With or Without You (9 page)

To his relief, Mimi breezed into the kitchen. Almost immediately, she stopped dead in her tracks and looked at her parents curiously. ‘Everything OK?’ she asked, frowning with
concern.

‘Er, yes,’ Jamie said quickly. ‘Mum’s just not feeling very well . . .’ He tailed off as Martha snorted derisively.

‘Mum?’ Mimi prompted, coming to her mother’s side and looking at her in concern. ‘Are you OK?’

Suddenly, Martha seemed to snap into life. ‘Yes!’ she said, over-brightly. ‘I’m fine, darling. It’s just something’s upset my stomach,’ she added,
shooting Jamie a look of contempt that only he could see.

‘Can I get you anything?’ Mimi persisted, rubbing Martha’s back softly.

For a second, Jamie thought Martha might lose it, as her face crumpled piteously. ‘No,’ she whispered, before shaking her head slightly and gathering herself. ‘No, darling,
honestly, I’m fine. I’ll go back to bed for a couple of hours and I’ll be right as rain.’

Mimi nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘OK, well, bye then. Love you.’ She kissed Martha on the cheek as Jamie watched her, the pain in his chest growing by the second. Then she came
over to him. ‘Bye, Dad,’ she said softly, standing on tiptoes to kiss him too.

‘Bye, gorgeous,’ he replied in a strangled voice. ‘I love you.’

‘Love you too, Dad,’ Mimi called happily as she headed for the front door.

‘Wonder if she’d love you quite so much if she knew what a cheating bastard you are,’ Martha hissed under her breath, turning back to face the French doors.

Jamie swallowed hard and rubbed his forehead. He literally didn’t know what the hell to do. He
had
to make Martha let him stay. He couldn’t leave the children. He may as
well be dead without them.

He went to the bottom of the stairs and waited helplessly for Tom to come down. ‘Tom!’ he called out eventually. ‘You need to get to school – you’re going to be
late!’

‘No I’m not,’ said Tom cheerfully, as he skipped down the stairs. He scooped up his book bag and lunchbox and opened the door. Jamie felt a sudden urge to leave the house with
him, so terrified was he of what Martha might be about to do next.

‘Tom!’ he called, as the boy headed down the front path.

‘What?’ Tom stopped and looked round at Jamie, puzzled.

‘I love you.’

Something in his voice must have got through to Tom because instead of scowling, as he usually did when Jamie yelled out to him down the street, he smiled softly back at Jamie and nodded.
‘I love you too, Dad. To infinity and beyond,’ he added, before heading off once more.

Jamie closed his eyes and tried to think what to do next. Reluctantly, he returned to the kitchen, where Martha was still standing like a statue, staring at the garden. It was as if there was a
force-field around her, preventing him from getting anywhere near her. He picked up the cup of coffee he had poured earlier and took it to the table, where he sat down, watching her carefully.

Suddenly she turned around and came towards him with all the force of a tidal wave. Before he knew what was happening, she was raining blows down on his head, swearing and screaming abuse at the
top of her voice. Jamie put his arms up to try to protect himself, but he was astonished at the power of her punches.

‘Martha!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t!’ But she either didn’t hear him or didn’t want to stop, and the onslaught continued.

After a while, it was as if all the fight left her body, and she slumped down onto the floor, crying as if she was in agony.

Watching her, the tears began to course down Jamie’s face again and he knelt on the floor beside her. ‘I’m so sorry! Oh my God, I am so, so sorry,’ he put his arms around
Martha and held her as she cried, rocking her backwards and forwards like a baby.

It was nearly half an hour before either of them had composed themselves enough to get up off the floor and sit at the table, looking across at each other, exhausted and dazed. Jamie
couldn’t bear the dull pain he could now see in Martha’s eyes, which normally shone with happiness and love. He shook his head, not knowing what to say or where to start.

Reading his mind, as she always did, Martha said, ‘Just tell me everything. Who is she?’

Jamie swallowed but his throat was so dry it came out as a cough. ‘She’s . . . well, she’s no-one. She means absolutely nothing to me.’ It was the truth, but the look on
Martha’s face told him that he needed to do better than that.

‘OK,’ he said, taking a nervous sip of his cold coffee, his hands shaking so badly that it splattered onto the wooden table, leaving miniature muddy brown puddles. ‘I met her
in a coffee shop in town . . .’

‘When?’ Martha’s question flew at him like a bullet.

‘About six months ago.’

She half-closed her eyes. ‘So how did you go from sitting in a coffee shop minding your own business, to taking pictures of yourself having sex with her?’

Jamie gasped at the horror of what he had done. When it was spelled out by Martha in such a matter of fact voice, it sounded so much worse than it had seemed when he was actually doing it. He
shook his head and sighed. ‘Well, to be honest, it was obvious what she was after . . .’

‘And obvious what you were after too, I’m sure.’

Jamie recoiled guiltily. He
had
been open to Debra’s advances when she’d asked to join him at his table that day. Martha was away on an assignment and he was feeling bored
and disillusioned with his life. Another woman complimenting him and making it obvious she fancied him had instantly made him feel better about himself. The irony of it. He couldn’t feel
worse now if he tried.

‘Go on,’ said Martha curtly. ‘I want to know exactly how you came to be having an affair with some old tart . . .’

‘It wasn’t an affair!’ Jamie cried. ‘It was just . . . sex. Not even very good sex.’

Martha snorted derisively. ‘Listen, you fucking bastard, you have been having “not very good sex” with some tart for six whole months. It is an affair, I can assure
you.’

Jamie put his face in his hands, unable to bear the contempt in Martha’s voice. He had never thought of it as an affair, he had just thought of it as sex. And he was telling the truth
about the sort of sex it was. Debra was years older than Martha, she wore clothes which left little to the imagination, smelt of cheap, cloying perfume and had absolutely nothing that made him
fancy her, except the fact that she had offered herself on a plate and didn’t want anything else from him but sex. They barely even talked and he would leave the second it was over. What he
did with Debra bore no resemblance to the sex he had with Martha, which was incredible in every way.

‘So why did you do it then?’ Martha spat, when he tried to explain that to her.

Again, he shook his head helplessly. He had no answer. When Debra had said, ‘I live quite near here. Would you like to come back to my house?’, why the hell did he not say,
‘No, thank you. I am a very happily married man and I wouldn’t dream of cheating on the woman I love.’

But, as he thought back, he knew exactly why he had taken up Debra’s offer so casually. He was bored and lonely and was flattered that another woman found him sexually attractive. Martha
would never find out and as it was clear that Debra was only interested in a sexual relationship, he was able to compartmentalise it as something purely physical that wouldn’t impact on his
family life. In fact, he had justified to himself, it would improve his relationship with Martha if he was happier.

They sat in silence for several minutes, each lost in their own desperate thoughts. Finally, Jamie spoke again. ‘Martha . . . I know that what I’ve done is awful. That I deserve
absolutely everything that you’re saying to me right now. But please, Martha, please don’t tell the children . . .’

‘Well they’ll find out when we split up. And that’s what’s going to happen,’ she said, wearily but firmly.

‘No!’ Jamie wailed, as he burst into tears again. ‘Please, Martha, please . . . it’ll kill them. And it’ll kill me,’ he begged.

Martha shook her head and stood up. ‘I think maybe you should have thought about that before.’ She stalked past him towards the door. Just as she was about to go into the hallway,
she stopped and turned around. ‘You need to pack a bag,’ she said coldly. ‘Our marriage is over.’

Martha was shaking so badly she could barely turn the taps on the bath. She leaned over and looked down into the water as it swallowed her falling tears, cascading into the
violent dark purple rivers of the Molton Brown bubble bath. Despite the never-ending torrent of tears, she was calmer now after the violence of her earlier outburst, when she had wanted to hurt
Jamie physically, just as he had hurt her.

And it
was
physical, the pain she was feeling. It was as though she had been kicked in the stomach by a horse and she felt faint with shock. A million thoughts were whirling through her
brain and she wanted to grab hold of just one, so that she could figure out what was going on and what she should do for the best, but she was too exhausted. In a split second, her perfect life had
disintegrated.

Jamie was everything to her. Her whole life revolved around him and the children. But suddenly it was all a sham. He was just a selfish, shallow bastard who didn’t give a damn about his
supposedly beloved family as long as he was able to indulge his own whims and desires. Where before Martha had felt secure and loved, now she felt as if she was walking on shifting sands and could
fall through the huge cracks at any moment.

She stepped into the bath; it was too hot, though she liked the sensation. It told her that she could still
feel
. She sank down until her whole body was submerged beneath the bubbles
and rested her head on the little white bath pillow at one end. The bath pillow that Jamie had bought her when she told him that she loved to read in the bath but it made her neck ache. He was
always buying her thoughtful little presents or making her favourite dinner when she was feeling low. Now she wondered if he had only done that to salve his guilty conscience. If that was the case,
he had felt guilty a hell of a lot of the time.

The realisation hit her with another jolt and she flinched. Still the tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks. They seemed to flow out of nowhere and she regarded them dispassionately, as they
plopped into the bubbles and disappeared forever.

She thought back to their wedding day, as her dad had proudly walked her down the aisle towards Jamie, who had looked impossibly handsome and nervous in his morning suit, before promising to
‘cherish’ her and ‘forsake all others’. The memory of her dad’s face that day brought a fresh torrent of tears. Her mother and father’s relationship had been
such a strong one. Her father would
never
have cheated on her mother the way Jamie had on her.

How many more affairs had he had, and how could she have been so stupid? He must have been laughing his head off as she took on the burden of providing for the family, with all the stresses that
entailed, while he spent his days having sex with anyone who came along. She had been such a bloody fool thinking that he loved her and the children, when the only person he really loved was
himself.

It was the shock that was the worst thing to deal with. If she had had suspicions about him, it might have been less devastating. But he had never given her any cause for concern. She had
trusted him with every fibre of her being and would have sworn on the children’s lives that he would never cheat on her. Again, she shook her head at what a complete fool she had been.

As the hot water soothed her aching body, her thoughts began to gather into some kind of coherent form. Memories drifted through of evenings spent eating dinner together, a glass of wine in
their hands, laughing as they chatted about their respective days. Of Jamie shrugging like the expert liar he clearly was as he told her that he had ‘just mooched around town’ that day.
Of Jamie occasionally claiming that he was ‘too tired’ for sex.

As the memories began to gather pace, like a train chugging relentlessly through her brain, the anger that had abated now returned and overwhelmed her, so that she found herself roaring with
rage and pain.

The bathroom door flew open and Jamie’s face appeared. ‘Martha! Martha!’ he yelled over the noise. ‘What’s wrong?’ Instinctively, he came over to her and
tried to embrace her, as he had a million times before, but she clawed at his face like a tiger, sending water spraying everywhere as she drew three perfect trails of blood down his left cheek.

He clamped his hand to his face in shock as Martha scrambled out of the bath, still crying. ‘Leave me alone!’ she screamed, now totally out of control. ‘Don’t
ever
touch me again! Get out! Get out! Get out of this house! I
hate
you!’

She ran into her bedroom and slammed the door shut, before throwing herself on the bed. She had never felt so alone.

On the one hand, she wanted Jamie to pack his bag and get out. She couldn’t bear to look at his lying, cheating face. But on the other hand, she was so scared of what would happen after
he’d gone. How would she explain to the children where he was? Could she bear to tell them the truth, knowing the pain it would cause them?

They were so happy. So balanced. The trauma of this would change everything forever. How the hell could Jamie have risked jeopardising all that, she raged, as her chest tightened so much that
she thought she might be having a heart attack.

In the midst of her anguish, she was dimly aware of her mobile phone ringing. She ignored it. A couple of minutes later it rang again, and this time she sat up and picked the handset up off the
bedside table. She glanced at the screen: Charlie Simmons.

‘Oh no!’ she sighed, swallowing hard and roughly wiping the tears that continued to fall down her cheeks. Should she answer it?
Could
she answer it? Before she could make up
her mind, the ringing stopped. After about thirty seconds, the alert told her that he had left a message. She clicked on to her voicemail and listened as his soothing, deep voice filled her
ear.