Eddy cups his palm around Seb’s shoulder. ‘You’re my best friend, Seb, always have been. I only want to help. You know you can trust me, don’t you?’
Seb nods without saying anything and Eddy pats him on the back. Seb has to resist the urge to shrug his warm palm off him.
‘You’ll tell her, right?’ Eddy asks and Seb still doesn’t need to say anything, just nods before he starts to pack their balls and racquets away in silence and they walk side by side back towards the pavilion. Usually, at the end of a game, Eddy opens his arms to commiserate or to congratulate Seb, but tonight he looks unsure. Instead, he holds Seb’s upper arm. ‘Well done for telling me, mate, and good luck with Rosie. Call me anytime, yeah?’
Seb slings his tennis bag over his shoulder and starts walking home, the night closing in around him. He has the urge to keep walking, to never stop, to walk until his body – his stupid, needy, traitorous body – dissolves into the human sludge it really is. A car passes him, the driver waving, and even though he doesn’t know who it is, he automatically waves back, because it’ll be a parent or one of his mum’s friends, someone he’s known for years. As he walks, he feels like he’s carrying all the people he loves on his shoulders. They’re all stacked in a precarious pyramid with Seb wobbling and straining at the bottom, trying to keep them all up. But tonight, by telling Eddy, he’s started to tremble under the weight, and Seb knows he’s not strong enough to keep them all from falling.
Chapter 6
Eddy can’t wait to get home from tennis; he wants to feel Anna, his soft, warm, loving Anna, in his arms. Blake’s staying at a friend’s tonight and Albie will be upstairs in bed already. Anna’s sat at the kitchen table, a bottle of wine open before her, and the radio’s on so she doesn’t hear him come in straight away. After his party, she’d stuck a few of the printed photos of his stupid, grinning face in different places around the kitchen: one on the fridge, another one on the corkboard with the takeaway menus and old appointment reminders. It’s disconcerting, accidentally making eye contact with himself constantly. When Anna does turn to him, her eyes are swollen, bloodshot. What is it with tonight?
‘Anna, love, why are you crying?’
He hates it when she cries. It makes him feel so useless.
‘You’re home early,’ she says, and she gestures to the chair opposite for him to sit. Eddy pauses. Maybe he should hug her? No, no, he should let her talk while she’s in the mood. He sits and tries to make his face open, neutral, like the expression their marriage counsellor always wore during a session. But stillness for Eddy is exhausting; his facial muscles were made for movement. He gives up, takes a gulp of her wine and says, ‘Anna, I’ve had a hell of an evening already. Please, just tell me why you’re sad.’
Anna runs her palm over her face and breathes out. ‘Rosie told me that something weird happened with Seb and Rosie’s new mate, Abi? Anyway, it made me start thinking about everything’ – she gestures to Eddy and back to herself, a tissue scrunched in her hand – ‘that happened between us and, well, I started thinking through some things and I noticed …’ She makes an exasperated groan, glancing at the ceiling as the tears come again. ‘I noticed some condoms were missing from your bathroom drawer.’
Eddy wants to laugh but forces himself not to. His darling Anna. He’s pretty sure her hyper-vigilance, her anxiety, is a kind of love.
‘Missing?’
‘Four of them,’ Anna croaks before starting to cry in earnest again.
Eddy stands and moves to kneel before her, like he’s about to propose. He looks up at her, not breaking eye contact, and feels himself swell with something unfamiliar – innocence, perhaps – as he says, ‘I promise you, Anna, I promise on our sons that I know nothing about those missing condoms.’
Anna looks down at him. ‘Really?’ She sniffs. ‘You mean it?’
He holds his arms out again, trying to show her he has nothing to hide. ‘I mean it, sweetheart. I really do.’
Then he does what he’s been yearning to do all evening. He puts his head in her lap, closes his eyes, and she strokes his face with her warm, soft hands as her tears fall on to him.
‘Oh, Ed, I’m so relieved. It’s just that Rosie was telling me weird stuff in the sauna yesterday about Seb and then Lotte called, to confirm the reservation, and she said something strange too …’
Eddy’s eyes open. ‘What stuff with Rosie and Seb?’
Anna doesn’t answer right away. Eddy lifts his head to look at her and he realizes with clashing certainty that Anna knows something.
‘Eddy, don’t, don’t do that, please. I’m not supposed to say anything …’
‘What, even to me?’
‘Well, yeah, I think so, I mean …’
‘Anna, I’m Seb’s best mate. Don’t you think I’d know if something was going on?’
Anna looks at him steadily then and Eddy realizes his stupid face is going to give him away. He drops his brow, erases his smug smile, but it’s too late. Anna’s on to him.
‘What? What did he tell you?’ Anna’s stopped crying, quickly tipping into anger.
Eddy freezes, stares up at his wife, feeling like a chastened dog on the floor.
‘And don’t say “nothing”, Eddy. I swear I’ll fucking scream if you say “nothing”.’
He looks away, feels his heart thumping, like it too is taunting him. What are you going to do, Eddy? What. Are. You. Going. To. Do?
‘Look. Look, all I know is that Seb intimated there might be problems.’
‘Go on …’
‘That’s it.’
‘Did he mention Abi?’
‘That new woman you said Rosie was really into?’
Anna nods.
Eddy lets the genuine surprise show on his face. ‘No. No, he didn’t. Why would he mention her?’
Now it’s Anna’s turn to decide what’s more important – loyalty to her friend or interest in the truth. She doesn’t weigh it up for long.
‘Rosie told me that Seb came home when Abi was at their place. She said it was weird. Rosie had to go upstairs to stop the kids arguing and when she got back they were whispering to each other. She said Abi became awkward, made some transparent excuse and couldn’t leave quick enough, that she’s been off with her ever since.’
Eddy’s face puckers in surprise. ‘That’s unlike Seb.’
‘Yeah.’ Anna agrees, enjoying herself a bit now. ‘It gets weirder. Lotte called me when we were in the sauna to confirm our reservation for opening night next week. We were chatting and she said that Seb turned up at the restaurant, totally out of the blue, to talk to Abi. She said she watched them a bit, said it looked like it was getting really heated, that afterwards he was completely flustered and left in a real hurry. Which, again, isn’t at all like Seb, is it? I decided not to say anything about Lotte’s call to Rosie, didn’t want to add to her paranoia.’
What was it Seb said on the court? He said this woman had ‘turned up’ and then he tried to backtrack, lied and pretended she’d only messaged, because he didn’t trust Eddy with the truth. The truth, Eddy realizes now, is that Abi is the woman he met online, the woman he had sex with.
He stands up because this is beginning to feel a bit much.
Anna stands with him, her eyes never leaving his face because she knows everything he’s feeling will be written there.
‘Eddy, what is it?’ she’s saying again and again, and all Eddy can mumble is, ‘Bastard.’
Eddy’s stomach squirms, not for Abi or Seb but for himself, because Eddy’s always found his role in any situation the most interesting. Why didn’t Seb trust him with the full story? Eddy has trusted Seb with everything, always, but Seb has been duplicitous, keeping his secrets to himself. He hadn’t said anything about the problems with Rosie – that they haven’t had sex for a year – and how many games of tennis had they played in that time? Besides – and here Eddy really starts to feel like he’s falling – who even is Sebastian Kent if he’s the kind of man to find a woman online for sex? Twice! Sober! And still, he hasn’t confessed to Rosie? He’s most definitely not the person Eddy thought he was. The perfect person he’d made them all believe he was. Why should he, Eddy, have to lie to his wife simply because Seb doesn’t have the balls to come clean?