If my husband is surprised to see me sitting at the kitchen table after two nights at Mum’s house he doesn’t let on. He gives me a nod as he steps into the room. He is dressed in a dark blue suit with a white shirt and a gray-and-white-striped tie. His black shoes are shiny. His hair is neatly brushed back from his face. The only thing out of place is the position of his laptop bag. Normally he wears it casually slung over one shoulder. Today he is clutching it to his chest.
Liz’s eyes narrow as he walks into the kitchen.
“All right, Mark?” she says in a tight voice.
He doesn’t acknowledge her. “Claire, could I talk to you? Alone.”
Liz looks at me and raises an eyebrow. So many emotions in one look—irritation, anger, worry—one wrong word from my husband and she’ll go off.
I reach for her hand. “I’ll come and see you later? Okay?”
She nods, her lips pressed tightly together and stands up.
She leaves the kitchen, deliberately taking a wide arc around Mark. He barely registers her departure. His eyes are fixed on me as he sits down stiffly at the table, hugging his laptop to his chest. “Is he here?”
“Jake? No, but Kira’s upstairs.”
“Right.” He looks from the hallway to the kitchen window. “We can’t talk here. Let’s go to the garage.”
I am so stunned, so wrong-footed by the look on his face, that I do as I am told and follow him out of the house and into the garage. He turns on the light and then sits down on Jake’s weight bench. He pats the space beside him and waits for me to sit down. He looks surprised when I shake my head.
“Claire”—he places the laptop bag on his knees and presses down on it with the heels of his hands—“I don’t know how to tell you this.”
“You’re having an affair.” The words sound ridiculous as they come out of my mouth. I feel as though I’m playing the role of the wronged wife in a soap opera.
“What?”
“With Edie Christian.”
“Edie Chr—” He tips back his head and laughs.
Irritation bubbles inside me. “Mark, I know. Stephen told me. Billy saw you kissing her in a pub last year.”
Mark’s laughter stops as quickly as it started. “What?”
“Billy was there. He was outside, waiting for Alfie. He saw you, he heard your phone conversation with your boss outside, he saw the kiss.”
“He . . .”
“He was hiding behind a skip. He heard and saw everything. That’s why he defaced all the photos of you in the album. I checked the dates on the calendar. It happened last summer.”
Mark doesn’t say a word. He stares at me dumbly, his bottom lip wet with spittle. He blinks several times, then looks down at the laptop on his knee.
“Mark?”
His Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows. “I can’t . . . I can’t take it in. I came home to talk to you about something else. I wasn’t expecting this.”
“When did the affair start?”
“Affair?” He frowns. “I haven’t had an affair.”
“There’s no point denying it. I’ll ask her.”
“Ask who?”
“Edie Christian.”
“Oh God.” He runs a hand over his hair. “Claire, I’m not having an affair with Edie Christian, or anyone else for that matter.”
“So you’re denying that you kissed her? You’re saying Billy was lying.”
“No. He wasn’t. But he didn’t see what he thought he saw.”
“So tell me what happened then?”
“Oh God, Claire. It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.”
“You kissed another woman.”
“I tried to.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“We . . .” He puts the laptop down on the bench beside him and stands up so he’s facing me. “We hadn’t been getting on for a while and—”
“So it’s my fault, is it?”
“No! God, no! It was me, it was all me. I was stressed. Dad had been ringing me up to moan about how unreliable Stephen was but when I tried to ring Stephen he laid into me. He said they were overworked and understaffed and if I gave a shit about Dad I’d do the right thing and join the firm. Then Dad had his heart attack and I was so scared. I thought he was going to die and it was my fault for being ambitious and thinking a builder’s merchants was beneath me. Then there was work—my work—and the pressure I was under to hit my targets. The kids were fighting at home. You and I weren’t getting on. And I couldn’t deal with it, Claire. I didn’t have anyone to talk to.”
“You’ve got friends.”
“I know. But no one wants to be the boring bastard bringing the mood down on a night out by complaining about how stressed they are.”
“You could have talked to me.”
“Could I? We were jumping down each other’s throats every other day.”
“And you thought kissing another woman would help?”
“No!” He reaches for me but I shift back before he can touch me. “I was drunk. I was drinking alone and then Phil Jones called. He said I hadn’t been performing well and my figures were shit and that he’d have to let me go. I begged him. I begged him not to and I told him everything—all the reasons why I’d been struggling—and he said he’d give me one last chance. A written warning and if I put one foot wrong I was out. I was a mess when I went back into the pub. Miss Christian was there with some of her friends and she came over to the bar to see if I was okay. She was so nice to me and I was drunk and I was so stupidly grateful that she gave a shit that I . . . I . . .”
“Tried to kiss her.”
“Yeah.” He briefly closes his eyes. “She pushed me away. She was so shocked. Really embarrassed. I tried to smooth things over but she ran off to her friends and then someone over by the window stood up and asked if anyone had a Ford Focus because someone had just chucked a rock through the window.”
“It was Billy.”
“What?”
“Stephen told me.”
“Stephen knew all this and he didn’t say anything?”
“He was protecting Billy. He’d been confiding in him. You should understand that.”
Mark shakes his head, his cheeks flushed red with anger. “Why should I?”
“Because apparently you had no one to talk to either.”
“Claire?” He reaches for my hand. “Please don’t cry. Please. I can’t bear it.”
“I’m not crying because I’m upset. I’m angry. I’m so bloody angry that—”
“It wasn’t even a kiss, not really.”
“It’s not that!” I throw his hand away from me. “It’s you. You and Billy and Stephen and Jake. Things go wrong in your lives but instead of talking about them you smash things up and drink and cheat and lie. What’s wrong with you? What the hell is wrong with all of you?”
Mark stares at his feet as I scream in frustration.
“Why didn’t any of you talk to me? I could have helped.”
“Could you?” Mark says softly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“There are some things you can’t control, Claire—some things you can’t fix. It might not make sense to you, the way we deal with our shit, but it’s our way of coping.”
“So Billy was right to throw a rock at your car, was he? Graffitiing his school was a good thing? So was teasing his brother and insulting you?”
“I don’t know.” He sinks back down onto the weight bench and rests his head in his hands. “I don’t know anything anymore. I knew we were going to have a tough conversation tonight but not about this.”
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“This.” He touches the laptop bag on the bench beside him.
“What are you talking about?”
“I found some photos on it,” he mumbles through his fingers. “Photos of little boys. Naked photos.”
A cold chill runs through me. “Whose laptop is that, Mark?”
He looks up at me. “It’s Jake’s.”