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‘Apparently I broke his nose, or so he said.’
I sank down onto the windowsill, trying to take it all in.
He sighed. ‘They fired me on the spot. Said it was gross misconduct, that violence in the workplace was unacceptable. They said they couldn’t keep me on.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I said, shocked.
This was worse than an affair, because it was so out of character. I’d never even seen Si get properly angry; I certainly couldn’t imagine him hitting anyone.
His eyes filled with tears. ‘I was embarrassed, Han. And devastated about it all, because now you’d know that I wasn’t the nice guy you thought I was. I was so used to providing for everyone, being the strong one that everyone leans on, looking after people, that I couldn’t stand the idea of people – you, mainly – feeling disgusted by me. And once I’d kept it a secret for a few days, I didn’t know how to get out of it. I spiralled into a sort of panic. A depression almost, if I’m honest.’
I rubbed the tops of my arms with my hands. I was shaking now the adrenaline had worn off. What I felt was a sort of resignation, a dull, thudding, pain. What kind of relationship did we have if he didn’t trust me enough to share these huge life events, to show me the good and the bad parts of himself? If he thought me too fragile to bear it?
‘Where were you, then, when I thought you were at work?’ I asked him.
‘In the library mostly. Sat trawling through the papers for jobs. I went to join some agencies, that sort of thing. I even thought about getting a bar job at one point. During the day so you’d never find out.’
‘They haven’t been paying you, then?’
He hung his head. ‘No.’
‘The joint account,’ I said, remembering how the card had been refused. ‘There’s no money in there, is there, because you haven’t been putting anything into it?’
‘I’ve been trying to keep it topped up,’ he said. ‘But, yeah. I don’t know what we’re going to do now, to be honest.’
There was some noise outside the window. Laughter; a cork popping.
‘And the Venice trip?’ I said, realising now that he must have spent a fortune on it. A fortune he clearly didn’t have. ‘Couldn’t you have cancelled it?’
‘I tried,’ he said. ‘I called the travel agent, but I’d got a special deal and it was all paid for in advance. They were sympathetic and all that. I lied and told them I’d been made redundant. But still … they wouldn’t give me my money back. Since it was all paid for, I thought we might as well go.’
I nodded, prising myself to my feet, walking into the bathroom, pouring myself a glass of warm, soft water from the cold tap and sipping it slowly, looking at myself in the mirror. Then I went back into the bedroom and began to gather up my things, dropping them haphazardly into my suitcase. All I knew was that I needed to get away. It would take time for it to sink in, all of this, the lies, the sham our relationship had become. I couldn’t be around him, not tonight. Not any night. And not just because of what he’d told me, but also because of what I’d discovered about myself. That I was not the person he thought I was, either. That I wanted more from life than I’d admitted to. And that clearly we weren’t as ‘right’ for each other as I’d thought.
‘What about Alison?’ I said. ‘What’s she got to do with all of this?’
‘The baby’s not mine, Han. I don’t know why you would think it could be.’
‘You haven’t slept with her?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘What is it, then? Because I know there’s something.’
He coughed. ‘She was … in a bar one afternoon. I needed a beer, so I stopped at this pub in town, and she happened to be in there with a couple of mates, ones I didn’t know. And we got talking about Catherine, the wedding, a bit about school. I hadn’t seen her for years, since we were all teens.’
‘But you’d always had a thing for her?’ I said, scooping up my camera, putting it carefully around my neck.
He shook his head. ‘No, there’s nothing like that.’
‘What then?’
He flung himself back on the bed, staring glassy-eyed at the ceiling. ‘We got talking. She’s a corporate lawyer, isn’t she, so she’s got loads of contacts. She said she’d do what she could to help if it goes to court.’
‘Are the police involved, then? Is he pressing charges?’
‘Course he is.’
I shook my head. ‘Bloody hell, Si.’
