‘I need a drink.’ I wipe my eyes, dry mouthed with fear.
He pushes an open bottle of red wine across the table, but I want to stay sober. At the sink, I pour myself a glass of water, looking out into the darkness.
I don’t know if I’ll be packing my bags in the morning.
Once I’ve drunk the water, I turn to him, and in a low voice I tell him everything it would have been wiser to say before we made our vows. In a great long rush of a speech, I explain the series of events that led to the incident, in my last job but one, when Frankie and I still lived in Hove, near the sea that I both loved and feared.
‘I see,’ Matthew says after I’ve finished talking. That is all he says. I stare at him. Waiting. Feeling him processing.
But he doesn’t say anything else. He just gets up and walks out of the room.
‘Matthew…’ I start.
‘I need some time,’ he says over his shoulder, the door banging behind him as he goes.
I hear the front door slam and his car screech away.
I sit at the table and think about what has been sent to his email.
Later I realise it is the same article that I’d been sent six weeks ago: the poor photocopy that I’d hidden away. It is exactly the same one.
The one that so mysteriously vanished from my dressing-table drawer.
* * *
10 p.m.
* * *
When he comes back, slightly calmer, when he asks a few more questions, I think Matthew does believe I am innocent; that I was unfairly accused.
He believes what I repeat, sweating with anxiety, pacing up and down: that the photo was taken by a student with a grudge, from the most incriminating angle.
And it is the fact he seems more sorrowful than angry now that is almost worse than when he’d shouted.
‘Why didn’t you just tell me?’ he keeps saying, increasingly drunk as he ploughs his way through the red wine – until I want to scream: Why do you think? Didn’t you hear what I said?
Eventually we go upstairs, very subdued, and when I get into bed, he rolls away from me as I try to cuddle up to him.
I lie sleepless again, staring blankly into the night.
Have I left it too late?
Thirty-Three
Jeanie
6 March 2015
8.30 a.m.
When I wake, Matt’s already left for work. I fell asleep so late, I’d not heard him leaving, and I feel disoriented as I haul myself out of bed. There’s no note from him, no text.
Frankie has gone to London, I remember, to sort his passport out. He’s leaving for France soon.
It’s Agata’s day to clean the house. I feel awkward and embarrassed when she’s here – but fortunately I’m going into the college, so I’ll miss her today. And at least that’ll be a distraction.
I’m really looking forward to it actually.
* * *
10 a.m.
On the drive into town my phone rings.
It is the college: an extremely harassed-sounding vice principal on the line.
‘Hi, Lesley,’ I say, hoping she isn’t going to reschedule. ‘How are you? I’m nearly there actually—’
There is a slight pause, then she says, ‘I’m going to get straight to the point, Jeanie. I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to withdraw the job offer.’
I feel like I’ve been gut punched.
‘Hang on please.’ I veer into a bus stop and turn off the engine.
Lesley is talking to the air as I pick up my handset again, trying to say the other teacher has decided to stay – but I know it is a lie. Obviously it is a lie – meant to spare my blushes.
‘And this is definitive?’ I ask, but I already know the answer.
When I hang up, having muttered various ‘Oh don’t worry, I quite understand’ type platitudes, I switch off my phone and just sit.
What else is there to say?
Eventually a bus hoots behind me. Absently I restart the car, driving blindly into the countryside, following a road I don’t know.
I don’t know anything round here: anyone or any place.
I park the car beside the old canal. I walk down the towpath to the water’s edge, past a clutch of houseboats in varying states of upkeep. I stand on the bank, staring into the murky depths.
How can I clear my name and start again properly when people believe something that isn’t true? When everyone believes it, except those closest to me? I am tarnished forever.
And if I lose Matthew too, if that happens – how can I ever live a normal life again? How can I live with that loss?
* * *
When I finally go home, hours later, Matthew is back.
‘You’re early.’ I reach up to kiss him, but he pulls away.
‘I had to come back. The alarm company called, saying it was going off.’
‘Oh?’ I put the kettle on, overcome with lethargy. ‘Agata must have forgotten to set it when she left. I’ll remind her next week.’
‘You won’t. Agata’s resigned.’ He is grim. ‘She’s not coming back.’