Got You Back (7 page)

She reminded herself to breathe. Surely there couldn't be any truth in what Stephanie had been saying. No way was James living a double life. Hadn't he and Katie talked about the importance of honesty and respecting your partner, and hadn't he seemed as adamant as she was?

She jumped as her mobile rang. James. She hesitated for a moment before answering, not quite knowing what to say.

‘Did you call?’ he shouted, when she finally said hello. He sounded as if he was out in a field somewhere.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, as if she'd forgotten. ‘I just wanted to tell you to drive carefully.’

‘I always do,’ he said softly. ‘I'll call you when I get there.’

‘James,’ Katie said, before he could hang up, ‘I was wondering if you'd got Peter and Abi's home number yet. Do you remember I asked you for it before and you said you'd get it for me? Only it seems crazy that I can't call you in the evenings and I worry about you clambering around on that roof in the dark.’

‘God, I'm useless,’ he said convincingly. ‘I forgot. I'll try to remember tonight. But, you know, I don't really want to be disturbing them every five minutes with the phone going. They're putting themselves out for me enough already.’

‘Well, just for emergencies, then. Don't you think I
should have a number for emergencies, you know, given your mobile reception's so bad?’

‘Of course. Look, I've got to go. I'll call you later.’ He hung up before she could say anything else.

Katie, who was unused to mistrusting people, who never questioned that what you saw on the surface was a true reflection of what was going on underneath, felt her legs go weak and sat down heavily at the table. Something wasn't right.

Later, when James phoned to say he had arrived safely, and then again that he was going to bed, she'd reminded him gently about getting her the number and he had swiftly changed the subject. She wondered how long he could keep this up. If she asked him every time they spoke, what excuse could he come up with over and over again? She wanted to think she was overreacting, that everything was fine, nothing to worry about, but it was beginning to seem unlikely.

‘What's Peter and Abi's surname?’ she asked him out of nowhere, trying to sound casual, when he called for the second time.

He answered without missing a beat: ‘Smith. Why do you keep asking me about them?’

‘Smith. Peter and Abi Smith. Or did she keep her own name?’

‘I'm going to bed now, goodnight.’

‘Night, darling,’ Katie said sadly. ‘Sleep well.’

‘Do you have an address?’ the friendly sounding man at
118118
asked her. ‘Only there are a lot of Smiths.’

‘Swiss Cottage somewhere, I don't know.’

‘Postcode?’

‘Sorry. NW something, I suppose.’

He sighed. ‘I have seventy-six P. Smiths in northwest London. Plus eighteen Peters. What would you like to do?’

Katie knew she was defeated. ‘Nothing. Thank you.’

Smith, thought James, had been a stroke of genius. He had no idea why Katie was suddenly so interested in Peter and Abi but he also knew she didn't have a suspicious cell in her body. She had never been one of those women who asked where you'd been if you were home five minutes late, or quizzed you about what you got up to when you were away. Come to think of it, Stephanie was the same, he realized, and felt a rarely acknowledged spasm of guilt. There was no getting away from it: he couldn't take any pleasure in deceiving two women who were so easily deceived, who loved him enough to truly trust him.

He pushed the thought from his mind. He felt confident that Katie wasn't trying to catch him out. He could come up with a plausible reason why Peter and Abi didn't want him to give out their number to anyone even for emergencies. They were on witness protection? Hiding from debt collectors? Had recently changed their number to avoid nuisance calls from violent ex-lovers and been advised by the police not to give it out to anyone, whoever they were? No, it would have to be more prosaic than that, but he would come up with something and fortunately —
or maybe unfortunately — Katie being Katie would believe whatever he told her.

In fact Katie was struggling to decide just what to believe. There was no doubt that James was hiding something from her. She just wasn't sure she wanted to accept exactly what that something was. Maybe she should have heard Stephanie out at least, given her the benefit of the doubt. She wondered whether she should call her back, although it was hard to imagine what she could say: ‘OK, so I know I basically accused you of being delusional but now I'd like to indulge you in that delusion for a while, then decide once and for all whether or not I believe you,’ was hardly going to win Stephanie round. And, anyway, it was half past ten at night: she couldn't call her now and risk waking her up. Stephanie had a young son — presumably she had to be up at the crack of dawn to get him off to school so she was bound to go to bed early. It would have to wait until morning. That gave her the whole night to decide exactly how she felt. James would ring her as soon as he got to the surgery, as he always did. She would try to think of one more way to challenge him, another question that he would struggle to answer. Then she'd know.

‘I've had an idea,’ she said, when she answered the phone the following morning. She had been up since six, too unhappy to sleep. ‘I was thinking maybe I could come down to London tomorrow night. Book a hotel so it wouldn't be a problem for Peter and Abi. It would be like a holiday.’

She heard James gulp. ‘Really? But that's crazy. I mean,
I'd hardly see you. I spend all Saturday with Finn, remember.’

Katie knew in an instant that what Stephanie had told her was the truth. She tried one last shot. ‘But we'd have the evenings and Sunday morning —’

‘It's a lovely idea,’ James said, cutting her off, ‘but by the time I've spent Saturday running round the zoo or the aquarium or whatever I just want to go to bed and sleep. I wouldn't be very good company. Sorry, love. Another time, maybe. And, you know, one of these days Stephanie will say it's OK for me to introduce you to Finn and then you can come down every weekend.’

‘OK,’ she said quietly. ‘Whatever you want.’

Katie put the phone down. She felt sick. She knew what she had to do.

11

When her phone rang Stephanie was in the middle of a rant to Natasha about James and the fact that he had seemed blithely happy when he got home last night, blissfully unaware as he was that Stephanie had finally unearthed the scale of his deception.

‘And as for Katie,’ she was saying for, perhaps, the twelfth time in the past two days. She hardly noticed that Natasha rolled her eyes, and was about to launch into another retelling of her bizarre exchange with her husband's mistress when she checked the caller ID and saw that it was, in fact, that very husband's mistress who was calling her now.

‘It's her,’ she said, in a pointless stage-whisper.

‘Well, answer it, then,’ Natasha said impatiently.

Stephanie did as she was told. ‘Hello,’ she said, in as neutral a way as she could manage.

‘Stephanie,’ Katie's now familiar voice said, ‘it's Katie.’

‘Mmm-hmm.’ Stephanie couldn't trust herself with any actual words until she had heard what Katie had to say.

‘I'm… I think we got off on the wrong foot and that maybe it was my fault.’

‘Well, yes, screwing someone's husband will sometimes do that,’ Stephanie said, before she could stop herself.

She heard Katie inhale sharply as if she was composing herself before she spoke.

‘I know this must have been a shock to you,’ Katie said, ‘but you have to believe it was as much of a shock to me. When James told me you were divorced I had no reason not to believe him. And now… now I don't know what to believe.’

‘So you thought you'd ring up and accuse me of being a fantasist again?’ Stop it, Stephanie, she thought.

Katie didn't seem to be responding to Stephanie's offers of a fight. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I wanted to say sorry for not listening to you. And that I know he's been lying to me now. I think. To be absolutely honest, Stephanie, I don't know what I think.’ Katie's voice cracked and Stephanie realized she was trying not to cry.

‘OK,’ she said, more kindly, waving a hand at Natasha, who was leaving. ‘Let's pretend we're starting again. I've rung you to tell you the man you're having a relationship with is my husband and you believe me. I accept that you thought he was unattached. What do we do now?’

Nearly an hour later Stephanie and Katie were still talking. Katie, Stephanie had discovered, had been seeing her husband for a year. It wasn't as if she and James had hidden their relationship from anyone: she had never seen the necessity because she had had no idea that they might be doing anything worthy of being hidden.

Katie, meanwhile, had discovered that her boyfriend still very much lived with his wife, and that although the past few years since the move to London had been fraught sometimes, they were still very definitely married. She had learned that Finn had been happily spared the traumas caused by warring parents, and that rather than just seeing
his father for a few hours on Saturdays he spent half of every week with him and the other half looking forward to seeing him again. She had learned that, just as she had trusted that James was buried in his work and sacrificing comfort and home life on the days when he was in London, so Stephanie had believed he was doing the same when he was in Lincolnshire.

Both had had to acknowledge to themselves that he had been living a lie. Stephanie, who had had a few days to get used to the idea, was trying to reprogramme her anger so that its focus was firmly channelled at James rather than at Katie. Try as she might to hate Katie, it was hard to keep it up once she knew that Katie had been duped as much as she had.

‘So, where do we go from here?’ she asked eventually.

‘I'm going to ring him and tell him not to bother coming back,’ said Katie, tearfully. Katie, who had never been hurt before, had taken it badly. ‘I would never go with another woman's husband. I mean never, Stephanie. You have to believe me. I'm going to kill him, honestly I am. I'll pack his stuff up and drop it round to the surgery and then I'll never see him again.’

‘I don't know,’ Stephanie said. ‘We shouldn't rush into anything. We shouldn't tell him what we know yet, not till we've decided if that's the best thing to do. Don't show your hand too early, my friend Natasha always says. You can always play it later, but once you've shown it there's no taking it back.’

Stephanie didn't know why she wanted to put off the confrontation with James. Partly, she thought, because she was afraid that if she told him she knew about Katie
he would look relieved, throw his hands in the air and say, ‘Hallelujah. At last I don't have to live a lie. I can leave you and live with the woman I love.’ She didn't think she could take the humiliation. ‘I know it's a strange thing to ask,’ she continued, ‘but let's sleep on it at least. Another twenty-four hours isn't going to make any difference.’

‘OK,’ Katie said reluctantly. ‘When he calls me tonight I'll try and pretend that everything's OK.’

‘Just turn your phone off,’ Stephanie said. ‘Let him worry about what you're up to.’

Katie wiped her hand across her brow and leaned on the kitchen table for support. Of course she would wait to see what Stephanie wanted to do. After all, Stephanie had a far greater claim on James than she did — even Katie had to acknowledge that now. She might be losing a boyfriend but Stephanie was in danger of losing a husband, the father of her child. Still, the way she felt at the moment it was hard to imagine Stephanie was feeling any worse. Could it really be true? James — nice, funny, loving James? Katie had always believed that people who were treated badly in relationships had somehow brought it on themselves. That wasn't the same as thinking they deserved it, certainly not, but she trusted that if you behaved well, if you gave someone all your support, allowed them their freedom, they would repay you by being honest and straightforward. It wasn't as if she had ever asked James to lie. He was the one who had made the move on her in the first place. He could have just left her alone to get on with her life, which she had been enjoying perfectly well, thank you very much.

She barely moved all morning. James still married? She could hardly take it in. It seemed so surreal. And all those things he'd said about Stephanie. How she tried to stop him seeing his son, how she'd bled him dry in the divorce, how they barely even exchanged pleasantries these days. All lies. The whole of him was a lie, everything she had believed about him, everything on which she'd based her love for him. It was all untrue. And poor Stephanie. Stephanie who had believed she was happily married until a couple of days ago…

She finally gave in to the tears that had been threatening to come ever since she had picked up the phone. Big, heaving sobs, which took over her whole body and which made Stanley come and stand beside her, looking at her sadly, unsure of what to do.

As the morning wore on the tears were replaced with angry thoughts — something alien to Katie: she liked to put a positive spin on things, to see the good in every situation. Twice she had begun to dial James's number. She wanted him to know that she knew. She wanted him to know he wasn't going to get away with it any more. But she had promised Stephanie she would sit tight for now. And if that was what Stephanie wanted, it was the least Katie could do. She got up and wiped her eyes, then lit some candles — geranium to lift the spirits. She was strong, she would cope.

‘Bastard,’ she said out loud, to no one in particular.

12

They had agreed to speak again the following morning. Meanwhile Stephanie called Natasha to fill her in on what had happened and to ask her what she thought they should do next.

‘You need to think it through carefully. Don't show your hand too early,’ Natasha said, when Stephanie had finished.

‘I know, I know. Haven't you got any new sayings?’

‘Funnily enough, I've never discovered that my best friend's husband is a bigamist before, or as good as, so forgive me if I don't immediately know what to say.’