Out of the Blue (14 page)

“I…I…”

“Don’t deny it,” I said contemptuously.

“I…OK,” he said. “OK, I admit it. She’s very attractive. She’s single. She fancies me. And yes, I fancied
her
.”

“She’s got short blond hair,” I said suddenly. It had come to me in a flash. What the French call an
éclaircissement
. Andie was that unknown blonde photographed with Peter in Quaglino’s. “She’s got short blond hair,” I said again.

“Yes,” he said. “She has. But how the hell do you know?”

“Because…” Oh God, I couldn’t tell him. “Because… Oh, female intuition,” I explained. “I feel sick,” I announced as I fiddled with my pudding spoon. “You’ve had an affair. How
could
you?”

“I’ll tell you how,” he said, and by now his voice was rising, as well. “Because you’d accused me of having one, and then the opportunity was there and I thought damn it, why not go ahead and do it!” I was aware by now that we were beginning to attract strange looks.

“Any dessert?” enquired the waiter. “And, er, I’d be grateful sir and madam if you could keep your voices down.”

“No,” I said, “I will not keep my voice down, because my husband has just been unfaithful!” I was aware of eyes swivelling in our direction, and of the sound of breath being sharply inhaled.

“Well, madam,” said the waiter, “I just feel that…”

“I don’t care what you feel!” I hissed. “We are having marital difficulties here.” By now all conversation in the restaurant had stopped and everyone was staring, but I couldn’t have cared less. “After fifteen years of marriage,” I informed the waiter, “my husband tells me that he’s strayed.”

“—poor woman,” I heard someone say.

“—isn’t she the weather girl on that morning TV show?”

“—faithful for fifteen years? The man must be a saint.”

“—of course
you
were unfaithful after five.”

“—no need to bring that up!”

“Now madam,” said the waiter, “I am very sorry that you have this, er, problem.”

“It’s not a problem,” I corrected him, “it’s a crisis.”

“And actually I’m divorced myself.”

“Oh, well, I’m sorry.”

“My wife left me.”

“Oh, bad luck,” said Peter.

“So although I am sympathetic, I must nevertheless ask you to keep your voices down.”

“Yes, Faith,” Peter whispered hoarsely. “Please would you keep it down!”

“That’s right, keep it down,” I said with a hollow laugh. “Don’t rock the boat. Be a big girl. Don’t make a fuss. Don’t cry. And above all, above all—don’t mind. Well, I
do
mind!” I wailed. “I mind terribly. How
could
you, Peter?” I added, aware that the table had begun to blur.

“Yes, how could you?” said a woman at the next table.

“How could I?” repeated Peter, turning in his seat. “I’ve already explained how I could. One, I had the opportunity, and two, I’d had so much stress, three, I’d had too much to drink, four, I was put under pressure and five, my wife had driven me mad with her horrible—and quite unfounded—suspicions.”

“They
weren’t
unfounded,” I said as I pressed a tissue to my eyes.

“They were then!” he shot back.

“I don’t blame him!” said a man to our left.

“Don’t take sides, Rodney.”

“I think she brought it on herself.”

“What an idiot,” said someone else.

“Don’t you ever do that to me, Henry.”

“Well, what about you?”

“What do you mean, what about me?”

“I’ve seen the way you look at Torquil.”

“Torquil? Don’t make me laugh!”

“My wife left me for our doctor,” said the waiter.

“Oh dear,” said Peter. “What a betrayal of trust.”

“Look,” I said to the waiter, “I’m
very
sorry about your divorce. But to be perfectly honest it has absolutely nothing to do with us. Oh God,” I wailed, “this is terrible! I just don’t know what to
do
.”

“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill!” said a man in a dark grey suit.

“Take him to the cleaners,” said his wife.

“Get yourselves some counseling!” said a man three tables to our right.

“Get yourselves a life, more like!”

“Infidelity isn’t the end of the world, I heard.”

“Yes, people can forgive and forget.”

“Forgive and forget?” I echoed, aware of the tang of tears in my mouth. “Forgive and forget? No! Oh Peter,” I wept as I reached for my bag. “Oh Peter, I was
so,
so
happy tonight—but now everything’s ruined.”

* * *

“I don’t like to crow,” said Lily on Saturday morning. “I really
don’t
like to crow, but I was right!”

“Yes,” I croaked, “you were.” We were side by side on leather benches, in a clinic in Knightsbridge, covered in thick, green slime. While we lay there, naked but for a pair of voluminous paper knickers, a white-coated therapist slapped some more bottle-green paste on our legs. Then she wrapped us in heated blankets and dimmed the overhead lights.

“Now, ladies,” she said pleasantly, “I’m going to leave you for twenty minutes, to let the marine algae get to work, purifying your system, toning your skin and eliminating the toxins from the body.” I found myself wishing it could eliminate the toxins from my mind. “I’d like you to relax,” she crooned, “close your eyes, and concentrate on having lovely, serene thoughts.”

“What a bastard!” Lily said viciously as the door closed and we could talk. “How could he
do
that to you!”

“I don’t know,” I whispered as I stared at the ceiling. “All I know is, it hurts.” The initial shock of Peter’s confession had worn off, leaving a searing pain.

“When we first discussed all this,” Lily went on, “I never thought for a
second
it might be true. I just wanted you to be a little more on your guard, darling, because you’re such a trusting soul.”

“Not any more.”

“But at the same time,” she went on, “I began to be aware that things simply didn’t add up. But now they do. My God, this stuff’s fishy,” she added, wrinkling her nose. “We’re going to smell like Billingsgate. Headhunter!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Headhunter! I ask you! She was after more than his head.”

“Well, she seems to have got it,” I said.

“And
that’s
why Peter sent you those fabulous roses on the fourteenth.”

“I’ve thrown them away,” I wept.

“They weren’t really Valentine’s flowers,” she went on, “they were because he felt guilty about his fling.”

“Oh well,” I went on with a bitter sigh, “you’ve got a good interview with me after all. It’s a nightmare,” I groaned, feeling my throat constrict. “How I wish I could turn the clock back.”

“You can’t,” said Lily briskly. “It’s too serious for that. This is the kind of thing that breaks people up.” I twisted my head sideways and looked at her.

“But I don’t want to break up,” I whispered. “I’m not thinking that far ahead.”

“Faith, darling, I think you should. Because the sad fact is that Peter’s infidelity is grievous—you’ll never forget it.” I felt physically sick when she said that. “And of course it would only happen again.”

“Would it?” I said. “I mean, I’m not letting him off the hook, Lily, but maybe it
was
just one slip. I mean, he has been under a lot of stress lately.”

“Don’t be such an idiot, Faith!” she said. “Infidelity is a slippery slope. Once men stray, that’s it. They can behave themselves for a while,” she went on, “but then they resent being kept on a rope. Oh yes,” she went on authoritatively, “the first affair is always the beginning of the end. Now, do you have a good lawyer?”

“Well, our family solicitor, Karen. But Lily, the cost of a divorce would break us.”

“Darling,” she went on patiently, as though explaining something to a dim-witted child, “Peter’s got this wonderful new job, so he can afford it.”

“But he’s not going to be rich,” I said. “He’ll simply be earning more than he was before. Look, I’m not making any decisions yet about getting divorced,” I said. “All I know is that I’m not ready to forgive.”

“How have things been at home?” she enquired.

“We’re avoiding each other,” I sighed. “I’ve hardly seen him since Valentine’s Day. Luckily the kids aren’t around this weekend because they’ve got things on at school. Oh God, Lily,” I said as my eyes filled again. “I just don’t know what to do.”

“Faith,” said Lily. “How long have we known each other?”

“Twenty-five years.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Since we were nine. So I think I know you better than anyone else. I know you better even than Peter. And I really believe that this will turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“How?” I croaked.

“Because what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” she replied. She reached out and squeezed my hand and gave me a comforting smile. “This will strengthen you, Faith. This will be the means by which you finally break out of your suburban shell and become a strong, independent woman at last. I popped into Harvey Nicks, by the way, and got you some amethyst power beads to give you courage.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“And I phoned the Samaritans, too.”

“You did what?”

“I phoned the Samaritans last night and pretended to be you. Now, don’t worry,” she said, catching my appalled expression. “I didn’t give them your name. I just said my husband had admitted to an affair and I talked about the pain, the humiliation and the fear etc etc. And they started blathering on about counseling and mediation and reconciliation and all that guff, but everyone knows it’s a complete waste of time.”

“Is it?” I said faintly.

“Yes, of course it is. Because infidelity is ineradicable. It does
irreparable
harm. You can try and glue the pieces of your marriage back together, but the fact is you’ll always see the joins.”

“All right, ladies?” The therapist had returned. We changed the subject while she removed our blankets; then we showered off the green slime. And I was just getting dressed when Lily suddenly said, “I think my colon could do with a quick clean. How about yours, Faith?”

“What?”

“Colonic irrigation,” she said. “Fancy it?”

“No thanks,” I said. The thought of having my backside dyno-rodded was more than I could bear.

“I swear by it,” she said happily. “I like to be clean inside
and
out. If it was good enough for the Ancient Egyptians, it’s good enough for me. Give me forty-five minutes for a quick sloosh and then we’ll go to lunch.”

I sat outside in the waiting room, trying not to imagine Lily lying on the table with a hosepipe up her bum, and attempting to ignore the voices filtering through the door.

“Ooh, Miss Jago,” I heard the therapist say, “you really should chew your food more—I’ve just seen an olive go by!”

To distract myself from visualising the contents of Lily’s colon, I flicked through the magazines. A huge range was laid out on the low glass table like a deck of cards. There was
Moi!
and
Tatler
and
Marie Claire,
and a selection of cheaper magazines as well. To be honest, I prefer the more downmarket titles. The models aren’t quite so depressingly gorgeous, and they have more competitions, too. So I flicked through
Woman’s Own
and
Woman’s Weekly,
then I picked up
Bella,
That’s Life
and
Best
. Then my eye caught the cover of
Chat
magazine, and I caught my breath. I stared at the provocative headline, aware of a small voice whispering in my head. Then, almost involuntarily, my hand reached out and picked it up. “WIN A DIVORCE!” it said.

March

When you get married you say “I do”. Now I find myself constantly saying,
what
do I do? I repeat it over and over, like a mantra, in the hope that enlightenment will come.

“Do nothing,” said our friendly family solicitor, Karen. She had been sitting there, in her office, scribbling notes on a pad while I tearfully told her the story. “My advice is to do absolutely nothing,” she said again.

“Nothing?” I repeated.

“Nothing,” she confirmed. “Because you haven’t had enough time to reflect.”

“But it hurts,” I said. I tapped my chest with my left hand. “It’s as though there’s this open wound. Here. Right here. Oh God, Karen, I’m in such
pain
.”

“Which is all the more reason to wait.”

“I can hardly function,” I croaked. “All I know is that something terribly serious has happened.”

“Well, infidelity
is
serious,” she said, handing me a tissue. “So you must let the emotional shock subside before you decide on any course of action.”

“I feel so
angry,
” I said. “So humiliated.”

“Well, you’re likely to feel considerably more angry and more humiliated if you go ahead and get divorced. Divorce is horrible,” she carried on simply. “It’s painful, humiliating, messy and extremely expensive. For some people it can be a catastrophe, emotionally and financially, from which they never fully recover. It’s only two weeks since Peter’s confession,” she added. “You ought to give yourself more time.”

“I just don’t know how I can…
be,
with Peter again,” I wept. “I can’t bear the thought of him having slept with another woman. I feel my future is lying in splinters.”

“Faith,” said Karen gently, “you don’t yet know
what
your future holds. So I say again, as I say to all my clients, don’t do anything rash. Especially as you have kids. But if, after long and careful consideration, you do decide to go ahead,” she went on, “then, yes, you can start proceedings. But you have to be absolutely certain that you really want a divorce,” she added seriously, “and that you aren’t just using divorce to punish Peter. Because once the wheels are set in motion, Faith, it’s very, very hard to go back. So please wait,” she repeated as I stood up to leave.

“Okay,” I sighed, “I will.” I went outside and untied Graham, who had been sitting there looking dejected in the hope that someone would give him something to eat. But when he saw me he leaped up, radioactive with excitement, and emitted a joyful bark. And seeing not just Graham’s tail, but his entire rear end wagging with delight, lifted my spirits a little.

“Hello darling,” I said. “Did you miss me?”

“Woof!”

“You love me, don’t you?”

“
Woof!
”

As we walked home in the bright spring sunshine, Graham bouncing along by my side, I thought hard about what Karen had said. I mentally reviewed my marriage, year by year, and remembered how happy Peter and I had been. And I thought of it all coming to an end, and of how devastating this would be. I had a sudden vision of the children and me, standing on the pavement outside the house with our suitcases and carrier bags. “Divorce can be a catastrophe,” Karen had warned. “Emotionally and financially…never fully recover…very, very hard to go back.” At this, a tiny shiver convulsed my frame.

“Karen’s right,” I said to Graham as we entered the park. I bent down and unclipped his lead. “She’s absolutely right,” I repeated as he shot away like a flying rug. He came back thirty seconds later with a red Frisbee in his mouth.

“Hey!” I heard in the distance. “That’s ours!”

“Graham,” I admonished him gently, “thou shalt not steal. Would you kindly take this back?” As he sped away I walked under an avenue of plane trees and looked at the primulas and the late crocuses, their petals now pecked by the birds, and at the clumps of pale green spears which would soon be daffodils. Then I sat down on a bench and shut my eyes and asked God to help me through all this. I said a little prayer. At that precise moment the sun came out—I felt its warmth suffuse my face—and I had a kind of epiphany, a sort of vision I suppose, and I knew that Peter and I would come through. We
weren’t
going to throw away fifteen happy years, I resolved. We
weren’t
going to destroy our life together. After all, I told myself as Graham and I made our way home. Worse things happen. Far worse things.
Terrible
things. You read about them every day. And Peter had only been unfaithful once, and he was very sorry about it.

“That’s why he confessed,” I said to Graham as I opened the front door. “He confessed because he has a conscience, and because he’s a decent man.” It was wrong of me, I realized now, to have thrown it back in his face. It was mean-minded, and it was stupid too, because think of all the men who cheat on their wives repeatedly, routinely even, without a shred of remorse. I picked up our wedding photo in its slightly tarnished silver frame, and felt my eyes begin to fill. “From this day forward,” I remembered. That had been the deal. “For better, for worse,” I had promised. We’d had plenty of better really, and now we were having a bit of worse. That’s what marriage was about. I looked at Peter’s open, handsome face and thought, this is the man I love. This is the man of my life. Yes, he’s made a mistake, but we all make mistakes, so I have to forgive him and let it go. And I
will
forgive him, I thought, almost rapturously, as I turned on the TV. Because to err is human, to forgive, divine. Now I imagined the scene in which Peter and I would be reconciled again, and the thought of it filled me with a warm glow which rose up from my toes to my head.

“Darling,” I would say to him, “you made a very serious error of judgment there. You nearly threw away our marriage for a moment of unbridled lust. You allowed yourself to be led into temptation. And you fell. But, Peter, I want you to know that I forgive you.” He was smiling at me hesitantly at first, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing, and then joyfully as the happy news sank in. “Yes, darling,” I murmured as he enveloped me in his arms. “We’re going to start all over again. We’ll use this unfortunate episode to strengthen our marriage, to go forward into the future. And do you know what, Peter, we’ll be even happier than we were before.” Now I imagined us in church, renewing our vows in front of a small but select group who all knew what we’d been through. Our parents would be there, and the children, of course, and one or two of our closest friends. They’d all be blinking back the tears as Peter and I looked at each other and said, once again, “I will.” And Peter and I would be crying as well, barely able to utter our vows with the huge emotion of the occasion. By now tears were indeed streaming down my face as I idly channel-hopped. And as I dabbed at my eyes with my right hand and scratched Graham’s chin with my left, the opening credits for the magazine program,
Loose Women,
started to roll down the screen.

“We’re going to be OK, Graham,” I added between little sobs. “Mummy and Daddy
aren’t
going to split up, darling. Don’t worry.” Suddenly he barked. Not so much in agreement, but because the second post had just arrived. He leaped off the sofa and went to the front door, where five envelopes were lying on the mat. Two brown ones—bills, presumably, which as usual I left for Peter—a postcard from my mum in Guadeloupe—
We’re having such a WONDERFUL time!
—two letters for Matt—oh, I wonder who
they’re
from? And a slim white envelope addressed to me. I ran my thumb under the flap, then suddenly stopped, distracted by something on the TV.

“Headhunting is a relatively new but booming industry,” I heard the presenter say. “Because these days big-hitters don’t apply for their jobs. They’re lured to them by clever middlemen—or rather women. For some of the most successful headhunters in the business are female, and we’re joined by one of them now. So would you please give a very warm welcome to Andie Metzler!” I heard the polite applause of the studio audience, then walked, as though hypnotised, into the sitting room. And now I stared, blank-eyed, at the screen. It was
her
. Andie Metzler. The emotional shock hit me like an axe to the knees, and I sank onto a chair. There she was. Talking. The Other Woman. The woman who had slept with my husband. The woman who smoked Lucky Strike. The woman who had saved Peter’s professional bacon, but who had destroyed my peace of mind.

“Women make wonderful headhunters,” she was saying. “More intuitive…subtle approach…better organized…Ffion Jenkins is a successful headhunter, and Michael Portillo’s wife, of course.” I suddenly realized that Ian Sharp’s photo hadn’t done her justice. Her short blond hair shone like spun gold. Her face was heart-shaped and wrinkle-free. She looked elegantly leggy as she reclined in a studio chair, her exquisite suit falling in gentle drapes. She was gorgeous. There was no denying it, though her voice was rasping and harsh.

“A woman headhunter recruited Greg Dyke to be director-general of the BBC,” I heard her say. “ICI uses a woman headhunter to fill its top posts, and I myself have placed managing directors in merchant banks, in telecoms companies, and more recently in a top publishing house, too.”

At this a wave of nausea arose in my throat, and now I looked at her with a deep, deep hatred, of a kind I had never felt before. I imagined her at the Ritz with Peter. I imagined them having lunch. I imagined them drinking champagne. Now I imagined them having sex. And I wanted to plunge a knife into the television set and kill her there and then. I wanted the rigging to fall and crush her to death. I wanted the studio floor to open and swallow her up. My thumb was still hooked under the edge of the white envelope and I absently drew it along. I pulled out the letter, still staring, with a visceral loathing, at my rival.

“Another quality that women bring to the headhunting business is that we’re very tenacious,” she said in her raspy, transatlantic drawl. “We’re ambitious for our clients, and we find them the very,
very
best person. We never give up until we’ve got the head we want.”

“I bet you don’t,” I hissed.

“We go right after them,” she added with a soft laugh, “and believe me, we get them in the end.”

Out of the corner of my eye I registered the word “CONGRATULATIONS!” Involuntarily, I lowered my gaze.
Dear Mrs Smith,
I read as Andie’s voice droned away.

“Yes, headhunting is a
very
rewarding career…”

On behalf of IPC magazines I am delighted to inform you…

“In all sorts of ways…”

That you have won first prize…

“—it’s also one which goes well…”

…
in our Win a Divorce competition!

“With marriage and motherhood…”

Mrs Smith, you answered our tie-breaker correctly…

“Which is something I find very appealing…”

So an all expenses paid divorce is yours…

“As I’m planning on settling down quite soon…”

With TOP celebrity divorce lawyer, Rory Cheetham-Stabb!

* * *

I didn’t do anything with the letter straight away. I was too shocked. I sat staring at it for quite some time, turning it over in my hands. Then I went upstairs and hid it in my knicker drawer. I’d never expected to win, I’d just posted the form off very quickly before I could have second thoughts. It was a prize draw, with a qualifier which required you to answer the following questions: a) How big was Princess Diana’s divorce settlement? b) Was Jerry Hall legally married to Mick Jagger? and c) How long is it before a decree nisi becomes absolute? They weren’t hard to answer: a) Seventeen million; b) No and c) Six weeks and one day. As you know I can never resist doing competitions, but I never actually thought I would
win
. Now I found myself unwilling to ring the organizers and claim my prize. Here I was, being offered what many, many women would envy—a divorce, on a plate, free of charge—but far from feeling euphoric I felt as though I were staring into an abyss. “Wait,” Karen had said. “Wait.” So I did. I waited for the shock of seeing Andie Metzler to subside. And it did, little by little, and by the end of that day I was fairly calm and thinking quite rationally once more, and by then I’d decided that, no, I
definitely didn’t
want a divorce. After all, I reasoned, it wasn’t as though Peter was involved with her. All he’d done was to sleep with her once, under pressure, on the spur of the moment. It wasn’t a longterm thing, just a temporary lapse of self-control. Andie wasn’t his mistress. She presented no threat to me. She was just a flash in the pan, that was all. So over the next couple of days I tried to mend bridges with Peter—we’d hardly exchanged a word since Valentine’s Day. We’d been avoiding each other, which isn’t difficult because of the hours I work. I’d been so angry I hadn’t even asked him how the new job was going, but now I broke the ice. We talked, awkwardly at first, about his work, and then mine, and about the kids, and soon we relaxed and found ourselves discussing all the things we normally discuss. And we went for a walk along the river with Graham. But neither Peter nor I mentioned his fling. It lay like an undetonated bomb between us. We walked round it, and carefully stepped over it, and pretended that it wasn’t there. And I reasoned that if we just ignored it, somehow it would naturally defuse and then disappear. I’d decided that Andie was no more than a nasty blip on the otherwise healthy cardiogram of our marriage. We would come through this, I resolved. Other couples did, and so would we. We would be the way we were. So I made an effort to be warm and friendly to him, but at the same time not
too
much. I needed Peter to know that I was still suffering, and that he could expect a slight touch of frost for a while. However I knew that in the end I’d come round, because I’d decided to stick with my marriage, so I didn’t look at the letter from
Chat
again. Four days later someone from the magazine phoned up to arrange for me to collect my prize, but I stalled and told them that I was too busy to do anything about it for at least a week. Because by then I knew that Peter and I would be reconciled, and they could give the prize to someone else. The children came home for the weekend, and we did all our usual weekend things. Though Matt kept going out to the post box—I really don’t know why.