21
Fiona
‘What do you think he’s like?’ Mark asks.
‘Who?’ Fiona is pretty certain she knows exactly who Mark is referring to, but she doesn’t want to make a mistake by bringing his name into this home before Mark does.
‘Him, her other husband,’ he spits out the word. Fiona reaches for the plastic basket in which laundered, but yet-to-be ironed, clothes lie tangled. Mark had pulled the items from the dryer earlier but hadn’t thought to fold and smooth them, that was the sort of thing that only the person who finds themselves responsible for ironing remembers to do, knowing it makes the job easier in the long run. Fiona does all her own ironing – obviously – and it seems like Leigh does all of the Fletcher family’s. Fiona tips the contents of the basket onto the kitchen surface, that she has just cleared and wiped, and then methodically starts to fold the laundry.
‘What does it matter what he’s like?’
‘Oh, come on, Fiona,’ Mark sighs impatiently. Of course, it is mad of her to pretend it doesn’t matter. Other than where Leigh is right at this moment, the only thing that can matter to Mark is the all-pervasive question: what does the other man have that he doesn’t? What had seduced his wife into becoming not another man’s lover, but another man’s wife? It has to be pretty spectacular to instigate a treachery so complete and absolute. Like anyone who has ever been betrayed, Mark is most likely stuck in that deeply disgusting and disturbing place where he is eaten up with a need to know everything about the other person he has been betrayed for. Yet Fiona knows that every piece of knowledge will whip, sting, inflame his sense of inadequacy, confusion, shame. Mark perhaps even knows as much too but he won’t be able to stop himself forensically googling and trailing all the social media accounts he can track, examining any morsel of information he can glean. What does the other man look like? What does he do with his life? Why did she pick him? It is a dark, destructive compulsion. But then most compulsions are.
‘You know, it’s not like she’s just left me for another man. That sort of jettisoning goes on all the time. That’s commonplace, manageable. What she has blown up is not just what we had, but who we are. My past, the boys’ childhood, it is all annihilated. It never existed.’
It is late, the boys are asleep, or at least in their rooms, faking sleep and playing on their phones. Fiona has spent most of the day at the Fletchers’ but even so she hasn’t been alone with Mark. This morning she went to the supermarket, this afternoon he said he needed to take a walk, to clear his head. She offered to go with him, but he asked if she would stay with the boys. ‘In case she comes home,’ Fiona suggested, trying to keep him hopeful.
‘Yeah, right, that,’ he muttered. He didn’t seem to believe it was a possibility.
He was gone all afternoon, but Fiona didn’t mind. She hung out with Seb, helped him with his geography homework and then watched banal YouTube videos with him that she had pretended to appreciate, and did in a way because they made him genuinely giggle. Oli had heard them laughing and eventually joined them on the sofa. The three of them sat closer than they might normally. There was something comforting about the tangy smell of Lynx body spray oozing off one boy, and fried food and pop off the other. From time to time, Fiona surreptitiously turned her head to catch the scent of them.
Mark returned just before supper, which Fiona had prepared, and they all ate together. She didn’t ask him what he’d been doing all afternoon. Where he had been. Both boys trudged back to their separate rooms after they’d cleared their plates, conversation exhausted. Being together they felt obligated to appear hopeful. It was wearying.
‘I’ll come up and turn your lights out later,’ Mark offered. He wanted to tuck them in, maybe kiss their foreheads, like he did when they were younger. Nowadays bedtime was more often about negotiating the relinquishing of phones. Oli didn’t respond at all, Seb shrugged. No one wanted to perform any of the usual bedtime rituals that marked the end of another day when their mum hadn’t come home.
‘The boys just need some space too,’ Fiona comments.
Mark nods. ‘Thanks, Fiona, your being here really helps.’
‘Oh, I’m doing nothing.’ She knows this isn’t true. She’s done the shopping, laundry and cooking; she’s being a surrogate mum but it’s not very English to brag about one’s usefulness in a crisis. Mark raises a small grin, understanding the code. ‘You’ve done everything. Not least simply keeping the conversation going at supper. A supper you made. The boys are a bit calmer around you.’
It hasn’t been discussed but it seems to be tacitly agreed that Fiona will stay on the sofa again tonight. She reaches for a bottle of Merlot that she bought this morning. She’s pretty sure it’s Mark’s favourite. She holds it up. He nods. She pours two large glasses.
Mark sits down in front of the family computer that is on a small desk in the corner of the kitchen, where the boys are encouraged to do their homework. Fiona smiles as she remembers talking to Leigh about this. ‘Is it so you can oversee their homework while you make tea?’ she’d asked.
‘No, it is to minimise the chance that they lose hours watching porn whilst pretending to do homework,’ Leigh had replied with a wink and a grin. Leigh knows
