Chapter 41
41
‘Where are the kids? It’s eerily quiet,’ says George, pausing by the front door to peer into the dark living room. A swirl of soggy brown leaves settle on the doormat before he can close the door; sideways November rain lashes on the bay window. The TV isn’t on. Tinny music doesn’t pour out onto the upstairs landing. Jack isn’t playing Crossy Road on the iPad at the breakfast bar. The girls and their mates aren’t upstairs. George walks into the kitchen. There isn’t any sign of leftovers for him to nibble on while he waits for Kate to finish preparing their meal. In fact, George is starving, and he can’t even smell the usual wafts of Bolognese, chicken pie or quiche that usually greet him when he comes home. ‘What’s going on?’
Kate leans solitarily against the cluttered island, clutching a hot cup of tea. Her face is still white, her hair bedraggled as if she’s been pulling it out. George opens the fridge door and leans in, looking for a morsel, which reminds Kate how comfortable he looked helping himself to a beer from the enormous fridge in the kitchen at Barrie Manor .
‘Why so quiet?’ George says, taking a cold cooked chicken leg out of the fridge and gnawing on it clumsily.
He doesn’t know.
‘The girls are staying at the Coxes’, Jack is having a sleepover at Herbie’s.’
‘On a Monday?’ George gives Kate a disparaging look.
She hasn’t told him.
‘On a Monday,’ Kate whispers.
‘What’s wrong, Kate? You look awful.’
Kate widens her eyes to offer a silent and sarcastic thanks. George puts his manbag on the breakfast bar stool and unwinds his stripy scarf in three shades of blue from around his neck. That scarf.
Kate grips her cup tighter. Her knuckles look as ashen as her face as she stares into space in the middle of the room. Family photos on the fridge look down on her with pity: Chloe playing Nala in the Year 6 performance of The Lion King . George teaching Izzy how to fish off Southwold pier. Jack holding his rugby under-8s player of the week trophy in the sunny autumn sunshine from a year ago. Kate pinned them all up there. The photos showing triumphs, achievement, pride and love. There are no photos of her up there. No one is proud of her.
‘When were you going to tell me you were moving in with her? After you’d gone?’
George gives a nervous laugh with chicken still in the corners of his mouth.
Shit.
He’s not sure how much Kate knows but he’s got good at acting, so he smiles his best bumbling smile.
‘What?’ he asks, blinking rapidly.
‘That old… old… BITCH !’ Kate rages.
George looks alarmed .
‘In her mansion! When were you going to tell me? In fact, when were you going to tell the kids? Hers know all right.’ Kate’s wobbly voice quietens, as if she’s worried the children might hear her from across the village.
All the blood drains from George’s grey face. ‘Kate…’ he says, walking towards her.
She bats him down.
‘Don’t “Kate” me, George,’ she says with a quiet tremble. ‘It’s not a misunderstanding; I’m not being paranoid. You utter bastard, you can’t make me look mad any more. I was right all along.’
‘Kate, please…’
‘She told me herself! How the dodgy old judge is even in on it. And her daughter! I knew it!’ Kate clutches her face in despair.
‘Just listen…’
‘What will Chloe and Izzy make of you choosing her daughters over your own? How will you explain it to Jack? His teacher’s mother ?’ The thought is too much, and Kate puts her tea towel to her mouth and sobs into it as George walks to her and pulls her into his coat.
‘I’m so, so sorry. I’ll end it, I promise. I’ve been trying to end it for ages…’
Kate pulls away, her eyes and nose streaming, a hurt face in despair.
‘When did it start?’
‘I can’t remember exactly.’
‘Yes, you can !’ she pleads.
Kate knows no one ever forgets the time of year when new sparks ignite; the way the air feels, the seasonal punctuations that witness a new flush of excitement. She herself remembers the balmy mountain heat of her summer fling with Hector Herrera. The sticky thunderstorm the night she turned to him in the bar and saw him kissing another girl. How it was Independence Day – mid-September – she was due to go back to England in a few weeks, to start her graduate trainee job at Digby Global Investors in London, but she changed her flight so she could leave the very next day. The autumn chill in the air when she and George first started eating their sandwiches together on a bench in Elder Gardens. ‘You don’t forget those things,’ she adds with a measured whisper.
George removes his coat in defeat. ‘Last summer. It was last summer.’
Kate looks at him with pure hatred. ‘ Last summer?’ Every second Kate thinks it can’t get any worse, it does. She’d at least hoped it was this spring, around the time the text came in as she stood in the kitchen at the exact same spot.
‘After we got back from France. She joined badminton. Said it was a shame we missed their cheese and wine party – it was a shame I had missed their cheese and wine party.’
‘Bitch. She went after you.’
‘One thing led to another. It just went from there. It didn’t mean anything.’
Kate’s blotchy face crumples as she imagines George and Antonia entwined. She takes a big sip of tea to give herself a momentary shield.
‘I’ll end it tonight, Kate. I promise. I don’t love her. I want to be here, I do not want to leave this house…’
Kate studies George’s small eyes, not knowing whether to believe him.
‘Not even for Barrie Manor and all Antonia’s millions?’
‘What are you talking about? You and the kids are my world. They’re so dysfunctional! It was just a bit of fun – call it a mid-life crisis or whatnot, I’ve not been myself recently – but she told her bloody husband and then?— ’
‘Just a bit of fun? You’d ruin your family and hurt me like this – make me think I was going mad or being paranoid – for just a bit of fun?’
George looks flustered, and ever-so-slightly annoyed. ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant I don’t love her, Kate…’
Kate shakes her head in her hands, angry that she’s meant to feel relieved about this; disappointed in herself that she does.
‘But she went and bloody told Archie – and he saw his way out. He invited me for a drink at the Red Hart, was giving me advice on how to handle her, as if she was one of his vintage cars, wishing me the best of luck – it’s a nightmare, Kate…’
‘Oh, boo-fucking-hoo, George.’ Kate wobbles between two octaves, her volume rising.
‘I’ve been trying to get out of it since. I’m so bloody sorry. I was trying to be discreet.’
George doesn’t look all that sorry to Kate. She wonders if he’s just sorry he was caught.
‘Discreet? Discreet? ’ Kate slams her empty mug onto the kitchen worktop. ‘Cosy drinks with her husband in the Red Hart? Civilised lunches with Antonia and Amber in London? Shagging for hours up The Shard? Who else knows? I bet the whole village knows! All those bitches at the WI must have been laughing at me behind my back.’
Kate pulls at her low ponytail in despair and looks at the mug on the cluttered island. She wants to pick it up again. This time she wants to throw it at George’s lying face, but knows it will be her cleaning up the tea stains and shattered ceramics, so she holds back.
George puts his scarf back on and winds it around his neck, trying desperately to save his family from unravelling in front of him.
‘I’ll go there now. I’ll end it, I’ll speak to Archie if he’s there too. You and the kids are my life, Kate,’ he says, his eyes piercing into her from where he stands at the kitchen door. Despite all the treachery, despite the fact that, while he protested that he didn’t love Antonia, he forgot to tell his wife he loved her, Kate can’t help feel the small relief of a hollow triumph as she watches George leave in panic.
At least I know. At least he’s choosing us.