CHAPTER EIGHTEEN HARRIET STRATTON

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

H ARRIET S TRATTON

A UGUST 2002

Harriet folded the towels, still warm from the dryer, and placed them on the kitchen table. She returned the carton of milk that had been left by the kettle to the fridge, then set to with a sponge and spray cleaner to make the surfaces sparkle. Anything, in short, to keep her hands and mind busy. Her breathing came in shallow pants and her pulse raced. She felt flustered, light-headed, overwhelmed. Bracing her arms on the butler sink, she exhaled slowly and closed her eyes, trying to calm down.

‘It's okay. It's okay, Harriet.'

She whispered the self-soothing mantra, wishing more than anything that she could see her mum. In that moment, all she wanted was to fall into the embrace of the woman who had raised her, to know again the unique solace and protection that her encircling arms could provide. There never had been and never would be anywhere like it. This, however, was no time for tears and she sniffed them back down her throat, afraid that if she gave in to the distress that beckoned, she might just drown in her sorrow.

She sat at the kitchen table. It was too much, all of it. Her showdown with Hugo and the death of Daniel Gunn were more than she had the capacity to cope with right now. Not that she knew Daniel, no more than someone to nod to, but it was as if the collective sorrow of the town seeped through the very bricks of Corner Cottage and mingled with her own private sadness, magnifying both. She was uncharacteristically nervous about the children surfacing, not sure what questions they might ask or how they might be feeling. Dealing with the fallout of that while doing her best to reassure them was also a lot; more, in fact, than she felt she had the emotional capacity to deal with.

Hugo walked into the kitchen, his hair still wet from his shower.

He sat upright in the chair opposite hers. It felt like an interview, giving the occasion a formality that only added to the weighted atmosphere. She declined to offer him a drink in the way that would once have been automatic, as if she were already mentally clocking off. These small things highlighted the state of before and after in which they now lived.

‘How're you feeling?' he asked.

She was stumped as to how to answer without breaking into a long, long soliloquy. ‘I'm okay. I can't stop thinking about Annalee and what she must be going through. I wonder if they've found his body yet?'

‘I haven't heard. Maybe they won't.' He added the unsavoury possibility and again her heart flexed for the Gunn family.

‘God, I hope they do. It'll bring closure.'

‘Yes.' He took a beat. ‘So what happens now, Harriet? What happens to us?' He looked awful, like a man who hadn't slept, a man who awaited his fate. It brought her no pleasure, knowing her face held similar clues.

‘What happens now?' She stared out of the French windows with the view over Fore Street. ‘I guess the first thing we need to figure out is the road of least discomfort for the kids. I expect they'll have questions. They will, of course, have questions,' she qualified, ‘and it's best we have our answers lined up. We don't want them to worry that no one's steering the ship.'

This was, as ever, her priority and she knew it would be his too. He gave a stiff nod, his mouth tightly closed. His silence encouraged her to fill the quiet, to keep talking.

‘And then I suppose we need to be practical and think about where we're all going to live, where the kids are best in school.'

‘Jesus Christ, another school? Another house? Another move?' He shook his head and bit his bottom lip and it bothered her. Just like that, his manner was sharp.

‘Maybe not,' she said as an idea came into focus. ‘Maybe just go home, go back to the house the kids love and tell Mr and Mrs Latteridge that there's been a change of plan, that we're no longer renting, let the kids go back to what they know – school, everything.'

‘Back to what we know,' he corrected.

There was nothing pleasant about knowing she was going to dash his look of hope, but she had little choice in that.

‘Back to what you know.' Her words were weighted with intent, but of one thing she was certain, even though the idea itself was a dagger in her breast: she would not, could not go back to that bed, that room, that house in that street where Wendy Peterson, who lived a few doors down, had pissed on everything she held dear. ‘And just a reminder that I was happiest when I didn't know I had all of this to worry about and so were the kids. This is of your own making, Hugo. You did all of this, so please don't get angry with me.' Her words were strong, her back straight and yet inside she quaked with fear.

‘So what are you suggesting? I live there with the kids and you go where exactly?' He looked and sounded startled.

Her thoughts raced and settled on the obvious solution. ‘I guess I could stay with Ellis, have the kids there half the time.'

‘Seems like you've given it quite a lot of thought.'

She pushed her thumbs into her closed eyes, as if this might relieve the pressure she could feel building.

‘I really haven't. I'm flying blind, like I have been for the last few months.'

‘So are you suggesting that you would rather have not known? Would it have been better to let it run its course while you jogged on as normal?'

‘No. I would rather you hadn't done it and I could have "jogged on" with my life, which felt pretty perfect!' She rubbed her forehead. Was this what it was going to be like now? Verbally running round in circles that were as exhausting as they were futile? ‘I'm tired, Hugo, too tired to do this with you, in this way.' She spat out the verbal olive branch and hoped he might grasp it.

‘I guess it was always going to be like this, wasn't it? You were always going to have that ace up your sleeve.'

‘It doesn't feel like an ace. Nothing about this feels like winning.'

She kept her voice low, aware that the kids were upstairs. It was a surprise to realise that he was crying again. His tears came suddenly and he swiped angrily at them as they gathered on the stubble of his cheeks. Ordinarily she'd have reached out, taken his hand, held him close, grabbed some kitchen roll, but there was nothing ordinary about this.

‘You're right, Harriet, no winning, only loss. I've lost so much. The house, the village, our friends, my reputation, the way my kids will feel about me when they inevitably find out.' She couldn't deny this truth. ‘And you—' He gulped back a sob that sounded wet, heartfelt and spoke of sorrow. ‘You've been my very best friend for over half my life and I've lost you, haven't I?'

‘I think so. Yes,' she whispered. Her mouth trembled and it took all of her strength not to sink to the floor.

‘Fuck!' He wiped his eyes and rubbed his hands on his jeans. ‘Fuck!'

‘What did you think would happen?' Her comment was made calmly and without any intended facetiousness.

He took a moment, drew breath, and shifted in the chair, running his fingers through his hair, and doing his best to remain in control.

‘I didn't. I didn't think you would ever find out and I got caught up in the ... the ...' He looked into the middle distance as if struggling to find the right word. ‘... the secrecy. It was quite intoxicating. The sex was okay, no more. It was more about the adventure, the illicitness.'

‘The lying,' she clarified, uneasy with the palatable coating he wrapped the words in as if to make them easier for them both to swallow.

Hugo nodded.

‘I trusted you. Always have. And I don't believe there are degrees of trust. It's either implicit or it's not, and I trusted you. I trusted us. I thought what we had was solid. I thought it was enough.'

‘I guess that's why I thought I could get away with it.' He was direct, a little cool, and she knew him well enough to recognise that this was what he did when cornered: he tried to hurt in order to mirror his own pain.

She was actually grateful for his candour but no less cut by his words. She felt sick and swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.

‘I don't really know what to say, H, none of this feels real for me, any of it. I fucked up so badly.' And just like that his shoulders fell and he was back to crying.

She sat quietly, waiting for the moment to pass, wanting to get back to the planning stage while they had a moment, before the kids came down.

‘So this is really happening? Us living apart, the kids divvying up their time, is that the plan?' he asked again, looking up at her through bloodshot eyes, and she felt the shift in their exchange, if not a shift in their relationship. He was asking her, not in a rhetorical sense, but because she now had the power.

Her words, when they came, were wrapped in sadness. ‘I meant what I said: I don't believe there are degrees of trust.'

‘And now you don't trust me.' He completed her sentence.

‘No, Hugo, now I can't trust you. That's the thing. And so we need to speak plainly, but calmly. We need to make arrangements, so that we can get it straight in our heads and explain it rationally to the kids.'

‘So what exactly do we do now?' He sniffed. ‘Instruct lawyers? Get a divorce?' His face again crumpled. ‘Jesus!'

‘Yes.' An image of her lying in her student bed, her head flat on his stomach, his fingers lingering on her skin. Sleeping so soundly ... She blinked it away. ‘Yes, we instruct lawyers. We get a divorce.'

‘We're that couple.' He sniffed again.

‘We are now that couple.' She confirmed the horror of it.

‘Dad! Dad!' Bear came running down the stairs. ‘There's a seal in the harbour! I was hanging out of the window and a lady shouted up, she's just seen it! Can you take me?'

‘Of course I can, sport! Just need to go to the bathroom. Meet me by the front door in two minutes, tell Dilly!'

She watched as Hugo jumped up and Bear ran off to find his sister. It was a reminder that no matter what came next, they would both always love their children more than anything, anyone. All this excitement over a seal. She was glad of the distraction, aware of the fact that her family was on a timer. Few would be the days they would all be together. Instead it would be the kids with one adult missing, or a new adult, or they'd meet at Granny's house, or a thousand other scenarios that would be different from this – the four of them, living under one roof. It was Harriet's turn for tears. She felt swamped by sadness for all they would be denied in the future and all they had lost.

Her husband was right about one thing: nothing about this felt like winning.

Dear Diary – haven't written that phrase for a while. I tend rather to launch into it, but right now I feel like I need a friend and so ‘Dear Diary' it is, like we're mates, chatting. Although I must admit, it's a fairly one-sided conversation.

Hugo has taken the kids seal-spotting in the harbour and I'm glad. Not only is it a chance for me to be alone, to catch my breath, but also, I hope, an event that might help shift the focus a little from the death of Daniel Gunn. I figure that for Annalee and little Tawrie, if their friends and neighbours are even momentarily distracted, it might help them move forward, even if only a bit.

It's been one helluva few days.

Truth is, I'm in a tailspin, hanging on by a thread. And in the absence of a friend close by and not wanting to eat up so much of my sister's time, I've come to look upon you as a confidante of sorts. I'm thankful for this ritual. A steadfast thing in the choppiest of seas. And boy do I need the ritual right now.

4.25 a.m., that's when I woke with a start, sweating as if emerging from a nightmare, my skin clammy, heart pounding, nightdress rucked around my hips and my throat dry.

How to describe it?

Like getting hit by a bus

No, not that.

Like being shot

No, not that either.

She took a moment, closed her eyes and tipped her head back in the chair as she tried to recall exactly how it had felt, sitting up in the bed and doing her level best not to howl out loud, as her husband slumbered soundly by her side. There had been a short discussion and, on her part, much thought, on the most appropriate sleeping arrangements following their decision to call time on their marriage. Yet when the time for bed came, both, felled by the news of Daniel's death, had fallen exhausted into the double bed. Close together, yet miles and miles apart.

It came to her.

She sat forward and tucked her hair behind her ears, pen in hand.

I woke with a start and it was like an ice pick of realisation hitting my chest. Pointed, painful and specific. Not the first time I've felt it. The first time was when I was in the bedroom of our house in Ledwick Green. The night I found out my husband was cheating.

It was May, a pleasantly warm evening. I'd just put away pants and socks in the chest of drawers and sprayed my neck with perfume, for no reason other than I was passing the bottle that sat on my dressing table. I was about to draw the curtains, gripping the inner edge, when Hugo's car pulled up in the driveway. He drove in, as he always did, facing the house, and I saw him unclick his seat belt.

My first thought was to hurry downstairs and crank up the stove, encourage supper to cook quicker, and to shove the peas on to boil. Planning for a regular supper with my family, thinking of his rumbling tum, just like any other night. Only it wasn't to be a regular supper and it certainly wasn't like any other night.

It was the first night; the first time I had unwelcome knowledge that would change the course of my life, of all our lives.

It was also an ending; the end of family life as I'd known it.

The end of loving him in the way I had.

It was also a beginning too. But just what was starting it would have been hard to say.

I only happened upon him as I stood there. Perfect timing, as they say. I wasn't waiting or looking or stalking or suspecting, doing nothing more than drawing the curtains to keep the soft glow of the street lamp at bay. I sometimes wonder what my life would be like today if I had not discovered his affair. It's a thought that scares me: the idea of carrying on oblivious – smiling, cooking, working, sleeping, loving – while the whole time he snuck out, lied and betrayed me, betrayed us. I then have to remind myself that this was how I lived before this night of revelation and I had been happy in the dark. Happy and ignorant. But that's the trouble with knowledge, once you have it, once you're informed, there's no going back to happy and ignorant. There's just no going back.

I watched him release his seat belt and was about to pull the curtain when he leaned forward to end a phone call. His mobile sat in its holder on the dashboard and he lingered, just for a second. No more. His hesitation in that moment was the cypher to crack the code of a puzzle I didn't know I had to figure out.

I was transfixed.

The fact is, I've known Hugo since university. I've known him skinny, muscled, fat. I've known him with a mop of curly locks, I've known him balding. I've known him to hit rock bottom when one or two bad financial decisions left the coffers empty, and I've known him to dance around the kitchen when the big wins have come in. I've known him happy, sad, up, down and I've loved him through it all.

I know his peculiarities, his quirks, tics, traits, likes and dislikes, and I know with certainty that he hates, absolutely detests, talking on the phone. A marvellous raconteur, he can natter for hours face to face, especially after a good supper and in front of a fire or sitting side by side looking out to sea on a blanket as the sun sinks and dusk steals the warmth from the day. Oh yes, in those situations his conversation and energy for connection is boundless, but when it comes to the phone ...

‘Bloody thing. I don't want to be connected or available 24/7 – just because you can be doesn't mean it's good for us! Impossible to hide!' That's what he always said.

And yet, as I held the tasselled edges of my Susie Watson linen drapes, my mind on the cauliflower cheese that was bubbling in the oven and the bacon waiting to hit the skillet (butcher-bought, of course, freshly sliced and wrapped in wax paper, tied with string) I saw that something life-altering had been hiding in plain sight.

That was the other ice-pick-in-the-chest moment.

For no more than a single second he paused, reluctant to end the call, wanting to eke it out, to hear the voice on the other end of the line, to linger longer than was necessary on the driveway in his two-litre, shiny, metallic cocoon of deceit, connected to a call that might have lasted his whole journey home. Company for him as he navigated the twisty lanes to the place where his family waited for him.

My stomach turned over and I couldn't move. Mesmerised, staring, hunting for other clues. He was smiling, happy, in a new shirt, with a recent haircut, the slow, easy pace of a man satisfied in every sense.

He climbed out of the car and looked up and when he saw me there was the vaguest flicker of unease about his eyes. As if he'd been caught, unmasked.

We ate supper. I remember Bear babbling on about a Pokémon movie and Dilly took an age to eat, forking tiny morsels into her mouth reluctantly and it really irritated me. I think I snapped at her to eat up or don't eat at all, and Hugo stared at my uncharacteristic outburst. I remember feeling hot shame spread over my face, but at so much more than the fact I had shouted at Dilly. Although yes, that too.

My suspicion was that I'd been duped.

That I'd been displaced.

He'd chosen someone else.

I was certain of it.

I could feel it.

I then spent an hour or so in the bath, drawing up a list of possible women: Claire from the pub. Always breezy and forward, her humour full of double entendres, saucy and obvious.

Bear's French teacher. Ms Duvall, who is sultry, sexy and with a voice like liquid chocolate and a tiny waist. I'd heard Hugo joke to Frank next door about dabbing on extra cologne for parents' evening and how he wouldn't mind detention with Ms Duvall. I'd laughed. He'd spoken brazenly in front of me, so obviously it had to be a joke, right? But what if it wasn't?

My mind raced and made illogical leaps. I was so in the dark.

The girl on reception at the gym – I couldn't remember her name? Lois? Or Lou? Super-fit. Young, strong, with a no-nonsense approach; she always seemed to have time to chat to Hugo but never to me.

Or any number of faceless candidates I'd never met at his workplace. He was, after all, a partner at the accountancy firm, and some level of power, no matter how small, was attractive to certain women.

I never thought it would be Wendy Peterson. Never in a million years! Wendy who lived further down the lane and liked to show her cleavage. Divorced Wendy with the convertible who had garden ornaments that we, as a couple, had secretly mocked, laughing at her lack of taste.

I sat next to him on the sofa as he flicked through the channels. The kids were asleep. I'd stacked the dishwasher, washed up the supper things, the kitchen was clean and tidy.

There was no pre-chat, I asked him outright: Are you having an affair?

His reply?

What a bloody ridiculous thing to say to me! No!

But he was lying.

I wanted to believe him, aware of how much easier life would be for us all, but I didn't.

I thought we were immune to infidelity, he and I, because we were built on a bedrock of trust. Affairs were what happened to other people. I figured that because of our long history, our buoyant sex life, our communication, our great kids, our lovely, lovely life that it wouldn't come knocking on our door, but I was wrong.

So yes, that was the first time I felt the ice pick, and this morning, as I sit here in this cosy kitchen, I feel it again, but this time it's for very different reasons.

The pain is the same, the grief too, but this time it's me who has caused the ripple.

I woke with a start at 4.25 a.m. and a clarity to my thoughts that has been absent for the longest time. A clarity that is as welcome as it is terrifying.

I thought loving Hugo enough would mean we could conquer anything, rebuild.

I had no idea that when trust is the thing that's broken, there isn't a glue in the world that can piece it back together, no matter how hard I try.

Maybe it's just me.

Maybe others are successful in brushing off the insult, the injury, but not me.

Mine is a scientific brain and I have analysed the facts, sorted the data, and come to the conclusion that this experiment – moving to a new place, living in a new house, and making new neighbours, starting afresh – it has failed.

We have failed.

And right now I feel angry that we took the step at all.

And no matter how hard I try not to, I see her face every time he makes a phone call and a small part of me wonders if they are in touch.

I imagine his hands on her body when his fingers graze my skin.

I picture him ending that call and the way he looked ... caught. And every time it's like a knife in my gut.

I can't do it any more.

Annalee Gunn is in my thoughts, of course. Mrs Annalee Gunn. I remember the way she looked at her husband as they walked around the harbour, entirely engrossed in one another, come rain or shine, as if the whole world existed just for them and whatever was going on around them was merely the backdrop to their love affair.

And I know that it's the way I used to look at Hugo, and it's the way Hugo used to look at me, but not now.

Not ever again.

So I guess the question is: what the hell do we do now?

Hugo is right: another school, another house, another move and then we separate and we get a divorce. It's easy to write. Simple and straightforward, the words on the page making no allowance for the dissection of the whole, the cutting of the emotional ties, the breaking of the routine and the way the heart will jump at the prospect of separation. All of those things much, much harder ...

The sound of Bear's feet thundering up the front steps and through the front door brought her to the present.

‘What are you doing?' he asked, kicking off his trainers.

‘Just scribbling in my little book.' She hated the thought of her words being discovered, deciding there and then to hide it somewhere and let it gather dust. She pictured the small wardrobe built into the eaves in the attic room on the top floor, with its loose side panel. That would do. She'd pop it in there, out of sight and out of mind.

‘Did you see the seal?'

‘No, it had gone.' His expression was crestfallen. ‘Dad and Dilly are coming.'

‘What would you like for breakfast?' She did her best to control the break in her voice, knowing that the decisions she and Hugo would make in the coming days would affect him and Dilly in ways that were unthinkable only a few months ago.

‘Sugar Puffs, please.'

Harriet stood and her boy fell against her and she held him fast. Her beloved son. And there they stood, as she hoped and prayed that in that space, in that moment, he would know the unique solace and protection that her encircling arms provided.