Page 32 of The Mistake

‘Oh, call Pete!’ Vanessa throws back her head and laughs, champagne spilling over her fingers. ‘I’d just love for Pete to come and hear what I’ve got to say.’ Natalie stares at her, her heart in her mouth, and then Vanessa leans in, close enough for Natalieto smell the alcohol on her breath. ‘Pete and I have been sleeping together for months. We’re having an affair.’

It’s as if someone has taken a sledgehammer to Natalie’s knees as she steps back, her legs numb. ‘What?’

‘Me and Pete. We’ve been having an affair since Easter.’

‘You’re lying.’ The words are a whisper, slipping out before Natalie can stop them. Her hands shaking, she takes a gulp of the warming champagne, but that only serves to make her mouth even drier. ‘Pete would never do that to me, to the girls.’Pete? An affair?Natalie wants to laugh; it sounds so preposterous. She’s known him for over twenty years. Yes, things have been a little difficult since she found out she was pregnant with Erin, but they’re Natalie and Pete. A team. Solid. She’s spent twenty years lying beside him – she could map every freckle and scar on his body, could tell you his wildest dreams and his biggest fears. She knows him better than she knows herself. She would know, wouldn’t she? If Pete was cheating on her?

‘Oh dear. You look a little pale,’ Vanessa observes. ‘You didn’t really think Pete was a good man, did you? That he was actually working all those evenings he came home late. Natalie, don’t you know all men are the same? Once a cheat, always a cheat. Isn’t that what they say?’

‘What do you want?’ Natalie is sure she’s lying. Revenge, for what Natalie and Pete did to her all those years ago. It has to be.

‘Just to tell you the truth!’ Vanessa says. ‘I can prove to you Pete and I are … close. We’ve been talking about going to Australia – to see his parents, and to look at a plot of land. He wants to build us a house out there.’

That was their dream – well, Pete’s – but Natalie was always going to go along with it, even if it has been slightly delayed. ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ she says, the words thick, almost strangling her. ‘Everyone knows Pete wants to go to Australia some day and build a house. You could have overheard him telling Dave.’

‘If I’m lying,’ Vanessa says, ‘why has Pete been coming home so late every night, Natalie? Do you know where he’s been? Because he wasn’t at the office, like he told you. He was with me.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Natalie says, her throat thick.

Vanessa gives Natalie a look full of pity. ‘Oh, Natalie. Think about it. You know what I’m saying is true. Why on earth would Pete want to come back to this,’ she gestures towards Natalie, to her too-tight sundress and greasy hair, then to the chaos that is their kitchen, ‘when everything he really wants is in MontpellierSquare.’

Montpellier Square. Natalie can see it in her mind’s eye now: all the times she checked Find My iPhone and Pete’s car was in the car park just down the street from the square. She’d thought he was taking the client out to dinner. Her face burns, and she feels like a fool. What contractor takes their client out to dinner three or four times a week?

‘There’s more,’ Vanessa says, her words coming out in a hiss that makes Natalie think of low-bellied animals, of snakes and worms, of lies and deceit. ‘That file I brought over? That wasn’t anything to do with work. Ask Pete about it – that’ll give you all the proof you need. I mean, I have it right here on my phone, I could show you now. But I think it should come from Pete.’ She smiles – a quick, bright flash of white teeth – and then before Natalie can respond, she’s gone, leaving Natalie winded and half wondering if she imagined it all.

The file. Natalie remembers the way Pete had snapped when he saw Vanessa in the kitchen. She’d thought it was because he didn’t want the collision of work and home life, that he’d been annoyed with her for calling him back home, but now … Swallowing down the nausea that makes her mouth fill with something bitter and unpalatable, Natalie heads for the stairs, wondering where Pete would have put the file, if he hasn’t destroyed it already. Her heart sinks at the thought of searching her own bedroom for evidence of her husband’s affair, sinks even further at the thought that her searching might disturb Erin, but she has to do it. She has toknow for certain. Tiptoeing into the darkened room, she holds her breath as she pulls open the drawer of Pete’s bedside table. Rummaging as stealthily as she can, Natalie lays her hands on an old watch strap, a business card for some plant hire rep, earplugs, a tiny screwdriver kit that looks as if it’s come out of a Christmas cracker, but no file. She checks the wardrobe, pressing her hands in between neatly stacked T-shirts and inside suit covers. She lifts the mattress, her shoulders straining, but under the bed is clear, too.

As she creeps out of the bedroom, pulling the door gently closed behind her, Natalie glances across to the end of the hallway, to the spare bedroom. She rarely has cause to go in there – onlyto freshen up the sheets and give it a dust on the odd occasion when they’ve allowed Jake to stay over, or if Stu and Mari have too much to drink and can’t drive home. Pete, though … Pete uses it all the time. He’s set up an old Ikea desk and chair, and if he’s really under the cosh he’ll spend Saturday mornings in there doing his paperwork.

Fire sparking in her veins, Natalie pushes open the door and heads for the desk. There are tidy piles of paperwork on top, supplier invoices, a printed VAT return, drawings that Natalie can’t make head nor tail of, but no file. The drawers contain staples, Post-it notes with curled edges and an old packet of gum; all of them are unlocked apart from the bottom drawer.

‘Don’t be so stupid,’ she mutters under her breath, aware that she sounds crazy – that Pete’s lies have made herfeelcrazy. ‘He wouldn’t leave it lying around. He would lock it away.’ Running her eyes over the desk, her gaze snags on the plastic pen pot, on the leaky biros and the mound of paper clips, and the glint of a tiny silver key underneath them. She pulls it out, resting it in the palm of her hand as far below, in the garden, someone shouts Pete’s name, and then there is raucous laughter and the clink of glasses. Natalie blinks as she stares at the key. It’s so light in her hand, but it has the power to change everything.

Stooping, she slides the key in the lock and the bottom drawer glides open. Documents lie in the drawer – Pete’s tax return, Erin’s birth certificate, a copy of Emily’s GCSE results – and there, buried beneath all the other papers, is a slim maroon wallet. Natalie slides it out and sinks down on to the bed. She feels sick and weak, the way she did when Zadie was four and Natalie had gastroenteritis and couldn’t even keep water down.

‘I don’t have to look,’ she tells herself, one finger sliding under the flap of the file even as she says it. Her pulse screaming in her ears, Natalie flips the file open, one hand going to her mouth as her stomach rolls over and over, an emotional rollercoaster of fear and pain. Vanessa’s face stares up at her, her lipsticked mouth seeming to mock Natalie as her eyes roam further down the photograph, over Vanessa’s perfect breasts and flat stomach, no hint of a single stretch mark. Natalie shuffles through, feeling more and more sick as she does, still telling herself that this doesn’t mean anything. Vanessa could have just sent the photos to Pete, it doesn’t mean he’s guilty … until she gets to the final photo. Pete, clearly naked, asleep in a bed that is not theirs, in a room Natalie has never seen before but would probably have lusted after if she had seen it in an Instagram post. The ground seems to fall away from beneath her feet, the file and photographs sliding from her lap, and somewhere far away Natalie thinks she hears the sound of breaking glass over the noise of the party. She can’t be sure, but she thinks it might be the sound of her heart shattering into a million pieces.

Pete

Finally letting himself out of the cloakroom, Pete heads back towards the garden, a knot of anxiety in his stomach as he searches the grounds for Vanessa. Emily glares as he approaches, moving as if to turn her back on him, but he reaches out and lays a hand on her shoulder.

‘What?’ she asks belligerently, causing Sam, her best friend from school, to titter nervously.

‘Have you seen Mum?’ Pete lets her attitude slide, noticing the almost empty glass in her hand, and the way her eyes have the slightly glazed look of someone who has consumed more alcohol than they are used to.

‘No,’ Emily snaps, ‘and I don’t want to either. I’m not talking to her.’

Pete sighs. ‘What’s happened now?’

‘I would tell you,’ Emily shrugs, casting a sly glance in Sam’s direction, ‘but I’m not talking to you either.’

Pete doesn’t have time for Emily’s childish games right now and, resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he makes a mental note to have a word with her in the morning about her attitude. He was so proud of her earlier, of the way she’s stepped up to the plate to help with Erin, but it’s times like this that remind him that no matter how much of an adult she thinks she is, Emily is still a child. Shaking his head, he moves past her, combing the crowd of guests on the lawn for Natalie’s blonde hair. He keeps telling himself he just wants to check in with her, make sure she’s OK – especially if she’s now had a row with Emily – but he knows it’s really that he wants to make sure Vanessa hasn’t got to her.

Speaking of Vanessa, there doesn’t seem to be any sign of her,either in the house as he marched through from the cloakroom, or outside in the garden. No flash of dark hair, no lilting laugh in the rapidly cooling evening breeze. Pete is just allowing himself the luxury of fully exhaling and going in search of a pint when Eve lurches towards him, stumbling on her wedged heels over the wet, churned-up grass.

‘Pete!’

Pete’s eyes dart behind Eve, hoping for an escape route, but she’s gaining on him and it seems there is no way of avoiding her. He’s going to have to make small talk. As Eve trips towards him, Pete groans inwardly. Her eyes are red-rimmed and the tip of her nose is pink and shiny, a dead giveaway that she’s been crying.Great party, Pete, he thinks to himself. Can it really be considered a celebration when half of the guests are either crying or arguing?

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