I study my husband asleep on the sofa. A nice face, broad forehead under brown hair (no longer long, but still plentiful), strong jaw without a hint of a double chin. But the parted lips and low rumbling of his snoring give him a slightly comical air: a sex god, he ain’t. Which is why it never occurred to me that he would find someone else. Or that someone else would choose him or chase him. Wrong.
‘Ahhhhh…I fell asleep in the wrong position.’ Jonathan blinks and winces as he starts massaging his neck. ‘Will you have a go with your healing touch?’
‘Let me see…’ Reluctantly, I knead the flesh, wondering with a kind of horrified curiosity if I might find a bite mark or a scratch there. I’m surprised at the jealousy that fills me. This man’s MINE, I want to tell the woman who texted him her lusty message. Keep your hands off him, L.
‘Hmmm…you are a genius…’ My husband beams with gratitude.
‘You are tense.’ Worn out by his double life, I reckon.
‘Work’s been non-stop.’ Jonathan gets up, stretches. ‘Tomorrow’s Tuesday, isn’t it?’ He follows me into the kitchen in his socks. ‘I’d better go through the rubbish, just so there’s no bottle caps in with the glass.’
‘Good-oh.’ I turn my back on the fussy sorting that will now take at least half an hour. Jonathan’s big on recycling, and can spend hours discussing landfill, the merits of compost, and the logic of climate change.
‘Damn, I missed Newsnight.’ Jonathan places four bottles of wine neatly in a carton that he will bring outside tomorrow morning. ‘Tea?’
‘Yes.’ I boil the kettle, set out two mugs on the counter. We stand there, sipping from our Charles and Diana Royal Wedding mugs, surrounded by children’s school books, white cabinets half-hidden by Blu-Tacked schedules, a half-opened bottle of wine and a bowl of fruit. You’d never know one of us was getting hot, volcanic, adulterous sex.
‘Ta.’ Jonathan takes the tea from me. ‘New dress?’ He gives my new Whistles wrap-around an appreciative look. ‘Nice.’
‘Thanks.’ I feel flustered: Jonathan can look at me like that while seeing someone else?! ‘I’m off to bed.’ I climb the stairs.
‘I’m off to Paris.’ Jonathan’s voice sounds flat and expressionless as he follows me upstairs. ‘On Wednesday. A conference on folliculitis.’
‘Not hair transplants? Or hair restorers?’ I ask innocently, and turn to see Jonathan start nervously: he can’t decide if he’s been caught out or I’m simply teasing him.
‘No. Definitely folliculitis.’ My husband switches off the lights downstairs and climbs up after me. ‘Definitely.’
Until recently, being married to Jonathan was easy. When friends would mock marriage as outdated or unrealistic, I’d stick up for it as the best of all possible unions. ‘Married people are healthier, and happier, than singles,’ I’d quote the latest research. ‘Married people are less likely to end up in jail, commit suicide, or go bankrupt.’ I was the marriage merchant in a world of marriage break-ups.
But am I facing a marriage break-up of my own?
Lying beside my husband on the bed, his feet hot against my cold ones, I test my reaction to this evening’s revelation as if I were a doctor trying to find the source of pain in a patient’s body. My ego is shattered, my nerves shaken, my heart in upheaval. Worse, my conscience is uneasy: have I been taking Jonathan for granted? The children, changing and growing, present a constant challenge; did I see Jonathan as something settled, someone I’d figured out? In fact, I realise with a jolt, I haven’t thought about Jonathan for years. I’ve listened to him, I’ve distracted him when things were difficult at work, I’ve co-opted him in sorting out the children’s rows. But I haven’t really engaged with Jonathan in a long time now. I didn’t feel the need to—nor did he. We talk about Kat’s homework, Freddy’s football, my mum’s pension, his mum’s prescriptions, the rise in our heating bills, the fall in house prices. Not ever about us. Somehow, I thought it a subject best left untouched. Yes, I’ve been vaguely conscious of leading life against a backdrop of mild disappointment; but I put it down to working in Dr Casey’s practice, not to marrying Jonathan Martin.
Jonathan is snoring again: a low grumble, reassuring, utterly familiar in a terrifying new landscape. I venture alone into this alien world. I can see me, on my own, at a friend’s party. Me, on my own with the children on holiday in Devon. Me, without Jonathan, cooking in the kitchen, or listening to the Today programme, or swearing at the sat nav. Me, without my husband. I blink, stare at the dark shapes in our room. I won’t sleep tonight, I know. My failures keep thumping inside my head. It’s because I’m thirty-seven. It’s because I take off my makeup in front of him. It’s because I don’t know the periodic table, or why e = mc2 or who edits the BMJ. What is Jonathan’s affair about? Improving his sex life, or…or satisfying his yearning for the best mate? If this is not just about sweaty grunting sex, it could mean divorce. My children robbed of their father, me robbed of my companion, all of us robbed of our peace of mind.
No, I’m not going to stand by and watch my life being kicked around. I’m going to fight to keep my husband. I must act quickly.
Within twenty-four hours, I am sitting in L’Avventura, staring at Mimi, his personal trainer, over a basket of focaccia and a bottle of mineral water. I’ve asked her to lunch on the pretext of sounding her out about taking me on as a client. I would no more hire Mimi to teach me kickboxing than go back to being mousey-brown, but Mimi is my chief suspect. Mimi has been on the scene for months now. My husband has never been thin, but he’s also never shown the slightest interest in losing weight, building his pecs, or achieving his target working heart rate. As of last winter, though, we have been getting a constant stream of ‘Mimi says my body weight:muscle ratio needs improving…’ and ‘Mimi says I need to get my heart rate up three times a week minimum.’ I noticed that Jonathan had started weighing himself with an absurd regularity, and stealing glances at our bedroom mirror. More suspicious still, his sessions with Mimi never seemed to take place around our home, but rather, near the office in Harrow. It took me three months to arrange an accidentally-on-purpose meeting with the Australian fitness freak, and I didn’t like what I saw: slim, blonde, and extremely young.
Just his type. In fact I can’t think of many men who would deploy great physical exertion to get her out of their bed—even though she moves her lips when she reads the menu, and pronounces prosciutto ‘prosecutter’.
I have a plan.
‘Sometimes,’ I begin, ‘I think it’s such a miracle that Jonathan manages anything at all. I mean’—I look full of loving concern—‘I’m so worried he’ll end up getting like his father…it was a blessing he passed away when he did.’
‘His father?’ Mimi looks bewildered.
‘Jonathan puts on such a brave front. Especially considering he’s doped up to the eyeballs half the time.’
‘Doped up?’ The waiter brings Mimi five teeny ravioli on a rocket leaf. She doesn’t look at them.
‘Yes…he is so good about covering it up. The doctors are worried, though.’ I look mournful. ‘They’re scared it might be taking a turn for the worse.’
‘What?!’ Mimi looks gratifyingly frightened.
‘It’s been hard at times, especially because of the worry about the children. It’s genetic. The doctors say any child’—here I look intensely at Mimi—‘any child of Jonathan’s will be affected.’ I taste a forkful of risotto. ‘I think we’ve got it in time. I mean, Kat did try to throttle her guinea pig and there was the incident with Freddy biting his school friend, but…’ I lower my voice, ‘with the injections they’re getting, it should all stay under control.’
Mimi, food uneaten, shakes her