Do I? Adrienne, yes, we’ve spoken in the last couple of days, but there’s still some way to go to reverse the damage done. ‘I have friends, yes. Why?’ He looks oddly relieved, and I realize the reason he’s here involves me, somehow.
‘What is it, Paddy?’
His face is expressionless for a few moments, then he seems to make a final decision.
‘I have something to tell you.’
I try to focus, to pull myself into the present. ‘What is it?’
I don’t breathe. The air between us is as thick as oil.
‘Maria told me she slept with someone.’
I nod slowly, and then I know what’s coming. Some part of me – some buried part, some reptilian part – knows exactly what he’s going to say.
He opens his mouth to speak. It seems to take for ever. I say it for him.
‘Hugh.’
His face breaks into relief. Still part of me hopes he’ll contradict me, but he doesn’t. I wonder when he’d known.
‘Yes. She told me she slept with Hugh.’
I can’t work out how I feel. I’m not shocked; it’s like I’ve known all along. It’s nearer to numbness, an absence of feeling. I take a deep breath. The air fills my lungs. I expand, I wonder if I could keep breathing in until I’m bigger than the pain.
‘When?’ My voice echoes off the walls.
‘In Geneva. She says it was just once. Apparently, it hasn’t happened since.’ He stops speaking. I wonder if he’s waiting for me to say something. I don’t have anything to say. Just once? I wonder if he believes his wife. I wonder if I do.
‘Hugh hasn’t told you?’
‘No.’ So that’s why Hugh hasn’t invited them round for months. It has nothing to do with what Connor may or may not have seen in the summer house.
I feel cold, as if I’m sitting in a draught. Hugh and I have always told each other the truth. Why hasn’t he told me this?
But then, look at what I haven’t told him.
‘I’m sorry.’
I look at him. He’s in more pain than I am. He looks empty, hollow. I can see he hasn’t slept.
Then, I realize. That’s why he kissed me. He knew, or suspected at least. I was his revenge.
I don’t blame him. I ought to reach out and hold him and tell him it’ll be all right, the way I tell Connor things will be all right. Because I have to. Because it’s my job, whether I believe it or not.
But I don’t. I keep my hands on the table.
‘Thank you for telling me.’
‘I thought I ought to. I’m sorry.’
We sit for a moment. The space between us seems to expand. We should be able to help each other, but we can’t.
‘No, you did the right thing.’ I pause. But did he? It’s not so clear cut; sometimes there are things it’s better off not knowing. ‘What’re you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t decided. Maria and I have some talking to do, but I know that. I suppose we all make mistakes.’ He’s talking to himself, not to me. ‘Don’t we?’
I nod. ‘We do.’
On the way home I call Hugh. I feel different, in some way I can’t quite determine. It’s as if something has shifted within me, there’s been some violent rearrangement and things haven’t yet settled. I’m furious, yes, but it’s more than that. My fury is mixed with something else, something I can’t quite identify. Jealousy, that Hugh’s affair has been short-lived and uncomplicated? Relief, that my husband has a secret of his own, one that almost matches mine, and now I don’t have to feel quite so bad?
His phone rings out. I’m still not sure what I’m going to say to him when we speak and I’m relieved when it clicks through to voicemail.
I hear myself speak. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were okay.’ I realize that’s all I’d really called for. To hear his voice. To make sure he still exists, and hasn’t been swept away by the tidal wave that has threatened everything else. ‘Phone me back, when you get the chance.’
I end the call. I wonder how I’d feel if he didn’t ring back, if he were never to ring back again. I imagine a car smashing into him, a terrorist bomb, or something as mundane as a heart attack, a stroke. I imagine trying to live with myself, knowing during the last months of his life I’d been resenting him, suspecting him, looking elsewhere so that I could avoid confronting myself. As I try, I realize I can’t. He’s always there. He always has been. I still remember getting off that flight – the one he’d paid for, the one that brought me home. He was waiting for me, not with flowers, not even with love, but with something far simpler, and far more important back then. Acceptance. That night he took me to his home, not to his bed, but to the spare room. He let me cry, and sleep, and he sat with me when I wanted him to and left me alone when I didn’t. The next morning he set about getting me help. He demanded nothing, not even answers to his questions. He promised to tell no one I was there, until I felt strong, until I felt ready.
He was there for me in the most real, the most honest, way possible. And still he’s the person I go to, the person I trust. The person who I want the best for, and want to be the best for, as he does for me.
I love him; finding out he’s slept with someone else – even boring Maria – has somehow made that feel more real. It’s reminded me he’s desirable, capable of passion.
I close my eyes. I wonder if they really have slept together only once. Either way, he’s had an affair that goes some way to countering my own. One of the holds Lukas thought he had over me is shrugged off, as simply as that. Anna will erase the photos and get him out of her life, and mine. For the first time in months I imagine emerging into a future without Lukas, clean and pure and free.
Hugh comes home. He’s late; a case had overrun. ‘Sorry, darling,’ he says when he comes into the kitchen. ‘Nightmare day. And Maria let me down again, at the last minute.’ He kisses me. Again I’m relieved. ‘Some crisis at home.’
So she hasn’t told Hugh that Paddy knows everything. I wonder why she told her husband, what prompted her confession. Guilt, I guess. That’s what it always boils down to, in the end.
‘How was your coffee with Paddy?’
It occurs to me that if I’m going to tell Hugh, this would be the moment. I know about you and Maria, I could say. Paddy told me. And I have something I want to tell you.
‘Hugh?’ He looks at me.
‘Uh-huh?’
I pause. I’m serving dinner. I wonder what would happen, if I went ahead. If I told him about Lukas. I wonder if he’d understand, if maybe he’s already guessed. I wonder if he’d forgive me, as I realize I’ve already forgiven him.
I change my mind. The secret I now know he’s keeping makes Lukas’s hold over me feel somehow diminished. I love Hugh, and I don’t want to give that up. Two wrongs don’t make anything right, but maybe they make things more equal.
‘Call Connor down, would you?’
He does, and a few minutes later our son comes downstairs. We eat together, sitting at the dining table. As we do, I watch my family. I’ve been a fool, an idiot. I’ve come close to losing everything. But I’ve learned my lesson – what good would a confession do now?
That night we go to bed early. I tell him I love him, and he tells me he loves me too, and we mean it. It’s not automatic, a call and response. It comes from a place of truth, deep and unknowable.
He kisses me, and I kiss him back. We’re truly together, at last.
Chapter Thirty
It’s the day Lukas is due to go back to Paris, to Anna. I’m working when Hugh calls, photographing a family who contacted me through the Facebook page I set up. Two women, their two little boys.
It’s going well, it’s a distraction. We’re near the end of the shoot, or else I’d have let the call go to voicemail. ‘D’you mind?’ I say, and the taller of the two women says, ‘Not at all. I think Bertie wants to go to the loo anyway.’
I direct them to the downstairs bathroom at the back of the house and then answer the call. ‘Hugh?’ I say.
‘You busy?’
I step outside into the cold autumn air and close the shed door behind me. I’m jumpy today, on edge.