20
Milly
Milly stared at the door that Richard had just slammed behind him.
She felt shocked and shaken. What did that all mean? What had just happened here?
She was struggling to make sense of it, to turn the words and the looks into something she could comprehend.
Nicole had known about Richard’s affair. Nicole had confronted him. And she’d never mentioned it to Milly. Not then, and not in response to any one of the desperate emails and messages Milly had sent in her direction after Richard had left her.
She’d ignored her.
Milly walked to the nearest chair and sat down before her legs gave way.
She’d thought that Richard’s affair had been the lowest point, but now she was discovering it was possible to go lower.
And there was no point in asking whether what Richard had said was true, because she could see from Nicole’s face that it was.
The fact that Nicole had known intimate details about the state of Milly’s marriage even before Milly had was so deeply uncomfortable and humiliating that she wanted to curl up in a ball and hide. She felt like a fool, as if she’d missed something obvious that everyone else had known about. Being the last to know something was never a good place to be, especially when the topic in question was your marriage.
“Why didn’t you tell me? When you overheard Richard’s conversation on the terrace that day, why didn’t you come straight to me?”
She couldn’t believe her friend had known all this time and hadn’t said a word. And there had been so many opportunities.
Eighteen months of opportunities.
And the last few weeks when they’d gradually healed their relationship, or so Milly had thought, Nicole still hadn’t said anything despite multiple opportunities.
The sense of betrayal was painful.
Nicole stood still, arms wrapped around herself. She hadn’t moved since Richard had walked out. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Her voice was a whisper. “I didn’t know how to handle it. You were so happy on that vacation. You had so many plans for the future. You talked about Richard the whole time. It was obvious that you had no idea what was going on. Not even the vaguest suspicion.”
And she felt like a prize idiot. She’d trusted her husband, and she’d also trusted her best friend.
“And it didn’t occur to you that it might have been a good idea to tell me? Or was it fun to watch me humiliated?”
“Fun?”
Nicole’s voice rose. “It was a nightmare, Milly. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to be the one to drop that bombshell and shatter your world. I didn’t want to come between the two of you and be the one who wrecked your marriage.”
There was a knot in her stomach. She tried to think back to that time, to work out what she’d been doing when Nicole had overheard that conversation. Had she been swimming in the pool with Zoe? Changing for dinner? Afterward there must have been tension between Nicole and Richard. Why hadn’t she spotted the shift in the mood?
Or had she simply not been looking, living her life in her own happy bubble, blinkered to the truth, trusting those around her because if you couldn’t trust your own family, who could you trust?
“So you gave him an ultimatum. You made him choose.”
She imagined Richard’s reaction, the panic of a cornered animal as he realized he’d been caught out.
How had he reacted to that ultimatum? Had there been any hesitation on his part? Had it crossed his mind, even for a second, to choose her?
How long would he have continued the affair if Nicole hadn’t confronted him?
The thought of it made her nauseous.
“I was trying to make him do what was right. Trying to make him see what he was risking. I didn’t think for one minute he would choose her. Why would I?”
Nicole pressed her fingers to her forehead. Slim fingers with perfectly shaped nails. “You adored each other. You finished each other’s sentences. You were always touching. You’d been together forever. I envied your relationship. You had the perfect marriage.”
The perfect marriage. What a joke. “You mean apart from the fact he was having an affair.”
Nicole gave her a look of despair. “I thought maybe it was just a stupid midlife crisis moment. A mistake that he was already regretting. When I overheard him on the phone he and Avery were fighting. He was telling her not to call him while he was away with you. It didn’t exactly sound loving.”
“And if he’d chosen me? Stayed with me, what then? Would you ever have told me, or would you have let me carry on believing my marriage was fine? Would you have sat back and watched me humiliate myself?”
Milly stood up and paced to the other side of the room. Her head was throbbing. She couldn’t think straight.
She thought back to the night before, her evening with Brendan. She’d been so hopeful. She’d felt calm and happy, as if she’d taken a real step forward. And now she was being dragged back.
“I don’t know what I would have done.”
Nicole was crying now. “It was a horrible position to be in. I didn’t want this to happen to you, and I didn’t want to be part of it. I didn’t know what to do or say.”
She hadn’t imagined, even for a moment, that Nicole had known about the affair, but it explained so much.
“This is why you ghosted me, isn’t it?”
She turned to face her friend. “At the time I didn’t understand—I’ve never understood. I couldn’t work out why you would do such an awful thing to me, but this is why.”
Nicole’s eyes filled, and Milly felt as if her heart was being crushed.
“You felt guilty that you’d made him choose, and he chose Avery. You felt too guilty to tell me. Too guilty to talk to me even though I needed your support more than at any other point in my life. You basically abandoned me.”
And that had been the worst thing.
She remembered how lonely she’d felt. How desperate. And how losing her best friend at the same time as losing her husband had been the most bitter blow. Their friendship would have given her strength, and the absence of it had weakened her at a time when she was at her most vulnerable.
Every problem she’d had in life, she’d navigated it with Nicole by her side. But not this time.
“I felt terrible,”
Nicole whispered. “And every message and email you sent telling me how devastated you were made me feel worse because I was the cause. You sounded broken. Raw. I was worried that if I confessed my part in it, you’d never forgive me.”
She regretted those emails now. The honesty of them. She’d written them to her closest friend, never suspecting that her friend already knew what was happening or that she wouldn’t reply.
She’d bared her soul. Held nothing back. And all she’d had in return was silence.
And that hurt more than anything.
“It was cruel to ignore me.”
“I didn’t intend to ignore you.”
Agony was visible in Nicole’s eyes. “I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t know how to tell you in a way that wouldn’t destroy our friendship. And I did try. I sat there for hours, literally staring at the screen. I typed a million emails to you and then deleted them.”
“You ignored my phone calls.”
“What was I going to say? Hey, I told him to choose, and he chose the other woman?”
Nicole took a deep breath. “I wanted to answer your calls, but I thought if I told you the truth I’d make it worse. It would be like punching you when you were already on the floor. I’d been a terrible friend. And the more time that passed, the harder it became to know what to say because then I’d also have to explain why it had taken me so long. I told myself I’d think about it a little longer and then do it. And I keep putting it off and putting it off, another hour, another day, and then you stopped emailing, and it was too late. I’m sorry. I really am sorry. I never should have given him that ultimatum. It’s all my fault. I don’t blame you for being upset.”
How could Nicole not understand? After all their years of friendship, and the fact that she knew Milly better than anyone, she still didn’t understand?
“I don’t blame you for that,”
Milly said. “I can see how awkward and difficult that situation was. I have no idea what I would have done if I’d been in your position, but I do know I wouldn’t have ignored you. You knew how upset I was, how devastating the whole thing was to me, and you weren’t there for me. You were my best friend, and you weren’t there for me.”
Emotion rose and broke, cracking her voice. “Not an email. Not a phone call. Not a single kind or supportive word.”
That was the thing she found hardest to deal with.
Nicole wiped the tears from her cheeks with her fingers. “I thought you’d blame me—”
“Of course I wouldn’t have blamed you. Would I have been upset? Yes, of course, but not with you. That wasn’t your fault. He didn’t leave me because you made him choose, he left because that was what he wanted to do.”
“But just now he said—”
“I heard what he said, and I have no idea why he said it—perhaps he was trying to transfer blame, I don’t know—but you weren’t the reason he had an affair, and you weren’t the reason he left me. He’s an adult, and the responsibility for both those actions belong with him. But ignoring me—”
Milly almost choked on the emotion wedged in her throat, emotion that she didn’t want to be feeling “—that was your fault. Your choice. You were my best and dearest friend, and you weren’t there for me when I needed you. And I get that you felt awkward and guilty and embarrassed, but I was desperate! I opened myself up to you, and still you didn’t respond. I emailed you when I was hyperventilating at three in the morning, terrified and alone, and you didn’t respond to that either. I had never needed you more, and you weren’t there for me.”
Nicole stared at her, her breathing shallow. “Milly—”
“All our lives our friendship has been the one unshakable, dependable thing. And it’s not as if it’s something you think about every day or anything, but it was always there, and that was the luxury of it. Our friendship was a lifeboat in rough seas, a warm blanket in cold weather. Knowing you would always be there for me made me feel secure and safe, and I think it was the same for you. And when I realized that you weren’t there for me—”
she swallowed “—you knew everything about me, so you must have known how ghosting would hurt me, and yet you still did it. And losing you was as bad as losing Richard.”
Milly saw the devastation on Nicole’s face and felt herself start to unravel. She needed to end the conversation. She needed space to process what had happened. There was no point in going round and round with both of them too upset to resolve anything. “I have to—I can’t do this. I can’t stay here.”
“What do you mean?”
There was a note of panic in Nicole’s voice. “You’re leaving? Where are you going?”
Good question. And there was only one answer. One place. The place she always went when she was hurt or upset.
Family.
“I’m taking Zoe, and we’re going to stay with my mother tonight.”
“No!”
Nicole shot out a hand and then withdrew it as quickly. “You shouldn’t have to leave your own house. If you want to be on your own, then I should be the one to go.”
“Go where?”
Milly grabbed her bag and her jacket. She might be wounded, but she was still practical. “We both know you can’t leave this place.”
Even now, after such a betrayal, she couldn’t put her friend in a position that would expose her.
Nicole looked anguished. “But—”
“I can’t talk about this now.”
She knew that if she stayed, she’d start worrying about Nicole and Nicole’s feelings, and she needed to focus on herself. She needed to work out how she was going to deal with this. What she was going to do. What it all meant. “I’m going to get Zoe, and we’re leaving. Lock the door behind me.”