The Sweetest Thing (13 page)

‘Great,’ he says, then hesitates before going on. ‘The children would have loved the beach …’

I refrain from commenting that he could have taken them with him. I suspect that he’s often torn between spending quality time with Adam, Georgia and Sophie, and pleasing Alice.

I notice the dark shadows around his eyes and
stubble on his cheeks as he looks me up and down. ‘My God, Jennie. You look a fright. What have you been doing?’

Glancing down at my work clothes, jeans and a vest, I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. ‘Baking, gardening and pulling weed out of the pond.’

‘How cerebral,’ he says with sarcasm. ‘Look at the muscles in your arms.’

I hadn’t noticed before, but they are more defined and my skin, although I do remember to slap on the sunscreen, has become lightly tanned. David might not like it, but I feel very healthy. ‘At least I don’t have to pay out for a subscription for the gym.’

‘I haven’t been to the gym for a while either.’

I can tell, I think. He’s put on some weight.

‘Are they ready? The kids?’

‘Daddy, Daddy!’ Sophie’s been ready since this morning, her clothes neatly packed into a pink suitcase with wheels. My throat tightens with regret when I see her clinging on to David, her arms around his neck. ‘I’ve missed you.’ She gives him a kiss on the cheek then giggles with delight, her curls dancing around her shoulders.

‘I’ve missed you too, darling,’ he says, letting her down on to the step. ‘Do you want to stick your bag in the car?’

‘I’ll just find Georgia and Adam for you,’ Sophie says. Daddy’s pet.

Adam isn’t far away. He comes tramping through from the lobby with his rucksack, clothes and electrical cables flowing from the open top, the straps unfastened.

‘Where’s Georgia?’ David asks.

I’m pretty sure she’s still packing, deliberately stalling,
so she can spend as little time away from Uphill House as possible, because of the three of them, she’s the only one who’s settled in, so far. So far. You see, I’m still optimistic. It’s early days.

‘Come in, David,’ I say. ‘I’ll show you around.’ I reckon that’s why he was so keen to drive all the way down here tonight – to see Uphill House for himself. When he and Alice bought their flat, I didn’t get to have a peek until the fourth or fifth time I dropped the children off. I’d thought about asking Georgia to take some video clips on her mobile, but decided that it would probably be against her ethical principles, and then I had a bit of luck: Adam left his iPod inside – it was the perfect excuse.

I went back to get it, sidling past David at the door. Alice was reclining on one of a pair of sofas, identical to the ones that David and I had when we were married. She had a copy of
Hello!
in her lap, and I recall thinking, How shallow. And how young … And how badly David had betrayed me.

I never did get to have a good look around the flat. I had to get out of there as quickly as I could.

‘There’s marmalade cake in the larder,’ I say.

‘Thanks, Jennie, but I can’t stop long. I’ve had a hard week. All this travelling isn’t going to help.’

‘Tough,’ I say. He made his choice, Alice over me and the kids.

‘There’s no need to be arsey with me.’ David pauses. ‘You should be grateful that this arrangement you’ve thoughtlessly imposed on everyone else didn’t drive me to go for full custody.’

He doesn’t scare me. I feel quite secure. I know he and the girlfriend are planning to travel the world, so he can look upon these weekend trips as practice.
Okay, I’m resentful, but is it surprising when David swans about, advertising his mid-life crisis, as if he’s the only person in the universe who’s ever had one?

‘I’ve already offered to meet you halfway,’ I say. What else can I do? I’m not moving back, that’s for certain. ‘If it’s really such a pain, you don’t have to see them every other weekend. You can make it once a month, if that’s more convenient for you.’ I don’t mean it. I have no intention of stopping our children seeing their father.

‘I want to see them,’ David says, looking hurt, and for a moment I feel sorry for him, because although it’s self-inflicted, he appears to be missing them – which is ironic, because he was hardly ever around before when we were married. He had a knack of timing his return home for just after I’d fed and bathed the kids, and read them a bed-time story. I used to find myself looking for hidden cameras in case he was spying on me.

‘Does Alice want to come in too?’ I add, although I’ve already noticed that she isn’t in the car.

‘Alice? Oh, no, she’s gone off with friends for a hen weekend at some spa.’

‘Is she getting fed up with you already?’

‘Really, Jennie, you can be so childish,’ David sighs, as he makes to step into the hall.

‘You’d better take your shoes off. The muck,’ I explain. I show David around – correction, Sophie shows him around and I tag along, hoping he’s impressed. However, he’s horrified.

‘Jennie, I knew it!’ he says when Sophie’s showing him the throne in the bathroom and the site of the infamous spider removal. ‘You’re completely insane. Do you really expect our children to live here? It’s dirty,
damp, and it’ll take you years to get it straight. You’ll have Sophie down with another chest infection …’

‘Rubbish. She only had those because of the traffic fumes … the pollution. The country air will clear her lungs.’

‘And why are the girls sharing?’

‘Because they wanted to.’

‘They told me on the phone about the dead bat. And the cattle stampede.’

‘It was hardly a stampede. The cows wandered into the garden because we’d left the gate open. Sophie, go and help Georgia finish packing.’ I check to see if Adam’s listening in, but I can hear his voice in the garden, saying goodbye to his dog.

I’m tempted not to offer David cake, after all, but then I think that would be petty, and it wouldn’t hurt to remind him what he’s missing: his family, my cooking.

‘Come through.’ Dad and I did a lot of work on the kitchen – I don’t think there’s anything for David to criticise in here, although I’m sure he’ll try. I set the kettle to boil on the Aga while David sits down and picks up the
Chronicle
. He casts a glance across the ad for Jennie’s Cakes, then turns to the piece of marmalade cake I’ve put in front of him. He examines it, checking for hairs maybe. He does have this tendency towards OCD.

‘That was … very nice,’ he says eventually.

‘I don’t suppose Alice has time to do much baking.’ She works full-time.

‘No, she doesn’t cook,’ he says wistfully, then as if he believes he’s being disloyal, goes on, ‘I’ve told her, though, she doesn’t need to.’ He looks at his watch. ‘I’d better be getting back. The roads should be emptier by now.’

Reluctantly, I call the children together. It’s tough because Sophie wants to go with David, Georgia wants to stay with me, and Adam is torn between seeing his friends in London and being with his dog. But within half an hour they’re in David’s car, waving goodbye, and, biting back my tears as I don’t want them to see I’m upset, I almost say, ‘I’ll come with you and stay at Mum and Dad’s.’

‘I’ll meet you at the McDonald’s at four on Sunday,’ David says, climbing into the driver’s seat. ‘Don’t be late. I’m flying to Brussels on Monday so I’ll have a very early start.’

I watch them all go, my family, the car disappearing down the lane, tyres scrunching into the potholes and dust rising in its wake. I check my watch. Forty-four hours to go. As I turn away, arms folded, head down, towards the house, there’s a whine from beside me. It’s Lucky.

‘It looks like it’s just me and you, dog,’ I say.

He gazes at me with mournful eyes and whips his tail once from side to side, then accompanies me indoors where I head for the drawing room and light a row of tea lights in the fireplace. Lucky settles on my lap, his head in the crook of my elbow, as I watch the flickering flames, and after all these years, I think I might have discovered the point of having a dog as a pet. ‘You’re such a sweetie,’ I tell him, and he makes this sound, like a cat’s purr, in his throat.

Seeing David must have stirred old memories in my brain because although it’s been eighteen months since he revealed Alice’s existence, it all comes flooding back. I considered myself a modern woman with traditional values. I gave up a good job for our family. I washed David’s socks, ironed his shirts and looked
after his children. I cooked for him, I muse, recalling the night I made boudoir biscuits for the very last time.

‘I can’t understand why you’ve stuck with it,’ David said, as we sat on the sofa side by side that evening. ‘Till now, I mean,’ he added.

‘What do you mean, till now?’ Something was different this time. David didn’t usually volunteer the information he was having an affair. He tended to confess when it was all over, or when I found out. A pulse of doubt throbbed in the back of my mind. ‘You have finished with her?’

David gazed at me, his expression remorseful, and very slowly shook his head.

‘I’m really sorry, Jennie.’

‘You’re still seeing her?’ The light flickered above us. ‘Oh my God, it’s serious.’

David nodded, as if he’d lost the power of speech. I could smell alcohol and acrid sweat. He was as nervous as hell, and so he should have been because he wasn’t telling me all this to beg my forgiveness. He was telling me because he wanted out.

Bile and the ire of betrayal rose in my throat. Before, I’d fought to save my marriage, but this was one step too far. As far as I was concerned, he could have ‘out’. There was no way I was letting him come near me again.

‘Who is she, this old slag?’ I said sharply.

‘It doesn’t really matter.’

‘Of course it bloody matters.’ My hands were balled into fists. I wanted – needed – to know all about her. What she looked like, sounded like, what perfume she wore. What exactly David admired in her. What exactly she had that I hadn’t.

‘Well, for your information, she isn’t some old slag,
and I’m very much in love with her,’ he said in a low, somewhat sheepish tone.

‘That’s a bit of a sudden change of heart,’ I said, standing up. ‘Last week you said you loved me!’ It had been a spontaneous gesture, David moving up behind me as I melted chocolate over a bain-marie in the kitchen, resting one hand on the curve of my waist and saying ‘I love you’ out loud. Now I understood that he’d been testing his feelings for me, making his choice.

‘Yeah, I said I loved you, not that I’m
in
love with you. There is a difference.’

I could feel the heat of my tears running down my face, taste salt and eggs and marsala wine, as I broke down completely.

‘Jennie,’ David said, and I could hear the desperation in his voice. ‘Please, don’t cry …’ He cocked his head towards the ceiling. ‘Don’t make a scene. The children.’

‘The children?’ His sudden concern for our children inflamed me. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t think about the children when you were shagging—’

‘Shhh! It wasn’t like that.’ David frowned. ‘God, Jennie, you’re making it sound so tawdry.’

‘It is! It’s tawdry, cheap and disgusting.’ I flashed him a furious stare. ‘
You’re
disgusting. You’re married to me … have been for fourteen years, remember?’ I hesitated as a single coherent thought unscrambled itself from the chaos in my brain. ‘Is she married?’

‘No. She’s …’ David picked at an imaginary piece of fluff on his sweater, then looked up at me again with something akin to a smirk on his face. At least, that’s how it seemed to me. As if he was proud of himself. ‘She’s single. And new to the company.’

‘I could have guessed you met her at work, seeing you spend most of your life there,’ I cut in.

‘She’s also quite young.’

‘Quite young?’ I stepped towards him. ‘What do you mean by
quite
young?’

‘Will you put that thing down?’ David was looking towards my hand. I glanced down, finding a bottle of Merlot in my grip. ‘You’re spilling it.’

I couldn’t believe that all he was worried about was his precious wine, when I was so angry and upset I could have hit him about the head with it, because when he said young, he meant she was a whole heap younger than me.

‘How young?’ I growled.

‘Twenty-four.’

At first I thought I’d misheard him.

‘Thirty-four?’

‘Twenty-four,’ David confirmed.

‘But that’s—’ I made a quick calculation and came to a dreadful conclusion. ‘She’s sixteen years younger than you, fifteen younger than me.’ She’s younger than me, her flesh firmer, her boobs still pert, no wrinkles, no grey hairs. ‘You’ll be a laughing stock, one of those sad old men being pushed around in a wheelchair by a vapid blonde. She is blonde, isn’t she? I know she is.’

‘Jennie, that’s irrelevant.’

It was. For a millisecond, I agreed with him. He was leaving me for a younger woman. There was nothing I could do or say to prevent it, even if I wanted to. I could see that it was hopeless, and after all I’d done for him, the ungrateful … slug. I wondered at myself sometimes. All that education and that was the best I could come up with: slug.

I was suddenly exhausted, drained, and irreversibly
changed. I was not the same person. My whole existence, my identity, was based on my marriage first, family second. Life as I knew it was over, and somehow I had to find the energy and inner strength to move forward and become my own person again.