For a moment she felt stiff in his embrace, not quite able to let go of the image of Hugh pining over his lost love Sophie, weeping in his teenage bedroom in Mulberry House all those years ago. And he hadn’t told her. He hadn’t said.