JEN
It seems I have all the evidence I need. I feel nothing but numbness, a sense that everything inside me is dying. I try to give Caro a reassuring smile, but I’m afraid it’s more of a scowl than anything.
‘Are you all right?’ she asks.
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ I manage to say.
I look over at Bex at the next table, she has her head down and is playing with her phone, but I know she must have heard what Caro just told me. My instinct is to jump up and seek out comfort from Bex – a hug, a reassuring word – but I have to continue to sit here opposite Caro, pretending my world hasn’t just fallen apart.
Of course, I had no right to determine who Laurence should or should not date – after all, although we had been due to meet up, we hadn’t been seeing one another since the previous summer. But I still feel jealous, jealous of a dead woman. For a moment, I understand how Daniel must have felt when he found out about the affair. I imagine myself holding a knife, pressing it to Laurence’s throat. But then I stop myself. What am I thinking? The revelation has unsteadied me, I tell myself, and it’s threatening to warp my perception. I have to be careful, I know that. I take a sip of sparkling water and do what my therapist says I must do if I find reality slipping away from me: I have to ‘return to the moment’.
But suddenly an awful thought occurs to me. ‘How long had this man … Laurence … how long had he been seeing Victoria?’ I ask.
‘I’m not sure,’ says Caro. ‘Anyway, I’d rather not dwell on that, if you don’t mind. As I said to you, I want to make sure that Vicky’s positive side comes across. You do promise me nothing of this, what I’ve just told you, will come out?’
‘Don’t worry, I promise,’ I tell her.
She asks me why I have an image of Victoria’s lover on my phone. I tell her that he was a friend of mine and I try to smile as I say something banal about life’s strange coincidences.
‘Anyway, I really must be going,’ she says, clearly unsettled by my odd behaviour.
I tell her that I will settle the bill. It’s the least I can do. She stands up, checks her phone, says goodbye. I watch her walk across the room, waiting, waiting for her to disappear around the corner, before I burst into tears. The release is immense. Bex rushes from her table to sit next to me.
I can’t get the words out, but there’s no need. She tells me she heard everything.
‘Oh, Jen,’ she says, putting her arm around me. ‘What a shit. But at least you know now.’
I take a deep breath and manage to spit out the words, ‘But what – what I don’t know – is how long?’
‘You think that they were together when you were …?’
I can’t speak. The thought of that turns my stomach. It’s not so much the possible infidelity, but that’s bad enough. It’s the idea that Laurence could have been lying to me, about this, and so much else. I think of that email he sent me just after the murder–suicide. It seemed so caring, so nice of him. But in it he neglected to mention that he even knew Victoria, never mind that they were, or had been, lovers. What else was he hiding? He was there that day, at the top of Kite Hill. He must have known that his girlfriend was about to be attacked. And yet he ran away. He left her to be butchered. Was it cowardice that compelled him to act as he did, or something else, something more sinister? Images, thoughts, past conversations swirl through my head. I feel weak.
‘Let’s get you back to the flat,’ says Bex. She takes out her purse and leaves cash for both our tables.
She helps me out of the café and calls an Uber. Mercifully, the traffic up Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road isn’t too bad, and we get back to the flat within half an hour. She leads me to the sofa like a member of the living dead.
‘Don’t think about it,’ says Bex, plumping up a cushion. ‘I’m sure Laurence wasn’t seeing Vicky then, back when you were together.’
‘But how do we know?’ I mumble. ‘That could have been the reason why …’ I don’t complete the sentence as I search my memory for possible signs of his infidelity.
There was that weekend he said he was going to a conference in Berlin. I know he went there, I saw some of the restaurant and bar receipts, but could that have been with Vicky? Then there were countless evenings when he said he had to work late. I never complained, of course, as I understood the pressures of his job.
I begin to wonder too about my own behaviour. Had this unconscious knowledge – the vague but formless sense that Laurence was seeing someone else – shaped the way I reacted during that awful scene at dinner? Since having therapy I have learned to try to understand the invisible factors that influence me. I had suffered one rejection – the loss of my job in particularly humiliating circumstances – but was I afraid of another? The desertion by Laurence? Was that why I wrecked his kitchen and bit into his arm?
Of course, it was all too late for Laurence and me. I know I could never get him back. Stupid of me to fantasise about ever reviving our relationship. But perhaps it isn’t too late for something else – it isn’t too late for revenge.