Fallen Women. Sue Welfare
many accidents have you and Chrissie had over the years, Joe? How many?’ Inside Kate was churning. She was struggling not to lose it, not to sound too angry or hurt because she wanted to know the answers. Wanted to know before she dissolved into the raw emotions. There were just too many things going around inside her head to decide which one was driving, and so her voice came out flat and cold and cruel.
‘Kate, please don’t do this.’
‘Don’t do what? Ask for answers? Want to know how long my best friend and my husband have been getting it on behind my back. How long has it been, Joe? How long?’ Kate could hear the fury rumble, developing in her ears and in her voice like a summer storm. She couldn’t remember a time when she had felt so much, so fiercely.
‘Look, Kate, I’ve already said I’m sorry; we didn’t mean to.’
‘What the fuck do you mean you didn’t mean to? What did it do, jump up and take you both by surprise? It’s not like you’re magnetic or anything. How long, Joe?’
He looked at Kate, wide-eyed and speechless.
‘Tell me,’ Kate roared with a voice that seemed to erupt from somewhere deep beneath her feet.
‘I can’t,’ he said, ashen now.
‘A year, two years. Five, ten?’
‘It isn’t like that.’
‘What is it like then, Joe? Or would you prefer me to ring Chrissie and ask her? You’ve gone on and on for years about what a fucking little tramp she is. How she neglects her kids, always getting herself into debt, going out with all sorts of misfits and morons. Christ, there were times when I was afraid to invite her round for a coffee in case we ended up rowing about it. And all that time you were screwing her?’
He said nothing.
Kate felt so sick that she thought she might die. ‘Since she moved in?’
Nothing.
‘Since she moved in?’ Kate roared, waiting for Joe to protest, to deny it.
But he didn’t. He didn’t deny it, instead he just looked up at Kate with eyes full of tears, and then at last very slowly said, ‘No, not all the time. When Chrissie first moved in you and I were going through a bad patch. The band was falling apart, things weren’t right between us. I don’t need to tell you this stuff, Kate, you already know it. I thought I was letting you and the boys down, that you didn’t need me, that you’d be better off without me. I was up to my arse in debt, what with all the gear, and then getting the van repossessed. Chrissie thought I was special. She just needed someone to give her a hand with a few jobs, put some shelves up, she was down on her uppers too. Depressed. I don’t know, I suppose we both needed a shoulder to cry on. What I’m saying is that it just happened. I don’t know what else to say. It just happened –’
Kate felt her whole life shift a little to the left. Where had she been when all this was going on? How was it she hadn’t known? Kate stared at him, remembering how she’d gone round to introduce herself to Chrissie, remembering how that first night she’d moved in Kate had invited her round to supper because Chrissie hadn’t got any gas or maybe it was electricity.
Staring at Joe, Kate watched a quick fire slide show of memories and images rip through her mind like bullets in a machine gun belt. She would have to go back now and look again at every single frame trying to spot the things she had missed the first time round. How could she possibly have not known? Was her intuition so bad?
‘And since then? How many times since you went to fix her shelves?’
Joe squirmed in the chair, a naughty boy caught with the stolen fruit in his jacket pocket.
‘Well?’
‘Look Kate, it’s not like we’re having a full-scale affair or anything.’
‘So what is it then? A harmless meeting of minds?’
He shook his head. It wasn’t so much a denial more a gesture of dismissal, of a desire to escape. Watching him, Kate wasn’t sure which hurt the most, Chrissie’s betrayal or Joe’s, and then she realised with a gut wrenching certainty it was, without a doubt, Chrissie’s.
Joe had never been privy to her thoughts and fears and dreams and giggling drunken confessions in the same unguarded way Chrissie had. Kate might have shared her body with Joe but it had been Chrissie Kate had told about her first snog, the first time she had ever seen a man naked and what she thought and felt and dreamed about almost everything else that had happened since then. Chrissie had been into those secret sacred places where only best friends go. And apparently, now it seemed, a few more besides.
Between them, they had betrayed Kate beyond words and it hurt so hard that she couldn’t gauge just how big the pain was. It spread out all around her like a rolling fog with no edge and no relief. She was angry and then furious and then humiliated; between them they had made a total fool of her, and she felt so hurt and so raw that she wanted to hit Joe and wreak some terrible, terrible vengeance. For an instant Kate wanted the pair of them dead, worse than dead, and then with a great wave of grief thought maybe it would be better if she was dead. All this ebbed and flowed through Kate’s mind in a handful of seconds.
‘Would you like some tea?’ Joe asked, getting up.
Kate finally slid down into the chair Chrissie had so recently vacated. ‘Yes,’ she said exhausted, head in hand. It was as if all those emotions had burnt off a huge amount of energy. But she wasn’t too tired to fight. ‘How could you do this to me?’
‘Kate, I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
‘You should have thought about that before you screwed Chrissie. I don’t know where this leaves us, Joe. Where do we go from here?’
She looked up at him. His expression held but she could see the panic and pain flash behind his eyes.
Kate spoke very slowly. ‘I’ve always been on your side, Joe, I thought we were a team. I know things haven’t always gone the way you wanted but I’ve never given you a hard time about it. I’ve always believed in what you do, your talent, I never ever said give up the music, get real, get a proper job,’ Kate paused. Maybe that was the problem, maybe he needed something to kick against, maybe she had killed him with kindness. ‘Are you planning to leave? Do you want to be with her? Have you just been waiting for the right time to tell me?’
He looked completely horrified. ‘God – no, of course not. I don’t want Chrissie, Kate, I never wanted Chrissie. I want you.’
‘It doesn’t look much like that from where I’m sitting, Joe. And actually don’t bother about the tea, either, it would most probably choke me.’
Feeling incredibly tired and world-weary Kate picked up her bags and headed upstairs.
Despite an odd sense of unreality, and a voice in her head that said that this couldn’t be happening, standing in the doorway to their bedroom Kate felt another great wave of nausea rising up in her stomach. There was no way she would ever be able to bring herself to wash the sheets. Ripping them off the bed Kate bundled everything, sheets, duvet cover, pillowcases into a big untidy roll and stuffed the whole lot into a black plastic rubbish bag.
When she was done, Kate pushed her hair back out of her eyes and – as she brushed her finger across her face – was amazed to find that she had been crying. While she worked Kate had no idea where Joe was or what he was doing. It was as if her consciousness edited him out. Who could she tell, who she could talk to about this, who was there who would put their arms around her and hold her tight until the tears boiled dry?
As she got clean sheets out of the airing cupboard Danny and Jake came jogging up the stairs.
‘We saw your car,’ said Danny, slumping down onto the bare mattress.
Jake grinned a hello. ‘We weren’t expecting you back until Monday.’
Kate didn’t trust herself to speak.