Gary turned round. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped, but he didn’t say a word. What could he say? ‘I thought you’d be out till late,’ or ‘It’s not what it looks like,’ or ‘Hi honey, do you want to pass us both a towel then how about we have a nice cup of tea and a chat about it?’
The water continued to cascade, filling the room with steam. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. It seemed as though time had stopped.
My gaze flicked from Gary to Rob to Gary again. Rob closed his eyes and hung his head. Gary slowly reached behind him and shut off the water with one hand while tugging his left earlobe with the other. Still nobody spoke. Nobody moved. It was as though the silence and stillness were a protective cloak keeping us from facing what was happening. Don’t move and don’t speak and we can pretend it’s a dream. But it wasn’t a dream. It was my worst nightmare and I had to get out.
‘Elise, I…’ Gary started.
I shook my head, then turned and fled. Stumbling along the corridor and down the stairs, I grabbed my jacket and bag from the bottom step and shoved my feet back into my ballet pumps.
My hands shook so much that I dropped my bag twice before I was able to fish the car keys out of it.
Reversing Bertie off the drive with a screech and turning to face down Abbey Drive, I glanced in my rear-view mirror to see the front door burst open and Gary dive out with a towel round his waist. He ran across the front lawn, shouting my name, but I pressed my foot harder onto the accelerator and turned up the volume on the radio to obliterate his cries. I pulled out of the estate and sped towards town.
My arms shook, jerking the steering wheel, then my legs followed suit. My head pounded, my heart thumped and my stomach churned.
A film of sweat covered my body and my mouth filled with saliva as I drove along the seafront. Oh shit! This time, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was going to be sick. I swallowed several times on the bile rising in my throat, knowing I had to find somewhere to stop, but this was absolutely not the place. Locals brushed shoulders with early-season tourists enjoying fish and chips, ice-creams and doughnuts. There was no way I could stop and vomit somewhere so public.
Grateful that the traffic lights were on green, I took deep breaths as I sped along the seafront, over the swing bridge and into the car park at Lighthouse Cove, unclicking the seatbelt as I did so. Without switching the engine off, I dived out of Bertie in the nick of time.
An elderly woman perched on the wall of the car park with a yappy Yorkshire Terrier under her arm stared at me then dashed across the road, muttering something about me being ‘a disgusting little bitch’. How very charitable of her. What if I’d been really ill and was on the verge of collapse?
My stomach heaved and I vomited again. Wiping my mouth with the back of my shaking hand, I waited a few moments to make sure there wasn’t going to be thirds, then slowly clambered back into Bertie, slumping back in the driver’s seat, still shaking.
A few minutes later, I reached forward and rummaged in the glove compartment until my hand wrapped round a packet of mints. I sucked on one while I slumped back in my seat again with my jacket draped across my shoulders, staring at the pink sky gradually fading into darkness, listening to the radio on low volume.
The car park I’d pulled into was the closest one to the patch of beach near the caves where Gary had proposed, where I liked to come and think. Ironically, at a time when I needed to do some really serious thinking, my mind was completely blank. The scene in the shower had been so shocking and unexpected that my brain couldn’t even begin to make sense of it. Had that really been my husband in the shower with another man? With Rob? I shook my head and closed my eyes, then swiftly opened them when all I could see was the two of them, hands all over each other. I shuddered.
Sometime later, a flash from my open handbag on the passenger seat drew my attention. It was my phone which I’d flicked to silent at the party when Kay stood up to speak. Six missed calls and five text messages, all from Gary. He'd obviously been in panic mode as they'd all been sent within half an hour.
Sighing, I scrolled through the texts:
✉︎ From Gary
Where are you? Please call me
✉︎ From Gary
Are you OK? Please call me
✉︎ From Gary
Li, I’m so sorry. Never meant this to happen
✉︎ From Gary
Can we talk? Please come home so we can talk. Rob’s gone
✉︎ From Gary
I’m worried about you. I get that you may not want to talk yet, but please let me know you’re safe xx
I didn’t want to listen to his voice so ignored the voicemail messages. I couldn’t bring myself to text him either. Instead, I dropped the phone back in my bag and stared out into the darkness again. Was that it? Was it the end for us? Nearly sixteen years together and my husband was… What was he? Gay? Bi? Confused? It didn’t make sense. Gary loved me. He’d always loved me. So what was he doing with someone else? Especially another man! There’d never been anything to suggest he was attracted to men, had there? I clapped my hand over my mouth. Oh shit! No! Curtis couldn’t have got it right all those years ago. Could he?
4
Fourteen Years Ago
‘I don’t believe you.’ I shook my head at my new friend, Curtis, as we put our trays on a table and took a seat in the college canteen. ‘Surely it’s not possible.’
He pulled a shocked expression and dramatically thumped his heart. ‘Your words stab me right here, Red.’ His blue eyes widened and twinkled with tears. ‘Are you calling me a wee liar?’ Wow! Tears on tap? Impressive! He hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d introduced himself as the biggest drama queen I’d ever meet.
‘I’m not calling you anything,’ I said. ‘I just don’t think it’s possible to tell someone’s gay just by looking at them.’
‘I’m not unique, you know,’ he said. ‘Scrub that. I am incredibly unique, Red, but my gift isn’t. It’s called a gaydar. Don’t tell me you’ve led such a sheltered life that you’ve never heard of a gaydar.’
I shrugged. ‘Sorry. I think you’re right about the sheltered life. I probably shouldn’t admit to such naivety, but you’re the first openly gay person I’ve ever met. Mind you, you’re the first Scottish person I’ve properly met too so I probably need to get out more.’
‘Sixteen and oh so innocent to the world around her.’ Curtis fluttered his eyelashes. ‘I may be the first openly gay person you’ve met, but I’ll bet you’ve met loads of us. You just haven’t realised it. In fact, they’ve probably not realised it themselves. At our age, some know and accept it, some don’t realise it yet, and some are very aware but are fighting their calling.’
Within a few hours of meeting Curtis, I’d known that I’d found a truly fabulous and fascinating friend who was going to add a little colour to A Level history classes. After five years of familiar surroundings at my small comprehensive with Sarah by my side, starting at Whitsborough Bay Sixth Form with students from eight feeder schools had been pretty overwhelming. My heart had sunk when I’d looked down the list for my history class and realised I knew nobody. I’d loitered in the doorway before my first lesson that morning, clinging onto my bag and trying to assess whether any of the natives were friendly, when I felt a tug on my sleeve.