The Mistress's Revenge (20 page)

“What?” I asked you. Clever, wasn’t it? All the opening lines I’d been rehearsing in the tube on the way, and that’s the one I came out with. “What?”

Silleeeee Salleeeee.

That’s when you started laying into me. About Susan, and Emily, and even Liam (for goodness’ sake!). You mentioned that comment on your company website. Well, when you put it all together like that, of course it was going to sound a bit unhinged. The way you said it sounded like I was a mad stalker or something!

I sat silently and listened and didn’t say anything. Instead I let your words flow over me like I was submerging my head in a warm, soapy bath, not really taking it in, but looking at your eyes, and wondering what it meant that you were saying all this stuff and yet your eyes were saying something else.

You’d bought a bottle of white wine, which we’d finished before
you’d even reached the website bit. You stood up without even breaking your flow, then stopped suddenly.

“Another?” you asked.

I didn’t want you to think I was a pushover, wanted to prove I still knew my own mind (foolish, foolish woman—when did I ever know my own mind?) so I asked for a whisky, a double. When you came back you were carrying two.

As we drank, you expanded on your theme that I was harassing your family, that I’d gone too far. I looked at your mouth as you spoke and traced your lips in my mind. Could you see I was doing that? Did my eyes give me away?

Somewhere around the second double whisky I tried to explain myself. You’d got it wrong, I told you. You were misinterpreting the facts. York Way Friday had knocked me for six (I think I may even have used that expression—for the first time in my life. You’ll have to forgive me. I was overwrought!). I’d wanted to stay close to you, which is why I’d made that first call to Susan, but the rest had happened organically (I think I used that word too. God, I’m embarrassed to remember it all). And the website comment hadn’t been me. Had definitely not been me.

“I’ve also been under stress,” I told you, not meeting your eyes. “Some weird things have been happening.” Then I told you about the emails and the man with the stripes on his leather jacket. You didn’t say anything, but I knew you were taking it all in.

By the time we were halfway through the third whisky (or was it the fourth?), I could tell you were mellowing. Your sentences still began with a bluster but it blew itself out before reaching the end.

“I should go,” you said. But we both knew you wouldn’t.

“You’re looking good,” you told me reluctantly, your eyes traveling over me. “Susan said you were too thin, but I think it quite suits you.”

I looked at your hand, as it lay on the table between us, tearing a cardboard coaster to shreds. Your fingers were so familiar. I imagined reaching over and putting my hand over yours.

Then all of a sudden, my hand was on top of yours. I couldn’t remember moving it there, it just seemed to have happened.

There was a split second where we both just looked at our joined hands on the table, as if they didn’t belong to us at all, but were some kind of pop-up art installation. I think we were both waiting to see if you would move yours away. When you didn’t, I knew. But really I’d known from the start.

Who was it who suggested going to a hotel? I know it doesn’t matter now but I hate to think there are parts of last night I can’t remember. I want to play it all again and again like a YouTube clip. I want to relive every second.

I remember the taxi was abnormally large, and we giggled a lot about how big it was. Then we were in a hotel and the cheapest room was £270, and between us we didn’t have enough cash (not even the cash from the fridge—you hadn’t been prepared!). You didn’t dare use your credit card (not with Eagle Eyed Susan doing the household accounts) and I hadn’t brought my one credit card that was still working. We tried to get money from a cash machine in the lobby, I remember, but it kept saying “error.”

“Eees faulty,” said a man in a corporate blue suit, in a strong Spanish accent.

We found that hysterical, I remember. “Eees faulty,” we repeated to ourselves until we were almost crying.

Then we were in another taxi, a different one.

“Take us to a hotel,” you told the driver, imperiously. “But make sure it doesn’t cost more than £187.75.”

Do you remember saying that? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything quite so funny.

The second hotel had a basement floor with windowless rooms at a discounted rate.

“Eighty-nine pounds?” you queried. “That’s a bargain.” So we bought a bottle of champagne from the hotel bar with all the money we’d saved.

And in the room, it was just like we’d never been apart. Your tongue, your mouth, your body (substantially more of it than before I thought, the fleshy evidence of too much celebrating). I was glad I’d waxed my legs, glad I’d put on my best panties. “It’s you, it’s you,” I
kept saying. You must have thought I was mad! Crayzeeee Salleeeee, you sometimes used to say.

Now, you mustn’t mind about that first time, Clive. Really it doesn’t make any difference to me. We were both nervous. How could we not be? And we’d had so much to drink. It was lovely just to lie there holding each other, wasn’t it? It didn’t matter about the bits that went soft when they should have been hard, or stayed dry when they were supposed to be wet. The only thing that counts is that we loved each other, and that we laughed. “I love you,” I said, and your eyes said everything that your lips couldn’t.

“I’ve missed this,” you told me later, as we lay on the bed, each bit of us entwined together.

“I’ve missed you too,” I said.

I’d turned my phone off but yours was set to vibrate. When it seemed as if the whole bed was shaking with the frequency of your vibrations, we peeled ourselves out of the sheets and went to the shower. How many times have we stood that way before in how many different hotel rooms, water dripping into eyes, and from hair, hands soaping under arms, between legs?

When we got dressed I couldn’t stop smiling. I steered you in front of the mirror and leaned against you. “Look at us,” I said. “We’re perfect.”

Of course we weren’t at all—you just a little too short, me a little too spiky. But for a second, we blended in together with the moment and it was really perfect.

You flagged a taxi down for me outside on the main road.

“Let’s not spoil tonight with heavy good-byes,” you said.

I think I laughed, didn’t I? How could such a night be spoiled? Anyway, good-byes don’t have to be heavy when they segue straight into anticipation of the next meeting. All the way home, I smiled. The taxi driver must have thought I was bonkers. “Good night?” he asked, rather pointedly.

When I got your text making sure I was nearly home, the warmth spread through me like Deep Heat rub. I’ve missed that so much, you know? Having you worry about me.

Right up until the moment I stepped into our cluttered hallway, my mind was wholly and completely occupied by you. Even the piles of shoes and bags and coats on the floor couldn’t dent the bubble of “us” that surrounded me. Does that sound fanciful? For once I don’t care.

The house was dark (hardly surprising as it was 1.30
A.M.
Where did all that time go? Hours swallowed up by the consuming greed of us), but there was something restless about the darkness, something that was pacing the floors and crouching in corners.

As soon as I silently pushed open the door of our bedroom, I could tell that Daniel was awake. The tension crackled in the air like static—do you know what I mean? I slid into bed pretending not to notice that Daniel’s eyes were wide open and shining in the darkness.

“Where have you been?”

His voice was shockingly loud in the stillness of the sleeping house.

“I told you. Gill’s leaving party. It went on far longer than I expected.”

There was a silence before Daniel said: “I don’t believe you.”

Do you know, when he said that, I had an overwhelming urge just to tell him the truth. To say, I’ve been in a hotel room with Clive. We’re in love. We want to be together. Of course I didn’t. I know it’s too soon and we haven’t even discussed a proper exit strategy (that was what you used to call it, do you remember, our ever-changing, convoluted plans to leave our significant others?) that we can both implement together. But I’m so sick of the lies. Now that we’re back together I want it all to be different. Completely open. Don’t you?

Instead of responding to Daniel, I lay and pretended to go to sleep, but inside I was still buzzing with you. Now don’t take this the wrong way, but after the initial euphoria wore off and I got more used to the idea of us being “reconnected” I even allowed myself the luxury of being a little bit cavalier. I started thinking about the weight you’d put on, and how it made you look a fraction older. Ridiculous how just one evening together can make one secure enough to become critical again. I imagined you lying awake in your huge bed in St. John’s Wood and thinking of me.

Now it’s 11:35
A.M.
and I’ve been up five and a half hours, and I’m starting to flag a little. I’ve sent you a couple of emails but I’m guessing you’ve stayed in bed nursing your own hangover. Hurry up and wake up! I’m desperate to talk to you.

There’s so much to say, isn’t there?

H
alf past four and still no word from you. The kids are home from school but I haven’t even seen them yet, I don’t want to leave my computer. You’ll think it silly, I know, but disquiet is pricking at me like cactus hairs. Of course you could have had back-to-back meetings. Or you could have been called away suddenly. Or Susan could be glued to your side. There could be any number of reasons why you couldn’t get to your emails, and I’ve clutched at them all in turn.

I’ve been on Susan’s Facebook page (I wish you weren’t quite so set against getting a page yourself) about a hundred times today, trying to gauge what’s happening in your house, but there are no updates. It has crossed my mind that perhaps you’ve already come clean to her and told her you’re leaving and have been in emotional lockdown all day. That would account for the silence. So many things are going through my head. I wish you’d just get in touch. Have you been getting my emails? I was tempted to text you earlier but I didn’t want to take the risk.

The muscles at the tops of my legs are aching from being wrapped around your back so long last night. Every time they twinge I remember what we did, and how your face was and how we looked when we stood together in front of the mirror.

I feel you in every part of me.

I
t’s quarter to seven and Jamie and Tilly have just come in to say they’re hungry. I don’t know what to make them. Daniel is visiting his brother, Darren, and I can’t think of anything to cook. All I can do is sit at the computer, compulsively checking and rechecking my inbox.

“I’m sorry having children is so inconvenient for you,” Tilly said when I told her I was too busy with work to make them dinner.

I googled a local take-away and ordered some pizzas. I know it’s extravagant, but sometimes it’s good to be spontaneous, don’t you think? Don’t worry, I wouldn’t do that if we were together. We’d take turns to cook proper meals that we’d eat with the kids (I mean mine, of course. I can’t imagine the Sacred Vessel sitting down at the table with us. Well, definitely not at first). Everything would be so different if we were together, wouldn’t it? Every day would be like an adventure.

“This is cool,” Jamie said when the pizzas arrived and I told them to eat them in front of the telly in the living room. But Tilly, of course, refused to see the fun in it. She held her cardboard box on her lap in front of her as if it was an unexploded bomb.

“There’s grease soaking through the bottom,” she said, disgusted. “When did we stop using plates in this house?”

When the boxes were opened, the pizza toppings looked like they were made of melted plastic, and Jamie had been given American Hot instead of pepperoni. Outraged, he thrust his box under my nose. The oil was pooling, obscenely orange, on the glistening disks of sausage and I almost gagged.

Where are you, Clive? Where are you, Clive? Where are you, Clive?

You were supposed to rescue me from all of this. Surely you remember that?

I
have forgotten how to breathe.

I open my mouth and gasp for air like a diseased fish. There is a hard rock of pain inside me that I cannot shift, and nothing can get past it. It is cutting off oxygen and blood. It is feeding on me and it is growing.

I am trying to make sense of what you have written in your email, so eagerly anticipated, sitting here patiently at my desk with my
journal open in front of me and the computer inches from my eyes, but the meaning dances around the screen thumbing its nose.

I have sat here all day trying to think what to say.

How could you have been there all day? If you’d sat there all day, you’d have watched my emails dribble in one by desperate one. And yet you never replied. It doesn’t make sense.

Last night should never have happened. Believe me when I say, Sally, I despise myself for it.

What do you mean “never have happened?” How can you wish something so perfect had never happened? It’s like saying Tilly or Jamie should never have been born.

Sitting here in the cubbyhole, I pick at an old scab on my arm until it bleeds. You despise yourself because of last night. Being with me makes you despise yourself. I make people think themselves despicable.

I want you to know I hold myself fully to blame for what happened. I feel I have let everyone down—my family, Susan, even you. The rock of pain becomes a boulder at that “even you” tacked on to the end like a reluctant concession.

I have no excuses for my behavior and I apologize for any mixed messages it may have sent out. No matter what impression I might have given last night, I can only reiterate what I’ve been saying for months. I love Susan. I intend to spend the rest of my life making up to her for the hurt I’ve caused her. I am fully committed to my marriage.

No, no, no, no. Am I saying that out loud? The children and Daniel will think I have gone completely crazy, sitting here in my cubbyhole at 1
A.M.
, shouting in the dark. But I just don’t get it, even though I’ve read it over and over. Why are you saying that about your marriage? Are you deliberately trying to hurt me? Is it a new game you’re playing, a new test?