Page 92 of These Old Lies

“Why are you telling me this?” Betty’s arms were crossed, the shock of what Charlie had said replaced with an anger that flashed in her eyes and reddened her cheeks.

“I didn’t want to keep secrets from you.”

“You seem to have been able to do so just fine for the past decade.” Betty swung her words like a brawler.

Charlie tried again. “When I was in France, I realised how many things I thought I had understood, and how wrong I had been. I saw how much keeping secrets hadn’t just cost me, but cost the people around me who I cared for the most.”

Moments from his week in the Somme flashed in front of Charlie:laughing with Smythe, Ned’s tears on the top of Thiepval Gate.

“There were so many assumptions, and none of them were true. It would have been a hell of a lot better if I’d just been upfront in the beginning.”

Ned wouldn’t have spent years thinking that he was part of the reason why Charlie tried to off himself, instead of the thing that kept him alive.

Charlie barrelled on, “Secrets eat away at you. I didn’t want that for us, for our family. You are far too important to me for me to not tell you the truth about what almost happened. And if I was going to tell you that, I needed to tell you everything.”

Betty crossed and then uncrossed her arms again. “I’ve known you weren’t happy. I’ve known it for years.”

“I want so much the life that you and I’ve built together. Our children, the shop.” Charlie tried to put everything in those last few words. If nothing else, he needed Betty to believe him on that.

“You weren’t happy, and I didn’t know why!” Betty snapped, raising her voice for the first time since they had started down this conversation. “I’m your wife! We share our burdens!”

Charlie was now rubbing his thumb over and over his right wrist, a sure sign that raw emotions were bubbling to the surface. “I didn’t want you to think I was a perversion.” His face was wet by the last word.

A white handkerchief, perfectly washed and pressed, was thrust into his vision. “Take this. Blow your nose.”

Charlie did as instructed and tried to gather himself. Dust mites, disturbed by Betty during a vigorous clean earlier in the day, danced in the air, caught by the sunlight coming through the windows.

Betty watched him, and then in a single movement she spun on her heel and stormed into their back room. Charlie was still working out whether it was worthwhile to go after her when she stomped back in, a bottle of gin and two glasses in hand. With little concern as to where she was, Betty plopped herself down in the middle of their shop floor, right between the shelves of motor oil and seat covers.

Following her lead, Charlie sat down, although more gingerly, leaving hislegs splayed out in front him.

“He told me to marry you,” Betty said, as she popped the top off the bottle and poured two generous glasses. “I could tell you were about to propose, and I was nervous.”

She extended one of the glasses to Charlie, who took it but didn’t drink. He waited and listened. Whatever came next was her story now.

“After New Year’s in ’24 you’d become so determined, talking about setting up your own shop, talking about the future. I knew your mother and sisters kept asking you about marriage, and I could tell what was coming. I didn’t know what to do. It felt like such an awful thing to be so uncertain when you were such a nice man. I had never thought I would want to marry, after John. Eventually my mother told me that I should go talk to someone that knew you, who could help put some of my fears at rest. I think she meant Kitty or Mary, but the person that jumped into my mind was Ned, after seeing the way he made you laugh at Claridge’s. So I looked up his address and went to his flat.”

Charlie gaped. He’d had no idea.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so hungover in my entire life. He answered his door in his dressing gown and looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week. But he invited me in and offered me a sidecar cocktail at eleven o’clock in the morning. I ended up making him tea in his own kitchen. I asked him straight out if he thought you would make a good husband. He was really very kind and understanding, for all that he looked like he wanted to die.”

“What did he say?”

“He gulped his tea down in one go, and then it was like he was quoting poetry or reading from a book the way he talked about you. These beautiful words about how he thought you would make an exceptional husband. That you give everything you have for the people you love. He said that you both had lost the ability to dream, but that he thought you had re-found it, and that your dreams included building a life with me. He told me I would be hard-pressed to find a more honourable or giving man.”

Charlie looked at his half-built shelves and found himself blinking rather rapidly. He could only imagine what it would have cost Ned to have said those words, especially at a moment when both of their hearts had been so newly smashed. Charlie didn’t think he could have done the same.

Betty took a long drink of her gin. “Do you want a divorce? Is that what this is all about?”

“No! God, no!”

“But you kissed him,” Betty insisted.

“Almostkissed him. We were both drunk on memories and wine.” Charlie took a sip of his gin for his own Dutch courage. “Do you want a divorce?”

“All that cost and fuss? Can’t see how it would be worth it. What you told me, about what you like, about Ned, it does change things, though.”

“How?” It was time for Charlie to find out the price he would pay.