Authors: Tess Stimson
‘Did you sleep with my husband?’ Harriet demanded.
He tried to catch Zoey’s eye, but she was staring at his wife like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
Dear Christ, don’t
say yes
, he pleaded inwardly.
We may
get away with the photo if that’s all she thinks this is. Don’t throw me under the bus. For God’s sake, keep your mouth shut.
‘Yes,’ Zoey said.
Christ almighty. Christ al-fucking-mighty.
His wife stalked towards the door, and he felt physically sick. How in God’s name was he going to make this right? She’d kill him the moment they got out of here. She’d have
his balls for breakfast.
Except he never got that far.
‘Don’t think you’re coming home now, Oliver. You can have him.’ She added, shrugging at Zoey. ‘It’s up to you if you want him or not.’ Harriet slammed
out of the room. For a moment, he was too stunned to react. What had just happened? What the
hell
had just happened? Was she serious? Had his wife just
left
him?
Zoey touched his arm. ‘Oliver—’
He shook her off, suddenly spurred into life. Wrenching the door open, he ran the length of the corridor and pummelled the lift button.
Still four floors away, damn it!
Impatiently, he
shoved open the fire door and started down the stairs, taking them two and three at a time, landing hard on each turn. His chest was tight and his legs aching by the time he reached the ground
floor and rushed out into the foyer.
No sign of Harriet.
He turned, panting, to the doorman, hands on his knees as he fought for breath. ‘Have you seen a woman . . . jeans and . . . pink sweater?’
‘She just got into that cab, sir,’ the man said, nodding towards the street.
He pushed past him into the street, but the cab was already a hundred metres away. He’d missed his moment. There was no point chasing after her now.
Zoey was still sitting on the bed, wrapped in her bathrobe, when he returned wearily to her room. She leaped to her feet when she saw him. ‘Did you speak to her?’
He shook his head.
‘Oliver, I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s my fault. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime, right?’
She winced.
‘I’m sorry,’ he sighed. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘Is that really how you think of us?’
‘You know I don’t. But it’s been a fuck of a day, Zoey. And you haven’t exactly helped.’
‘She asked me directly,’ Zoey said tearfully. ‘I didn’t know how to lie to her. I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to cause trouble. I swear I wasn’t trying to
make things worse, but she asked me, and . . .’
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘You did what you thought was right. It’s my fault. I should never have let her come upstairs with me. Seeing you practically
naked, in a hotel bedroom – talk about rubbing salt in the wound. Christ. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should never have let it happen.’
‘What must she have thought when she saw me?’ Zoey cried. ‘In a
dressing gown?’
‘I’m sorry. I honestly had no idea she was going to pull a stunt like this. I thought she was going to wait for you to come downstairs. She said she just wanted to talk things
through with you in person, so we could clear up any misunderstandings. She seemed so bloody
calm.’
He remembered a friend once commenting that the definition of an adulterer was a man who made two women unhappy instead of one. Well, he was certainly proving that in spades.
‘What are you going to do now?’ Zoey asked.
‘God knows.’ He sank onto the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. ‘There’s no point going home, not tonight. I don’t want a scene in front of the kids. I need
to give her some time to calm down so we can sort this out properly, without an audience.’
‘Are you – do you want to stay here tonight? Not like that,’ she added hastily. ‘I just meant . . . oh, Oliver, it’s all so horrible. Nell’s really upset with
me; she won’t answer my calls, and all I’ve had from her is a text saying she’s staying at Teri’s. I can’t go home because of all the journalists, and I probably
won’t have any friends left after all this. I know what we did was terrible, but if it wasn’t for the girls getting mixed up in the first place, none of the newspapers would
care.’ She started to cry in earnest. ‘Please don’t leave me alone. Not tonight.’
He hesitated. She looked so miserable, and so
young;
she reminded him achingly of Florence when she’d had a really bad day at school. Zoey hadn’t asked for this. Maine had
happened at a vulnerable time, when she was confused and emotionally wrung out. He should’ve known better. He was the one who was married.
He put his arm round her, sighing as she leaned against him. Where else was he going to go? He could book a different hotel room, but what was the point, really? They’d already been caught
with their trousers down. It would be like locking the stable door after the horse had bolted.
And Zoey
needed
him. Something it seemed Harriet hadn’t done for a very long time.
He woke first, as daylight streamed through the open window. Zoey was still pillowed on his shoulder, as she had been for most of the night. Carefully, he eased his arm from
beneath her head, gently replacing it with his pillow, wincing as pins and needles shot through his deadened muscles.
He tiptoed softly into the bathroom to take a piss, then turned on the shower. He could still smell Zoey on his skin. Sleeping with her had definitely
not
been part of the plan. All
he’d done was make an impossible situation worse.
He’d known from the second he’d agreed to stay it was a mistake. She was in love with him; he could see it, feel it, as she dropped her robe and pulled him into her pliant arms.
She’d opened not just her body, but her heart to him. And when she touched him, when she wrapped her arms around him and he breathed in the citrus scent of her skin, when she bit down on her
lip and smiled up at him, he couldn’t say no.
Dammit, he should have done!
She was the one who’d seduced him this time, he knew that, but he still should have had more self-control. For her sake, as much as anyone’s. He
loved being with her. She was easy company, she made him laugh, she made him feel strong and masculine and protective. But he didn’t love her the way he loved Harriet – he never would
– and it was unfair of him to lead her on like this, even if she was the one doing the running. She deserved better than a man in love with another woman. Harriet was complicated. She was so
consumed with doing the right thing – being a good wife, a good mother, a good manager at work – she often forgot to simply have fun. Living with her was complex and frequently
frustrating. But even after sixteen years, she challenged and fascinated and intrigued him in so many ways. He simply couldn’t imagine not being married to her.
He left before Zoey awoke, leaving her a note telling her he’d gone into the office. He knew it was cowardly, but he couldn’t face another emotional scene, not this early in the day.
He needed some time and space to get his head straight, to figure out a way to break free without causing any more damage. And right now, he simply didn’t trust himself to be around her.
The moment he was outside the hotel, he called Harriet’s mobile. He wasn’t surprised when it went straight to voice-mail. ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Please
don’t just delete this. We need to talk. You have to let me explain. Please, Harry. For the kids, if not for me. Call me any time.’ He paused. ‘I love you.’
She didn’t return his call, and he didn’t expect her to. She wasn’t going to lower the drawbridge right away. She was going to make him work for it, and he didn’t blame
her after what he’d done.
The office was deserted on a Sunday. For the first time in his life, he felt grateful to the Inland Revenue. Such was the cluster-fuck his now-ex-manager had created, he found his hands too full
with work to dwell on his domestic drama. The company was behind with both their tax and VAT payments, and the Manchester office – which serviced the entire North of England – was in an
even worse mess. They owed the taxman tens of thousands of pounds – money he hadn’t budgeted for and, right now, had no idea how they would find.
It took him the rest of the day simply to sort out what needed to be done, and he was surprised when he leaned back in his chair and stretched out his aching muscles to find it was already after
five. He needed to get back to the hotel, sort things out with Zoey It wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to, but he couldn’t hope to mend things with Harriet until he drew a
line under the past.
To his surprise, Zoey had already checked out. ‘She left this for you, sir,’ the receptionist said, handing him an envelope.
Darling Oliver,
she’d written in a looping, untidy scrawl on the back of his own note from that morning.
I don’t want
you to be with me because you have nowhere
else to go. I’m going to collect Nell and take her back home. If you choose me, you know where I’ll be. Love, Zoey. xoxo
Not quite sure whether he was sad or relieved she’d gone without saying goodbye, he requested a new room and handed the receptionist his credit card.
‘Excuse me, sir? I’m afraid your credit card has been declined.’
‘Run it again,’ Oliver said impatiently.
He watched as the receptionist swiped his card through the machine. ‘Afraid not, sir.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. It was fine yesterday,’ He handed the man another card. ‘Try this one.’
The receptionist’s attitude was a little more frosty this time. ‘Not having any luck with this one either, sir.’
‘Are you sure it’s not your machine?’
They were interrupted by another guest wanting to check out. Oliver waved for him to go ahead, watching with mounting frustration as the other man’s credit card went through instantly. God
knows what the problem was. All his credit cards were American; no doubt some officious jobsworth had noticed the UK activity on his account and flagged it up as suspicious. And since it was
Sunday, there was bugger all he could do about it till tomorrow.
‘Does sir have cash, perhaps?’ the receptionist asked tightly as his fourth and last card was declined.
‘Not enough for the prices you charge,’ he retorted.
The receptionist smiled coldly. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m sure it’s just a computer glitch. We’ll be happy to accommodate you as soon as it’s resolved.’
He checked his wallet as he walked back out onto the street. Seventy pounds sterling, and about eighty dollars and some change. Not going to get him far. He supposed he could borrow some money
from the petty cash at the office, but with the taxman crawling all over him, he was a little wary of being caught with his hand in the till.
He had no idea where on earth he could spend the night. He couldn’t afford the fare to Hampshire, where his brother lived, and he didn’t want to risk photographers following him if
he went to his parents. They were too frail to deal with this kind of shabby situation.
He’d have to go to Zoey. Go to her and tell her the truth, and hope she’d at least give him a place to say till he got all this sorted out.
Florence peered out of the window at her father as he pressed the doorbell for about the fifteenth time. How could you love someone so badly and hate them so much at the same
time? Half of her wanted to run out and hug him to pieces, and the other half of her – the half that was winning right now – never wanted to speak to him again.
‘Please, Harriet,’ her father shouted through the letterbox. He backed down the front steps and glanced up at the sitting-room window. ‘I know you’re in there, I can see
you. Please, can’t we at least
talk?’
She ducked away from the window, her heart thumping. She was the only person in the house; her mother had gone with Gran to the hospital, and the boys were at the ice rink with their cousins.
Dad looked so miserable. She knew it was his own fault, but she couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for him. She supposed she could let him in for a few minutes, just to say hi. It wasn’t
like Mom had forbidden her to talk to him. Anyway, she wasn’t here, so she didn’t need to know. And if Dad kept on ringing the bell and hammering on the door like he was doing now, one
of the neighbours would end up calling the police, it would be all over the newspapers again, and Mom would totally
flip.
Quickly, before she could change her mind, she ran into the hall and opened the front door.
‘Florence!’ Dad exclaimed.
‘You don’t have to sound so surprised,’ she said crossly. ‘I am staying here too.’
‘Yes, of course.’ He shifted uncomfortably on the front step. ‘I just hadn’t expected to see you. Is your mother in?’
‘No. She really isn’t,’ she added, taking pity. ‘She and Gran have gone to see Gramps at the hospital, and then she’s got stuff to do. They’ve only just left,
so they won’t be back for ages.’
‘What about the boys?’
‘Aunt Lucy took them to Streatham ice rink with Ben and David.’
Dad hesitated. ‘Can I come in?’
She shrugged and walked back down the hall. Her father followed her into the kitchen, where she perched on a stool and started flicking carelessly through a celebrity magazine.
‘So, how’ve you been?’ he asked awkwardly.
‘Well, let’s see,’ she said without looking up from the Kardashians. ‘In the last three days, my father’s run off with my birth mother, my
actual
mother is
losing her shit and surfing the net for lawyers, Gran is in floods of tears twenty-four seven and practically measuring Gramps for his coffin, Sam fell out of a tree yesterday and had to go to the
ER for three stitches in his chin, George dropped Mom’s iPhone in the toilet and trashed it, and Charlie won’t talk to anyone and refuses to wear anything but his Spiderman costume,
even in bed. So life is peachy, all in all. Thanks for asking.’
‘Is Sam all right?’ Dad exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t anyone call me?’