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“I asked Jack to do it because I thought if I asked, you would turn me down.”
“Really? But Jack tracked me down because I never called him!”
“Itracked you down, Laura. Also, I thought you could use the money, don’t bite me but you looked like you could.”
“Did I? Oh well, you know me, the eternal student.”
She smiles. “And I thought we could be friends again.”
“Really?”
She waves her hand. “Water under the bridge, as they say.”
And I try to think back, and wonder how I could have got it so wrong. “I’m sorry for what I did,” I say finally. “For being stupid Beth. That was unforgivable.”
She shakes her head. “You really thought I left my family because of some mythical woman called Beth no one had ever seen?”
“Well…” I make a face. “Yes, that’s exactly what I think.”
She shakes her head again. “I left because this Beth happened on the back of what Jack did…with that girl. I’d had enough, Laura, I couldn’t deal with his infidelities anymore. If it wasn’t Beth, there would have been another one, I guarantee it.”
I frown. “What girl? What did they do?”
She sighs. “We had a babysitter.”
“I remember that. What happened?”
“Oh, you know, the usual sordid mess. I fired her when I found out she’d been fucking my husband behind my back.”
“Oh no! I thought…” I was going to say,I thought it was you, being paranoid, the way you were back then. “No,” I say firmly. “Jack wouldn’t do that.”
She looks at me under hooded eyes. “How long have you known Jack, Laura?”
I don’t reply. “So did you know for a fact they were…having a thing?”
“Yes.”
“How did you find out?”
“She told me. She said they were in love. I confronted him, he cried and begged for forgiveness, said it had meant nothing, she had seduced him. The usual…crap.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. She pulls out another cigarette. “Can I have one?” I ask. She puts the cigarette in her mouth and lights it, and I’m thinking that no, I guess I can’t have one, but then she hands it to me. I remember with a pang that’s what we used to do, back in high school. She’d steal her mother’s menthols and we’d smoke them on our way home, and she’d often light mine, just like that.
“Thanks,” I say.
She lights a second one for herself. “She was crazy. After I fired her, she’d send me the most vile emails.”
“Like what?”
She blows out a plume of smoke. “Calling me names, telling me I was a cold bitch, that Jack hated me, that one day he would leave me and I’d die alone and miserable.”
“Jesus!”
“I know. It was kind of scary. I blocked her email and I never heard from her after that.” She shudders. “She was nasty. A nasty piece of work. So he never told you about Jenny?”
“No, I mean, why would he? That was before my time…” I resist the urge to bite a fingernail or rub my forehead. The truth is, I’m shocked. I never believed Jack had been unfaithful to Bronwyn, and part of me wishes he’d confessed that to me.
“Not that long before your time,” she says.
