He's Got to Go Read online

  It was such a disgusting image. It wasn’t Adam. That was the only thing that she had to cling to, the only thought that sustained her. Adam was a man who liked the fine things in life. Being in a situation like that with a woman was crude. The last thing that Adam was was crude. He was magnetic and charismatic and attractive—even if not a patch on Finn Coolidge in the animal charm school—and he certainly wasn’t crude. So he wouldn’t, couldn’t, behave in public like that with a woman.

  Unless she had him under her spell. Unless there was something about this woman that had changed him completely. Only, thought Nessa despairingly as she sat on the edge of the double bed, he hadn’t changed. Not with her. Not with Jill. Not at all.

  She got up and opened the wardrobe door. She felt guilty as she slid her hand into the pockets of his suits. She didn’t know what she expected to find there but she had a vague notion that maybe there would be something. But there wasn’t. No carefully folded up love letters. No unexplainable Visa card receipts. No gift-wrapped bottles of perfume. Everything was exactly the way it always was. Nothing had changed at all.

  Jill and Nicolette were playing in the back garden. Nessa called her daughter and handed her some money.

  “Pop down the road to the newsagent’s,” she told her. “Get the latest copies of Woman’s Way, Woman and Home, New Woman and She.”

  Jill looked at her in astonishment. “All of them?”

  “All of them,” said Nessa.

  She read the horoscopes for the month ahead. Woman’s Way, which had a weekly horoscope, told her not to be distracted by other people’s emotional issues. Woman and Home said that she would regret rushing into certain decisions. New Woman told her that she had been putting other people’s feelings ahead of her own for too long, and She suggested that her imagination was working overtime.

  “Exactly,” she said out loud as she closed the glossy magazine. My imagination is working overtime.

  He arrived home at seven-thirty. Nessa felt her heart thud even harder in her chest as she heard the car pull up in the driveway and the beep of the alarm as he locked the doors. The effect of reading the horoscopes had worn off. She’d remembered that Portia’s comments weren’t figments of her imagination. She’d heard the words, spoken by someone who didn’t even know she was listening. And they were fact. Adam had stuck his tongue down some woman’s throat. She hadn’t imagined hearing that. So she’d spent two hours oscillating between hope and despair until she didn’t know how she felt anymore.

  “What on earth happened?”

  She spun around at the sound of his voice and water from the kettle, which she’d been filling for no reason, went everywhere. She grabbed a cloth and began mopping the floor.

  “What do you mean, what happened?” Her voice was muffled as she leaned down.

  “To your car!” Adam was shocked. She could hear it in his voice.

  She’d forgotten about the car. “My car?”

  “Yes,” he said. “There’s a bloody big gouge along the side of it.”

  “Oh, yes.” She straightened up and wrung out the cloth. “I scraped it.”

  “You what?!”

  “Scraped it,” she said. “You know. What you do on a regular basis.”

  “I know I do it,” he said jokingly. “But a Driscoll woman? Scraping a car? Unheard of, I would’ve thought.”

  “Not anymore.” She didn’t know how she was saying these banal words when the ones she wanted to use were so different. She didn’t know how it was that he was talking to her as though nothing had changed between them. His expression was one of surprised concern. It wasn’t the expression of a man who was cheating on his wife. As if she knew what that should be!

  “Did you call Bree?” he asked.

  “No,” said Nessa.

  “I’m sure she’ll be able to sort it out,” he said confidently. “I know it’s not her make but all those colors are pretty much the same, aren’t they?”

  “She can buy Ford paint anyway,” said Nessa.

  “Sure. Of course.” He put his arms around her and hugged her. “Never mind, honey, at least you know what it’s like now.”

  She wanted to lean back into his embrace but she couldn’t. She wriggled out of his hold. “What would you like for dinner?”

  “You haven’t started it yet?” He looked downcast. “I’m starving!”

  “Are you?”

  “Ravenous,” he assured her. “I didn’t have time for lunch today. Too busy.”

  Doing what, she wondered. Meeting women and sticking your tongue down their throats?

  “What would you like?” she asked.

  “What about you?”

  She shrugged. “Pasta?”

  He made a face. “It’s not exactly what I was dreaming of after the day I’ve had,” he said. “Any chance of steak?”

  “It’s too warm for steak,” she said. “And it’s not quick.”

  “We could barbecue it and eat outside,” said Adam.

  “Don’t be stupid.” She opened the kitchen drawer and looked aimlessly inside. “It takes ages to heat up the barbecue.”

  “No it doesn’t,” said Adam. “It’s gas.”

  “Even still.”

  “Oh, what’s the matter with you?” he asked in exasperation. “I thought you liked eating outdoors. I was trying to be helpful.”

  This was her opportunity. To tell him what she knew. That he’d been seen with another woman. But the words froze on her lips and she wasn’t able to speak them.

  “Headache,” she said.

  “Probably the effect of the car scrape,” said Adam cheerfully. “It gets us all different ways. I don’t mind what I eat. Pasta’s fine if that’s all you feel up to.”

  If you really want steak you could make it yourself, she thought. Only you don’t, do you? Not ever. You come home and you expect me to have things ready for you like some kind of fifties housewife. And I’ve let you expect it. Because I thought that way you’d always love me.

  Adam opened the fridge and took out a tin of beer.

  “I’ll sit in the garden for a while,” he told Nessa. “Do a bit of unwinding. The traffic was brutal on the way home. I was stuck at the village for ages.”

  “OK,” she said.

  What kind of person am I, she asked herself as she watched him relax into the comfortable lounger, what kind of person am I that lets him carry on as though nothing has happened? And what kind of idiot does he think I am?

  Only he doesn’t know that I know something. He thinks everything is exactly as it was this morning. Perfectly in its place. She opened the cupboard and took down the packet of pasta shapes. Her eyes were filling with tears again and she blinked them away as she shook the pasta into a saucepan.

  If I hadn’t heard the girls in the sauna I’d have said yes to the steaks, she realized. I’d have agreed straightaway and allowed him to fire up the barbie and I’d have made some coleslaw—I would have entered into the spirit of it and enjoyed it and done what he wanted because when he’s happy, I’m happy. It’s another Cancerian trait, of course, wanting people to be happy. I always thought that it meant I was a warm, caring person. But is it simply pathetic instead? It must be. Portia thinks I’m pathetic and she hardly knows me. And surely it’s pathetic not to say anything to him. Because I’m afraid. Afraid to know. I’d prefer to pretend that I didn’t know.

  Which was what Portia had said. Nessa remembered the younger girl’s words, that she probably knew about Adam and the other woman only she put up with it for the lifestyle and for her daughter. If it’s true, she asked herself suddenly, could I pretend that I didn’t know? After all, not knowing hasn’t done me any harm so far. It hasn’t affected my marriage—how he’s treated me or how he’s treated Jill. Anyway, maybe it’s just a kind of seven-year-itch thing. Something brief and torrid that he’ll get over, which will leave us stronger afterward. She wiped some mushrooms with a damp cloth. But will I be stronger, she wondered. Will I get over it? If it
ends and he’s still with me and nothing has changed, will I be able to forget it? To go on living as though nothing has happened? As though I never knew?

  Her headache was getting worse. She looked out of the kitchen window. Adam was talking on his mobile. She felt her mouth go dry.

  Was he talking to her? The other woman? Was he saying that he was at home and his stupid, compliant, silly, useless wife was making him something to eat? Was that the kind of thing they talked about? Did they discuss her? Did she ask him about her? Did they laugh about her and her ignorance of their affair and did they hold each other tightly and wrap themselves into their own world, excluding her?

  Or did the other woman even know he was married? Was she as stupid in her way as she herself was? Did the other woman believe him when he told her that he loved her and that he wanted to be with her? Did she dream of the day when he’d ask her to marry him, unaware of the existence of his wife and daughter and the detached corner house in Malahide who could screw it all up for her?

  Did she love him?

  Did he love her?

  Was it just sex?

  Nessa heard him laugh suddenly and she wanted to be sick. He laughed like that with her sometimes. When they were sharing a private joke, a piece of silliness that only the two of them understood. He must be talking to her. He must. Then Jill ran into the back garden and threw herself at him. He hugged his daughter, said something to the person on the phone, then put it to one side and got up out of the lounger. He lifted Jill into the air and made a face at her, indicating that she was too big and heavy for this sort of lark. Then he sat down on the grass beside her and listened as she told him about her day at summer camp and, undoubtedly, about how the car had got scraped. She heard him laugh, then hug Jill again.

  He couldn’t be seeing someone else, thought Nessa. He just couldn’t. He wouldn’t jeopardize everything that he had for someone else. Why would he bother? What would be the point?

  “Do you want to join us?” asked Finn over the phone to Cate. “We’re in La Finezza.”

  She shook her head even though he couldn’t see her. But she wasn’t quite able to speak. She hadn’t done anything except shake since she’d seen the blue line on the pregnancy test.

  “Cate? Are you there? Do you want to join us? It’ll be fun.”

  He’d phoned to say that the producer had invited him and one of the researchers to dinner and they’d love it if Cate could come too. But she couldn’t. Obviously. She wasn’t fit to go to dinner with anyone.

  “I’d love to.” She was surprised at how she managed to get the words out. “But I’m really whacked tonight, Finn. I’ve been doing loads of paperwork and I’ve just run a hot bath.”

  “Are you sure?” Finn sounded disappointed. “They really want to meet you.”

  “And I’d like to meet them too,” lied Cate. “But not tonight, Finn.”

  “Have it your way.”

  “Honestly, I would like to,” she repeated. “But—”

  “It’s OK,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ll see you later,” she told him. “Have a good time.”

  “Sure.”

  Fuck, she said as she put down the phone. Fuck bloody fuck. Now he was annoyed at her and the last thing she wanted or needed was for him to be annoyed at her. They’d often argued before about how he would suddenly go out to dinner with one of his media buddies and forget all about her. And now, the first night he’d thought of asking her, she’d refused. He’d think it was some kind of revenge on her part. Getting him to ask her and saying no. He’d think she was being petty.

  She sighed and sat down on the leather couch again. She drew her knees up underneath her chin and wondered how she could still do that when she was pregnant. And then she thought that maybe it would harm the baby and she stretched her legs along the seat.

  The baby. It was such a small word for something so monumental. Of course, it was hardly a baby yet, was it? Only the size of her fingernail or her finger or something, she supposed. Which meant that it wouldn’t do it any harm if she did whatever she liked with her legs while she was able to. She drew her knees back under her chin and thought about getting fat. She didn’t want to get fat. She thought pregnant women looked gross—there was no way that it was attractive even though loads of magazines tried to pretend that you could look gorgeous carrying a huge lump in front of you. They fobbed gullible women off with stories about their hair being shinier or their nails being stronger or some kind of crap like that, as though it could compensate for not being able to see your own feet! And, worst of all, was the whole birth thing. Nessa had told her a little bit about it after Jill was born and Cate had stopped her because she’d thought that she was going to be sick. She couldn’t, she absolutely just could not go through what Nessa had gone through. She didn’t want people poking and prodding at her body. She didn’t want to have blood tests at regular intervals. Blood tests made her faint. And the idea of a baby forcing its way out of her made her shake with terror.

  I do not want to be pregnant, she said out loud, her voice trembling. I do not want to have a baby. I do not want to have this baby.

  She got up and stood by the huge window. The sea was calm today and the water still sparkled with the light of the evening sun. There were hundreds of people walking along the seafront—in couples and families and groups. There were joggers, cyclists and skaters too, all taking advantage of the warm summer. And there were women and men walking side by side as they pushed buggies containing loved and wanted babies.

  Cate put her hand on her stomach again. I wouldn’t be able to do that with this baby, she thought. Because I’d resent every damn minute of pushing it along the seafront when I could be doing something else. They told you that you changed, that you’d do anything for your child. But she didn’t want to change. She didn’t want to do anything for somebody that she’d never asked to have.

  If I had an abortion, she allowed the thought to form in her head, nobody would ever know. And then I wouldn’t have to go through with all of the things that I never wanted to go through with. I wouldn’t have to tell Finn or Nessa or Bree or Mum. She shivered. Her mother would disown her if she thought Cate was even thinking about an abortion. Nessa or Bree probably wouldn’t think too much of her either. But it was easy for other people, she thought hotly, easy for them to say that you should make the best of it and get on with things. She could see how they’d think it would be right for her to have this baby when she was getting married to the soon-to-be most popular man on TV. But they’d be wrong. She knew Finn. She knew herself. She knew what they both wanted. And she knew that a baby wasn’t on the cards. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  The more the evening went on the harder it was for Nessa to say anything at all to Adam. As they sat in front of the TV and watched a succession of half-hour sitcoms, she formed sentences in her head but wasn’t able to say any of them out loud. Adam was slouched on the sofa, his legs stretched out in front of him, another beer on the small coffee table beside him. It was the way things always were on Friday nights and she simply wasn’t able to ruin it all by bringing up a subject that she didn’t even know how to deal with. So she allowed the time to slip by and suddenly they were in bed together and he was reaching for her as he always did on Fridays. He drew her close to him and slid his hand along the inside of her thighs and she was sure, at that point, that he must know there was something wrong with her. But he didn’t seem to notice and she felt the pressure of his hand increase. She couldn’t quite believe that she was making love to him as though nothing had changed. And she couldn’t quite believe that she was holding him tightly and telling him she loved him when, right then, she thought that she probably hated him.

  Afterward she lay beside him and listened to his steady breathing as he slept. She wanted to fall asleep herself but, every time she was on the brink, every time she felt herself drifting into semi-consciousness, she would suddenly feel herself begin to fall and would jer
k awake, her heart thumping, her nerves jangling.

  She wondered if she’d ever be able to sleep properly again.

  Cate couldn’t sleep either. Finn had arrived home from La Finezza just after midnight in good humor and slightly drunk.

  “You should have come,” he told her. “It was fun.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had things to do and I knew that I wouldn’t be good company tonight. I didn’t want to spoil things for you.”

  “I love you.” He kissed her haphazardly.

  “I love you too.” She watched him go to the bathroom, heard him clean his teeth and then stumble toward the bedroom. She waited until she could hear his snores before going to bed herself.

  “I’m pregnant,” she whispered in the darkness as she lay beside him. “But I don’t really think we want this baby, Finn. Do we? If you say that we do then I won’t think about the abortion anymore. But if you don’t say anything, can I assume that you’re OK with it?”

  She knew he wouldn’t answer. He was deep in slumber, untroubled by the fears and worries that assailed her. But she knew what he’d say to her. That she was right about the baby. That it wasn’t a wanted baby. That she should do something about it. And he’d hold her in his arms and kiss her on the forehead as he always did when they’d come to a disagreeable decision. But he knew that she’d do what was right. For her. For him. For both of them.

  11

  Venus in Sagittarius

  Emotional freedom is the key.

  While Nessa and Cate were both lying awake in bed, Bree Driscoll was powering along the Morehampton Road. She could feel the pressure of Michael’s arms as he clung on to her while she slipped along the inside lane and past the line of traffic that even at this hour clogged Donnybrook village.