I get out of the car with the firm intention of doing just that. I’ll have a shower, get dressed into something a bit more socially acceptable than sweatpants and I’ll go to work, just for an hour, just to see.
The house is quiet. I put my swimming bag by the front door and head towards the kitchen, expecting them to be sitting at the table, paperwork spread out in front of them along with mugs of coffee.
The room is empty. Maybe they’re in Greg’s small home office.
I start to make myself tea, delaying the inevitable now that I’ve decided on it. I hear Greg bustle into the room behind me.
‘What happened to your swim?’ he says.
I turn to face him, saying, ‘The pool is booked for a gala.’ My voice falters. There’s something odd about him. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but as he draws closer to me and pecks me on the cheek, the feeling intensifies. It’s balanced on the edge of my tongue, teetering, niggling.
He is flustered, his cheeks reddened, and a bead of sweat stands out on his forehead.
Then I notice his shirt is on inside out.
‘I see Gemma is here. Where is she?’ I say.
His fly is down.
‘Er, she’s… in the bathroom.’ He smiles manically and turns away from me.
Then the penny drops, loud in my head, and I almost laugh out loud.
I abandon the tea and walk past Greg, out of the kitchen. The downstairs toilet door is ajar. Greg’s office door is open and the room is empty.
I walk up the stairs calmly, no need to hurry. I know what I will see when I reach the top and turn the corner.
Greg is prancing behind me, asking me if I want a biscuit, telling me to go back to the kitchen and he’ll make my tea for me, anything to stop me from getting to the top of the stairs. I ignore him, can’t really process what he is saying anyway.
I reach the top step and turn the corner without pause.
Gemma is in my bedroom, sitting on the corner of my bed. The bed I made this morning when I got out of it, which is now messy, the covers wrangled.
She is buttoning up her blouse, her feet bare and her long, usually sleek hair mussed like the sheets.
I look at her; she looks back. There is no sense of shame or guilt on her face; instead, it looks like victory.
I nod at her. I’m not sure why. Everything seems to have slowed down, the air thickening, until all I can see is this woman sitting on my unmade bed.
I turn around and walk from the room. Greg is poised on the top stair. His face has taken on the colour of ash. He can’t meet my eyes. ‘Mads…’
I walk past him, not giving him the opportunity to lie about this, to try and create a reasonable excuse for why his PA is in my bedroom, why I’m the one getting the wrong end of the stick, that it’s not what it looks like.
I grab my bag from where I left it all of five minutes ago, get back in my car and drive.
I don’t know where I’m going until I get there. I’m at the park, near to the children’s play area and the café where I met Mia all that time ago. So much has happened since then. And yet nothing has changed.
Like a puppet, I go into the café, order a tea to go and a Smarties cookie and head over to the park bench on which I sat that day. I watch the children play, the mothers talking and laughing, the dogs chasing and panting. I can hear my phone ringing in my bag, but I ignore it.
I just sit and drink my tea, not thinking, not feeling. I want to rage, scream, throw something, but I can’t, so I sit and watch.
When my tea is finished, I throw the cup in the bin and walk back to the car park and beyond. I keep walking until I reach the main road. I don’t look at anything around me. All I can see inside my head is Greg’s face as he stands at the top of the stairs, the guilt and admission like a neon sign flashing in his eyes, those eyes that couldn’t meet mine. I think of all those years together, all that hurt, disappointment, sorrow, and I step off the pavement into the road.
I can hear the squeal of brakes and feel a sense of my body not being in control of itself anymore. Then I feel nothing at all.
10
The cup scalded her fingers as she passed it to Greg.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Maddie said with a quiet smile.
‘No worries. It’s nice to see you.’ Greg put the mug down on a coaster on the coffee table. ‘Listen, er, Gemma doesn’t know I’m here, so…’
‘Oh, right, that’s ok. I won’t say anything.’ But inside she felt smug – and curious. Why hadn’t he told Gemma that Maddie had asked him over for coffee? Was this how Greg and Gemma had started? Seemingly innocent chats over beverages that had developed into more than words? She hadn’t answered Jade’s question last night about how she had found out about Greg’s affair, but that was because she was ashamed of herself for how she had reacted.
Looking back on it now, she frightened herself by realising that it could have ended very differently.
As it was, the road she stepped into was a twenty mile per hour zone, so the car that hit her was thankfully not going too fast. But if anyone asked her, she hadn’t done it on purpose. It was just a lapse of concentration. She certainly hadn’t done it because she had realised she had
