The second wives club, p.30
The Second Wives Club, page 30
“We only had sex a couple of times,” he said wearily, lowering himself down onto the chair next to her at the table. “I’m so sorry.”
Now that her greatest fear was confirmed, Julia didn’t actually feel that much worse. Perhaps the anticipation had been worse than the realization, or perhaps she was getting an early start on the inevitable shock that usually followed any such confrontation. As it stood, she didn’t feel angry, she didn’t even feel a twinge of sadness. She simply felt numb.
“When?”
“Um…,” he looked unnerved, as if he expected her to explode and fly at him at any second, “…remember the business trip to New York?”
“Yeee-sss,” she said slowly, scowling slightly. “Don’t tell me it was all bullshit and you spent the week with her?”
He quickly shook his head. “No, no. There was a business trip, and it was for a week. But remember when I got home and we had a row about having a baby?”
Julia scowled and nodded slowly, trying to remember that particular row among all the others.
“And remember I said I was going for a long drive?” He looked sheepish. “Well, the first time happened then.”
She made a choking noise. “And during the couple of hours you were on the missing list, you managed to conceive a child with your ex-wife…is that what you’re telling me?”
He nodded slowly. “I was upset, and she was upset about something as well, so we comforted each other and…and it just happened.”
Julia shot to her feet and took a couple of angry paces toward the other side of the kitchen. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, she’s always upset about something. What was it this time? Someone looked at her the wrong way in the street? Stubbed her toe on the skirting board? Whatever crap she comes up with, you always fall for it.”
She turned back to face him, but he was staring at the floor, deep in somber thought.
“And the second time?” she demanded. “When was that?”
“A Saturday afternoon when you were at lunch with your girlfriends.”
“Which one?”
He shrugged as if it were irrelevant. “The first one Susan went to after her accident.”
Julia let out a small gasp. While she was at a meeting of the Second Wives Club, he was busy shagging the very first wife she was bitching about. Oh, the excruciating irony of it. “But she was six months pregnant by then.”
James nodded. “Yes, she was.”
She slowly shook her head, finding it hard to comprehend what she was hearing. Deborah had always been an irritant, but never in her wildest dreams had Julia imagined that James would have sex with her. She was too plain, too mousy to have even figured on Julia’s radar as a sexual threat. How wrong could she have been?
She let out a hollow laugh. “You know, there’s an old saying, ‘no one misses a slice from a cut loaf.’”
He frowned slightly. “I’m not with you.”
“It means it’s very easy to fall back into bed with someone if you’ve already been there,” she explained, her tone hard. “As you have so effectively proved.”
“Look, Julia…” He looked at her plaintively. “I didn’t plan any of this. It just happened.”
She put her hand up to indicate for him to stop. “Spare me, please. Accidents just happen. But falling into bed with your ex-wife is a fucking decision, James, and don’t pretend otherwise.”
Closing his eyes, James leaned back in his chair and tilted his head back, saying nothing.
Julia stayed quiet for a few seconds, struggling to control her temper. She wanted to retain the moral high ground and knew that shouting and screaming wouldn’t help matters. “How long have you known it was yours?”
He rubbed his eyes. “Same time as she and Paul did. Just after the birth. She always said it was his, so I took her word for it.”
“Christ, mousy and stupid,” she muttered. “And you’re not much better. If you had unprotected sex with her…which clearly you did…then of course there was a chance it could be yours.”
She walked back to the table and sat down, stretching her long legs out in front of her. James still hadn’t managed to look her in the eye. He was staring down at his loafers, glancing out the window, anything to avoid connecting with her.
“Look at me,” she said.
Slowly, he lifted his head and looked at her, guilt and anxiety all over his face.
“I want to know everything about when she told you, how she told you, how you felt when she told you, what she said, what you said…” she demanded.
He let out a deep sigh. “Why torture yourself with the details? It’s not important.”
She felt a surge of anger again, and this time she couldn’t control it. “It’s important to me, James, and you will tell me everything I want to know! You fucking owe me that much!” she shouted.
He recoiled slightly and put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay.” He paused. “You know when I came home the other night and told you she’d texted me to say she’d had the baby?”
Julia nodded, concentrating hard on his every word, syllable, and facial expression.
“Well, that was true, she had. And the text said nothing about what had gone on with Paul.” He paused again and took a deep breath. “Then yesterday morning she called me at work to say that the baby was white and that the only person who could now be the father was me…” He rubbed his eyes again, as if he might open them again and find out it had all been a bad dream.
“So when we had dinner here the other night and you talked about trying for a baby, you still had no idea you’d already fathered one?” Julia asked suspiciously.
“No, no idea at all. Ironic really, isn’t it?”
“No, James, it’s not ironic, it’s a living bloody nightmare! I can’t believe you’ve got yourself—gotten us—into this mess.”
The clink of the letterbox opening in the hallway made them both instinctively look toward the kitchen door. It was probably their daily consignment of junk mail, offering two dreadful pizzas for the price of one dreadful pizza.
She turned back. “So what did you say when she told you?”
“There wasn’t much I could say, was there really?” He smiled ruefully. “I told her I was shocked, which I was, and that I needed time to come to terms with it.” He stopped speaking and looked at her with an air of finality.
“Was that it?”
He shrugged. “Pretty much, yes.”
Julia knew that a lot more must have been said, but suddenly another thought struck her and she wanted to know the answer. “Have you seen it?”
His visible discomfort at the question told her immediately that he had. “If by ‘it’ you mean the baby, then, yes, I have. I popped in on my way home from work yesterday.”
She snorted sarcastically. “One day you’re popping in to mend a broken toilet, another you’re popping in to see your new son.” The final two words stuck in her throat and she felt tears pricking at her eyes. “It’s the son you’ve always wanted, but there’s just one tiny problem. It’s not with me.”
She started to sob openly, her tears splashing down onto the polished wooden table. He made no move to comfort her, simply staring at her with sadness in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again.
“Sorry…sorry.” She rolled the word around a bit, mulling it over. “Nope. That doesn’t make me feel any better. I don’t want easy apologies, James, I want an explanation.”
“An explanation?” He looked like a rabbit caught in headlights. “How do you mean?”
She reached across to the center of the table and plucked a tissue from its box, wiping her nose. “I mean that I want to know why you slept with Deborah when you’re married to someone like me.” She let out a small sob. “I work hard at looking good, I’m bright, I cook like a fucking professional, and I’m really imaginative and adventurous in bed. Most men would kill to be married to me.”
He smiled sadly and nodded. “You’re absolutely right, they would.”
“So why the hell did you feel the need to sleep with her?” She looked at him with injured defiance.
“I don’t know…it’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
He shuffled in his seat, looking for all the world like he’d rather be having the hair on his testicles extracted with tweezers than be having this conversation. “You want the truth?”
“No, I want you to fucking string me along again,” she spat. “Of course I want the truth.”
“Okay. Well, I guess I went to her for a break.”
“A break?” She looked at him incredulously. “A break from what?”
“From your relentless perfection.” He at least had the grace to look slightly sheepish as he said it.
She let out a hollow laugh. “Well, that’s a new one. You slept with another woman because I was too perfect?”
“Something like that, yes.” He leaned forward earnestly. “The thing is, Julia, that yes, you are every man’s dream, but sometimes you just don’t feel real. There are moments when I feel like I don’t really know who you are, or like you know who I really am. It’s like being married to a fantasy…a…a blow-up doll!”
The fantasy bit she quite liked, but the blow-up doll analogy was a hurtful step too far. Her eyes filled with tears again. “You think I’m like a blow-up doll?”
“That’s the wrong way to put it,” he backtracked. “I shouldn’t have said that, but you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” she countered. “I don’t know at all. What I do know is that since we’ve been married, I have broken my back to be everything I thought you wanted me to be.” She looked and felt wounded. “You once said you left Deborah for me because you found me so exciting. What changed?”
“Nothing changed. It’s just that after a while the exciting inevitably becomes the familiar, I suppose.”
The tears had dried up now, and she could feel another swell of anger. “Forever chasing the chase, eh, James?” she said bitterly. “I had no idea you were one of those hackneyed, ‘grass is always greener’ kind of guys. How fucking sad you are.”
He made a distasteful expression.
“Oh, don’t give me that sanctimonious ‘women shouldn’t swear’ act. Fucking save it.” She was aware she was sounding shrill, but she no longer cared. “My husband has just had a child by his ex-wife. I’m fucking allowed to swear.”
“Yet another of your unladylike characteristics,” he muttered.
She knew she shouldn’t take the bait, shouldn’t get caught up in an argument that had nothing to do with his infidelity, but she couldn’t help herself. She was now in a fighting mood. “What do mean, another?”
“Nothing.”
“James.” She raised her eyes theatrically. “If you make an accusation, at least have the balls to carry it through to the end.”
“Okay then.” He looked directly at her, his eyes like granite. “Your refusal to try for children. What kind of woman does that make you?”
She felt his words punch right through her, temporarily winding her. “You tell me,” she said quietly but ominously.
“It makes you odd, that’s what it makes you,” he said defiantly.
“Does it indeed?” Inside, she felt wounded by his accusation, but outwardly she looked appalled. “And your punishment for my ‘odd’ behavior is to go and get another woman pregnant, is that right?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
His voice broke slightly as he said it, and she looked across to find that he was crying.
“Why are you crying?” she asked incredulously.
“Because it’s all such a goddamned mess.” He sniffed, wiping his nose with an old tissue he retrieved from his trouser pocket. “I never set out to hurt you, Julia, honestly. I just felt pissed off that you wouldn’t try for a baby, and I suppose I felt rejected. I started feeling like maybe you’d only married me for my money, for our lifestyle, without any real desire to connect with me on a deeper level, to take that step to create a new life together and have a baby.”
“And Deborah was there to say ‘Daddy’ and open her legs?” she scoffed. “How pathetic. Well, you’ve certainly got a baby now, haven’t you?”
He nodded and blew his nose again, calmer now. “I was thinking…I know it’s a less than ideal situation, but it might just work out for the best, you know.”
At first, Julia wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly and screwed up her eyes in incomprehension. “Sorry, did you just say this could all work out for the best?”
“Yes. I know it sounds crazy, but just think about it.” He leaned forward on his elbows, an earnest look on his face. “You don’t want to have a baby, and now I have one. Don’t you see? It’s perfect!”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t see. And besides,” she added wryly, “I thought you didn’t like perfect.”
He ignored the gibe. “When he gets a little bit older, Daniel…that’s his name, by the way…can come stay with us once during the week and every other weekend. That way, you don’t have to actually give birth, you don’t have to give up your lifestyle, but I get to be a father.” His expression suggested he’d just announced a workable solution to the crisis in the Middle East.
Julia stared at him open-mouthed, still angry but also bewildered by all that had gone on and been said. She didn’t trust herself to answer him at this point. She needed time to think things through before making a knee-jerk decision she might later regret.
“So what do you think?” he said hopefully, looking for all the world like a man who was simply asking her to choose which of his neckties she preferred.
“What do I think?” she parroted, stalling for time. “I think that I need time to think, that’s what I think.”
Now it was his turn to look bewildered. “Sorry?”
“I need time to mull everything over.”
“What’s to mull?” He looked genuinely surprised. “Surely you’re not going to let this destroy our marriage?”
Studying his face as he spoke, she realized that what he’d said was utterly devoid of irony. “I’m not going to let this destroy our marriage?” she said wearily, anxious for the confrontation to end so she could retreat and lick her wounds for a while. “Any potential destruction is all your doing, James, not mine. We’re not talking about a run-of-the-mill marital argument here…not only have you been unfaithful to me, it was with your ex-wife and you have fathered her child. Betrayals don’t come much bigger than this.”
“So what are you saying?” He suddenly looked worried. “Are you saying you want a divorce?”
Julia sighed and started to walk toward the kitchen door, feeling calmer now that she knew she was in control of the decision-making. “I’m not saying anything at the moment. As I said, I need time to think, and then I’ll let you know.”
“When?” he shot after her.
“I’m going to go upstairs and pack, then go to the airport and get a standby ticket to somewhere hot, where I will spend the week alone with my thoughts. We’ll talk when I get back.”
She paused in the doorway. “In the meantime, I suggest you do some serious thinking of your own about what you want from life. I thought it was me, but now I’m not so sure.”
“You can’t live without me!” he bellowed after her retreating back.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she murmured quietly to herself. “I’m willing to give it a try.”
end of an earache
“A glass of water, please. And a menu. I could eat a donkey.” Susan lowered herself into a wicker chair in Natasha’s Café, her ever-broadening hips making it difficult to squeeze in.
“Christ, if I’m the size of a bungalow now, can you imagine what I’m going to be by the time I actually have the baby?” she grumbled to Fiona. “I’ve put on about forty pounds.”
“It’s entirely normal.” Fiona smiled indulgently. “Every pregnant woman puts on weight.”
“Yes, but only about six pounds of it is actual baby. The rest is fat.”
“And fluid. You’ll lose it really quickly once it’s born, you’ll see.”
“Very kind of you to say so, but I suspect the reality will be a little harder to shift. It can’t be a coincidence that ‘stressed’ is ‘desserts’ spelled backward. I have such a craving for sugar that I virtually inhaled some yesterday.”
“It’ll all be worth it. Just think…in about six weeks’ time, you’re going to be cradling your very own baby.”
“I know.” Susan grinned. “I don’t want to go on about it when Alison gets here, because I feel so awful for her…so I’ll say it now. It’s the greatest feeling in the world. I’m so excited!”
“And I’m so pleased for you. How’s the leg holding up?”
Susan turned down the corners of her mouth. “Not bad. It still looks a little unattractive, hence the trousers, and I get the occasional tweak from the metal pin, but other than that I feel very lucky to have escaped with only that to grumble about.” She waved toward the door. “Here’s Alison now.”
“Wow, you look amazing,” said Fiona, looking her up and down.
Alison was dressed in a cream linen trouser suit and flat gold sandals. She had a faint suntan, just enough to bring out a smattering of freckles across her nose, and her hair shone. “Thanks. One of the benefits of my new healthy regimen…the one that’s supposed to help me get pregnant. It’s been about six months now since a drop of alcohol has passed my lips, and it’s worked wonders for my skin. Sadly, it hasn’t worked wonders on other fronts.” Her face clouded slightly, but she rallied herself and smiled at Susan. “But I can see you’re blooming very nicely.”
“Yes, blooming fat. I’d swear I was giving birth to a small sofa if I hadn’t seen the scan pictures.”
“I want to ask you lots of questions about it,” said Alison, looking around and back toward the door. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, what with holidays, work, family commitments, and so on, that there seems heaps to catch up on. But I suppose we’d better wait until Julia gets here, and then you don’t have to repeat yourself.” She settled herself in the chair and hung her handbag over the back of it. “Talking of which, has anyone else spoken to her since the James drama? I called a couple of times to offer support but didn’t really get much out of her.”
