I’ve watched the same clip a dozen times since I found it on Andy’s Facebook page yesterday. I hardly ever check his page – he’s my husband, I don’t need to be his social media ‘friend’ – but then I received a notification Louise had tagged me in a post, and stupidly, I clicked on it. I should never have accepted her friend request a couple of years ago, when we were being ‘civilised’. I’ve blocked her now, but the damage is done: I can’t unsee the video.
The footage was taken about five years ago, by Bella: she starts with a selfie in which she talks to the camera about ‘meeting my family’, perhaps for some sort of school project. She’s about ten, but I didn’t do the maths and work out why Louise wanted me to see this particular video until the second time I watched it. And then it hit me, like a punch to the gut.
There’s just the briefest glimpse, when Louise reaches for her tea, but it’s unmistakable: the clear outline of a baby bump.
I’ve always known Andy cheated on me with Louise. He told me when we met they were legally separated, waiting for the slow wheels of divorce to turn, and even though I’d known it was a cliché, exactly the kind of thing all married men say, I believed him. He had his own flat in central London, devoid of any feminine touch, and we didn’t just spend weeknights together, but most weekends, too; once, we even flew to Barbados for a week. I didn’t know then that Louise was used to him travelling for work for days or weeks at a time, giving him the perfect excuse to be away.
Just a few weeks after that Barbados holiday, I saw them together, quite by chance, at Paddington station. I’d never met Louise Page, but I recognised her instantly from her byline in the Daily Post, a column I’d always enjoyed reading until I fell in love with her husband. She was smaller than I’d expected, and prettier than her headshot photo. And at least five months pregnant.
Of course I should have ended things with Andy then and there. But he was so distraught, so repentant. One night of nostalgia, he said, too much wine, they’d slept together out of habit rather than desire. He hadn’t been sure of me, then, he said; he’d been convinced I’d find someone my own age, someone more appropriate, with less baggage. He swore it’d just happened once, and that he and Louise had both agreed it had been a mistake. But then a scan at twenty weeks had revealed some kind of shadow on the baby’s heart, which can indicate Down’s syndrome, and her obstetrician had booked her in for an amniocentesis test (thankfully negative) with a foetal expert in London. That’s where he’d been taking her when I’d spotted them at the station. There was no relationship between them anymore. He was just doing the decent thing by his child.
Once again, I’d believed him. I’d allowed myself to be convinced he was a good man who’d made a mistake, and was now trying to do the best he could to clean up his mess. In fact, I loved him all the more because he hadn’t walked away from Louise, knowing the way a man treats your predecessor is the best indicator of how he’ll treat you.
And most important of all: I’d just found out I was pregnant myself. I couldn’t face the thought of being a single mother, but at the same time, aborting the baby of a man I loved to distraction was out of the question. Every man was allowed to screw up once, surely? He swore I was the one he loved, and that was all that really mattered.
But this video changes everything. Louise didn’t get pregnant on a nostalgic, one-night-only trip down memory lane. They were clearly still in a relationship the whole time Andy and I were together. I replay the clip yet again, freezing it as Andy tucks the strand of hair behind Louise’s ear. He loved her. I can see it in his face, as clear as day. Perhaps he’s never stopped. Did he love me, too, when he was rubbing Louise’s feet on the sofa? Or was I just a diversion for him, providing sex and careless, child-free pleasure? Louise was his professional equal, but I looked up to him; worshipped him, almost. How that must have stoked his ego. God, what an idiot I was. I’m an intelligent, successful, ambitious woman, and I still fell for some of the oldest lines in the book. He would never have left Louise if she hadn’t screwed up. He didn’t choose me. Her mistake pushed him into my arms by default.
I snap the computer shut as I hear the front door open. There’s no point feeling sorry for myself. I knew Andy was a liar when I married him. The question is: now that I know our entire relationship has been built on a lie, what am I going to do about it? Do I give Louise what she’s wanted from the beginning, and leave him? Or do I reconcile myself to spending the rest of my life with a man I can never quite trust?
I compose my face into something resembling normal as Bella and her friend Taylor come into the sitting room. ‘Hey.’ I smile. ‘Was the movie good?’
Bella shrugs. ‘It was OK.’
‘Did you get anything to eat while you were out? Or do you want me to sort you something for lunch?’
‘We went to Pret,’ Taylor says. ‘But thank you, Mrs Page.’
‘Oh, God, please call me Caz. You make me feel ancient.’
The two of them hover awkwardly in the middle of the sitting room, throwing each other meaningful looks. They clearly want to ask me something, and I resign myself to handing over the rest of the contents of my wallet. Neither Andy nor Louise give Bella any kind of proper allowance, and refuse to let her get a Saturday job, which means she has to ask for handouts every time she wants to get herself a coffee or buy a T-shirt. She’s sixteen now: it’s humiliating for everyone. I’m tempted to set up an automatic transfer via a banking app myself, except I don’t want to totally overstep my bounds.
Taylor nudges her friend. ‘Go on. Ask her.’
I reach for my bag. ‘How much d’you need?’
‘It’s not that,’ Bella says quickly.
She twists the silver ring nervously on her hand. She and Taylor both sport identical ones; they could be twins, in their ripped black jeans and oversized black sweaters, except that while Bella looks young for her age, Taylor could easily pass for twenty-one.
‘Come on,’ I sigh. ‘Spit it out. What d’you want?’
Bella glances towards the doorway. ‘Is Dad here?’
‘He’s taken the boys to the Science Museum. They won’t be back for ages.’ I stand up, and grab my jacket from the back of my chair. ‘OK, I’m taking you two out. We’re going to Halva’s Patisserie for a sugar hit. Then you can tell me exactly what’s going on’ – I grin – ‘and why you don’t want to tell your father.’
I double-lock the front door, and shoo the girls down the street ahead of me. The flat is just off the North End Road, in one of the many tiny side streets honeycombing Fulham, and jammed with parked cars on both sides, one of the main reasons we never brought Andy’s SUV to London. Our next-door neighbour, a sweet woman in her seventies, opens her door to bring out her rubbish just as we pass her gate, and I call out to the girls to wait as I stop and take it to the street for her. ‘Sounds like you’ve been partying, Mrs Mahoney.’ I smile, as the bag clinks.
‘Oh, get away with you, Caz.’ Mrs Mahoney laughs. ‘It’s Ernie’s pickle jars. You know what he’s like.’
‘I do indeed,’ I say.