The First Wife (7 page)

‘Rachel,’ Jack said, and he could feel that it was ending, right here, right now.

Of course he wasn’t happy. He’d been trapped in this stupid marriage for years. She wasn’t happy either – he could work that out from the scene in front of him. While he had been gazing at the horizon and dreaming of Europe, she was finding her own escape rather closer to home. He barely even blamed her.

Before anyone said a word, his mind leaped ahead. He could get his own place, have the kids at weekends or whatever divorced dads did. He could go away, do some travelling, bring them out to stay with him for a week in the holidays. He would be free.

All the same, this was not an ideal scenario. The three of them were looking at him, waiting. He tried to find the words.

‘The three of you?’ was all he managed to say. Then, when they still stared, he started shouting. ‘Get out of my house! Out! I was so bloody careful not to clip your cars, you bastards, and—’

Sam, from rugby, heaved the window open and clambered out without a backward glance. Mark, the physio, chose to edge past him to the door. Jack heard the cars starting, and waited until they had driven away.

He turned back to his wife, who had preemptive tears in her eyes.

‘Jesus, Rachel,’ he said. ‘How long’s it been . . . ?’

She shook her head. Her crying grew louder, building up into proper sobs. He wondered whether he ought to comfort her. When he took a nervous step closer, unsure of the etiquette, she flung herself at him, against his chest. He winced, put an arm on one of her shoulders, and another arm on the other, and drew her gently away from his sore ribs. He knew he should be shouting, furious, calling her all sorts of names. Yet he could not feel anything but a resounding sense of relief. He realised he had been waiting for something like this, for a drama. He could overlook the details (two people he would have counted as vague mates of his, the use of his bed).

‘It’s OK,’ he said, and he kissed the top of her head, an old habit. ‘Hey, Rach – it’s all right. Look, maybe you’ve done us a favour here. It hasn’t been right for a while, has it?’

She pulled away and glared at him.

‘You’re not even going to bother to fight? Jesus, Jack. For fuck’s sake. Pathetic! No wonder I take my thrills where I can bloody find them.’

He looked at her and, in spite of themselves, they both began to grin. They were so pleased with the future that Rachel’s extravagant infidelity had opened up to them that soon they were giggling, and not long after that, they were clutching each other, roaring hysterically, until it occurred to Jack that he was in agony. He sat down suddenly on the bed and held his side.

‘Rachel,’ he said, still giggling in a rather mad way, ‘I came back because I crashed the ute a bit. Need you to take me to a doctor. Then I suppose we’d better talk.’

‘Sure,’ she said, and she looked more like his old sweetheart than she had in years. Some cloud that he had never noticed had lifted from her face. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘there’s probably a lot we need to be talking about. A lot I need to tell you, now we’ve got this far.’

November

I ran to their house with my anorak on and my flimsy hood pulled up over my head. I tried to jump over, or skitter around, the puddles, but it did not work. My tights were wet, my feet were wet. My hood blew down, and my hair was soon as drenched as it would have been after a lengthy swim, though I had, of course, never learned to swim. I was wearing the black trousers I always wore for work, and they were now going to stick to my thighs, heavy and cold, for hours.

I didn’t have an umbrella, because I had never even owned one. There was no point: the branches of even the biggest trees were bent and whipped around by the wind. I saw someone on the other side of the road, struggling as hers turned inside out, trying to pull it back into shape. The rain was almost horizontal. There was nothing to do but get your head down, hurry to your destination, and long for a warm and cosy shelter.

In their porch, I jumped up and down and shook myself like a dog. I let myself in, but when I put the first key in the top lock, it would only turn in the opposite way from usual. It took a lot of fumbling with all three locks before the door swung open, and I realised that it had not been double-, let alone triple-locked, at all.

This meant there was someone at home. Someone who had either not heard me fiddling with all my keys, locking and unlocking with each in turn, or someone who had heard and not bothered to come and help out.

As I stepped inside, the alarm did not beep. It had not been set. I had been cleaning here for two months, and this had never happened before.

I called a tentative, ‘Hello?’, but there was no reply. As noisily as I could, I put my wet shoes and my socks on the hall radiator, and hung my coat in the porch outside so it would not drip all over the floor. Then I closed the front door, stood still, and listened.

I might be in this house with Harry Summer. Or with Sarah Summer. Or with someone else, or no one.

‘Hello?’ I called again, into the silence. My voice was too loud and I felt self-conscious and silly.

There was no sound at all. They had forgotten to lock up properly: that was all.

I pulled myself together, got out everything I needed from the cupboard under the stairs, and set off to start, as always, at the top of the house. I told myself that it made sense to do this, to end up back downstairs, but really I did it this way because I could not wait for my first look at the view.

There was a black leather bag on the floor of the top bedroom, with clothes spilling out of it. The duvet was hanging half-off the bed. One of the pillows still had the imprint of a head on it. The room had a different smell: it smelled, I thought, like men’s toiletries, deodorant and things like that.

I stood still in the doorway, taking it in. When I was certain there was no person anywhere in the room, I knocked on the open door, stepped gingerly in, and looked around.

A pair of pyjama bottoms was crumpled on the floor. There were, I saw, men’s clothes in and around the bag. I pulled the duvet straight. There was half a cup of coffee beside the bed, and a folded-over section of the
Guardian
, so I supposed that this guest, whoever he was, had come back to bed with coffee and the paper (I happened to know that the Summers had the
Guardian
delivered by the paper boy, who was Zac’s friend Simon, who said they gave him a ten-pound tip last Christmas). I touched the side of the coffee cup. It was still warm.

Like me, the guest had spent some time standing at the window. I could tell, because he had rubbed several viewing-areas into the condensation. They were too high for me. I put my feet where his must have been, and rubbed the rest of the insides of the windows with one of my cloths, which was instantly drenched. The view from this room was different every time I looked. Today there was mist rolling in from the sea, and I could barely see the castle or swimming pool. The sea faded away, just a few metres out, as if it were a stage set. I could not see the tankers, but I knew they were out there, lurking close to the horizon. I always wondered about the sailors who lived on them. They came ashore sometimes in little boats, and I had seen a couple of them, once, in the Tesco at Events Square, buying bags and bags full of tins and cheap bread and rice. People said they just had to wait, living on the boats, until someone in charge called them home again.

I knew that the visitor stood here with his coffee, because there were brown drips on the carpet that I would try to get off in a minute. Before that, I cleaned the insides of the windows properly. Then I folded the clothes that were scattered on the floor next to his bag, and put them on the chair. I felt more comfortable, once I had imposed some order.

As I was reassuring myself that he must have gone out without bothering with the double-lock and the alarm, I heard a splash of water. A tap, I thought. A tap had been left on. I knew I had not imagined it. It came from the little bathroom that adjoined this room. I stood still. There was another splash, louder this time. I bit my lip, edged towards it, and knocked. When there was, again, no response, I grabbed the handle, turned it, and opened the door.

He sat up in the bath, his mouth open, his expression horrified. My heart leaped into my mouth. It was him: Harry Summer. Harry Summer was naked in the bath, and I had just walked in.

I managed to say, ‘Oh, sorry,’ before closing the door firmly. I heard the water sloshing around as he got out. ‘Um, I’m Lily, your cleaner,’ I called, from the other side of the door. ‘Sorry, I had no idea you were here, otherwise of course I wouldn’t have—’

‘No, don’t worry,’ Harry called, in a gruff voice. He chuckled. ‘Tell you what, Lily-the-cleaner. Pop downstairs and make us some coffee, will you, while I get myself decent?’

‘Yes!’ I yelled gratefully, and I set off down the stairs, as quickly as I possibly could.

I cleaned the kitchen frantically while the kettle boiled, even though it put my system completely out of sequence. It was a huge, light room at the back of the house, and the chrome oven was still spodess from last week: they did not seem to cook very often. I washed out the cafetière and found a tin of coffee in the fridge, an old-fashioned-looking tin with
Mother’s Coffee
emblazoned on it and a picture of a fifties-style housewife. As a cleaner, I felt I did not have a right to make myself a drink, but at the same time, Harry Summer had asked me to make him one. I would only have a cup if I were offered one.

I wondered why he was in the upstairs bathroom, and why he was not at work, and whether he was sleeping up there.

‘Lucky I went for the “bubbles” option!’ he said, standing in the kitchen doorway and laughing. I looked at him, confused. He was nearly Harry. He was tall and good-looking, but now that I looked at him properly, I could see that he was someone else. ‘Otherwise you really would have got more than you bargained for,’ he continued. ‘Fergus Summer. Nice to meet you, particularly in such entertaining circumstances.’

I forced myself to smile. ‘I’m Lily,’ I told him again. He was definitely someone who would have laughed at ‘Button’. I tried to be brave. I had barely ever even spoken to a man one-to-one like this and I was not sure how to be. I clasped my hands behind my back so that he would not see them shaking. ‘I’m, er, so sorry. I called out and knocked and . . . in the end I thought someone must have left a tap running. And I came in. Sorry.’ I took a breath.

‘Please,’ he said, and I saw him looking me up and down. My trousers were still wet, and they felt all clammy on my thighs, and my hair was half-straggly, half-frizzy. ‘Don’t think anything of it. It’s made my morning, to be frank with you, Lily. In fact, it’s made my week. I had my ears underwater. Didn’t hear a thing. I see you straightened out my disgusting mess while you were up there. No need to, but thanks.’

‘Milk?’ I said. ‘Sugar?’

‘Cream. It’s in the fridge. Join me?’

I hesitated. ‘Um, I would love a coffee, if that would be OK, but I have to clean at the same time.’

‘They work you hard, my darling brother and his wife?’

‘I work. They pay me. I have a few jobs but this is my best one.’ I found a tub of double cream and held it up. ‘This?’

‘That’s the baby. Why on earth is this your best job?’

‘It’s the nicest house and they don’t have children,’ I said, as I handed him the tub. I was horribly embarrassed by this entire encounter, but I liked this man, too.

‘Well, those things are both true. Children do make a vile mess, don’t they? I’ve got two of my own, for my sins.’ He looked cheerful as he said this, as if he did not really mean it. ‘So, you like them? They treat you well?’

‘Um,’ I said, ‘I haven’t met them.’

‘Oh,’ he beamed, taking the pot of cream, his hand brushing mine as he did so. ‘Now this is getting better and better. You have met me, naked – me naked, not you, admittedly – while my brother has no idea that his house is ordered by a beautiful young lady with enormous chocolatey eyes, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

I felt myself blushing, and I looked at the floor. I could not think of a single thing to say, so I kept quiet.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,’ he said. ‘That’s the last thing I’d want. Look, this is the way you do it.’ He was holding the cream tub high above his mug, letting a narrow stream of thick liquid swirl into his coffee, twirling it around to form a spiral. I was vaguely aware that he was showing off. ‘Want me to do yours?’

‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll stick to milk.’ I tried to think of something to say. ‘So,’ I muttered. ‘You’re staying a few days?’

Fergus sat down at the chunky wooden table. ‘I am indeed, Lily. Not necessarily out of choice. There are, to be honest with you, more harmonious households in which to take one’s vacation. But . . . well, trouble in Paradise, rather than a holiday. Steer clear of the Summer men, that’s my advice. We’re not good with women.’

I opened the fridge and started taking things out so that I could clean the shelves. I piled artisanal cheese, a tub of olives, two bottles of white wine, and lots of bottles of beer onto the counter, wondering, as I did so, how they could stomach all the wine they seemed to drink. There were different bottles in there every week.

‘Trouble?’ I said politely, without looking up.

‘How old are you, Lily?’

I looked over my shoulder, my guard up.

‘Twenty,’ I said.

‘Boyfriend? Husband? Kids?’

‘No.’

‘Lucky you. Sensible girl.’ I cleaned the inside of the fridge for a while, before he spoke again. ‘Just a bit of marital trouble,’ he said eventually. ‘Been married since I was two years older than you are now. I was just a puppy, you know, a fucking puppy. She had my best years.’

‘Did you have her best years too?’

‘I did. She could have done a lot better for herself than me. That’s for sure.’

I was hesitant over how much I should ask.

‘Have you left?’ I tried tentatively.

He laughed. ‘Not so much “left” as been evicted. We’ll sort it out – we always do. But in the meantime, I thought I’d come down here and give her a bit of breathing space. Sarah seemed to think that looking at the sea would cheer me up. So did my mother. When those two agree on something, you have to do it. You have no choice. I mean, looking at the fucking sea? What’s that going to do?’