Gayle looked embarrassed. “She went out early this morning,” she said, “leaving me to get the kids off to school. I haven’t seen her since.”
Kurt stared at her. “You’ve been here all day?”
“I’ve been here for the last six months,” Gayle said. “She gave me a room, a list of chores and a few other duties, then let me get on with it. I’ve been cooking, cleaning and tutoring the kids.”
Kurt sucked in his breath. He hadn’t realised just how much time Gayle had spent with the kids. Had Molly spent any time with them at all?
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. Molly had always wanted to have a live-in maid, but they’d never been able to afford it. She too resented being poorer than most of the families who sent their kids to private school. “I didn’t mean…”
“I get paid well,” Gayle assured him. “And I don’t really have a family to live with…”
Kurt nodded, told her to make sure Percy did a good job of cleaning up the mess, then walked upstairs and entered his office. Once, he’d worked from home two days a week; now, the room had been left untouched for months. Molly had to have told Gayle to leave it alone, he decided, as he saw the dust lying on top of his desk. Sitting down in front of it, he opened the computer terminal and pressed his thumb against the scanner. A moment later, he was looking at their joint account.
“Shit,” he breathed. Molly was spending money as if it was going out of fashion. He’d once thought the prize money would last the rest of his life. Now, it was clear that over half of it was gone. But what had she been buying? A check of the spending pattern revealed that she’d spent most of the money on clothes. “What the hell is she doing?”
He skimmed through the list of items, wondering just when and where she’d worn a bright silk dress, a set of incredibly expensive pieces of underwear or a bikini that seemed to cost enough to feed the entire family for a week. He’d certainly never seen her in such underwear… was she having an affair? The thought outraged him for a long chilling moment, then he laughed at himself. How could he possibly complain about her having an affair when he was having an affair?
But she could have been caught at any time, he thought, dully. What if the kids found out the truth?
He stared down at the computer, miserably. Their relationship had been falling apart for years, he saw now, long before he’d been taken away. They hadn’t had sex in months before he’d been recalled to war, then they’d had sex only once before he’d been reassigned to the Luna Academy. But he’d had sex with Rose more times than he could count. The spice of fucking someone he knew he shouldn’t even be thinking of fucking, paired with the certainty of death, had spurred him onwards. Every time he tried to think of Molly, naked and willing, he saw Rose instead.
Carefully, he closed the computer and headed out the door, locking the room behind him. Outside, he could hear the sound of Penny chatting on the phone to her friends, while Gayle — downstairs — was lecturing Percy on the value of thinking before doing something as stupid as walking into a clean house with muddy clothes. Kurt had to smile at her threat to turn the hose on him next time, washing him down thoroughly before he stepped foot into the house and scattered mud everywhere. Kurt’s father had made the same threat, years ago. He hadn’t actually done it.
It was nearly four hours before Molly finally arrived home. By then, Kurt had managed to have a man-to-man chat with Percy, a more peaceful discussion with Penny and speak to Gayle about how his children had been behaving. Penny had, apparently, fought quite a bit with the nanny at first, then settled down and started to learn. Percy had been buying books and videos on starfighter training and studying them frantically. Kurt could only hope that he picked up enough to realise that he knew nothing when — if — he entered the Academy.
“I want you to take them both out tonight,” he’d said to Gayle, when they’d finished talking. “Take them bowling, then go watch a movie or something that will keep them out for a long time.”
Gayle didn’t argue. In a way, that was a more worrying sign than anything else.
“Molly,” he said, when his wife closed the door behind her. “We need to talk.”
Molly scowled at him. She had always had a fiery temper and some of their arguments had been shockingly loud. “Why?”
Kurt braced himself “For a start,” he said, “why didn’t you tell the kids I was coming?”
“I thought it was tomorrow,” Molly said, sullenly.
“I told you it was today,” Kurt said, feeling his temper flare. When had he started hating his wife? “If you couldn’t come and pick me up at the station, all you had to do was tell me and I would have taken a taxi home. But you didn’t have to leave the kids unaware I was coming.”
He took a breath. “And what about the money you’ve been spending?”
“It’s my money,” Molly snapped. “I have a right to spend it how I like!”
“Yes, we agreed we would share the joint account,” Kurt said, trying to keep an icy grip on his temper. “But you’ve been spending money on expensive clothes, expensive handbags, expensive… underwear! What the fuck have you been doing?”
“I’ve been enjoying having money for the first time in years,” Molly thundered. She drew herself up to her full height and glared at him. “Why should I not spend it as I please?”
“Because we have to think about the future,” Kurt snapped back. He took a long breath. “Penny will be in schooling for at least another three years; longer, if she wants to train as a doctor. We might have to pay for that training if she can’t win a scholarship. Percy might change his mind about what he wants to do with his life! And what happens if we run out of money because you’ve been spending it on overpriced clothes?”
“All of my friends buy such clothes,” Molly said, sharply. “Why the hell shouldn’t I?”
“Because your friends are married to rich aristocrats, high-priced lawyers and corporate CEOs,” Kurt said. “The amount of money I got as my share of the prize fund is barely a month’s wages for them. But we won’t get another windfall like that, Molly, while they earn the same amount of money each month! We cannot afford to spend like rich men and women!”
He took a breath. “And I don’t understand some of your choices,” he added. “Are you having an affair?”
Molly stared at him for a long moment, then exploded with rage. “Are you daring to suggest that I would have an affair with someone?”
Kurt glared back at her. “Why the hell have you been avoiding me? I call from the moon; you’re never there! I send messages; you reply late, if at all. I’ve spent more time talking to Gayle than I’ve spent talking to you in the past three months. You knew I was coming today and yet you fucked off somewhere else while I had to take a taxi home and surprise my daughter! Why didn’t you even tell them I was coming?”
“I was busy,” Molly shouted.
“Doing what?” Kurt shouted back. “What the hell have you been doing that keeps you from talking to your goddamned husband?”
Molly grabbed for a vase and held it up, threateningly. Kurt reached for a plate, then stopped himself before his fingers closed around the fine china. They’d picked the christening plates for their children, years ago. He wasn’t going to destroy them just because he’d had a fight with his wife. And yet… what was she doing?
It was worse, he realised mutely, than an affair. If she’d been honest, he would have been honest too… but it was clear she no longer cared about him or their future. All she cared about was her chance to join High Society — or what passed for it in their hometown — without worrying about anything else. But it was unsustainable. The prize money would run out and then Molly would be dependent on the kindness of strangers. Her job — and his - didn’t pay enough to maintain her lifestyle.