What had got into her? A reality check, that’s what. A wake-up call, loud and clear. Attention, Josie Winter! Your life is passing you by. Do something with it!
Anyway, one thing at a time, eh? She had Rose to think about tonight. Maybe she could bring up the subject of foreign expeditions again when they were snuggled up in bed later, post-coital and lovey-dovey . . .
Now. What to eat, to get them in the mood? The boys had had scrambled eggs for tea earlier, but Pete had claimed not to be hungry after the huge lunch at Barbara’s.
‘Great,’ Josie had said brightly, ‘you and I can eat together later. It’s a date!’
She didn’t fancy the spag bol she’d bought them for yesterday – not romantic enough – so she grabbed the sheaf of takeaway menus. There was wine in the fridge, they could share some nice Indian or Chinese food, then get down to business. Rose – prepare to leave that limbo of unborn souls! You are on the verge of being created, my little darling!
She went into the living room, where Pete was sitting staring into space, and spread the menus in front of him like a fan.
‘Pick a card, any card,’ she said. ‘You choose.’ As long as it’s prawns, she thought. She knew, from devouring every article ever printed about getting pregnant, that zinc was good for men’s sperm count. She’d already bought in the supplements, and had cooked up enough eggs and shellfish in the last few months to send his zinc levels sky-rocketing, but a last top-up tonight wouldn’t hurt. In fact, would it be too deceitful if she secretly ordered everything to have prawns in? She could pretend the restaurant had cocked up the order so that when his beef in black bean sauce turned out to be prawn chow mein, she’d—
He was sighing and shifting around in his armchair. ‘Josie . . . um . . . I’m not that hungry. Sorry.’
She stared at him in surprise. ‘What’s wrong? It’s not like you to turn down a takeaway. There’s some wine in the fridge, I thought we could . . .’
He still hadn’t looked at her properly. Now he was fiddling with his wedding ring. ‘Josie,’ he started, then put his head in his hands.
‘What?’ she asked. I’ll order him something anyway, she thought distractedly. He was bound to be hungry when the food arrived. Chinese would be nice. And she knew from her pregnancy-magazine addiction that if a woman wanted to conceive a girl, she should eat calcium-rich food, green vegetables and fish. Let’s see, maybe she could start with . . .
‘Josie,’ he said again, then cleared his throat. ‘Josie, I can hardly bear to do this to you, but . . .’
It wasn’t exactly the best way to start a sentence to your wife, Josie thought, turning sharply towards him. Not the most cheering words to hear at any given point. Zinc and spring rolls disappeared from her mind at once, and a creeping horror spread through her at his pale face, the way his eyes were so dark and haunted-looking. And what was going on with the wedding-ring thing?
‘But what?’ she prompted hoarsely.
‘There’s somebody else,’ he said. ‘I’ve met somebody.’
Josie’s mouth moved but her brain seemed to have jammed with some kind of mechanical fault. ‘Well . . .’ she heard herself saying, ‘well, everybody meets new people all the time! I mean, I met the new woman from number twenty-three the other day, Joanne, she’s called, and . . .’
She wasn’t being deliberately obtuse, she just couldn’t equate Pete’s words with the truth. He hadn’t really said that, surely? Slip of the tongue, it had to be. He hadn’t meant to say
that
. The somebody-else thing.
He
couldn’t
have said that.
‘Josie!’ He sat up, a flash of irritation crossing his face, then seemed to think better of it, and bit his lip. ‘I’m trying to tell you – I’m trying to say that I’ve met someone else. I’ve
fallen in love
with someone else. And I’m . . .’ He looked at the floor for a second, then full in her eyes. ‘I’m leaving you.’
It had been a gorgeous wedding. Absolutely gorgeous. Gold September sun beaming through the windows as she teetered up the aisle of the seventeenth-century stone chapel. Her killer-heel shoes, the pinching corset, the tightness of her hairstyle were temporarily forgotten as she saw him there in his tails, a single white rose on the lapel. Those brown eyes on hers – slightly anxious at first, then, as she got nearer to him, a wink and a grin.
On the video you could hear a low, sighing chorus of
oohs
and
ahhs
as she walked up – not to mention her nan exclaiming loudly, ‘Well! What a beauty!’ in a particularly surprised sort of way – but Josie wasn’t aware of any of that at the time. She didn’t hear a note of ‘Here Comes the Bride’. She didn’t smell the perfumed lily-of-the-valley tied in little posies by each row of seats. Pete was all she could see, dear, kind, lovely Pete, with his one white rose and his brown eyes.
‘Do you, Josie Catherine Bell, take this man, Peter David Winter, to be your lawful wedded husband?’
‘I do.’ Damn bloody right I do! she’d thought, shocked that there could be any doubt. Who in her right mind
wouldn’t
take Peter David Winter to be her lawful wedded husband, with his low chuckle, his saucy cocked eyebrow and his penchant for sex in public places?
‘You may now kiss the bride.’
Josie had never particularly liked that line. What about the bride? Didn’t she get a say in it? Today, feminist annoyance was put to one side.
You may now kiss the groom, she told herself as Pete’s mouth came towards hers. My husband!
On the video, her eyes were shut. She was smiling as she kissed him. He had a hand on her back, as if he was steadying himself. Or was he steadying
her
? Pete had never been nervous in his life. Confidence ran through him like blood.
One kiss, and they were married. It was perfect.
Perfect.
Josie often thought about their wedding day. Dusting the framed photos always made her smile. Driving past the old rectory where it had all happened, remembering the marquee on the grass, friends in colourful dresses and hats gathered in clusters on the lawn like late-summer flowers . . . she could conjure up the memories in a flash, and they always left a melting warmth inside her.
Often, when Pete was away at a business conference or a stag weekend, she sat down with a glass of wine, put the video on and watched herself marry him all over again. It gave her the most delicious shiver, seeing them so young and happy on her own TV screen. So in love.
And now . . .
Now . . .
‘It’s Lisa, isn’t it?’ she said. It all clicked into place in a second. Josie felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach as the images crashed into her mind. The photo under Lisa’s bed, the flash of guilt in Lisa’s eyes, the message on the answerphone. It was meant for Pete, surely, to warn him that . . .
‘Lisa?’ Pete repeated. He was staring at her, with a look of fear. ‘What did she . . . ? I mean, why do you . . . ?’
She gulped. So it was true. It was really true. It was written all over his face.
‘I’m not stupid!’ she snapped. ‘I worked it out all by myself. And you just confirmed it, looking at me like that.’ Tears sprang to her eyes, and her fingers trembled uncontrollably. She had spent twenty-four hours with her friend – her so-called friend – Lisa, and all the while this had been on the cards. It was breathtaking! ‘So . . . what are you saying?’ she managed to get out. ‘That you’re leaving me for her? That you’re leaving me for
Lisa
?’
He shook his head, a strange uncertainty in his eyes. ‘Josie, it’s not Lisa,’ he said slowly, as if he was speaking to a child. ‘That was just a stupid mistake. It’s—’
Josie nearly fell off her chair. ‘What?’ she cried, her voice rising in shock. She couldn’t keep up with this. ‘What? So you
had
an affair with Lisa – but now you’re leaving me for someone
else
?’
She could hardly take it in. Finding out about Lisa was a sucker punch on its own. That had all but knocked her to the floor. But now – this? There was
more
?
Words were coming out of Pete’s mouth. Spilling out, as if he couldn’t control them. Awful words. Terrible words that she’d never expected to hear him saying. Not ‘Till death do us part’ after all.
Stale.
No sex drive.
Outgrown one another.
Boring.
Then came even worse.
‘She makes me feel alive.’ Wham! A knife in the back.
‘She makes me laugh.’ Thud! A kick in the guts.
‘She makes me feel like a teenager . . .’
‘When you were a teenager, you were as miserable as sin,’ Josie reminded him waspishly. There were only so many clichés she could take. She buried her head in her hands.
Go on, say it
, she wanted to scream.
She makes me come twenty times a night. She makes me horny as hell. She makes me hard just by cocking her little finger . . .
‘You know what I mean,’ he said helplessly.
‘No, I don’t fucking know what you mean,’ she shouted, remembering too late the boys asleep upstairs. ‘You’re thirty-five, Pete. You’re not
supposed
to feel like a teenager any more. Remember?’
She was weeping, though she couldn’t remember starting to cry. She dashed the tears away, almost surprised to feel the wetness sliding down her cheeks. Don’t cry, don’t cry, she told herself fiercely. Don’t let him see you cry.
‘You’re meant to feel like a grown man,’ she went on, staring at him, this person she’d loved for so long. He suddenly looked like a stranger with his blue T-shirt and guilty eyes. ‘You’re meant to feel like a
married
man. A dad! And now you’re telling me that you went off with Lisa, and this other slag . . .’
‘She’s not a slag,’ he said wretchedly. ‘She’s . . . I love her.’
Josie thought of the Baby Gap bag still sitting in the bottom of her wardrobe, full of its cheery pinkness and promise. That was the worst blow of all, straight to her belly, her softest, most vulnerable part. ‘But what about Rose?’ she said, her voice breaking on the name. ‘What about—?’
‘There
is
no Rose!’ he shouted. ‘She doesn’t exist – and I’m sick of you going on about it! Can’t you see, that’s what’s driving me away, you being so . . .’
He didn’t finish his sentence, he held off from the adjective at the last moment, leaving the unspoken accusation hanging between them.
Josie felt as if she’d been slapped. She felt winded, out of breath. There was a long, horrible silence.
‘But . . . you
can’t
love her,’ she said, in the end. ‘This other woman. You’re supposed to love
me
.’
She looked up at him, but he said nothing. He turned away.
‘I . . .’ she began. ‘You . . . You can’t just leave like that,’ she said. She felt as if she were floundering through an awful dream. ‘You can’t just
go
. What about the boys? What about me? What about our marriage, our home,
everything
?’
The words were coming out wrong, half choked, half spat. She was crying harder, almost unable to speak.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Josie, I’m really sorry.’
‘Well, that’s all right, then, isn’t it?’ she sobbed. ‘That makes everything just fine, if you’re sorry!’ She put her arms around herself, holding each elbow tightly as if it was the only thing that would stop her falling to pieces. ‘How many others have there been?’ she asked, not daring to look at his expression. ‘Two? Three? Ten?’
‘Josie . . .’ he said pleadingly, but she was on a roll.
‘Go on! Tell me. Twenty? And who’s the latest one, anyway? Hey – I’ve guessed it, it must be Nell. Are you doing the rounds of all my friends? Is it Emma? Harriet? Joanne from number twenty-three?’
He was shaking his head. ‘Don’t be silly, of course it’s not them,’ he said.
‘What do you mean, don’t be silly? It didn’t stop you with Lisa, did it?’ she roared. Suddenly, she hated him. She absolutely hated him. He had betrayed her, humiliated her. She could hardly bear to look at his lying face.
‘I told you, Lisa was nothing. Honestly. It was just a stupid mistake and I’ve always regretted it.’ He gazed at her beseechingly, and for a second – just for a single second – she actually felt sorry for him. He genuinely seemed to mean it. Then he ruined everything all over again. ‘She’s called Sabine,’ he said haltingly.
‘Sabine?
Sabine?
What sort of name is that?’ Josie shrieked, sympathy out of the window. ‘Is she French?’ she demanded. ‘Is she?’
Please don’t let her be French
, she thought despairingly. That sexy accent, chic wardrobe, adventurous sex romps, all that va-va-bloody-voom . . . Josie knew Sabine would win hands down if she were French. How could she, Josie, with her British pear shape, ever compete with
la belle Sabine
and her
je-ne-sais-quoi
, her ‘
Oh, encore, monsieur!
’?
‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s not French.’
‘Well, where did you meet her? How old is she? What does she look like?’ she asked. The sobs were giving way to a sneer. She wanted to know everything about her, everything – yet at the same time there was a part of her that wanted to know nothing, just needed to cover her ears and run away.