Tell Me No Secrets (27 page)

‘It's hardly a bombshell.' He bites on another croissant and takes a drink of coffee. ‘It's been running between us for months, years, decades, since we climbed out of our prams.'

‘But you've just crossed a line by talking about it,' I point out. ‘Now we can't put it back.'

‘I don't want to put it back.'

‘Well, maybe I do. Did you think of that?'

‘Do you?'

‘Yeah.' I nod emphatically. ‘I would like to put it back because now I feel like you're going to make a move on me.'

‘I'm not.'

‘We work in such a close space.' I look around the room. ‘How are we expected to carry on now?'

‘This room is over five hundred square feet and anyway' – he shakes his head – ‘I'm not going to make a move on you.'

‘Why not? Why bring it up just to do nothing about it? Because we're married? Because you don't want to spoil a good friendship? Because you
can't get it up
?'

‘You think I can't get it up?'

‘Well, can you?'

‘Do you want me to make love to you?'

‘No. I want you to prove that you can get it up first.' I lean back against the desk, purse my lips, fold my arms. My heart's pounding but I'm angry as hell. I expect him to back off, apologise.

But he doesn't. He opens his trousers. ‘Will you help me?'

I don't answer. I'm busy trying to regroup and then I look at him, wonder when he was circumcised.

‘Undo your blouse,' he says.

I do it. I'm wearing a pretty lace bra that I bought in the January sales. It's a midnight blue, balconette style, lays my breasts out like panna cotta on a dessert plate. He doesn't touch himself, just looks at me.

‘When were you circumcised?'

‘When I was twelve. Tight foreskin.'

‘You didn't tell me.'

‘I'm trying to concentrate.' His eyes flash up to my face. ‘I believe I have something to prove here.'

I smile in spite of myself and then I laugh because what we're doing is ridiculous. It sets my breasts wobbling. He likes that. I watch him grow hard.

‘Satisfied?' he asks me.

‘In a manner of speaking.' I back away, do up my blouse, hear him zip his trousers. The phone rings. He answers it and talks like it's any other day. I sit down behind my desk. What was
that
all about? I'm shaking.

When he finishes the phone call he looks over at me. ‘Is that it?'

My heart swerves. ‘Is what it?' I say.

‘I thought for a minute there that we were playing I-show-you-mine, you-show-me-yours.'

‘What's brought this on, Euan?'

He shakes his head as if it should be obvious. ‘We're a long time dead.'

I hold his eyes, see desire in them and tenderness and a flicker of fear. I stand up, walk over, stop in front of him, pull down my trousers and my pants, not elegantly, that will come later. I yank them down. I have my eyes closed. Inside me a voice screams:
What the hell are you doing?
It tries reminding me that I am a mother. It shows me my two girls running off into the playground, the pompoms on the back of their hats bobbing in time with their running legs.

When I open my eyes, Euan is staring between my legs. His mouth is slightly open and I can see the tip of his tongue between his teeth. I begin to tingle, heat spreads down into my groin and I know in a couple of minutes I'll crave him so badly that I'll beg. ‘Is that enough?' I say.

‘You tell me.'

I'm falling. It feels heady, a rush of sweetness and light. One last try. I think about Paul, how he will be sitting with his students patiently talking them through their dissertations, the way he looks at me when he comes in from work, hugs me to him, asks me about my day, encourages me, makes love to me, gives me money and time and gives me himself. I think of my girls, holding my hand, falling asleep beside me, drawing hearts, big and red to present to me, blowing kisses, shouting,
I love you, Mummy!
into the wind. I think about Mo, how she cried at my wedding, how she looked after me as if I were her own and how much she loved us both.

‘If I could go back in time I would do things differently,' I say. ‘When you went to Glasgow I thought about looking for you. I imagined myself turning up at your uncle's house and surprising you. I imagined you walking away from me—'

‘I wouldn't have walked away from you.' He pulls me on to his lap. ‘I would never have done that.' He starts to kiss me so gently that I can barely feel it. My skin sings. I reach my hands up under his T-shirt. His chest is warm and I tangle my fingers in the hairs.

So it begins.

We make love that first time and all the waiting, the wondering and the imagining ignite with the touch of our bodies like oxygen to a flame. I am shameless. I can't open my legs wide enough. I want to show him all of myself. He takes me so completely that I feel like my body is his. Like he made me. My feelings for him stretch to the corners of myself and back again. He feels strong, warm, delicious, intoxicating.

The minute I leave the cabin to go home for the evening, the guilt starts. Why did I do it?
Why?
I love Paul, I love my children and I love my life. Sure, sometimes it's humdrum but the attachment to my family is deep and satisfying.

In the end I put it down to a flash of pure lust. It won't happen again. I'm better than that. I shower for almost fifteen minutes. I feel like I am coated in him and I'm afraid that Paul will smell him on me. I make a quick family meal then go to bed early, feigning tiredness.

I don't go into work the next day. At ten o'clock Euan calls me.

‘Are you coming in?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

I screw my eyes up tight. ‘I'm too scared.'

‘You have one hour and then I'll come and get you.'

I go. We do it again and again. We take risks but we minimise them. Monica almost never comes down to the cabin but, just in case, I buy the same sheets and when we've spent the afternoon in bed, I change them. I even make sure we use the same soap powder. We never send texts to each other. We don't email, we don't phone unless it's to do with the children. We limit ourselves to once a week. We double-check that Sarah and Tom are not likely to arrive home unexpectedly.

Sometimes I dig and push. I can't help it. I want to understand him. I want to know why he loves me so that I can protect it, keep it safe, nurture it so that it never dies.

‘Why did you marry Monica?'

‘Monica's a good person, Grace. She works hard. She's loyal and kind. I love her for that.'

‘More than me?'

‘Different.'

I can't stop. ‘But if you had to choose one of us?'

‘I don't know. She's the mother of my children.'

‘Does that mean you'd choose her?'

‘It means I don't know.'

I still can't stop. ‘In your heart me or her?'

He looks at me for a long time. I wait and in the waiting it comes to me that I don't want to know the answer. I cover my face with my hands and peek through my fingers. ‘I'm sorry,' I say. I see that I have hurt him. ‘I'm sorry,' I say again. ‘I'm so sorry.'

‘I think we need some rules.' He takes my wrist, kisses the back of it. ‘We don't talk about our partners. Ever. That has to be a boundary.'

‘I understand.'

So we make rules:

1. We never talk about the sex we have with our partners.

2. We never talk about the future and what would happen to either one of us if we didn't have the other.

3. We resist all pressure from our partners to spend time together as families.

Marriage should be about love and trust, loyalty and honesty. I know that. What I'm doing is wrong, dangerous and ill-advised. But, oh, so hard to stop. I know we have the edge on marriage. We never experience the deadening effect of endless days of mundane arrangements. Euan is always a man to me, never a husband, or provider, someone to put out the rubbish or stop off for dog food. The high-octane mix of love and loss fuels us. I'm not interested in whether he can cook an omelette or remember to put his clothes in the laundry basket. I'm interested in making him smile, stroking him, loving him and working out what makes him tick.

It's not the nineteenth century. We could leave our families and start afresh together. It would be messy, nasty even, but that doesn't stop a lot of people. We think about it and then we talk about it. Just the once. But I can't do anything else wrong. Having an affair is wrong, I know that, but it's the lesser of the wrongs than splitting up two otherwise happy families.

After eight months we agree to give each other up. There is no future in it, the pain of discovery would outweigh the pleasure and we can't keep pushing our luck. I know that it's the right thing to do and I go back to being an honest wife and mother. I have done what's good and proper and I should feel pleased but I don't, I feel utterly desperate, incomplete, raw inside. I can't sleep and spend the small hours doubled up on the bathroom floor.

Euan is no better. He looks drawn, fatigued, snaps at his clients and sighs for no reason. We still work in the same space but keep our backs turned and our heads down.

It gets easier. I work from home more and Euan has a huge project in Dundee that keeps him in the office on site. We manage this for four years. And then one day, I'm feeling low. Paul's mother has died and Ed has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I'm at work, trying not to think about Paul's grief and the life that's ahead for Ed. Euan and I reach for the kettle at the same time and our hands touch and hold. I start to cry. He takes me into the bedroom and we spend the whole day in bed, luxuriate in each other's body and make up for time lost.

Three weeks of loving each other again and then a jolt, a near miss. Sarah and Ella are moments away from catching us in bed together. We stop again. It's difficult and painful but we do it. Another four years pass and then Orla comes back.

12

I have a recurring nightmare and whenever I'm stressed, it visits me with a religious vengeance. There's a knock on the door. Two men are on the doorstep, their hands are in the pockets of their black overcoats and then they both pull out ID and hold it up to my face. One is young with an angular jaw; the other is an older man, taller, tough and jaded with an ugly scar running from his temple down the edge of his left cheek like the silver trail left by a slug.

‘Are you Mrs Grace Adams?'

I nod.

‘Would you be good enough to accompany us to the station?' the tall one says. ‘We have reason to believe you were involved in the death of a young girl back in 1984. Ring any bells, Mrs Adams?'

He has a leering, jeering face that morphs into a demon with horns and burning coal for eyes. His scar breaks open and a slug climbs out. Its antennae are long and feel the air then lunge for my eyes.

When I wake my hands are covering my face. I expect to feel slime but I don't. It's just me, myself, my own skin and bones. I don't want to disturb Paul so I slither out of bed and go downstairs, make myself some tea, sit on the sofa with my legs underneath me and wait for my nerves to settle. It's just one of those things, I tell myself. I'm prone to nightmares, lots of people are. No point in analysing it. No point in examining the guilt and the regret. It doesn't help.

It's two o'clock in the morning and I'm wide awake, pumped full of adrenaline. I know there's no point in me going back to bed yet so instead I go into the kitchen and make the pâté, set out the picnic cutlery and glasses.

Orla was right – I am stuck. Just like she said, forever sliding backwards, remembering Rose, reliving that night, catching hold of Euan, seeing myself in his eyes; the self that existed before Guide camp, the self that is straightforward. I have tried to assuage my guilt with a life of family and love and commitment. I have made Rose's father happy. Paul loves me and I love him. And yet what have I really been doing all these years? Delaying the moment when I have to pay for what I did. And all the while increasing the stakes. I could still be living abroad – but no, I came back to the village. Not only do I live in the heart of where it happened but I married Rose's dad. I couldn't have sealed my fate quite so spectacularly if I had deliberately planned it that way.

And Euan. When he returned my call yesterday, he already knew that Orla was living in the village. Monica told him immediately after I met her on the beach. I asked him why Monica was so upset. Was it about her father's affair or was it more than that? He didn't know or didn't want to talk about it, I don't know which, because the very word affair brought us right up close to what we have both restarted. He asked me when I was coming into work. I said I thought we shouldn't be alone together. I told him that we couldn't repeat Monday. He said, of course not. He knew that. But we should talk about Orla. I told him that Paul and Ed are going away for the weekend fishing and the girls and I will go to Edinburgh. So that leaves Sunday free for him to meet Orla and bribe her? Persuade her? Leave that to me, he said, and we both hung up.

When the picnic is organised, I go back to bed, turn towards Paul and shape myself around the curve of his spine. He doesn't wake but his body yields to mine. I close my eyes and hope for emptiness but instead I see Angeline, with her potent mix of charm and sexuality, attracting men like moths to a flame. Her wanton seduction of Monica's father, the repercussions far-reaching: a girl without her dad, a wife without her husband.