Alex looked up at me, horrified. ‘Firstly, how about pointing out I met you eight years ago, rather than making out this all happened yesterday, plus – a three-month relationship? That’s just a blatant lie, and I didn’t encourage his mother to do anything of the sort or shove his stupid little girlfriend.’ She scanned the rest of the article, stunned. ‘They’ve referenced the weekend in Ibiza, David witnessing him kissing me at work, that weekend he supposedly came here, they’ve quoted Gary Day and there’s a huge picture of him too.’
She pushed the laptop away from her and started to visibly shake.
‘Hey!’ I said, quickly moving my chair to get up and put my arm round her. ‘It’s OK.’
‘It’s not OK.’ She went completely rigid at my touch and, thrown, I quickly removed my arm. ‘Everyone will see this. Our families, friends, colleagues, people I barely know, complete strangers – but most of all, what about Maisie and Tilly? This is going to be there forever now. What do I say when they’re old enough to find this? When their friends look at it and know what I’ve done?’
‘But you didn’t do it. Not what he says you did.’
She closed her eyes, barely moving – as if undergoing an invasive medical procedure so painful all she could do was wait for it to be over. ‘I had no idea who he was. I swear.’
I didn’t know what to say, and as I sat there unable to make it go away for her, or fix it, the now familiar feelings of powerlessness, rage and guilt began to burn within me. This was all my fault – and his.
‘Rob.’ She opened her eyes suddenly and looked at me, desperately. ‘You still believe me, don’t you?’
I stared at the mother of my children and the woman I had fallen in love with on sight ten years ago. ‘Of course I believe you.’
And I do.
There are some messed up things that can happen in life – I’m not oblivious to the fact that some people find themselves going through truly horrendous experiences when literally the day before their lives were totally normal – but if anyone had told me Alex would one day walk in through our front door and announce that she’d been publicly accused of sexually abusing a vulnerable seventeen-year-old boy, I would have laughed. Not because it’s funny, but because it is so offensively ridiculous. When it actually happened and she said the words out loud, waiting, terrified, for my reaction, I didn’t even have to think about it. I got to my feet, walked over to her, and I held her while she cried.
My wife is not what you would call a shy, retiring person. She’s outspoken, and what she would say is standing up for what’s right, other people might describe as being bolshy. I know she can appear unlikeable. Our first landlord ended up serving notice on us after Alex got into a heated argument with him about a faulty fridge he hadn’t fixed as fast as Al thought he should have. I’ve watched her have confrontations with restaurant, shop and hotel managers, listened to numerous draft complaint letters to the council, a window company and our bank, and not said anything when she’s threatened legal action over, among other things, a pair of faulty shoes.
But my wife is also genuinely one of the kindest, most generous people I have ever met. Being a doctor, friends of hers often ask her for ‘informal’ advice. That can range from expecting her to diagnose their kids’ rashes over the phone, to wanting her to dispense advice when they’re worried their children’s behavioural problems are in fact the first signs of autism. She gets texts at all hours, and I’ve never known her not call anyone back because she was too tired to deal with it after a long day at work. When she asks people how they are, they actually tell her. Warts and all, as well as at great length, but she always listens. If one of her friends called in the middle of the night needing her, she would go. Without question.
There aren’t, however, anywhere near as many people she talks to about things that bother her. She would say that’s because she’s a private person, but it’s more about her finding it hard to open up, because she doesn’t feel comfortable relying on people. Her father ran up thousands of pounds worth of debt behind her mother’s back, and it only came to light when he did a bunk, leaving Alex’s mum to sort everything out, with Alex’s help. They almost lost the house. Alex got used – fast – to having to sort things out for herself and as a result is a very competent person, who is now often mistaken for being strong to the point of invincibility. Her self-reliance can also come across as arrogance when she gets frustrated with people not doing things as fast as she could do them herself – just as her difficulty with trusting people can appear as aloofness to people who don’t know her well. But she let me in. In spite of the fact that she knew how much she was risking the second we crossed the line and kissed, she overrode her instincts.
‘All of my friends have warned me that if you’ll cheat on your wife with me, one day you’ll cheat on me too.’ She’d looked up worriedly as she lay in my arms in her bed after the first time we slept together. She was understandably afraid of getting hurt as well as the risk to her career and who could blame her? I didn’t think about Bella’s feelings when I slept with Alex. I knew I was going to devastate Bel and I did it anyway. Bella and I were childhood sweethearts. We’d long outgrown each other and reached the point where we either split up or got married. We went the wrong way and got married. That was our only mistake.
I knew the second I met Alex that she was the one. She always has been, and she always will be. I explained all of that to Alex as we lay there in her bed and added: ‘I will never cheat on you like this with anyone else, and I will never leave you. I promise.’
And while I know how pathetic it sounds to say I kept my promise – because when I slept with Hannah it was just sex and it meant less than nothing – I honestly believe it’s true. I had, and still have, no feelings for Hannah whatsoever. I don’t even particularly like her as a person. I made a mistake – but it’s scarily easy to do.
Sorry, but it is. It’s easy to find yourself getting pissed much too quickly when you’ve got kids and you never get to go out. You’re overexcited to be out in a real-life pub, you start acting like you’re on day release and neck drinks on the company card that you don’t have the tolerance for any more. The alcohol kicks in and you start to feel invincible and reckless. You remember how funny you used to be, you’re enjoying yourself immensely and everyone is having a great old time. Then someone in particular appears at your elbow, laughing and smiling up at you. She’s pretty and acts like you’re amazing. She touches your arm, and you jump like it’s an electric shock because you don’t get touched much these days. Not like that anyway.
Your wife is so tired when she comes to bed that if you turn over to hug her, she wriggles away and says she just needs five minutes peace to herself to read her book, so you wait, but you’re knackered too and by the time she turns the lights off you’re already pretty much asleep – which you can’t help thinking was your wife’s aim all along. You might try to talk to her about it for the hundredth time – tell her you want things to be different, you need to make time for each other… and she will respond that she has a really demanding job, two small children and she’s ‘giving’ all the time. What she really wants – rather than being told her marriage is in trouble and only a shag can fix it – is to be kissed and hugged a bit more? Paid attention to? Supported?
Which is confusing and pretty fucking irritating because the last time you did all of that, you were told to get off, because she was reading.