Chapter 40
40
NOVEMBER 2018, LONDON, ENGLAND
Kate marches up the platform at Liverpool Street station, under a crystal and iron roof as breakable and as worn as her beating heart. The platform is almost empty at this time, so she charges freely towards the front of the train because the back won’t reach the short village platform of Claresham’s nearest station. Steam emanates from the low square heels of her round-toe boots.
Antonia fucking Barrie. I can’t believe it. She must be at least ten years older than me!
Suddenly, it all makes sense. The long blonde hair was Antonia’s shade of impeccable. The lunches with ‘B’ were for Barrie, not Baz Brocklebank. The hours spent in the hotel at The Shard weren’t long business lunches. The pulsating green spot of Find My iPhone that taunted Kate was actually George pleasuring someone else. Antonia fucking Barrie. How George disabled Find My iPhone around the time Kate was cottoning on, getting closer. His compliance to come to Antonia and Archibald’s annual cheese and wine party when he usually eschewed such ‘ghastly’ events. The ease and comfort with which he opened Antonia’s fridge door and helped himself to a beer …
And then there was Antonia’s patronising and belittling little looks up and down at Kate’s shoes, her clothes, her bakes. Were they out of pity or anger? Did Antonia want George all to herself or was George just a toy boy; a distraction for the cougar? A court jester there to entertain the bored judge’s wife?
That day Kate saw Antonia and Amber Barrie on the train as they glided past her with their noses high in the stuffy carriage air; the day he had ‘Lunch B’ in the diary and Kate interrupted George’s firing of Bethany – were they heading into town for a cosy lunch with George? Did Antonia see Kate on the train and tip George off, so he cancelled and decided to sack Bethany in anger?
Perhaps he’s fucking the pair of them, the shit.
Kate shivers and starts to feel travel sick as the train snakes out of the station and back to the shards of a shattered idyll.
‘Where to, love?’
Kate slumps into the back seat of a blue Vauxhall taxi and thinks of her cold broken house, its garden grey and threadbare, and wraps herself tightly in her belted parka. There’s no one at home. Chloe is at secondary school, and Izzy and Jack won’t need picking up for another hour. Home is empty. She could go there, flop on the bed, curl up into a ball and sob until her tear ducts dry up. Or she could go and see Antonia Barrie. Look her in the eye and tell her she knows all about her grubby affair with her husband.
My husband.
‘Barrie Manor please,’ Kate says, remembering Bethany’s amusement at the name, although she still doesn’t feel like laughing .
‘The judge’s house?’
‘Yes.’
As the taxi peels out of the quiet station towards the large Italianate house on the edge of Claresham, Kate feels anger overtake fear; incredulousness cancels out British reserve; a need for answers overrules the worry that perhaps no one is at home and this journey will be for nothing. Kate’s vision is so tunnelled, her objective so huge, as the car sweeps through the walled front garden of Claresham Hall and up a driveway to an ornate manor house.
‘That’s ￡7.60, love. Want me to wait?’
Kate looks at the grand wooden double door, flanked by two immaculately trimmed green orbs. A red and silver Christmas wreath hangs, even though it’s not yet mid-November.
Kate presents the driver with a crisp ten-pound note from her shaky hands and then remembers the school run.
‘Actually yes, yes please.’
‘Right you are,’ says the driver, turning off his engine and reaching for the rolled-up newspaper on the dashboard.
Kate gets out of the car like a shot, before she can talk herself out of it, and walks across the circular driveway at the top of the grand approach. She raises a heavy brass ring before banging it down as loudly as she can. The thud thud thud of the knocker beats as loudly as her heart. Kate can hear someone vacuuming on the other side of the door and knows it won’t be Antonia.
The vacuum is turned off and the door opens. A small woman with short blonde hair that’s black at the roots peers around it. More staff.
‘Yes?’
‘Is Antonia in?’
‘Yes, who shall I say?—’
‘Kate Wheeler. ’
Kate says her name boldly and confidently without a single hint of a wobble in her voice, and the lion inside her roars. She feels proud of herself.
I can do this.
The maid doesn’t say anything but indicates that she’s just going to look for the lady of the manor.
Kate inhales the dreary grey day and waits to be invited in. Even braced for a showdown, she could never storm into someone’s home; she’d have to be invited in first.
Antonia arrives clutching a golden Christmas bauble, and her face has an icy curiosity about it, but before she can even say hello, she knows why Kate is at her door. She flashes white teeth.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asks. Ever the impeccable hostess.
‘How long? How long have you been shagging my husband?’ Kate demands.
‘Oh, let’s not do this on the doorstep,’ scoffs Antonia. ‘Do come in.’
Kate wants to raise her arms like the decrepit windmill she can see from the Barries’ vast garden and wheel them in a rage towards Antonia. Wipe the smug look off her face. But she curbs it, for now, and follows Antonia inside to the kitchen.
The maid closes the heavy front door behind them. ‘Don’t worry, Marta, I can get these, if you can carry on untangling the lights… I got into a terrible pickle with the red and gold ones.’ Antonia smiles and nods Marta away before sashaying into the kitchen, towards the kettle on the Aga. Even for a day of sorting out Christmas decorations, Antonia looks elegant and crisp in a white shirt and jeans as blue as her eyes.
‘Don’t bother with the tea and the pleasantries, Antonia. I already know what a slut you are.’
Antonia’s face drops .
‘I just want to know, how long has my husband been lying to me for?’
Antonia looks taken aback, stunned to be insulted in her own home, but runs her fingers through her bouncy blonde hair casually, defiantly, and fills the kettle with water from the sink on the island anyway.
‘Oh, I don’t know, a year perhaps.’
A year?
Kate swallows her disgust so she is able to speak.
‘How did it start?’
‘Well, you know, badminton is such a passionate sport…’
‘How can you be so breezy about this? Can’t you see what you’ve done to my family? To me?’
‘Oh, come on, Kate, grow up. These things happen all the time.’
‘ These things happen? My husband has been sleeping with… with… you and you expect me not to take umbrage?’
‘Archie knows. In fact, he’s been rather accepting…’ Antonia raises an audacious eyebrow. ‘I mean, he doesn’t exactly want to start playing golf with George, but I think he’d rather I were happy. Archie always was a bit of a teddy bear really.’ Antonia looks wistfully out onto the fields beyond the kitchen windows, to the old ruined windmill in the village beyond.
Kate is floored. ‘Your husband knows about this?’
‘Yes,’ Antonia replies with a surprised smile, as if it were perfectly obvious he would know, and be accepting, of his wife having an affair with a man twenty years younger than he. ‘Amber too. She and George get on spectacularly actually. Clarissa less so, and the boys are still a bit young, but give them time…’
Her daughters know.
Antonia puts the lid on the kettle and cranks up the heat .
‘Time?’ Kate stands like a dishevelled cat, her big brown eyes wide and shocked, her mouth hanging open in disbelief.
‘Yes, time. For them to get used to the idea.’
‘Used to the idea?’
‘Of course. Have you not even talked to George about this? Am I really your first port of call?’ Antonia gives a smile and shakes her head in disbelief. ‘George wants to move in. Archie is working on a deal, an exit strategy if you will. For them both.’
‘An exit strategy?’ Kate is astonished how businesslike Antonia is being. How devoid she is of any human emotion.
‘Well, Archie’s far too old for the commute; for rough and tumble with Alistair and Bertie. He’s wiped out after a day in court. He can’t keep coming back here. He’s moving into the apartment on Chancery Lane – George is moving in here. Did he not mention that?’
For the first time ever, Kate sees a flash of insecurity and doubt glide across Antonia Barrie’s self-assured smug face. Polished lines crack just a little. But it doesn’t offer Kate any comfort. The water in the stovetop kettle starts to bubble and the steam erupts through a hole, sending a whistle and a hiss screaming into Kate’s brain. She looks at the ivory and silver sparkles of the granite worktop and her vision starts to blur.
‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
Heat inflames her cheeks as bile rises in her throat. Kate slams her hand against her mouth and runs to the front door with the charge of the kettle whistle. She pulls the heavy door, opens it and is hit by an afternoon chill as she vomits all over the pruned green sphere to her right. She looks to the taxi driver, embarrassed, but is relieved to see he’s fallen asleep, leaning back like a bear in winter, mouth rattling as he snores, newspaper draped over the steering wheel in front of him .
Kate takes a second to clean the corners of her mouth with an anti-bac wipe and opens the taxi door with deliberate noise.
The driver wakes with a start.
‘Oops. You got me there, love. Where to?’ he says, not looking into the mirror to see Kate’s pale and pasty horror.
‘The Finches,’ she says meekly.
Home. I just want to get home.