The Third Wife (31 page)

‘But Maya didn’t know that.’

‘I think she did,’ said Abby gently. ‘I think the way she was feeling that night was about much more than those Skype messages. I think it was a combination of all sorts of things. Guilt mainly. Fear.’

‘Fear of what?’

Abby sighed. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, tugged down the skirt of her dress. ‘The reason she was drinking that night …’ She paused. ‘The reason she got so drunk. It wasn’t because of the Skype messages. Or the emails. It was because she was planning on – urgh, I’m really sorry, Adrian. But she was planning on leaving you. That night.’

Adrian rocked back in his chair with the power of her words.

‘That’s why she was crying. That’s why she kept putting it off and putting it off. She told me that’s where she was going. After our conversation. She was so filled with resolve. I was so sure she was going to do it.’

‘So, she didn’t seem suicidal? She didn’t seem like she wanted to die?’

‘No! She was emotional. She was scared. She was sad. She was nervous. She was very, very drunk. But not suicidal. Not at all.’

‘So, then, why?’ he said. ‘Why did she do it?’

Abby sighed. ‘I truly think it was an accident,’ she said. ‘Honestly. A split-second thing. You know. Happens to everyone. One of those moments where if you’d stepped off the kerb a second later you’d have been run over, if you’d changed lanes you’d have gone straight into that car in your blind spot, if you’d waited for the next train you’d have been blown up by a bomb. That kind of thing. I don’t think she wanted to die. I think she just wanted to make everything better. Give you back to your family.’

They sat in silence for a moment. Adrian rubbed and rubbed at the twenty-four-hour stubble on his chin until he became aware of the repetitiveness of the gesture and dropped his hand into his lap.

‘What would you have done?’ Abby asked. ‘If she’d made it home? If she’d told you she was leaving?’

Adrian didn’t answer for a few seconds. His thoughts were spinning. ‘I think she’d already tried to do it,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘Before. She tried to leave me before. And I didn’t hear it. I didn’t let her say it.’

Abby stared at him, kindly.

‘She told me she didn’t think it was working. Us. I told myself she’d only said it because she was drunk, because she’d been out with her single friend, because she was sad about not having a baby. Anything but accept what she was trying to say. I persuaded myself that if I just ignored it, it would go away. And it did. I thought it had worked …’

‘She did love you, you know. But she was very cross with you.’

‘She was?’

‘Yes. She told me that you’d misled her. That you’d let her believe she could make everyone happy. She said you’d “mis-sold” your life to her.’

Adrian was about to jump to his own defence but stopped. First of all he could not reasonably shoot the messenger, and secondly she was right. He had given Maya entirely the wrong impression of his home life. Possibly not deliberately. But certainly subconsciously.

‘She also—’ Abby stopped abruptly. She closed her mouth and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘nothing.’

‘No,’ said Adrian, greedy for more insights, however unpalatable they might be. ‘Please say it.’

‘She was, at least she
told
me she was, in love with somebody else. Someone you know.’

‘She was having an affair! Oh my God. Who with? Was it a teacher? From the school?’

‘No. No. Not that. No. It was your son.’

Adrian closed his eyes.
His son
. Of course.

‘But nothing ever happened. No affair. Just feelings.’

‘Feelings?’

‘Yes. Mutual feelings. I wasn’t going to tell you, but now we’re here, it seems pointless not to get it all out there.’

‘And what – my God! Was she planning on
being
with him? Once I was out of the picture?’

‘No,’ said Abby quietly. ‘No. Far from it. She just wanted to leave you all to heal. To be a family. She just wanted to be out of it all. As if it had never happened. She was going to get a flat with her friend.’

‘Sara?’

‘I can’t remember. Her friend who was going to do teacher training. She had it all planned.’

‘Christ.’ Adrian hit the wooden table with the heels of his hands. The glasses clattered together. Where had he been? Where on earth had he been? His son in love with his wife. His children sending poisonous emails. His wife desperate to leave him and talking to strangers in bars. Everyone so angry and unhappy. And where had he been? Sitting cross-legged in the middle of this toxic tornado of human emotions humming la la la with his hands over his ears?

‘Look,’ he said to Abby, ‘is there more? It’s just … I have to go. They’re all waiting for me.’

‘No,’ said Abby. ‘There’s no more. Just that. Except for something she told me. She said it was the thing that really made her mind up for her. Something your little skater girl said that day. About missing you in the mornings. In the kitchen. Asking her about her dreams.’

Adrian looked at Abby for a moment, searching for the memory. And then there it was. Suddenly, like a flashbulb in his head. The dark, unstirring basement, the drip and gurgle of the coffee machine, the footsteps down the wooden steps and his girl, standing there in her pyjamas, dirty-blond hair in disarray, sometimes with a soft toy under her arm. Just the two of them in the morning gloom. The sound of Pearl’s spoon against the china bowl, the swing of her bare feet under the kitchen counter. His eyes upon her, asking her what she’d dreamed about, only half listening to her reply, but drowning sweetly in the seawaters of his daughter’s voice. Every morning, of every day. How could he have forgotten? And how could he have taken himself away from that?

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I really need to go now. I really need to be with my family. Right now. But thank you. So much.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Abby, half rising to her feet. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. In March. I just … you were so raw. I couldn’t do it.’

‘No,’ said Adrian. ‘I understand. I needed to be ready to hear it. I wouldn’t have been ready then. I wasn’t ready then.’ He stopped and looked at the door of the pub. ‘She was a lovely person, wasn’t she?’

‘I only knew her for an hour,’ she replied softly. ‘But yes. She seemed a lovely person. Not the sort of person to tear a family apart.’

‘
She
wasn’t the sort of person to tear a family apart,’ said Adrian sadly. ‘
I
was.’

He took the tube to the Islington house. He couldn’t face the thought of a cab journey, of being trapped in a vehicle with someone wanting to talk about the bloody Olympics for twenty minutes. The Piccadilly Line was August quiet and he found a seat without any trouble. He sat, his chin pressed into his chest, his feet planted solidly on the floor, his head filled with it all. Not a suicide, after all. Not an inexplicable act of inner turmoil unrelated to himself. Instead, if Abby’s theory was to be believed, a terrible misstep
entirely
related to himself. To himself and to his family.

Lovely, soft, pliable Maya.

If only she’d been harder. She would have dealt with the issue of the emails before it had got under her skin; she would have come home from Caroline’s house that night filled with righteous anger about the behaviour of his children and she would have thrown her few things into a bag and gone and made a life for herself, a nice flat-share with Sara, a nice boyfriend eventually, who would have married her and made a baby with her without anyone paying a price.

But instead she’d lost her nerve, walked the streets of late-night London with a belly full of vodka rather than come home to do what she needed to do. And then there, that blighted kerbstone on Charing Cross Road where the bloodstains had long since faded away, she’d slipped from the pavement, either by accident or by design, but certainly without properly thinking about what she was doing.

He thought about Abby’s question earlier in the pub. What
would
he have done if Maya hadn’t fallen from the kerb, if she had made it home, drunk and disordered, and told Adrian she was leaving? How would he have reacted? And he knew the answer, well and good. He would have talked her round. He would have pooh-poohed all of her objections; he would have convinced her to stay. And if she’d told him about the emails? About the Skype chat? About the disgraceful way she’d been treated by his own daughter? He would still have found a way to make her believe that it could all be OK. And what, he wondered, would he have said if she’d told him about Luke? About their platonic affair of the heart?

He sighed and tipped up his head. Even then, he knew, even then he’d have thrown platitudes at her, told her that everything was going to be fine.

And why? Why would he have thrown a smokescreen over everything? Why would he have ignored the alarm bells, the signs of impending doom? Why would he not have said,
My God, Maya, what a terrible, terrible mess this all is, and how are we going to fix it?

Because there was nowhere else for him to go. There had always been somewhere for Adrian to go before. The next woman. The next house. The next family. The next chapter. But he was only halfway through the book of Maya and himself. And he wasn’t prepared to put it down until he’d finished it. Maya didn’t get to choose when it was over. No woman had ever got to choose when it was over with him.

He thought again of Pearl’s bare feet swinging beneath the kitchen counter. And then he thought of the Sunday morning, after he’d gone. He’d woken up in bed with Maya in their new flat and he’d turned to her and smiled and said, ‘The rest of our lives has officially begun.’ He had not thought of Pearl padding down the stairs in her pyjamas; he had not pictured her walking into a dark empty kitchen with nobody there to ask her about her dreams. Instead he had pressed his face into Maya’s soft flame-red hair and breathed in her fresh, new smell, told her again and again how happy they would be, how wonderful this new chapter would be, how everyone would love her, how she’d made his life complete.

He’d expected everyone to be happy, just because he was.

Who the hell did he think he was?

Did he think he was
God
?

And Cat? And Luke? He’d left them too, maybe not in an empty kitchen, but what other tender spot had he ripped himself away from? What other horrible gaping hole had he left in their worlds? Why had he never asked? Why had they never told him?

‘You’re just a child, Adrian.’

That’s what Caroline had said to him more than once during the process of their break- up.

‘You’re just a little boy.’

‘You exist only in the world according to you.’

‘You think the rules are for other people.’

‘You think anyone who tells you the truth is being mean.’

‘You have this innate belief in your own fairy-tale narrative.’

Caroline had said many things to him over those months, in that deep, calm voice of hers. He had not listened to a word of it. Instead he had stroked Maya’s hair and held Maya’s hand and talked to Maya about the baby they would have and rushed home from work to Maya, and met Maya at cinemas and pubs and dreamed about the bright blue future with Maya. Everything else had been aural interference.

He’d thought himself so very reasonable. He’d given Caroline the house. He’d let her choose the terms of their shared custody. He’d carried on paying the bills for over a year without any fuss. He hadn’t once raised his voice or thrown blame at anyone but himself. He had conducted himself impeccably.

But really, what was impeccable about leaving your children and their mother because you liked another girl better?

He changed trains at King’s Cross on to the Northern Line towards Angel. In the corners of his consciousness Pearl’s pale bare feet swung back and forth and back and forth with every footstep he took.

He climbed on to another half-empty train and took another empty seat. His thoughts turned to Caroline and her half-baked ideas about having a baby with Paul Wilson. He tried to imagine it. He tried to imagine there being a child in the world who was inextricably bound to him but was not his. Another face at the Christmas dinner table, another ‘Daddy’. The thought made him cross. Then he thought of Pearl coming down for her breakfast in her pyjamas and Paul Wilson sitting in the half-light, Paul Wilson asking her about her dreams, Paul Wilson maybe holding a baby in his arms who would be Pearl’s new baby brother or sister, and he felt a red heat of injustice spread through his entire anatomy.

Yet he’d expected his family to be happy with his plans to do exactly the same. He’d expected them to embrace Maya and their theoretical child. He’d assumed that everyone would go with the flow, get on with their lives, unscathed.

One more person to love
.

The train pulled into Angel. He stumbled on to the platform and made his way up the soaring escalators towards Upper Street. He started to run as he got closer to the house. The air was humid and grey and his shirt stuck to his skin with sweat. His heart was racing. He shouted into his phone as he ran, to Caroline, ‘I’m on my way. I’ll be there in five minutes. Don’t let Otis go to bed. Don’t let anyone go to bed.’

He took the steps up to the front door two at a time and hit the doorbell urgently. Luke opened the door and stood back to let him pass. ‘Everyone downstairs?’ he asked.

Luke nodded and Adrian ran down the stairs, nearly breaking his neck over the two dogs as they ran towards him to find out who was at the door. He found his family in the kitchen. Caroline was standing over the hob, stirring hot chocolate in a pan. Cat and Pearl sat side by side on the barstools at the counter and Otis was on the sofa next to Beau who was fast asleep in his clothes. Luke came from behind Adrian and stood next to Cat.

He looked at them all, a hundred things he wanted to say. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He put his hand against his racing heart, feeling the sweat cooling on his shirt. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said again.

And then, quite unexpectedly, he began to cry.