one. I think that it’s helping:
Question One: Did you know something was wrong before you found out?
Answer: No. (There is only a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response box. There is none that says ‘well, maybe, maybe just a little’.)
Question Two: Has your partner ever been unfaithful before in your or in previous relationships?
Answer: Yes. (The bastard.)
Question Three: Do you find yourself consumed with the physical betrayal?
Answer: Yes. (I can’t stop thinking about Adam being inside another woman.)
Question Four: Are you finding it difficult to cope with your anger?
Answer: Yes.
Question Five: Do you believe your marriage can be saved?
Shit … I surf again and find lots and lots of positive mantras, the sort that Caroline wants me to embrace. I send them to my printer upstairs. Tomorrow, I will place them randomly all over the house, making sure to use Sellotape rather than Blu-tack, just because I can and because I know it would piss him off. I then discover an Internet forum site that has live web-chats for women who have been cheated on.
Amy from Hull is online.
‘Sometimes I just want to call him up and say, “Okay, point proved. Come on home now.” Then, other times I want to smash his face in,’ she says.
Patsy from Seattle replies.
‘Oh, I get that one! My best friend was so angry with her ex that she posted frozen prawns to him every day for a week when she knew he was away. Even though my ex is awful, I don’t think I’d have the nerve.’
I laugh out loud. ‘Hi,’ I type. ‘My name is Beth and I’m almost an alcoholic.’ I hope they get the irony and don’t really think I’m an alcoholic. I touch my wine glass, which is almost empty, and put it to one side. In reality, I think I am drinking too much, beginning to rely on that glass of wine, self-medicating.
‘Hi Beth, LOL and welcome! What’s your story?’ Sally from Manchester … Shit. Where do I begin?
‘My husband cheated on me with a younger woman. He is immature and selfish and I am so angry with him that although I don’t want to smash his face in, I think I quite like the prawn idea.’ I hit the return button.
‘Is she beautiful?’ Sally asks. ‘My husband is currently shagging an ex-Miss Great Britain,’ she says. ‘As I’m twenty pounds overweight from giving birth to his one son-and-heir six months ago, I find this fact harder to take than the fact that he has cheated. He cheated on me with a younger, solvent, skinny woman with a flat, scar-free stomach and pert tits.’
‘Chin up Sally.’ Briana from Queens … ‘Mine left me for a man. Sorry for appearing to downgrade your pain, but I think I’d prefer an ex-beauty queen to another man.’
Christ. It’s overwhelming. I take a break and make a cup of tea before resuming my position on the sofa, where I read a few more tales of woe before finally deciding to be more proactive. Having spent an entire episode of CSI on the worldwide web of betrayal, I am armed and dangerous. I email Adam.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
30 September 2014 21:42 PM
To: ahall@hall&fryuk.net
Subject: You
I don’t want to talk to you, but I do want to let you know how I feel. The dictionary says that monogamy is ‘a state of being paired with a single mate’. So, Adam, a question: What do you have in common with gibbon apes, grey wolves, swans, barn owls, beavers, black vultures, whales and termites?
Answer: Absolutely nothing. They all mate for life. You, on the other hand, are a specimen beneath the level of a termite. How does that make you feel? Proud of yourself?
Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I’d like you to stay away from me.
Beth
PS Meg said you were mugged. I’m trying to be sympathetic but sort of feel it may be some karmic force at work. Meg assures me you’re well and completely unaffected by what happened and knowing this has allowed me to send this email. I mean what I say Adam, I want nothing to do with you any more.
After I press the send button, I make my way to the garage to do some left-handed damage to the punchbag.
I’m sipping my first coffee of the day, sitting at the tiny wrought-iron bistro table on Ben’s balcony. Though the noise of the street below is sometimes intrusive, today I find it a positive distraction from the noise in my head. I have to go to work, but I want to crawl back into bed.
Though, if I do, the nightmares will be back. Dreams of my parents when they were alive, dreams of Beth and I when we were young … It seems my brain simply doesn’t want to sleep. It seems my brain is in frightening overdrive as soon as my head nears a pillow. Last night, my mother was shouting at me about Ben’s broken guitar, telling me that I was responsible. Then she burst into song. It was like something from The Sound of Music. Then Beth called her a termite. I asked her if she meant me. Isn’t it me who’s the termite? Just before I woke, Beth morphed into an enormous insect and bit my mother’s head off. Completely screwed. My head is completely screwed.
In the kitchen, I munch on a week-old croissant that I find in the bread bin. It tastes stale but the cupboards are bare. I’ve never really had to consider food shopping before. Beth always took care of it and the cooking. Briefly I wonder how she is, if she’s ready to talk.
The email from her telling me she wants nothing to do with me, the one that is probably the root cause of my nightmares, is now a week old. I was tempted, so tempted to tell her to sod off and pay for everything if she’s so goddamned independent, but I didn’t. I slam the plate and coffee cup into the sink, head to the bathroom to brush my teeth. My head is banging. I touch the back of it, run my fingers over the scar Harold gave me. It still feels bruised and sore. I root through the tiny medicine box that Beth brought up from the house; there are plasters, antiseptic lotion, some loose gauze but no paracetamol. In need of some form of analgesic, I stare at my mirror image and am horrified to see it start to cry.
Sitting on the edge of the bath, my tears fall. I’m painfully aware that the last time I cried was twenty-two years earlier when my parents died together. I held onto Ben at the graveside and knew our lives would never be the same.
‘Big boys don’t cry, Adam.’
My head hurts more when I shake the memory of one of my mother’s favourite mantras from my head. I don’t know what Beth would do now – possibly magic up some pain relief from a pocket somewhere – but I do know she’d fix this, just like she fixed me then, when she walked into my life a year later. And I can’t ask her because she’s not talking to me, has told me to stay away from her and would probably rather I curled up and died. A fate I possibly deserve.
I
