The Other Us. Fiona Harper
open my mouth and stop. I realise I have no answer. I’ve been so busy living in a slightly steamy fantasy all afternoon, I haven’t considered it. ‘Do you?’
He shrugs. ‘Not fussed. Whatever you want to do.’ And then he turns back and carries on making the tea.
I want to scream at him. I know it sounds lovely having a husband who’s accommodating about everything, but sometimes I think it’s just a ruse so all the decision-making is left to me. I’m tired, weighed down by the responsibility of a thousand tiny things: what to eat for dinner each night, which car we buy, what colour to paint the living room and which restaurant to visit on the odd occasion we eat out. Maybe that’s why I let Becca lead me round by the nose? On some level, it’s a relief.
Dan hands me a mug of tea – he always makes me one when he comes in from work – and then he heads off towards the hallway. ‘Just going to go up to the study and do some … you know … marking. On the computer. What time’s dinner?’
Now, this might sound like an ordinary domestic conversation, but it isn’t. Dan isn’t making eye contact and it all came out in a bit of a rush. I look carefully at him.
‘We’re having pasta … probably around seven.’
‘Cool.’ He turns and head upstairs with his cup of tea.
Half an hour later, I go to the box room above the hallway that we’ve always used as a study, seeing as that second baby never did come along. I don’t knock. Dan looks startled and he quickly closes down a window on the screen. Just text, no pictures. It didn’t look like a web page, I don’t think, but it was definitely something he didn’t want me to see.
‘What you up to?’ I ask breezily.
‘Oh, just some marking,’ Dan says, without looking round. ‘By the way, I thought I’d let you know I’m getting together with Sam – you remember Sam Macmillan? We went to school together? – on Thursday evening. We’re going out for a pint so I might be back a bit late.’ His tone is light but there’s a tension lying underneath it that stretches his words tight.
My insides go cold.
I know Sam Macmillan. I’m friends with his wife Geraldine on Facebook. And I know for a fact that they’re away celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary in Prague this week, because I’ve been gradually going green with envy seeing all the holiday snaps and still-so-in-love selfies.
‘OK,’ I say as I reach for his mug and retreat. I feel shivery inside as I head back down the stairs. I leave the mug on the kitchen table instead of putting it in the dishwasher and I stare out the French windows that lead to our small and slightly overgrown garden.
This is it, then.
Before now it’s just been a feeling, a sense that something isn’t right. That’s what I was going to tell Becca about today. Now I have something concrete.
I pick up my mobile and open the door to the garden, dial my best friend’s number. I know it’s usually all about Becca when we get together, but just for ten minutes I really, really need it to be about me.
‘It could be nothing,’ Becca says firmly. ‘It could be something really innocent.’
I take a moment to weigh her words. ‘Was it innocent when Grant kept turning his phone off the moment he walked through the door so he didn’t get any calls he couldn’t explain, or when you discovered he had an email account you didn’t know about?’
Becca sighs. ‘No. I wanted to believe it was, but it wasn’t.’
We’re both silent as we process the implication of what I’ve just told her – about Dan’s behaviour growing more secretive over the last couple of months. How he’s spending more and more time in the study. How he often shuts down what he’s doing if I enter. How he keeps meeting up with friends he hasn’t seen in years, but only every other Thursday night.
I close my eyes. I don’t want to go through this. I don’t want to be pulled apart at the seams, like Becca was throughout the discovery of her husband’s infidelity and their subsequent divorce. I don’t want Sophie to come from a broken home, even though she’s technically a grown-up now. She worships her father, even though she teases him about being a boring old fart. I don’t want her to have to know this.
Could I? Could I just close my eyes and pretend this isn’t happening?
‘What are you going to do?’ Becca asks, interrupting my thoughts.
My throat is suddenly swollen and I need to swallow before I can push any words out of my mouth. ‘I don’t know.’
I expect Becca to get all post-divorce militant on me, tell me to deck him one or go and take my best dressmaking scissors to his suits; but instead, she exhales loudly and says, ‘Oh, Mags …’
That’s when the tears start to fall. I wipe them away quickly with the heel of my hand. I don’t want Dan to know I’ve been crying when I go back inside. Stupid, I know. Why does this little secret even matter when there are much bigger ones eating away at the heart of our marriage?
‘You’ll get through this,’ Becca says, and her voice is both soft and full of confidence. ‘I know you will.’ We say our goodbyes, with Becca telling me to call her, day or night, if I need her.
I stand in the garden, watching the sun go down, and imagine her faith in me to be real. I let my mind play out what surely must be coming: the inevitable tears and accusations. The confession. Dan moving out. I fast-forward over it all, just alighting briefly on the main scenarios, then imagine what it’ll be like if I ever get to where Becca is now: stronger, happier, freer.
Maybe I’ll find a wonderful new man too.
My mind quickly drifts back to where it’s been going all afternoon: Jude.
Maybe we’ll meet again at the reunion. It’ll be too soon then, of course, too fresh and raw, but we’ll chat. We’ll keep in touch. He’ll text me now and again, just when I’m feeling most down. And then one day I’ll find him on my doorstep with a big bunch of flowers and I’ll just know I’m finally ready to have my own ‘glow’. Dan will be nothing but a distant memory.
I sigh, wishing it could be true, that I could jump forward to that moment in reality, not just in my mind, and that I wouldn’t have to experience all the in-between bits.
Don’t be silly, I tell myself. Things don’t happen just because you wish them, and I put my phone to sleep and walk back inside the house to cook Dan’s tea.
We sit eating our pasta. Neither of us has much to say. Dan keeps his focus on his plate most of the time, hoovering up the large portion I gave him – extra cheese on top – and while he eats, I look at him. I wonder who this is, who my husband has become.
You never really knew how to reach me, I tell him in my head. I always thought you’d figure it out some day, but now you’re not even trying. You’re probably too busy trying to ‘reach’ into some other woman’s knickers.
I chew my pasta and wish I’d cooked something that makes more of a crunch. Another thought creeps up on me, and then another and another.
What if it’s not just sex?
What if he’s falling in love with someone else?
What if he knows how to reach her, this mystery woman he must talk to on the computer?
Then I’ll rip his chest open with my bare hands and kill him.
The force of my rage stops me cold. I put down my fork.
I’m shocked. I thought my love for Dan was comfortable, like a bath you’re not quite ready to get out of, even though it’s well on its way to lukewarm. I didn’t know there was enough left to prompt such fury.
I get up and scrape my food into the composting bin, then dump my plate in the dishwasher.