“I haven’t told him.” I added sharply, “Have you?”
She shook her head. “Of course not.”
“He hasn’t said anything to me. I kept the newspapers away from him.” There had been only a short piece in the local press about Tom, not even a photo. It said he’d died by falling downstairs when he was drunk, and warned readers to be careful. My name wasn’t mentioned; it just said that a family friend had seen him fall. That wasn’t exactly how I would have described myself. “I wondered whether he might have heard about it from someone at work, but I don’t think so.”
Ruby drew a breath and I could see she was trying to pluck up her courage. “I need to ask you something. Something personal.”
“Go ahead.”
“When did you sleep with Tom?”
I wasn’t expecting that one. “Remember when you went to Paris with Harry?” I said eventually. “I saw you at the airport with him. Kissing him.” I was glad to see guilt suffuse her face. “I’d suspected for a while, but when I saw you together . . . well, it was pretty obvious what was going on. I went round to Tom’s to tell him you and Harry were having an affair.” I gave her my famous brazen look. “And we slept together.”
There was a dead silence, then she said, “I left home a few weeks after that trip. So you knew all that time ago?”
“I guessed before then,” I said. “I’m not stupid, Ruby.”
“And Tom knew, too. I didn’t realize.”
“He only knew because I told him.” I felt a surge of shame but quickly curbed it. “I don’t think he had a clue beforehand. I’m sorry, but if you were having an affair with my husband, was I meant to just take it?”
“No, of course not.” She brushed her hand across her eyes. “Why should you?” I could see her trying to control herself. “And now you’re pregnant. Why did you have the DNA report with you?”
“I’d come round to prove to Tom that Harry was the father. I didn’t want to talk to him; I printed out the e-mail and was just going to put it through his door. Tom wouldn’t leave me alone. He was convinced it was his baby. He wanted to tell Harry that he wasn’t the father and watch him suffer, but it was more than that. He wanted to share custody of the baby. He seemed determined not to lose another child, as he felt he’d lost Josh. I would have had to have contact with him all of my life and I was terrified of that. When the results came in, I came straight over with a note telling him to keep away from me.”
I thought of those early days of my pregnancy, of having my blood taken and collecting Harry’s nail clippings from the bathroom bin, terrified that the result would show the baby was Tom’s. I still felt light with relief when I thought of the result. It dawned on me the night Tom died, when I couldn’t sleep, that he could have still paid Harry a visit and told him I’d slept with him. He could have given the copy of the DNA test as proof that I was worried about the baby’s parentage. But even if he had, and even if I’d had to admit to sleeping with Tom, then at least the child was Harry’s. Still, I’d had a lucky escape; I knew that.
“How did you find out that Tom knew about you and Harry?” I asked.
She didn’t speak for ages and I had to stare at her quite hard to make her notice. Then she said in a quiet voice, “The day before . . . Well, the day before I saw you, I bumped into Harry in a café in Nantwich. We hadn’t planned to meet; it was just chance. He’d had a meeting with a client and was buying cakes to take back to the office. We had a talk. A coffee. We cleared the air. We won’t be seeing each other again.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, remembering that night and how I’d felt the distance between us. So that was why Harry had seemed to have something on his mind. “I’m glad you told me.”
“I was an idiot,” she said. “I think I wanted to get out of my marriage and saw him as my savior.”
I raised an eyebrow at her.
“I know. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I just don’t understand,” I said. “Okay, so you bumped into Harry, but why did that make you realize that Tom knew about your affair?” Suddenly Ruby looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights and my stomach dropped. I knew she was going to say something really bad. “It doesn’t matter,” I backtracked, but she interrupted me.
“No. You need to know. Harry and I were going to live together.”
“What?”
Her voice was unsteady. “I’m so sorry. It was a fantasy, on my part, at least. I was crazy to think I knew him well enough to do that. I got completely carried away.” There was a long pause, then she said, “I am so sorry I did that to you. I’m ashamed of myself.”
I forced my face to be impassive. I didn’t want her to see the hurt that I felt inside. I said, “When was this?” but I knew. I still made her answer.
“It was June twenty-first,” she whispered.
She didn’t need to say it was the day that I found out I was pregnant. The day Harry came home late, with a huge bouquet of peonies. I’d been such a fool, thinking he’d bought them especially for me. I hadn’t talked to Jane until five o’clock that afternoon and all the florists around here would be shut at that time of day. That bouquet wasn’t for me at all; he must have bought it earlier in the day, before he knew I was pregnant. I felt a surge of anger. He’d bought my favorite flowers for Ruby, to celebrate leaving me.
I looked at Ruby. She was scarlet, wringing her hands, the lot.
I had to ask, but I really didn’t want to know the answer. “How long were you and he together?” I asked. I remembered last Christmas when he was distant, remembered a holiday we’d had in the spring, when he seemed to spend a lot of time on the phone “to the office.” And I remembered myself doing the pick-me dance again and again throughout our marriage, thinking he was a prize. What I deserved. He really wasn’t.
She swallowed hard and I gripped my hands together. “Eighteen months,” she said.
My mind was frantic as I tried to calculate. “Wasn’t that when you started working for him?”
She lowered her eyes, her face a picture of guilt. “Yes. It started almost the moment we met.”
And, just like that, the light went out in my marriage.
CHAPTER 73
Emma
I left Ruby pretty soon after that. I could hardly bear to look at her. My whole body was hurting as though I’d been punched in the gut.
Eighteen months of lies and deceit. It had started the moment they met.