long we kissed for, lying there on a rug on the top of Primrose Hill, our bodies entwined, our hands everywhere, grasping, pulling, clutching. We didn’t remove our clothes and we didn’t have sex, yet it was still the single most erotic moment of my life. I couldn’t let go of James for more than a second without pulling him towards me again.
It grew darker and colder and I suggested we leave the park and go back to his.
James shook his head. ‘Let me put you in a taxi home instead.’
‘But—’
He pulled his coat tighter around my shoulders. ‘There’s time for that, Suzy. Plenty of time.’
I wait until Brian leaves for work before I go through his things. It’s nippy in the cloakroom, the tiled floor cold under my bare feet, the windowed walls damp with condensation but I don’t pause to grab a pair of socks from the radiator in the hall. Instead I thrust my hands into the pockets of Brian’s favourite jacket. The coat stand rocks violently as I move from pocket to pocket, pulling out the contents and dropping them to the floor in my haste to find evidence.
I’ve finished with the jacket and have just plunged both hands into the pockets of a hooded sweatshirt when there’s a loud CRASH from the kitchen.
I freeze.
My mind goes blank – turns off – as though a switch has been thrown in my brain and I’m as rigid as the coat stand I’m standing beside, breathing shallowly, listening, waiting. I know I should move. I should take my hands out of Brian’s fleece. I should kick the contents of his wax jacket into the corner of the room and hide the evidence that I am a terrible, mistrusting wife but I can’t.
My heart is beating so violently the sound seems to fill the room and, in an instant, I’m catapulted twenty years into the past. I’m twenty-three, living in North London and I’m crouching in the wardrobe, a backpack stuffed with clothes in my left hand, a set of keys I stole from someone else’s jacket, in my right. If I don’t breathe he won’t hear me. If I don’t breathe he won’t know that I’m about to …
‘Brian?’ The sense of déjà-vu falls away as the faintest scraping sound reaches my ears. ‘Brian, is that you?’
I frown, straining to make out anything other than the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of my heart, but the house has fallen silent again.
‘Brian?’
I jolt back to life, as though the switch in my brain has been flicked the other way, and I pull my hands out of his sweatshirt.
The hallway carpet is warm and plush under my feet as I inch forward, pausing every couple of seconds to listen, as I head towards the kitchen. The smell of bleach fills my nose and I realize one hand is covering my mouth, the scent of disinfectant still fresh on my fingers from cleaning the bathroom earlier. I pause again and try to slow my breathing. It is coming in small, sharp gasps, signalling a panic attack, but I am no longer afraid that my husband has come back to retrieve a forgotten briefcase or a lost house key. Instead I’m scared of—
‘Milly!’
I’m almost knocked off my feet as an enormous Golden Retriever bowls down the hallway and launches herself at me, front paws on my chest, wet tongue on my chin. Normally I’d chastise her for jumping up but I’m so relieved to see her I wrap my arms around her and rub the top of her big soft head. When her joyful licking gets too much I push her down.
‘How did you get out, naughty girl?’
Milly ‘smiles’ up at me, tendrils of drool dripping off her tongue. I’ve got a pretty good idea how she managed to escape.
Sure enough, when I reach the kitchen, the dog padding silently beside me, the door to the porch is open.
‘You’re supposed to stay in your bed until Mummy lets you out!’ I say, pointing at the pile of rugs and blankets where she sleeps at night. Milly’s ears prick up at the mention of the word ‘bed’ and her tail falls between her legs. ‘Did silly Daddy leave the door open on his way to work?’
I never thought I’d be the kind of woman who’d refer to herself and her husband as ‘Mummy and Daddy’ when speaking to a pet but Milly is as much a part of our family as Charlotte. She’s the sister we could never give her.
I shut Milly back in the porch, my heart twisting as she looks beseechingly at me with her big, brown eyes. It’s eight o’clock. We should be strolling through the park at the back of the house but I need to continue what I started. I need to get back to the cloakroom.
The contents of Brian’s pockets are where I left them – strewn around the base of the coat stand. I kneel down, wishing I’d grabbed a cushion from the living room as my knees click in protestation, and examine my spoils. There’s a handkerchief, white with an embroidered golfer in the corner, unused, folded neatly into a square (given to him by one of the children for Christmas), three paper tissues, used, a length of twine, the same type Brian uses to tie up the tomatoes in his allotment, a receipt from the local supermarket for £40 worth of petrol, a mint imperial, coated with fluff, a handful of loose change and a crumpled cinema ticket. My heart races as I touch it – then I read the title of the film and the date – and my pulse returns to normal. It’s for a comedy we went to see together. I hated it – found it rude, crude and slapstick – but Brian laughed like a drain.
And that’s it. Nothing strange. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing incriminating.
Just … Brian stuff.
I sweep his belongings into a pile with the side of my hand, then scoop them up and carefully distribute them amongst his pockets, making sure everything is returned to where I found it. Brian isn’t a fastidious man; he won’t know, or care, which pocket held the change and which the cinema ticket but I’m not taking any chances.
Maybe there is no evidence at all.
Charlotte didn’t squeeze my hand when I asked if her secret had anything to do with her father. She didn’t so much as twitch. I don’t know what I was thinking, imagining she might respond – or even asking the question in the first place. Actually I do. I was following up a hunch; a hunch that my husband was betraying me, again.
Six years ago Brian made a mistake – one that nearly destroyed not only our marriage, but his career too – he had an affair with a twenty-three-year-old Parliamentary intern. I raged, I shouted and I screamed. I stayed with my friend Jane for two nights. I would have stayed longer but I didn’t want Charlotte to suffer. It took a long time but eventually I forgave Brian. Why? Because the affair happened shortly after one of my ‘episodes’, because my family is more important to me than anything in the world and because, although Brian has many faults, he is a good man at heart.
A ‘good man at heart’ – it sounds like such a terribly twee reason to forgive someone their infidelity, doesn’t it? Perhaps it is. But it’s infinitely preferable to life with a bad man and, when Brian and I met, I knew all about that.
It was the summer of 1993 and we were both living in Athens. I was a TEFL teacher and he was a widower businessman chasing a big deal. The first time Brian said hello
