Private Lives

Chapter 12

It’s Tuesday morning and Anna’s still asleep as Eddy flicks the kettle on. Yawning, he starts up her laptop on the kitchen table. She’d spent most of the night down here, tapping away while he pretended to sleep upstairs. Since Singapore he’s often caught her reading messages on his phone, emails on his laptop. Of course he doesn’t like it, but he lets it go. Their therapist had said that rebuilding trust required effort on both sides. His effort is practising patience and if that means letting Anna snoop from time to time, then so be it. He’s never felt the need to spy on her in return, but since she came back from talking to Seb she’s been muttering about ‘doing something’ and Eddy is pretty sure whatever it is she’s planning is laid out on her laptop.

Albie sloshes milk all over his Weetabix and flicks through an old Lego magazine while Eddy taps ‘Smithson’ – Anna’s maiden name – into her computer and the screen lights up with a Word document.

He rubs the coarse hair of his beard, the words blurry without his glasses; he can only make out a few: ‘unethical behaviour’, ‘unsafe’ and ‘immediate removal’.

‘What the fuck,’ he mutters, and Albie looks up at him sharply. ‘Sorry, Albs,’ Eddy says to his littlest one as the kettle comes to an angry boil. ‘I’m just going to take Mum a cup of tea, I’ll be back in a minute.’

Albie doesn’t lift his eyes from his magazine; he just nods as Eddy tucks the laptop under his arm and carries two cups of tea upstairs. Blake’s door is still closed – he’ll still be fast asleep – but Eddy doesn’t have long before Albie will need him again, he doesn’t have long to find out whatever it is Anna’s planning.

Anna’s sitting up in bed, blinking against the brightness of the day. She eyes the mug in Eddy’s hand. ‘Thanks, sweetie.’

He reaches to his side table for his glasses and sits on the edge of the bed. She smiles when she sees the laptop; she seems glad, flattered even, that he’s been poking around.

‘You read it?’ she asks.

‘Not yet.’ He puts on his glasses and starts reading. ‘“Petition to remove Sebastian Kent as head teacher from Waverly Community Secondary School.” Anna,’ he says, the vowels long and full of warning, ‘you want to get Seb fired?’

‘I was hoping he’d resign before it came to that,’ Anna says defensively.

For as long as Eddy can remember, Seb had always wanted to be head teacher. Eddy never understood it, even tried to turn Seb’s head by showing off his own larger paycheques, the company car, the flashy business trips. Seb had been appropriately impressed but had stuck to his course. When he’d told Eddy he’d got the head teacher job just a few months ago, they’d held on to each other’s arms and jumped about Eddy’s kitchen, whooping, until Blake came in and told them, smiling, that they were both acting like kids.

Now, Eddy is reading a document his wife has written to bring all that to an ignoble end. The petition reads like a fever dream; she hasn’t bothered with punctuation.

It’s a relief she doesn’t mention exactly what it is that Seb’s done, but still, it’s written to incriminate him, written to show him in the worst possible light.

‘Anna, you can’t really think he’s not safe to do his job …’

‘If he worked in a factory or was an IT guy, then sure, whatever. I wouldn’t care. But he doesn’t, does he? He’s a teacher, our son’s head teacher. He should be a role model, lead by example. He has a responsibility to our children, to our whole community, to act with integrity with …’

Eddy holds up his hand and interrupts, ‘Yes, fine. I agree, I do, but when he’s not at work then surely he can do what he likes as long as it’s legal. Think about that presenter guy who was caught messaging younger men at work, Max …’

‘Max Harting.’

‘That’s it. Didn’t you say that you didn’t like what he was doing, didn’t agree with it, but that it wasn’t illegal so never mind?’

He sounds desperate, but it isn’t fair, he wasn’t prepared, and Anna has been up thinking about this all night. She enunciates her words carefully as she says, ‘What if Seb was a far-right lunatic in his spare time, had a swastika tattoo and posted awful stuff online – would you want to know about that?’

Eddy pulls a face. ‘Of course I would,’ he says gruffly.

‘Yeah, but all that’s legal, so …’ Anna makes her eyes wide, shrugs, like, ‘what’s the problem?’ She’s made her point. ‘Well, I’d want to know if he slept with prostitutes, and I think other women would agree with me.’

Eddy stares dumbly at the laptop screen, silent for a moment. He doesn’t want to get into an argument about gender. About why this prostitute thing is worse, more offensive – or so Anna seems to be suggesting – to women. He’ll certainly lose.

Eddy knew some of his colleagues, on work trips to faraway places, would sometimes pay. But Eddy had never considered it; the best part had always been the chase, the ‘will we, won’t we?’ Paying for it – he imagined – took all the magic, all the sexiness away. But he won’t mention any of this to Anna. He needs to keep his own name as far away from all this as possible.

‘What does this mean, then, for our family, for Blake?’

‘Well, I think if we can’t get rid of Seb then we’re going to have to find somewhere else for Blake, even if it’s further away. Brighton has some good places …’

‘Brighton’s half an hour away!’

‘We’ll make it work.’

‘Anna, all his friends are here, he’s happy at Waverly, we can’t just …’

‘Then for once in your life, Eddy, support me! The petition will get rid of him, everyone will sign it – trust me. We’ll get a new head and then we won’t have to move Blake.’

‘But Seb’s his godfather …’ Eddy replies meekly and Anna reaches for his hand, squeezes, like she’s full of regret about that choice they made fifteen years ago, too. He can’t say out loud what he’s really thinking, the feeling that crowds out almost everything else. The panic that he’ll lose Seb. His best friend and perhaps, he realizes now, the truth sinking within him, his only real friend. Anna will tell him he’s being selfish, thinking only about himself again, like always. So instead, Eddy asks, ‘And what about Abi and her girls, the repercussions for Rosie? It’s not just Seb who’ll be impacted by this.’

Anna just nods, sadly. ‘I know. I’m going to try and talk to Rosie today, let her know that we’ll be there for her …’

‘She can’t possibly think this is a good idea.’

Anna breathes out gently, tries to keep herself calm, reminding Eddy that she’s an expert in this particular kind of heartbreak. ‘Look, Ed, Rosie’s in the denial stage now. I remember it myself. She can’t think straight about anything, but when she’s processed some of her own feelings, I think she’ll understand where I’m coming from with the petition.’

‘And Abi? What about Abi?’ Eddy asks, clutching for the thing that will make Anna stop or at least pause, but he hasn’t found it yet because Anna replies, ‘I don’t name her; I don’t even mention exactly what he did.’

Eddy tries to ignore the strange slippery feeling in his stomach. He noticed the way Blake blushed and looked away when he mentioned Lily’s name the other day. Blake has a crush on Lily, which Anna doesn’t know about and which only serves to complicate everything even more.

‘Yes, but it will come out, won’t it? She’ll be implicated …’

‘Well,’ Anna sniffs, ‘excuse the pun, but she made her bed, didn’t she? I’m afraid I can’t protect everyone.’

He can’t help it. He has to say something about the cost to his own life.

‘And what about my thirty-year friendship?’

Anna breathes out; Eddy’s exasperating her now. ‘I don’t know, Ed. That’ll be up to you guys to figure out.’

Eddy’s head feels like an untethered balloon, bobbing around; he knows he should say something, but he can’t find any thoughts, just air where thoughts should be, so he pleads, ‘Can you just let me talk to him first, please, before posting this?’

Anna props herself up on her elbows a little, considering, and says, ‘I tried that already, didn’t I, Eddy?’ Her eyebrows slant together which means she’s about to say something difficult. ‘Look, Ed, I didn’t want to tell you this, but when I spoke to Seb he compared what he’s done with what you did, in Singapore. He said it was the same thing.’

Eddy wilts. ‘What?’

Anna nods. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s not, of course. You didn’t plan to be unfaithful, you didn’t pay a poor, desperate woman for sex and you came home and told me straight away about what you’d done, so …’

Eddy can feel her eyes on him, anxious for his reaction. Anna’s quiet for a moment, staring at him, before she glances at the laptop balanced on his knees and her face lifts with excitement. ‘Oh my God, Ed!’

‘What?’ Eddy says, nervous again.

‘You remember when you and Blake saw Seb at school and he slammed his laptop shut and you started that whole stupid “Seb’s a spy” gag – can you remember whether it was his school computer?’

Where feelings should be, Eddy’s mind is completely blank. He looks at his wife, mystified, shakes his head, blows out to show that he has no idea, absolutely none.

‘It probably was? He uses it for everything, I’m pretty sure. What difference does it make?’

‘What difference? Ed, if he was looking for sex workers, literally shopping for women to abuse and using school property to do it, then he really is a danger to kids …’

‘What? How?’

Anna rolls her eyes at his slowness. ‘Imagine if a child came into his office, if they’d seen those images …’

‘Anna, come on, that’s pretty unlikely …’

But Anna doesn’t care what Eddy thinks because she keeps talking, ‘He’s being paid by the taxpayer, literally funded by us, the hard-working public, and he’s using that time on school property to look up women to abuse.’

Anna’s talking herself into a rage and Eddy knows that the thrill of it is too alluring for her, he won’t be able to reason with her now, so it’s a relief when a small voice from downstairs calls up, ‘Dad … Daddy?’

He clears his throat and calls back, ‘Coming.’

‘You OK, Eddy?’ Anna asks, clasping his hand briefly, as he stands up, readjusts the tie on his dressing gown to go to their son, while Anna stares at him, her eyebrows lifted in concern.

Eddy nods to show that yes, of course he’s fine, when they both know he’s not. He’s really not fine at all.

Eddy has a lunch meeting with a client in London and while he’s standing in front of the open wardrobe trying to choose a shirt for the day, Anna comes in and immediately hands him the light-blue shirt he’d been looking for. ‘I’ll drive you to the station.’

Eddy frowns; the station is just a short walk away.

‘I’ve got something I want to show you on the way. Come on.’

‘But my train isn’t for an hour, and I’ve got a couple of …’

‘You can send emails while I drive. Please, Eddy. It’s important.’

Ruston is only five miles south of Waverly, but as Anna’s parents moved almost twenty years ago to a more salubrious village in Hampshire, they have no reason to visit. Eddy has come once or twice to buy paint in one of the big industrial estates that seem to be engulfing the small town, but other than that he hardly thinks about the place and Anna almost never mentions it.

Anna is quiet on the drive. Eddy focuses on his phone and does his best to ignore the anxiety nibbling away in his stomach.

Even with the sun shining and autumnal leaves falling soft as snowflakes, Ruston is still an armpit. The centre of town is strangled by a one-way system and many of the shops are boarded up. The only places open are betting shops, takeaways and tired-looking budget supermarkets selling more booze than food. Kids bunking off school and drunks congregate outside, like these grubby places are their church and they’re seeking redemption in a bottle of cheap whisky or energy drink.

A skinny mum pushes a bored-looking toddler and a wall-eyed baby in a pram. She moves like she’s angry, ready for a fight, stopping next to another woman with greasy hair and a pushchair, smoking at a bus stop. It’s jarring thinking about their lives in Waverly occurring at the same time, just five miles down the road.

‘Why are we here?’ Eddy asks nervously.

‘Wait a moment,’ Anna says, keeping her eyes on the road. Eddy notices how tightly she grips the wheel. This is hard for her. She wants to be here even less than Eddy but she’s pushing through her discomfort because whatever this is, it’s important.

They stop outside a row of red-brick houses that doesn’t look so different to their own terrace in Waverly. But these houses have broken kids’ toys in tiny overgrown front gardens, weeds sprouting out of the roof tiles, and one of the windows has been barred up with a metal grate. Anna points to a house in the middle. It has grey net curtains hanging in the window that look like they were once white.

‘That was ours. Number sixteen. And that’ – she points to the scrubby patch of grass opposite the row of houses – ‘is where I used to watch them. They used to call out to my dad asking if he wanted a blowjob for breakfast, laughing at him as he walked me and my sister to school. Dad used to get so angry. When it first started getting bad back in the late nineties, Dad would come out here with a litter picker and a bin bag every weekend to pick up the used condoms, but he stopped after a while.’

‘Why?’ Eddy asks weakly. Horrified for his upright, dignified father-in-law and appalled for little Anna.

Anna shrugs and just stares blankly, like she doesn’t want to see the place in focus even from a car window. ‘I think he just gave up. It almost destroyed him, you know, watching this fishing village he grew up in become one of the most deprived towns in the country.’ Anna folds her lips against her teeth. ‘It got worse. Once, Sami opened the door to a pimp looking for one of his girls. Sami and I weren’t allowed out on our own after that, even though we were teenagers. We were bullied at school for being stuck up, for having this overprotective dad. Then one day I recognized one of the girls; she was only two years above me at school and she was standing out there in just her bra and short white skirt. She went missing a couple of weeks later. I remember her mum asking if we could put a “Find Charlotte” poster in our front room. We did, of course, but then a few days later I heard my mum crying in the kitchen; the poster had been taken down. No one said why and we moved soon after.’

Eddy doesn’t know what to say but knows he should say something. ‘God, Anna, I’m so sorry.’

Anna turns in the driver’s seat to look directly at him. ‘This is what I’m afraid of, Eddy. Of this same thing happening to Waverly.’

The thought that Waverly with its tourists, art galleries and lazy brunch cafes could ever fall like Ruston is almost laughable, but Anna’s face is so serious and she seems to read Eddy’s thoughts as she says, ‘I mean it, Ed. Ask my dad. He always says that if this could happen to Ruston, it could happen anywhere.’

Eddy thinks about pointing out that her father had told him the reason Ruston fell so hard was because the community was dependent on the fishing industry and when their small boats were overtaken by the huge trawlers, they didn’t stand a chance. Overnight, it seemed, everyone was unemployed, which of course led to poverty, which in turn led to all the other problems. But one look at Anna and he can see that she won’t want to hear it. Her reasons are emotional; she is motivated by trying to protect her sons from some of the things he now knows she experienced in her own childhood. Her fears might not be grounded in reality, but that doesn’t make them any less important.

He takes her hand where it rests on the gear stick between them. He feels a wonderful tenderness. He can respect, even love her fire about this whole Seb mess now he knows where it comes from. ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this, Anna?’

She shakes her head, sadly. ‘I don’t know; they’re not the best memories. I try not to think about it.’

He nods. He knows those reasons all too well.

She turns to him, curious to see if he understands her better now, and he smiles at her and nods to show that he does.

‘I just want to protect my community and our kids’ childhoods for as long as I can. And if she hasn’t been forced into it, then she is simply a woman who makes bad choices. Most women’ – Anna says the words carefully, implying that what she means is ‘most good women’ – ‘most women would do anything other than sell their bodies. I’d stack shelves, clean toilets, whatever, if I had to. You know I would,’ she says, warming to her own righteousness. ‘But Abi didn’t. She chose to open her legs for whoever paid her, putting herself and her own children in danger. If she’s capable of doing that, then she could be involved in anything – organized crime, drugs – and God knows what she’s like when it comes to parenting. Thank God I cancelled Albie going over to their place when I did. It would break me if the same thing happened …’ She glances towards the door that used to be her front door but there’s a crack in her voice, she can’t keep talking, so he leans towards her, takes her in his arms, clumsy over the gear stick, and he kisses the side of her face and doesn’t make her finish, but instead he says, ‘Come on, I can’t miss that train.’ And Eddy keeps his eyes on the road and neither of them talks as they drive back to the safety of their lovely little town.

Eddy waits on the platform for his train and after checking there’s no one around who might overhear him, he calls Seb. Just when he thinks Seb’s answerphone is going to click on, like it has every other time Eddy’s called since Saturday night, Seb picks up. ‘Hi, Ed.’ His voice is flat, his tone grey, exhausted.

‘Seb. Mate, good to hear you,’ Eddy says and out of habit adds, ‘You OK?’

‘Um, not really, no, not really. Look, Ed, I really want to talk, I’ve got something to ask you, something you can do to help this whole horrible thing, but I’m about to meet with a parent so only have a couple of minutes …’

‘That’s fine. That’s fine.’ Eddy knows he should start by telling him how sorry he is that all this is happening, gently ask what Seb’s plans are, perhaps suggest that he take some time away from work to focus on his family, prepare the ground for Eddy to imply that he should resign. Or perhaps he could tell Seb that he’s just been to Ruston, the things Anna told him, the things that helped her reaction make more sense to Eddy. But those words are jostled and pushed to one side, making way for other, more boisterous ones that leave Eddy in an undignified whine, ‘Listen, Seb, I … Anna told me that you think what happened in Singapore was the same thing as … you know, this thing that you’ve done.’

There’s a brief pause on the other end of the line, Seb doing that thing where he quietly considers what’s just been said.

‘Ed, you know I’m going through a horrific time, I don’t really have the energy for your relationship prob—’

‘You meant it?’ Eddy can’t help it; he cuts Seb off.

But Eddy stops talking because to his dismay and irritation, on the other end of the line, Seb starts laughing.

‘What? What’s so funny, Seb?’ Eddy squeaks, sounding like the twelve-year-old he was when they first met at the bike park.

But Seb can’t answer because he’s laughing too much, a little manic.

He takes a couple of deep breaths to calm himself before he says, ‘That is literally the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard. My life is falling apart and you want to talk about yourself?’

Now it’s Eddy turn to pause.

He’s selfish? Seb’s calling him selfish when Seb’s the one who has lied again and again, Seb’s the one who rented a damaged woman, like that girl, Charlotte, Anna told him about, and Seb’s the one who gambled his children’s well-being for a quick shag? For most of Eddy’s life, Seb has been the golden boy – athletic, clever and kind – while Eddy felt like a grasping, hunched, lowly sidekick whose only attribute was to do the stupid stuff others were too frightened to do and to say the stupid gags to make people laugh – and, even then, only sometimes. But now, with these revelations, Seb has fallen from his cloud with the other rare angels, face first into the mud where Eddy has always stood.

‘My life, everything I love is hanging by a thread and you, my best mate, are worried about something your insane wife said about you?’

That word, ‘insane’, kicks Eddy in the guts. Seb doesn’t know Anna, not really; he doesn’t know that she knows more about the dark side of prostitution than any of them. What it can do to people, to a place. He thinks again of Charlotte.

‘That’s not fair,’ Eddy says, his jaw tense.

‘No, Ed, I’ll tell you what’s not fair. Being hounded by your wife at work when I need friendship, support more than ever. What’s not fair is my best mate thinking only of himself …’

Eddy hangs up.

He thinks about his arthritic, white-haired father-in-law slowly clearing away used condoms in the jacket and tie he always wears. Of Anna’s young face watching girls being driven away by strangers, that poor, poor girl Charlotte, and then he thinks about Seb. The circumstances might have been a bit different but he still knowingly got involved in an industry that treats women like commodities, like some kind of human spittoon. Anna is right: he isn’t so different to any of the men driving those desperate young girls away somewhere quiet and lonely where no one would hear them.

His phone buzzes with a message from Anna: I’m going to publish the petition, OK?

Eddy types out, Fine, but then he deletes it because Seb has been his best mate for longer than he’s known Anna. He types out, No, Anna. Please don’t, but just as he’s about to press send he changes his mind, deletes that message too, because how long had Seb been lying to them all? And besides, doesn’t Anna need his support now? He throws his phone back into his bag and gets on his train and decides to do absolutely nothing – which is, he decides, a decision in itself.