Page 45 of The Man Upstairs

“Have you tried to give it up?”

He didn’t look at me like I was an idiot for asking.

“Yes. Many times. Not least at the points when I had Katreya screaming and crying in my face, blaming everything in the world on the fact that I’d been downing shots. Some of it likely true, of course, but it becomes an easy scapegoat. She found it a lot easier to point fingers at my drinking problems than she ever did to try a little bit of self-reflection as to her own part in our difficulties. As I said, I’m sure a lot of her arguments were very true, but not every single one of them. Still, that’s no longer a relevant concern.”

I plucked up the confidence to keep digging.

“Is that why you split up? Is that why your family broke down? Because of the drinking?”

“We didn’t split up, and that isn’t what broke the family down,” he said. “I packed up and moved away because I was cast aside and disowned, and rightly so.”

Again, I was surprised at his honesty.

“Say it.” He laughed a sad laugh. “Ask the question. I know you want to ask it. The infamous three letter word.Why.Keep on digging, Rosie.”

“Ok, cool. So, why did you pack up and move away? Why were you disowned?”

His eyes bored deep into mine.

“Because of the pictures you saw in the wardrobe drawer. Addiction to alcohol isn’t the only one I have. I’m addicted to sex, too.”

I reeled at that, struggling to comprehend it. My mind was whirring, and he nodded as he saw.

“The girl in the photos is one of my daughter’s friends. Her name is Maisie. She was the first girl I fucked outside of my marriage. She was nineteen years old.”

I didn’t know what to say, just listened as he kept on talking.

“The shock and the thrill of fucking her kept my urges at bay for a considerable amount of time after that. I’d say maybe six months. The next girl was Serena. A friend of Grace’s from gym class. Grace was doing gym right the way up until university. Her friend Serena was very… flexible.”

My skin was still prickling with want for him, despite his words. If he was trying to shock me into revulsion, it wouldn’t work. I was far too caught up in him.

“Serena opened up a new perspective for me,” he said. “I began to notice the flirtatious glances I was getting during my lectures. A lot of girls like professors. It gave me an unfair advantage when it came to fucking them.”

I reached back over for the whisky, braving another shot, despite the fact it tasted gross.

“I have fucked an awful lot of girls,” Julian said. “It was only a matter of time before Katreya found out. Secrets can’t stay hidden for ever.”

“A lot of guys cheat,” I said, as a ridiculous attempt at playing it down.

“I’m an adulterer. I committed to my wife in holy matrimony, and that deserves the honour I promised her.”

“So, you cheated on her? Just like that? Because your daughter had a hot friend? And then what? You became addicted to it?”

“That’s one angle,” he said. “In truth, I should have left my wife a lot sooner. She would have said the same if she hadn’t felt so betrayed. I once overheard her talking to friends about it in our living room, when she thought I was downing whisky upstairs in the office. She was laughing about it. About how it would never have lasted if she hadn’t been pregnant so young. She called me a filthy pervert and said she’d not been finding me attractive for a long, long time. It shouldn’t have surprised me. We were only fucking as a token gesture very occasionally at that point.”

“That must have hurt.”

“It did, yes. But on the hurt scale, I think Katreya’s hurt surpasses mine. I don’t think she’ll be sending me asorrycard.” He stared at the window. “If she knew where to send one, that is.”

“She doesn’t know where you are?”

He shook his head. “No. Nobody does. And they wouldn’t want to.”

I pulled my legs up under me on the sofa, feeling shit for digging.

“Like I told you,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d want to go there.”

In some ways I wished I hadn’t. I could have been cocooned in his arms, riding high on bliss.