I knew I loved him, it’s why I didn’t leave when he told me he’d fallen in love with someone else. It seemed this wasn’t just a casual fling like before, this was apparently something deeper, more intense. This had been a shock, but was also painful proof to me that Dan was capable of real, passionate love. I saw by the way he looked when he talked about her that she meant more than anyone – more than me. I never told him how I felt, I found it too raw to see the faraway look in his eyes when he told me he’d finished it with her.
But I had to forgive him because I loved him, and that night in the garden of the villa I still believed that, in forgiving him, he’d finally come to love me. It’s why I took the time to understand his dilemma – he was completely torn between his mother’s wishes and my happiness. In the moonlit darkness, I saw panic in his eyes and knew only I could release him from this awful tug of war. So I reached out my hand, which he took gratefully, and murmured, ‘Okay, they can have our room, but you owe me one.’
The relief made him laugh. His whole body seemed to relax, and he instinctively hugged me. ‘Thank you. I knew you’d agree. I know how much it meant to you, to us – but I just felt bad saying no in front of Ella.’
‘I understand, your mum shouldn’t have put you in that position, but she was probably only being thoughtful,’ I sighed, catching his hand as we continued to walk through the garden, both drawn to the pool, still lit, a bright turquoise rectangle in the darkness. We stood together, by the edge, mesmerised by the blue glow and, still holding his hand, I sat on the edge. He sat down too and I slipped off my sandals, lowering both feet in. It was cool and so refreshing and, in the airless heat, I had this urge to slip into the water, fully clothed, and let the blue cold wash over me.
‘I want to get in,’ I said to Dan.
He smiled. ‘You can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because… you’ll get all your clothes wet.’
‘I could take them off first?’ I suggested, and looked into his eyes. ‘We could get in together?’
For a moment, I could see he was thinking about it; he had that cautious smile I’d fallen in love with a long time ago. Was it too late to start again and get it right this time?
‘Go on,’ I muttered, waggling my toes under the water, longing to slip into the glinting turquoise, for it to swallow our heat.
He didn’t answer me, just looked out over the massive blue, contemplating the prospect. The wine from dinner was making me carefree, less inhibited, and I slowly unwrapped and removed my dress. I sat in my underwear, glad of the semi-darkness. Joy used to joke that moonlight was flattering for a woman over forty. I liked that theory. ‘Why don’t you buy some good-fitting underwear and turn down the lights?’ she’d suggested after Dan’s affair, convinced a push-up bra and a pair of lace knickers would bring him to heel. I was sure she had a checklist of ‘things a wife should do to stop her man straying’ and it seemed I hadn’t done a single one. So it was, in essence, all my fault.
I remember laughing to a friend of mine, ‘Jesus, it will take more than good underwear and bad lighting for me to look like the twenty-five-year-old he’s been sleeping with.’ And here I was, sitting in my underwear by moonlight, straight out of Joy’s ‘Ten Ways to Get Your Man Back’ series.
‘Are you coming in?’ I asked, trying to sound flirtatious and mysterious, which wasn’t easy after fifteen years of marriage and three kids. I took his silence as a sign that he was considering it and, encouraged by this, I stood up and jumped in.
The thrill of the cold water was a wonderful antidote to the intense heat, but as I emerged, all I could see in the watery moonlight was Dan’s irritated face. ‘Oh Clare, no!’ he was saying. ‘Get out. The children’s room’s over there.’ He pointed to the side of the house. ‘If they hear you…’
‘They won’t. They’re exhausted, and fast asleep. If they call out, Joy’ll go to them. I thought you were coming in with me?’ I said, now feeling a little foolish that I’d gone into the water.
‘Sssh!’ Another shushing. ‘No, I’m not. It’s late, and you’re drunk. It’s dangerous.’
‘I’ve only had two glasses of wine,’ I said, too loudly.
‘Come on.’ He was holding out his hand to help me out, but I was damned if he was ruining my fun.
‘You asked me to be spontaneous, Dan.’
‘Yes, but not now, not here…’
‘But that’s what being spontaneous is.’ I was hurt, disappointed.
‘It’s… not… it’s stupid. Get out, take my hand,’ he said, angry now.
‘No, sod off, I don’t need your help.’
‘Oh, do what you like,’ he said and stepped away from me.
I was trying to be what he wanted, and still he was rejecting me.
‘You’re the one who isn’t spontaneous,’ I yelled. ‘You’re so bloody scared of your mother you can’t do anything without permission,’ I added, my throat now tight with tears. I was goading him, desperately wishing he’d turn around and come back, even to have the last word, but he didn’t, he just kept walking until he’d disappeared into the blackness.
Okay, I’d had a drink, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been swimming, but even then, in my tipsy anger, I couldn’t help but wonder, if he thinks it’s so dangerous, why is leaving me here, alone, slightly drunk in deep, dark water?
Chapter Ten
I swam to the shallow end of the pool, and pulled myself out. It felt dark and lonely, the slightly frivolous excitement I’d felt only minutes earlier now smashed. I felt foolish. I’d wanted Dan to be so carried away by passion that we made love in the pool, or outside. I’d tried to be who I thought he’d wanted me to be, and I hated myself for it, for trying to be who I wasn’t.
Until Marilyn I’d been happy, I’d even learned to quite like myself. I wondered, as I had for months now, how I compared to her. Did Dan look at me and wish I was her, did he scroll through his memories of Marilyn, and use them like porn to turbocharge his desire when with me? And did I come up short?
I don’t know why I’d been so surprised that he’d fallen for her. They were together twenty-four/seven; she worked on the money side, and he on the business. She was important to the growth of Taylor’s and had ways and means of making their money go further. She also happened to be pretty, seventeen years younger and three children lighter. It might have been predictable to anyone on the outside (anyone, apparently, except me) that they were falling into each other’s arms. But then I’ve never been good at guessing surprises – from Dan’s marriage proposal fifteen years before, to the surprise party he threw for my fortieth birthday. But the fortieth fireworks and Tiffany bracelet paled into insignificance when he said he’d been having a six-month affair with the accountant. Yes, Dan always had the ability to take my breath away.
But this wasn’t the first time. About three years before, he’d had a fling with a stewardess he’d met on a business flight to Dublin to look at some properties – apparently her name was Carmel. I’d heard him on the phone to her, when we were on holiday in Greece that summer. It was horrible, I’d been so hurt, so disillusioned. And later, much later, he told me about her, said she’d been a fling, nothing more, and he’d had to say he was leaving me because she was threatening to kill herself. But eventually he finished it, and that’s when all the trouble started.