Page 55 of Things We Never Said
So here’s a photo of Maggie and me with Stéphane keeping us from each other’s throats by lying in the middle. He actually seemed to think that all the bitching that was going on was funny. Perhaps he thought we were fighting over him. He had that kind of outlook on the world. And look at little April there scowling at the back. She looks like she’s about to glass him with her orange juice. God though ... I had forgotten how good-looking he was.
I had worried about you and Maggie for most of the summer. Your moods seemed to be all over the place and I was constantly trying to decode if you were still having a dalliance behind my back or not.
Once I knew that Maggie had split up with Duncan, I avoided her like the plague. It was bad enough that you worked together and rowed together. I was damned if I was going to be the one to organise little get-togethers for you both at the weekends.
But it was a difficult time, that’s for sure. I suspected you of being unfaithful during every instant that you were out of my sight, but whenever you were late and I invented an excuse to phone you, you were always there, perfectly reachable at your workstation, and unless you and Maggie were doing it there in the middle of the open-plan office (which I did manage to visualise, by the way), I couldn’t work out where or when you might be doing it.
By September, when this photo was taken, everything except my own lingering paranoia was back to normal. You seemed calm and interested in home life. It was as if nothing had ever happened. I suspected you were very good at pretending that nothing had. And when I went down to the river and saw that Maggie was no longer rowing, I was able to convince even myself that it was over.
And then we met them, that sunny September day on the green outside the Fort. Maggie was with Stéphane, her French banker, or trader, or whatever they call them, who we had all heard so much about. He was beautiful and smooth and stunningly well dressed, if perhaps a little oily in that way that Latins sometimes can be. Does that sound racist? I don’t mean it to. I’m sure you know what I mean. Anyway, Maggie was clearly in love with him and frankly I could understand why.
You behaved most strangely around him. It was as if his very presence upset you, and I deduced that you were jealous. Maggie had dumped you for shiny, wealthy, bilingual Stéphane, and I felt angry on your behalf while being still angry on my own account, mixed with a dose of what I suppose one can only call jealousy.
He only ever wore those expensive double-cuffed shirts, and braces, and waistcoats and stunningly lustrous suits. I’ve always had a bit of a secret thing for a man in a suit, but more of that another day. He was whizzing Maggie up and down the country on mini-breaks in that open-top BMW of his, and neither of them were tied to home by a petulant daughter. April, you will remember, was at her absolute worst back then, so I was feeling jealous of pretty much anyone who didn’t have kids. But Stéphane, well, he pressed just about every jealousy button that I had.
The feeling soon wore off because, as we all know, Stéphane turned out to be a bombastic, arrogant knob.
Do you remember the champagne incident? It just came back to me.
We met up in a pub somewhere, it was around Christmas, I think. And you ordered a beer only to find that Stéphane, who was at the bar, had cancelled it for you. He had ordered a magnum of some ridiculously expensive champagne for us all and couldn’t even imagine that anyone would rather have beer.
You were quite assertive and explained, very calmly, that you didn’t like champagne but that you did, very much, like Harvey’s IPA.
And Stéphane just laughed. He made this shooing gesture with his long, manicured fingers, and said, in that smooth French accent of his, ‘Nonsense. You will like this champagne. Believe me!’ We all looked at each other and no one said a word, and then, while he was pouring the champagne, Maggie mouthed ‘sorry’. Or perhaps, looking back, she mouthed ‘help!’
It’s a horrible thing to admit, but I was glad he turned out to be such an arsehole. I was still angry with Maggie, but not, surprisingly, as angry as I should have been. Perhaps I was already starting to doubt myself.
The tapes trouble Sean all week. Looking back on his relationship, so many things, so many of Catherine’s seemingly inexplicable mood changes, suddenly make sense. Stupidly and, he now realises, in a rather macho way, he had assumed that his wife’s ups and downs were simply part and parcel of living with someone. All men know that women are mysteries, don’t they? Everyone knows that women are from Pluto and men are from Mars or whatever it is.
But perhaps he should have tried harder to understand. Perhaps he should have forced her to open up and tell him what was wrong. Perhaps he should have sat her down and refused to budge until everything was out in the open.
Then again, there were plenty of times when he had tried. Catherine had been perfectly happy for him to assume that her moodiness was normal, even as she berated him for being a macho man when he did. Lord, if he had been told one small truth for every time Catherine said, ‘Oh, don’t mind me, I’m all over the place at the moment,’ then there would have been no secrets at all. So it’s a shame. They wasted precious time tiptoeing around each other when clearly all that was required was a good heart-to-heart.
And now it’s all over. There is no more time.
On Friday morning, as Sean pulls up his chinos, his iPhone makes a spectacular leap for freedom from his trouser pocket and lands in the flushing rapids of the toilet bowl. Sean looks on the Internet for tips and doubtfully leaves the device in a sealed packet of rice for the weekend, but when by Sunday afternoon it’s still refusing to resuscitate, he walks into town to drop it at the Apple store. It’ll be ‘sorted’, the genius tells him, by Tuesday.
As he steps out onto Corn Exchange Street, he almost bumps into Maggie, who is hurrying past.
‘Hello stranger!’ she exclaims. ‘What brings you to civilisation?’
Sean kisses her on both cheeks. ‘I went and dropped my phone down the loo,’ he explains. ‘I’ve just left it with an Apple “genius”.’ He raises two fingers to indicate the quotes around the word ‘genius’.
‘How did you manage that?’ Maggie asks.
Sean grimaces. ‘You know, I really have no idea. It pretty much jumped out of my pocket, if you can believe that.’
‘I thought they were waterproof or something, aren’t they?’
‘Not mine,’ Sean says. ‘Too old.’
‘But they can fix it, can they?’
‘The guy was too busy being cool to give me any actual information. But by Tuesday I’ll have it back, theoretically. Or one like it.’
‘Oh well,’ Maggie says. ‘That’s still pretty good service, I suppose.’
‘For three hundred pounds ...’
