Page 40 of I Know How This Ends

It takes me two days to realize I’m a hypocrite.

It’s not always easy to look inward instead of raging outward; it is far easier to blame other people instead.

“Hi.” I stand on the doorstep, hands in my pockets. “Can I come in?”

It’s early in the morning and Polly is mid tying her hair up in a perfect blonde bun, grips sticking out of her mouth like

insane beige teeth. She cocks her head slightly. It’s sweet how often she does that, like a curious beagle.

“Mmmnneeugh!” She takes the pins out. “Sorry, I mean—of course!”

I follow her into her spotless, glossy house, feeling nauseous.

“Is anyone else at home?” I swallow and look around. “Like... uh... small people with big ears and whatnot.”

“No, no small people, no inordinately large ears.” Polly smiles. “I’ve finally got the house to myself. School and nursery

and work, respectively. I’ll let you guess which one is at which, but Peter was furious when they handed him Lego.”

I force a smile in return.

This is it. No more excuses.

I’ve been ignoring all phone calls and essay-length messages from Jules—not even reading them, just muting and leaving them in archive—except now I wonder if this is how she felt too.

Every time we sat down together, was she desperate to tell me and unable to work out how?

Did she feel sick all the time? All I know is that I can’t fling numerous toys out of the proverbial pram while doing almost exactly the same thing to someone else.

“I need to talk to you about something pretty serious,” I say bluntly. “And I’m not good at the whole... sensitive conversation

thing. I’m the human equivalent of a bullet. So please forgive me if it comes out wrong.”

Polly frowns. “OK.”

“And by pretty serious ,” I amend, “I mean very, very serious. Like, life-shatteringly serious. Like, nothing-will-ever-be-the-same-for-you-again

and you-may-hate-me serious.”

“Gosh.” She frowns. “Hang on—do I need coffee? I’ll get coffee.”

Polly stands up and walks over to the coffee maker, pauses and looks back at me with her eyebrows raised.

“It’s a gin conversation,” I admit flatly. “At ten a.m. I’m sorry.”

“Right.” She opens the larder. “I’ve got vodka. Will that work?”

“Yep. Pour me one too.”

With a steady hand—we’ll see how long that lasts—Polly pours two enormous glasses of vodka. Then I continue to watch with

growing amazement as she cuts a large fresh orange in half, patiently squeezes it on top of each glass and carves little orange

peel curls to pop on top. When she starts searching for sugar and cinnamon to dust, I let out a loud groan.

“For fuck’s sake, Polly. Stop procrastinating and just bring the bottle.”

She nods and sits down. “Right. I’m ready. Go.”

“Your husband is shagging about on the internet,” I say, staring her directly in the eyeballs. “Or, at the very least, trying

very hard to. I unwittingly went on a date with him about a month ago, in a nearby Italian restaurant, and he was calling

himself John . He tried to go home with me, but I wasn’t interested.

I guessed he was married, but also I just didn’t like him.

As a man. Or a human. Sorry. Actually, I ordered everything on the menu and made him pay, as revenge, which isn’t really relevant at all, but I just wanted to clarify that I did not have sex with your husband. ”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Polly’s face is a total blank.

“I’ve known for a fortnight,” I add hurriedly. “Since I saw the photo of him on your fridge. But it was... never quite

the right time to say something.”

My mind skitters back to all the times Jules could have said something.

Is there ever a right time to hurt the people you love?

“Oh! And I have evidence. Look.”

With no satisfaction at all, I hold out my burner phone. John’s profile—sorry, Peter’s profile—disappeared about three minutes

after we ran into each other in their driveway, but I got there quicker and screenshotted everything. Let’s just say you don’t

need to have visions of the future to have seen that coming.

There’s silence from Polly as she takes a huge swig of vodka and orange.

“I’m sorry,” I say earnestly. “I am so, so, so sorry. I could have told you sooner. Are you OK? Do you want me to confront

him for you? He knows I know, by the way. We obviously ‘met’ when you came home the other day.”

Swallowing more vodka, Polly takes my phone off me.

Cheeks bright pink, she studies the screenshots.

“Six foot? You’re still saying that, Pete? You weren’t six foot twenty years ago and you haven’t grown since.” She scrolls down, reading intently,

then makes a face. “He is a Gemini, but he knows exactly what that ‘means’ because he reads his horoscopes daily. Long walks on the beach, my ass. He usually drives and meets us at

the other end. Never smokes? Our garden is littered with poorly hidden butt ends.”

I reach out and attempt to put a compassionate hand on top of hers, even though it’s holding a now almost empty glass of vodka.

She’s clearly having a very polite meltdown.

“‘ Hear to talk’?” Polly keeps reading. “Jesus. How embarrassing, Peter. Posy can spell better than this already.”

I’m watching her face, but I don’t fully understand the reaction.

Surely she should be crying, pacing, staring out of the window, dramatically evaluating where her youth has gone and so on?

Calculating how many women he has met, how far it has gone, whether their marriage is salvageable?

“That is a really horrible photo,” she says, pointing at the final one. “See how the sun is shining straight down? You can

tell he’s losing his hair. What a rookie.”

“Um.” I take my phone back. “Pol—can I call you Pol?”

“I think once you’ve been on a date with my husband, love of my life, father of my children, you probably should, yes.”

I blink. “OK. Pol, are you, perchance, in shock?”

“I am in shock, yes. Absolutely.” She nods and finishes the vodka. “I’m in shock that his profile is so humiliating . Why did you even go on a date with him in the first place, Maggie? The man wrote LOL at the end of three sentences and he’s

nearly fifty years old.”

“I... uh.” This time, I blink three times. “Not important. Self-destructive mode. Can we circle back to your bizarre reaction

now, please?”

“Margot,” Polly says patiently, as if I’m one of her kids, “I know.”

“What do you mean, you know ?”

“I know. I’ve known for ages. Over a year, actually. You think you can have an online dating profile in a city this size and

get away with it? I’ve had two single girlfriends send me screenshots already, although by the looks of it, he’s actually

made his profile worse since the last time I saw it. I don’t think he’s having much luck. The man needs a decent copywriter.”

“You know,” I repeat in amazement. “Of course you know.”

How could Polly, the most together and polished human I’ve ever met, not have worked it out? It’s just me, the gullible idiot, who doesn’t have a clue what’s going on right under their nose when their partner comes home late at night, unwilling to kiss them before they’ve brushed their teeth.

“And you’re OK with it?” Now it’s my turn to swig my drink. “You’re fine with Peter... dating other women?” A sudden thought:

“Wait, is this one of those super-modern marriages where you both date other people and come home and tell each other about

it for fun? Is it, you know, an open marriage ?”

All my anxiety has completely evaporated. She knows.

Maybe they take alternate evenings, organizing their schedules properly so they don’t have Italian two nights running.

“Of course I’m not OK with it,” she says in exasperation. “He’s barely enough of a husband when he’s here, let alone when

he’s wining and dining other women. Clearly, neither of us is happy. But I’m not in a financial position to leave. Not yet.

So I’ve been putting all my ducks in a row, sorting out separate bank accounts, talking to my lawyer friend about joint custody

arrangements, trying very, very hard to find a new job without him noticing. Which is surprisingly easy, because he pays absolutely

zero attention to what I’m doing.”

She looks at me pointedly over her glass.

“Oh!” I inhale in surprise. “Right! OK, that explains why you were more excited about the telly job than I was.”

And also why she didn’t tell him about me.

“One giant step toward freedom,” she says with a shrug, pouring both of us more vodka. “If I can get a job that lets me work

from home, doing something I love, I don’t have to wait until the twins go to school, as was originally the plan. That would

mean I can leave much, much sooner. But I do also believe in this project, and in you, Margot. Truly. I’m not just using you

to, you know, get out of my shitty marriage.”

“I know.” I laugh, so incredibly relieved I feel a bit sick again. “You don’t have to say that. And I’m not using you to save my shitty meteorological career.”

“It’s a mutually beneficial relationship,” Polly says with a grin, cheeks now all glowy and rosy. “Like clownfish and anemones.”

“Is it?” I burp lightly. “What do they do?”

“Well, the anemones protect the clownfish with their stinging tentacles and the clownfish clean the... Actually, it doesn’t

really matter. Posy was talking about it yesterday, that’s all, and I’m a bit drunk now. We help each other. That’s what I

mean.”

“Sounds quite a lot like a friendship to me.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

Polly and I beam at each other, then hold up our glasses.

“Here’s to new friendship,” she declares loudly to nobody in particular. “And moving forward, and starting again, and spelling

here correctly.”

“And actually laughing instead of saying LOL.”

We both laugh loudly, now pretty tipsy.

“Did you really order everything on the menu and make him pay for it?” Polly leans forward. “Because that explains why he came home in an

inordinately foul mood a few weeks ago, with breath that smelled of crab and Posy’s flu snot still on his shoulder.”

Not a baby: just a sick eight-year-old. What a douche.