Tess Stimson - The Adultery Club (47 page)

every night for nearly ten years, but I have never truly appreciated it until now. A balloon of nervous excitement rises. She must understand, she must, she must. I turn the corner and the back door opens; Mai steps into the rectangle of light cast from the warm glow of the kitchen.

My steps quicken with hope. Perhaps she heard me outside;

perhaps she is coming to meet me halfway-And then Trace follows her out, pulls her into his arms

for a lingering embrace, and I hear my wife laugh as she

playfully ducks another man’s kisses.

A cold wind blows through my heart. It didn’t take her

long to find a replacement. What was I thinking, coming

here ready to prostrate myself like a repentant sinner?

Heaping myself with sackcloth and ashes? When all the time—I back away, trembling with bitter fury. I have known

she is with him, but to see him, in my own home, with

my wife. This man has been waiting in the wings since

the day I married Malinche, ready to pounce, no doubt,

the moment he had the chance. Or perhaps he hasn’t

waited in the wings at all; perhaps he’s been centre stage

with my wife all along. I always thought the candle she

held for him - and I’ve always known about Trace Pitt,

known exactly how much he meant to her - was just the

nostalgic regret of a happily married woman for her first,

lost, love. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps he wasn’t lost at all.

Fine.’

Fine.

As of now, he’s welcome to her.

The anger abates before I even reach London, leaving me

empty and bereft. On the morning the papers from Ms

Schultz are due to thump onto the rabbit-chewed doormat

in Stapleford, I feel an overpowering sense of loss, as if

someone has died. In a sense, someone has. Everything

I thought I was, everything I had planned to be, with

Malinche at my side, is gone.

Sara is out of the office all day; no one seems interested

in where she has gone when I ask, but that isn’t unusual.

Since word of our affair leaked out, she has been cold

shouldered like a Nazi collaborator in Vichy France.

I shut myself in my office and work, secretly glad of

the respite.

When I get back to the flat a little after seven, I find

Sara sitting in darkness, a glass in her hand and a bottle

of wine, three-quarters empty, on the table in front of her.

I loosen my tie and throw my jacket over the back of a

chair. ‘Should you really be drinking?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I suppose so. God knows how many babies are cona-iviui

when their mothers have had one too many, after

all.’ I reach for a glass. ‘Go easy, though. The first twelve

weeks are—’

‘I saw Malinche today.’

The glass shatters on the marble counter.

‘Christ! Where’s the dustpan?’

‘Your wife, Malinche.’

‘Yes, I gathered that much!’ I brush shards of glass into

a newspaper. ‘Where, for God’s sake? Was she here? Did

she come round?’

‘No. I went to see her.’

Sara hasn’t moved. Her head is bowed, so I cannot see

the expression on her face.

I dispose of the broken glass in the plastic bag hanging

from one of the cupboards and sink heavily onto the sofa

next to her. ‘What’s going on, Sara?’

She runs a finger around the wet rim of the glass. It

sings sharply.

‘I told her you loved her, not me. I told her she should

take you back - well, not in so many words. But she knew

what I meant.’

I gape.

‘You told her what?’

‘Come on, Nick she says impatiently. ‘I’m only saying

what we both already know. It’s not like this is news.’

I open my mouth to deny it, to plug the gap between

us with another lie, another carefully crafted piece of

wishful thinking: and discover I can’t. Sara has found the

courage that has so far eluded me and dared to acknowledge

the pink elephant in the room. Useless now for me

to keep on stepping around it.

I get up, find another tumbler, and pour myself a

hefty measure of Scotch. The liquid burns a hot path to

my stomach, its warmth spiralling out through my body.

On the far side of the street, a teenager is panhandling,

a filthy blanket wrapped, squaw-like, around her bony

shoulders. Her shoes don’t match: she’s wearing one

thick-soled trainer and one navy snaffle shoe, trodden

down at the back. The imbalance gives her a curious gait

as she shuffles down the street.

I close the blind.

‘You went all that way to tell her that?’

‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’ She slugs back some wine.

‘I don’t know what I planned to tell her, Nick. I didn’t

really think it through, if you want the freakin’ truth.

I just needed to know, one way or the other.’

‘Know what, for Chrissake?’

Sara stares at me as if I’m being deliberately obtuse.

‘Whether she still loved you.’

The room is suddenly very still. My heart pounds in

my ears. I only realize how tightly I am holding the glass

when my wedding ring bites into my palm.

‘What did she say?’

She reaches for the bottle again. ‘I’m not pregnant,

Nick.’

I can’t breathe. A kaleidoscope of possibility explodes

behind my eyes.

‘I don’t know if I ever was. I never actually did the test

- yes, I know,’ she says tightly, ‘I missed two periods,

Nick, I was sick every bloody day, I’m sorry, I just

assumed—’

‘You assumed?’ I slam my drink onto the table. ‘You

assumed? Jesus Christ, Sara, this isn’t a bloody game,

people’s lives are at stake here—’

‘I realize that!’ sfŚ

‘I asked you to marry me!’

‘Well, now you don’t have to, so that’s all right then,

isn’t it!’

I push my face into hers, dropping my voice to a cold

hiss: the words fall like hot stones into an icy lake.

‘What was it, some kind of trick to keep me hooked?

Like the bloody lipstick?’

She jerks, as if I’ve slapped her.

‘I gave you the benefit of the doubt that time. But this. The oldest trick in the book,’ I snarl, ‘and I bloody fell for it! When were you going to tell me, Sara: as I walked you

up the aisle with a fucking cushion under your dress?

Jesus Christ!’

‘I didn’t make it up! I swear, Nick, I wouldn’t do that,

I’m not like that! I just made a mistake—’

‘Why should I believe you?’

She leaps up to face me, eyes glittering with anger and

tears. ‘Go back to her, Nick! Go back to her!’ She shoves

me in the chest with the heel of her hand. ‘I don’t know

why you’ve waited this long! You’ve had your fun, you’ve

got your legover and reminded your dick what it was all

about, so now you can go back and play house with your

wife and your psychotic children and forget all about me.

It’s what you’ve wanted to do ever since you moved in,

isn’t it?’ Her chest heaves. ‘Well? Isn’t it?’

Suddenly, she seems no older than Evie. Guilt thuds

into me. My behaviour has been unforgivable: to my

wife, to my children, and to Sara. None of them deserves

this. And now I have lost them all. Mai has Trace, and

Sara and I have nothing to offer each other but recrimination

and regret. My daughters will despise me before they

are very much older; if they don’t hate me, the best I can

expect from them is pity. And I am left to gnaw at wounds of my own making. Christ, what a mess.

I reach out to Sara, but she brushes me angrily away.

‘Go on! What are you waiting for?’

‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, Sara. I didn’t

want you to get hurt. Someday you’ll—’

Tor fuck’s sake, spare me the pep talk!’

‘Yes. Sorry.’

Her chin comes up. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what

she said?’

“I pick up my jacket. I don’t need to hear Sara tell me

what I already know. If Mai had one shred of feeling left

for me, she’d have picked up the phone after she heard

my answerphone message last weekend. She wouldn’t

have been nestling in Trace’s arms two nights ago.

I’ll be at the Dorchester I say wearily, ‘for tonight, at

least.’

She doesn’t move.

‘I’ll see you at work on Monday. We can talk then—’

‘I quit,’ Sara says defiantly. ‘Fisher accepted my resignation

over the phone about an hour ago—’

‘Fisher!’

Her eyes sparkle with malice. ‘He said he’ll pick up the

slack for a while, until you find someone to replace me.

He did mention something about coming out of retirement,

actually. To keep an eye on things. Given the - how

did he put it? - “ruddy pig’s ear” you’ve made of things

since he’s been gone.’

I digest this for a moment. ‘And you?’

‘T don’t think that’s any of your business, do you?’ she

challenges. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I have an interview

wilh I hi BBC next week - a second interview, actually

they’re looking for another entertainment lawyer. It’s a

growing field, apparently. Very well paid; and rather

more riveting than who gets which saucepan, don’t you

think? And if that doesn’t work out,’ she shrugs, ‘I never

did take a gap year. I’ve always wanted to go white-water

rafting down the Grand Canyon.’

I hesitate at the door.

‘Sara. If I hadn’t been married - if we’d met before—’

‘No,’ Sara says fiercely. ‘No.’

Outside, the homeless teenager holds out a dirty hand,

palm upwards, for money. I reach into my pocket, and

hand her the small turquoise box I had been planning to

give Sara this evening.

I have already crossed the road and hailed a taxi by

the time the runaway opens it and discovers the two-carat

diamond ring nestling inside it.

Tug-of-love cases are always the worst; the ones every

divorce lawyer dreads. Hard not to feed off a mother’s

desperation as she sits across from you, twisting a handkerchief in her hands and begging you to find a way to

bring back her children. Children who are, even as you

unscrew your fountain pen and note the details - ‘two

boys, four and seven, born in Chepstow, eldest child

allergic to peanuts, husband’s family of significant means’

- being spirited to a dusty, cramped apartment in Tehran

or Rabat, told their mother is dead, given new names and

new lives. Children you know she will, in all probability,

never see again unless her husband takes pity and returns

them to her himself.

I open the file in front of me. There is something about

Leila Sabra that moved me. Perhaps it was the loss of my

own daughters sitting heavy on my heart - my plight

incomparable to hers, of course, but grief is not quantifiable; one does not feel misery any the less because one

has company.

My sympathy for Mrs Sabra, however, is not the reason

I am closeted in my office at three o’clock on a Sunday

afternoon, wiring large sums of American dollars around

the globe - Beirut, this time - to grease the palm of a

facilitator we have used, with a modest measure of success,

in such cases before. I am here because, quite simply,

I don’t know where else to go.

My mother is wrapped up in her own grief; I cannot

add to it. My wife is in love with her childhood beau,

with whom she is currently enjoying a bucolic existence in my home, at my expense, with my children - and clearly has no further need of me. My mistress, who has thrown

me out, is in love with me: for all the good it does either

of us, since I am, inconveniently for all concerned, still in

love with my wife.

I rub my temples. The sorry mess I have made of my

life is beyond parody.

I slot my iPod - for the discovery of this revolutionary

piece of technology, at least, I may thank Sara - into my

computer docking system and start to compose a brief for

Counsel as the soothing strains of Pat Metheny fill the

room. One of the advantages of working on a Sunday: no

telephones, no interruptions, and the freedom to deafen

oneself with ‘Suefto con Mexico’ - from New Chautauqua, arguably his best album - if one so chooses.

My gaze snags briefly on a picture of my youngest

(Inughtor. In the words of my wife: our last-chance baby,

indulgently named for the jazz guitarist I love so much.

She still isn’t yet two.. What happened to us? How did it

all go so wrong, so fast?

It would be comforting to think there were undetected

fractures in our relationship, fissures that took only a

little pressure to widen suddenly into unbridgeable gulfs.

But I am done with lying, even to myself. The unpalatable,

unvarnished truth is that I made one mistake; and

wrecked everything.

I force my attention back to the computer screen. The

knot of misery in my stomach eases a little as I lose myself

in the labyrinthine complexities of the Sabra finances.

It’s always so much easier, of course, to bring order to the

domestic chaos of other people’s lives than to my own.

No doubt Freud would have a great deal to say about

my choice of career, given the tragedy that scarred my

early childhood. And right now, I would not gainsay him.