‘I know what you’ve been up to!’
Suzie stared at him and instinctively pulled tiny Jacob tight to her chest. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Rex?’ He was standing in front of her, with his hands on his hips. There was a glint in his eye, something that she’d never seen before. Those green eyes were darker; was that hatred?
‘You, in that wine bar!’
‘What wine bar?’ It felt like the last time she’d been out with lipstick on was about six years ago. What was he talking about? These days it was all about walks with other mums she’d met, the local coffee shop. Mother and baby Pilates – she felt a bit of a fraud at that one with all the other clearly post-natal women in there, but oh God, she could pinch herself; she was loving the fact that she was a mum! But wine bars? She didn’t have time for this. It was coming up for two o’clock on Saturday and her baby massage lady would be here in an hour – about the time it took for her to bath and change Jacob before his session.
Suddenly, as if she was a computer that had been rebooted, she remembered. The wine bar. Steve. The olives. The laughter. The wanting-to-have-sex feelings for Steve, the flirting… She froze. It seemed a lifetime away. How on earth could Rex know about that?
‘Here,’ he said, jabbing her phone with his fingers, ‘I found them on your phone when you asked me to take some photos of Jacob that you could send to your mum. That’s when I saw these!’ He spat the words out and threw her phone next to her on the couch.
She clutched Jacob as she picked it up gingerly and looked at the photos. Oh God. There was a woman, with bright red lipstick wearing an emerald green dress who was grinning back at her. That woman had sleek, recently dyed hair, a cheeky grin, and – she knew – a purple bra and knicker set on. That woman had sat staring at a toddler that morning in the park; she had been a bit deranged and extremely sad. That woman had her arm around a very attractive man and she was gripping an olive between her teeth, providing him with an eyeful of cleavage and proffering the olive to him seductively. That woman was Suzie.
Suzie closed her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, Rex, that was just a night out with some clients and a few people at the bar—’
‘And who were the few fucking people, Suzie?’
His anger took her breath away. ‘It was ages ago. Don’t scream at me, Rex,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll scare Jacob.’
‘Jacob, Jacob, Jacob – that’s all I hear these days. I go to work, I come home, and repeat and repeat – and all I hear when I get home is Jacob. What about me, Susan?’
It was bad. Gone was Suze, or babe, or sweetheart, or honey; in fact Rex hadn’t called her by any of those names for months. And he certainly hadn’t called her any of those names while having sex, as he usually did, because they hadn’t had any sex – for ages.
‘Susan’ was for when he was absolutely furious. Perhaps this was because that woman in the emerald green dress had disappeared and morphed into a pyjama-wearing zombie who had taken to thinking it was OK to stay in nightwear till noon. Who had recently even put on some weight, who couldn’t give a fig these days about calories, whose treadmill was covered in dust, who couldn’t be bothered to book a hair appointment as it meant finding someone to look after Jacob and, much as she trusted Ramone, he was always out and about on his courses and popping in to check on Charlie every now and again and – bizarrely, going shopping with Charlie – it had become all too hard. Much easier to snuggle up on the sofa with Jacob, feed him his bottles, let him sleep in her arms and watch repeats of MasterChef. She looked down at her tea-stained pyjamas.
‘Rex, I’m sorry, that was a long time ago, that was—’
‘You’re damned right that was a long time ago – I hardly recognised you.’
And with that slap in the face he marched out of the room.