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‘You’re so naïve… you see everything in black and white. How many marriages do you think would survive if every woman who learned that her husband had made a small mistake actually left him? I never intended it to happen, but, well, let’s be honest—sexually…’ He gave a small shrug. ‘She made me feel wanted,’ he told her, giving her his little-boy-lost smile. ‘She made me feel that I was important to her. She wanted me, Fern. Oh, I know it isn’t your fault that you aren’t very responsive sexually, and believe me I do understand, but I am a man with all the normal male urges, and she…’
She felt sick then, sick and too filled with loathing and disgust to say anything, to do anything other than merely stand there and listen to him, knowing that he was right, knowing how upset her parents would be, how shocked, how devastated… how difficult they would find it to understand.
‘I still need you,’ Nick insisted. ‘We can put things right… try again. Please, Fern. You must give me a second chance.’
In the end she gave in. What other option did she have? she asked herself bewilderedly. Nick loved her; he needed her; her parents would neither understand nor approve if she left him, and she herself was bitterly aware of her own guilt, her own betrayal of the vows she had made and had fully intended to keep.
Nick was right, she did owe it to him to give their marriage a second chance. But even as she was giving in, agreeing, aware of the huge weight of reasons why she ought to be pleased that he wanted to stay with her, she still felt an unfamiliar dangerous flare of panic and anger, a sense almost of being trapped and imprisoned.
She suppressed it, of course, quickly smothering it with the tight blanket of her parents’ teachings and her own awareness of what she owed it to them and to Nick to do.
But that night in bed, after he had made love to her and she had lain dry-eyed and tense beside him, she knew she had to tell him about Adam.
The next morning she tried to do so.
‘What do you mean, you can’t stay with me?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Look, Fern, I’ve already told you, it… she meant nothing. It was just sex, that’s all, just sex.’
‘It isn’t that,’ she whispered miserably. ‘It’s me. I…’
Something in her expression must have given her away, because she heard him curse and then demand aggressively, ‘It’s Adam, isn’t it? Well, if you think I’m going to let you leave me for him…’
‘It isn’t like that,’ she protested, horrified by what he was saying. ‘Adam isn’t… doesn’t…’
She wasn’t able to continue, her voice breaking under the strain of what she was feeling, but Nick grabbed hold of her arm, insisting fiercely, ‘Oh, no, you aren’t stopping there. Adam isn’t… doesn’t what, Fern? Adam doesn’t want to fuck you? Don’t lie to me, Fern. I know how much he…’
He stopped then, releasing her so roughly that she half fell against the kitchen table.
‘I’m not letting you go,’ he repeated flatly. ‘You’ve made a commitment to me, to our marriage, and if you think…’
He paused, watching her as she crouched against the table, her body shaking with shock and tension, tears slowly filling her eyes as her self-control started to splinter.
Suddenly his voice softened and became almost cajoling.
‘Think, Fern. Think of how your parents would feel if w
e broke up… if I had to tell them that you’ve been unfaithful to me with Adam. How long have you been seeing him? How often?’
She stopped him immediately, the words falling over one another as she tried to explain what had happened, how upset she had been, how Adam had found her. How…
‘You mean you did it just to pay me back… because of my affair,’ Nick interrupted her before she could finish what she was saying. For some reason he had started to smile, his voice and body relaxing. ‘Did you tell Adam that?’ he asked her softly. ‘Did he know you were coming back here to me?’
‘I didn’t tell him anything. Just that… just about her coming here…’
He was still smiling at her, almost crooning at her as he reached out to her, apparently unable to sense the tension and resistance in her body as he pulled her into his arms.
‘Fern, Fern, don’t you see? The only reason you went to Adam was because you wanted to get back at me. Of course I’m upset… jealous… hurt—what man wouldn’t be? But I do understand. You love me… and because of that you wanted to hurt me… to pay me back for hurting you. But it’s all over now and we’re still together. And we’re going to stay together. Let’s both put the past behind us and make a fresh start… give our marriage a second chance. I want to. Don’t you?’
What could she say? How could she refuse to accept the olive branch he was offering her? How many other husbands would be as generous… as forgiving? She owed it to him… to her parents… to the way they had brought her up and the standards they had inculcated in her, to do what he was suggesting.
‘Yes,’ she agreed listlessly. ‘Yes, I do.’ And yet somehow saying the words had hurt her throat, straining the muscles, making them ache with the same weary despair that had also invaded her body…
* * *
‘Fern, what the hell are you doing? Aren’t you ready yet?’
Guiltily Fern hurried towards the bedroom door, stepping back from it just in time as Nick thrust it open and walked in.
Formal clothes suited him, she acknowledged, as she studied the effect of his well-cut fair hair, and the healthy tan he had acquired since visiting the leisure centre, against the expensive fabric of his dinner suit and the crisp whiteness of his dress shirt.
