‘Johnny…’
‘I said to myself then that I should kick her out, that she would only bring me grief. Of course I didn’t, though: she stayed all evening and all night and I made her eggs Benedict for brunch.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Never believe women. Especially when they’re being nice to you.’
‘That’s not fair,’ I began. But I didn’t have time to argue with him. Gwen was on her way, the real Gwen. ‘You should go,’ I said.
‘I haven’t finished my wine.’
‘I really think you should go.’
‘Let me cook that meal for you.’
‘No.’
‘You’re lonely and I’m lonely and at least we can give each other –’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I haven’t been fair. We can’t give each other anything.’
‘Dumping me, dumping Frances, moving on. That it?’
‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘We weren’t married. We slept with each other twice. It was a mistake. I apologize. Now you have to go.’
He put his glass down on top of the chart. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right.’ He stared at me. ‘You’re not how I thought you’d be.’
Three minutes after Johnny had left, Gwen arrived. She burst into tears on the doorstep and I pulled her into the house, shut the door and hugged her until her sobs subsided. ‘I’m such an idiot,’ she said.
‘What’s he done?’
‘Nothing.’ And she gave a long, disconsolate sniff.
‘Come and tell me about this nothing. I’ll make us supper, unless you’ve eaten already. Wine? I’ve got an open bottle.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Tell me, then.’
‘He was with this woman for ages and she went off with one of his mates. It took him ages to get over it. You’ve met him – he’s such a big softie. Anyway, she got in touch with him because that relationship’s over. He’s with her now, “comforting” her. I think she wants him back.’
‘He told you all this?’
‘Not the last bit.’
‘Does he want to go back to her?’
‘He swears it’s me he wants. But I don’t know whether to believe him. You know my luck with men. Can I have a tissue?’
‘Help yourself. Here’s your wine.’
‘Am I being an idiot?’
‘Who am I to say? All I’m sure of is that he’d be an idiot to leave you – and by the sound of it he’s being totally straightforward with you. Plus he seems pretty devoted to you.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘All I know is what he looked like to me: kind, honourable, besotted.’
‘Yes. Sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I was sitting alone in my flat and suddenly I couldn’t bear it.’
‘I understand.’
‘It’s been so nice, being in a couple.’
Gwen gave me a hug. We chinked glasses. I cooked the chicken and divided it between us with a bag of salad leaves. It was rather a tiny meal for two emotionally drained and ravenous women, but we finished off with the mango and lots of chocolate bourbons, then sat on the sofa together with my duvet over us and watched a DVD before I called a cab to take her home.
I woke with a start and looked at the clock beside me. It was just past three. I must have been dreaming about Greg, because I had an image of him throwing grapes into the air and trying to catch them in his mouth but they spun everywhere. Perhaps what Johnny had said about fasting at Ramadan had prompted it. It had been a comic dream, but happy. I lay in the dark and tried to hold the picture in my mind.
I woke again at five. Something was bothering me, a wisp of a thought I couldn’t get a hold of. Something I had seen? Something someone had said? And just as I stopped trying to remember, and sleep was pulling me down again, it came to me.
I got out of bed and pulled on my dressing-gown. It was very cold in the house. I went to the computer and turned it on, and when it came to life, I Googled ‘Ramadan’. I knew it always took place during the ninth month of the year; this year it had begun on 12 September.
How long did I sit there, staring at the date? I don’t know, perhaps not so long. Time seemed to slow right down. At last I went into the living room and stood in front of my chart. Johnny’s empty wine glass was still on top of it. I took it off and looked very carefully at all the grids. My breath sounded loud in the silent room. I went to the drawer of my desk and pulled out the menu card Fergus had given me, stared at the date at the top and at the scrawled message: ‘Darling G, you were wonderful this evening. Next time stay the night and I can show you more new tricks!’
The evening of 12 September was the one and only time that I knew for sure Greg had been with Milena. But now I also knew he hadn’t, because she had been with Johnny.
Chapter Twenty-three
I was tempted to cancel my next appointment with the counsellor. I didn’t, but when I arrived I felt I was there under false pretences, which was how I felt almost everywhere I went and whatever I did. She sat me down and then sat opposite me, but not in an inquisitorial way. ‘So, how has your week been, Ellie?’ she asked.
I considered saying, ‘Fine,’ and leaving it at that. But then I decided that there, in that protected space, I would make an attempt at telling the truth, although nothing like the whole truth. ‘You talked about me being on a sort of journey,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve gone backwards a bit. In fact, quite a lot.’
She looked puzzled. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Last week you asked me if I accepted that my husband, Greg, had been unfaithful. I said I did. That was an incredibly hard step for me to take. Now I’ve taken another hard step, which is to go back from that. I’m not sure any more. In fact, I think it’s possible that he wasn’t.’
Judy didn’t look cross. I continued before she had a chance to speak, because I knew that there was worse to admit to and that I’d better get it all out of the way. As I spoke, she watched me.
‘I’ve come straight from the police station,’ I said. ‘I phoned them up and made an appointment to see a detective. Before, I’d mainly seen this female police officer. I suspect she was assigned to me to hold my hand and calm me down as a sort of amateur therapist. This time I made sure I had a proper meeting with someone who had the authority to make decisions.
‘I’m going to be honest with you, even if it makes me seem crazier than you already think I am.’ I paused and waited for Judy to interrupt and say she didn’t really think I was crazy, but she didn’t, so I continued. ‘It would have been much easier to prove Greg had had an affair with this woman, and in fact I did find that proof, or at least I thought I did. Are you going to ask what the proof was?’
Judy seemed confused. ‘I’m not sure it’s really my function,’ she said.
‘It was a note written on a menu, a menu for a particular date, referring to that date. It looked like evidence that there really had been an affair and that somehow he’d managed to conceal it from me. It should have been a relief, and maybe it was. But I’ve since found out…’ I felt a rush of horror, as if an abyss had opened at my feet, at the idea of telling Judy the details of how I had found out. ‘I won’t go into the details, but suffice to say that I now know, without any doubt, that on that day Milena couldn’t have been sleeping with my husband because she was sleeping with someone else. And discovering that left me with a problem – two problems, actually. The first was that I just couldn’t give this up and get on with my life. The second was that once I trusted Greg again, the proof got much harder and more complicated.’