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23. EARLY SUMMER 2013

This is the second night running that Catherine has gone to bed alone. She had tried to stay awake last night, waiting for Robert to come home, but she couldn’t. When she woke the following morning, there was no sign that he had been to bed at all. It was only when she heard the front door close and ran downstairs that she realised he had, but that then he had left again without wanting to wake her.

He must be really snowed under at work to come back so late and leave so early in the morning. She had wanted to talk to him, ask him why he hadn’t called her and let her know what was going on, why he wasn’t home for supper. He is a thoughtful man. Yes, thoughtful. So thoughtful that he’d slept in the spare room so as not to wake her. He is pleased she is sleeping again and didn’t want to disturb her. And then again in the morning he must have made sure she wouldn’t wake, and she should have been grateful, but she wasn’t. She was uneasy. And her unease had grown during the day when her calls went unanswered and her texts received replies which were slow to come and terse in tone.

And now, on this second night alone, she lies in bed, listening out for him again. It is just before midnight. She hears the rumble of a train; the hiss of cars on the wet road; the grumble of a taxi pulling up. The slamming of a door. She sits up. This could be him. She listens for a key in the front door, but hears nothing except the distant chime of the church bell ringing midnight. She gets up and goes to the top of the stairs. She hears the sound of keys being laid on the hall table. But so quietly that if she hadn’t been listening, she would have missed it. If she had been lying in bed, as she guessed Robert thought she was, she wouldn’t have known that he had come in and was downstairs. What she really heard was the effort he’d put into hiding his return. She waits for him to come upstairs but he doesn’t, so she makes her way down, tightening the cord on her dressing gown, trying to strangle the churning in her stomach.

Robert looks at Catherine, but says nothing. His eyes stay on her as she comes closer and pulls out a chair, joining him at the kitchen table. He drinks from a glass of whiskey he has poured himself, his eyes still fixed on her.

“Robert,” she says quietly, but his name is all she can find to say.

He puts down his glass and reaches into his jacket pocket, taking out an envelope. He tips the photographs onto the table and spreads them out with his fingers, as if he is about to perform a card trick. She looks at them, confused at first, as he had been when he first saw them, but then it comes back to her. She sees the images. Hears the sound. Click, click, click.

“Oh God,” she says as she is dragged back, an unwilling time traveller. She doesn’t touch them, just looks. Then he grabs her wrist and makes her pick them up.

“Look at them. Look at them closely. Look at yourself.” And she does. Tears come to her eyes, her throat closes, dry, choking. She wipes her sleeve across her eyes. She cannot cry — if she cries she will never stop — it will go on and on and she will drown. They will both drown. Is this the worst moment? But she knows it is not.

“I said look at them.” She has never heard him so cold, never felt the chill his voice sends through her now. He doesn’t shout, but love has been stripped out, leaving only fury.

“Look at all of them.” And she is forced to go through them, one by one.

He stops her hand when she gets to a photograph of herself masturbating. There is more than one and he will not allow her to flick through them. She must look at them slowly. Then he snatches them from her and lays three down side by side: a triptych of his shameless wife. His wife spread out in glossy colour on their kitchen table, her fingers sticky, tucked into herself. Light, nimble fingers. And then Robert begins to cry, and it breaks her heart.

“Oh, Robert, I’m so sorry… I should have told you….” She moves towards him, wanting to put her arms around him, to pull him closer, but he pushes back his chair. He doesn’t want her touching him. He snatches up a photograph of Nicholas, on the beach with her.

“What the fuck went on?” That voice again. There is more anger than pain in him.

“I should have told you… but… Nicholas didn’t know anything. Really. He didn’t know… it was so long ago… I—”

“I know exactly when it fucking was,” he interrupts. “It doesn’t matter how long ago it was. You did this.” He grabs up the photographs and throws them in her face. The shock of it makes her gasp. Most of them fall to the floor, a couple settle on her lap. She brushes them off, leaving them where they lie.

“And Nicholas?” he says. “What did he see? It’s one thing doing it to me, but to him? How could you? I didn’t think you were capable of…” He can’t say it and she waits for him as he struggles to order his thoughts. But it is dangerous to wait. She should step in before he says too much, but she is lost. She is lost back then, remembering.

“Who was it? I want to know who the fuck it was. Did it carry on? Or was it some fucking Spanish waiter — a holiday fling like you were some teenage slut who had a holiday shag. An easy lay. Those fucking English cunts — bit of sunshine and sangria and they’re anyone’s. But they don’t usually have their fucking kids with them. Were you bored? Had to get a bit of attention for yourself?”

“No, no, it wasn’t like that…” It feels as if a stranger has walked into their home. This is not Robert.

“Well, how was it then? He was taking pictures of our son. So tell me. How was it?”

“Stop shouting at me,” she says because he is shouting and she cannot think if he shouts. He is no longer cold; his anger has warmed him up….

“Please. Stop. I will tell you if you listen… just try and listen….” She grabs his whiskey and finishes it. She prepares to say it out loud, to confess why she has never told him. “I didn’t want you to leave us there. Do you remember that? I asked you not to go, not to go back to work, to stay with us…” She stalls, building up to it, but he doesn’t let her. He snatches back control, unable to contain his fury.

“You are unbelievable. You’re saying that it’s my fault? That because I left early that justifies you fucking a stranger under our son’s nose? Exposing him to that? You really think you can justify anything you do, don’t you. That you are always right. That right is always on your side. Saint fucking Catherine.”

She is stunned. He hates her in that moment, she can see it. So quickly he has turned from love to hate. He is hurt, she tells herself, but she fears it is more than that. Clogging, dark resentment bubbles out of his mouth. She watches him, his mouth opening, stuff coming out.

“You couldn’t do without me for four days? You couldn’t manage without sex for four days? As I remember it, we were barely having sex then anyway. That’s why I bought you that fucking underwear.” He kicks at one of the photographs.

“So how long did it go on? Did you have little reunions? Meet up over a glass of Rioja back in England? Oh, maybe all those fucking work trips. Did you take him with you?”

What had she expected? Not this. She looks at the photographs on the floor and bends down to pick them up.

“Where did you get them?”

Robert ignores her, opening his bag and slapping The Perfect Stranger down onto the table.

“So it is about you.”

Sweat soaks into her dressing gown.

“Yes, but it wasn’t like that — not like it is in there…” It feels as if he has jammed his fist down her throat and she can’t get her words out.

“Really? So why were you so worried then? Why did you try and burn it? And you’ve just said that Nicholas knew nothing about it, but he was sent this book too, wasn’t he — so he must have been involved somehow…”

“Yes, but not…,” she starts and then stops. “You haven’t read it?”

“No. I haven’t had the stomach. These tell me enough.” And he kicks at the photographs again. “Did he write it?”

“No,” she whispers.

“What? I can’t hear you.” Scornful. Bullying.

She shakes her head.

“So who then? His wife? Did she find out?”

“His father. I think it’s his father.”

“His father? Oh, for fuck’s sake. He was young? How young exactly? Don’t tell me he was underage.”

And then Catherine raises her voice, but it’s more a scream than a shout. Shrill and desperate.

“He’s dead. He died…” And she catches the shock on Robert’s face. A shock wave which has taken twenty years to travel from her to him, and now has smashed down the defences she had constructed around their life together.