"What's the matter?" I asked, genuinely concerned.
Jenny kept trying to turn away, to turn so her back was to me. It felt like a game. We both kept spinning around in a circle. I held her around the waist, and it was only when she stopped moving that I realised her face was blotchy and wet.
"What is it?"
"I can't do this," she said. Her eyes stared at me so intently it felt like she could see through me and read my thoughts.
I kissed the tip of her nose. "We don't have to. We can just go home. We don't have to have a picnic today."
I don't know why I said that. Surely, I knew that she wasn't talking about the picnic? Why would she be so upset about a damn picnic? I think I must have known, even at that point, that I was trying to hide away from reality.
"Not this," she said, holding open her hands to our idyllic surroundings. "This," she continued. Her hands pointed at me now. "I love you, Marcus. You need to believe me. I love you with all my life. But I have been seeing somebody else, and I can't keep doing this to you."
I still remember exactly how I felt at that moment. I felt like pleading with her that she could do this to me, that I would sacrifice anything so long as I could spend my every moment with her and Emma. Instead, I walked away without uttering a word. I don't know whether Jenny tried to chase after me; I do know she never caught up.
It was only late that night that Jenny found me. I sat in the conservatory, drinking sparkling white wine, morphing uncharacteristically into the angry drunk, just waiting for her. I heard her putting Emma to bed, reading her a bedtime story. It was always me who read Emma a bedtime story. Daddy. I'm not sure how long Jenny sat opposite me without saying anything. I just sensed her there, huddled in a quiet ball, her knees pressed against her chest.
"Who is he?"
Her voice was meek and broken. "Does it matter who he is?" she replied. I know that she didn't mean to be cruel, to be heartless, that it was a genuine question. I sensed that she regretted the words as soon as they escaped her lips, that she would reel them back in if she could. But it did matter. I wanted to know what man could cast a spell so powerful on the woman I loved that she would be prepared to give up this wonderful life.
"I think I deserve to at least know who he is, don't you?"
She frantically nodded her head, trying to backtrack. "He is a doctor."
That was all she said about him at the time, but it was enough. He was my intellectual superior; he was the greater man. I tended not to fear men because of their physical strength; I was intimidated by intellect. I always feared I'd be embarrassed, exposed as a fraud. Again, it was what Richard would call distorted thinking. What mattered was that Jenny was having an affair, not who she was having an affair with.
Jenny told me more over time, over the next few days and weeks, as I began to see things clearer. We didn't discuss me moving out - it was just assumed that I would, even though she was the cheat, the fraud. I did more than move out - I quit my job, too. I moved into an apartment first before deciding that, now I was on a roll, I may as well completely transform my life. Transform was one word for it - completely fuck it up might have been a more apt description. On a whim, I purchased a long boat and made that my home. And so, for the short term at least, not only did I not have a job, but I didn't have a home that stayed in the same place for long, either.
That was five years ago, though, and of course, things have moved on since then. Jenny has already said sorry a million and one times. There is really no need to bring it all up again, not at a bowling complex in the middle of the day, not when there are so many other things I should really be worried about.
Jenny turns back to me. She knows that this isn't the catalyst, that this isn't the reason I am so distant, that there must be something else troubling me. "Marcus," she says, "whatever it is, it sounds serious."
I say nothing. My silence speaks volumes. They say that a picture can paint a thousand words. My face probably reveals a lifetime of woe.
"Has he come back?"
This is what I wanted. I knew that, if I didn't say anything, she would work it out. Jenny knows me better than any living person.
"In a way. But I'm doing my best not to let him in. I'm working on it with Richard. It isn't as bad as it sounds; nothing ever is. There will always be challenges, you know that. Richard assures me that it isn't a sign of a relapse, that it is just a glitch. You know the method Richard uses with me."
Jenny nods her head. The
