Chapter 5 

What happens that night with crimson hair and a yellow exercise ball...

That evening. 11.30 pm-ish – I’ve been sitting on the bed wearing a beautiful crimson uncrushable satin wrap and matching hair for the last twenty minutes. Kev hasn’t even made a  comment, which is odd in itself. In the very recent past, ‘wasteful’, ‘self-indulgent’, ‘unnecessary’ expenditure of the hard-earned on myself (aka looking after oneself) has always been an issue. I, like most women, have suffered the torment of temptation towards ‘self-indulgent’ expenditure in the face of his guilt-inducing insistence that I was everything he needed just exactly the way I was. He once persuaded me to let him cut my hair. He was a tree surgeon he insisted, hadn’t I seen the impressive curves of his hedges? There was no need to throw hard-earned money away on something that could be affected satisfactorily at home. I had swallowed my entirely sensible misgivings and sat down on the hair-cutting stool in the kitchen with a bath towel draped around my shoulders. He had done his ‘Edward Scissor-Hands’ impersonation and I had smiled faintly at the results. The next day, as soon as he’d vanished to grind some stumps in Kiltarlity, I’d run to The Hair Academy with a woolly hat pulled down tight over my uncanny resemblance to Professor Snape. Daniel, bless him, had practically wept for me.

     So the silence is a puzzle. Maybe he feels he’s not in a position to make a fuss? Maybe his mind is too full of the philosophical implications of philandering? No doubt Other Woman had a sexy and expensive garment or two in her wardrobe, purchased by her husband (though he may not have known he’d purchased them) and saved for an affair with somebody else’s man. Now it seems so obviously the thing to do! In the past, I’ve been too sensitive about how insecure he might feel if I toned my figure with exercise and spent, no, wait, invested a small fortune in the cosmetics department at Debenhams! But now! Now it seems to me there’s a good case for always dressing like one might have to move on to the next guy at a moment’s notice. This, on top of being nothing short of strongly advisable, is of course a fabulous justification for afternoons spent at the salon, the beautician, the Spa, the lingerie department or with the lady who does the make-overs at the Estee Lauder counter – even if it does demonstrate just a teeny lack of confidence in a relationship. I mean, isn’t it a bit like having one, sensibly shod foot planted at home, on the ground, while the other sports a red satin stiletto and is ready to hit the deck at a run if some, well, better bet, shows the least bit interest?

     

      Kev and I have not had sex since that not-very-Laura-Ashley night at his parents but, yes, we are still sharing the bed. We have three bedrooms in total. The boys occupy one each and that doesn’t leave much scope for alternative arrangements. The landing tends to get busy and the living room starts to resemble the inside of an untidy caravan when there’s bedding in it.

Specially Kev’s bedding. Come to think of it, anywhere Kev resides (the workshop, the lorry cab, his side of the bedroom) starts to look like the inside of an untidy caravan. Besides, neither of us is sure we want to give up yet. I (of course) wonder does he have someone else on his mind when he touches me and he (of course) wonders does he have any right to come near me in that way given the situation. Oh, and he strained his back at work a couple of days ago. Sacrum. His left buttock twinges painfully every time he bends. A pain in the arse. At the moment he’s reclining naked on a large yellow exercise ball, rolling back and forth, wobbling and grunting.

     “So how are you Kev?” I ask boldly. “How’s the ‘closure’ going? Did you sort that out on your visit?”

I haven’t mentioned yesterday’s visit until now. I had thought I might feel a sense of something unpleasant being over, of us making a fresh start and therefore no need to ask difficult questions. It hasn’t happened. Since he walked in the door this evening he’s been distracted. He didn’t notice the cat had sneaked in and was collapsed in the hearth with its limbs sticking out like broken twigs. He didn’t notice I’d made chocolate cake to offset the shock the huge pile of designer carrier bags on my side of the bed would occasion. Heck, so far, he hasn’t even noticed the carrier bags! Questions have to be asked.

    

     He attempts to pull himself upright on the ball but it’s too sudden and his compressed sacro-ileac joints can’t take it. For a moment he bobs erratically. It looks like he could end up with his head and shoulders wedged between a chest of drawers and the wall, but the wardrobe door’s half open and he uses it to stabilize himself. “What exactly do you want to know?” he asks and his voice is hoarse (could be the subject matter or the fact that he nipped his scrotum between his thigh and the space hopper whilst trying to regain control of it.)

     I try again.

     “Well, what I want to know is, are we back to being a twosome instead of a threesome? Because, you know, the threesome thing, that won’t work for me – I’d want out of it. Tell me, what’s going on inside your head? Have you packed her in or is all the packing going to go on this end? Um?”

      In one fluid if not quite balletic movement, he abandons the ball to flop onto the bed beside me with his hands dramatically planted over his face.

     “Lizzie, I think I’m going to need your help to get through this,” he moans.

     It’s all a lot worse than I thought then. My help. My help. My help? I repeat it slowly in my head and try to picture myself ‘helping’ him. It’s true he’s got one hell of a lot of stuff - outbuildings packed with tools, tins of paint, scrap metal, broken things, parts of machines etc. I suppose, yes, I probably would have to lend a hand to get everything moved. Is that what he means? What else can he mean? I don’t do helping my man negotiate the fall-out from a particularly poorly-judged extra-marital fiasco! Do I?

     “We’re a sort of unique couple, aren’t we Lizzie?” he goes on. “How would it be if we all moved in together? You know, there’s so much she could learn from you…”

      Another mental picture. This time me, clad in gorgeous crimson satin, forcing him to eat his own exercise ball as he lies roped to the bed, stuffing chunks of yellow rubber down his throat with a look on my face that says “See? See how unique I am? Unique and very, very bloody angry…”

      

      “Kev,” I begin slowly, fighting back the impulse to stick my fingers in his eyes when, in an attempt to answer him meaningfully, I’m forced to remember why I ended up sharing my life with him in the first place. “You said you wanted to grow old with me, remember? You promised you wouldn’t let me down. I’ve already been divorced once, I had to bring up Eldest with his dad far away. You know how much I never wanted to have to do that again! I asked you all the questions in the beginning. I needed to know you were sure and I didn’t want to marry you because I wanted something better than that – something that would work! I can still hear your voice saying it, over and over again, ‘I’m sure Lizzie, I’m absolutely sure…’

     Taking his hands away from his face he looks at me, red and sweaty, like his head is going to burst. “I said those things to her too,” he says. “I’m sorry. I so wish I hadn’t. But it’s done now…”

    “Can’t you be the strong one?” the Gates had asked, and they must have asked because they thought I could. Would they consider boudoir-inflicted GBH the actions of a strong woman, I wonder? What would Youngest think? And how would I live with myself? Sure, everyone would understand and the Inverness Courier would couch the story in non-judgemental terms (because the Inverness Courier is very good at that) and my prison sentence would be reduced due to the tearful testimony of character witnesses and the unspoken sympathy of the Procurator Fiscal. But, in the end, what earthly good would it do? I know this man so well – that’s something I can be absolutely certain of, don’t need anyone to tell me so can’t be misled. Like a lot of people, under pressure he likes to believe there’s an easy way out if only he can ‘think outside the box’. He also hates to think of himself as a bad person. He’s looking for a way he can say it was all about love, caring and selflessness. Unfortunately, because I won’t allow us just to paper over the cracks and move on under the umbrella of a face-saving fiction, I’ve landed myself with the job of pointing out the flaws in the logic. The fact is, you can’t be honest, faithful, true and caring to two people simultaneously. Instead you end up submerged in a situation generating huge amounts of hurt and pain and grief and deceit and anger and a whole bunch of other stuff, none of which you would wish on your worst enemy nevermind people you care about.

     Strenuously managing my breathing, I try to enlighten him. “You can’t go around making promises when you’re already in a committed relationship and you have a home and a family and a business, “ I tell him, as calmly as I can. “Shit, Kevin! You can’t go round making promises unless you’re going to keep them! Tell me please Kev, whatever made you think you could?”

     “Dunno. It just happened ok? I didn’t know it could happen…”

     “Stop, stop, stop! You make it sound like all that running round behind my back, all that cheating is just something you got caught up in - like a blizzard or a… an unofficial street protest about fuel prices! We all have to take responsibility for our own actions, don’t we?”

     He resorts to blame-shifting. “Well what about her actions? She seduced me!” he whines, and I snort a laugh like a muffled landmine explosion.

     “Oh fine! And it was fine for you to say ‘Yes’ then! As long as she asked you first that’s okay! Whatever she wants from you is so much more important than what I or your family want from you. Just out of interest - did you never stop to think about what you had to lose?”

  

  
       It’s cold in the room. We never have the radiators on upstairs because we don’t want the kids to get soft. While he considers my question we simultaneously decide to shrug ourselves under the duvet, and I switch off the lamp. Forced to snuggle together for warmth if nothing else, he sighs a huge sigh in my right ear then – “I just didn’t realize how destructive it would be…” He says.

      What’s the point? Really, what is the point? Does anyone give up ten years of their life to building a home and a family life to hear that kind of bilge at the end of it?

      I decide to do myself a favour and shut up.