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“It’s okay. In some ways, it’s good to get it off my chest.” He looked up at me thoughtfully, those green eyes tinged with regret. He was doing his measured way of speaking thing, weighing the words carefully before letting each one go. “I have been married to the job. I’m much more senior now, so I have more autonomy, but reaching that point—there’s a hell of a lot of hurdles to jump through. Night shifts, long hours, weekends, exams. I’ve taken bloody hundreds of exams. And moving around too, starting again at a new hospital every six months, which doesn’t make for great family harmony. Paula wanted kids straight away; I kept putting it off. She was a primary school teacher, but she wanted to give it up to be a stay-at-home mum. I wasn’t ready for children, and I didn’t think I’d be able to give them the attention they deserved, not until I’d finished my surgical training and had a permanent post. She increasingly resented me for that.”
“Must have been tough.” I topped up his glass, and he nodded appreciatively. “For both of you.”
“Yes, in lots of ways we hadn’t foreseen when we first met and thought we both wanted the same things.” He frowned. “Surgery can be a selfish path to follow. I was quite single-minded. Less so now. In retrospect, I behaved unfairly. I should have been more open to starting a family. It became a huge bone of contention between us, and I feel responsible.”
I was no expert, but enough strife seemed to be packed up in that all on its own to tip any marriage over the edge. “I can see a partner making those sacrifices for another person would put a lot of stress on a relationship.”
His brittle laugh held not a trace of humour. “Actually, it’s worse than that, much worse. Looking back, I think we could have muddled through those hurdles, once the exams and moving around were over. Once we were finally settled in one place. We’d have had children, and Paula would have been much happier.”
He fell silent again, and I tried to school my features into sympathy and understanding, not outright nosiness. My bet was on adultery: the bored resentful wife stuck at home while he worked, or him with a colleague, bonding together during all those long operations and late nights.
“I told her I thought I was gay.” He flashed me a quick, defensive look.
A long awkward beat stretched between us while my jaw dropped open, then realigned itself.
Followed by that bitter laugh again. “Not what you expected, is it?”
“Bloody hell. To be honest, no.”
We each took another gulp of wine, draining the remainder from both our glasses. Stunned, I pushed back my chair. “Can you excuse me a second?”
I headed to the pantry, fiddling about in there longer than necessary, trying to collect my thoughts. “If we’re going to unpick that revelation, I think I’ll need to open at least one more bottle.”
“That’s pretty much word for word what she said.”
Fuck. He was gay. Evan was gay. I had a gay man in my kitchen, and his name wasn’t Freddie. Nor was he a married RAC mechanic. Fuck.
“You thought you were gay, or you are gay?” I queried on my return. Important to clarify. I wasn’t going to waste my time cosying up to a guy blaming his marital strife on a bi-curious mid-life crisis.
Evan threw me a withering look. With dismay, I realised my sudden departure from the table had given the impression I couldn’t scramble away from him fast enough. “Don’t worry, Rob, I’m not about to jump you,” he remarked, slightly coldly.
Fucking marvellous. Now he thought I was a homophobic turd. “I didn’t think you were. I’m cool with…um…gays.” I sounded like the most uncool person ever.
Evan watched me unscrew the wine, my hand trembling slightly, and thawed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have told you. I don’t know why I have, really. In fact, apart from my soon-to-be ex, you’re the only person I’ve ever said those words out loud to.”
He shook his head. “God, it’s a funny business. Saying it to people. And that you feel obliged to inform people anyhow, as if they need to be warned. It’s going to take some getting used to.
“No one at work knows yet, although I probably will tell them soon.” He gave a short laugh. “If only to stop them all speculating that Paula’s left me because I was having an affair. Which I wasn’t.”
“Your secret is very safe with me.” Fuck, was it ever. He couldn’t have chosen a better person on the entire planet to confide in. I’d kept my own proclivities hidden for twenty years—I wasn’t in the business of outing anybody. Or outing myself, come to that, even if the perfect opportunity had just unexpectedly presented itself. How deeply ingrained the fake Rob Langford had become.
I poured us each a generous glass from the second bottle. Found some cheese too, before clocking he didn’t touch it. Instead, he made do with picking his way through a bowl of cherry tomatoes and a bag of chestnuts Lucy had parcelled up for me, more in a spirit of hope than any real expectation I’d eat them. The guy would live forever with his diet.
Now he’d popped the cork, seemed he needed to unload the whole story. As confessions went, it was unexpected yet rather spectacular. In my quiet kitchen, separated from the rest of the world by a couple of miles of banked snow, it felt incredibly intimate too.
“It was stupid really; I was never going to tell her or anyone else. Lots of men don’t. I could have been one of them. Stayed married, taken the good bits out of the two-point-four kids family life, and ignored the bad. I’d known for years that men did it for me, not that I’d ever acted on it. But then my wife and I had a huge bloody row—it blew up out of nothing, like the best rows always do. We’d had a couple of drinks, and she was going on about how I didn’t give her enough attention. I was so cross with her, and so bloody tired. I’d been up half the night with an emergency operation, and I just came out with it.”
He rolled a tomato between his thumb and finger, examining it. “And that was the end of my marriage.” Dropping the tomato in his mouth, he added, “She’s a good person, but she would never contemplate working things through after that. Can’t blame her, really. And, looking back, our marriage was on the rocks anyway. I just sped things up, gave her an opening.”
I cut myself a huge wedge of cheese, munching it down on a cracker, then followed it up with a tomato, to make myself look and feel healthier. I accidentally let a few crumbs of cheese slide to the floor for Zeus to find. As if his wind wasn’t bad enough already.
“Anyhow.” Evan shook himself, as if physically pulling himself together. “How about you, Rob? Divorced? Separated?”
“Neither. I’m single.” Denial was so deep-rooted within. Even now, after he’d told me all that, my lips were sealed. “There’s no one special. This farming life isn’t for everyone.”
“There’s a television programme, isn’t there?” He broke into a sudden smile. “The farmer wants a wife? Is that it? It’s something like that. Oh my god, a good-looking bloke like you; you should go on there.”
Grinning back at him, I occupied myself cutting another chunk of cheese. Tiddly, maudlin Evan was exceedingly attractive. Furtively eyeing up his mouth as his lips closed around another fleshy plump tomato, this farmer could list a few things he wanted right now, and none of them included a wife.
