The Girl Next Door (29 page)

The morning that Rachael found out David was having an affair was perfectly normal, until that moment. It was Sunday, and Milena didn’t work at the weekends, except the occasional Saturday night, and sometimes during the summers out in Connecticut. Rachael loved Milena, and she recognized how much easier she made their lives, but she loved it, too, when Milena wasn’t there, and her children were all her own.

David had slept until 8, as he liked to do, but she’d been up since 5.30, as she always was. No alarm required – she just woke up. She’d run her six miles, around the reservoir in the park, Coldplay blaring through her iPod, and been home before the children woke, to make pancakes, as she did every weekend. They had stumbled along the corridor at the sounds of the kitchen, tousled and sleepy, but hungry. She had talked to them while they ate, nursing a mug of Earl Grey, and leaning against the breakfast bar. Jacob was starting West Side Soccer across town later – he was excited to get his kit on and get down there. He had his mother’s energy, Rachael recognized, and it would be good for him. Noah wanted to go and watch. David had said he would take them, and Mia had been promised her favourite morning – Barnes & Noble, to read picture books on the floor, followed by lunch with her mum. The boys were watching
SpongeBob
, making the most of their permitted weekend television hour, and Mia had crawled back up into bed with her father for a post‐pancake snooze. Rachael had stood leaning against the doorframe watching them for a moment. They were facing each other, Mia’s little leg tucked under her, and her fingers fanned out on the pillow. Their profiles were the same – so were their dark curls.

It was always a bit hard, making the transition from country life in the summer back to city life, and the approaching fall. This weekend would have been beautiful out there. It was still hot, but the humidity had disappeared completely. But life had revved up again. School and sport and obligations… It had been a lovely summer, though. David hadn’t spent as much time out there as she’d wished he could, but they’d all made the most of the time they had had together. She was proud of her husband, and work was obviously going really well.

David forgot his BlackBerry. She’d let him sleep a little longer than he should have done, and the three boys had had to rush to get out of the house in time for soccer. It was unlike him to do that – to hurry and to forget things. Other women’s husbands moaned about husbands misplacing phones, keys and wallets, but not David. Later she wondered for just a second whether he’d forgotten it on purpose. Whether on some deep level he’d wanted to be found out.

Rachael wasn’t snooping. Why would she? He’d done or said nothing suspicious. Nothing was out of the ordinary, off routine. She had no reason to check up on him. If she was really honest, she’d never entertain, for a moment, the idea that he would need to cheat on her. When she first realized he’d gone without it, she put it down on the table beside her, sure that he’d be back within minutes to claim it. She and Mia were making clay animals. Mia was working on what she assured her mother was an elephant, and had instructed Rachael to get started on a lion, with a big mane. Rachael had just retrieved the garlic press, planning to squeeze clay through it. Mia was chattering delightedly. This was exactly the kind of thing she loved to do, and only really got the chance to when her big brothers were elsewhere – they weren’t great at the sit‐down art projects, and Rachael and Milena had cleaned enough clay out of rugs and paint off walls to learn the lesson some time ago.

So the machine vibrated next to her as she fed the garlic press with clay. Instinctively she reached for it, assuming that it would be David, calling to check that the BlackBerry was at home, rather than in the hands of someone who’d found it on the street, or down the vinyl seat of a cab. He’d have borrowed the phone of one of the other dads on the soccer sideline. New message. She knew his password. It was JANOMIRA – the first two letters of each of their names, Jacob, Noah, Mia and Rachael. She knew his password, she opened mail that came to the apartment addressed to him. She knew his social security number, and his blood pressure, and the pre‐tax amount of his last bonus. He was her husband. She knew everything.

Except this. Rachael didn’t know this.
CALL IF YOU CAN. I MISS YOU
. For a moment, confused, she assumed he’d written it. To her. Then realization dawned, and she felt instantly stupid that she could have thought that. Somebody was missing him. It wasn’t Jacob or Noah or Mia, and it wasn’t her. It was somebody who had no right. Beside her, Mia chattered on about elephants, and their trunks, and the lion’s mane, and about how long it would take them to dry so she could paint them. Rachael kept pushing clay into the garlic press until Mia noticed and said she thought there was probably enough for a mane now.

She couldn’t scream or rant, because Mia was there and David wasn’t. She wished she was brave enough to press the green button and find out who was missing her husband, but she couldn’t do it. She stared at the BlackBerry until her eyes lost their focus, and tried to stop her brain and her heart racing so fast. She missed beats, and she felt dizzy, a little breathless.

Mia was pulling on her sleeve, dressed in her raincoat and boots, though it was pretty hot and sunny outside (they were new, and pink, and she would wear them to bed given the opportunity), asking when they were going to Barnes & Noble. She was finished with the clay.

Rachael didn’t even make her take off the wet‐weather gear.

She tried to stay calm, as Mia sat contentedly on the floor of the bookstore, surrounded by a stack of picture books she’d collected from the tables and shelves. She tried to stop her brain from getting ahead of itself. She tried different scenarios. Versions in which the text was harmless, innocuous, a mistake. Meant for someone else. Sent in error. A stupid, stupid joke. The funny thing was, she knew.

The other funny thing was, if you’d asked her yesterday how she would react to something like this, she’d have sworn she’d be brave. She would have returned the call on the BlackBerry. She would have waited at home and confronted David. She’d have been loud, and righteous and angry – at least, at first.

She was none of those things.

She was terrified.

She couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the apartment and seeing him.

*

When David came in after soccer, there was clay all over the table. Rachael never left a mess. He felt a flutter of panic – maybe Mia had hurt herself, maybe she’d had to run out to the ER, and that was why they hadn’t cleared up. There was no note. He saw his BlackBerry on the corner of the bookcase just inside the front door. He’d realized very soon after he and the boys had left that he’d forgotten it, but knew he didn’t have time to go back for it. He’d actually acknowledged to himself that he’d had more fun without it – he’d run up and down the sidelines with Noah, and actually watched Jacob. He knew that if he’d had it with him, he’d have been ‘fiddling’ with it, as Jake called it. He picked it up, wanting to call Rachael and find out what had happened. That’s when he saw the text and the flutter of panic became a wind.

Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl. How could she have done that? She was never, ever supposed to do that. In rearranging his moral codes in order to justify the affair, David had told himself that at least he was completely honest with Stephanie. Stephanie knew there was a wife and three children, and that there were no weekends or holidays, and that there was absolutely no possibility of him leaving Rachael for her. He’d been clear about that from the beginning. He’d never said a single thing to her that he didn’t mean. That meant he didn’t have to feel bad about Stephanie, however bad he felt about Rachael. Stephanie knew the score. She was a volunteer. And she’d broken the rules.

What he didn’t know was whether or not Rachael had seen the text. All least, he couldn’t be sure, and that uncertainty was like an itch, all over his skin. Cold fear ran down his spine at the thought that she had. It would explain the mess, and the absence of a note. His finger shook on the keys of the BlackBerry, dialling her number. He was about to find out, he guessed.

The call went straight through to Rachael’s voice‐mail, and David was lost for words. When he did speak, he kept his tone light, but sounded silly to himself, like a children’s television presenter, artificially high and jolly.

‘It’s me. We’re back. Jake’s got a great left foot, turns out. We were thinking of coming to meet you, if you don’t mind boys at lunch. Give me a call, let me know where you are? Okay. Bye.’

The boys were watching television again, and though he knew he should stop them, he was glad they were occupied.

He put himself in the far corner of the apartment, facing the wall, and dialled Stephanie. She answered immediately. ‘Hey, baby.’

‘You texted me. At the weekend.’ He sounded cold and angry, even to himself.

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Not as sorry as I am.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘I don’t know. I think Rachael might have seen it. I left my BlackBerry behind when I took the boys to soccer this morning.’

‘Oh, my God.’

He was silent.

When Stephanie spoke she sounded breathless. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Are you? Really?’

‘Of course. You don’t think I meant that to happen, do you?’

He didn’t know any more. He thought they’d had that straight. ‘She didn’t call you? You haven’t had any calls?’

‘None. Not until you. Honestly.’

That gave him hope. Rachael had balls. She was likely to have called the number, if she had seen the text.

By six o’clock, Rachael still wasn’t home, and she hadn’t rung, and he was sure she had done. She was letting him stew.

He didn’t have a clue what to do with the boys all day. Rachael always organized weekends. They clamoured to go swimming at Asphalt Green, or to take their scooters to the park, but he didn’t want to be out when Rachael got home, and they were easily pacified by the unexpected luxury of a whole afternoon on the Wii. He fed them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, without the vegetable crudités he knew they would normally have on the side, and let them dip Oreo cookies into their milk.

At some point, as he went through the motions of the afternoon, he realized that, when it came to caring for his sons, he only really knew what he wasn’t supposed to do. What was banned, what was controlled, what was prescribed. He didn’t view it proactively at all. What could they do? What did they like to do?

When had that happened? When had his life become this complicated?

He had carefully and studiously avoided, up until this point, acknowledging the ridiculous cliché that he had become by beginning this affair, but sitting in the apartment waiting for Rachael, growing more afraid by the hour, it stared him right in his stupid face.

It had started at the beginning of the year. Not, at least, in the tawdriest of ways – at the office holiday party – but in January, when New York’s grey, frozen winter still stretched out for another few months. Stephanie worked at the office – the executive assistant to an opposite number of his in another department. He’d first noticed her during a series of meetings over a deal last year. He remembered distinctly the surprise he’d felt when he registered an unfamiliar reaction. She was pretty, but by no means beautiful. One of those New York women who really knew how to make the best out of what they have – always immaculate, ultra slim.

He had never so much as looked at another woman that way – not since college. Rachael had always been enough.

She’d made the running, he thought, realizing how weak and cowardly he sounded, even inside his own head, as he voiced the thought. He was pretty sure none of it was his idea, not in the first place. In fact, he’d given her a wide berth after those meetings. He wasn’t a fool. Not then, at least. She knew he was married, a father. She knew what she was doing. She’d made it very, very clear that she was his for the taking, and, eventually, he’d given in, and taken her.

The first time had been easier than he might have imagined. They’d been at an off site, down at the Four Seasons at Battery Park. She’d flirted all day – during the coffee breaks, and across the table. They bumped into each other later, outside. She was smoking a cigarette, leaning against a tree. He’d gone out for some fresh air, thinking he might ring Rachael, but realizing it was late – she’d be asleep already. No one else was around. She’d beckoned him over, and he’d stood with her while she finished the cigarette. He’d never smoked himself, never found it attractive in a woman, until that moment. He was transfixed by the shape her mouth made when she exhaled smoke. It was suddenly so overtly sexual. Following her inside, into the elevator, to the door of her room – it was almost like he was in a trance. He was someone else. She closed the door behind them, and pulled his mouth down to hers before he had the chance to speak. And he just gave in. He let it happen to him. There was a moment – a second, before it was too late – when he could have stopped. He tried to conjure Rachael’s face, but he couldn’t. He tried to imagine his wife’s breasts, as he stroked Stephanie’s, but it was like he’d forgotten them. He hovered over Stephanie’s naked body, feeling her breath, faintly smoky, on his skin, and… let it happen. He literally could not think about anything other than being inside her, and he didn’t feel like himself again until later, after he came, and it was over. The first night, the first time, the alchemy made it happen. After that first time it got much, much easier.

It was sex, of course. Not that often, and, frankly, not all that great. David was not the kind of cheating husband who found sneaking around, and clandestine liaisons, erotic. He wasn’t, he reflected, a natural adulterer. Actually he found keeping track of his lies exhausting. But his conscience bothered him less than he might have imagined. Stephanie had a good body, but so did Rachael. She still looked more or less like she always had – golden, taut and pert – like the girl in the white bikini on the beach in St Barts all those years ago. You couldn’t tell she’d carried the three pregnancies. Stephanie was eager to please, and she had certainly had one or two new tricks, but neither did he have complaints about Rachael. He knew other guys who moaned that their wives went off sex after they had children, but not Rachael. It was, he supposed, regular, but still inventive, never perfunctory. And not always at his instigation. If he occasionally felt as though sex was something on Rachael’s ‘to do’ list, somewhere between ‘book the babysitter’ and ‘order sushi’, at least they did it often, and well. David had a friend at the racquetball club whose wife had actually told him, after a martini or two, that she submitted to sex three times a week mainly because it burned up to 750 calories and was a good inner thigh firmer. It saved her a spinning class. Multi‐tasking taken to a ridiculous level. Only in New York.