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  It hadn’t always been that way. When they first met they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, even rushing home on the occasional lunch hour for a passionate session. Then the children were born. Now their sex life was more endangered than the Giant Panda.

  On the rare occasions he showed an interest, Jeff would roll over and whisper, “How about a quickie?”

  As opposed to what? she thought to herself as he made the cursory attempt at foreplay by twiddling her nipple as if he were fine-tuning Radio Five.

  “I think I’m hermetically sealed it’s been so long,” Jo had said wistfully to her friend Rosie a few weeks earlier.

  Now Jeff’s lack of interest made perfect sense.

  Jo watched News At Ten, but absorbed none of it. Bong! Jo Miles discovers photos. Bong! It has to be her husband’s girlfriend. Bong! She castrates him.

  All her thoughts centered on the moment when Jeff finally bothered to come home.

  When the program had finished she walked down their dark hallway and flicked on the kitchen light. The long wooden table in the center of the room was cluttered with coloring books, papers, and unread newsletters from the children’s school. Jo used her arm to sweep the lot onto the floor. She wanted a clean surface for what she was about to do. One by one, she placed the five photographs in a line across the center of the table, in order of undress. Then she sat down in the large wicker chair at the far end and waited.

  For half an hour, there was only the sound of the clock ticking and Jo’s breathing. Then finally she heard a key in the lock. It was 11 P.M.

  She heard Jeff’s footsteps coming down the hallway before he peered round the kitchen door, surprise registering on his face. He had assumed she would be in bed by now. His dark brown hair looked mussed and his cheeks were bright red. His tie had been loosened and his suit looked like it had been trampled by a herd of wildebeest. Crumpled of the Bailey. I wonder if he’s been with her, thought Jo. She felt completely numb.

  “Hello. I thought you’d probably have gone for an early night. What are you—” He stopped mid-sentence as he caught sight of the photographs. “What are these?” He had gone deathly white and his pupils had expanded to the size of dinner plates.

  Jo stared at him impassively, knowing it was important for her to stay calm at this point. She had to admit she was relishing his obvious discomfort. She glanced at the photographs again, before looking him straight in the eye.

  “I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that.”

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  caught in headlights. She could see he was desperate to come up with a simple explanation, but clearly knew there wasn’t one. Running a hand through his hair, he sat down at the other end of the table and made an attempt to worm his way out of the situation.

  “She’s nobody Jo, honest.” He looked beseechingly at her.

  “Try again.” Her voice was clipped.

  Jeff looked down at his feet. He was a solicitor and Jo knew he could recognize conclusive evidence when he saw it. There was no point lying. With no dramatic pause or build-up, he came out with it in a matter-of-fact, could-you-pass-the-salt kind of way.

  “I’ve been seeing her for about six months.” He looked pathetically sheepish.

  Six months. Six, deceitful, conniving, duplicitous bloody months, thought Jo as she struggled to take it in. Was this really happening? To her, Jo Miles? Right now she felt she was in the middle of someone else’s nightmare or cruel joke.

  “Are you in love with her?” The knot of emotion at the back of her throat made it difficult to speak. She hoped—prayed even—that the answer would be no.

  He said nothing for a moment, then slowly began to nod his head. “I am, yes.”

  The unmistakable feeling of cold fear began to creep along Jo’s arms. Every major argument they had ever had became insignificant. People have arguments because they still care. This was different. She felt she was facing her emotional Armageddon. A million questions raced through her mind, but the raw need to know what she was up against won through.

  “Who is she?”

  She was fascinated by how calm she sounded. Fear of what was coming next had paralyzed her senses. She waited for an answer from the man who now seemed like a complete stranger to her. Behind his head on the kitchen wall was a collage of family holiday snaps from over the years. Jeff holding Sophie as a baby, playing football on the beach with Thomas, the four of them tucking into a huge paella. In every picture they were all glowing with happiness.

  “I said, who is she?”

  She watched him shuffle uncomfortably and start picking at a piece of loose wickerwork on the arm of the chair. He didn’t want to have this conversation. Jo knew he’d rather run out of the front door and put it all in a detailed letter. But there was no way she would let him get away with that.

  “She’s one of the secretaries at work.”

  His voice was barely audible as he fixed his gaze on one of the Italian ceramic floor tiles they had spent a fortune on. The same tiles they had uncharacteristically made love on after a drunken night out two weeks earlier. It took a lot of alcohol these days. Jo burst into bitter laughter. For a second, she thought he must be joking, that this whole laughable scenario was his idea of fun and the guy from Candid Camera was going to walk through the door at any second. But there was no telltale twinkle in Jeff’s eyes nor even the faint trace of a smirk.

  “Oh God, the bloody boss-shags-secretary cliché,” she spat, close to hysteria now. “No doubt you’ve told her your wife doesn’t understand you or that I’m paralyzed from the waist down.”

  Sarcasm suited her mood right now. Other men were pathetic enough to go off with their secretaries, but not her husband. Not the man she had respected and trusted enough to marry and have children by.

  Jeff’s face was pinched. “She’s not a shag, Jo. I’m in love with her. Believe me, I’ve tried not to be, but I just can’t stop it and I can’t carry on pretending anymore—it’s not fair on you and the kids.”

  The kids. The words snapped into her consciousness.

  “Are we having this conversation because you’re going to leave us?” Her voice sounded cracked and distant. She was beginning to feel really scared.

  Jeff stood up and walked toward her. He knelt down in front of her chair and took her hands in his.

  “I have to leave, Jo. Believe me, I would stay and sort things out if I could, but the whole thing is completely out of my control now and I can’t contemplate life without her.”

  He was looking up at her, waiting for a reaction. But Jo was completely numbed by what she’d just heard. She was bright, funny and self-motivated—she had to be. But when she stood at that altar, “she” became a “we.” They were a unit. Now she was terrified by the prospect of it ending.

  “The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you,” he said softly, laying his head in her lap.

  She sat staring down at the back of his head as the enormity of the situation began to sink in. “But I know you’ll be able to cope because you’re so strong. She would fall to pieces if I left her. She’s so vulnerable.”

  Jo felt it slowly at first, a dull sensation that began in her chest and rose in a tidal wave through the rest of her body. A violent, unstoppable surge of pure anger.

  Grabbing her half-empty coffee cup from the table, she used all the force she could muster to bring it smashing down on the back of his head.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” he cursed, his hand shooting to where a small trickle of blood was now mingling with the cold coffee. “What the fuck did you do that for?”

  But Jo didn’t answer. She grabbed Jeff’s head and pushed him to the floor with a strength that surprised even her, then leapt to her feet. As he scrambled around trying to stand up, she stood over him, her face twisting with rage and searing pain. At that moment, her loathing of him was absolute. Suddenly, he was standing in front of her.

  “Jo, please . . .” He raised his arms as if he were about to embrace her, but he
r response was swift.

  The first blow struck him across the right side of his face and he fell back against the oven door, gasping in pain as his lower back struck the handle. Jo couldn’t have cared less. She flew at him, pummeling his chest with clenched fists until he managed to grab one of her arms and restrain her. Sobbing, she sank to the floor in front of him.

  “Bastard . . . bastard,” she whispered, shaking her head in disbelief.

  Jeff didn’t move. Jo knew her extreme behavior had stunned him because she’d never been the emotional sort. She hadn’t even cried on their wedding day, but her mother had made up for that.

  “Why do mothers always cry at their daughter’s weddings?” Jeff had whispered in her ear as they walked back down the aisle to the sounds of her mother’s loud nose blowing.

  “Because they know girls always marry a man like their father,” she’d laughed.

  Now here she was crumpled at her husband’s feet.

  Bending down, Jeff gently placed a hand under her arm and helped her up. “Sit down. I’ll get you a drink.”

  He walked over to the cupboard above the sink and got out the bottle of whiskey they kept there. She watched as he poured a generous measure and placed it in front her. Amazing, isn’t it? she marveled to herself. Men spend their lives making decisions and cut-throat deals, planning wars, erecting buildings—or whatever it is they damn well do. Yet throw a bimbo in a short skirt into the mix and they all lose ability to take control of their lives. Here was the man she loved suddenly throwing everything away on the “love” of someone he’d known five minutes. Another suspicion crept in. She had to ask.

  “How old is she?”

  “Is that relevant?”

  “For fuck’s sake Jeff, we’re not in court. Just answer the question.”

  “Twenty-three.”

  Her chair made a loud scraping noise as Jo pushed it backward and stood up. Jeff flinched, expecting another blow to the head. But her desire to get away from him was all-consuming. She ran down the hallway and into the sitting room where she sat in darkness on one of the two faded floral sofas. Jeff followed her, as she knew he would, and switched on the lights. She winced at the brightness.

  “Twenty-three? Jesus Christ. Are you seriously going to walk out on me and the kids because you want to shack up with some love-struck bimbo?” She hissed the words at him, mindful that Sophie’s room was at the top of the stairs.

  He stood there, fiddling with the corner of a framed stick-drawing Thomas had done at nursery school. A small amount of blood had now soaked into the back of his shirt collar. When he finally spoke, his voice was chillingly measured.

  “She’s not a bimbo, Jo. She’s actually very bright and she knows what hurt all this will cause, but she feels the same way as me. It’s unavoidable.”

  Unavoidable. Un-bloody-avoidable. God, her husband could be a pompous prick when he wanted to be.

  “No Jeff. Paying tax is fucking unavoidable. Old age is unavoidable. But throwing away your marriage simply because some teenager bats her eyelids at you is entirely avoidable.”

  For every crass remark he made, a thousand sarcastic retorts sprang into her mind. But she knew that whatever she said wouldn’t be taken as common sense, simply the words of a bitter woman whose husband was about to leave her. It was no longer her and him against the world. It was him and the other woman against her. He had defended her when Jo called her a bimbo. No doubt they had been having cozy dinners and discussing the marriage. Mulling over how he would tell her, wondering how she would react, contemplating the effect on the children. How bloody noble of them.

  “And as for her knowing what hurt this will cause, how the fuck can she? Does she have two kids she has to tell that their dad’s walking out on them?”

  She had no idea what was going through Jeff’s mind at that precise moment, but she’d hazard a guess at, “Beam me up Scotty.” He was rocking on his heels, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. His hands were tucked behind his back like Prince Charles when meeting the great unwashed. The emotional distance between them yawned, and Jo’s anger subsided as she became overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness and total incomprehension.

  “I thought affairs were supposed to be a symptom of an unhappy marriage. I had no idea you were unhappy,” she faltered.

  “I kept thinking things would get better, I really did. But we never seemed to talk about it.”

  “You never brought it up.”

  “No, but I shouldn’t have to, should I? Isn’t marriage all about reading each other’s moods and looking out for each other?”

  “Maybe . . .” Jo shrugged her shoulders.

  “Well, we seemed to stop doing that. We’ve just been existing under the same roof and never really communicating. So I found myself turning to someone else for conversation, support, and . . . understanding, I suppose.”

  “And sex Jeff? What about sex? Have you slept with her?”

  “I’m not going to answer that question.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ then.”

  He ignored her and carried on. “After a while I lost the urge to sort things out with you. You were so wrapped up in your work, the kids, the house. There didn’t seem to be a great deal of room in your life for me.”

  The anger was back. Years of pent-up frustration bubbled to the surface and she leapt to her feet. “You’ve just fucking said it, haven’t you? Because I’m the woman in this relationship I’m expected to come home and get the kids into bed, make sure there’s food on the table, wash Thomas’s football kit for the morning, iron Sophie’s uniform, blah blah fucking blah. I don’t have time for myself, Jeff, let alone you. And all you have to do is look after Number One in the mornings, then go off to work where a secretary makes you a cup of coffee and probably gives you a fucking blow job.”

  Pausing for breath, she looked across at Jeff, who was saying absolutely nothing. He must know the sentiment of what she’d said was true.

  She freelanced as an interior designer, something Jeff always thought of as a “hobby.” He had once made the mistake of saying, “Anyone can throw a few colors on a wall and add some pictures.” So Jo challenged him to mastermind the decor of the spare bedroom. It was still there as visible testament to Jeff’s complete lack of imagination.

  During the two weeks that he spent working on it, disappearing up there most evenings with the door closed, Jo and the kids weren’t allowed to see a thing. Every night he would lock the door and take the key to work with him.

  On the night of the grand unveiling, he made Jo close her eyes until she was inside. She opened them and thought she’d passed on to another spiritual plane. It had cream walls, cream curtains, a cream carpet.

  “It’s . . . er . . . very cream,” she said, as Jeff beamed with pride.

  Of course, several years on, it was no longer cream, particularly after several of the children’s friends had stayed in it. Shades of grubby gray would be a more accurate description.

  But at least the little exercise had forced Jeff to admit that Jo’s choice of career did require creativity and talent. He had also to concede that it was lucrative, particularly in the middle class neighborhood where they lived. Most of the working couples there had no qualms about forking out a few grand to Jo for a Homes & Gardens style decor.

  The room they were standing in now glowed in the rich, warm colors of red and gold. Jo had spent weeks poring over plans and swatches, keen to make sure that the room they spent the most time in was cozy and welcoming for their evenings at home together. Fat lot of good it was now.

  “Do you love me?” He raised his eyebrows and looked at her quizzically.

  “What do you mean?” The question had taken her completely by surprise.

  “It’s not a hard question is it, hon?” he said softly. Hon. He hadn’t called her that for months, maybe even years.

  “Of course I love you. You’re the father of my children.” She was annoyed that the focus had suddenly been put ont
o her when he was the one about to walk out.

  His eyes dulled and he started scraping his foot backward and forward along one side of the kilim rug at his feet. “It’s not enough, Jo,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want you to be with me because we have children. Just remove them from the equation for the moment. Would you still love me enough to be with me?”

  Did their future together depend on her answer? She could lie and say yes, or she could tell the truth.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, maybe that goes some way to explain why we’re in this situation now. At least I know she loves me.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake don’t be so pathetic! She wants you now, but what happens when some twenty-four-year-old bloke makes a pass at her? She’ll take one look at you with your bald patch and emotional baggage and decide her brief flirtation with older men is over. Then you’ll be left wondering why you gave up on your marriage and kids for something so shallow.”

  Jeff sat down on the sofa opposite her and shook his head. “Candy’s not like that. She gives me time and makes me feel wanted.”

  There were so many serious observations to be made on the drama unfolding in their sitting room, but Jo couldn’t help herself.

  “Candy? Is that her name? Christ, she sounds like a porn star.”

  “It’s short for Candida,” said Jeff sullenly, traces of a red flush creeping up his face.