Private Lives

Chapter 6

Eddy can’t wait to get home from tennis; he wants to feel Anna, his soft, warm, loving Anna, in his arms. Blake’s staying at a friend’s tonight and Albie will be upstairs in bed already. Anna’s sat at the kitchen table, a bottle of wine open before her, and the radio’s on so she doesn’t hear him come in straight away. After his party, she’d stuck a few of the printed photos of his stupid, grinning face in different places around the kitchen: one on the fridge, another one on the corkboard with the takeaway menus and old appointment reminders. It’s disconcerting, accidentally making eye contact with himself constantly. When Anna does turn to him, her eyes are swollen, bloodshot. What is it with tonight?

‘Anna, love, why are you crying?’

He hates it when she cries. It makes him feel so useless.

‘You’re home early,’ she says, and she gestures to the chair opposite for him to sit. Eddy pauses. Maybe he should hug her? No, no, he should let her talk while she’s in the mood. He sits and tries to make his face open, neutral, like the expression their marriage counsellor always wore during a session. But stillness for Eddy is exhausting; his facial muscles were made for movement. He gives up, takes a gulp of her wine and says, ‘Anna, I’ve had a hell of an evening already. Please, just tell me why you’re sad.’

Anna runs her palm over her face and breathes out. ‘Rosie told me that something weird happened with Seb and Rosie’s new mate, Abi? Anyway, it made me start thinking about everything’ – she gestures to Eddy and back to herself, a tissue scrunched in her hand – ‘that happened between us and, well, I started thinking through some things and I noticed …’ She makes an exasperated groan, glancing at the ceiling as the tears come again. ‘I noticed some condoms were missing from your bathroom drawer.’

Eddy wants to laugh but forces himself not to. His darling Anna. He’s pretty sure her hyper-vigilance, her anxiety, is a kind of love.

‘Missing?’

‘Four of them,’ Anna croaks before starting to cry in earnest again.

Eddy stands and moves to kneel before her, like he’s about to propose. He looks up at her, not breaking eye contact, and feels himself swell with something unfamiliar – innocence, perhaps – as he says, ‘I promise you, Anna, I promise on our sons that I know nothing about those missing condoms.’

Anna looks down at him. ‘Really?’ She sniffs. ‘You mean it?’

He holds his arms out again, trying to show her he has nothing to hide. ‘I mean it, sweetheart. I really do.’

Then he does what he’s been yearning to do all evening. He puts his head in her lap, closes his eyes, and she strokes his face with her warm, soft hands as her tears fall on to him.

‘Oh, Ed, I’m so relieved. It’s just that Rosie was telling me weird stuff in the sauna yesterday about Seb and then Lotte called, to confirm the reservation, and she said something strange too …’

Eddy’s eyes open. ‘What stuff with Rosie and Seb?’

Anna doesn’t answer right away. Eddy lifts his head to look at her and he realizes with clashing certainty that Anna knows something.

‘Eddy, don’t, don’t do that, please. I’m not supposed to say anything …’

‘What, even to me?’

‘Well, yeah, I think so, I mean …’

‘Anna, I’m Seb’s best mate. Don’t you think I’d know if something was going on?’

Anna looks at him steadily then and Eddy realizes his stupid face is going to give him away. He drops his brow, erases his smug smile, but it’s too late. Anna’s on to him.

‘What? What did he tell you?’ Anna’s stopped crying, quickly tipping into anger.

Eddy freezes, stares up at his wife, feeling like a chastened dog on the floor.

‘And don’t say “nothing”, Eddy. I swear I’ll fucking scream if you say “nothing”.’

He looks away, feels his heart thumping, like it too is taunting him. What are you going to do, Eddy? What. Are. You. Going. To. Do?

‘Look. Look, all I know is that Seb intimated there might be problems.’

‘Go on …’

‘That’s it.’

‘Did he mention Abi?’

‘That new woman you said Rosie was really into?’

Anna nods.

Eddy lets the genuine surprise show on his face. ‘No. No, he didn’t. Why would he mention her?’

Now it’s Anna’s turn to decide what’s more important – loyalty to her friend or interest in the truth. She doesn’t weigh it up for long.

‘Rosie told me that Seb came home when Abi was at their place. She said it was weird. Rosie had to go upstairs to stop the kids arguing and when she got back they were whispering to each other. She said Abi became awkward, made some transparent excuse and couldn’t leave quick enough, that she’s been off with her ever since.’

Eddy’s face puckers in surprise. ‘That’s unlike Seb.’

‘Yeah.’ Anna agrees, enjoying herself a bit now. ‘It gets weirder. Lotte called me when we were in the sauna to confirm our reservation for opening night next week. We were chatting and she said that Seb turned up at the restaurant, totally out of the blue, to talk to Abi. She said she watched them a bit, said it looked like it was getting really heated, that afterwards he was completely flustered and left in a real hurry. Which, again, isn’t at all like Seb, is it? I decided not to say anything about Lotte’s call to Rosie, didn’t want to add to her paranoia.’

What was it Seb said on the court? He said this woman had ‘turned up’ and then he tried to backtrack, lied and pretended she’d only messaged, because he didn’t trust Eddy with the truth. The truth, Eddy realizes now, is that Abi is the woman he met online, the woman he had sex with.

He stands up because this is beginning to feel a bit much.

Anna stands with him, her eyes never leaving his face because she knows everything he’s feeling will be written there.

‘Eddy, what is it?’ she’s saying again and again, and all Eddy can mumble is, ‘Bastard.’

Eddy’s stomach squirms, not for Abi or Seb but for himself, because Eddy’s always found his role in any situation the most interesting. Why didn’t Seb trust him with the full story? Eddy has trusted Seb with everything, always, but Seb has been duplicitous, keeping his secrets to himself. He hadn’t said anything about the problems with Rosie – that they haven’t had sex for a year – and how many games of tennis had they played in that time? Besides – and here Eddy really starts to feel like he’s falling – who even is Sebastian Kent if he’s the kind of man to find a woman online for sex? Twice! Sober! And still, he hasn’t confessed to Rosie? He’s most definitely not the person Eddy thought he was. The perfect person he’d made them all believe he was. Why should he, Eddy, have to lie to his wife simply because Seb doesn’t have the balls to come clean?

Slowly he turns to Anna, blinking, and only still half believing it himself he says, ‘I think Abi and Seb had an affair.’

Anna laughs, loud and involuntary, but then one look at Eddy and her face falls.

‘Oh God,’ Anna groans, lifting her hand to her mouth. ‘You’re serious.’

He tells her everything Seb told him on Court Five, starting with Seb’s uncontrollable sobbing and then his half-confession. How it felt to Eddy that there was more to the story, more that Seb wouldn’t share.

‘I mean, why, after months of keeping this all to himself, does he choose right now to tell me? The timing’s too convenient, and now all this strangeness with Abi …’

Anna’s eyes are round with wonder; she reminds Eddy of eight-year-old Albie last year when he discovered the truth about Santa. ‘Sebbo wouldn’t, I mean, he couldn’t …’ she’s mumbling, pouring herself more wine, sloshing some on the table but not bothering to wipe it up.

‘Anna, he literally just told me tonight. They haven’t had sex for a year. He said he got desperate; he met her online.’ Since his own indiscretion, Eddy usually cowers away from any conversation about infidelity, especially if Anna’s within earshot, but he can tell from Anna’s rapt expression that for once she’s not thinking about what he did.

She shakes her head and stares at Eddy as she says, ‘Online? He planned it?’

Eddy nods his head. ‘And he was sober.’

‘Is he going to tell Rosie?’

Eddy looks away from Anna, catches his own eye in the photo Anna had slung over the hook where they hang aprons. ‘He said he wasn’t going to.’

‘What?’

‘I know. I know,’ Eddy agrees, looking back at her shocked face, and, while it doesn’t feel entirely unpleasant for his perfect, handsome best friend to fall a few thousand feet in his wife’s estimation, Eddy can’t completely eviscerate him, so he shifts the perspective. ‘It makes you think about what the hell is Abi playing at? Turning up in Waverly – is she blackmailing him or something? That’s what I keep thinking.’

Anna shakes her head and says, ‘She could be a psychopath.’ The force of her words takes Eddy by surprise and then suddenly, out of nowhere, Anna starts crying again, and again Eddy feels useless.

He takes her in his arms, his muscles remembering Seb’s weight as he clung on to him. Anna’s voice is soggy as she says, ‘Oh, Rosie. Poor, poor Rosie.’

Eddy steers them through to the sitting room. Anna sits on the sofa first and by the time he’s brought her wine and the vape she keeps hidden at the top of the dresser ‘for parties’, she’s calmer. Her eyes are glinting and alive as Eddy sits next to her, and he knows she already has a plan.

‘What are we going to do, then?’ she asks.

‘What do you mean, sweetheart?’

‘Well, I have to tell Ro. Obviously.’

‘Really?’ Eddy sits up; he needs to see Anna’s face.

‘Eddy. There’s no way I’m keeping this from her. I mean, we really don’t know what Abi’s up to. You’ve seen Fatal Attraction. We have no idea what she’s planning. It’s not safe.’

Shit. This is getting out of control.

‘My God, he could have been talking to her that time you and Blake went into his office and slammed his laptop closed, remember? You know, when you first called him a spy?’

‘Wait. Anna, slow down. Look, the first thing I need to do is talk to Seb, see if our suspicions are correct. Then …’

‘Then we have to tell Rosie …’

‘Let’s give Seb the chance to tell her himself first? I’m sure he’ll tell her when he finds the right time. We owe him that much, at least.’

‘He’s had months, Ed! How much time does he need?’ Her pitch has crept higher and higher. She can’t maintain it; she pauses, resets herself and comes back steadier, lower as she says, ‘When all that shit happened in Singapore, one of the only things that made it easier was knowing you’d told me straight away, that it only happened once and that it was you being drunk and out of control. Seb knows that. I remember telling him that.’

Eddy almost reminds Anna of the Seb he’s known for more than half his life. Seb, the boy who swapped his brand-new bike for Eddy’s old one when they were thirteen because Eddy was trying to impress the first girl he fancied, Seb who literally dragged Eddy across the finish line at the London Marathon, Seb who occasionally leaves them home-made loaves on their doorstep, Seb who writes Blake, his godson, beautiful letters every year for his birthday. But somehow, Eddy knows reminding Anna of that Seb now will only make him fall from her grace harder.

Instead, on the sofa, Eddy keeps his arm around his wife and they talk through their shock, each asking questions they know the other won’t be able to answer. They stay like this until they’ve finished the wine and then they lie back, their bodies pressed against one another, stretched along the full length of the sofa.

Eddy feels weary in both heart and body, but still, sex is probably a good idea. It’d reassure Anna, remind her that they’re OK, that they’re solid. He pulls her hair to one side, starts kissing her neck until she makes those little sighing noises he loves, and she reaches for him. When they’re finished, they lie back again on the sofa and Eddy strokes her hair and she massages his hand as she says, ‘I think it was Blake, by the way.’

‘Blake?’

‘Who took those condoms.’

‘Ahh, of course!’ And Eddy adds, because he knows Anna will like it, ‘I’ll chat to him.’ Even though he probably won’t.

Against his chest, he feels her smile. He’s glad they’ve shared their secrets with each other tonight, and their unscheduled sex reconnected them. The dynamic between Eddy and Seb has changed, in a way he could never have anticipated, but Eddy’s never been able to function on his own – now he’ll need Anna more than ever.

He kisses the top of her head and says, ‘Love you, A,’ and he feels her smile again so he closes his eyes, content and safe, knowing he is loved.

Just after midnight they go to bed and Eddy wakes in the morning with his arms still around Anna. She’s the only woman he’s ever been able to cuddle while he sleeps, one of the things that made him realize she must be ‘the one’. He’s working from home today, so he’s in no rush to get out of bed. Eddy pretends still to be asleep as Anna gets up and pads downstairs. He listens to her unloading the dishwasher, boiling the kettle, and then hears her chatting to Simon, the postman.

‘Morning, Si. Heard about your back, you poor thing.’

A couple of minutes later she walks back upstairs, putting a cup of tea on Eddy’s bedside table. He’s about to talk to her, but she’s on the phone already. She likes to call her sister, Sami, who lives in the Lake District, first thing in the morning. His eyes only open a sliver, he can see she’s still in her dressing gown, staring out of the window, as he listens to her leaving a voicemail.

‘V, it’s me, Anna. Listen, I need to ask you a favour – would you be able to collect Albie after school and have him at yours for about an hour today? I know it’s last minute, but I can explain everything when I see you, and Albie would love to show Luca his new Lego car. Sorry to ask, but I have a meeting and predictably all the after-school clubs are booked …’

Eddy’s eyes fly open. What the hell is she doing? Albie is supposed to be going over to Abi’s, isn’t he? She turns around as he sits up in bed and mouths, ‘What the fuck?’ which makes her stumble and rush her sign-off: ‘Message me to let me know this is all fine.’

Before Eddy can open his mouth, Anna beats him to it. ‘It’s not safe, Eddy. I can’t risk Albie getting into a precarious situation.’

‘What are you talking about, “precarious situation”?’

Anna tilts her chin up; she really gets the hump if she feels like she’s being patronized. ‘Abi, obviously.’ She glances at the door. It’s open a little, so she goes over to close it, which is unnecessary as Albie’s downstairs listening to a football match, quietly munching through the seven Weetabix he eats every morning. ‘I can’t trust her with Albie.’

‘You can’t trust her with Albie?’

‘He’s a child, Eddy, my little boy – I won’t let a possibly unhinged bunny-boiler we barely know look after him. And besides, what will Rosie think when she finds out that I let Seb’s mistress look after Albie!’

‘Anna, you’re overreacting.’ He thinks about adding ‘as usual’ but knows that would totally derail the conversation.

‘I’m not, Eddy. Think about it. She’s obviously turned up here to blackmail Seb – she might be some kind of scammer or catfish; she might have done this many times before.’

‘Anna, we hardly know the woman! And besides, you can’t warn the whole town off her. This is irrational—’

Anna waves her hands, talks over him. ‘You’re right, Eddy, completely right! We hardly know the woman and that’s exactly why she shouldn’t be looking after our son. It’s my fault and I won’t ask people we don’t know well for help with childcare again, OK?’

She’s wired and Eddy knows she’ll have spent the early hours going over and over her arguments. He feels weak and unprepared, so he nods to show he accepts everything she’s said. Anna kisses him and says, bouncy again, ‘I’m going to get in the shower.’

Eddy leans over for his tea and, as he sips, acknowledges that he’s not feeling good. Not feeling good at all.

In their en suite, he hears Anna turn the shower on. He shared too much last night and now he’s hungover from too much honesty; his thoughts feel like scuttling mice in his head. Did he really have to tell Anna everything? He loves her – of course he does – but she isn’t known for her discretion and, besides, her loyalty lies more with Rosie than with Seb. But shouldn’t Eddy’s loyalty also be with Rosie? After all, Seb has acted and is acting like an absolute idiot. Last night, he felt so connected to Anna, good about himself, but now, in the cool, blue morning light, the revelations feel too real, too grubby, the consequences too big to comprehend. Next to him, on the duvet, Anna’s phone starts to ring. Eddy looks at the screen, the letter ‘V’ illuminated, covered in hearts. With a groan, he pulls the duvet over his head and waits for the noise to end.