Got You Back (3 page)

He wouldn't have admitted that what he was doing was wrong because he was trying to convince himself that there was no harm in it. He believed he was happy, Stephanie, he believed, was happy, and Katie certainly was. OK, so it was a bit of a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode. One of these days he knew he'd have to make a decision, plump for one life or the other. One day either Stephanie was going to insist that he gave up his life in Lincolnshire and moved to London full-time or Katie would grow tired of waiting for him to settle in the country. But until that happened his life suited him. As long as he didn't think about what he was doing too much.

James, if hehad been being honest, would probably have said that the easiest, most carefree timesofhis double existence were the long journeys each week between London and Lincoln, Lincoln and London. He took his time in the car, listening tomusic, singing along. Hewould stop several times, not just at service stations but occasionally veering off into Bedfordshire or Hertfordshire to visit a quiet pub or a Michelin-starred restaurant, ananonymous man taking time out between his two lives.

He had never deliberately set out to create a double life for himself. When he had first met Katie he had been feeling particularly low, particularly hard-done-by by Stephanie. He had felt sorry for himself — poor James, working so hard and slogging up and down the country because his wife had insisted that was what he do. He was tired from the travelling and lonely on his nights away from home, holed up in the flat above the surgery eating microwave meals and drinking beer out of the can. He missed the day-to-day dramas of family life, the way his routine had been so entwined with his wife and son's that he had always felt part of a team. He was miserable. Katie was sweet and pretty and vulnerable and crying, and it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to put his arm round her. And then, of course, one thing had led to another. It wasn't the first time his head had been turned by an attractive woman since he'd got married, it was just the first time he'd acted on it. He had thought it was the textbook ‘bit of fun’, the classic ‘What she doesn't know won't hurt her’, the clichéd ‘It's different for men, sex is just sex — it doesn't mean we love our wives any less.’

He had invited Katie out to dinner and she had said yes, and he had found himself trotting out the story he had prepared in advance, that his marriage was over and that the only reason he travelled to London every weekend was to see his son. Because Lower Shippingham was such a small place, the news had got round and he was now having to keep up the lie with colleagues and friends too. Lucky for him that there was no one Stephanie had kept in touch with. As she never tired of telling him, she hated Lower Shippingham and everybody in it, so there was little chance of her ever coming for a visit.

Katie had eaten mussels and oysters and prawns with her fingers, and he had laughed at her and said she reminded him of Daryl Hannah in
Splash
, which she had taken as a compliment. He had been charmed by her sweetness, her hopeful — some would have said naïve — view of the world. He had always found Stephanie's dry cynicism funny, they had always shared a rather cruel sense of humour, but Katie's optimism was so… unchallenging. It was relaxing to spend an evening with someone who wasn't looking for ways to contest everything you said for comic effect.

The other thing Katie did, which ensured that James would want to see her again, was say no. He had walked her home to her little cottage, buying condoms from the machine in the restaurant toilet before they left. On the doorstep she had thanked him for a lovely evening and had allowed him to kiss her just enough to let him know she was interested, then pushed him away and said goodnight. James was intrigued. It was that easy. He had known he had to see her again.

In the end Katie had kept him waiting for six dates before she had invited him into her bed for comfortable and undemanding sex. He had felt under no pressure to perform, so focused was she on making sure he was having a good time. By then he was hooked, having got used to the home cooking, the back rubs and the cosy, quiet life in Katie's cottage, so much more comfortable than the flat above the surgery.

Suddenly Katie was his girlfriend, not just a woman he had gone on a date with once. And he had found he liked it. It made his life in the country so much more homely. The first few times he had gone back to London for the weekend he had walked around in a cold sweat — a mixture of guilt and the fear of discovery. He had felt wretched, as if the enormity of what he was doing only became a reality when he was with his family. He promised himself he would break it off with Katie, that he would try to pretend it had never happened, make it up to Stephanie and Finn somehow. But then he would go back to Lincolnshire and Katie would be there, just wanting to look after him, and he would convince himself that he wasn't hurting anyone, he was just trying to make life away from home a little more bearable.

This evening he had arrived home from his practice in St John's Wood at the usual time, sweating and irritable after a half-hour journey in the car that anywhere else would have taken ten minutes. He felt out of place in London. He had grown up in the countryside and, although he had spent five years in Bristol studying to become a vet, he had always known he would move back out to the sticks to practise. He could understand why
Stephanie had needed to get back to work, to find a career, but there was no denying he resented the fact that this meant he had to spend half of his week in town.

He looked down at the list of tomorrow's patients, which Jackie had emailed him over, as she always did at the end of every day, all listed in that rather cutesy way that town veterinary practices often had, with the first name of the animal rather than the person who was bringing them in: Fluffy O'Leary, a Siamese cat who was having her teeth brushed, Manolito Pemberton, a Chihuahua with foot troubles — caused, James had no doubt, by the fact that his elderly owner never let his paws touch the ground — Snoopy Titchmarsh, Boots Hughes-Robertson, Socks Allardyce. The list went on and on with not a genuine problem between them. He sighed. Three days of indulged baby substitutes. When he was feeling especially hard-done-by he felt that Stephanie ought to be more grateful that he spent half of his life doing a job he hated.

Stephanie didn't know what she had been expecting when she saw James that evening — that he would come in and say, ‘I've met a woman called Kathy,’ or suddenly start talking about a colleague called Kitty he had never mentioned before. What she hadn't prepared herself for was that he would be the same old James.

‘Did you have a good day?’ she said, with as much dignity as she could muster, once they had sat down at the table.

‘Great,’ he said, smiling in a way that made swallowing her food impossible.

‘Anything exotic?’ Usually days that were described as ‘great’ were those on which he had carried out an intricate operation on an unusual pet. A salamander, or once, even, a small monkey. At least, that was what she had always thought. Clearly wrongly.
I'm really missingyou
.
K. Kiss. Kiss, Kiss.

‘No,’ he said, stuffing a huge piece of chicken into his mouth. She waited to see if he would elaborate. He didn't.

‘Jonas has got a puppy,’ Finn piped up, getting his father off the hook.

Stephanie had no idea who Jonas was, but she knew where this was going. ‘No, Finn, no puppies.’

‘That's so unfair. Jonas is a year younger than me and he's allowed a puppy so why aren't I?’

‘Who is Jonas anyway?’ Stephanie asked, not really caring what the answer was.

‘Oh, Mum, you're so stupid.’ Finn sighed and turned back to his food.

James was humming to himself between mouthfuls, something he often did and which Stephanie had always found irritating, but today it seemed to have taken on a new significance. It was as if he was saying, ‘Look how happy I am. Look what a great week I've had, shagging Katherine.’

Stephanie looked at him across the table. I have to get a grip, she thought. One text does not mean he's having an affair. He smiled an I-haven't-a-care-in-the-world smile at her, and she turned away.

‘Eat your peas,’ she said to Finn, trying to sound like her normal self.

‘I already have, stupid,’ Finn said, picking up his plate
and turning it upside-down to demonstrate his point. ‘See?’

Once Finn had been persuaded to go to sleep, at about eight thirty, Stephanie had claimed a headache and announced she was going to bed. James had stretched out a hand to touch hers as she walked past him, eyes still glued to the TV.

‘Night, darling,’ he'd said. ‘Hope you feel better.’ His phone, which was lying on the coffee-table, had beeped to announce a message coming through.

‘That'll be Karmen,’ Stephanie had wanted to say, but instead she'd huffed out of the room. Or maybe it's Kara or Kayla or Katie, she thought, accidentally hitting on the right name finally, although, of course, she didn't know that yet.

4

Katie Cartwright was in love, she was sure of it. She didn't know where it had come from, this sudden, overwhelming attraction to James, but come it had and now it was all she could think about. She had been in love before — or, at least, had thought she was. She was thirty-eight years old, after all. It would be strange if this was the first time. In fact, she had never been without a man in tow her whole adult life. As soon as one disappeared over the horizon another had always popped round the corner. But she had never felt like this. She had known James for almost exactly a year, she thought now. Nearly a year to the day since her dog Stanley had had to have corrective surgery on his leg and she had cried because she was so scared something might go wrong, and, next thing she knew, the kindly (not to mention handsome) vet had his arm round her shoulders and the rest was history, as they say.

They took it slowly at first. James was separated from his wife and he had told her he wanted to give this new relationship the best possible chance, to do everything right, which included taking their time. They had to make sure they were doing what was best for both of them before they took any big steps. Katie had found this a little difficult, not to mention unnerving, at first but she knew it meant James was taking their affair seriously, that
he was considering her as someone he could spend his life with. So she accepted it when he had to leave to go down to London on Wednesday mornings and didn't return until Sunday nights. She had never questioned why he didn't invite her to go with him: she knew that while he was away he was having to lodge with friends until he found a permanent base, and that their small flat was barely big enough for the two of them, let alone James as well.

After a couple of months he had moved his toothbrush and a few other bits and pieces into her tiny girly bathroom. Gradually his clothes had begun to take up space in her wardrobe and his books and papers crept across the dining-table. She loved the feeling that his possessions were enveloping her, marking out his territory like he was a tom cat spraying the boundaries. She lived for the Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays when his belongings were joined by their owner. She understood why he couldn't be with her all the time — he had his practice in the city to think about — but he had recently begun to hint that one of these days he might give up his London work altogether and she thought there was a promise in there somewhere that the two of them might live out their happy-ever-after in the countryside together.

Katie had had a series of careers and had never found the one that totally suited her. Recently, following a couple of years of night classes, she had set herself up practising acupuncture and aromatherapy massage, seeing clients several times a week in her house. The fact that more often than not the appointments turned into
ad hoc
therapy sessions suited her. She loved to feel she was
helping people. She knew she was a good listener and she had a positive outlook on life that her clients found uplifting. It was taking a while to establish some regulars but she had known it would, alternative therapies not being something which the locals took to easily.

Ironically, if Katie had ever trained in the psychological therapy she now found herself having to practise on others, she would almost certainly have deduced that her behaviour, passively accepting that she was in a relationship with a commitment-phobe who seemed happy to keep their liaison a part-time venture, stemmed from her rather low self-esteem. That this made it impossible for her to risk confronting James or even suggesting that she move all her clients to the beginning of the week so that she could spend the latter part in London with him. That, deep down, she knew that the fact that he was a lodger in his friends’ flat was just an excuse. Rather, she had convinced herself she was the victim of an irresistible force, hopelessly ensnared by love. Like Juliet with her Romeo or Cathy and her Heathcliff, she was powerless to stop what was happening. She was happy to wait it out. James was a careful man. He needed to make sure that the time was right before he made any big gestures.

5

The following morning Stephanie's alarm woke her at six forty-five. For a moment she didn't know why she had set it for such a ridiculous hour and she nearly turned over and settled back down to sleep, but then her heart plummeted as she remembered what had happened.

‘Turn it off — turn it off!’ James was flapping an arm in her direction, eyes still closed. He hated early mornings.

She crawled out of bed. It was nearly light outside and it was promising to be a beautiful spring day, not that she cared. She went into the bathroom down the hall, plucked, shaved and exfoliated, then buffed with the spiky body brush that had been hanging redundantly on the back of the bathroom door for months and which, she thought now, she may have used to clean the grime off the sink once. Then she carefully made up her face — not the usual wave of the mascara wand that was all her everyday routine consisted of but the full deal, from foundation to shimmering highlights on her browbones. It seemed important for her self-esteem that she look her best today. She was dressed and ready by the time she heard Finn moving about. She fed Sebastian some grey-looking cod out of a foil tray, gave Goldie his unappetizing brown pellets and tried not to think about why she was doing this, trying to leave the house an hour earlier than usual to avoid seeing her husband.