Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
Ellen stared at Lucy. Cogs of memory turned slowly in her brain.
That was why she hadn’t remembered anything.
Hard as she’d tried for weeks afterwards to piece together the events from walking home with him to waking up the next morning, it’d been a deep black hole from which she couldn’t retrieve anything.
Across the table Lucy watched her intently, as if to gauge how this information had landed. Was this really true? It changed everything. ‘Do you really think that’s what happened?’
Lucy nodded. ‘I do. He wouldn’t have cared that you were Robert’s girlfriend or my best friend. It was a game to him. It was about control. I’ve had enough time to think about it to realise that.’
It was almost too much to process. All these years of hating herself.
Of anger directed at her weakness. Even now, she could close her eyes and be back in her university bedroom that morning.
The shame sinking beneath her skin like tattoo ink.
Indelible. Permanent. ‘So you’re saying it was not my fault?
That I didn’t choose to sleep with him?’
Lucy’s eyes looked directly into hers. ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. You can’t remember a thing about it because your beer had been laced with Rohypnol or whatever it was that monster used back then.’
Ellen slumped in her chair like a deflated balloon. When you’ve lived with shame for so many years, it becomes part of you, like extra weight you can never lose. Freedom from the belief that she had knowingly cheated on the man she loved made her almost dizzy.
But the relief was short-lived. She may not have been in control of her body when she spent the night with Ian. But she had kept the truth from Robert. She had still lied.
And that was the part that was most unforgivable. She knew that.
Thinking about Abigail now – only two years younger than she had been – she had sympathy for her twenty-year-old self.
Young and naive, she’d been so scared of telling Robert about that night.
Terrified of losing him. And then, once she found out she was pregnant, that was a whole other level of fear.
She’d meant every word of what she’d said to Lucy, she really had thought that the chances of the baby being the result of her night with Ian were miniscule. But that didn’t make it okay.
She looked at Lucy now. ‘This is so hard to take in.’
‘I know.’
Over the years, there had been times when the guilt had gnawed at her, but there had always been a reason not to tell Robert. The longer they were married, the more she couldn’t stand the risk of losing him.
Would she have judged a woman who’d done what she’d done?
Who’d kept this secret from her husband and daughter?
Possibly. But having lived it, having been that scared pregnant student, that young overwhelmed new mother, that thirty-year-old wife with two girls who loved one another, that woman in her forties facing a house emptied of the two lights of her life.
When would she have told him? When could she have risked tearing apart the life they’d built together with something that might – if Grace was Robert’s biological daughter as she hoped – be completely incidental to their life together.
She reached across the table for Lucy’s hand. ‘Thank you for telling me this. I’m sorry that you had to go through that with him, too.’
‘I should have contacted you before now, but I let jealousy get the better of me.’
Maybe not on the same scale, but this was another surprise. ‘Jealousy? Of me?’
Lucy nodded. ‘Yes. You had everything I wanted. Robert. A happy family life. I looked you up on Facebook a couple of years ago. I couldn’t get past your security settings, but I could see your profile pictures over the years. How happy you were.’
Ellen had done the same thing two weeks ago after she’d spoken to Lucy’s daughter Emily in Canterbury. ‘But your life is so glamorous. You are so glamorous. I’m not sure that anyone would understand that someone who looks like you would be jealous of someone who looks like me.’
Shaking her head slowly, Lucy laughed. ‘It’s not about looks.’
‘I know but, seriously, when I saw you in Malaga I felt ashamed of myself. How I’d just let myself go. You always look amazing.’
‘I know I do. But that isn’t by luck. I work at this every single day.’
This made Ellen feel even more embarrassed. ‘I know, but it’s done the trick.’
‘No, that’s not what I meant. The truth of the matter is that I’m terrified to let myself look older.
If I don’t look good, what else have I got to offer?
You’ve seen Joe. He has women throwing themselves at him and he travels so much, he could be seeing any number of women and I would know nothing about it. ’
Ellen thought back to Joe’s comment about their ‘understanding’ and it made her feel sick. Why was a woman like Lucy attracted to men who treated her so casually?
‘You are lucky, Ellen. You’ve had such a long and stable marriage. Robert still looks at you as he did when you were young and thin and beautiful.’
Ellen tried not to be offended by the implication that she was no longer any of those things.
Lucy was right. She was lucky. But that luck might be about to run out when she told Robert the truth about what happened all those years ago.
Worse than that, she was going to have to tell Grace what had happened and Grace would have to have a DNA test.
As if thinking about her had summoned her into being, Grace and Abigail appeared at the door to the canteen. Abbie got to her first. ‘The receptionist told us that you were in here. What’s happening? Where’s Dad?’
Grace was close behind, but there was something hooded in her expression. Was it anger? ‘Sit down, both of you.’
Lucy stood to offer Abigail her chair. ‘I’m going to go. But call me if you need anything. I’ve booked a room in a hotel not far from here.’
Ellen looked her dead in the eye. ‘Thank you. I’ll call you later tonight with an update.’
Grace pulled a chair over to join Abigail. There was definitely something wrong with her. ‘What’s going on, Grace? Why are you angry?’
Her face flushed, Grace shook off Ellen’s question. ‘It’s nothing. I’ll tell you later. What’s happening with Dad?’
Ellen took a deep breath, kept her voice soft and calm. ‘As far as I know, the operation went well, but then there was a complication and he had to go back in to surgery.’
Abigail gasped as her hands flew to her face. ‘Is he going to be okay?’
Ellen glanced at the large clock on the wall, it’d been about forty-five minutes since she’d spoken to that doctor. ‘I was just about to check with someone.’
The efficient receptionist put a call through to the theatre reception.
While she was waiting, Ellen watched her daughters.
There was clearly something going on between the two of them that had nothing to do with Robert.
Grace’s hands were gesticulating wildly until they both glanced over in her direction and she restrained herself.
Was there any chance that she already knew Ellen’s secret? Had she overheard somehow?
The receptionist began speaking to someone on the other end of the line and Ellen’s ears craned to piece together what was happening from her side of the conversation.
When she put the phone down again, she smiled at Ellen.
‘Mr Grayson is just on his way to talk to you. He said he’d meet you in your husband’s room. ’
‘Thank you.’
Heart thumping, Ellen relayed the information to the girls and they made their way to Robert’s room in silence, fear resting on their shoulders. Halfway down the corridor, Abigail slipped her hand into Ellen’s.
The room felt emptier than when she’d left it with Lucy. Trying not to read too much into Mr Grayson’s request to speak to her here – in private – Ellen tried her best to be upbeat for Grace and Abbie. ‘I’m not sure your dad will be too impressed with that picture.’
On the wall opposite the bed, an oil painting of a lake scene, possibly a Scottish loch, was framed in a distressed gold frame. The still waters were possibly intended to engender a sense of calm. All Ellen could think about was how deep that water might go.
There was a soft knock on the door, and Mr Grayson appeared with a smile that made Ellen’s heart rise in hope. ‘Okay to come in?’
In both senses of the word, she was anxious to see him. ‘Of course. How is he?’
His smile was as reassuring as his words. ‘It was a small tear, but it’s been repaired and all is well. He’s going to be fine.’
Holding Grace and Abigail close, their arms and tears entwined, Ellen sent up a prayer of thanks. Their family was still together. For now. She could only hope that, once she told Robert her terrible secret, that would still be the case.