By the next morning, Alice has made a decision. In order for her to go into battle, she needs to know who she’s fighting against. Nathan, Alice has decided overnight, isn’t going anywhere. Why would he, when his whole life is with her? He’d lose his home, his kids, his job, the lifestyle to which he’s become accustomed, for what? A sleazy bit of rough on the side? It’s easier for Alice to think this way, believing she’s in control, and can dictate the outcome. Because if she allows any other scenario to play out in her mind, she simply wouldn’t be able to function.
So she needs to find out who the threat to her family is, and once she does, she’ll know what to do about it. But in the meantime, she’s going to try her damnedest to be the wife and mother she needs to be to stop her world from going off-kilter. Though that doesn’t mean she’s going to give her all to her philandering husband; she slips out of bed just as he moves toward her with an outstretched arm.
She takes a quick shower and puts her hair up into a messy topknot—there’s no point in doing anything else when the humidity outside turns even the sleekest style into a ball of frizz. She knows she’s trying to keep her mind occupied—to stop it from alternating between Tom and Nathan, asking the questions she so desperately wants to know the answers to.
But what will she do with the answers once she has them, if they’re not the ones she wants? Is Tom still alive, living happily with his new family? Had he set the whole thing up? But then why would he be so audacious as to continue using his real name? Who is Nathan having an affair with? Will it make a difference if it’s someone she knows? Will she stay if he promises it didn’t mean anything? Will it crucify her if he says he’s fallen in love? She can’t possibly say how she’ll react without knowing what she’s dealing with.
It pains Alice to admit it, but Beth had been right all along. She’d had a sixth sense that Nathan was cheating, probably because she’d had it happen to her and knew the signs to look for. But then Alice pulls herself up at the stark realization that, in fact, Beth’s partner hadn’t been unfaithful to her. Tom was already married. It was Alice he was unfaithful to, not Beth. The intense fury that she’d tried so hard to contain is in danger of boiling over.
She remembers listening to Beth over and over as she’d relived their intense love affair, revealing their most intimate moments against the backdrop of its sudden demise.
“How could he do it to me?” Beth had cried as Alice held her. “I thought we were everything to each other. He told me he loved me and never wanted to be without me.”
Alice could even recall asking Beth if he might have been married.
“There’s no way,” she’d said abruptly, seemingly offended by the suggestion. “He used to stay over. How could he do that if he had a wife and, God forbid, kids at home?”
Alice stops buttoning up her shirt. He’d stayed over? So it couldn’t have been Tom. But as fast as her brain wants to grab onto the tiniest semblance of hope, it removes itself from her grasp just as quickly, as she acknowledges that Tom had often been away with work. She laughs wryly at the memory of him going back and forth to Dublin, in a supposed attempt to win new business. Had the client even existed? Had the whole setup been an elaborate ruse to be with Beth?
She pictures Tom kissing her and Sophia goodbye at the front door, with his overnight holdall in his hand.
“I wish I didn’t have to do this,” he’d say.
“So do I, but it’ll be good for business,” Alice would reply. “So go make it worth our while.”
He’d look back at them forlornly, like a lamb going to slaughter, and Alice used to feel a little piece of her heart break each time. Now, she wonders, how long it had taken him to get his game face on and get round to Beth’s. She imagines it was only a matter of minutes.
Alice does all that she can not to blanch when Nathan takes her hand as they walk down to breakfast. He sits down and orders a coffee while Alice heads to the buffet that is laid out along one wall of the huge room. She’s debating between fruit or cereal when a male voice behind her says, “I missed you last night.”
Taking her time to turn around, assuming that whoever it is must be talking to someone else, her mouth drops open and a thousand words crowd the space in her brain as she’s faced with a uniformed pilot. He looks like the man from a dream she thinks she’s had.
“I’m sorry…” she starts, without really knowing where she’s going with it.
“Don’t be,” he says smiling. “It happens all the time. I get stood up by beautiful women every night of the week.”
Somehow, she doubts that. “I’m not here on my own,” she says, feeling like a schoolgirl caught playing truant.
“I know,” he says, his eyes avoiding hers as he picks up what looks like granola in a glass pot. “I saw you walking in with your husband.”
Alice’s cheeks flush and her pulse quickens as she scans the room, desperately trying to remember where they’d been seated.
“Anyway, it was very nice to meet you,” says the pilot. “And good luck with that venture of yours.” He continues along the buffet without missing a beat.
Her heart’s done exactly the opposite as she sees Nathan heading toward her.
“What are you having, sweetheart?” he asks, as he literally rubs shoulders with the man Alice could have had sex with last night.
She could have done, perhaps should have done, but she hadn’t. Nathan, on the other hand, most probably had, as he certainly wasn’t in the bar where he claimed to have been. Yet, he was only gone for an hour or so. Would that have given him enough time? If the woman who proclaimed to “need him, now” was waiting in a room down the corridor, then it gave him plenty.
Alice can’t help but scan the room as she walks back to the table, picking out any lonesome woman and assessing whether she might have had sex with her husband last night. There are disappointingly few possibilities, but it doesn’t stop Alice fawning over Nathan, just in case they’re being watched.
She puts her hand on his as they talk, careful to give him her full attention. He, in turn, seems to give her his, which confuses her. Why would he do that if he knows his mistress is there, watching?
“Looking forward to going home?” he asks, as she leans in for a kiss. He doesn’t flinch.
“It will be good to see the girls,” she says.
“Has it been as hard as you thought it would be? Coming away? Leaving them at home?”
“Actually, no,” she says, honestly. She imagines that’s probably because she’s had other things to think about.
“It would be nice if we could do this again,” he says. “Perhaps a little more often. If last night was anything to go by, I’d like to do it a lot more often.”
She remembers their lovemaking before she’d seen his phone; the warm tingle of alcohol making her lose her inhibitions, the sense of abandonment as she finally cast off the shackles of the past, content to give her all to the husband who deserved it. The words of the text flash in her mind and it hits her again, hard, that he doesn’t.
“It’s funny,” she says, watching his reaction carefully, “but this time yesterday, I was so excited about this project.”
His brow furrows. “And now?”
“Now, I don’t feel like I want to do it.”
“But what’s changed in that time?”
Everything, she wants to say. “Nothing,” she says instead. “I just don’t want to do it.”
Nathan sits back in his chair and laughs. “Well, it’s a bit late to change your mind.”
“Is it?” she asks, tilting her head to one side. “What if I wanted to pull out?”
He runs a hand through his hair. “Well, you can’t … we’ve exchanged. We’d lose the hundred grand deposit.”
“But losing one hundred thousand would surely be better than losing a million?” she says.
He picks up her hand and holds it to his lips. Any notion of his mistress being in the room evaporates. “I understand why you’re nervous, it’s only natural, but it will be okay.”
“I just don’t know if it’s the right thing to do,” says Alice. “I don’t know if I’m prepared to risk AT’s money … Tom’s money.” She thought she’d throw that one in there, just to remind Nathan whose money they were playing with. She doesn’t care if it makes him flinch a little. And ironically, she no longer cares what Tom may or may not think about what she’s doing. He’d lost that right.
“We can’t back out now,” says Nathan. “We’re too far in.”
Alice reclaims her hand. “But there’s not really a ‘we’ in it, is there? This is all on my shoulders. It’s my money, my reputation, and my responsibility if it all goes wrong.”
“But it won’t,” says Nathan. “This is going to be the best thing that’s ever happened to us and I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”
She smiles sweetly, but she doesn’t believe a word he says anymore.