Page 77

SEVENTY-FOUR

Martha glances at her husband in the driver’s seat of the car. He looks, she thinks, so carefree. He looks happy, unburdened. His blue eyes gleam in the January sun through the windscreen, and he turns when he notices her gaze upon him, and smiles.

“You look so beautiful,” he says. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” she says.

They are halfway to Bangate and Martha’s gut roils and churns as the coast gets closer and closer.

Twenty minutes, she thinks, twenty minutes and then…

but no, she can’t bring herself to think of it, of what happens in twenty minutes.

Right now, she is in the moment: the sunshine, the road ahead, the road behind, this moment of nowness and calm.

She absorbs it, holds it inside, ignores the voice in her head that says, You idiot, you idiot, you idiot ; the voice that says, How could you be so stupid, so stupid, so stupid?

Hers has not been a life of bad decisions and poor choices.

Hers has been a healthy life, a functional life, a life of pleasure and joy.

Her first husband was a good man, a good husband, and a good father.

They split up because they’d outgrown each other and that was all there was to it.

Her friendships were solid, her home was beautiful, her children were happy (well, on the whole), her business was successful.

And yet, into this pretty picture, somehow, stage left, silently and without Martha asking one single question, a beautiful man had appeared.

And Martha had made the first bad decision of her life.

How, she asks herself now, had she lived for four years with a man who claimed to have a job but never took a business call, never introduced her to a colleague, never took her to a work function, a man who went on business trips that required him to switch off his phone for days on end, a man who claimed to have severe ADHD yet managed to hold down an important job, garner respect, be given promotions.

How did she not ask more questions? Push him?

Corner him? Who was she? And more important, who the hell is he, this man smiling into the winter sun, with his loose body language, telling her he loves her?

And why, she asks herself, does she still want his love?

What does she want it for? What is wrong with her?

But now she knows she is not alone, that many more women have allowed themselves to be manipulated and used by this man, and in some ways she feels she may have had the best of him.

He has not stolen from her, at least, not until recently and even then not very much, not compared to how much he has stolen from others.

From Laura, from Amanda, from Tara. She thinks, secretly, privately, that Al loves her more than he loved any of the others, she really does.

She thinks, even as it pains her to do so, that Al gave her the best of himself, the less sleazy side of himself, the side of himself that wanted a normal life and a normal marriage.

She suspects that she is fooling herself to think these things, and she pictures Nina Swann sitting in her office at the flower shop, strong and formidable in black.

Nina Swann would not have put up with a moment of this treatment, she thinks, and as she thinks this her phone buzzes and she pulls it out to see that there is a message from Nina, except it does not say Nina, it says “school,” and the message, she sees from the preview in her notifications, says: All ready. ETA?

She types quickly. Eight minutes . Then puts her phone away before Al can see it.

A moment later, Al pulls the car over into a lay-by. Martha looks at him anxiously.

“Just need a pee. I’ll be right back.”

He gets out of the car and Martha watches him curiously.

She has never, in all the four years she’s been with him, known Al to pee outdoors.

Literally never. Her heart rate quickens, and her breathing becomes tight and uncomfortable.

What is he doing? she wonders. Is he running?

Escaping? Does he know? But a moment later, he reappears from the undergrowth, smiling genially.

“You OK?” he asks, looking at her strangely as he gets back into the car.

She nods and smiles hard. “I’m just excited,” she says breathlessly, to hide the adrenaline rush brought about by the subterfuge. “This is going to be incredible.”

Al turns to her and smiles, and still, even now, she is blown away by the way he looks when he smiles, this handsome, charming man, the father of her child.

“It is,” he says warmly. “It really, really is.”