Chapter 5
Four days to the renewal of the vows ceremony
“Do you think you’ll ever get married?” asked Sheridan the next day at work. Then it was as if someone had taken out a foundation
stone from a whole tower block, causing it to collapse. Poor Sheridan couldn’t have known that Polly would fold quite so dramatically
at such a gentle probe. Polly couldn’t have known it either: She wasn’t aware of how much stress she was operating under.
Her head told her she was coping just fine; her body obviously knew otherwise. Her eyes started squirting out tears to the
extent that she couldn’t wipe them fast enough with her fingers. Sheridan hurriedly took out a pack of tissues from her bag
and threw it over the divide.
“Bloody hell, Pol, what did I say?”
Polly looked around her, hoping no one had noticed. It was bad enough breaking down in front of Sheridan, but if any of Jeremy’s
team were around, they’d attribute any such show of emotion to “women’s hormones,” “time of the month,” or “early menopause,”
and females in this place had enough of a rubbish deal without handing the males ammunition with which to load their guns.
“Is it that pathetic pay raise? Has it been on your mind?” whispered Sheridan, hoping to jolly her.
It wasn’t, but it had its part to play. Another straw on the camel’s back, and quite a few of them were bearing down on her at the moment.
“Right, go to the loo, get yourself together, and I’ll meet you in the canteen in five minutes,” commanded Sheridan. For a
woman so young, she was a bossy beggar at times. She waddled out toward the lift, and Polly headed for the ladies’ room and
did a repair job on her makeup. Nothing could be done about her eyes, which were already puffed up after not much sleep. She’d
lain in bed for ages wide awake, putting herself in Chris’s head, him imagining everything was fine and dandy and not having
a clue that the woman he’d just tried to be intimate with would be leaving him at the weekend. She felt cunning and guilty,
and that wasn’t a combination that guaranteed a good sleep.
She walked into the canteen and saw Sheridan in the far corner waving. She’d already gotten the drinks and two enormous pieces
of tiffin.
“So, spill,” ordered Sheridan. She’d never seen Polly cry before and she suspected it must be a big deal if she’d broken down
at work.
“Sorry about that, upstairs,” Polly began. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m okay. Really.”
“You’re so obviously not; you look like crap. Have you slept? Your eyes were all swollen up when you walked in, not that I
would have said anything, although I just have,” said Sheridan, who wasn’t one for mincing her words. And that was what Polly
really liked about her. She was an open book; there was no pretense, no pretensions, nothing hiding in her to leap out and
bite you.
Polly really didn’t want this, though. Sheridan was about to drop a baby and was full of joy and sunshine and hope and happiness; she shouldn’t burden her with her problems. “If,” Sheridan then said, through a large mouthful of tiffin, “you are going to give me some bullshit that nothing is up because I’m pregnant and you think I shouldn’t be worrying, don’t waste your energy.
You are not going to bring on my early labor by unpacking what’s going on in your head.
In fact, if anything, I hope you do, so you’ve nothing to lose.
Trust me, I’m a great listener. I’m also very nosy.
So what was it in the words ‘Do you think you’ll ever get married?
’ that caused that reaction? Hasn’t he asked you—Chris? Is it a sore point?”
When they’d gotten back together, Polly remembered Chris saying in bed once that when things had settled, maybe they should
talk about “the next step.” She’d become a little giddy about it at the time, when she was all mixed up and vulnerable, presuming
he meant marriage, but looking back now, it might have meant joint custody of a pressure washer. He’d never mentioned it since,
and she’d never brought it up because if he did propose, it had to come entirely from him to be viable.
“No, he hasn’t asked me, but it’s not that.” Polly swallowed a mouthful of nervous saliva.
“What the hell is it then, Pol?”
Just say it , said a voice in Polly’s head. It felt too big to keep in, too weighty and uncomfortable, and she needed to tell someone.
“I’m leaving him.”
She had never spoken those words aloud to anyone, and they seemed especially harsh, hanging in the air like a trio of discordant
bells. They sounded brutal, heartless, an assault on the eardrums.
“Fuck,” said Sheridan, eyes widening. “I thought you were going to say your sister-in-law’s wedding had made you feel a bit
why not us? I wasn’t expecting that. Why didn’t you tell me before?” Sheridan held up her hand and then answered her own question in
a very miffed tone. “You didn’t want to offload onto the pregnant woman. I thought we were friends, Polly Potter.”
“We are,” said Polly. “That’s why I didn’t want to offload onto the pregnant woman.”
“Drink your drink,” said Sheridan after tutting at her.
“I got you a hot chocolate. I thought it was more comforting than an Americano. You looked as if you needed some TLC.” The words nearly set Polly off crying again because it was these little considerations that made the world go round.
She’d had so few of them from Chris, whom she wanted them from most of all, that they felt massive, stretched all out of proportion when she received them elsewhere.
She’d really miss Sheridan when she left.
They’d stay in touch, but it wouldn’t be the same as seeing her every day and hearing her irreverent wit and playing their daft office games that made her laugh.
She’d been a constant source of joy in her life since she took the office seat next to her two years ago, after Alan had died and the company was going through all the changes and Polly had felt sad and unsettled and in need of a friend.
“Can I ask why?” Sheridan shifted to a more comfortable position on the hard plastic chair.
“I mean, I’ve never met your other half, but I kind of got the impression you were okay. ”
Where to start? With “Me and Mrs. Jones,” she supposed. “Chris had an affair last year.”
“What?”
Something else Sheridan hadn’t been expecting.
“Is that when you lost all that weight and told me you’d been to Slimming World? Polly, you bloody liar.”
It was then. And she hadn’t said anything to Sheridan at the time because her mum hadn’t been well. But even so, Polly had
never really been that open a person. She’d had a lot to deal with in her life, things she found too embarrassing and raw
to share, so she’d just got on with dealing with it herself.
“Did you know her?” asked Sheridan.
“All I knew about her was that she was called Mrs. Jones. Or maybe she wasn’t, but that’s the name he’d stored her number
under on his phone.”
“How did you find out, Pol?”
“We were in his van. It was April Fool’s Day of all dates.
He’d just filled up with petrol and was paying.
A text message from Mrs. Jones popped up on the dashboard display; his phone Bluetooth was still connected, you see.
The only Mrs. Jones I knew lived next door to Chris’s mum and she kept an eye on her for him so I was worried something must be wrong.
I didn’t think; I just pressed the ‘read out’ button. ”
Sheridan couldn’t have been more engrossed if she’d tried.
“This robotic voice read out the message. ‘Thank you for yesterday. I haven’t come so hard in ages. When are we doing it again?
When can you sneak away?’” Word for word, she’d never forgotten it.
“Fucking hell,” said Sheridan, more breath than voice. “What did you do?”
“He got back in and I told him what Mrs. Jones had said and he went ape, saying I shouldn’t be reading his texts, how dare
I? I just got out and walked off.”
“Did he go after you?”
“No, he drove off the other way. I spent the night in a hotel. Then I went to the house when I knew he’d be at work, packed
some things, and moved into an Airbnb. It wasn’t ideal living out of a suitcase. I ignored his calls for a while; then, after
a month, I stupidly weakened and answered. We agreed to give things another go, but he said that if we had any chance of repairing
we should look forward, not back. What’s done is done, no point in raking it all up, blah blah. He refused to tell me anything
about her, other than it was finished.”
“I bet he did, the bellend,” said Sheridan, her mouth contracted into a grim line. “I’d have ripped his bollocks off with
my bare hands.”
The Billy Paul song “Me and Mrs. Jones” had kept cropping up everywhere in the weeks that followed. It had haunted her. Piped
through speakers in the supermarket, playing on the radio in her car, even in a hotel toilet once during a work conference.
Especially that line about having a thing going on.
“The Airbnb was awful, I was mashed, and I just wanted to go home. You don’t have to tell me I gave in too quickly and let
him dictate the terms.”
Always his terms.
She’d read countless books about how to heal a broken heart, and they hadn’t worked.
His affair had altered him irrevocably in her eyes and she’d tried her best to love the changed man she saw him as now, just like the books advised.
They said you could build a new stage in a relationship even if you couldn’t forgive.
And maybe, if he’d put the effort into sewing up the holes that her trust in him had escaped through, they might have had a chance.
But he hadn’t even bothered threading the needle to try.
Sheridan reached over and put her hand on top of Polly’s. “Oh Pol. I wish I’d known all this. Maybe I could have helped you,
even if I was just a sounding board for you. But why now, Pol? If he had the affair last year?”