So, Joshie knows all about me and Robbie. He waited, thankfully, until we were alone to tell me this, the last guest having been forced to leave their front-row seat. He let me accuse and reproach in front of them, and he said nothing.
Once the last one had left, and just as I was preparing myself for the big showdown, he said, ‘You can quit the act now, Sas.’
I tried to protest, of course I did. He was having none of it. And, in all honesty, I didn’t have it in me to fight. We were going to tell them in a week or so anyway – why put him through the agony of having to fight to hear the truth? I did resist for a little while – I wanted to punish him for the public humiliation he had just put me through – but then he mentioned the flat and I knew I should just give it up, for his sake. I owed him that.
I sat down on the ottoman before my legs gave way beneath me. All this time, I’d been thinking we had the upper hand, and they knew. I suddenly felt very cruel.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said finally. He had sat down opposite me on the sofa. ‘I’ll tell you everything.’
‘I think I pretty much know it all,’ he said. He didn’t even shout at me. He didn’t give me a hard time at all. And that almost made it worse. ‘I just wanted you to admit to it. I wanted you to stop treating me like an idiot.’
‘I don’t understand what’s going on with you and Paula,’ I said, as if I had any right to know the truth, after the way I’d been behaving. I was struck with jealousy, I’m not going to lie. The idea of Joshie, his hands all over another woman, his lips locked on hers, it was killing me. Hypocrite? Moi?
He told me from start to finish about their – pretty chaste, I was glad to hear – relationship. And despite what all my party guests would say, I believed him. They were not having an affair. I couldn’t understand why I felt so relieved.
‘I’m sorry if you were embarrassed. That was never our intention.’
I didn’t like the way he said the word ‘our’.
‘I’ll live,’ I said. He was looking wretched. I could see that he was racked with guilt. I reached out and took hold of his hand. And he let me.
I looked at him. At his kind, handsome face. ‘Can you ever forgive me?’