The Safest Place (15 page)

‘I’ve never been in there, ever,’ she said. ‘Looks way too expensive for me. Still, I’m curious to know what it’s like.’

How easy it was for me to wax lyrical about the hotel itself. I described it to her in detail; the open fires, the bedroom, the beautiful candlelit restaurant. I told her about what we ate, and
what we drank, about the quality of the sheets that we slept on. Oh yes, with such passion I could talk about the hotel.

Thankfully, she didn’t ask for details about us.

David came home quite early on Wednesday night, just before nine. I heard his car on the drive, surprised, not expecting him back so soon.

‘I had a meeting that finished early,’ he said. ‘I managed to get away.’ Then, ‘How are you?’ he said. ‘How are the kids?’ He asked about my day.
He stood in the kitchen with me while I cooked him pasta, chatting about inconsequential, mundane things and I responded, politely, somewhat unnerved by the novelty of him coming home. Before he
ate he went off to chat to Ella and Sam. I stayed in the kitchen and listened to them talking and laughing, each of them vying for his attention. How ordinary it seemed and yet how strange.

And later, when we lay in bed, he pulled me to him, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. So rarely we went to bed at the same time these days. He stroked his fingers along my arm, in time with
the rhythm of his breathing, and I curled up against him, all thoughts suspended. He turned his head slightly, and kissed my hair.

‘We had a nice weekend,’ he said and right then I wanted to believe that he meant it. I wanted to forget how awkward and strained it had been, and convince myself that yes it
was
a good weekend. I wanted to swallow the lie, whole.

I closed my eyes, safe in the warmth of his body. I willed myself numb.

And then he said, ‘I’m going to have to stay in London tomorrow. We’ve got a meeting with clients. It probably won’t finish till late.’

I did not speak. I did not move. I lay there, rigid in his arms, as the fear that I had suppressed all week came racing back through my veins.

When you love someone, and are married to them, and have given birth to their children; when you have slept with them, night after night, and been so close to them, you think
they will be there forever. You think that you know them and that you will always know them. You think you are bound.

By Friday I could bear it no longer. All night I had lain awake on my own, thinking about David staying in London, torturing myself with what ifs. I couldn’t face the
weekend, not knowing. I couldn’t face being alongside David for two whole days with these doubts, these suspicions, gnawing away at me.

I needed to know I was wrong.

On Friday, Sam and Ella were both out. I had the house to myself for most of the afternoon.

With shaking hands I took that piece of paper out from under the fruit bowl and put it down on the table – not that I needed to see the number; I’d got it memorized in my head. I put
my mobile phone on the table too. I wasn’t going to use the house phone. I’d thought of that. If I used my mobile, whoever answered wouldn’t have a clue who was calling. I sat
there at the table for a while, bracing myself. What would I say? What would phoning this number prove, or not prove?

I still hoped I was being foolish, that I’d got it all wrong.

I took a deep breath. I keyed in that number, and pressed dial.

Straight away I was connected to an automated voicemail. The phone didn’t even ring; whoever owned it was on a call. And that felt like a reprieve, a chance to cop out, to stop this
nonsense. ‘Leave it there,’ I told myself, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I had to know whose number it was. So I dialled again, and again I got that voicemail. I took
another deep breath, and let it out slowly. I counted to ten. I dialled again.

This time I got through. A woman’s voice said, ‘Hello-o,’ lilting the word slowly over three syllables. I dropped the phone as if burnt. She could be anyone, I told myself. She
could be anyone. She was still there; I could hear her, faint and tinny, speaking into my kitchen. ‘Hello,’ she said again. ‘Anyone there?’ I held my breath, all plans of
making excuses, of pretending to have dialled a wrong number, gone now. She muttered something, then silence. I counted the seconds till I was sure she had gone, my heartbeat booming in my
ears.

She could be anyone, I told myself again, but I knew. I just knew.

I found myself hunting through his wardrobe like a madwoman, checking his pockets for proof, for receipts, sniffing his jackets for the scent of another woman’s perfume.
I went through his underwear looking for I don’t know what; I counted out the condoms in the drawer in his bedside table, examining the box for recent disturbance because apart from that
disastrous occasion on Saturday night it certainly hadn’t been disturbed recently on
my
account.
I
packed the condoms for our weekend away, grabbing a couple and sticking
them in my wash bag – how many were left in the box then? Seven condoms I counted now but for how long had there been seven? I knew I was being ridiculous. He wouldn’t use condoms from
this box on
her
, sneaking them out of the house like a naughty school boy; my rational self knew that. But I wasn’t feeling rational. I was possessed by a rage I didn’t know
how to deal with and rolling in and out of that rage was utter panic. How could he
do
this to me?

He kept his bank and credit card statements in the den, in a file underneath the computer. When I’d gone through absolutely everything I could think of upstairs I went down there, and
dragged them all out. And I really scrutinized those credit card statements, and that’s where I found what I was looking for: bills for dinner in restaurants, on nights that he was away from
me. Not huge bills; those he would have put on his company card, when he was entertaining clients. Bills just the right size for a nice little dinner for two.

We did not have much money. We’d stretched ourselves financially, moving here, doing up the house. I couldn’t bear that he was spending what little money we did have on some other
woman. We never went out. He never took me to restaurants any more, but then how could he? There were no restaurants around here. Last weekend at the hotel was the first time we’d spent money
on doing anything special together for ages, and even then when I met him at the station with my grand surprise all arranged he’d had the cheek to say, ‘Do you think we can afford
it?’

I sat on the floor of the den, howling out my rage. I scrunched up those credit card bills; I tore them apart. I wanted to be the one that my husband took to fancy restaurants in London. I
should have been the one. And I would have been once, but here I was, stuck out in this farce of a country dream on my own, night after godforsaken night, while David . . . wasn’t. The
unfairness was unbearable; it bore into me like a drill. He had one foot in this dream of ours – of mine – but the rest of him was still there in London, with somebody else.

Now what was I going to do?

I wished I’d never heard him on that phone; I wished I’d never seen the way his shoulders and his neck had tensed so almost imperceptibly, so guiltily, when he realized I was there.
I wished, now, that I didn’t
know
.

There is so much to be said for ignorance, for wilful blindness, for just chugging on, obliviously, with your head stuck firmly in the sand . . . but actually knowing changed all of that. How
could I talk with David now, how could I live with him, sleep with him, share my space with him? How could I wash his clothes, care for his children, be here?

He had betrayed me. He had rendered my whole life a sham.

I went to bed very early on Friday night, and pretended to be asleep when he got home. I didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to have to say, ‘How are you? How
was your day? And how did it go yesterday, with that meeting that ran on so late?’ I didn’t want to ask these ridiculous, false questions and hear his lies for answers. I didn’t
want to hear him sigh, and tell me how tough it was, all this commuting, all this crashing in London at his colleague’s flat. I didn’t want to hear him say that he
missed
us,
when he was away. I lay in bed with my eyes pinned shut when he came up,
burning
with anger. I heard him come in, and undress. I felt him creep underneath the duvet beside me. But I did
not move. I barely breathed. One word, one touch, and I would have ripped him to pieces. I would have ripped out his heart.

On Saturday I got up before David, and left him in bed still asleep. There was no riding lesson that day but I had errands to run; Ella needed new plimsolls for school, Sam
some new trainers and PE shorts. Things we should have got in the week, only I hadn’t been able to do anything useful with all these suspicions spiralling around in my head. But now that
David was home I wanted to be out. I didn’t want to be near him at all.

I drove the kids into town, but we shopped miserably, perfunctorily. They seemed to pick up on my mood and exacerbate it. And there were no plimsolls in Ella’s size in the school
outfitters, and of course there was nowhere else to try.

‘I need them for Monday,’ she wailed. ‘I’ve got to have them.’

‘Well you can’t have them if they haven’t got any,’ I said, too eaten up with my own worries to care about a pair of plimsolls.

‘I could try and order you a pair,’ the shop assistant said doubtfully. ‘But it will take a week or so.’

‘A week!’ Ella screeched. ‘What am I supposed to wear till then?’

‘You’ll have to wear your old ones,’ I said.

‘They’re too small,’ she wailed. ‘I’ll get blisters.’

And she carried on moaning, all morning. We trudged about, trying to get the rest of our things, and then trawled around the market to buy food.

‘Can’t I just go and meet Max?’ Sam said, but if he went off with Max I’d have to pick him up later from Max’s house, and that would mean seeing Melanie. And I
couldn’t face the sight of her, not right then.

‘No,’ I snapped. ‘I need you to help carry the stuff.’

‘You don’t normally need me,’ he muttered.

‘I do today.’

‘I could carry the stuff then go,’ he said.

And then Ella latched on. ‘I want to go and see Abbie,’ she said.

‘Not today.’

‘Why not?

‘Because we’ve still got things to get. And I’ve got too much to do.’

‘I haven’t,’ said Sam.

‘Well I have,’ I snapped. ‘And I haven’t got time to be ferrying you two back and forth. So no, not today.’

‘Just because
you’re
in a bad mood,’ Sam scowled, dragging his feet up the street behind me.

And so we went home. My stomach sank as I turned the car down the lane to our house, dread lodged heavily inside me. I tried to concentrate on the things I had to do: putting
the shopping away, getting the washing on, organizing lunch. But I resented all these chores now. David had put his clothes from the last couple of days in the laundry basket; I saw them in there
among our things and I wanted to throw them at him. How dare he come from fucking
her
– whoever she was – then bring me back his dirty clothes to wash? How dare he? I
didn’t even want to touch his clothes – I flicked them out of the way, flinging them on the kitchen floor, kicking them aside with my feet.

He wandered into the kitchen.

He sauntered over to the counter, and started cutting himself a slice of bread. ‘What are we having for lunch?’ he asked, as if all in the world was normal.

I could not speak. My face was tight, my teeth biting into my screwed-up mouth. My heart was thumping, angry, hard and slow.

He opened the fridge. ‘Got any ham?’ he said. I turned to look at him. He stood with his back to me as he searched through the contents of the fridge. He was wearing a blue polo
shirt and jeans. How relaxed he looked; how very ordinary in his Saturday clothes, his dark hair still damp from the shower. He prodded around at the food I had just bought, finding ham, finding
cheese.

‘What?’ he said, when he turned around and realized I was staring at him. He plonked the food down on the counter beside the sink, having to step across his strewn socks and pants in
the process. He looked down at the floor, saw those pants and socks and absently kicked them back in the direction of the washing machine and me.

And that did it.

‘Who is she?’ The words were out, thick and alien, my voice not my own.

He hesitated for just the merest fraction of a second, then carried on preparing his sandwich, his eyes on the task, as if hoping he hadn’t heard me.

‘
Who is she?
’ I shouted this time, so that no way could he pretend not to hear.

He flinched. I saw the colour flash into his cheeks. Slowly his hands stilled and he forced himself to look at me. He tried to smile. His eyes hovered on mine like beads on springs, flickering,
unable to hold. ‘Who is who?’ he said.

I slammed my hand down on the counter, so hard I felt like I’d smashed it. ‘Don’t insult me!’ I screeched, the palm of my hand, my fingers, singing with pain.

The colour rose further in his face, then faded right back out. He folded his arms across his chest defensively, and tilted his head to one side, eyes focused somewhere on the floor. I waited
for him to speak. I waited and waited. The house was silent but for the whir and click, whir and click of the washing machine going round and round.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘It doesn’t matter who she is,’ he said quietly.

‘It matters to me! And it obviously matters to you!’

‘Jane,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about this.’

‘Fine! Talk away!’

‘Calmly,’ he said.

‘
Calmly
?’

‘Jane, please.’ He looked at me now, spreading his arms, imploring me. ‘I didn’t want you to find out like this.’

‘You didn’t want me to find out at all!’

He sighed. He half closed his eyes, as if he was the one in pain here.

‘Who is she?’ I said again.

He bit down on his lip, sticking out his chin, while he considered whether to tell me or not. ‘Her name’s Diana,’ he said at last.