Milly ‘smiles’ up at me, tendrils of drool dripping off her tongue. I’ve got a pretty good idea how she managed to escape.
Sure enough, when I reach the kitchen, the dog padding silently beside me, the door to the porch is open.
‘You’re supposed to stay in your bed until Mummy lets you out!’ I say, pointing at the pile of rugs and blankets where she sleeps at night. Milly’s ears prick up at the mention of the word ‘bed’ and her tail falls between her legs. ‘Did silly Daddy leave the door open on his way to work?’
I never thought I’d be the kind of woman who’d refer to herself and her husband as ‘Mummy and Daddy’ when speaking to a pet but Milly is as much a part of our family as Charlotte. She’s the sister we could never give her.
I shut Milly back in the porch, my heart twisting as she looks beseechingly at me with her big, brown eyes. It’s eight o’clock. We should be strolling through the park at the back of the house but I need to continue what I started. I need to get back to the cloakroom.
The contents of Brian’s pockets are where I left them – strewn around the base of the coat stand. I kneel down, wishing I’d grabbed a cushion from the living room as my knees click in protestation, and examine my spoils. There’s a handkerchief, white with an embroidered golfer in the corner, unused, folded neatly into a square (given to him by one of the children for Christmas), three paper tissues, used, a length of twine, the same type Brian uses to tie up the tomatoes in his allotment, a receipt from the local supermarket for ￡40 worth of petrol, a mint imperial, coated with fluff, a handful of loose change and a crumpled cinema ticket. My heart races as I touch it – then I read the title of the film and the date – and my pulse returns to normal. It’s for a comedy we went to see together. I hated it – found it rude, crude and slapstick – but Brian laughed like a drain.
And that’s it. Nothing strange. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing incriminating.
Just … Brian stuff.
I sweep his belongings into a pile with the side of my hand, then scoop them up and carefully distribute them amongst his pockets, making sure everything is returned to where I found it. Brian isn’t a fastidious man; he won’t know, or care, which pocket held the change and which the cinema ticket but I’m not taking any chances.
Maybe there is no evidence at all.
Charlotte didn’t squeeze my hand when I asked if her secret had anything to do with her father. She didn’t so much as twitch. I don’t know what I was thinking, imagining she might respond – or even asking the question in the first place. Actually I do. I was following up a hunch; a hunch that my husband was betraying me, again.
Six years ago Brian made a mistake – one that nearly destroyed not only our marriage, but his career too – he had an affair with a twenty-three-year-old Parliamentary intern. I raged, I shouted and I screamed. I stayed with my friend Jane for two nights. I would have stayed longer but I didn’t want Charlotte to suffer. It took a long time but eventually I forgave Brian. Why? Because the affair happened shortly after one of my ‘episodes’, because my family is more important to me than anything in the world and because, although Brian has many faults, he is a good man at heart.
A ‘good man at heart’ – it sounds like such a terribly twee reason to forgive someone their infidelity, doesn’t it? Perhaps it is. But it’s infinitely preferable to life with a bad man and, when Brian and I met, I knew all about that.
It was the summer of 1993 and we were both living in Athens. I was a TEFL teacher and he was a widower businessman chasing a big deal. The first time Brian said hello to me, in a tatty tavern on the banks of the river Kifissos, I ignored him. The second time I moved seats. The third time he refused to let me continue pretending he didn’t exist. He bought me a drink and delivered it to my table with a note that said ‘Hello from one Brit to another’ and then walked straight out of the pub without a backward glance. I couldn’t help but smile. After that he was quietly persistent, a ‘hello’ here, a ‘what are you reading?’ there and we gradually became friends. It took me a long time to lower my barriers but finally, almost one year to the day after we first met, I let myself love him.