Page 53 of Things We Never Said
You were there, in a racing eight, looking red-cheeked and sweaty, whizzing down the river at quite a shocking speed. So I felt reassured, for a while.
I discovered, too, that it did me good to get out of the house first thing. So the race down to the river and back became a regular morning adventure for April and me. Sometimes we would see you and sometimes we wouldn’t. Amazingly, you never noticed us. I suppose you were too busy being shouted at by that horrible woman cox with the megaphone. April only ever once mentioned seeing you rowing and, surprisingly, you didn’t seem to think anything of it, so I got away with it.
But then, one morning, all my certainties fell to pieces again. Because I saw Maggie was rowing, too. You both looked ecstatic, and again it felt like a realisation of something that I had always known.
I sat a way back from the boathouse and I watched until you got back, and then I watched until you left.
Maggie was running her fingers through her hair, still damp from the showers, and you were laughing at something she had said. And then you put your arm around her shoulders and squeezed her.
I cried when I got back, and then I sat and tried to reason with myself all afternoon.
When you got home that night, I suggested we have Maggie and Drunken Duncan, her boyfriend of the moment, round for dinner. I just wanted to see how you’d react.
‘Oh, she’s split up with Duncan,’ you told me nonchalantly. ‘Didn’t I tell you that?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You didn’t.’
‘Well, she has,’ you said. ‘But we can still invite Mags around if you want.’
I was left wondering how I’d get out of that one.
Sean pushes the Dictaphone to the far side of the table and covers his eyes with his cupped hands. He feels like he wants to weep, but realises, after a moment, that the tears are not going to come.
He feels angry, too. For how could Catherine possibly have convinced herself he was having an affair with Maggie?
OK, perhaps he can see how that could have happened. They had been close over the years. Perhaps, at times, too close.
But why on earth hadn’t she simply asked him? He could have put her mind at rest. He could have saved her months of anguish – years, perhaps. Now he does know, it’s too late to tell her the truth. And that feels devastating.
On Thursday evening, Sean is invited to join a group of friends for a pub quiz at The Brook.
Quiz night had once been a fairly regular occurrence, and Sean can’t quite work out when that ceased to be the case, nor why. Certainly, he hasn’t seen any of the gang since Catherine died, but now that he thinks about it he can’t remember having been out with them for a while before she died either, so perhaps the two are unrelated.
Whatever the reason, he accepts the invitation. He’s grateful for any kind of distraction at the moment and is looking forward to seeing his old friends again.
When he gets to the pub, five familiar faces are already lined up along a bench seat, drinking.
Sean buys a round of drinks for those whose glasses are nearly empty and then sits down on the other side of the table, feeling, for some reason, as if he’s being interviewed.
‘So!’ he says, scanning the smiling faces. ‘It’s been ages. I was trying to work out how long it’s been and why we never do this anymore.’
Jim, the youngest of the group, glances along the row and then shrugs and says, ‘We’ve all been too busy, I guess. You know what it’s like, what with work and the kids and everything else.’
‘Sure,’ Sean says.
‘How have you been?’ Pete asks.
‘OK,’ Sean replies. ‘You know.’
A silence falls over the group. Everyone sips their drinks.
‘The missus saw you out in Grantchester,’ Pete says.
‘Sylvia?’ Sean says. ‘She should have said hello.’
‘You were with someone,’ Pete says, coyly. ‘I don’t think she wanted to interrupt anything.’
Sean frowns. ‘I was with Maggie,’ he says.
