Page 55 of Forever, Maybe
Chapter forty-one
“Look who I ran into!” Danny announced, gesturing at the woman next to him, who was still regarding Nell as a python might a baby goat. “See, there are other folks our age out on a Thursday night!”
“Hi… Jennifer,” Nell murmured weakly.
How on earth had she failed to recognise Jennifer Frazer when they bumped into her in the park, Nell asked herself.
Sure, it had been years, and Jennifer—or rather, Jenny Curtice as she’d been back then—looked different now.
The extra weight was gone, the mousy-brown hair traded for a sleek, polished blonde style, but her eyes and build were unmistakable.
And her old penchant for caked-on makeup? Still alive and well.
Those times she used to pick Jamie up from his house for work.
Now and then, his wife would follow him out the front door, down the short garden path to where Nell waited in her Fiat 500.
She often hurled insults as she stalked after him, her eyes full of fury—darting to Nell with a look that seemed to say I see you.
As if she already knew Nell would one day be the woman her husband betrayed her with.
“Can I get you a drink?” Danny asked, gesturing toward the bar behind him.
“No,” Jennifer said briskly. “I need to tell you something.”
“Jennifer, please… don’t,” Nell murmured.
Danny’s gaze bounced between the two women, his confusion written all over his face.
Jennifer turned to him, eyes narrowing. “Your wife and I have something in common. So do you, come to think of it. Jamie Curtice. Ring any bells?”
The ice in Nell’s core spread like frostbite. She couldn’t breathe. Danny frowned, his forehead crinkling. Jamie Curtice. The name floated in the air between them, meaningless to him. Names were not his forte.
He shot Nell a quick, bemused glance, but she shook her head, biting her lip hard enough to hurt. There was nothing she could do now, no way to stop the juggernaut barrelling toward her.
“So… erm… when’s the interview coming out?” Danny tried again.
Jennifer’s face didn’t soften. Her jaw was rigid, her eyes alight with spite. “Later this year. A lot’s been happening. My ex used to come here a lot, you know.” She gestured around the room with a sweeping motion, her smile brittle.
“Oh, aye?” Danny asked, attempting politeness.
“Couldn’t keep it in his pants.”
“Sorry about that,” Danny said awkwardly, shifting in his seat.
Jennifer’s laugh was harsh, jagged. “Don’t be. Who wants to stay with a slimeball, cheating bastard, eh?” She directed the last part straight at Nell.
Danny tried to catch Nell’s eye, his eyebrows raised in a silent question. Like most men his age, he would rather invite someone to punch him than listen to a virtual stranger express raw emotion.
“Didn’t she ever tell you?” Jennifer turned to Danny, her voice arch and sharp, a smirk tugging at her lips. She radiated the certainty of someone who knew exactly what she was about to unleash.
Jennifer, don’t do this… Nell urged again, but the words stuck in her throat.
Paralysis pinned her to the spot, every nerve on edge.
The overpowering scent of Jennifer’s vanilla-and-cinnamon perfume mixed with her Bacardi-soaked breath, clinging to the air like a taunt.
Nell’s eyes caught the meticulous detail of Jennifer’s makeup: russet-red eyeshadow above the crease, metallic mahogany below, and perfectly flicked black eyeliner that extended out like tiny blades.
Everything felt vivid. The dryness of her mouth. The sticky film on the table beneath her fingertips. The pulsing thud of music in the background, someone crooning about it being almost over now.
Almost over now.
“Tell me what?” Danny’s voice was taut with suspicion, his confusion etched into every syllable. “Look, have you got some kind of—”
Jennifer voice sliced through his question.
“Turns out, one of the many, many sluts my ex screwed around with was your wife.” She let the words hang for a moment, her eyes gleaming as she studied Danny’s face.
“They had a little one-night stand back in the day. Late at night, under the desk in the meeting room at White Lightning Communications. Nobody around. Nell on top. Classy, eh?”
Her voice had risen to compete with the music, the harshness in her tone making every word land like a slap.
Nell sat frozen, her heart pounding so hard it was almost deafening. Yet, even in her panic, part of her brain marvelled at the precision of Jennifer’s detail. Under the desk. Nell on top. God.
“I…” Nell’s voice cracked as she tried to speak, to say anything to stop the wreckage unfolding before her. Nothing came.
“Don’t bother denying it,” Jennifer sneered, inspecting her long, polished nails like a predator toying with its prey.
“That slimeball told me everything. Don’t think you were special, or that he felt anything about you other than the fact that it was easy to persuade you to drop your slut knickers. ”
Jennifer pushed back her chair and rose with a deliberate slowness, her shoulders rigid. “Lovely seeing you again, folks. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”
She strolled away, the faux-casualness of her departure only amplifying the tension she left in her wake.
Danny’s gaze shifted to Nell, and the raw, visceral pain in his eyes made her flinch. Fury, disgust, betrayal—they all burned there, but it was the hurt that struck the hardest blow. Pain, deep and unguarded, was winning.
He stood abruptly, his knee banging against the table and sending the glasses wobbling precariously. Without a word, he turned and headed for the door, leaving Nell rooted to the spot, her world collapsing in slow motion around her.
She waited half an hour after Danny left, paralysed by fear and dread. Her legs refused to carry her out of the bar, so she ordered a double vodka and Diet Coke. It didn’t work. The burn of alcohol only deepened the ache in her chest, failing to deliver the numbness she craved.
What if I say this? What if I explain that?
None of the excuses she rehearsed seemed remotely sufficient to persuade Danny that she hadn’t really betrayed him—not in the way Jennifer had made it sound—and that he shouldn’t hate her.
Jennifer appeared to have buggered off, too.
The coincidence was maddening. Jamie confessing his sins to her.
Jennifer choosing that night to drink enough to fuel her righteous rage.
Running into Nell and Danny on a rare Thursday night out.
What were the odds? The universe had conspired to orchestrate her downfall.
It took her another hour to summon the courage to go home.
The house greeted her with deafening silence.
Danny wasn’t there. His car was still parked in its usual spot—he’d had too much to drink to drive—but in their bedroom, the open wardrobe told her all she needed to know. Clothes were missing. He’d gone.
She called his phone repeatedly. The first messages were simple: Call me, please. Then longer: We need to talk. I’ll explain everything. Finally, desperate: Danny, please. I’ll tell you everything. It was a one-off. A terrible mistake. One I’ve regretted every day since.
No reply.
She lay on top of their bed, still fully clothed, her phone clutched tightly in one hand. Exhaustion finally overtook her at four in the morning, and she fell into a restless sleep.
When she woke three hours later, she had thirty blissful seconds of reprieve.
Disoriented, she wondered why she was still dressed, what day it was and why the other side of the bed was empty.
Then the events of the night before slammed into her like a freight train.
Jennifer’s sharp voice, the venom in her eyes rimmed with thick black kohl and Danny’s look—pain, anger, betrayal—before he walked out.
She grabbed her phone and tried again. This time, the call went straight to voicemail. No ringing, no hope. The call log mocked her. Fifteen unanswered pleas. Her persistence had failed to wear him down.
He was shutting her out. Completely.
She waited until eight o’clock, when she knew Holly started work. “Is Danny there?” she asked, her voice shaking and thin.
“Oh, hiya Nell! You alright?” Holly’s cheeriness came from a normality to which Nell no longer belonged. She muttered “fine”, the best she could manage, and Holly offered to check Danny’s diary.
“He’s away today. Him and Joe are meeting some packaging people about the supermarket stuff. But you’ll get him on his mobile.”
She could hear the question there—Holly wondering why Nell hadn’t tried Danny’s mobile first. Nell thanked her and hung up. Danny didn’t want to be contacted and there was little she could do about it.
She paced the house, eyes staring out of the windows, unseeing.
Upstairs in her bedroom, she’d found the bottle of CK One Daniel had given her two Christmases ago, dismayed when she’d grimaced upon opening the packaging.
The perfume had always reminded her too much of Jamie, his body beneath hers, and those hideous three minutes shut in the toilet cubicle in Buchanan Galleries, waiting for the pregnancy test results.
She hurled it against the wall at the back of the garden, and then hosed the wall down, unable to bear the smell.
The day dragged on and on. She couldn’t work.
She couldn’t eat. Finally, the front door opened just after eight o’clock.
She’d been waiting for his return all day, but now that Danny had finally arrived, she wasn’t prepared at all.
Her legs trembled, jelly-like, as she walked out of the living room.
He stood two metres away in the hallway, his eyes boring into her, and the bottom half of his face set in rigid lines. When she said nothing, he headed for straight the stairs. “I need to pick up some things.”
She found him in their bedroom. He had pulled out a suitcase—one of the larger ones—and was throwing in pants and socks, every drawer in the room wide open.
“Do you want to listen to what I have to say?”
He shook his head furiously. “No. All those times you used to pick him and take him to work, and vice versa and all those White Lightning nights out. Were you shagging him the whole time?”
Fear made her defiant. “No! You heard her. it was a one-night thing. You’d rather let Jenny Curtice have the last word, rather than me, the woman you’ve been with for twenty-two years?”
He straightened up, a shirt in one hand and trousers in the other.
“Aye, twenty-two years, eh? And it seems I don’t know you at all.”
The desolation was palpable. Nell gulped, pressing her hand to her mouth. She mustn’t, mustn’t cry.
“You do know me.” She dared not move any closer to him and they faced each other across the bed.
“You do. I made an enormous mistake that was completely out of character, and I have lived with the consequences and the remorse ever since. But I don’t think the person who made that mistake tells the whole story about me, or the me you know and live with. ”
“Lived with.” He tossed the shirt and trousers in the suitcase, before turning to the wardrobe and yanking out other items with a determined ferocity.
The words made her gasp. “Danny, please.”
The suitcase was almost full. “Please what? Forgive you for being a cheating bitch? First, you refuse to have kids and never give me a good enough reason for why. No, no. You insist we’re not having them, and you only change your mind when it’s too late.”
Wishful thinking on his part. She hadn’t changed her mind, but he barrelled on regardless.
“Then, I find out that you cheated on me with Jamie, Jamie Curtice—that weaselly, oily little prick. You say that you’ve suffered the consequences and the guilt. What, am I meant to feel sorry for you?”
He spat the last words out.
Her legs refused to hold her up any longer and she sat down on the bed.
The conversation they hadn’t had since learning she was going through the menopause, and the animosity he clearly felt about her refusal to countenance children.
“No, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant that I knew I’d done terrible things, and it’s bothered me a lot over the years. I’m very sorry.”
He zipped up the suitcase and hauled it off the bed, standing it on its side.
Swallowing hard several times, she forced herself to speak again. “I… I found myself pregnant afterwards.”
He froze mid-step, one hand gripping the doorframe. Slowly, he turned back to her, his eyes wide, his expression a mixture of disbelief and horror. “Pregnant?”
She could have kept the secret buried. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t already weighed her down for years, carving deep scars into her. But the gravity of this moment demanded honesty, no matter the cost. For once, the truth felt less like a burden and more like a release.
“Yes.” Her voice wavered, and she faltered.
“Be… because I couldn’t be sure wh-who the father was, I…
I booked in for an ab-abortion.” The words scraped out of her like shards of glass, her voice breaking on the final syllable.
“The consultant was vile. I deserved it. His judgment, his disgust. But in the end…” She drew a trembling breath, tears spilling over.
“In the end, I didn’t need the abortion. I miscarried.”
She buried her face in her hands.
“So, it coulda been mine?” His voice cut through her anguish like a blade, laced with bitterness. “No wonder you were so keen to sleep wi’ me when you came back from staying wi’ Stephanie. You fucking bitch.”
The casual cruelty of his words made her wail all over again, the sound raw and guttural. She tried to smother it, biting down on her hand, but it was no use. She could feel him watching her, his gaze sharp and pitiless.
The silence stretched until it was broken by movement—the scrape of his shoes on the floor, the suitcase bumping heavily down the stairs. She heard the front door swing open, then slam shut with a force that seemed to reverberate through her chest.
Alone now, in the hollow silence of the house, she collapsed onto her front. This time, there was no need to suppress her grief. Her cries came unrestrained, tearing through her with astonishing ferocity, the years of pent-up pain and shame finally clawing their way free.