Chapter 38
38
MINNIE AND JESSE
Now
‘That day in the cafe. Before my meeting with my agent.’
‘What?’
‘When fucking Orson bounced his ball in my hot coffee.’ Jesse tried to play it for laughs.
‘What about it?’ Minnie’s face was already set to do battle.
‘It… it wasn’t the first time I’d seen you.’
‘What’s that?’
Jesse got up and threw on some well-worn jeans from the spare wardrobe, before sitting on the upcycled chair next to the bed, his elbows on his thighs.
‘I haven’t told you what happened with my marriage because I was too embarrassed. But Hannah had an affair.’
‘Shit, Jesse.’
‘I caught her in January. By March I suspected it was still going on – it was still going on. I followed her. Not stalker like, I just knew she was still seeing her lover and I started to get paranoid. I started thinking she was sleeping with our friend. I had a really dark week, I thought I was going mad.’
Minnie was utterly confused. ‘I don’t…’
‘I followed Hannah to a hotel where she met up with… him. They went off to a room, had sex – I assume.’
‘Was it your friend?’
‘No.’
‘So what’s going on? I don’t understand. Is that why you were so stressed out that day I met you? You knew she was still sleeping with him?’
‘No, this was about a month before you and I started talking, six weeks maybe. After they were done, I followed Hannah’s lover…’
‘Right…’
‘And the day I followed my wife’s lover was the day my wife’s lover broke up with you.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It was JP I followed to the cafe. To Bondiga’s.’
Minnie looked aghast.
‘That’s where I saw your crying face.’
Minnie held her hand to her mouth, the way she had that day in the cafe, as if she might be sick, as it all fell into place.
That’s why Jesse and his wife had split. That’s why Jesse had looked at her in shock and recognition when Orson bounced the ball into his coffee. He hadn’t recognised her from her work. He had spied on her when she was at her most vulnerable, when she was at her lowest ebb.
‘JP was shagging your wife?’
Jesse nodded solemnly.
‘And you knew this all along?’
‘Well not exactly…’
‘But…’
‘But yes, I did know this when we first spoke.’
‘I thought your scorn for him, your compassion, was in support of me.’
‘It was.’
‘But you were just spying on me!’
‘I wasn’t! I promise.’
Minnie clutched the sheet closer to her chest.
‘I went back to the cafe a couple of times, only because I wanted to confront the sleazebag. Find out who he was. I wish I’d done it that day as he left.’
‘What, while he was dumping me?’ Minnie put her head in her hands; she felt mortified. The public dumping, her biggest humiliation, had happened in front of Jesse too. And he never told her.
‘When I managed to get a meeting with Maddie Feynman, I realised Bondiga’s was around the corner. It was another chance to go back and look for him. Not that I should have gone back that day.’
Minnie looked at him, startled, even more hurt.
‘No – no – I mean, I shouldn’t have been thinking about him at all that day, I should have been focusing on my work, my dad’s book.’
‘That’s why you were spoiling for a fight with a kid.’
‘But then I met you .’
Jesse pressed his fingers together. Minnie shook her head and stood up, sheet still clutched to her body like a savage bride.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
She looked for her sundress, bra and knickers, picked up from the poolside and strewn on the back of the chair behind Jesse. He stood up, flustered.
‘There just wasn’t a good?—’
‘I feel awful! This is awful!’
She tangled with her bra then threw it angrily on the bed.
‘You were standing outside in the rain, spying on me?’
‘No! It really wasn’t like that!’
‘Then why didn’t you say?’ she spat.
Jesse looked dumbfounded.
‘You knew all along who I was. Even when I was writing down the rules at your table, like a fucking mug.’
‘I didn’t. I still don’t know you, your name. All I knew was this awful thing that linked us.’
‘You did! You cheated!’
Jesse slumped on the edge of the bed, exasperated. ‘Hey this was your stupid game!’
Minnie looked at him, hurt again, and threw her arms up in the air and her sundress over them. She zipped it up furiously.
‘Well you had ample opportunity to tell me how fucked up it was.’
Minnie gathered her things wildly and started cramming them into her bag.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going home. I don’t know what’s going on any more.’
‘Please, Minnie, it’s not what you think.’
Jesse put his hands on her waist and tried to pull her into the gap between his legs.
‘Why wouldn’t you tell me something so massive? My boyfriend was fucking your wife! He might still be! You watched me get dumped! And you never thought to tell me? All this time we’ve spent together, and you never thought to tell me! I feel like such an idiot, Jesse. Let me go!’