“I thought that donkey would be able to withstand more of a beating,” jokes Nathan as he comes back into the kitchen, his arms so full of piñata debris he can’t see where he’s going. He staggers blindly toward the bin. “I was hoping for at least half an hour of entertainment from that. What’s next, Mum?” He lets out an exaggerated sigh as he picks up a glass from the worktop and takes a mouthful of red wine. “God, this kids entertainer malarkey is hard work—no sooner are they on one thing than they want to know what’s coming next—”
“Nate,” Alice interjects, feeling infinitely stronger. “This is Beth.”
“Ah, the infamous Beth,” he says, looking down to wipe his hands on a tea towel. “I was beginning to think you were a figment of Alice’s imagination, or a hunky rugby player she’s been seeing on the side.”
He looks up, ready with one of his wide grins that would beguile even the most unwelcome of guests. “Pleased to finally meet—” The rest of his sentence is cut off as his glass flies from his hand and smashes onto the island, splintering into a thousand tiny pieces.
“Argh!” shouts Alice, jumping back from the missile.
“Oh goodness,” calls out Linda. There’s a splash of red liquid on her white skirt, but her eyes are on Olivia’s birthday cake, sat on the worktop with nine candles, soaked in red wine and pockmarked with shards of glass.
It’s only Beth and Nathan who don’t make a sound, seemingly frozen in time, like someone has pressed the pause button on them.
“Okay, stay away, kids,” says Alice, throwing an arm out across the conservatory door, where several pairs of eyes are craning to see what’s happened.
“But look at my cake,” shrieks Olivia. “Olaf’s all red.”
The color has drained from Nathan’s face—his expression suspended in disbelief while all around him chaos reigns.
“B-but how?” he manages in barely more than a whisper.
A crippling heat descends upon Alice as she looks to Nathan, to Beth, and back again. “How what? What the hell’s wrong, Nathan?”
“I … erm, I just…” he stutters.
“Are you okay?” Alice asks her husband, as Linda reels off kitchen roll and starts soaking up the pooling liquid.
Nathan looks to Beth, his eyes blinking rapidly. “What? Erm, yeah … yeah, I’m fine.”
“What’s going on?” Alice can’t help but notice the change in the atmosphere. As if somebody had come in and wired five hundred amps into an outlet. That somebody appeared to be Beth.
Alice looks to her, but she just shrugs her shoulders and smiles.
“Nathan?”
“God, I don’t know what happened there,” he says, running a hand through his hair and attempting to laugh. “You look just like somebody I used to know and for a moment I thought you’d come back from the dead. I got the fright of my life.”
Beth smiles sweetly. “Oh, I can assure you I’ve not died. Unless, of course, I’m in some parallel universe, living another life, and I’ve come back to haunt you.”
Nathan laughs awkwardly. “Yes … yes, maybe.”
While Alice and Linda clear up the mess, Nathan and Beth stand rooted to the spot.
Alice’s sense of unease refuses to budge. The look on Nathan’s face was unlike anything she’s ever seen before, as if he really had seen a ghost. Yet Beth is the epitome of calm, as if she has everything under control.
Alice knows the thought she’s trying so desperately hard to stop infiltrating her mind. It can’t be. It isn’t possible. She’ll settle for any other explanation than that, because if she gives that room to breathe, it will suck all the breath from her.
“I’ll just go and change,” says Nathan. “I’d better go and see if I can get Livvy a new cake as well.” He leaps over the pool on the floor, where Linda is on her hands and knees, cleaning it up.
“What’s got him all of a fluster?” she asks.
Alice looks to Beth, hoping for an answer, but she just smiles and says, “Here, Linda, let me help.”
“Excuse me for just one second,” says Alice as she follows Nathan up the stairs.
“Jesus!” he says as he looks down at his splattered chinos in their bedroom mirror. “I don’t suppose that’s going to come out.”
“Are you going to tell me what that was all about?” asks Alice, trying to stay calm, while under water her legs are kicking furiously to keep her afloat.
He turns on a kilowatt smile. “Honestly, nothing. That woman, your friend…”
“Her name’s Beth,” hisses Alice. “Why do you find that so hard to say?”
“Beth,” he says, slowly and deliberately, “looks just like a girl I used to know.”
“An ex-girlfriend?” presses Alice.
Nathan’s head drops. “Yes, actually she was. Back when I was in my early twenties.”
“So what happened?”
“We were together for a few months, had a great time, but then…” His voice trails off.
Alice waits. She’s not going to help him out.
“Then we split up, and about a year or so later, I heard she’d died in a car crash.” He looks up at Alice imploringly, but she feels nothing.
“Funny, you’ve not mentioned that before.”
“It’s not something that’s ever come up,” he says. “The woman downstairs just looks so much like her—that’s all.”
“Beth,” Alice says, her voice strained.
“Yes, Beth,” he repeats. “It gave me quite a fright.”
“So much so that it made you drop the glass you were holding?”
“Well, yes.”
Alice watches as he takes his trousers off and finds another pair in his immaculately organized wardrobe.
“So, you and Beth don’t know each other?” Alice can’t believe that she’s pursuing this line of questioning. That she could honestly think that her second husband is also having an affair with her best friend. Because that’s what she’s thinking, if she’ll just allow herself to admit it.
“What? No, of course not.”
“You’ve never seen her before in your life?”
“Well, I don’t know, maybe. If she’s perhaps been at school when I’ve been there … I don’t know.”
“You’d better go and get your daughter a new birthday cake,” Alice says, her eyes narrowed.
“Yes,” he says, raising his eyebrows and attempting to laugh. “Honestly, you couldn’t make it up, could you?”
No, Nathan, you couldn’t, thinks Alice.