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‘I get that it might change things for Nemo.’
‘That was about money,’ Roula said. ‘No one knew about my marriage. They were both bad.’
‘Yes.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You’re not on your own, Roula.’
‘Oh, I am in this,’ she said.
‘I know now...’
‘You don’t!’ she refuted. ‘You don’t know anything about me or what it was like. I was eighteen and I had no idea. That night with you was the first time I’d ever actually made love.’
Galen sat there, and in his eyes she saw she’d confirmed what at some level he’d already known.
And then she shared details she’d never thought she would.
‘I looked at that bed,’ Roula told him. ‘And every day I prayed that I’d never have to lie in it again. What does that make me?’
‘Normal.’
‘Culpable.’ She saw him frown. ‘I mean in court. If they questioned me...’ She shivered in the warm night air. ‘He’s pleading guilty, though. I’m dreading it.’
‘Of course.’
‘I was planning to leave him,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know how, or where I could go—there was no retreat then. I didn’t have a job. It took me a long time to realise just how bad my marriage really was,’ she went on. ‘After he died, I mean. It was a lot easier to be a grieving widow than to deal with it all. I was just coming to the point when I’d decided to speak to someone—a counsellor or something—but then I found the gas cylinder and that window closed. I knew I couldn’t reveal it to anyone.’
‘Well, I’m glad that you’ve told me. Well, notglad. I wish you’d been able to tell me before we—’
‘Please,’ Roula sneered. ‘You’d have run a mile.’
‘I wouldn’t have.’
‘Or you’d have treated me like glass.’ She was adamant. ‘It was better for me that you didn’t know. Ihateit that you know!’
Galen sat silent.
‘Can we never speak of this again?’
‘If that’s what you want. But if you ever—’
She shook her head. ‘I won’t.’
‘Roula?’
‘I mean it, Galen. I loathe what he did, and I hate it that you know, and I can’t stand how you’ll look at me now.’
‘What?’
‘Would that night have happened if you’d known what you do now?’
Galen took a breath, because so many times he said the wrong thing, and he knew that he could not get it wrong now. Not for his sake, or their sake, but for her sake and for the sake of the next sex she had.
Because in bed... Well, he’d paused for a moment and then thought about it later...
But did he tell her?
‘Would you tell me to get on your lap now?’ Roula demanded.
The old Galen would have said,Settle down, Roula, we’re outside the care home—but he didn’t know what to say now.
