On the inside, Desmond Jordan was reeling. Externally, though, he had to keep a calm head and try not to let things spiral out of control. He knew that bitch across the road would be the one to fuck everything up for him. And now there was nothing he could do about it.
Fortunately, she didn’t know the reason why he’d been going out most nights and he’d pleaded with the police to make sure she didn’t find out. In exchange, he’d had to tell them absolutely everything.
He’d had to tell them that he’d been sleeping with the temp while his wife and kids were visiting family in Baltimore. He’d had to tell them that he’d go round to her place three or four nights a week, knowing that ears would prick up and tongues would wag if she ever came over to his. If word ever got back to the woman over the road, he knew damn well that Bess would find out and that’d be his marriage over. His wife was a pretty forgiving woman, but even she had her limits.
It was never something that he’d intended to happen. But then that’s what they all said, wasn’t it? It just kind of happened. Yes, it had probably been his idea for Bess and the kids to take a break, but it wasn’t as though he was just shipping them off to get them out of the way. Jack and Lyra had done particularly well in their last assessments, so he figured they could do with a break.
Homeschooling the kids hadn’t been as straightforward as Bess had made it sound. She’d been homeschooled herself back in the US, but found it difficult to cope with doing it herself in the UK. As a result, they’d hired an au pair with experience in homeschooling who’d teach the kids while Desmond and Bess were out at work. As far as Desmond was concerned, this completely defeated the object as the idea was that by being homeschooled the kids would see far more of their parents. In his opinion, they could’ve just been sent to the local school and he could’ve saved a packet on what he was paying the au pair. But no, Bess was insistent. Her first few years of school in the US had been hell for her, with the bullying getting so bad that her parents had pulled her out and homeschooled her. She didn’t want the same for her kids, she said.
Bess wasn’t the sort of woman who always got what she wanted, but if she felt particularly strongly about something she was like a dog with a bone. That was one of the things which had first attracted him to her. That strong temperament and independent will was something he really admired, but sometimes even he needed a break.
He’d done his best to minimise his worries in life. Having a plan always helped, he found. He’d always been clear and methodical in his ways — that was one of the things that got him through med school — but he really hadn’t planned for the whole sleeping-with-the-temp thing. Fortunately for him, that had been his biggest and only real worry in life up until now. He could be quite a highly strung person when under stress, which was why he stuck rigorously to his life plan.
Within five years the mortgage would be paid off. Then he’d look to sell the practice and he and Bess could both retire. The kids would be ready to go into the world of work — or, more likely, university — and he and his wife would be free to do whatever they wanted. If Bess got her way, it’d probably involve a move back to the US, but Desmond wasn’t keen. Fortunately for him, it wasn’t something she brought up often so there was a chance he might be able to avoid a showdown over it.
He’d been bailed over the incident in the pub, ‘pending further enquiries’. He wasn’t sure what other enquiries they could possibly make, and he hoped that they were trying to avoid having to charge him. He’d inform the General Medical Council of his arrest anyway. He knew from speaking to other doctors who’d had incidents in the past that the GMC’s biggest bugbear was when members didn’t tell them something had happened. If he told them, there was a decent chance he might be able to continue practising. If he didn’t tell them and they found out another way — which they always did — he would have no chance.
Could he deal with that? Financially, probably. He could sell the practice and pay off his mortgage. The money he’d have left over would probably allow him to make do. If not, he could take a part-time job somewhere to make ends meet. That wasn’t his main worry. It would be the indignity of it all. He’d worked so hard to get where he was, despite his difficult beginnings, and he wasn’t about to let a lifetime’s hard work go to waste.