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The whole miserable fiasco of an evening was worth it, just for this. ‘I’m sure she didn’t either,’ I lie. ‘It was just a mix-up, that’s all.’
Bella shrugs. ‘I guess.’
‘Come on, Bella,’ Louise calls sharply. ‘Time to go. Your brother needs to get to bed.’
I’m taken aback: this isourweekend with the kids. I turn to Andy. ‘Aren’t Bella and Tolly coming home with us?’
He can’t quite meet my eye. ‘Louise thought they should go home with her, as Bella was so upset we missed the play,’ he says. ‘We’ll have them next weekend instead.’
‘But I booked the Escape Room for tomorrow morning,’ I object. ‘It’s all paid for. It’s too late to change it now.’
‘I’m so sorry, but that’s not going to work for us. Perhaps if Bella hadn’t had such atryingevening,’ Louise says acidly.
I’m literally too angry to speak. I storm out to our car, not bothering to wait for Andy and Kit. Andy has had a couple of glasses of wine, which means I’m driving, and I stare rigidly through the windscreen, watching him kiss his ex-wife and her family goodnight, Kit asleep in his arms. It’s not just the waste of money that makes me so furious. I’m beyond fed up with the way Andy lets that woman dictate our lives. Why can’t heeverstand up to her?
‘You were a bit ungracious tonight,’ Andy says, as he buckles Kit into his car seat and gets in.
‘Me?’
‘Sssh. You’ll wake Kit.’
‘How wasIungracious?’ I demand, in a furious whisper.
‘You barely spoke to anyone all night. And when Becky and Hugo Conway came over to congratulate Bella, you interrupted them.’ He reaches for his seatbelt. ‘I know you and Bella don’t really get on, but it washernight. You could have made a bit more of an effort.’
I’m so incensed, I almost reverse into a lamp-post. ‘We just spent nearly seven hundred pounds on a dinner where the only two people to talk to me all eveningwere four years old!’ I retort. ‘And I interrupted the Conways because you were all making Bella incredibly uncomfortable. She hates being the centre of attention—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone said how brilliant she was!’
‘Onstage, yes. Onstage, she gets to hide behind the character she’s playing. And it’s not true I don’t get on with her. She was the only person who even bothered to thank me for dinner.’
‘Shame we couldn’t make it on time to her play, then,’ Andy mutters.
‘If you think I’m going to Celia’s damn party after—’
‘I’mgoing,’ Andy snaps. ‘You do what you like.’
We drive the rest of the way home in silence. Angie warned me years ago, when Andy and I first got engaged, that I wouldn’t just be marrying him, but I didn’t take her seriously. I knew I’d have to take on his kids, of course, but it never occurred to me I’d have to deal with his ex-wife’s entire family.
No one ever chooses to fall in love with a married man. Five years ago, when Andy ran a red light and hit the side of my Fiat Uno, I didn’t clock the wedding ring on his left hand as we exchanged insurance details and think,Yes, this will be a nice challenge.Of course I fancied him; he was crazy good-looking, I’d have been blind not to. But I’d never been one of those women who felt empowered by being a mistress, naively imagining themselves as a figure charged with some magical, carnal power, superior to the dull, wifely creature who did the supermarket shop and the school run.
But I knew, too, that when he called the next day and asked me out for a drink to ‘apologise for the inconvenience’, the invitation was far from innocent.
His marriage was already over, but I didn’t know that then, and I went anyway. And by the time I left the bar in Covent Garden, I was already halfway to being in love with him. I’d heard the expression ‘walking on air’ before, but that night I understood for the first time what it meant. I felt as if I was floating seven inches above the ground, weightless with joy. I had no idea then what I was letting myself in for.
Second wife. Second best. Second fiddle.
My pregnancy with Kit wasn’t special, even though Andy did his best to seem excited, because he’d done it all before. Our wedding was a lovely, classy, elegant affair at Kensington and Chelsea Register Office, but it wasn’t the big white church wedding I’d dreamed of as a little girl, because Louise had already had that. We’ve never been to Venice, or South Africa, or to see the Northern Lights, because he’s been to those places with her. He was unfaithful to me: he broke all our promises to each other when he and Louise slept together again, but because I was the mistress, because he was Louise’s before he was mine, I accepted it and took him back.
I wasn’t the reason for their break-up, but somehow I’ve always felt it was my fault. So I’ve put up with the litany of seconds instead of firsts; the guilt and the compromises, the snide remarks, and the open hostility. I’ve sucked it up and plastered on a smile, accepting itall as the price of loving him. I always believed that, if I gave it time, Louise would move on with her life, and Andy would be wholly, unquestionably mine.
But what I failed to understand until this moment is that it’s not just Louise who’s mired in the past.Andyis the one who can’t let go.
I pull into the driveway outside our house, watching my husband as he gets out of the car, and for the first time since that night in Covent Garden, instead of floating on air, I find my feet planted firmly on the ground.
WILHEMINA JANE POLLOCK
PART 2 OF RECORDED INTERVIEW
