Mark and his woman.
She wished she knew if he was with the blonde tonight, or if he was genuinely having dinner with his boss. Her eye fell on the telephone and she jumped up, picked up the telephone book which lay beside it, and began flicking through the pages. She found Jacqui Farrar’s name quite quickly, stared at the number, hesitated, then on an impulse dialled it.
The phone rang and rang; she was about to hang up when the ringing stopped and a low, husky voice slurred, ‘Yes?’
Sancha couldn’t think what to say.
‘Hello? This is Jacqui Farrar,’ the voice at the other end said.
Sancha was still silent, wanting to hang up but transfixed, listening to the voice of this woman who might be her husband’s mistress.
‘Hello? Hello?’ the other woman said, and then, in the background a man’s voice spoke.
‘Is there anyone on the line? Can you hear breathing? Here, give me the phone. Those pests make me sick. I’ll get rid of him for you.’
It was Mark’s voice. Sancha’s heart hurt as if a giant hand were squeezing all the life-blood out of it.
A second later he was snarling in her ear. ‘Look, you creep, get off this line and don’t—’
Sancha put the phone down and stood there, eyes closed, trembling. It was all true. He was there, now, with Jacqui Farrar. Had they already made love, or were they going to?
No, she couldn’t bear to think about it.
She turned off the electric fire and the lights, closed all the doors, going through her nightly routine with the dull plodding of a robot, moving heavily, not seeing anything around her because her mind was so possessed with unbearable images. She wished she could shut them all off, like the television; she wished she could stop the pictures coming, but she was helpless in the grip of jealousy and pain.
She would never sleep tonight, but tomorrow she would have to go through the usual round of duties-taking care of the children, doing the housework, the shopping, the cooking. Well, that would be easier than sitting around with nothing to do but brood. She would try to keep busy, try not to have time to think.
She was still awake when Mark got home. She heard the car purr slowly up the drive into the garage, then a few minutes later the front door opened and closed quietly. Sancha sat up on one elbow and looked at the green glow of the alarm clock—it was nearly one in the morning. He had been with that woman all this time.
She lay down again, staring up at the ceiling, listening to Mark moving about downstairs. The fridge door opened and shut; he was probably getting himself a glass of iced water to drink if he woke up in the night.
He began coming upstairs. She would know his footsteps if she were dead, and knew which stair he stood on by the muted creaking. He was trying not to wake her. He didn’t want her to know he was coming home at that hour. He didn’t want to answer any questions about where he had been, what he had been doing until this time of night.
He was trying to get away with it, betraying her and their marriage but unwilling to pay the price, face the consequences.
Well, he was going to have to! She was going to take Zoe’s advice and confront him, tell him she knew and he could stop lying. Either he stopped seeing his girlfriend or their marriage was over.
Holding her breath, she waited for him to open their bedroom door and come into the room, but he didn’t. He walked on past and went into the little spare bedroom at the end of the corridor.
It was like a blow in the face. He wasn’t even going to share her room tonight—maybe not any other night!
Of course, he had slept in the spare room before—when she’d first come home from hospital with Flora he had slept elsewhere because of the constant interruption during the night, when the new baby woke up yelling for food or attention. But that had only been for the first couple of weeks. When the new twin beds had been delivered Mark had rejoined her in this room.
Rage suddenly exploded in Sancha’s head. She jumped out of bed and ran down the corridor, bursting into the spare room just as Mark was getting into bed.
He was naked. The angry, accusing words froze on Sancha’s lips. She hadn’t seen him naked for months. When you had children you didn’t wander about without any clothes on, and they hadn’t been making love. Now her heart began to race, and her ears were deafened with the sound of her own blood rushing round her body.
She couldn’t take her eyes off that powerful, lean body; he was intensely masculine, with a muscled width of shoulder and deep chest, dark, rough hair curling down towards the strong thighs and long legs.
Her mouth went dry. She had not felt this intense desire for so long she almost didn’t know what was happening to her. Heat began to burn deep inside her; she could scarcely breathe.
‘Did I wake you up? Sorry, I tried to be very quiet,’ Mark said curtly, looking away with that frown of irritation, and slid between the sheets, pulling them up to his neck as if to hide his nakedness from her, as if he disliked having her look at him.
She swallowed, fighting a longing to go over and touch him, run her hand down over that strong male body; she would have given anything to get into bed with him and caress him but she didn’t dare risk a rejection. ‘Why are you sleeping in here?’
‘So I shouldn’t wake you, obviously,’ he said, sardonic and offhand. He wasn’t even looking at her now. He had his eyes fixed on a space beside her. She realised he did not want to see her; her presence in the room was an embarrassment to him. There was a trace of dark red along his cheekbones and his jawline was tightly clenched.
‘I am awake now,’ she said fiercely, the pain of his indifference stabbing at her. ‘Why were you so late? Where were you tonight, Mark?’
He snapped, ‘I told you. Having dinner with my boss.’ Then he carefully yawned, not a very convincing performance. His face and body were too tense to be relaxed enough for sleep. ‘Look, I’m tired—we’ll talk in the morning. I might as well sleep here tonight, now I’m in bed.’ He leaned over and switched off his bedside lamp. ‘Goodnight, Sancha.’
Angry words seethed inside Sancha’s head, almost came out of her in a hot gush, but the habit of years took over. Since the birth of her first child she had learned to take second place, to accept the way things were, not to fight the inevitable. Mothers had to; the self had to step back for a while, let the child take precedence over any personal needs or desires. She wanted to scream at Mark, but she forced her rage down, drew breath, very quietly closed the door—although she wanted to slam it, she mustn’t wake the children—and walked back along the landing somehow. She wasn’t sure how she kept one foot moving in front of the other.
In the bedroom she sank down on her bed, shaking so much she felt as if she were falling to bits. The scream was trapped in her throat; she felt it trying to come out, put her balled fist into her mouth to silence it and bit down on her knuckles. Bit until she felt the saltness of her own blood seep into her mouth.
How dared he? How dared he talk to her in that brusque voice, look at her with such cold, remote eyes? When he was lying to her, betraying her with another woman? Well, he needn’t think he was getting away with it. She knew what he was up to—it was some sort of male power game. Typical of them, utterly typical—shifting the blame,
