The One That Got Away (29 page)

When I push open the sitting room door he is collapsed
on the sofa in the dark, shoes and suit jacket still on. I can smell the alcohol on him from where I am standing. He glances
up briefly as I appear in the doorway but then looks down at the floor again.

I walk in and silently sit on the opposite sofa to him, curling my legs up and under me. I don’t move to switch a lamp on,
I don’t try to say anything. We just sit there in semi-darkness, the only light coming in from the hall.

Eventually his eyes flicker up dully. ‘I’m not pissed,’ he says eventually, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘I didn’t say anything—’

‘How could you?’ he bleakly cuts across me before the words are properly out of my mouth. ‘And don’t say you were drunk, you
must have had some idea what you were doing.’

My eyes fill with tears. ‘I
was
drunk yes, but—’

‘I went to a party tonight, perfectly happy, having a drink and then some doctor walks up to me and everything turns to shit,
my whole life, and …’ he forces his eyes tightly shut, ‘you let me say hello to that bastard like some fucking stupid kid,
when all the time he, and you, knew that …’ he pauses painfully and then asks me again. ‘How could you?’

I have to tell him the truth. I have to.

‘Dan, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t—’

‘I
knew
something was wrong. I KNEW it.’ He sits up and puts his head in his hands. ‘I asked you about those emails and you said
it was nothing.’

I feel tears of shame prick at the back of my eyes.
‘I made a horrible mistake. I know that’s not enough, but it didn’t mean anything, I
promise
you!’

I can hear myself saying the small, useless words and realise how lame and pathetic they must sound to him, because they don’t
come anywhere close to capturing what that night was like. Just for a moment I remember Leo once saying them to me, how it
felt to hear them, how I know Dan is feeling now.

‘I knew I was right.’ He repeats, barely hearing me. ‘You kept shutting your computer down when I came into the room, getting
texts from him. When I saw those emails …’ He puts his hands over his head and then looks at me bleakly. ‘How long has this
been going on?’

I’m dumbstruck. He’s been worrying and watching all this time? That thing on my mobile, might he have? … ‘It’s not what you
think,’ I insist.

‘Don’t lie to me again.’ He doesn’t break his gaze. ‘So why did you go out and get a new phone then? I’m not stupid, Molly!
You think I’ve not noticed you turning off your work one each night? Was it so that I wouldn’t see his messages?’

‘Dan, I swear to you, it happened
once
.’

‘But how I can believe you?’ He shouts. ‘You’ve already lied to me!’

‘Please, Dan,’ I plead. ‘Try not to shout. They’ll hear us next door. It’s not fair to them.’

‘Fair?’ he says incredulously. ‘You’re worried about what’s fair?’

We both pause.

‘You’re at home all day, or at meetings fuck knows where, off at conferences – for all I know this could have been going on
for ages. Is this why you’ve not wanted to start a family with me?’ his voice cracks.

‘No!’ I can’t believe he could think that. ‘Of course not! Pearce isn’t—’

‘If you’ve been having an emotional thing with him behind my back,’ he points at me warningly. ‘I’m telling you now, if that’s
what this is—’

Any confession I might have made about Leo dies immediately on my lips. He will
never
believe that there was no emotional involvement there, I’m not entirely sure I could believe that myself. ‘I was so drunk
I didn’t know what I was doing. It was one night,’ I say quietly. ‘I promise you on my life.’

We sit there silently and he drops his head to his hands exhaustedly, giving me the first proper view of the hideously swollen
knuckles on his right hand. Even in the half-light, I can see the bruise has already come up and is turning violent colours,
probably much like Pearce’s face. Shocked, I half stand, reach out and say, ‘Oh Dan! Your hand—’

‘Leave it.’ He says instantly, shrinking away from my approaching touch.

I try to move closer. ‘But it’s—’

‘I said leave it.’ He stands up quickly and moves to the hall doorway. ‘I can’t even look at you right now.’ His jaw clenches.
‘All I can see is that fucking bastard touching you, and you pissed and …’ his face contorts with rage
then collapses into misery. He wrestles to get himself under control. ‘Please, just go to bed.’

I don’t know what to say. He moves aside as I go to walk past him, which breaks my heart completely because all I want to
do is rush to him; kiss him, hug him, cling to him and tell him over and over how sorry I am. But none of it’s enough.

‘I love you so much,’ I whisper.

He scrunches his eyes closed tightly as if somehow that might also block out my voice. ‘Don’t,’ he begs. ‘Please don’t. I
can’t do this right now. Please, just leave me alone.’

Hugging my knees to my chest, sat on our cold bed as I rock on the spot, my face wet with tears, I listen to him slowly getting
the sofa bed out downstairs.

If I was frightened before, now, I’m terrified.

I jerk awake at about half-six having had snatches of confused dreams that I am back with the boyfriend I had before Leo,
that we’ve moved into a house together. He was holding my hands and trying to kiss me – and while it was a relief not to be
with Leo, I kept pulling back in total confusion thinking, ‘This isn’t right, how did I end up with
you
? I’m sure there was someone else who I was much happier with, someone who …’

Then everything that happened last night rushes back to me, and I crane to hear some evidence of that person moving around
downstairs. Everything is silent. I creep down the stairs, peer round the door and feel physically sick with relief to see
the outline of his body still on the sofa bed. Disappearing back upstairs, I lie quietly in our bed waiting for him to wake
up, but by half-seven – a
quarter of an hour later than he normally gets up – he hasn’t moved.

‘Dan?’ I say tentatively, going back down five minutes after that. He shifts and peers at me standing over him before turning
his face away and closing his eyes again, as if he wishes I wasn’t. A waft of stale booze mixes powerfully with the pine fresh
Christmas tree.

‘Are you going into work today?’

He shakes his head almost imperceptibly and moves again, his bashed-up hand comes into view and rests redundantly on the duvet
cover.

I wince. ‘Your hand …’

‘I can move my fingers,’ he mutters. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘You don’t think you should see a doctor?’ I say it without thinking. He opens his eyes and shoots me a quick look before
closing them again.

Desperate for something normal and useful to do, I walk over to the Christmas tree and switch the lights on. It begins to
merrily twinkle, but as I’m stepping away from it, I trip over one of Dan’s shoes which I haven’t noticed sticking out from
under the edge of the sofa bed, stumble and shoot a hand out to the nearest thing that will steady me, but there’s nothing
there, only the tree. It topples over sideways and lands in a crash of baubles and flurry of needles. Dan jerks his head up
and stares at me in disbelief before saying ‘What are you
doing
?’ It’s enough to make me burst into tears, standing there foolishly in my pyjamas, everything crashing down around me.

He picks the tree up while I get the hoover out. Once
I’m finished, and everything is almost as it was, the sound of Mel bellowing ‘Jingle Bells’ at Jack filters in from next door.

Dan glowers at the wall silently, but says nothing, just rubs his face tiredly with his good hand. ‘Have you got meetings
this morning?’ he says quietly as I sink on to the edge of the sofa.

I shake my head. I don’t even know if I have a job after last night. ‘I’m going to call Antony in a bit.’

‘You know what one of the worst bits of this is?’ he says suddenly. ‘Knowing that you kept all this from me.’

‘I wanted to tell you Dan. I SO wanted to tell you.’

Mel’s front door bangs and we hear her shout ‘Come on then! Let’s get in the car. No – the car! Don’t put that in your mouth,
it’s dirty.’ Then car doors slam, the engine starts and the tyres crunch on the gravel before leaving us in absolute silence.

Dan closes his eyes and whispers, ‘I wanted to kill him. I actually wanted to kill him. I have never felt so much hatred for
another person in my whole life.’

I look at the floor.

‘Do you have any idea how it feels, Molly, to think about you … drunk and …’ he closes both of his eyes tightly again, like
he’s trying to shut it out. ‘Don’t you understand?
Anyone
that hurts you … and yet I’m just supposed to … FUCK!’ he shouts, darting a hand out and hurling the lamp from the small
table across the room so fast I don’t even realise he’s done it until the base explodes on the wall.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I begin to cry quietly. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Dan.’

‘You should have stopped it!’ he shouts. ‘Why didn’t you stop it?’

‘I was too out of it to know what I was doing.’ I’m so bitterly ashamed the words are no more than a whisper.

He gets up and walks out of the room, slamming the door behind him. There’s nothing more I can do than sink to the floor and
begin to slowly pick up the shattered pieces of the lamp.

When he comes back down, showered and dressed in home clothes, it’s just as I’m putting my mobile down. ‘Who were you calling?’
he says sharply.

‘Antony rang me. He’s told me to cancel my meetings. We’re going to talk in about an hour.’

He doesn’t say anything to that, just sits back down. ‘Has
he
tried to call you?’

‘No.’

‘Did it really only happen once?’ He asks me outright.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s the absolute truth?’

‘On my life.’

He stares at the floor, and trying to work out what he’s thinking, what those questions mean, I begin to babble.

‘I love you,’ I say. ‘I made a mistake; a huge error of judgement that I will regret for ever. I—’

‘Stop,’ he says quickly. ‘I don’t want to hear any more.’

I don’t know what more I can say anyway.

We sit there for what feels like hours, opposite each other.

‘Who else have you told?’

‘Joss.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘No one.’

‘Because the only way I can even consider doing this,’ he says quickly, ‘is if no one knows. None of our families, friends
… especially not about last night. I can’t handle anyone pitying me, I won’t be able to deal with that.’

‘I understand—’ I begin.

‘I want it to be like it never happened. You have to promise me,’ he says fiercely.

‘I promise, of course I promise.’

‘And you have to leave your job.’ He looks at me defiantly, almost daring me to say no. ‘As soon as possible.’

I think back to the humiliation of last night, all of my clients standing there looking at me, Pearce sprawled on the floor,
Antony not able to look at me. I’d give pretty much anything not to have to deal with the aftermath of that, and have a fresh
start somewhere else.

‘The thought of you being in the same room as him …’ Dan clenches his jaw. ‘All the time you work for the same company he
can email you and phone you, get news about you. Every day I’d be going off to work worrying that you were going to see him,
imagining you talking to him. I knew that something was going on and
I can’t spend every day from here on in worrying that it’s starting up again. That’ll kill me. I don’t even care about the
money. You just have to leave. Effective from today.’

Today? I look at him uncertainly. ‘Well – I’ll try, when Antony calls but …’

‘You’ll have to just make it happen somehow.’ He says defiantly, sensing my reservations. ‘It’s a job, not a prison sentence.
You don’t HAVE to do it. I want you to clear your work email down by the end of today too, and give that phone back. I’ll
drive it over to their offices myself.’

‘Dan, it’s not that simple—’

‘My hand is fine,’ he insists, misunderstanding me.

‘No, I mean the car is theirs too.’

He pauses, he’d obviously forgotten that. ‘Well, we’ll have to arrange for that to go back as well. And I want to get you
a new phone.’

‘But I’ve just got one!’

He shakes his head determinedly. ‘He’s got that number too, for all I know.’

‘He hasn’t – I promise you.’

‘It’s the only way this can be,’ he insists, warningly.

‘OK, OK.’ I agree hastily. ‘I’ll go and get dressed and then we’ll … get sorted.’

He just nods.

I get up, make my way to the doorway and then pause there for a moment, and look back at him.

‘I can’t promise anything,’ he says. ‘But I’ll try. That’s
the best I can do.’ He looks at the floor again and mutters, ‘I knew I wasn’t going mad. I knew it.’

‘Dan—’

‘I think I’d just like to be on my own again for a bit please.’

Defeated, I leave the room. He keeps saying that; he knew. Joss was right, I must have let myself get so over-wrought I gave
it all away without even realising it. I almost want to ask him about the tracking application but the last time I made a
wild accusation like that … and I honestly think if I question the trust between us again right now that will be it.

And anyway, arguably he had good reason to do it. He was right, I did cheat. Whether it was acceptable or not for him to track
my movements is neither here nor there. In all honesty, the only person who has fucked up from beginning to end here – is
me.

‘Mum, where would I have found anywhere on Christmas Eve selling double cream – even if I had got your message?’

‘Double cream?’ Dad repeats as he comes into the kitchen and looks between me and Mum. ‘What on earth do you want more double
cream for Meg? There’s a dairy’s worth out in the big fridge.’

‘I know, but,’ Mum frowns at the tray of mince pies on the table, slapping Chris’s hand away as he breaks from present wrapping
and tries to sneak one, which makes Karen grin. ‘I’ve still got the trifle to do and … I expect you’re right though. We’ll
manage.’