Chapter 16
16
JESSE
Four Months Ago – February
In a large airy room in Fulham Palace, the wintry trees of Bishops Park looking like spectres through the window, Jesse and Hannah sat side by side, waiting. Waiting for Andrew’s bride to arrive, waiting for an explanation, waiting for a solution, waiting for an answer to their deadlock.
Oscar and Fred tugged on Andrew’s jacket and played with the rings; Andrew’s brother Justin tried to keep them occupied by doing a trick where he pretended to slice his thumb in half using the forefinger on his other hand.
‘That’s stupid!’ Jesse saw Fred say to his uncle, although Jesse couldn’t hear it under the sound of the string quartet.
As they had taken their seats and nodded to Andrew, Justin, and the boys, Jesse had said he wished Ida could have come to the Valentine’s Day wedding. Even though it was a school day.
‘I’d have taken her out of school for this,’ Jesse said, leaning into Hannah but without looking at her. Ida had known Andrew, Elena and the boys all her life.
‘I wish we’d had a no-child policy at our wedding,’ Hannah shot back quickly.
Jesse looked at her, surprised.
‘What? Bloody Wilbur cried all the way through the vows!’ she snapped in justification.
Jesse and Hannah had got married eight years ago in Richmond Park, near where they had gone to school in Surrey. Jesse had wanted to get married in the South of France but Hannah wanted to be closer to home, so he’d traded the purple lavender of Provence for a wisteria-covered Georgian mansion in the middle of the park in spring. They had exchanged vows in a room not dissimilar to this one, not dissimilar to a hundred weddings they seemed to have gone to lately; they ate lamb and rhubarb crumble and danced to ‘You Are So Beautiful’ by Joe Cocker.
Jesse looked around the room, taking in the touches he recognised. Bow-backed chairs and a flower arch at the front. The nervous groom and his best-man brother, although Jesse had asked his dad to be his best man.
He knew if Ida were invited, she would have sat impeccably next to him in a pretty dress, or her fanciest ‘explorer shorts’ as she called them.
He smiled to himself as he watched the boys, pretending to be amused by them while feeling the force between him and his wife, noting that no part of his body touched any part of Hannah’s, despite the chairs being crammed in. It was like an air lock separated the gap between their seats.
Jesse looked at Andrew ruffling Oscar’s hair then trying to tame it before smoothing down his own nervously. Why was he so nervous? This was a brilliant idea. Waiting until their twins were six to get married, so their kids could be there, so they could witness and remember their parents’ declaration of love. Giving their relationship and parenthood time to settle, to really think about their vows before making them. Hannah had clearly made hers in haste.
Maybe we were too young.
They had only been in their early twenties.
Jesse leaned in to Hannah, their shoulders briefly touching. He felt her almost flinch.
‘I’ll move out,’ he said quietly. Hannah looked at him sharply, then down at her skirt as she swiped a loose thread from it. She was shocked, both at what Jesse had just said, and for choosing now to say it, of all times, as if he had planned it. To announce it in a crowd, while a string quartet played ‘Marry You’ by Bruno Mars. Minimal chance for an argument or a scene.
Jesse had been sleeping on the sofa ever since the night Hannah came home last month, apologised for smelling of garlic, blamed her PA Tara for having put the dinner in the diary in the first place, apologised that the client had talked for too long and said they had all got a bit carried away. She said she desperately needed to pee before she put her bag down. Jesse was sitting on the sofa, elbows on his thighs. She hadn’t even stopped to look at his harrowed face.
‘I know what you did,’ Jesse had said, the words like vomit he couldn’t hold back. ‘The client got more than a bit carried away.’
Hannah had stopped suddenly in the doorway, hoping desperately that he didn’t know. She didn’t have time for explanation and retribution.
‘I heard you, on FaceTime.’
She turned around, her face almost angry as she looked at Jesse, although she couldn’t meet his eye. A suppressed outrage, as if her husband had been spying on her. She closed her eyes, let out a huge sigh and leaned on the door frame in defeat.
‘I can’t do this now,’ Hannah said, as she kicked off her heels, took her Nike trainers from the shoe rack by the door, put them on, and headed straight back out. She hadn’t stopped to go to the loo.
Jesse sat on the sofa for another forty-five minutes, thinking, Is that it? Wondering if Hannah had just left him without even bothering to tell him. Wondering still who the man was who’d made his wife groan. Who the man his wife was repeatedly calling a naughty boy was. Wondering what the hell was going to happen to their beautiful daughter. Then Hannah came back to the flat and deigned to offer Jesse an explanation.
‘It didn’t mean anything.’
Didn’t. Past tense. A one-off? It didn’t sound like a one-off.
‘I’m not in love or anything.’
Hannah didn’t notice the look of total confusion and bewilderment on Jesse’s face. Not in love with her lover, or not in love with her husband?
‘I need time to work out what’s going on in my head.’
Jesse wanted to shout, What the fuck is going on in your head?
‘Who is he?’ Jesse asked, but Hannah just ignored the question.
How could you do that?
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Hannah snapped after a third time of asking. Jesse was taken aback by her righteous rage.
My dad just died.
‘What matters is the reason it’s happened. Who is irrelevant.’
‘No it isn’t. Who is he?’
Hannah stayed silent and stony faced.
‘How long has it been going on? You seem pretty comfortable together.’
They knew their way around each other’s bodies.
‘Were you fucking him when I went to France? When my dad died?’
Hannah managed to look both mortified and livid, her thin lips creeping into a trembling line. She took a deep breath.
‘Look – I’m not happy. You’re not happy. We need time.’ As she said it, she held up her hand, as if she were scared of Jesse. He did make her flinch. That was the most hurtful thing. Loving, doting, kind Jesse made his wife flinch. She’d rather talk dirty and get fucked by a faceless man than look at her husband, who had just lost his dad.
Jesse slept on the sofa, and the next morning, when Ida saw him, eyes ringed and red by the double blows of grief, she asked him if he was playing hide and seek. ‘No my sweet girl, I was snoring too loudly, Mummy couldn’t sleep.’
‘Koalas snore loud, Daddy,’ Ida replied without question. ‘It sounds more like a burp. You can sleep in my room if you want.’
After a month of sleeping on the sofa, of living in a pressure cooker, where Jesse felt he wasn’t allowed to mention the situation or raise it, he realised it was all too much. Too much sadness, too much betrayal, too much grief. He was grieving his dad, and he was grieving his marriage, and everything he thought he knew about his wife. All the things he had thought highly of her – how clever she was; how driven she was; how go-getting she was; how beautiful she was – had come crashing down. He couldn’t tell his friends. He’d only told Max last week that they were having issues when she’d found him asleep at 6a.m. in the office, in a sleeping bag on the floor. He definitely couldn’t tell his mother given what she was going through right now, although Jesse did tell Elena. He was doing some branding for the private tutoring company she was planning to start up, and they’d met for a coffee when she was near his office, to chat through designs. Elena Apfel Private Tutoring. He did put an apple on her logo, even though he refused to put a lightning bolt on his – she was a teacher, it was a gift.
‘Are you OK? You look awful!’ Elena had said. And then Jesse couldn’t keep it in any longer.
‘Do you know about Hannah’s affair? Has she told you?’
Jesse could tell from the horror on Elena’s face that she knew nothing, before going through a torrent of emotions and questions, about who she was sleeping with, how she could do that to Jesse, how awful everything must be at home. The branding fell by the wayside that day.
‘What are we going to do about the wedding?’ Elena had asked, horrified. ‘Shall I uninvite her? I’m not sure I can look at her.’
Jesse shook his head.
‘Keep it all normal. It might all blow over in time.’ As he said it, he stole a sideways glance at Elena and they could tell from each other’s expressions that this wasn’t the sort of thing that would just blow over.
A few days before the wedding, Elena had an idea: she convinced Andrew into them offering Jesse their home, housesitting while they went on honeymoon to Australia. The twins’ half-term break was being extended to three weeks, and Jesse could live freely in their West Hampstead town house while the family were away, giving him and Hannah time to work on their marriage. Elena was so livid she couldn’t bring herself to speak to Hannah in the run-up to the wedding. She put her lack of communication down to being too busy with the last-minute details. Andrew agreed and told Elena they could offer Jesse a place to crash, but otherwise he wanted to keep out of it. It was none of their business.
The string quartet started to play ‘Halo’ by Beyoncé, Jesse not knowing he would be dancing to a rendition of it sung by a drag queen a few months later. Heads started to crane, to see whether this was Elena’s entrance music. Hannah looked quickly, but the bride wasn’t there yet.
‘Where will you move to?’ she asked hurriedly, as she looked at Andrew and the boys at the front. Oscar was teasing Fred and stealing the ring he was in charge of. Justin told them to calm down. Andrew looked tense and kept his gaze at the floor.
Jesse nodded towards the front. ‘They said I could have their place while they’re in Australia. Said I could stay longer if need be.’
Hannah almost choked. ‘ What? ’
‘Shhh…’ Jesse whispered, calling for calm as he pressed a horizontal hand down through the air. Hannah didn’t flinch now. She looked panicked and alert.
‘It makes sense. Three weeks. It’ll be healthy.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘Why? They’ve got the space. I can watch the house, put the bins out, feed Rocky.’
Hannah looked like she was the one who’d been betrayed.
‘I think it makes sense,’ Jesse said again, as coolly as he could, about a prospect that sickened him.
Hannah shook her head as if it were a firm no.
‘It doesn’t make any sense!’ She paused. ‘What will Ida think? You living in Oscar and Fred’s house and not with her?’
‘They’ll be in Australia.’
‘No but?—’
Jesse turned to Hannah and actually looked at her, his eyes piercing.
‘Well do you want to explain it to her?’ he said, as harshly as he had ever spoken to his wife in their lives together. He rubbed his face in disbelief. He felt so tired, his eyeballs so sad they hurt.
He couldn’t understand why Hannah was quite so incredulous. She had been the one to blow apart their marriage. How many men had she slept with anyway? Was it one special guy, or something she did regularly to get kicks with clients? She still wouldn’t tell him who he was. Why wouldn’t she say who he was if it was over? Did she really not love him? How reckless to ruin your marriage for someone you didn’t love. How could she kick him when he was at his lowest ebb, heart already torn and hollow from the emptiness of grief?
Jesse took a deep breath and out of habit he went to feel in his pocket, before remembering the keyring his dad had gifted him after a trip to India wasn’t there. He had lost it one month before his dad had died and it haunted him. A little brass statue of the goddess Saraswati his dad had picked up at a tourist shop and was so taken with her, he gave her to Jesse, and Jesse had treasured it for years. Until he lost her. His pocket was empty.
‘Would everyone please stand?’ the celebrant said with a warm smile. Jesse slowly rose; Hannah stood abruptly, flustered, her bag dropping to the floor and its chain strap clanging to the metal of the chair underneath her, making people look. Then Jesse had an epiphany.