Then one weekend they had thrown a garden party for his workmates. Her friend Penny, whom she’d met at the BBC, came to help. It was a really warm day and she had put the children downstairs in the cool to have a little nap, taking the baby alarm with her. After an hour’s silence, she thought they were sleeping well. But when she went to check on them she heard Gray’s voice through the slightly ajar door.
‘Sssshhh, sssshh, gorgeous …’
This was the first time Helen had ever heard him talking to the children so soothingly.
‘… She can’t hear. I turned the baby alarm off.’
How thoughtful of him. She pushed the door open and saw Gray with his trousers round his ankles, entwined with a woman she’d never seen before, summer dress pushed up to her waist, knickers on the floor, one leg wrapped around Helen’s husband and one breast hanging out. She looked at Helen over Gray’s shoulder and smiled: ‘Hi.’
Gray spun round and fell over. Watching him scrambling on the floor caught up in his trousers and boxer shorts sent such a feeling of violence through her, he should’ve been glad that she didn’t have a carving knife in her hand. Instead, she checked that the children were still sleeping and went into the kitchen, where she sat at the table and sobbed. Penny found her there and, after sending her off to bed with a box of Kleenex and chucking out all of Gray’s chinless friends, she launched into Gray with such ferocity that he ran to the pub. He came back at closing time to find Penny guarding Helen’s bedroom door.
‘I have made up the sofa bed for you in the basement. The kids are asleep and I’ll stay here tonight to get them up in the morning. You have got a lot to prove. Not least, that you will never again be this shitty to Helen – or you will have me to answer to.’
He had slunk downstairs.
Penny stayed for a week, filling Helen with good sense and strength.
It took a very long time before Gray shared Helen’s bed again or was allowed to touch her. Despite his refusal to talk about what had happened or to answer any of her questions, Helen eventually decided to let her anger and feelings of betrayal go, and to give him a second chance.
The next time it happened, it hadn’t hurt quite so much.
Or the next.
That’s not to say that his serial infidelity was not a torture for her. Death by a thousand cuts. But she confided in no one. Certainly not Penny, who would have been furious. Besides, Penny had her own problems. She was having an affair with the deputy news editor, who was married.
‘I know I’m a hypocrite, Helen,’ she confided. ‘But his marriage has been over for years and at least you and Gray are back on track.’
If only you knew, thought Helen.
Penny continued, ‘They haven’t slept together for yonks, but he can’t leave her because she’s so unstable and he would never forgive himself if she did anything stupid.’
‘You deserve so much better though, Pen. How long are you going to wait for him?’ Helen said gently. ‘Until one of you dies?’
‘I keep hoping it will sort itself out. I love him so much. We are meant to be together.’
As these things do, they did sort themselves out. The mad, sexless wife appeared at the office Christmas party with blonde hair, a big smile and eight months pregnant.
This time it was Helen’s turn to look after Penny. She rang the deputy news editor at work and gave him what for in no uncertain terms. When Gray heard, he gave Penny a cuddle and said, ‘Welcome to the sinners club.’
Over the years, Helen, Gray and the kids, often with Penny in tow, had shared holidays and a friendship that wove a comfortable blanket around them. Helen could always tell when Gray had a fling on the go. It was all very clichéd. He paid more attention to his appearance and was assiduous in bringing home little gifts for her. She didn’t know why she put up with it, but the idea of divorce and custody battles exhausted her. Least said, soonest mended.
Penny meanwhile lurched from one unsuitable man to another, but her professional life went from strength to strength. A year older than Helen, she had joined the BBC as a graduate trainee, working as a production secretary in the newsroom, which was where she met Helen. From there she was seconded to EastEnders as production assistant to the producer, swiftly working her way up the ladder to director. Her reputation really took off after she directed a historical drama that became a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic. These days she was head of her own production company, Penny Leighton Productions. Helen was thrilled for her, even though her success meant that now their friendship had to be conducted via email and Skype.
The years had been kind to Gray too. There was always a market for Bentleys and Ferraris among City high-fliers and although the swanky showrooms in Chiswick had long gone, he kept his hand in and sold enough cars privately to keep them comfortable. Sean had moved out to a small flat he’d bought in Tooting and Chloe was settled in Bristol, leaving Helen and Gray on their own. Then, last Boxing Day, she did the unsayable and asked him for a divorce.
*
He fell apart, of course. How could she leave him, what would he do without her? What would the chaps say?
Helen’s Chiswick women friends were full of showy compassion for her. Even the one or two who she knew had dallied with her husband.
‘Helen, how bloody awful for you. How will you find another man at your age?’ etc etc. They hadn’t a clue how happy and liberated she felt.
Her father had passed away ten years before. Her mother almost thirty years before, of breast cancer, when Helen was in her teens. She had no dependent children and now, no husband. She didn’t need a man to validate her existence, and what’s more, she was now financially independent. The cottage was all paid for, thanks to Gray agreeing that she had earned it looking after him (putting up with him, more like) and the children for all those years, and her father had left her his comfortable estate.
After a period of adjustment, Gray discovered he rather liked the single life too, having bought himself a swanky, minimalist Soho flat in which to do some guilt-free entertaining of the opposite sex.
A good deal is one where everybody is happy, thought Helen. And she most definitely was.
2
From her bedroom, Helen stepped out on to the small, square landing. On her left was the only other door upstairs, a second bedroom that she had converted into a bathroom. She headed down the wooden staircase, pausing by the window at the turn in the steps to look out over her wildly overgrown back garden. Like the famous gardens of Heligan, this was her own Lost Garden. Some fifty yards long and twenty wide, it was criss-crossed with mossy brick paths and rectangular flower beds, though it was hard to tell where they ended and the lawn started. Here and there she could see the orange Montbretia licking like flames in the undergrowth. Somewhere amid the tangle of Old Man’s Beard and brambles bursting with blackberries was an old privy and a couple of broken-down chicken houses.
It backed on to the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church.
‘Very quiet neighbours,’ the estate agent had joked.
It didn’t bother her at all. There was an ancient drystone wall between her and the dead and she had plans to stud it with primroses and ferns.
At the bottom of the stairs a latch door opened straight into her sitting room. The tall and deep open fireplace cradled last night’s ashes, which were still gently smouldering. She stirred the coals, added a firelighter and some kindling, then walked across to the door leading into the kitchen. The September sunshine bounced off the shiny lids of the Aga and