Ten minutes later, I arrive at the surgery, head down, hoping to avoid Carly. The situation between us is becoming dangerous. I sidle in and mumble to the first receptionist who is free, a mousy woman with thick glasses and iron grey shoulder-length woolly hair. For a second she makes me think about sheep.
‘I’ve come to collect a repeat prescription for my father-in-law.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Stuart Tunnicliffe.’
She flicks through the pile of prescriptions in the box in front of her, and soon hands me Jenni’s father’s.
‘The doctor’s given him three months’ supply. Then he needs to come in and have his blood pressure checked again.’
She hands me the prescription and gives me a half smile in dismissal. Before I can turn around and slip out quickly, Carly is standing in front of me looking Carly Burton Bright, Carly Burton Delicious. Her short blonde hair shines in the autumn sunshine that pushes towards us through the window. Her blue nurse’s uniform looks as if it has been painted onto her perfect figure.
‘Craig Rossiter, isn’t it?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’
‘I was about to telephone you. Please come to my consulting room. We need to discuss your blood test result.’
She leads the way. Despite my best intentions, I follow her. Through the waiting room, into her domain. Once we are inside she closes the door, turns a key, and locks it. She closes the venetian blinds.
‘I need to give you an urgent check-up,’ she says as she slides her hand down my trousers.
I push my tongue into her mouth and tell myself once again, this has to stop.
Craig is out at the fire station and I am checking the bank statements. Our balance isn’t adding up and I need to double-check it. Debits to the local Travelodge? And then I get it, sudden, sharp, and clear as daylight. Slicing through my mind like a knife. Random facts, facts I hardly noticed, snap together like a jigsaw. Changes in his hours. Copious showers. The phone calls. And I am numb inside like the day my mother died. As if this isn’t happening to me. As if I am floating above myself watching someone else.
A key in the lock. Footsteps across the hallway into the living room. Craig is here, standing in front of me; lovable and familiar, bending to kiss me. We kiss and he steps back to look at me.
‘What’s the occasion?’ he asks. ‘Is everything all right? You don’t usually wait up when I’m on a late shift.’
I flop down onto the sofa. He sits next to me and takes my hand.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asks gently.
‘I hope so,’ I say, and then I start to cry.
He puts his arm around me and I wince inside.
‘Tell me, Craig,’ I hear myself say. ‘Are you having an affair?’
‘Of course not. Whatever makes you think that?’
I push back my tears, pull away from him and grab the bank statements from the dining table, holding them so tightly that they’re crushed between my fingers.
‘These,’ I say, waving them in his face. ‘What have you been doing at Stansfield Travelodge? Why would you need to stay there?’
‘I can explain,’ he says calmly, standing up and attempting to take them from me. But I will not let them go. I clasp my fingers more tightly around them, crumpling them in my palm.
‘Jenni, I can explain,’ he repeats.
‘Can you, Judas?’ I hiss.
I sit at the dining table, still clutching the bank statements, and he sits opposite me, face like a waxwork from Tussaud’s.
‘Go on then. Explain.’
‘I got behind at work – I’ve been going to the Travelodge to write up my notes.’
‘Oh please.’
A silence that stifles. A waxwork face, melting and crumbling.
‘It meant nothing, Jenni. I’ll end it immediately.’
‘If it meant nothing,’ I ask, my voice breaking, ‘then why?’
He reaches for my hands across the table but I pull away.
‘Jenni,’ he says, ‘I love you more than anything. This woman,’ he pauses for emphasis, ‘she means nothing to me.’
‘But who is she, Craig? Tell me, please.’
My mobile rings. I pick up.
‘It’s over. She found out.’
Shock ricochets through me.
‘How does she know? We were so careful.’
‘Careful?’ Craig hisses. ‘Always ringing me. Suggesting weekends away. A shag in the surgery! Do you call that careful?’
‘You make it sound as if I forced you.’
‘Carly. I need to be brief. I’m not ringing for a chat.’ There is a pause. ‘She found out from debits to the Travelodge on our bank statements.’
‘Why did you pay like that? That was stupid. Was your relationship with me a cry for her attention?’
‘Cut the psycho-babble,’ he hisses. ‘I just didn’t think, that’s all. I’m paying for it now.’
‘Does she know it’s me?’
‘Thankfully no. And Carly, she must never find out.’
I have waded through the day, feeling as if I am pushing through mercury or lead. Every movement has been difficult; my limbs have become metallic, the air laced with dread. There were brief, tiny moments when I forgot what had happened. As I held Luke and Mark’s hands and we ambled to the play park. As we queued by the ice-cream van, an autumn breeze moving from the river to caress our faces. For a few seconds I forgot.
When the children were at school I went to church – the church where we married, by the river in Stansfield. Wren architecture. Ancient yew trees. My mind rushed back to our wedding day. I was back walking down the aisle arm in arm with my father, the organ deep throated and resonant, pumping from the balcony, the tremble of my bouquet of lilies magnifying the trembling in my fingers. What haunted me most was the memory of the vicar wrapping a cloth around our hands and saying,
‘Those who God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.’
Do you remember, Craig?
Home from your shift at the fire station, you stand too close to me as I lay the table. You start to help me. The air around you has an aura. I don’t want to be near you. You smell of sex with someone else. Your behaviour has sullied you. The stench of your betrayal will never leave me. You lay the cutlery, I lay the place mats, and when we come close I lean my head away.
We sit around the kitchen table together to eat lasagne; the children’s favourite. I push it around