‘Who was she?’ Rebecca asks, and the question catches me off guard, not just because I wasn’t expecting her to speak.
‘Who?’
‘The woman that just turned up on my doorstep.’
‘What woman?’
I try to look past Rebecca and out onto the street to see who she might be talking about, but it’s too dark out there, and I can’t see anybody.
‘There was a woman here just now. She said she knew you.’
‘What was her name?’
‘I don’t know. She didn’t tell me.’
‘Then how am I supposed to know who it is?’
‘I think you know.’
That last comment from my wife is said with a hint of menace, and I don’t like it at all. I genuinely have no idea who she is talking about, but I know that I can’t keep saying that because it will only make her angrier. But what else can I say?
‘Can you come back in and close the door so we can talk?’ I suggest. But that doesn’t work either.
‘Not until you tell me if it’s true.’
‘If what’s true?’
‘Did you have an affair?’
Of all the surprising things that have happened, starting with the knock at the door a few minutes ago, that is the one that gets me the most.
‘An affair? What are you talking about?’
‘She said she slept with you last month?’
‘What? Who did?’
‘The woman!’
Rebecca is on the verge of tears, and I hate it, mainly because I have no idea how to make her feel better.
‘I don’t know what has happened, but I’ve not slept with anybody,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘Are you sure she had the right house?’
‘Yes, I’m sure!’ Rebecca hisses back. ‘She knew our names!’
‘Okay, okay, calm down,’ I say before reaching out for my wife again, but she just bats my hand away as if it’s a fly on a hot summer’s day.
‘Don’t tell me to calm down! How would you feel if somebody turned up and said I’d slept with somebody else.’
‘But it’s not true!’
‘Prove it!’
‘How can I do that? I don’t even know who this bloody woman is!’
I must have a point because Rebecca doesn’t have a comeback for me right away. Instead, she closes the door, and at first, I feel relieved because I think she is calming down. But I’m wrong.
She is just getting started.
3
REBECCA
It’s been five minutes since my perfect Saturday night was interrupted by a knock at the door. It’s been four minutes since a female stranger told me that my husband had strayed. And it’s been one minute since I demanded that Sam tell me the truth about what has happened.
But so far, I have no answers.
So far, my husband is denying it all.
‘Rebecca, I don’t know what to tell you other than the truth, which is that I have no idea who this woman could be and why she would say such a thing!’
I glare at Sam, trying to read him, which was always something that I felt I could do. But now I’m not so sure.
Maybe I don’t know him as well as I thought I did.
Maybe I never knew him at all.
I storm past him and go back into our living room, where the empty takeaway boxes on the table are evidence of the fact that this was once an innocent evening. I also notice that Sam has paused the movie for me, which I would have thought of as considerate a few minutes ago but not any more now that I have more important things to think about.
‘Rebecca, will you just listen to me?’
Sam has followed me in here, as I knew he would, and I was planning on taking a seat to have the rest of this conversation, but now that I’m standing by the sofa, I realise that I’m far too anxious to sit. Instead, I keep pacing, and it’s Sam’s turn to stand in the doorway and look at me with a worried expression on his face.
‘She said last month. Where did you go last month?’
I say the question out loud, but it’s as much for me to answer as it is for Sam. I’m racking my brains trying to recall if my husband had a night away from me a month ago, but I can’t think of anything, and it turns out that Sam can’t either.
‘I didn’t go anywhere!’ he tells me, and despite my best efforts, I can’t think of a time when he stayed away overnight. But then I realise that doesn’t mean he is innocent. Who said anything about it being a sordid night in a seedy hotel? He could very easily have cheated on me during the day.
Maybe at his office. Maybe at her house.
Maybe here.
‘Why would somebody say this if it wasn’t true?’ I ask him as I continue to walk around the room erratically. I’m going to wear a hole in this patch of carpet if I’m not careful, but I’m not going to be able to stand still until my heart rate has come down, and that won’t happen until I get to the bottom of this.
‘I have no idea, but it isn’t true. I swear.’
‘I want to believe you.’
‘Then believe me!’
‘But why would she say it? Why would she turn up here? How does she know my name, and how does she know where we live?’
The volume of my voice was increasing with each question that I asked of my husband, and he perhaps wisely waits a second before answering me so that I can simmer down again.
‘Look, I don’t know who this woman is and why she said those things. But you’re right. If she knows who we are and where we live, I guess I must know her. I just need to figure out who it is and why she would say such a thing.’
That all sounds very logical, and Sam said it in a way that almost made me think that this is just a puzzle that needs to
