‘Lord, Anneliese, please don’t think we’d ever do anything to hurt you,’ began Nell.
She looked anxiously at Edward, pleading with him to sort it out.
You could tell what people thought by their eyes more easily than by anything else, Anneliese knew.
Over the years, she and Edward had exchanged many telling looks. And she and Nell had exchanged them too – they’d been friends for nearly twenty years, a lifetime.
Only she’d never been aware of these two important people in her life looking at each other in this way. Until now.
Anneliese felt as if she was watching the last reel of a movie where all the plot loopholes are tied up.
Nell and Edward were the ones sharing the telling looks now because they were the couple in this scene: not Anneliese and Edward, but Nell and Edward.
‘Please, Anneliese, sit down.’
Edward was still beside her, his expression anxious and his hands out in supplication.
‘I wish we didn’t have to do this but I suppose we have to. Now or never, right?’ he said, looking defeated but determined, determined to have this awful conversation.
And that was when Anneliese knew absolutely that Edward was leaving her for Nell.
Edward hated confrontation of any kind. He’d been useless on those occasions when Beth was in floods of tears, distraught over something or other.
His facing a conversation that could easily end in shouting told her all she needed to know.
‘You’re going, aren’t you? You’re going with Nell.’
Edward nodded mutely and held his hands out imploringly, as if to say, What else can I do?
Anneliese sat down then and placed her hands on the table. ‘I came home early because I’ve got a migraine,’ she said to no one in particular.
‘Shall I fetch your pills?’ Edward said.
She nodded.
He rushed from the room, eager to be gone.
‘Tea might help,’ Nell added and turned to open cupboards, finding cups and teabags easily. She’d spent so many hours here, sharing tea and life with Anneliese, that she knew where everything was as well as Edward and Anneliese did.
‘Tea wouldn’t help, actually,’ Anneliese said harshly. ‘Nothing is going to help.’
Defeated, Nell sat down at the far end of the table opposite Anneliese.
Her hair was different, Anneliese realised. Normally, Nell’s dark blonde curly hair was windswept even when there wasn’t wind. She rarely wore much in the way of make-up and for a woman of her age – Anneliese’s exact age, actually, fifty-six – she had remarkably clear, unlined skin with just a few freckles and the inevitable little creases that spun out from her laughing blue eyes. Today, her hair was brushed carefully into shape and she wore lipstick and mascara. She looked done, ready for some event.
And that event was running off with Anneliese’s husband.
‘Why, Nell, why?’
‘Oh Anneliese, don’t sit there and look so surprised,’ snapped Nell, who’d never snapped at Anneliese before in her life. ‘You must have known. Edward said you didn’t, but I knew you did. Women know. You’re turned a blind eye, that’s all. Which says a lot about your relationship, that you didn’t care enough –’
‘I didn’t know,’ interrupted Anneliese, shocked at this new version of Nell whom, mere moments ago, was saying she’d never meant to hurt Anneliese. ‘If I’d known, do you think I’d have gone on wanting to be your friend, going for lunch with you, asking you here for dinner?’ She stopped because she felt too numb to think up other examples of how she hadn’t known.
‘How long has it been going on?’ she whispered.
Anneliese knew she should summon up rage and fury, but all she felt at this moment was a terrible weakness in her legs, and the sense that she’d been totally wrong about the people in her life.
If either Edward or Nell had betrayed her individually, the other would have been there to remind her that they still loved her. But they’d both betrayed her. Together.
‘Don’t let on you didn’t know. You must have known,’ Nell hissed.
Again, Anneliese felt herself recoil at the bitterness in her friend’s voice.
‘Don’t lie to me, Anneliese. You might lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me. If you two were crazily in love with each other, would Edward have come to me? Answer me that, then? No, he wouldn’t. He came to me because you didn’t need him, you cut him off. You had so much and you didn’t care, didn’t realise it. Well, I did and I’m not going to apologise to you for it.’
Anneliese felt the weight of Nell’s rage at her: at Anneliese for having the wonderful Edward all to herself and not realising what a treasure she had, a treasure that she’d stupidly lost.
She thought of all the Saturday nights she’d invited Nell over to the cottage for dinner, making it sound as if they were three friends sharing a meal instead of a happily married couple reaching out the hand of friendship to a widow who might be sitting on her own at home otherwise. Eric, Nell’s husband, had died ten years previously, and since then Anneliese had tried so hard to include Nell in their lives. Anneliese had meant it as pure friendship, but perhaps Nell had seen it as something else: as pity? Or as Anneliese showing off, as if to say, I have a husband and you don’t. Come and eat with us and feel jealous, why don’t you? What else had Nell misconstrued?
‘I thought you knew me well enough, Nell, to know that if I’d realised you and Edward were –’
Saying it was hard.
‘– having an affair, I’d have said something. I might have a lot of flaws, but I know that I’m honest. Remember how many talks we had about the value of friendship where honesty mattered? How we hated fake friends, people who said the right things at the right time and meant none of it?’
The anger that hadn’t been there suddenly blazed to life in Anneliese’s heart. They’d lied to her. They’d both said they valued truth, and now it transpired that truth had been missing for such a long time. Worse, Nell was trying to put the blame on to Anneliese.
‘I didn’t have a clue what was happening,’ she went on in a harsh voice. ‘It might make you feel better to think I did and that I was giving you tacit approval to steal my husband, but I didn’t.’
‘I’m sorry, Anneliese.’ Edward stood in the doorway, the small plastic container of Anneliese’s migraine medicine in his hand and a look of desolation on his face. ‘I knew you didn’t know. I wanted to think you did because it would be easier, but I knew you didn’t.’
‘How long has it been going on, this thing between you two?’ Anneliese asked, purposely not looking at Nell any more.
‘Not that long,’ said Edward.
‘Since the fundraiser for the lifeboat,’ Nell interrupted, obviously not keen on the damage limitation of breaking it all to Anneliese gently.
Well over a year, Anneliese thought to herself.
‘I presume you were waiting for a nice time to break it to me, then. My birthday? Christmas?’
‘It had to come out sometime,’ Nell said coolly. ‘Might as well be now.’
Both women looked at Edward, who shrugged helplessly.
Anneliese