‘No,’ Simon replied quickly, without raising his head.
I can’t explain how relieved I was to hear that two-letter word, but I couldn’t ask why. So it was only when we were invited to Steven and Baishali’s house for drinks to celebrate Simon and him winning a large county council commission that the murky waters cleared.
‘Is everything all right?’ Baishali asked when I joined her in the kitchen. The truth was that I was as anxious as hell and clearly I was showing it. I’d avoided Paula of late because she’d have seen straight through me and demanded I take action – or worse, started the ball rolling without my permission. But Baishali didn’t like confrontation, so I’d picked her and Steven as my first social engagement since the attack to try and navigate my life back to normality.
‘Yes, everything’s fine,’ I replied, and gave her a fixed grin.
‘It’s a shame about Dougie, isn’t it?’
I swallowed hard. ‘What about him?’
‘He’s gone back to Scotland, hasn’t he? He popped a note through our letterbox saying goodbye. Seems very sudden, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, trying to disguise my relief.
‘Simon must be disappointed.’
I had no idea what my husband was thinking anymore. I asked myself why he hadn’t told me his best friend of twenty years had suddenly moved away. I was growing increasingly uneasy over how our lines of communication were becoming disconnected. But if it was true, that the animal had crawled back to Scotland, maybe I could start to try and live again.
At a time when every part of me craved normality, Simon and I were drifting apart in separate lifeboats.
Sex and intimacy were the furthest things from my mind, but when we got home from Steven and Baishali’s, I was crying out to feel like a normal woman again. I desperately hoped that by making love to Simon, I could push that night from my mind.
Physically I was still sore, but I forced myself to make him want me because I didn’t want to equate sex with pain and violence for the rest of my life. Even during the act, which is exactly what it was, I knew we were both only going through the motions. And if I felt it, I’m sure he did too.
But it was the start I needed to repair what someone else had almost ruined.
14 May
I hadn’t guessed I was pregnant, even when I missed my period.
I presumed that while I’d been focused on blanking things out, I’d simply neglected my body by skipping meals and sleeping badly. I chalked it up as an off-kilter cycle and my body’s delayed reaction to trauma.
But when the second month rolled by with no sign of its arrival, I nervously made a doctor’s appointment. Three days after my test, Dr Willows rang with the results. I slumped onto the stool by the telephone, the wind knocked out of my sails. I was pregnant and I had no idea what to do.
I was already stretched to breaking point. I was a mum to three children under the age of five, I was married to a workaholic husband and I was trying to hide the mental scars Dougie had left me with. The thought of having to cope with another little one mortified me. It would be another distraction that stopped Simon and I from repairing our relationship. I’d accepted that our sex life had shifted from passionate to sporadic and unfulfilling, but at least we’d made a little effort to be intimate. And while neither of us had climaxed and so it was unlikely, biologically it didn’t mean I couldn’t fall pregnant.
I seriously considered an abortion. I imagined organising it while Simon was at work and the kids were at school. And by the time they’d all pour through the door at teatime, none of them would be any the wiser.
But I’d know. I loved motherhood and I had no right to stop a second heart beating inside me because mine was broken. Poor timing was an excuse, not a reason, and a pretty weak one at that. So I forced myself to come to terms with it. I had gotten through tougher times.
I didn’t know what the future would bring for Simon and I. But I knew there was a future for the baby inside me.
SIMON
Northampton, twenty-eight years earlier
18 March
‘Why? Why?’ I bellowed while my fists took on lives of their own, raining blow after blow upon Dougie’s face and body.
Four days had passed since I’d heard my best friend and my wife together, and I’d barely been able to look at her. She’d been uncommonly quiet and withdrawn – ravaged, I hoped, by guilt for what they had been doing behind my back.
I made a backlog of office work my excuse for spending time away from both her and the scene of their crime. But concentration was impossible and I’d sit at my desk, haunted by the noises they’d made behind our bedroom door. And although she’d desecrated my faith in her, my physical fury was directed towards Dougie.
I was unsure if I was more enraged by his devious, cowardly betrayal of our friendship or at my own naivety for never having doubted his loyalty. Catherine aside, I’d been closer to him than any of my friends. But he’d made a mockery of all I’d presumed, and try as I might to contain it, my anger refused to simmer until I’d made him feel as weak and vulnerable as I was.
I waited until the early hours of the morning when she was asleep before I walked to his rented house. Both the upstairs and downstairs curtains sealed off the inside from unwanted prying eyes, so I ventured to the rear and peered through his kitchen window.
The light was on and an unconscious Dougie was sitting inside on a plastic patio chair, his head tilted backwards, surrounded by empty beer cans lying like fallen soldiers. While my life was imploding, he’d been celebrating. My rage peaked.
He only became aware of my presence when I slipped my arm around his neck and jolted him backwards to the floor. Startled, his blurred eyes opened wide but the alcohol in his system made any attempt to reclaim gravity futile. I straddled him and rapidly recast the structure of his face into a tapestry of blood, hair and mucus. My knees pinned his helpless, flailing arms to the ground, but even bruising my knuckles as I broke his nose and jaw was not enough to curb my ferocity.
‘Why her?’ I spat. ‘Why my wife?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he choked. ‘Stop, please stop—’ But I didn’t allow him to continue: another blow thrust his front teeth to the back of his throat like pins in a bowling alley.
I dragged him to his feet by his stained shirt collar and held him against the wall. His head hit a clock and it fell, spraying glass across the lino.
‘I don’t know why,’ he gasped, his breath reeking of booze and blood. ‘I didn’t plan to—’
‘Shut up!’ I snarled. ‘You’ve destroyed us, Dougie. You and me, her and me, all of us. Everything . . .’