okay, Harry. I know. I’m not going to see you again, am I? Not like last night, I mean. You don’t have to pretend. You don’t have to say anything that isn’t true. I know you’re married.’
‘You’re a great girl, Siobhan. You really are.’
And I meant it.
‘But you love your wife. I know, I know. Don’t worry. I would prefer to hear it now than six months down the line. I would rather get it over with before I start to really like you. At least you’re not like some of them. You didn’t tell me that your wife doesn’t understand you. You didn’t tell me that you’re probably going to break up. You didn’t spend months sneaking out of the house to phone me. You’re not a stinking hypocrite.’
Not a hypocrite? I spent last night with you and I’ll spend tonight with my wife. Surely a hypocrite is exactly what I am?
‘You’re no good at all this, Harry. That’s what I like about you. Believe me, there are not many around like you. I know. The last one – Jesus! I really thought he was going to leave his wife and that we were actually going to get married. That’s how stupid I am.’
‘You’re not stupid,’ I said, putting my arms around her.
We held each other tight, with real feeling. Now we were splitting up, we were getting on brilliantly.
Then she started to get choked up about how difficult it is to find a good man, while I thought to myself – well, that’s a relief. We aren’t going to star in a remake of Fatal Attraction after all.
I knew I was getting off lightly. Siobhan was going to let me go without pouring acid on my MGF or putting our pet rabbit in a pot. Not that we had a rabbit. But after the relief had subsided I was surprised to find that I felt a little hurt. Was it so easy to say goodbye to me?
‘This always happens to me,’ Siobhan laughed, although her eyes were all wet and shining. ‘I always pick the ones who have already been picked. Your wife is a lucky woman. As I believe I said on that message I left you.’
‘What message?’
‘The message on your mobile.’
‘My mobile?’
‘I left a message on your mobile phone,’ Siobhan said, drying her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Didn’t you get it?’
Gina was packing her bags when I got home. Stuffing a suitcase and a weekend bag up in our bedroom, pale-faced and dry-eyed, doing it as quickly as she could, taking only the bare essentials. As if she couldn’t stand to be there any more.
‘Gina?’
She turned and looked at me, and it was as if she were seeing me for the very first time. She seemed almost giddy with contempt and sadness and anger. Especially anger. It scared the shit out of me. She had never looked at me like that before.
She turned again, picking something up from the little table by her side of the bed. An ashtray. No, not an ashtray. We didn’t have any ashtrays. She threw my mobile phone at me.
She had always been a lousy shot – and we had had one or two arguments where things had been thrown – but there wasn’t the room to miss, and it smacked hard against my chest. I picked it up off the floor and a bone just above my heart began to throb.
‘I’ll never forgive you for this,’ she said. ‘Never.’ She nodded at the phone. ‘Why don’t you listen to your messages?’
I pressed the icon on the phone which showed a little envelope. Siobhan’s voice came crackling through, wry and sleepy and completely out of place in our bedroom.
‘It’s always a bad sign if they go before you wake up…but please don’t feel bad about last night…because I don’t…your wife is a lucky woman…and I’m looking forward to working with you…Bye, Harry.’
‘Did you sleep with this girl, Harry?’ Gina asked, then shook her head. ‘What’s wrong with me? Why am I even bothering to ask? Because I want you to tell me that it isn’t true. But of course it’s true.’
I tried to put my arms around her. Not hugging her. Just trying to hold on to her. Trying to calm her down. To stop her getting away. To stop her from leaving me. She shook me off, almost snarling.
‘Some little slut at the office, is she?’ Gina said, still throwing clothes into her suitcase. She wasn’t even looking at the clothes she was packing. She didn’t look as though she thought she was a lucky woman. ‘Some little slut who thinks you can do her a few favours.’
‘She’s actually a really nice girl. You’d like her.’
It was a truly stupid thing to say. I knew it the second the words left my big mouth, but by then it was already too late. Gina came across the bedroom and slapped me hard across the face. I saw her wince with pain, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears. She didn’t really know how to hit someone. Gina wasn’t like that.
‘You think it was romantic or passionate or some such bullshit,’ Gina said. ‘But it’s none of those things. It’s just grubby and sordid and pathetic. Really pathetic. Do you love her?’
‘What?’
‘Are you in love with this girl?’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘If she wants my life, she can have it. All of it. Including you. Especially you, Harry. Because it’s all a lie.’
‘Please, Gina. It was a mistake. A terrible mistake, okay?’ I scrambled for words. ‘It didn’t mean a thing,’ I told her.
She started laughing and crying at the same time. ‘Don’t you understand that makes it worse?’ she said. ‘Don’t you understand anything at all?’
Then she really started to sob, her shoulders all hunched up and shaking, not even trying to wipe away tears that seemed to start somewhere deep inside her chest. I wanted to put my arms around her. But I didn’t dare touch her.
‘You’re just like my father,’ she said, and I knew it was the worst thing in the world she could ever say. ‘Just like him.’
‘Please, Gina,’ I said. ‘Please.’
She shook her head, as if she could no longer understand me, as if I had stopped making any kind of sense.
‘What, Harry? Please? What? You’re like a fucking parrot. Please what?’
‘Please,’ I said, parrot-like. ‘Please don’t stop loving me.’
‘But you must have known,’ she said, slamming shut the suitcase, most of her clothes still unpacked and scattered all over our bed. The other bag was already full. She was almost ready to leave. She was nearly there now. ‘You must have known that this is the one thing I could never forgive,’ she said. ‘You must have known that I can’t love a man who doesn’t love me – and only me. And if you didn’t know that, Harry, then you don’t know me at all.’
I once read somewhere that, in any relationship, the one who cares the least is the one with all the power.
Gina had all the power now. Because she didn’t care at all any more.
I followed her as she dragged her suitcase and bag out into the hall and across to Pat’s bedroom. He was carefully placing Star Wars figures into a little Postman Pat backpack. He smiled up at us.
‘Look what I’m doing,’ he said.
‘Are you ready, Pat?’ Gina asked.
‘Nearly,’ he said.
‘Then let’s go,’ she said, wiping away