What Goes Around

chapter FORTY EIGHT

Gloria

‘Why did you stay, Gloria?’

We’re lying in bed and there’s no-one but us in the house and I’ve told Paul all about the affairs, not just the affair with Lucy, no, it wasn’t just her.

He cheated from day one.

‘Why?’ Paul says to the silence. ‘If you knew that he was cheating, did you stay?’

‘That’s what you did then.’

He nods because it was the same for his wife - you just stayed in a marriage that didn’t work.

I tell him my theory, the one about Charles and Diana, that once they got divorced it seemed okay for everyone else.

I mean the world didn’t stop did it?

If they could do it, why couldn’t we?

And so he did.

I’d have stayed.

I lie there and close my eyes as Paul chats on and I admit the truth to myself.

I am lazy.

I’d have carried on turning a blind eye. That’s why I hated Lucy so much, not so much what she did, but that she insisted that he leave.

‘You think the whole world’s at it.’ Paul’s talking about sex as I go deep into my mind. ‘I used to get it on my birthday and at Christmas and in the end I gave up.’ He doesn’t sound bitter. ‘I didn’t want charity.’

‘You never had an affair?’

‘Only with food.’ Paul says. ‘You know, I thought that was the problem, that it was my size that put her off.’ He looks over to me. ‘It turns out that I could have been twelve stone and ripped and she still wouldn’t have wanted me.’

I lie there and think of Lucy who was eight stone and gorgeous and still he cheated on her, for the first time in decades I am almost free.

It wasn’t actually about me.

I wasn’t the one with the problem.

I wasn’t the crap wife that pushed him away, that made him do what he did.

It wasn’t even about Lucy.

The problem lay with him.

‘Did you never think about having an affair, Gloria?’ He looks over.

‘God, no.’

I didn’t.

But I’m being lazy again. I am heading for the peanut butter jar that lives in my mind. I’m stuffing thoughts down, except I want a relationship that’s honest. I turn on the bed and I look to a man that might not be able to survive what I’m about to say here, but if it’s going to be better than good then I really need Paul to be able to handle my shame.

I tell him something I’ve never shared with another living soul.

I’ve had a few angry words with a dead one mind.

Oh, the stories I could tell!

And I do.

‘There was a time…’ I look over to him and my face is on fire. ‘After I had Alice, I lost a lot of weight. I really wanted my marriage to work, I’d have done anything to save it.’

He looks at me, his eyes tell me I can go on.

I can’t.

I am starting to cry.

‘Gloria?’

‘We went to a dinner party…’ My eyes are screwed closed and I am so ashamed, so ashamed and I cannot do this. ‘At the end of the night….’ I go to climb off the bed but Paul holds my arm. ‘There was just us and Greg and Shirley - Greg’s the MD. He’d told me before we went out that we needed to impress him, that I needed to behave.’ I don’t want to do this – I don’t want to re-live this, except I am. ‘They had one of those heated outdoor spa things.’ I open my eyes and I watch Paul as I tell him. ‘Shirley said it didn’t matter if I didn’t have a bikini and they were already in the water. I just went in in my bra and knickers…’

He’s still looking at me.

‘Shirley started talking about my weight loss, how great my figure was, how nice my breasts looked. Then she started feeling them. He told me take off my bra and, when I didn’t, Shirley did it for me.’

I know that Paul thinks this sort of stuff is disgusting and I do too – I’m disgusted by that time.

‘When I didn’t want to play with Shirley,’ I just tell Paul what happened. ‘He did.’

‘And Greg?’

I just lie there and I remember it, I remember how I’d have done anything to save my marriage, and so I did.

I was screwed by the MD because I didn’t have the guts to get up and leave.

I’m more ashamed of that, than what happened.

‘It was his sodding fantasy, not mine,’ I say. ‘But I did it – I went along with it…’

I tell him how excruciating work things were for me after that, how I needed five Bacardi’s and cokes just to get through them.

He holds me as I cry and, when I’ve calmed down, he’s still holding me, and then he kisses me.

He isn’t turned on by the story; he’s just turned on by me.

He knows me now.

Someone knows.

The person that matters the most in the world to me, actually knows my truth.

And the nicest thing of all is, he’s still here.