“Rose, what’s happened?” I said.
She waved me away. “No, no, please, don’t be kind. Please, I couldn’t bear it.” She pulled a hand towel from the dispenser and put it to her face, then gave a half laugh through her tears. “Ridiculous. I can’t seem to stop crying. Oh, please ignore me, Beth. You’re very kind. It’s just I have no one to talk to, no one at all.”
“But I’m sure you have lots of friends,” I said, surprised.
“Oh yes,” she agreed dispiritedly. “I’m very lucky.” And then she whispered, “I just feel so ashamed.”
“Well, you could tell me,” I coaxed. “I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
It was then that she broke down and began to cry as though her heart was broken. “Oh, Beth, it’s such an awful mess.”
On impulse I put my arms around her, just as she had done to me all those weeks before. “What am I going to do?” she said. “What on earth am I going to do?”
And finally, little by little, she told me what was wrong, how Oliver had confessed to having an affair with one of his students at the university. “She’s nineteen,” Rose said. “Nineteen! He said it just happened, that it got out of control, that he’d tried to end it but she became obsessed with him. He says that she’s unstable, that he hadn’t realized how fragile she is and that . . . that he’s sorry, and . . .” She broke down again, too distraught to go on.
“Oh,” I whispered, “oh, Rose, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all so sordid,” she cried, “so humiliating. How could he do it to us, Beth? To me and Emily? How could he?”
I don’t think she meant to tell me so much. I think it was like a dam breaking, that it was a relief to finally confide in someone. She said she couldn’t face anyone finding out, her family, her friends. I think she only talked to me because I was so removed from her personal life. And people have always said I’m a good listener; perhaps she felt safe unloading it all on me. Finally she stopped crying. “I have to go,” she said. “I’m due to see a patient any minute.” She took a gulp of breath and dried her eyes, but she looked so hopeless still, so crushed.
“Do you want to meet for coffee tomorrow?” I asked her shyly. “We could go somewhere in town, if you like, away from the hospital, I mean.”
I wanted her to see that she could trust me, that I’d keep her secret, that nobody from work would find out. I thought she was going to turn me down, but to my surprise, she looked at me gratefully. “Are you sure?”
After that, we fell into the habit of meeting up once a week or so. We’d go for coffee in an out-of-the-way place in town, or sometimes I’d go to her lovely house, the Willows, when Oliver wasn’t home. We were unlikely friends, but friends we became. I honestly think I was the only person in the world she could talk to. And I thought how strange and sad life is, that someone like Rose, with all the grand and important friends she must have, had only me, a near stranger, to confide in. How different people are, aren’t they, from how they first appear? I tried my best to comfort her, because I felt so sorry for her. She told me that she wanted to forgive Oliver, that he knew he’d made a horrible mistake, that he regretted everything.
“Can you forgive him, though?” I asked, surprised. I tried to think how I would feel if it were Doug cheating on me. I didn’t think I would be able to get past it, to be honest, not if we had a little baby too.
A strange expression came over her face then, and suddenly she didn’t look quite so vulnerable anymore. In fact, in that moment she looked quite fierce. “I will not let that little bitch destroy my family,” she said, and she sort of spat the words at me, and I remember being quite shocked. “I will not let that happen,” she said.
—
And then, a week or so later she came looking for me on the ward. She looked dreadful; I could tell that something was very wrong. She pulled me into an empty office, her face very white. “She’s pregnant, Beth,” she said. “Nadia. The girl my husband has been fucking.”
I’ll never forget her saying that word. I’d never heard her swear before; she just wasn’t the type. But she said it with such bitterness, such venom. My hand flew to my mouth. “Oh no!”
“She’s due in two months!” she cried. “Two months! Oliver said he’s only known a month, that he couldn’t face telling me before, but he’s lying, of course. And now she’s started calling the house. She won’t leave us alone. She said that unless he leaves me for her, then she’ll tell everyone about their affair.” She shook her head in dismay. “His career will be over, Beth. We’ll have to leave—everyone will find out at the hospital—everyone will know. All our friends and colleagues and family . . . oh, Beth, what shall I do? Everything, our lovely life, our lovely family, it will all be ruined! It will be so humiliating, so utterly humiliating.”
She was beside herself. I tried to comfort her the best I could, but I didn’t know what to say, not really. After that night I didn’t see her for a while. She took some time off work and then, what with one thing and another, a few weeks slipped by, though I worried about her constantly. Occasionally I’d see her, but she was always busy or rushing off somewhere. When, finally, we did arrange to meet, I thought she seemed a little calmer, a little more resigned to it all,
