Strictly Love (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

 

‘You bastard,’ said Katie. She was shaking like a leaf, and without thinking she slapped Charlie on the cheek. Then she turned round and stormed out of the room, brushing past people with no thought of anything other than escape. She ran to the car, climbed in it and was halfway home before she gave thought to where she was going.

In her heart of hearts, Katie had known the end was coming. Their marriage had never been brilliant, but since Molly's birth it had limped along while she ignored the warning signs, hoping that if she buried her head in the sand for long enough they'd go away. And now this. Charlie's bombshell had blown their marriage apart. There was no going back now.

Charlie was gay. The words were going round in her head, but what did they mean? How had he found out? Had he been unfaithful to her? The thought made her physically sick, and she had to pull over to the side of the road to retch. She was still shaking and felt alternately hot and cold all over. Suppose he hadn't taken precautions? Suppose he had infected her with something? What was she going to tell the children? Her mind was a whirling maelstrom of questions, and the biggest one of all was, If Charlie really were gay, why on earth had he married her in the first place?

Her whole married life had been based on a lie. She had worked so hard to paper over the cracks, and all the time her husband had been living a lie. As the shock wore away, Katie felt herself
filled with a white-hot rage. How could he do this to her? How could he?

The thoughts batted back and forth, back and forth, till she was thoroughly sick of them. She drove and drove with no thought to where she was going, no thought for her future, or what was going to happen now. All she could think of was that she was stuck in a nightmare not of her making and she could see no possible way out.

Mark had gone out somewhere with the girls, so Rob was on his own watching a repeat of
Strictly Come Dancing
. After watching Matt and Flavia's tango, Rob felt inspired to go back to his friend Carlo, and he spent a ridiculous half an hour listening to Carlo telling him how to unleash the sexy beast within. As if there was much point, when there was no one to unleash it on.

Even though Katie wasn't going dancing any more, he hadn't been able to make himself stop. He enjoyed it too much for a start. And he exercised the faintest of hopes that she might come back, eventually. She had to. It simply wasn't the same dancing with someone else. He was still kicking himself that he had let his feelings get the better of him and kissed her. If he hadn't he'd still be seeing her, and though it would have been indulging in the bittersweet pain of knowing they couldn't be together, it would have been much, much better than not seeing her at all. His counsellor, Nina, had said this was the wrong way to look at it, and he should learn from what had happened and move on. The trouble was, Rob didn't want to move on. He just wanted Katie. The counselling was undoubtedly helping him unlock some of the misery in his head, but it couldn't give him the one thing he wanted more than anything else.

There was a ring at the door. Rob frowned. It was too early for Mark to be back. He hoped that it wasn't another doorstepper. Since a new series of
Love Shack
had started airing (special guest commentator: a certain Jasmine Symonds), the press interest in
Mark seemed to have waned, but both he and Rob remained wary. Rob hadn't understood what it meant to have your privacy ripped apart till he was faced with a baying horde of tape recorders and cameras every time he left the house. He sincerely hoped there wasn't some new ridiculous revelation about to hit tomorrow's papers.

Rob glanced out of the hall window before opening the door. To his complete surprise it was Katie. What on earth was she doing here?

‘Earth to Gemma, Earth to Gemma,’ Mark called, as his daughter sat transfixed by her mobile, seemingly determined to ignore him. He looked at Beth and grinned before grabbing a spoon and using it to fire boiled sweets at his older daughter.

Still wary about media intrusion, Mark had decided to take the girls to Pizza Hut this evening, and bring them home late. They hadn't been to the house much since the storm broke and Mark missed them badly. So far Sam hadn't kept her threat of stopping him seeing the kids, and he'd kept papers out of the house and given them a watered-down version of events. Though, judging by the look in Gemma's eye occasionally, he wouldn't be at all surprised if the tales of his antics hadn't been the talk of the Year Eight toilets. He hoped for Gemma's sake it hadn't, but she seemed spikier than ever when she was with him. She appeared to Mark to be very unhappy, but he had no way of breaking through her hard shell and reaching her. They were all going away to Dorset, camping, at the start of the school holidays. Mark only hoped Gemma would have cheered up by then.

‘Dad, you are so sad,’ said Gemma witheringly. ‘You're all over the papers. No wonder Emily left you.’

‘Don't you ever lighten up?’ Mark retaliated. ‘And Emily leaving me had nothing to do with this.’

‘Someone in the family needs to maintain decorum,’ muttered Gemma.

‘Right,’ said Mark. ‘Okay, I probably deserved that.’

‘You are so embarrassing!’ Gemma burst out suddenly. ‘Everyone is talking about it. All of Year Eight know what a loser my dad is. I'm the laughing stock of the school.’

‘Oh, Gemma,’ said Mark. ‘I am so, so sorry. Really, I am. If I could do something to change that evening, I would.’

‘Why did you have to do it?’ asked Gemma. ‘Imagine how you'd feel to find out your dad's naked picture had been printed in the papers.’

‘Er, gross,’ said Beth. ‘Were you really naked, Dad?’

‘Well, this is one conversation I never imagined myself having,’ said Mark. ‘Okay, I haven't told you too much about this because I didn't want you to be upset. But what happened was I went out for a drink with my friends, and I think someone must have put something in my drink because I don't really remember much of the evening.’

‘You mean you got paralytic.’ Gemma's tone was self-righteously accusing. Oh to be young and so sodding sure of yourself, Mark thought.

‘No,’ said Mark, ‘I don't. If I had got drunk I would have known about it. I had a few drinks, but that was all. My lawyer thinks someone might have set me up.’

Beth looked a bit anxious and he kicked himself for having given too much information. It was so hard to know how to handle the situation. He didn't want to lie to the kids, but neither did he want to overburden them either.

‘Why do you need a lawyer, Daddy?’ she asked. ‘Will you go to prison?’

‘No, no,’ said Mark. ‘Nothing like that. It's just one of my patients –’

‘Jasmine Symonds,’ added Gemma knowledgeably. ‘I read all about it in
Heat
.’

’– yes, Jasmine Symonds,’ Mark continued, ‘hang on a minute, you read
Heat
?’

‘Yes, so?’ said Gemma. ‘Everyone reads
Heat
.’

‘Hmm, I'm not sure that's altogether suitable,’ said Mark. ‘Remind me to have a chat with your mum about that.’

‘It's Mum's
Heat
I read,’ said Gemma, in unmistakeable teenputdown tones. ‘Besides, I don't think she'll be all that bothered about having parenting lessons from you at the moment.’

Deciding that some battles weren't worth fighting, Mark let the subject drop and went on to explain what Jasmine had accused him of.

‘And the reason Emily left me is because she's Jasmine's lawyer.’

‘I miss Emily,’ said Beth.

‘I do too,’ said Mark.

‘So did you tell on Jasmine?’ asked Gemma.

‘No, of course I didn't,’ said Mark. ‘Someone did, but it wasn't me. But because she's made a big fuss about it, there has to be a court case, and that's why I've got a lawyer. But it's nothing at all to worry about.’

Nothing to worry about. How he wished that were true.

Emily was out with Ffion. She'd had two invitations that day, and had blown Ffion out to begin with, but Charlie's party had been so boring, even Katie had suggested she'd better leave. So, finding herself at a loose end, she had decided to drive up to town and go to the club where Ffion was strutting her funky stuff. Emily didn't feel like going, particularly, but it beat sitting at home on her own on a Saturday night, staring at four walls.

It was ages since she'd been out in town, and normally when she came to these things she'd had a fair amount to drink. Ffion was clearly well on her way when Emily arrived.

‘Hey, Ems,’ said Ffion, giving Emily a huge hug. ‘Come and join the party.’

The party included several people that Ffion worked with, and, Emily noticed with a sickening shock, Callum. He affected not to notice her at first, but eventually he looked up and said,
‘Hey babe,’ before pulling Ffion onto his lap and proceeding to snog her face off.

That was one way of being put in her place, she thought, and she perched reluctantly at the end of the table. Thankfully, just seeing Callum again was enough to make her realise she wasn't missing anything. Ffion was welcome to him.

The talk quickly turned to Jasmine Symonds, who was doing a stonking impression of someone who had managed to pull a rabbit out of a bag. Her guest spot on
Love Shack
was turning out to be inspired, as people were apparently tuning in night after night to hear her talk about the ‘trauma’ of being abused by her dentist – she had
actually
used the word ‘abused’. Emily couldn't believe it.

‘He only took her tooth out,’ said Emily. ‘And it was rotten.’

‘Whose side are you on?’ asked Ffion. ‘That dentist sounds a right shifty sod. He had it coming, I reckon.’

The consensus round the table was fairly united. Between them, they appeared to have read and believed unquestioningly every piece of tittle-tattle about Mark. It made Emily feel inordinately depressed. Maybe a lonely night in on her own would have been a better option.

‘What are you doing here?’ Rob felt he was being rude, but he was shocked to say the least. Katie was the last person he'd expected to see.

‘Can I come in?’ She looked dishevelled and slightly wild. There was something in her eyes that made him shiver. And not in a good way.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Rob. ‘Are you all right? Only you look a bit upset.’

‘Upset? Upset? Ha. Yes, you could say that.’ Katie's voice didn't sound right either, there was a note of rising hysteria in it that Rob recognised from his years of dealing with the various strops of teenage girls.

‘What happened?’ he asked gently as he sat her down on the sofa. Clearly something was badly wrong.

Katie sat very still for a moment, and then she burst out laughing. But it wasn't a normal laugh, it was a horrible parody of a laugh. A laugh that sounded hollow, without mirth. A laugh that smacked of desperate sadness.

‘Katie!’ Rob was shocked, wondering whether she needed a slap on the cheek to bring her out of it, then he suddenly realised the laughter had given way to tears, and then she was sobbing in his arms.

‘Is it the kids?’ he conjectured, wondering what on earth could have provoked this response. ‘Or Charlie?’

‘The kids are fine,’ hiccoughed Katie, ‘it's Charlie. He's – oh god, I don't know how to say it – if it wasn't so awful it would be funny.’ She took a deep breath before continuing. ‘I thought he was having an affair, you see. And he is, I think. Well, I don't know. Maybe he isn't.’

‘Katie, you're not making a whole lot of sense,’ said Rob, stroking her hair gently.

‘I know,’ said Katie, ‘that's because this doesn't make sense to me. At all.’

‘What doesn't?’

‘Charlie's gay,’ said Katie.

‘Expect the unexpected,’ said Rob, and whistled slowly. He sat in silence for a few moments, before saying, ‘Bloody hell. You're not joking, are you?’

‘I wish I was,’ said Katie. ‘I feel like I'm stuck in a very bad dream. I mean, how could I not have known? It's not as though we‘ve never had sex. We‘ve got three kids, for fuck's sake. How can he possibly be gay?’

‘Were there no signs at all?’ Rob chose his words carefully. This was the sort of thing you read about in the papers. You didn't expect it to happen to people you actually knew.

Katie sighed. ‘I don't know,’ she said. ‘Though, to be honest,
we never had the greatest of sex lives. Sorry. Too much information. I thought it didn't matter, as we were happy in the beginning. Or, at least, I was …’

Her voice trailed off.

‘I've been kidding myself that everything was okay. I was so determined that my marriage was going to be perfect in a way my parents' wasn't, and now look at me.’

‘It's not your fault,’ said Rob. He hugged her tightly.

‘Isn't it?’ Katie asked. ‘I think I got so caught up in trying to create the perfect life that I forgot to live a normal one. Any sensible person would have faced up to the truth eons ago.’

‘But they wouldn't be you, though, would they?’ said Rob. ‘What I love about you is your integrity and strength of purpose. You gave it your best shot; it's not your fault you failed.’

Katie looked at Rob wonderingly, as if seeing him for the first time.

‘You're right,’ she said. ‘It's not. And now we can stop pretending, can't we? There's nothing to hold us back.’

She lunged towards him, taking him unawares.

‘Woah, Katie,’ he said, dodging her kiss. ‘This isn't the time or the place.’

‘Of course it is,’ said Katie. ‘I was being loyal to Charlie before. I don't have to be any more.’

Rob couldn't believe it. If anyone had told him he'd turn down the woman he loved, he wouldn't have thought it possible. But he was going to. He had to.

‘Katie,’ Rob said, ‘I have feelings for you. I won't pretend I don't. But you're in shock. And you have a lot of stuff to sort out. I can't believe I'm saying this, but now is not the right time for a quick fling with me.’

‘But –’ Katie looked so shattered he felt utterly lousy, but her vulnerability made him sure that he was right.

‘But nothing,’ he said. He brushed his lips across the top of her head. ‘Right now, I think you need to get home and sort
yourself out. I'll be here if you need me. And I'll do my very best to be a good friend to you. But that's all I can be for now. When the time is right, well, then we'll know.’