Page 29 of The Stranger in Room Six

Belinda

We’re sitting in the visitors’ room, reunions exploding all around us. One couple is yelling at each other. ‘You promised you’d stay straight this time,’ says the man.

The toddler on the mother’s knee bursts into tears. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ snaps the woman.

‘That’s right. Blame me as usual.’

Another couple try to hold hands until a guard shouts, ‘No touching!’

I just sit, stunned into silence.

‘My husband and Karen had a child?’ I ask, just to confirm I’d heard this correctly.

She nods.

Then I laugh. ‘You’re lying; you must be.’

Penny casts a scared look around the visiting hall, ringing with children’s yells and guards barking. ‘It’s true,’ she says. ‘That’s why I called you just before your husband died.’

‘That was you?’ I gasp.

‘Karen asked me to, in the hope that it might bring things to a head and push Gerald into leaving you. I was meant to tell you about their child too, but I got scared when you said you were going to report me and I rang off.’ She shakes her head.

‘I’m sorry it turned into such a tragedy. I never meant this to happen.’

I’m numb, trying to take this all in. A child? An affair was bad enough but this …

‘How did they meet?’ I whisper.

Penny looks guilty. ‘She was a friend who needed some accountancy advice. So I asked Gerald if he’d see her and then he took her on as a client. It was clear from the start that there was an attraction between them.’

A shiver goes through me. ‘Really?’ I falter.

‘I’m afraid so.’ She shrugged as though this was inevitable. ‘It was like watching sparks fly. Then two years later, Karen got pregnant and had a little boy. He’s three now.’

Three? My husband had a child three years ago and managed to keep it secret?

Then I recall the many ‘conferences’ Gerald had gone to over the years.

Had they been excuses for seeing her overnight; for being there when their son was born?

Had he sat by her side in the delivery room, urging her on as he’d done when I’d had the girls?

‘You’re doing so well, Belinda. Keep going!

’ Had he stayed on afterwards to help her in those early days?

‘He kept telling Karen that he loved her,’ adds my visitor, ‘but wanted to wait until your girls had grown up before he left.’

I can barely speak. ‘I didn’t suspect any of this.’

‘I guessed that, from your voice on the phone. Karen and I always assumed that you knew but were turning a blind eye. I wish now that I’d never rung.’

So do I. Gerald wouldn’t have died. We could have limped on as a not-very-happy-but-not-very-unhappy couple. I feel my hands clench into fists under the table between us.

‘What’s her surname and where is she now?’ I growl.

‘It’s Greaves,’ she says shakily ‘but I have no idea where she is. After I heard Gerald died, I called her mobile but it rang unobtainable and I was really worried. So I went round, only to find that she’d moved out, still owing rent.

I was hurt, to be honest. I’d have thought she’d have told me if she was going somewhere, especially after all the support I’d given her.

I even let the three of them stay in my house one weekend so they could have some time together.

You and the children were in the Scilly Isles. ’

I feel sick to my stomach. Gerald had left us there unexpectedly, saying he needed to get back to work early. Then anger takes over.

‘Just wait until I find her,’ I hiss.

Even I am shocked by the threat in my voice, but to her credit Penny sounds almost sympathetic, as well she might, given her part in all this. ‘I know, I understand that.’

She glances, clearly scared, at the angry faces, the crying faces, the tension, small children yelling. ‘But you’re in prison. How are you going to find her, and what would you even do if you did?’

There’s no way I’m going to share my dark thoughts with this woman. In truth, I haven’t decided what I would do. I’m still trying to understand the man with whom I’d shared nearly twenty-five years of married life.

How could Gerald have had an affair, knowing it might break up our family? He wouldn’t have made the first move, I know that. It must have been her. She probably saw a well-off man and imagined a life where she didn’t have to work any more.

I’d never understood before why some wives – including my mother – silently put up with their husbands’ affairs without saying anything. But now I’ve seen the damage it can do, I’m beginning to get it.

‘If you hadn’t interfered, I might not have known about them,’ I blurt out.

‘But wouldn’t you rather know?’

‘No,’ I snap. ‘Then my husband would still be alive! You need to go, now. Get out of here or I’ll have to get a guard to make you leave.’