It’s ridiculous, Maddy thinks, that she’s become so reliant on her phone for all her basic functions that, now that it’s broken, she’s rendered helpless. She pays for everything on her wallet app and, having left her actual wallet in her parka pocket at home, she can’t even buy a cheap replacement. She’s cobbled together eleven pounds in cash from the pockets of her gym bag, but she knows it’s not going to go very far and that she’s going to have to face the music.
Even with no traffic it takes over an hour to get home. She’d been in such a state when she’d left that she hadn’t noticed the distance, but she’s exhausted by the time she gets to Cobham. She stops the car in the drive, glad that Trent’s car isn’t here. She notices that the wreath and Christmas lights have been left in a tangled heap by the front door. Everything had looked so pristine and welcoming on Christmas morning, but now her home looks strange and worrying to her – like a relative in a coma.
She feels her eyes fill with unexpected tears as she gets out of the car. What had she been expecting? That her home would welcome her back? That it would make everything OK? After all, this is the home that she famously built from scratch, documenting the whole process in her @made_home log and Instagram account. She’s shared everything: from bidding on the ugly bungalow that had once stood on this patch of land, to driving the bulldozer that had razed it to the ground. Every roof tile, window frame, radiator fixing and light bulb she’s painstakingly chosen herself, and that’s all before the eye-catching décor and snazzy furniture. She knows at least five people who have used her Moroccan-inspired tile scheme in their own bathrooms.
She’s made out that a project like this is a breeze. All you need is a vision and a knack for a bargain. With considerable effort, she’s managed to maintain the illusion that this is a fun-filled space in which she entertains her many friends. A space that’s simultaneously cosy, cool and romantic. The whole point had been to build a home in which she could live out ‘her best life’, as she’s hashtagged so many times.
God. If only people knew the truth.
Letting herself into the silent house makes her heart physically hurt and it occurs to her that what makes a home isn’t a building or a designer kitchen; it’s more intangible than that. Home is the atmosphere inside the walls. There isn’t a hashtag for the kind of atmosphere she feels right now. At least not one she could possibly share. She’s used to constantly plumping, preening and picturing the various nooks and crannies of her home, but, for the first time, she feels a sense of shame.
She remembers now how judgemental she used to be about the kids in Jamie’s class who came from a ‘broken home’ and how she’d encouraged him not to be friends with them, like they were unlucky or tainted in some way. Parents who’d divorced. Parents who were alcoholics. Everyone who’d distastefully outed their problems in public, lumped together in her judgemental view.
But it’s easy to break a home, it turns out. It’s taken until today for her to see how a home can appear to be so solid, but it’s made up of the invisible strands of goodwill and honesty by its occupants. Kindness is the thing that holds it together. Kindness is its glue. Without that, it breaks.
Trent hasn’t cleared up in her absence. There’s washing-up in the sink. Out of habit, she steps towards the dishwasher and opens it, but then remembers the last time she was standing right here … and why … and she goes instead to the study, grabbing a few empty bags from the hall cupboard on the way.
Her old iPhone is in the drawer of her desk. She takes it, along with some carefully filed paperwork about her phone contract, her passport and car insurance. She notices the brown edges of her prayer plant and goes to fill up the designer watering can in the loo. She comes back and drenches the poor plant, wondering whether she should take it with her. It’s not until that very moment that she understands that she’s not staying.
Full of grim resolve, she takes the stairs two at a time up to Jamie’s room. She re-decorated it when he left. It had been a disgrace, with its bongs and blimp-holed duvet cover, but maybe she should have kept it for him as it was. Isn’t that what proper parents do? Keep a shrine to their absent child? Like in the movies.
She tried to picture him in the room where he must be living now. She hopes it’s a nice one, but she doubts it. Since she’s been in Brighton, she’s learnt some sobering facts about what might have happened to Jamie and it’s starting to look bleak. She knows he’s not living somewhere permanent. It would have been wishful thinking, but he hasn’t taken out a mortgage, or registered on the electoral role. He’s not paying council tax, as far as she’s been able to find out. She has no way of knowing whether he’s even still in Brighton at all. She picks up the framed photo of him and then puts his school photo into one of the bags too.
She steels herself and goes into her bedroom. Or ‘the boudoir’ as she calls it, in a slightly tongue-in-cheek way, on her feeds. She’s had such fun making it a deliberately sexy, intimate, exciting space. It’s even got a cute little metal and velvet bar she salvaged from Paris. Oh God. Have Trent and Helen done it in here? Has Trent committed that ultimate sacrilege. Has Helen used her towels, her shampoo, her face creams?
The bed isn’t made, the scatter cushions falling from the chaise onto the floor with a recklessness that makes her picture Trent sitting up in bed and throwing them with force across the room. He knows how she likes the bedroom to be left tidily, as she often uses its petrol blue and gold chinoiserie walls as a backdrop for her lives and reels. There’s an empty bottle of wine by Trent’s side of the bed and a glass with an inch of drying claret.
Her mind can’t stop picking at the fact of her husband’s tawdry infidelity, as she re-stacks the scatter cushions in their careful colour order. Maybe on some fundamental level, she’s never really trusted him. Not after he pulled her in a bar in Mayfair and, after she slept with him on the first night, she found out that he was already engaged. He dumped his fiancée for her, which at the time he spun as the most romantic gesture ever, but now she sees it for what it was: cruel.
She hugs a brocade cushion to her chest, as she thinks about how cruel it is too that he’s shared his feelings with Helen and not her. He must have been having an affair before Jamie left. So Helen must have known how tense things had been at home. Now Maddy doesn’t know what bothers her more – the fact that Helen must have been gloating behind her back, or that Trent found solace in her arms, when Maddy had been hurting so much herself.
Trent and Helen. Helen and Trent. Has he fallen in love? More in love with Helen than he had been with her? Because he must have serious feelings if it’s been going on for three years. Three years. And everyone knew. Except her.
She thumps the pillow against the stack with unnecessary force. She’s always prided herself on being perceptive, so how didn’t she see what was going on right under her nose? Even in lockdown? She tries to think back over the past months and how, apart from on their wedding anniversary, there hasn’t been much sex.
There used to be a lot more. Years ago, she and Trent were at it like rabbits. But not since her menopause kicked in and she went on HRT. Trent had been patient and understanding. Of course he had been. He’d been getting his end away elsewhere.
Objectively speaking, she can see how Helen might have easily lured her horny husband. She was always a go-getter, that one. Maddy saw that the first time at the PTA meeting and Helen, who only had a child in year one at that point, was already intent on bossing the school fête.
Oh yes, Helen must have loved the thrill of reeling him in, although it can’t have been difficult. Trent was charming when he wanted to be, plus he was very generous, and he was in good shape. Oh, God, she thinks, remembering the cross trainer she bought him for his fiftieth. He was obsessed with it and lost nearly a stone and now she understands why. She’s unwittingly trimmed him up for another woman.
She takes her trusted Paul Smith holdall from the top shelf of her walk-in closet and starts packing her clothes. She spent so long planning this little haven of a room with its purpose-built shoe racks and jumper shelves. Its movement-activated light-up mirrors have always made her feel like a film star, but now, as she catches her reflection, without the flattery of the clever bells and whistles she uses on the images she posts, she looks … old. No wonder Trent doesn’t find me attractive any more.
She thinks of her forthcoming appointment with Jackie, the beautician, who comes to the house and gives her face a regular ‘spruce’. She’ll have to cancel the much-needed session. How can she see Jackie when she probably knows all about Helen and Trent too? It had been Maddy herself who’d given Helen Jackie’s number not long after they’d first become friends, after Helen had commented on how ‘fresh’ Maddy always looked. Maddy had shared the secret of their inner circle, revealing that Jackie ‘did’ all of their friends. But Helen hadn’t been admiring her; she’d just been trying to gain a competitive edge. It feels like such a gross betrayal of the sisterhood.
A little self-pitying sob escapes her as she packs her thermals, jeans, and comfortable shoes, then goes downstairs to the boot room to find her walking boots and coat. Her purse is in the pocket.
She’s heaving the bags into the hall when she hears the crunch of gravel on the drive and the roar of Trent’s Land Rover dying down as he turns off the engine. She sees the shadow of his body through the strip of frosted glass, the black of his leather jacket. Once, this sight made her heart race with excitement, but now it beats with dread.
‘You’re back,’ Trent says, as he comes in, chucking his keys on the console table. He’s carrying a Waitrose bag full of bottles. He must have been to the little one in Helen’s village.
His tone grates.
‘I just came to get a few things.’
‘I was calling you and calling you.’
‘My phone broke.’
‘Oh. Well, you shouldn’t have worried me like that.’
She used to be so enamoured with Trent. She sees this now, as he steps towards her. She flicks her arm away before he touches her. She can’t look at his familiar grey eyes because she can see that he means it. She has worried him. He does love her. In his own way. And she knows this. Because they’ve been together for ever, which means that there’s a very big part of her that belongs to him. A part, that should she detach it, might destroy her.
‘We need to talk,’ he says, his head cocked at a just-too-slightly-condescending angle. It’s enough to snap her to her senses.
‘What’s there to talk about? About how you’ve been sleeping with one of my best friends for three years?’
‘It’s not three … I …’ he stumbles, taken aback that the frame matters. ‘I meant to stop it. Honestly, I did. But Helen … she was just there and so willing and I … well, I was weak, babes. I know that. I can see that. And I didn’t mean to hurt you. It didn’t mean anything. Honestly, you’ve got to believe me.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Because she doesn’t. She can see it in his face. He’s lying. How dare he act as if he’s been repeatedly lured away by some wicked sex siren against his will. It’s pathetic.
She starts to walk past him.
‘Maddy.’ He grabs her arm and she freezes, staring down at his wedding ring. After a fraught moment he lets her go. Her heart hammers so hard in her chest, she feels sick. She moves towards the front door and opens it. ‘When will you be back? We’re supposed to be in lockdown. You’re not supposed to be travelling anywhere unless it’s essential.’
She doesn’t answer him, although she’s tempted to snap that this is an emergency; that she does have the right to travel. Because it is absolutely essential that she gets away from him.
‘Maddy,’ he calls. ‘Maddy, come on. Be reasonable. At least tell me where you’re going. You owe me that.’
‘If you must know, I’m going to find Jamie,’ she manages.
Trent lets out a snort of derision as he calls after her, ‘Well, good luck with that. Isn’t it a bit late to play mother of the year?’