Arthur waited patiently, his face anguished, saying nothing, until eventually Evie spoke again.
‘Where is he?’
‘Waiting outside in his car.’
She slumped forward. After a few moments she sat upright. ‘Very well. Let’s get it over with.’
Arthur left, and shortly after, Douglas came into the dining room. He moved around the table and sat on the other side facing Evie. He looked haggard. There was a couple of days worth of stubble on his face, his hair was unkempt and there were dark rings under his eyes. He seemed to have lost weight and his face was gaunt and pallid despite his sun-tanned skin. Evie waited for him to speak.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have had to walk in on … that.’
‘So if I hadn’t seen you, it would be fine? As long as I didn’t know about your dirty little love nest? As long as I hadn’t interrupted what you were up to? If I had sent you a telegram to warn you that I was coming to visit you could have hidden her away and it would have been all right, would it?’
‘When you walked in I’d just told her she couldn’t stay any longer. That we were finished.’
Evie snorted. ‘Yes, it looked like it. A perfectly normal way to end a relationship – make love all day long then, while she’s giving you a massage, tell her to pack her bags.’
‘It wasn’t a relationship. She was my housekeeper. And we hadn’t been making love.’
‘Shut up, Doug. I don’t want to hear any more. You disgust me.’
‘But that’s it. It was just sex. It didn’t mean anything. And when you walked in I’d already told her it was over. It was only a massage. It didn’t mean a thing. None of it meant anything.’
Evie snorted in derision, got up from the table and was about to move towards the door.
He leaned across and gripped her arm, holding her back. ‘Please hear me out, Evie. I beg you.’
She shook her arm free of his hold. ‘I don’t understand you at all. I feel polluted just listening to this.’
‘It started after Felicity and I parted.’
For a moment Evie thought she’d misheard. ‘Parted?’
‘My marriage to Felicity was the biggest mistake of my life.’ He shook his head rapidly and added, ‘No the second biggest. The biggest was what has just happened.’
His words shocked Evie. ‘Go on,’ she said, curious to hear about Felicity – even though she knew it would make no difference to the final outcome.
‘I was besotted with Felicity. She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen and I believed I was in love with her. But once we were married I soon discovered she was mean-spirited, always finding fault in everything and everyone. Joyless. From the early days of our marriage she denied me her bed whenever she could. It felt like a miracle to me when we found out she was expecting Jasmine. I’d hoped that Penang would have been a new start for us but it was Felicity’s idea of hell. She hated the place and hated being pregnant. The birth was difficult and she showed no affection towards the baby and wanted little or nothing do with her. She made no secret of her contempt for me.’
‘Yet you loved her.’
‘I loathed her.’ He looked at Evie and she knew he was telling the truth.
‘Why do you keep a shrine to her upstairs?’ She jerked her head upwards to the ceiling. ‘In your bedroom.’
‘That’s not my bedroom. I never go near it. When I’m in this house and haven’t spent the night with you, I sleep in the small room next door.’
‘But all her clothes are still in the main bedroom. All her personal things. Jewellery. Everything.’
‘Are they? You can get rid of them. I told Aunty Mimi to do that after Felicity died. I don’t know why she didn’t.’
Evie was stunned. Things were turning out to be the opposite of what they had seemed.
‘When I bought Batu Lembah I hoped things might change. Felicity didn’t like Bella Vista. But from the moment we crossed the threshold of Batu Lembah she made it clear that she didn’t want to be there. It used to look better in those days. More furniture, pictures, home comforts. But she never liked it. She was angry all the time. One evening I came home to the bungalow to be greeted by screaming from Jasmine. My wife was beating her with the handle of her hairbrush. Jasmine was only three. That’s when I sent Jasmine to the convent. For her own protection. I took on the house in George Town and Felicity moved back there. I’d come into town just for meetings, tennis, functions at the club and so on, just to keep up the facade that our marriage was functioning.’
He stopped and ran his hands through his hair. His expression was grim. He was evidently finding telling her all this painful.
Breathing out loudly, he said, ‘Felicity couldn’t bear the physical side of marriage. After Jasmine was born she wouldn’t even entertain the idea of letting me near her at all.’ He put his head in his hands. Looking up at her, a picture of misery, he said, ‘I’m only human. A man has needs. I’m not proud of what I did, but that’s how it started with Nayla.’
‘Don’t say her name. I don’t want to know. And that might be how it started but
