Trio - [65]

‘Kay-’

‘Shut up!’ She drank again, a fiery mouthful, sucked angrily on her cigarette. There was so much anger. It was like a great cannonball inside, hot and heavy and rolling, rolling. How could you? she wanted to scream at him, How could you hurt me so, how could you risk all this, our marriage, our children? Why? Questions that had no answers.

‘Get out!’ she managed.

‘Kay.’

She flung her glass at him, the drink splashing on his shirt and his neck, the tumbler crashing to the floor.

He hesitated.

‘Fuck off!’ she screamed. Words she had never spoken before.

He went.

She found another glass, poured another drink, smoked more cigarettes. Looked out at a brisk, bright afternoon and felt her eyes swim. How could it all be there, looking just as it had before?

When the twins woke she got them up, went through the motions of feeding and changing, the drink making her move a little more slowly, more carefully. She put Martin and Michael out to play in the garden. All the while nursing her anger, chewing over the shock of her discovery, seeing again Adam’s darker leg against Joanna’s, his buttocks, her breasts swaying as she sat and turned away. She wallowed in it, soaking up the misery, feeling the bite of jealousy and the ache of grief settle in, the streams of emotion seep through her till it was all she was. Every hair, every cell sharing in the pain.

She let her imagination run riot, fantasising about the two of them, her friend and her husband, digging out a conspiracy that dated back months – assignations, plans and schemes, efforts to cheat on her. She was a fool, such an idiot. How she had sympathised with Joanna when she’d told her about Bev and Ken that time. She had felt so sorry for Joanna, so glad that she and Adam were different. Hah! They had played her for a fool and that knowledge scalded her with shame.

When Theresa and Dominic got back from school she made peanut butter sandwiches for them and mandarin oranges from a tin. She let them watch Crackerjack and then she got them all bathed and into bed earlier than usual. She couldn’t eat. She had a headache from the brandy but she didn’t care. A headache was nothing. She smoked more cigarettes, drank strong coffee. Poured herself the last of the brandy.

He came back when it was dark. She heard the door, then his walk along the hall. She was sitting in the lounge. She hadn’t put the light on.

‘Kay.’ He’d been drinking too. She could smell it on him as he came closer, a yeasty smell, beer, not the spirit she’d doused him with. He put his hand on her shoulder.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she spat at him.

‘I don’t know what you want me to do,’ he said in anguish.

‘It’s a bit late for that now, isn’t it? I wanted you to honour our marriage vows. I wanted you to love and honour me, to forsake all others. To be true to me.’

‘Kay, I promise-’

‘You promise? You promise what?’ she began to shout. ‘You don’t know how to keep a promise, you bastard! You rotten, cheating, bloody bastard! I hate you, Adam, I hate you for this.’

There was a silence. She heard the blackbird outside trilling in the dark, the hoot of the train in the distance. Adam’s breath, harsh as though he’d been running. Then she heard him sit. The creak of the chair and a sigh.

‘What will you do?’

‘Well, I can’t divorce you.’

He made a sound. Had she shocked him? Good. She wanted to frighten him, though, make him feel an ounce of what she was feeling. ‘I don’t know about the rest. Separation, maybe.’ Had he any inkling how unlikely that was for her? ‘I’d need to get a solicitor, maintenance for the children. And we’d need to stay in the house.’ She wouldn’t do any of it, though, would she?

‘Kay, please. It was one mistake, a stupid, bloody mistake. I love you, and the children. You mean everything to me. There’s no need to-’

‘What? Take it to heart? Don’t tell me what I need or don’t need, Adam.’

‘I just meant-’

‘How long?’

‘What?’

‘How long have you been fucking Joanna?’ She swore to shock him.

‘Kay, really.’

‘The truth, Adam. How long?’

A pause.

‘A couple of months.’ He cleared his throat.

‘When did it start?’

‘Kay… I don’t…’ He fell quiet.

‘Don’t remember? Why not? Do you sleep with the neighbours often? When?’

‘Why?’ He said softly.

‘When?’

‘Easter.’ he cleared his throat again. Four months, not two. ‘The dinner dance.’

At the Tennis Club. Kay had left early so their babysitter could get home. ‘But Ken was there?’ The four of them had sat together.

Silence.

‘You didn’t take her home. Where then?’

‘In the gardens.’

She lit a cigarette, the flare from the lighter illuminating her face, the flame just catching a wisp of hair. She smelt the acrid stench as it shrivelled up, a tiny crackling sound.

‘Where else?’

He didn’t answer.

‘Did you do it here?’

‘No,’ he said quickly.

Liar. ‘Adam?’

‘No,’ he insisted.

‘Where else?’

‘Joanna’s.’

‘That weekend at Southport,’ she said flatly. ‘After the picnic? When we went horse riding?’

‘Kay, please, don’t.’

‘Tell me, Adam.’

‘Yes,’ he said and sighed.

She felt her past unravelling. The memories distorted now by the image of them having sex. Bitterness flooded her anew. Joanna had lent her a stole that weekend. They’d all got drunk in the chalet bar. She’d been wearing Joanna’s stole and Joanna had been borrowing her husband. How ironic.