‘I don’t know.’ And the downside of it all, the nervous guilt, the scorching shame opened up in me. A pit of my own making. I tried to explain to Jane but my account sounded shallow. It was the first, the only time, I’d met with her disapproval and I resented her for it.
‘I don’t love him, it’s just a fling.’
She was quiet and I spoke to fill the space, asking about her holiday, their house-hunting. The dislocation in our friendship was horrible. Jane genuinely couldn’t understand my behaviour. Later, when it was all over and we were able to talk about it, she said it would have made sense to her if I had loved Jeremy but to risk so much just for sex seemed self-destructive.
Three years after that Mack left Jane for another woman. Someone he had already been seeing before he married Jane – and he’d just kept on seeing her. I wonder if Jane hadn’t had some premonition, some sixth sense that behaviour like mine and Jeremy’s would hurt her.
Was I being self-destructive? Having an affair because I knew I didn’t deserve the security I had found with Neil? Because I knew that one day he would leave me, like my father had left, so I beat him to the punch? Maybe there was an element of that, kicking down my own sandcastle, but I also believe it was a fluke of circumstance. If any other man had opened the door of that apartment, I wouldn’t have lusted after him so foolishly.
After three months my design brief for Jeremy and Chandi was almost completed. Contractors would be carrying out the work to my specifications, but that was delayed as the construction of the building was behind schedule. I hadn’t thought about what would happen after my part in the project was done. It was like being a child again, living only in the here and now, with no thought for the consequences.
It was the middle of winter, the last time I saw Jeremy. Temperatures had dipped and the side-roads glimmered with black ice. The air was cold and foggy, washing everything monochrome. We had fixed a meeting first thing in the morning; I had other clients to see later in the day. Jeremy had the heating on full whack when I arrived. Their lounge felt airless and dry. I peeled off coat, gloves and scarf.
‘Don’t stop.’ His voice thickened. He was sitting on the couch in his jogging pants and a sweatshirt, his hair still damp from the shower.
I glanced at my portfolio.
‘We can do that after.’
He reached out a foot, ran it up the inside of my leg, above my knee. Heat pulsed through my veins like hot syrup, making my skin rosy and my breathing quicken.
I took off my cardigan, unzipped my boots and pulled them off. He watched as I slid down my trousers and stepped out of them. He pulled his sweatshirt over his head and dropped it. I unbuttoned my blouse, then the cuffs, let it fall open. Enjoying his excitement, the irresistible burn of sexual appetite.
That was when Chandi walked in. Fresh from work, where the boiler had packed up and her appointments had been cancelled.
She took in the sight of us, me in my shirt and sheer underwear, her husband half naked on their couch, and she gave a little dry laugh. Like she’d known all along – like here was another fuck-up to add to her bloody lousy day. ‘You fucking bastard,’ she said to Jeremy.
He had the grace to redden and began to apologize to her. I said nothing, pulled on my trousers, stuffed my feet into my boots, shrugged my coat on and scooped everything else up. Chandi began to shout at him. Without a word I walked out, my heart thundering and my legs trembling.
A week later I got a cheque for my work. I never knew whether they had gone ahead and used the designs, if they had stayed together and completed their home. But wouldn’t it rankle if they had? Each time anyone commented on the grey-green of the curtains or the wood-burning stove, wouldn’t it be like heat on a burn?
Three weeks after that I told Neil what I had done. There was no need to, no one else would have spilled the beans, but I found that carrying the betrayal was souring my love for him. I needed his forgiveness. I got an inkling of why Catholics go to confession.
He was very hurt, very angry. Then he cried. He wouldn’t touch me. That was the worst thing. When he still hadn’t come near me after three days, I surveyed the wreck I had made of our marriage, faced the prospect of losing him for good and asked him to come and see a counsellor with me. I was desolate and couldn’t see how we could rebuild our relationship without outside help. How could he forgive me? If the tables had been turned I would have rent him limb from limb, kicked him out and built a prison on the moral high ground for myself and the children.
The next year was very painful, though our counsellor was a brilliant and highly skilful woman and the work we did with her was far more intellectual than I had expected. She encouraged us to examine in depth the patterns of communication in our families, the use of power and control, of emotional life, and to look at what we had brought with us to our own marriage. Again and again I came up against the wounds left by the loss of my father, and my mother’s distance, which was a loss of sorts. Perhaps for the first time I mourned him properly, grieved for her and for the mother I never had.
I think it took several years more for Neil to really relax into the relationship again. I don’t think he ever loved me the same. I’m not saying he loved me any less, but differently – it might even have been stronger because of what we had weathered, but it was less innocent.
As for trust, that grew with time. The years flew by and the children grew and I never strayed again. Of course, trust was part of the equation at the end. Could he trust me to do as we had agreed? Sometimes I think that mattered more to me than the love. After all, my love might have led me to deny his request, arguing that I loved him so much I was not prepared to spend one day less with him. That would be love as need – love as taking not giving. Trust had a more practical dimension. Trust was a question with a yes or no answer. It was one-sided, one way. Could Neil rely on me to do his bidding?
Perhaps if I hadn’t had the affair I wouldn’t have needed to prove I could be trusted with this most onerous of tasks. Perhaps I’d have held out longer and forced him to see that there was another way. That he could die peacefully, with dignity, without hastening the process.
Instead, when he asked me for the third time, I thrashed about like a landed fish for long enough and simply caved in.
Chapter Fifteen
When Neil got his diagnosis in 2007, the neurologist told him about the local MNDA branch and offered to put him in touch with them. Not long afterwards he had a phone call from someone there. They talked for quite a while and then she sent him a folder full of leaflets and information on different aspects of the disease. She also invited him along to the next branch meeting. Neil procrastinated. He told her he would think about it. When I raised it with him, he said he didn’t feel like going. ‘I need a bit more time to get my head round it.’
Now I wonder whether even then he had made the decision about his death and therefore thought joining the Association wasn’t an option for him. Meeting other people with the disease, getting advice and support and a sense of solidarity might compromise his position. If he made friendships there, gave or received succour and then arranged an early demise, how would those other people and their families feel?
So we never really got involved. Should I have pushed him more, early on, when his resolve hadn’t hardened? Then he might have found some hope, another way of looking at things, won more time with us and taken advantage of hospice care. But now that I knew his days, his hours, were already cut so short, there was no way I could pressure him into spending time on anything he wasn’t eager to do.
We did take charge of one of the breathing space packs and followed the advice in the Association’s leaflets to help us talk about the situation with Adam and Sophie.