Page 102 of The One Plus One
‘We need to talk?’ Jess was half laughing now. ‘Yes, let’s talk, Marty. How about I talk? For two years I’ve not made a single demand on you – not for money or time or childcare or help of any kind. Because I thought you were ill. I thought you were depressed. I thought you were living with your MOTHER.’
‘I was living with Mum.’
‘Till when?’
He compressed his lips.
‘Till when, Marty?’ Her voice was shrill.
‘Fifteen months.’
‘You were with your mum fifteen months?’
He looked at his feet.
‘You’ve been here fifteen months? You’ve been here more than a year?’
‘I wanted to tell you. But I knew that you’d –’
‘What – kick off? Because you’re here living a life of luxury while your wife and kids are back at home scrabbling around in the crap you left behind?’
‘Jess…’
She was briefly silenced as the door opened abruptly. A little girl appeared behind him, her hair a virgin sheet of blonde, wearing a Hollister sweatshirt and Converse trainers. She tugged at his sleeve. ‘It’s your programme, Marty,’ she began, and then she saw Jess and stopped.
‘Go to your mum, babe,’ he said quietly, his gaze flicking sideways. He put his hand gently on her shoulder. ‘I’ll be through in a minute.’
She looked at Jess warily, perhaps picking up on some strange vibration in the air. She was the same age as Tanzie. ‘Go on.’ He pulled the door behind him.
And that was when Jess’s heart actually broke.
‘She…she has kids?’
He swallowed. ‘Two.’
Her hands went to her face, and then her hair. She turned and walked blindly back down the path. She didn’t actually know where she was going. ‘Oh, God. Oh, God.’
‘Jess – I never set out to –’
She spun round and flew at him. She wanted to batter him. She wanted to smash his stupid face and his expensive haircut. She wanted him to know the pain he had put his children through. She wanted him to pay. Heducked behind the car and, almost without knowing what she was doing, she found she was kicking at it, at its oversized wheels, its gleaming panels, the stupid bright white shiny stupid immaculate stupid car.
‘You lied! You lied to all of us! And I was trying to protect you! I can’t believe…I can’t –’ She kicked and felt the faint satisfaction as the metal gave, even as the pain shot up her foot. She kicked again and again, not caring, her fists raining blows on the window.
‘Jess! The car! Are you fucking mad?’
She rained blows down on that car because she could not rain the blows on him. She hit with her hands and her feet, not caring, sobbing with fury, her rasping breath loud in her ears. And when he wrenched her off it, wedging himself between her and the panels, his grip tight on her arms, she felt a momentary flicker of fear that they were into some new realm of craziness now, that her life had spun utterly out of control, and then she looked into his eyes, his coward’s eyes, and there was a loud buzzing in her head. She wanted to smash –
‘Jess.’
Mr Nicholls’s arm was around her waist, easing her backwards.
‘Get off me!’
‘The kids are watching. Come on now.’ A hand on her arm.
She couldn’t breathe. A moan rose up through her whole body. She allowed herself to be pulled a few steps back. Marty was shouting something she couldn’t hear through the din in her head.
‘Come…come away.’
