Private Lives

Chapter 13

Seb works from home on a Tuesday; with his new open-door policy at school, it made sense having one clear morning to tackle budget admin and staffing issues, and make confidential phone calls somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed. When Rosie gets back from drop-off, she finds him hunched over his laptop, long legs splayed at the kitchen table, his head snapping up from the screen as she enters.

‘Ro, sorry, I thought you’d be at work.’

Rosie flicks the kettle on and looks at Seb. God, his earnest expression is so transparent; nervously touching the scar on his lip.

‘I’ve taken the rest of the week off work,’ she says, her tone bland, emotionless. ‘Good old Norovirus.’

‘You didn’t tell me,’ Seb says, a whine in his voice, eyes blinking from behind his glasses.

Rosie snorts a fake laugh and Seb at least has the decency to look away, abashed. That was an idiotic thing to say.

His work phone starts ringing; he looks down. ‘Sorry, it’s Harriet, I’m going to have to take this.’

Rosie shrugs and turns her back to him to get a mug and teabag as Seb stands and walks out of the kitchen to take the call upstairs, saying, ‘Morning, Harriet,’ to the chair of governors as he leaves.

Once he’s gone, Rosie turns back round to face the kitchen table, ignoring the kettle as it spits and bubbles behind her. As she hears Seb move around safely away upstairs, she stares at one thing. His school laptop. Seb thinks she doesn’t know his password, but she’s watched him open it enough times that she knows it’s their kids’ initials followed by the year. He is vigi lant about protecting his students’ and teachers’ confidential information, but not vigilant enough. Fucking Seb. Fucking upright, law-abiding Seb. She moves across the kitchen, sits down on the still-warm chair. Seb. So good when it came to everyone else and such a traitorous slimy shit when it came to her – his wife. Rosie taps in his password, and the screen comes alive.

Above her, the floorboards groan. He’s pacing around. She feels her hands moisten, nervous suddenly at what she’s going to ask them to do; they’ve never done this, never snooped before. But she didn’t listen to her instinct before, when she suspected something more had gone on between Seb and Abi, and look where it has left her. Betrayed in the most degrading way. She remembers Blake and Eddy’s story – how Seb had slammed his computer shut when they’d disturbed him at school. She won’t ignore her instinct again. She clicks through to the computer’s history easily, and the screen fills with an incredibly young-looking Asian girl, peering over her shoulder, looking back at Rosie, around her pert, naked bottom the words ‘GeeGee is ready to play!’ Rosie whimpers and clicks on the next page. This time it’s a white woman with long brown hair in a squat over a chair, bronzed, doughy breasts pushed up, masturbating, her eyes closed, her lip slightly curled, furiously focused on her own pleasure. ‘Discounted rates! Only £130 for the first hour!!!!!’

Rosie clicks on more and more pages. Where was she, she wonders, when Seb was staring at them? Was she putting their kids to bed? Cleaning the bathroom? Folding fucking laundry?

Rosie sits back and lifts her face to the ceiling, feeling herself drop fully into what she suspected to be true. Seb is a liar, a perpetual liar. He’d been shopping online for people just like how she’d buy toilet roll and tomatoes. He hadn’t just stumbled on Abi’s website like he said. He’d hunted for her, hunted specifically for Abi with her brown eyes, toned legs and perky breasts.

Upstairs, on the phone, Seb laughs, and Rosie feels like she’s suddenly no longer made of bone and muscle. No. Now she’s all rage.

She stands, knocking the chair over but not caring; she can’t sit with him smiling and laughing, thinking he’s got away with this sick browsing. She leans over the laptop, palm pressed against the table, hunched as she keeps clicking. He’d considered hundreds, not caring how cheap or young or desperate their eyes looked in the photos. He couldn’t have called them all, but can she, Rosie, ever be sure he didn’t? How can she ever know for certain that he didn’t go and visit the thin Black girl with fake breasts, stilettos and huge, sad eyes? Her hand reaches for her shoulder, her forearm slung across her own slack breasts like she’s protecting them from the perfect twenty-year-old breasts on the screen. She feels her own vagina pressing chubbily, falling out of itself against her old cotton pants, the creeping hair, a different species to the impossibly neat slit of these women. She bets they all smell lovely, those tidy, hairless vaginas, like perfect, silken closed mouths despite the grind of their endless, tiring work.

‘Rosie?’

Rosie’s head snaps up from the screen as she slams the laptop closed. Eva is standing in the back doorway, holding something wrapped in a tea towel and looking quietly at her daughter-in-law.

‘You scared me!’

‘Sorry,’ Eva says, addressing the toppled chair on the floor before looking back up to Rosie. ‘I did knock but you were miles away.’

Eva’s eyes move from Rosie’s face to her hand, her fingertips resting on Seb’s laptop, the Waverly Community Secondary School label stuck on top.

‘Yes, I was just … Seb’s upstairs on a call. I’m actually about to go out. I want to go for a swim and then I promised I’d see Anna.’ Rosie had, in a weak moment, finally given in to Anna’s incessant requests to meet and talk.

‘That sounds like a good idea.’ Eva nods approvingly and Rosie knows she’s referring to the swim rather than to Anna, whom Eva has never really connected with. Eva is one of those people who believes cold water cures everything from dry skin to a broken heart. ‘I just wanted to see if you needed anything – a chat, maybe, or food or help with the children …’

‘No, I’m fine. Thanks, Eva.’

Still on edge from almost being caught out, Rosie can’t return Eva’s smile as she passes Rosie the warm bundle she’s been holding.

‘Here – I baked it this morning. It’s the one with cheese and chives.’

Heath’s favourite.

Eva glances again at the laptop on the table, like she’s thinking about saying something. It makes Rosie bristle.

‘I’m so sorry this has happened,’ she says, quiet but steady.

Rosie doesn’t want Eva’s calm now, not when all those websites are spinning so wildly in her brain. She puts the bread on to the work surface and grabs a tote bag from the hook by the back door before shoving in a still-damp towel from the drying rack.

Eva says nothing, knows Rosie well enough to know when to back off.

‘Seb probably won’t be long,’ Rosie says, bending down to pick up the fallen chair.

‘No, I won’t wait for him. It was you I wanted to check in on.’

Rosie doesn’t know what to say so she just nods furiously and says, ‘Yes, well, I’m fine. Fine!’

She heads out of the back door, leaving Eva to deal with the human maggot she raised whom she can still hear, laughing, above their heads.

Rosie walks quickly into the water and the cold screams through her as she wades up to her hips. A huge wave, made up of a million angry foaming mouths, rises to bite, but she dives underneath it. The freeze makes her retract into herself so she can hardly move at all. Then a great pull drags her up and out and she surfaces, screaming, swearing, and she’s so fucking small but she’ll keep fighting because there’s nothing else. Another enormous wave roars towards her, a great salty mouth howling for her. This time, she lets it take her, pulling her into its mess, its rage, and while it plays with her, rolling her around with its watery tongue, there’s a moment of immense silence, of such elemental gentleness that Rosie doesn’t feel scared, she doesn’t feel anything and, for a second, she disappears. Then, without warning, the sea starts chewing her again, her lungs panic, heave, and suddenly the sea is done with her. It spits her out, a diner spitting a bone out of a stew. She’s left in the shallows, spluttering and breathing hard. The water has worked smooth Rosie’s jagged edges like sea glass. She isn’t thinking about Abi and all those other plastic women online and for a moment she’s left with just the clean, simple realization: Seb was never good. He’d been yearning and suppressing and hiding himself all along. He’d had secrets. And she loves him, and she hates him and she loves him and she hates him, and she has no idea how they’re going to survive.

She doesn’t dry herself well so she’s shaking with cold by the time she gets back to the car, but this is the best bit, her skin tasting of salt, the sparkle and fizz of blood in her veins. Her phone buzzes with more missed calls from Seb and one from Eddy and then a text comes through from Anna.

Just got to the cafe, babe. Will order us some tea. Love you. X

Anna has been ending every message to Rosie with ‘love you’ since Saturday, which to Rosie feels more indicative of Anna’s guilt, for not telling Rosie that Abi and Seb had had sex, than genuine love for her. Rosie wishes for the millionth time that, apart from Maggie, her architect friend in Sydney, she hadn’t let her old friendships from school and university fade over time. She’d known it was happening, especially after they moved to Waverly, but her children were so young, her life already overly stuffed with people. She couldn’t handle any more, so letting those relationships splutter and die had felt more like a relief than a loss. Until now. Now she just has Anna and a handful of other Waverly women whom she calls friends, who no longer feel safe. Especially not now when she really needs help.

Rosie dresses, for once not caring that her dimply bottom and sagging breasts are on display. She slowly makes her way along the beach to the cafe; it’s windy so she clamps her arms around herself in a hug to try to keep warm. Her hair is cold and wet, like seaweed dangling around her face. She’s shivering by the time she arrives at the almost empty cafe and sees Anna sitting at a table for two in the far corner by the window, a pot of tea and two mugs in front of her. Anna stands and opens her arms as soon as Rosie walks through the door. The young girl behind the counter glances up from her phone to look at Rosie, but the screen drags her eyes back immediately.

It’s good to feel Anna’s soft, warm body against her own. Anna kisses the side of her face and Rosie shakes her head so Anna knows it’s not her fault as she whispers, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m sorry about all this, Ro.’

When Rosie at last pulls away, Anna rubs Rosie’s upper arms and says, ‘You’ve been swimming!’

Rosie nods. ‘I had to clear my head.’

Anna’s doing her best to hide it, but Rosie can still feel her excitement, the anticipation just behind her gentleness. It’s in the way she smiles, the spark in her eye. Anna’s always loved drama.

They sit and Anna pours tea, adding two spoonfuls of sugar to Rosie’s mug without asking before handing it to her.

The hot mug in Rosie’s hands feels wonderful. Anna settles back in her seat, spine straight, braced and waiting, which Rosie knows is challenging for her. They don’t mention how upset Rosie had been that Anna hadn’t told her earlier about Seb; Anna has already explained her reasoning in texts and, besides, there are more important things to talk about now. When Anna can’t take the silence any more, she leans in and says, ‘I want you to know, anything you tell me won’t go any further. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.’ Adding as an afterthought, ‘Not even Eddy.’

Anna says it like she’s bestowing a great gift on Rosie rather than offering her the simple dignity of confidentiality. Still, Rosie remembers how hard it was talking to Anna after Eddy’s affair, the pressure she felt to find the right words, so she nods and mutters, ‘Thanks,’ before adding with a sigh, ‘I talked to Abi the other day, just before pick-up.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Yup.’

Anna’s eyes pinball around Rosie’s face, trying to keep her talking, but she doesn’t, so Anna says, ‘Well, I hope she apologized.’

Rosie frowns, threads her fingers through her salt-stiff hair and says quietly, ‘She didn’t, actually.’

Anna tuts, rolls her eyes.

‘You think she should?’

‘Ro – she had sex with your husband. More than once. Yes, she owes you a bloody apology! She owes you a thousand apologies and it still wouldn’t be enough in my view.’

There’s a part of Rosie that likes Anna’s interpretation of all this, part of her that wants to be the uncomplicated victim.

Anna leans towards Rosie, eyes gleaming as she asks in a whisper, ‘Did she say anything about being a prostitute?’

‘Umm, not really.’

‘So she said something about it …’

‘Anna.’ Rosie holds up her hand to get her to stop.

‘Too much, you’re right, too much. Sorry, Ro.’

They sit in silence for a moment before, again, Anna’s had enough and asks quietly, ‘So, did he find her online?’

Rosie nods. She sees them all again, all those thrusting, parading, hairless women cooing how much they love sex; how Seb must have, at some level, believed they were waiting desperately for him. It was pathetic. Laughable. The lies they were all telling themselves.

‘Yes, and about a thousand other prostitutes.’ Rosie feels a fresh slap of rage as she says the words out loud, but why shouldn’t she? Why should she protect him? ‘Another thing he lied about.’

Anna actually gasps. ‘He didn’t just see Abi?’

Rosie shrugs because, really, what the hell does she know about her husband any more?

‘Where did you find this out?’

‘On his computer.’

‘The one from school?’

Rosie nods and notices how Anna’s eyes widen and her mouth clenches like she’s stopping herself from shouting something out loud.

‘It’s the premeditation that really hurts,’ Rosie says, more to confirm the fact to herself than to share it with Anna.

Anna nods like she understands, but she doesn’t because she repeats, ‘Premeditation?’

Rosie looks away, waits for Anna to twig.

‘Oh, you mean the planning that went into it. Booking the time, buying the train ticket, making sure you were busy so you wouldn’t be suspicious, taking the cash out …’ Rosie holds up her hand again to show that’s enough. Anna’s made her point.

‘You’re right,’ Anna says, reaching for Rosie’s cold hand. ‘All that stuff, I can’t imagine. It must make it so much harder.’

Anna doesn’t need to explain herself. They both know what she’s getting at. That what Seb’s done is worse, much worse than what Eddy did. Even in infidelity there are hierarchies.

Rosie takes a sip of tea before saying, ‘Then there’s all this other stuff, like, at some deep level, Seb wants women to perform for him no matter the cost to them. I mean, how fucked up is that?’

Anna is back to shaking her head and says, ‘It’s so disturbing. It’s all deception and suffering, when you think about it.’

Rosie has the unsettling feeling that her friend is looking at the same problem but from a different angle to Rosie. She takes another sip of tea and Anna does the same.

‘Have you had a chance to think about what you want to do?’ Anna asks. ‘If you want to kick him out for good or …’

Rosie shakes her head and remembers asking a sobbing Anna something similar two years ago, before Anna adds, ‘Take your time, love. I’ll support you, help in any way I can. You do know that, don’t you?’

Rosie nods, feebly, and Anna, apparently energized from the tea, asks with renewed vigour, ‘Listen, there’s something specific I need to talk to you about, something I feel I have to do, but before I ask, I just want to check you got the link I sent through for the clinic?’

‘Clinic?’

‘The STI clinic.’ Anna mouths the ‘STI’ bit even though there’s no one around to hear them.

Rosie must look blank because Anna says, ‘I know it’s probably the last thing you want to think about, and I know you guys haven’t had sex for a year, but still, I heard that London is smothered in gonorrhoea these days, so I really …’

‘What did you say?’ Rosie leans forward, feeling blood rush, hot and sudden, back into her face.

‘Yeah, there’s this really nasty strain of gonorrhoea …’

‘No, the bit before – about me and Seb, about us not having sex. Who told you that?’

Anna’s eyes dart around Rosie’s face again, searching for the right answer. ‘Eddy told me, so Seb must have mentioned it to him.’

Rosie feels like her eyes have fallen out of her head and are rolling like marbles across the tiled floor. The cafe spins as her heart gallops.

‘Rosie, what’s wrong?’

Rosie stands and Anna clamps her hand back around Rosie’s arm, but this time it doesn’t feel good. This time it feels like Anna’s trying to restrain her. Rosie wiggles free. ‘He’s been talking, has he? About our sex life, or lack of sex life, blaming me for paying a prostitute …’

The teenager behind the counter looks up from her phone. Anna’s eyes are wide, appalled by this sudden, unexpected turn. ‘No, Ro, I mean, I don’t know what that man’s doing but …’

‘He’s trying to justify what he did by blaming me, saying he had to go and pay for sex because I wasn’t giving it to him for free – that’s what he’s doing.’

Anna looks disappointed that her meeting is being so badly derailed but Rosie feels light with anger, and it feels good, like she’s high.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she says, turning towards the door.

‘Wait, let me come too. I need to tell you about …’

‘Anna, please, just let me go.’

‘Oh, Ro, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry …’

Rosie doesn’t hear the rest because she’s already walked out of the cafe, the door banging behind her as she runs back to her car.

She parks badly outside their house and rushes inside. Seb’s sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over his computer that still carries all those women inside. How fucking dare he be sitting there so normally, so untouched by everything he’s done, while her world has blown up like a fucking bomb?

‘You pervert,’ she says from the open doorway.

‘Rosie!’

Seb’s cheeks pink in surprise. He looks at her, taking in her soggy, bedraggled appearance, and stands up from the table.

‘Rosie, how was your …?’ He moves towards her, like he wants to tame her, just like Anna.

She pulls away and growls, ‘Don’t you fucking come near me.’

‘Just … Ro, please, tell me what’s happened because I …’

Behind her, the front door bangs back on its hinges. In her hurry to get to him she didn’t shut it properly and the wind has blown it open. Seb hurries to close it. She wants to hit him then, hit him because she knows he’ll be worrying about someone overhearing them, someone hearing the truth she can feel bubbling up, about to burst out of her.

When he’s standing back in front of her, head slightly tilted, he asks again, ‘What’s happened, Ro?’

She laughs. ‘It’s so easy for you, isn’t it?’

‘What is?’

‘Lying.’

Seb doesn’t react. Instead, he waits, knowing she’ll keep talking, which of course she does.

‘You weren’t shown Abi’s website at that awards thing, were you? You went searching for her. Literally, shopping for a woman.’

Seb’s eyes swivel away from her and she knows what he’s thinking.

‘You didn’t delete your laptop history, you idiot. I saw everything.’

Seb closes his eyes briefly; his cheeks and the scar above his lips redden. It feels fucking wonderful. But it’s not enough. She swivels his laptop towards her on the table; it’s still unlocked, and she navigates quickly to the history and opens up one of the sites. There’s a close-up of a tongue licking an erect penis: ‘The best oral without condom in London for only £80!’ She scrolls down, stops at a woman’s face – she’s smiling, licking her top lip while her hands cover her bare breasts. Rosie points to her. ‘Tell me something, Seb – do you think she actually wants you? Are you that delusional? Honestly, I think you’re sick. Either you’re mentally unwell, believing that a woman like that wants to have sex with you, or you’re sick because you don’t give a shit that that poor woman is obviously lying because she’s desperate for money and you don’t care about her pain. You’ll just fuck her anyway!’

She starts scrolling again, down to a GIF of an arse in a G-string wiggling back and forth.

Seb closes his eyes again and Rosie has to resist the urge to peel them open with her thumbs, force him to look at what he’s done, but instead gets closer to him and says, ‘But that’s not all, is it? You’ve been telling people about us, our sex life, that I hadn’t had sex with you and that’s why you hired Abi …’

‘What? No, no, of course I haven’t,’ Seb interrupts, shaking his head, which makes Rosie erupt.

‘Then how the hell does Anna know we haven’t had sex in a year?’

Seb freezes, caught out, and Rosie feels a rush, the thrill of being right, her anger justified, so she keeps shouting, ‘This isn’t The Handmaid’s Tale, Seb – a woman has the right not to want to have sex!’

She’s expecting his head to drop, for him to become all meek and hangdog like he’s been for the last few days, so it’s a surprise when, jaw flexing, he takes a step towards her. ‘And what about what I wanted? I tried, I tried everything I could think of, but you turned me away again and again. I didn’t want to never have sex again. It was driving me mad, Rosie, completely insane.’

He taps his finger to the side of his head, his voice getting louder and louder, the scar on his lip getting redder. ‘Perhaps I am delusional but at least I know what I want. I only ever wanted to have sex with you, my wife, the person I love, but that wasn’t allowed, so what should I have done instead? I’d love to hear it.’

‘No one should ever be forced into having sex!’

‘And no one should ever be forced into celibacy!’

Rosie remembers the nights Seb tried to talk, the marriage counsellor she always found a reason to avoid, the gifts of lingerie Seb bought her, but she kicks the memories away. She won’t let Seb derail her now, not now her anger is still fizzing through her. ‘You’ve weaponized our intimate life to justify your own disgusting perversion. I never thought you’d sink so low, Seb, truly.’

Seb is shaking his head at her in disbelief. ‘What intimate life? We didn’t have an intimate life, Rosie, because you didn’t want one! That’s the whole fucking point! I told …’

‘Every time I close my eyes, Seb’ – Rosie moves closer to him, close enough that he can see her revulsion; she doesn’t care as spit from her mouth flies at him – ‘I see you fucking her! Do you have any idea how messed up that is?’ She closes them now briefly, as though to demonstrate, and there they are – naked, Abi sinking her lovely mouth on to his, Seb desire-drunk and clumsy, Abi gasping at the cold press of his wedding ring in her vagina.

Seb doesn’t see it, of course; he’s too obsessed with his own pain as he shouts, ‘And you have no idea how messed up it is feeling like your body is slowly starving, literally dying, Ro …’

Through his shirt she can see his muscles moving in and out, the chaotic beat of his heart, but she doesn’t, she won’t soften – not in front of him, anyway. Suddenly she just feels so exhausted. As though her whole energy quota for the day has been used up in the last few seconds, it takes all her effort to move close to him again as she says, ‘I want you to go now Seb.’

He stares at her with dull, expressionless eyes before he starts packing up his disgusting laptop and his notepad and pens. Rosie watches him numbly and just before he heads towards the door she says, ‘Don’t you dare tell anyone anything else about me. Or try and make out like you shagging a prostitute is my fault. If you do, I swear to God I’ll happily let everyone know the shit you really are.’

And just before he walks away, a part of Rosie expects to hear him say her name, apologize or even try to touch her again, and a bigger part of her is terrified when he does none of those things.