Dear Thing (32 page)

‘There’s something wrong,’ he said. ‘You look like there’s something wrong. I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t you? Not at all?’

If he didn’t know how Romily felt, she could keep going. She could handle this. They could make a plan together. They could see a solicitor, they could draw up the agreement Romily and Ben had said they didn’t need.

Had they dismissed it because …

‘Claire. Don’t make me guess. If this is something about Romily and our baby, it affects me too.’

‘Romily is in love with you.’

She held her breath. She waited for him to laugh it away. She waited for him to react in horror.

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘She wrote that?’ he asked. ‘In her letters to the baby?’

‘She wrote that she’s been in love with you for a long time.’

‘Oh,’ he said. He sat back down in his chair.

‘Is that all you have to say about it? “Oh”?’

He chewed on his lip. ‘I’m not sure what to say about it.’

‘You mean that you knew?’

Ben paused. His whole manner was thoughtful, as if he were sifting through evidence, memory and emotion. Claire, on the other hand, was trembling. She held on to the back of a chair, her fingers pressing against the wood.

‘No. I didn’t know. But now that you say it, it’s not a surprise. Oh God. It’s not a surprise.’

‘It was to me!’

‘You don’t know her as well as I do.’ He was looking off into the distance. ‘She’s been single for a long time. I’ve been more or less the only man in her life. Objectively, it makes sense.’

‘Objectively? I’m telling you that another woman is in love with you and you’re talking objectively?’

‘I’m trying to explain it to you. I’m trying to understand it myself.’ He rubbed his hands in his hair. ‘I wasn’t expecting this conversation tonight.’

‘Ben, she’s in love with you and you’re my husband.’

‘It must have been very difficult for her. It must still be, with the baby. My baby.’ He frowned.

‘You’re worried about
her
?’

‘Yes. She’s got the worst of it.’

She stared at Ben, the man she had thought she knew better than anyone else in the world. ‘Didn’t you think that she must be in love with you when she offered to carry the baby? To do this huge thing for you?’

‘No. That is, I was so excited, so happy, I …’ He sighed. ‘You’re right. It was cruel of me. I didn’t mean it to be, but it was cruel. I just thought it would be all right.’

‘How could it ever be all right?’

‘I didn’t think about Romily being in love with me. It’s only now, when I think about it. When I have all the facts. It’s—’

And now, now, his face crumpled into sorrow and regret. He put his head in his hands.

‘It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done,’ he said.

It felt as if her fingers were going to bore through the back of the chair, straight into her own palms.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘You’re acting like this is all about Romily. I’m your wife. It’s my baby too.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve done this to both of you. I’m so sorry.’

‘What’s going to happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said into his hands. ‘Oh God. She trusted me. You trusted me. I’ve let both of you down.’

She wanted him to look at her. To see her. To know what this was doing to her.

‘Have you had an affair with her?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘In some ways it would have been less cruel if I had.’

‘What? How can you say that?’

He raised his head, but his attention was still far away, still deep in his thoughts. ‘I don’t mean less cruel. That was wrong. I mean it would have been more honest.’

‘More honest?’

She couldn’t stand. She pulled out the chair and sank into it. Her fingers throbbed.

‘Ben,’ she asked, not even trying to keep her voice steady any more, ‘are you in love with Romily?’

‘I care about her a great deal. I don’t know if it’s love. My feelings have changed towards her over the past few months. I’ve been trying to ignore it, but it’s true.’ He swallowed. ‘I think about her first thing in the morning when I wake up. She’s carrying my child. I feel protective of her. I think she’s precious. I would do anything for her.’

Now he looked at Claire.

‘That sounds like love to me,’ she said.

‘I’m trying to be honest with you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry if it hurts. But we need to get it out in the open now. Don’t we?’

‘You,’ she said, ‘are the only man I have ever loved. Ever.’

‘I know.’

‘Do you still love me?’

‘Yes. I’ll always love you.’

‘But you love her too.’

He looked away. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Is that why you’ve been spending so much time with her?’

‘Yes. Probably. I keep feeling that I’ve failed you, Claire. That I can’t do or say what you want me to. It’s easier with Romily. I know that makes me sound … I’m a coward. But I owe her something too, don’t I?’

‘Is it her, or the fact that she’s pregnant with your child?’

‘I don’t know. Can you separate them? I’ve never felt like this before.’

Because I couldn’t have your child. And she can.

That’s what it came down to. Again, and again, and again.

‘I think you need to leave,’ Claire said.

‘Okay.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll sleep in the spare bedroom.’

‘No. I want you to leave the house. I want you to leave me alone. I don’t want to live with a man who says that he loves me and falls in love with another woman who can do what I can’t.’

The pain was so naked on his face that she had to look away.

‘If that’s what you want,’ he said.

And it was that easy, to uproot her entire existence. She sat at the kitchen table and listened to him going upstairs, putting a few things into a bag. When he came back into the kitchen to gather his laptop and work, she didn’t look at him.

‘Claire,’ he said. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Everything that we have is a lie.’

‘It’s not a lie,’ he said. ‘But maybe it’s not all there is.’

She didn’t answer.

‘I’ll ring you,’ he said at last. And then he was gone.

‘
IF YOU DON’T
mind my saying so, you look absolutely awful.’

Romily rubbed her eyes and turned to the woman who’d spoken. It was the one with the scruffy toddler, the one who’d been kind to her before. She had on a scarf with crocheted flowers sewn into it.

‘I haven’t slept,’ Romily said. ‘That’s all.’ She edged towards the school gates, to make her quick escape. She thought she’d perfected the art of dropping off Posie without being trapped into a conversation, but maybe she hadn’t.

‘Heartburn?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Better than heartbreak, that’s what I say. Though not by much.’

The woman’s voice was cheerful but it was the word that did it. Heartbreak.

The sob she’d been holding down all weekend, so as not to show Posie, erupted. It sounded like the wail of a sick animal. Romily clapped her hand to her mouth, but the tears had already started flowing down her cheeks.

‘Oh, shit,’ said the woman. ‘Oh no, I’m sorry. I’ve said something wrong. I’ve been an idiot. I’m sorry.’

‘No,’ sobbed Romily. ‘No, it’s not you. It’s me. It’s okay.’

She went to wipe her nose on her sleeve but the woman handed her a muslin square before she could do so.

‘I always misread situations,’ the woman said. ‘Everyone tells me so. I have some chocolate here somewhere. Here.’ She held out a packet of chocolate buttons. ‘Just don’t show Daniel you’re eating them or you’ll have to share.’

Romily shook her head. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Well, obviously it’s not. Is there anything I can do to help you?’

Romily shook her head, wiping her face. The muslin smelled of baby lotion.

‘Come on. I’m doing my best here. If you can’t take chocolate buttons, at least tell me what’s wrong.’

‘I’m not keeping the baby,’ Romily blurted out.

‘Oh.’

‘It’s not mine. I’m a surrogate. But I didn’t say anything because …’

‘Oh. Well, that’s a really nice thing you’re doing. It’s incredible, in fact.’

‘I don’t want to give it up.’

‘Oh.’

‘So that’s one reason why I’m crying. I can’t tell you the other one.’

‘I think you had better take the chocolate buttons. My name is Eleanor, by the way.’

Romily felt the packet being pressed into her hand.

‘You must think I’m a terrible person,’ she said.

‘No, I think it’s pretty understandable, actually. You’re heartbroken. Like I said. I take it back: heartburn is
much
better. You can go ahead and blow your nose on that. I’ve got a million of them.’

Romily blew her nose. She looked at the woman blearily.

‘Will you tell them?’ Romily asked. ‘The other mothers? I don’t think I can.’

‘Okay. Are you sure you want me to?’

‘Yeah,’ said Romily. ‘It’s time for the truth.’ She shoved the muslin into her jacket pocket. ‘I’ll give this back to you after I’ve washed it.’

The truth, she thought as she hurried to the museum. She was supposed to be a scientist. She was supposed to relish facts, recognizable behaviour patterns, data. She knew that the truth was objective, the truth was the way the world worked. The truth was that Ben was married to Claire and that she had promised to give this baby to them. She had always known the truth.

And all the time she was busily writing down her inner feelings, her illogical, untenable, unbearable feelings, as if that was going to help anything.

Feelings hurt. Even though writing them down gave some sort of momentary relief, it wasn’t worth it. Because once feelings were out there in the world, they became real. They became part of the truth.

And then you had to deal with them. You had to feel the humiliation when another woman discovered you wanted what was hers. The shame, the self-hatred, the anger, the desperation to cover up your shabby secret; the sickly, stunted, hopeless love you had nurtured for no reason at all.

Hal looked up as she passed his desk. ‘How’s the Queen Bee today?’

‘Queen Bees control the colony as well as serve it,’ she said. ‘They work purely on biological imperative with no
free will. I don’t think the metaphor is particularly apt.’

‘Cranky.’

‘If you were thirty-five weeks pregnant, you would be cranky too.’

‘If I were thirty-five weeks pregnant, I would have taken maternity leave by now and would be lying on a sofa watching
Bargain Hunt
.’

‘I’m not taking maternity leave. I don’t need to.’ All that time, by herself. With no work to distract her.

Like Claire.

She went to the collection store room and shut the door. She lay her head on Amity’s rosewood cabinet, atop the corpses of hundreds of insects.

Claire had promised herself, when she got on the train to London, that she would not answer her phone. She would not talk to Ben if he rang; she would not speak to Romily. She would not trust herself to talk with her mother or her sister. She would take a weekend in London, away from her empty house, in a pretty hotel. She would go to galleries and concerts, she would spend money on her credit card, she would lick her wounds and fill herself up with other people’s art and music and food and she would have space, good space, constructive space, to work out what she wanted. How she could possibly go forward, with a husband who was in love with another woman and a baby who was still in that other woman’s womb.

In the end, her phone only rang once. It was her sister. Claire remembered with guilt that she was meant to be discussing with her what to get their parents for Christmas. But she couldn’t talk without giving herself away. She wasn’t even certain that she’d be able to go home for the holiday. She
couldn’t picture herself going without Ben. Surrounding herself with concerned family, exposing her wounds for everyone to see. Her mother might not say
I told you so
– she probably wouldn’t, she was too kind – but Claire would think it. Her mother had never had to discipline her as a child, not as she’d had to with Helen and Ian. Claire would send herself to the corner.

Christmas is over three weeks away. Everything could be back to normal by then
, a small hopeful voice said to her as she walked through Tate Britain without seeing anything, as she sat through Brahms and Chopin.

But she didn’t know how it could be.

There was too much space in London, none of it hers. Being away from home didn’t let her think; it untethered her, set her adrift among too many conversations and carols, too much traffic, too many ideas. She didn’t like eating alone in restaurants, and room service was too quiet unless she put on the television. She wrote a dozen texts to Ben and deleted them all. She brought up his number but did not call it, as if that would magically make him ring her so she could refuse to answer it. So she would know that he was thinking of her. That he was not with Romily.

Because where else would he go?

London was intolerable, but getting on the train home didn’t make her feel any better. She picked up her car from the underground car park beneath the station and drove home. Ben’s BMW was in the drive, exactly as normal, and that small signifier made her heart leap then sink. Before she could go in the house he opened the front door from the inside and they stood there on either side of the threshold of their home. She held her weekend bag and he held a suitcase.

‘Hi,’ he said. It was Ben, it was Ben, her husband, her only
love, looking the same as he always did. He didn’t reach forward to kiss her. He looked wary, as if caught doing something wrong.

‘I’ve been in London,’ she said.

‘Did you have a good time?’

‘I …’

He nodded. ‘I came to pack some things.’

‘Where … have you been?’

‘The George, in town.’

It was on the other side of Brickham from Romily’s flat. ‘Have you seen …’

‘I haven’t seen anyone. All I’ve done all weekend is think.’

It was unbelievable that he could look the same. Claire felt that if she smiled, if she touched him, they could carry on just the same as they always had. But there was something between them, some membrane she couldn’t push through. A mutual agreement that all the years didn’t count for anything. It was as if they’d lost the habit of being married, as if that had been all that was keeping them together and now that they’d broken it, they couldn’t get it back.