‘Hi, Gwen,’ said David, pushing his mobile back into his pocket.
I pretended I was so hard at work that I hadn’t heard him properly. I stared at some figures and underlined a few. My hands shook and the pen made incomprehensible scrawls across the page. David, I thought. So it was David.
‘Gwen?’
I felt unable to speak coherently. I could barely manage to breathe. But I made myself say something, as if I were a normal human being. ‘David,’ I said, ‘how are you doing?’
Although he had spoken to me, he didn’t seem to hear my reply. He just wandered restlessly around the office. I stared at the paper, and tried to make sense of what I had just learned. There was so much of it that I could only process it in fragments. David was one of Milena’s lovers. Those tender, effusive emails had been from him – he was usually so ironic and amused. Milena had sat in this office reading his messages, writing to him, while Frances had been in the same room just a few feet away. How could he have done it? With her friend and colleague? Right under her nose? How could she have done it? Or was I reading it the wrong way? Was that part of the excitement? They say that there’s no point in gambling for small amounts of money. It has to hurt when you lose. Maybe it’s the same with infidelity. Anyone can have a one-night stand on a business trip, at a conference in another country. The real thrill is doing it like an illusionist, risking discovery at every moment, witnessing your victim’s lack of knowledge.
When I thought of Milena’s messages, the chill of them, the manipulation, I wondered if she was more interested in the power than in the sex. Was sex for her just a demonstration that she could have any man she wanted? That she could triumph over any woman, in any circumstances? Was it likely that Greg could have held out against that? Was he so different from the others?
I tried to remember what David had said to me about Milena and Frances. In all those conversations when I had been lying to him, he had been lying to me, as he had also been lying – had he? – to Johnny and Frances. Well, if he had, he wasn’t the only liar. There was Frances, with her own infidelity. They had been betraying each other.
‘Is Frances around?’
I felt like someone very, very drunk trying to imitate someone sober and not knowing whether the act was convincing or ludicrous. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, enunciating each word carefully. ‘She’s seeing the printers some time this afternoon.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said David. ‘I can phone her.’
I couldn’t stand this any longer. I stood up and reached for my jacket. David gave me the appraising look I always found so hard to read.
‘I’m not driving you away, am I?’
‘I’ve got a meeting,’ I said. ‘I have to go.’
‘At your school?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said, and stopped myself elaborating. I didn’t want to risk any lies I might trap myself inside. ‘Could you tell Frances I’ll give her a ring?’
I walked to the door. Just as I was opening it, I heard David call my name. What was it? Had I made a mistake?
‘Sorry, Gwen, I forgot.’
‘What?’
‘Do you want to come out to lunch with us tomorrow?’
‘Sure.’
‘Hugo Livingstone’s coming. We thought it would be good if you could join us. What with Milena, Hugo’s in a bad way. It would do him good to meet a friend.’
‘That would be great,’ I said, hearing my voice tremble. ‘Look forward to it.’
All the way home I felt as though I was stained with something. I had turned over a stone and found horrible slimy things, but in the end what did it amount to? What had it really told me? Yet still I felt contaminated by it. When I got home I had a long shower, trying to wash off all the Gwen-ness, all the deceptions and entanglements. I stood there until the tank began to empty and the water turned lukewarm. Afterwards I pulled on a torn pair of jeans and a scraggly old sweater. I went outside into the garden and stood for a while, feeling the cold darkness on my face.
I thought of calling Gwen and asking her to come over, but I knew she was with Daniel tonight. Mary? She was looking after Robin, and I couldn’t abide the thought of talking to her while she held his little body to her chest and cooed into his downy hair. Fergus? He was with Jemma, waiting for the labour pains to begin. Joe? I could call Joe and he’d be over like a shot, with a bottle of whisky and his gruff brand of tenderness, calling me ‘sweetheart’ and making me cry. I almost picked up the phone, but then I had a vision of myself as they must see me: poor Ellie, sucking misery into a room, needy and sad and not moving on, battening on to the lives of others.
So I went back into the kitchen, and first of all I made a phone call to Party Animals, knowing Frances would not be there so all I had to do was leave a message saying I wasn’t coming back and wishing her luck with the future. That done, I opened the small drawer in the table, where I pushed miscellaneous leaflets, flyers, bills, and took out the list that had been given to me all those weeks ago by the police-woman, the leaflet with helpful phone numbers for victims, for the stricken, the harmed, the bereaved, the helpless.
Chapter Twenty-two
Judy Cummings was a short, stocky woman in early middle age. She had abundant coarse dark-brown hair with occasional strands of grey, thick brows over bright brown eyes, and was wrapped in a long, bulky cardigan. Her handshake was firm and brief. I had been dreading the kind of handshake that a grief counsellor might give, which goes on for too long and tries to turn into a condolence, a fake intimacy that would have had me running for the door. But she was almost businesslike. ‘Take a seat, Ellie,’ she said.
The room was small and warm, empty except for three low chairs and a low table on which, I noticed, there was a discreet box of tissues.
‘Thanks.’ I felt awkward, tongue-tied. ‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ I said. ‘I’ve no idea what to say.’
‘Why don’t you start at the beginning,’ she said, ‘and see where that takes you?’
So I began with the knock at the door, on that Monday evening in October. I didn’t look at Judy as I spoke but bent over in my chair and put my hand across my eyes. I didn’t tell her about my amateur-detective work, or about my disbelief that Greg had had an affair. I just talked about losing him: that seemed to take up all the time.
‘I feel so bleak and empty,’ I said at last. ‘I wish I could cry.’
‘I’m sure you will in time.’ Her voice was softer and lower now; the room felt darker, as if the light had faded while I was there and we were in some twilit world. ‘There are so many things going on, aren’t there?’ she continued. ‘Grief, anger, shame, loneliness, fear of the future.’
‘Yes.’
‘And having to see the past differently.’
‘My happiness. I thought I was happy.’
‘Indeed. Even that must seem unreliable. But by coming here you have taken an important step in your journey.’
I took my hand away from my eyes and met her brown gaze.
‘It hurts so badly,’ I said. ‘The journey.’
We arranged to meet the following week, and I went from her to the shops. I had made myself a promise that I would start looking after myself. No more empty cupboards and midnight snacks, eaten standing up, of cheese and handfuls of dry cereal. Regular meals; regular work; honest work. I put pasta, green pesto, rice, Parmesan, olive oil, six eggs, tins of tuna and sardines, lettuce, cucumber and an avocado into my trolley. Muesli. Chicken breasts, salmon fillets – it’s hard to buy for one; everything comes in couple sizes. ‘For sharing’, it said, on the flat bread I added to the rest. Tonight, I thought, I would make myself a simple supper. I would sit at the table and eat it, with a glass of wine. Followed by – I tested it with my thumb for ripeness and put it in the trolley – a mango. I would read a book and go to bed at eleven, turn out the light.