Chapter 31
‘What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages you will have!’
It was the longest flight of my life. I cried most of the way, the kind of crying that leaves you hollowed out and faintly humiliated, even when it’s justified.
Chase was a wanker, this I knew, but until now I’d clung to some battered sense of duty.
The loyalty, vows, and appearances had to be kept up.
All that nonsense. I’d believed that staying meant I was a good wife.
A good person. That it would all somehow even out in the end.
By the time we touched down at San Francisco International, I looked like I’d been on the losing side of a boxing match. My eyes were nearly swollen shut, my cheeks mottled and puffy.
The immigration official blinked at me, frowning slightly. She looked from my passport to my face and back again, not entirely convinced we were the same person.
‘What were you doing overseas?’ she asked.
‘Visiting family. Attending a wedding,’ I croaked.
‘On your own?’
My stomach tightened. These were the usual Green Card checks, the nosy little tests to prove my marriage wasn’t a sham. God forbid I might have married a man just to stay in the country. I wanted to say, Trust me, love, no one would fake this for a visa.
‘My husband was with me. He’s returning on a later…’
‘Hey, I’ll take this one.’
A second officer with slicked black hair and aviator sunglasses hanging from his shirt, stepped in and gestured for me to follow him. My heart gave a little jolt. Had something happened?
He didn’t speak at first, just took my passport, Green Card and customs slip. He flipped through it all. ‘You live in the hills?’
‘Yes.’ I was waiting for the trap. Waiting to be caught in some bureaucratic snare I didn’t see coming.
Then he looked up. ‘Are you married to Chase Fuller?’
The sound of his name made me feel vaguely nauseous.
‘Yes, I am.’
He paused. Then reached for the immigration stamp and thumped it down with his palm, nailing blue ink onto and into the fibres of watermarked paper.
‘I went to junior high with Chase. He’s a spoilt little rich kid, a son of a bitch. Made my life a misery.’ He finally looked me in the eye. There was pain there. A familiar kind. ‘Welcome home,’ he said. ‘You have my deepest sympathies.’
He handed me my documents and walked off.
I stood frozen, watching him go. Of all the things I’d expected, an ally at border control wasn’t one of them. Chase’s poison, it seemed, had seeped further than I realised. His presence was felt at the very border of the country.
I didn’t go home first. I went straight to collect Rocky. Sunglasses firmly in place, even though the sun was already dissolving into the fog bank rolling in from the Pacific. I didn’t want anyone to see my puffy face.
Rocky went mad when he saw me. He launched himself at me, tail wagging like a propeller, ears flapping, tongue out. He didn’t care what I looked like. To him, I’d been gone forever and was now miraculously returned.
When we got home, I dumped the suitcase by the door and headed straight for the shower.
I stood under the hot water until my skin prickled and the plane disappeared off me.
The tears had dried now, replaced by a strange, flat calm.
The kind you get after a big storm. When there’s damage, but also a quiet.
The phone started ringing in the other room, but I ignored it. I wasn’t ready to talk. Not to anyone. Especially not to Chase.
‘Woohoo!’
I froze. Swore. Fumbled for my bathrobe. Too late.
Bunny came striding into the bathroom like it was her own. ‘Did you have a divine time?’ she said, swooping in for an air kiss, stopping abruptly when she saw my face. ‘God, Florence. You look terrible. Are you pregnant?’
‘No. It’s Chase. He disappeared at the wedding. Didn’t even turn up for the flight home.’ I wasn’t about to tell her the full truth, that he’d tried to force his way onto the plane, that I’d been the one to stop him boarding. That he’d embarrassed us both one last, very public time.
Bunny tutted, rolled her eyes and sighed. It was one of those ancestral sighs she must have inherited from some long line of bored women married to difficult men.
‘He’s just like Chase Senior,’ she said. ‘You know, the number of times I had to get on a plane to drag that man back from some Thai girl or Singapore witch. It always cost him in diamonds at both ends. Son of a bitch.’
It hit me like a truck. So I hadn’t imagined it. All the lies, the denials. The long-haul ‘business trips’ and the defensive sulks. He’d done it before. And not just once.
‘You can’t be here when he comes back,’ Bunny went on. ‘You need to vanish for a suitable amount of time. Make him think twice about doing it again.’
That word again – suitable.
‘To do what again?’ I snapped. ‘I don’t want a life managing his affairs.’
‘Oh, honey.’ Bunny linked her arm through mine and led me into the bedroom like I was five. ‘It’s a good life. Look at this place. Look at the lifestyle. You’ve risen, Florence. You’ve ascended from the backcountry of England into a Mayflower family. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great deal.’
I wanted to scream.
‘Come stay with us for a few days,’ she said, still holding on to my arm. ‘Let it all blow over. Chase will be begging you to come home. Might even be a diamond necklace in it for you, if you play your cards right.’
I stared at her. My mouth wouldn’t open, not even to tell her where she could shove the diamonds.
‘It’s just how men are,’ Bunny added. ‘You might as well learn to reap the benefit.’
That’s when I knew: I couldn’t do this anymore.
Not one more dinner, fake smile, or whispered excuse for my husband’s absence or behaviour.
The house was beautiful. On the surface of it all, life was glossy. But at its core it was rotten. And once you noticed it, you couldn’t stop smelling it.
I’d married into the Fullers. Nearly five years ago.
And it was time to get out.