‘I still need you,’ Nick insisted. ‘We can put things right… try again. Please, Fern. You must give me a second chance.’
In the end she gave in. What other option did she have? she asked herself bewilderedly. Nick loved her; he needed her; her parents would neither understand nor approve if she left him, and she herself was bitterly aware of her own guilt, her own betrayal of the vows she had made and had fully intended to keep.
Nick was right, she did owe it to him to give their marriage a second chance. But even as she was giving in, agreeing, aware of the huge weight of reasons why she ought to be pleased that he wanted to stay with her, she still felt an unfamiliar dangerous flare of panic and anger, a sense almost of being trapped and imprisoned.
She suppressed it, of course, quickly smothering it with the tight blanket of her parents’ teachings and her own awareness of what she owed it to them and to Nick to do.
But that night in bed, after he had made love to her and she had lain dry-eyed and tense beside him, she knew she had to tell him about Adam.
The next morning she tried to do so.
‘What do you mean, you can’t stay with me?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Look, Fern, I’ve already told you, it… she meant nothing. It was just sex, that’s all, just sex.’
‘It isn’t that,’ she whispered miserably. ‘It’s me. I…’
Something in her expression must have given her away, because she heard him curse and then demand aggressively, ‘It’s Adam, isn’t it? Well, if you think I’m going to let you leave me for him…’
‘It isn’t like that,’ she protested, horrified by what he was saying. ‘Adam isn’t… doesn’t…’
She wasn’t able to continue, her voice breaking under the strain of what she was feeling, but Nick grabbed hold of her arm, insisting fiercely, ‘Oh, no, you aren’t stopping there. Adam isn’t… doesn’t what, Fern? Adam doesn’t want to fuck you? Don’t lie to me, Fern. I know how much he…’
He stopped then, releasing her so roughly that she half fell against the kitchen table.
‘I’m not letting you go,’ he repeated flatly. ‘You’ve made a commitment to me, to our marriage, and if you think…’
He paused, watching her as she crouched against the table, her body shaking with shock and tension, tears slowly filling her eyes as her self-control started to splinter.
Suddenly his voice softened and became almost cajoling.
‘Think, Fern. Think of how your parents would feel if we broke up… if I had to tell them that you’ve been unfaithful to me with Adam. How long have you been seeing him? How often?’
She stopped him immediately, the words falling over one another as she tried to explain what had happened, how upset she had been, how Adam had found her. How…
‘You mean you did it just to pay me back… because of my affair,’ Nick interrupted her before she could finish what she was saying. For some reason he had started to smile, his voice and body relaxing. ‘Did you tell Adam that?’ he asked her softly. ‘Did he know you were coming back here to me?’
‘I didn’t tell him anything. Just that… just about her coming here…’
He was still smiling at her, almost crooning at her as he reached out to her, apparently unable to sense the tension and resistance in her body as he pulled her into his arms.
‘Fern, Fern, don’t you see? The only reason you went to Adam was because you wanted to get back at me. Of course I’m upset… jealous… hurt—what man wouldn’t be? But I do understand. You love me… and because of that you wanted to hurt me… to pay me back for hurting you. But it’s all over now and we’re still together. And we’re going to stay together. Let’s both put the past behind us and make a fresh start… give our marriage a second chance. I want to. Don’t you?’
What could she say? How could she refuse to accept the olive branch he was offering her? How many other husbands would be as generous… as forgiving? She owed it to him… to her parents… to the way they had brought her up and the standards they had inculcated in her, to do what he was suggesting.
‘Yes,’ she agreed listlessly. ‘Yes, I do.’ And yet somehow saying the words had hurt her throat, straining the muscles, making them ache with the same weary despair that had also invaded her body…
‘Fern, what the hell are you doing? Aren’t you ready yet?’
Guiltily Fern hurried towards the bedroom door, stepping back from it just in time as Nick thrust it open and walked in.
Formal clothes suited him, she acknowledged, as she studied the effect of his well-cut fair hair, and the healthy tan he had acquired since visiting the leisure centre, against the expensive fabric of his dinner suit and the crisp whiteness of his dress shirt.
Nick liked his dress shirts to be hand-laundered by her, and starched. It was a laborious job and one which she felt the local laundry could have performed far more efficiently, but she also knew that if she tried to point this out to Nick he would demand to know if she thought he was made of money, and what she did with her time. After all, she did not work.
Because Nick would not let her. Because every time she raised the subject of getting herself some sort of part-time paid work he told her furiously that he was not going to be humiliated in their local community by having his wife pretending that he kept her so short of money that she needed to earn the pathetically few pounds she would earn.
‘And besides, what would you do?’ he had taunted her. ‘You’ve never held down a proper job.’
‘I could train,’ she had retorted. ‘Some of the local shops…’
Nick had gone from contempt to fury, accusing her of deliberately trying to undermine him, his position.
Didn’t she at least owe it to him to at least try to behave as a loyal wife? he had demanded bitterly.
A loyal wife… Her eyes bleak with despair, she turned to look at him, watching the irritation and contempt hardening his face as he studied her.
‘Why the hell don’t you find something decent to wear?’ he demanded.
She could have retorted that she could not afford the luxury of anything other than the most basic of chain-store clothes, but to do so would reignite his grievance against her late parents, for using their modest wealth to purchase annuities which had died with them rather than investing their capital elsewhere so that it could have been passed on to her.
They must present a bizarre contrast, she admitted tiredly, Nick in his obviously expensive dinner suit, she in her shabby, well-worn, dull dress.
‘My God, you love playing the martyr, don’t you?’ Nick accused her as he glared at her. ‘Hurry up or we’re going to be late. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing up here anyway.’ He gave her another disparaging glance.
Comparing her with Venice, Fern wondered unhappily, or was she simply imagining things… looking for them, because…?
As she followed him downstairs, she wondered what Nick would say if she told him that she would rather stay at home.
Get even more angry with her than he already was, she imagined.
There had been a time when she had actually enjoyed going to dinner parties, had looked forward to the stimulation of conversation with other people, but that had been before Nick had pointed out to her on their way home one evening that she was boring people with her silly mundane conversation.
He had apologised to her later, but when she had refused to respond he had accused her of sulking and she had tried to tell him that she wasn’t; that she just felt so weighed down by the burden of realising what people