The Marriage War

Zoe yawned, gave her sister a glance across the table, then asked, ‘What have you decided to do?’

‘Do?’ Sancha pretended not to understand, but Zoe wasn’t letting her off the hook.

‘About Mark and this woman,’ she said bluntly.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.’

‘Show him the letter,’ advised Zoe. ‘Don’t be an ostrich. You have to talk to him, Sancha.’

‘I know. I will.’ Sancha did not tell her that she had seen Mark, or mention the blonde girl. She knew she wouldn’t be able to talk about it without breaking down, and if she did tell Zoe her sister would urge her to leave Mark or have a confrontation with him. Sancha needed more time to think.

Zoe finished her tea and looked at her watch. ‘Do you feel up to collecting the boys, after all? Because I really need to go home and have a soak in the bathtub.’ She gave her sister a comical look, rolling her eyes. ‘I need rest and silence.’

‘I know just how you feel. Flora is quite an experience—I shouldn’t have left you with her,’ Sancha said, smiling. ‘Of course I’ll get the boys—no problem.’

Zoe got up, stretching. ‘I am completely whacked! You know, anyone who can cope with that little monster day after day has to be a superwoman. You’re my hero.’

She kissed her on the top of her head and left, and Sancha sat in the kitchen with another cup of tea, listening to the silence in the house and grateful for it, hoping Flora would not wake up just yet. They had an hour before they had to collect the boys.

She had a bad feeling that the next few months were going to be the worst in her life. Zoe had been joking when she’d called her a superwoman—she only wished she was! But she wasn’t. She was just a very ordinary woman in a very painful situation, and she did not really know what she was going to do. She only knew she loved her husband deeply, and couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.

But she couldn’t bear, either, the idea of him with another woman. That was eating at her, driving her crazy.

What was she going to do?

That evening she put the boys and Flora to bed at their usual time, after feeding them one of their favourite suppers—a horrifying mix of scrambled egg and baked beans on toast which Charlie had invented one evening and which they had kept demanding ever since. She gave them some fruit, after that, and plain vanilla ice-cream.

Sancha had not eaten with them. She could never really enjoy a meal eaten with her children. Her digestion couldn’t cope with the constant getting up and down, the nervous tension of watching Flora carefully drop beans on the floor, or the two boys kicking each other under the table.

She often did eat with them, of course, but it was never a pleasure. Tonight she had decided to wait until they were in bed and then heat herself some soup. She wasn’t hungry.

By the time she had finished her soup and a slice of toast there was silence upstairs. The children were all fast asleep. Sancha curled up in front of the electric log fire and ate an apple, staring into the flickering flame effect of the fire and brooding on Mark and his woman.

She wished she knew if he was with the blonde tonight, or if he was genuinely having dinner with his boss. Her eye fell on the telephone and she jumped up, picked up the telephone book which lay beside it, and began flicking through the pages. She found Jacqui Farrar’s name quite quickly, stared at the number, hesitated, then on an impulse dialled it.

The phone rang and rang; she was about to hang up when the ringing stopped and a low, husky voice slurred, ‘Yes?’

Sancha couldn’t think what to say.

‘Hello? This is Jacqui Farrar,’ the voice at the other end said.

Sancha was still silent, wanting to hang up but transfixed, listening to the voice of this woman who might be her husband’s mistress.

‘Hello? Hello?’ the other woman said, and then, in the background a man’s voice spoke.

‘Is there anyone on the line? Can you hear breathing? Here, give me the phone. Those pests make me sick. I’ll get rid of him for you.’

It was Mark’s voice. Sancha’s heart hurt as if a giant hand were squeezing all the life-blood out of it.

A second later he was snarling in her ear. ‘Look, you creep, get off this line and don’t—’

Sancha put the phone down and stood there, eyes closed, trembling. It was all true. He was there, now, with Jacqui Farrar. Had they already made love, or were they going to?

No, she couldn’t bear to think about it.

She turned off the electric fire and the lights, closed all the doors, going through her nightly routine with the dull plodding of a robot, moving heavily, not seeing anything around her because her mind was so possessed with unbearable images. She wished she could shut them all off, like the television; she wished she could stop the pictures coming, but she was helpless in the grip of jealousy and pain.

She would never sleep tonight, but tomorrow she would have to go through the usual round of duties-taking care of the children, doing the housework, the shopping, the cooking. Well, that would be easier than sitting around with nothing to do but brood. She would try to keep busy, try not to have time to think.

She was still awake when Mark got home. She heard the car purr slowly up the drive into the garage, then a few minutes later the front door opened and closed quietly. Sancha sat up on one elbow and looked at the green glow of the alarm clock—it was nearly one in the morning. He had been with that woman all this time.

She lay down again, staring up at the ceiling, listening to Mark moving about downstairs. The fridge door opened and shut; he was probably getting himself a glass of iced water to drink if he woke up in the night.

He began coming upstairs. She would know his footsteps if she were dead, and knew which stair he stood on by the muted creaking. He was trying not to wake her. He didn’t want her to know he was coming home at that hour. He didn’t want to answer any questions about where he had been, what he had been doing until this time of night.

He was trying to get away with it, betraying her and their marriage but unwilling to pay the price, face the consequences.

Well, he was going to have to! She was going to take Zoe’s advice and confront him, tell him she knew and he could stop lying. Either he stopped seeing his girlfriend or their marriage was over.

Holding her breath, she waited for him to open their bedroom door and come into the room, but he didn’t. He walked on past and went into the little spare bedroom at the end of the corridor.

It was like a blow in the face. He wasn’t even going to share her room tonight—maybe not any other night!

Of course, he had slept in the spare room before—when she’d first come home from hospital with Flora he had slept elsewhere because of the constant interruption during the night, when the new baby woke up yelling for food or attention. But that had only been for the first couple of weeks. When the new twin beds had been delivered Mark had rejoined her in this room.

Rage suddenly exploded in Sancha’s head. She jumped out of bed and ran down the corridor, bursting into the spare room just as Mark was getting into bed.

He was naked. The angry, accusing words froze on Sancha’s lips. She hadn’t seen him naked for months. When you had children you didn’t wander about without any clothes on, and they hadn’t been making love. Now her heart began to race, and her ears were deafened with the sound of her own blood rushing round her body.

She couldn’t take her eyes off that powerful, lean body; he was intensely masculine, with a muscled width of shoulder and deep chest, dark, rough hair curling down towards the strong thighs and long legs.

Her mouth went dry. She had not felt this intense desire for so long she almost didn’t know what was happening to her. Heat began to burn deep inside her; she could scarcely breathe.

‘Did I wake you up? Sorry, I tried to be very quiet,’ Mark said curtly, looking away with that frown of irritation, and slid between the sheets, pulling them up to his neck as if to hide his nakedness from her, as if he disliked having her look at him.

She swallowed, fighting a longing to go over and touch him, run her hand down over that strong male body; she would have given anything to get into bed with him and caress him but she didn’t dare risk a rejection. ‘Why are you sleeping in here?’

‘So I shouldn’t wake you, obviously,’ he said, sardonic and offhand. He wasn’t even looking at her now. He had his eyes fixed on a space beside her. She realised he did not want to see her; her presence in the room was an embarrassment to him. There was a trace of dark red along his cheekbones and his jawline was tightly clenched.

‘I am awake now,’ she said fiercely, the pain of his indifference stabbing at her. ‘Why were you so late? Where were you tonight, Mark?’

He snapped, ‘I told you. Having dinner with my boss.’ Then he carefully yawned, not a very convincing performance. His face and body were too tense to be relaxed enough for sleep. ‘Look, I’m tired—we’ll talk in the morning. I might as well sleep here tonight, now I’m in bed.’ He leaned over and switched off his bedside lamp. ‘Goodnight, Sancha.’

Angry words seethed inside Sancha’s head, almost came out of her in a hot gush, but the habit of years took over. Since the birth of her first child she had learned to take second place, to accept the way things were, not to fight the inevitable. Mothers had to; the self had to step back for a while, let the child take precedence over any personal needs or desires. She wanted to scream at Mark, but she forced her rage down, drew breath, very quietly closed the door—although she wanted to slam it, she mustn’t wake the children—and walked back along the landing somehow. She wasn’t sure how she kept one foot moving in front of the other.

In the bedroom she sank down on her bed, shaking so much she felt as if she were falling to bits. The scream was trapped in her throat; she felt it trying to come out, put her balled fist into her mouth to silence it and bit down on her knuckles. Bit until she felt the saltness of her own blood seep into her mouth.

How dared he? How dared he talk to her in that brusque voice, look at her with such cold, remote eyes? When he was lying to her, betraying her with another woman? Well, he needn’t think he was getting away with it. She knew what he was up to—it was some sort of male power game. Typical of them, utterly typical—shifting the blame, trying to make it look as if it was she who was in the wrong, she who was behaving badly, not him, never him.

Their sons did it all the time—played the same game, put up the same instinctive defence. ‘Me? Mum, you don’t think I’d do that. I didn’t—not me—it wasn’t me. It must have been Flora who spilt the milk, tore the comic, broke the cup, ate the chocolate...’ Or any of the hundred tiny crimes committed in this house every day while Sancha was cast in the role of detective, judge and jury all in one, trying hopelessly to pin the blame on one of her children while suspecting all of them. The boys always tried to accuse Flora, but if she was asleep in her cot and couldn’t be proved guilty they turned on each other, both equally full of righteous indignation and wide-eyed innocence.

But they were children. Mark was a grown man. He needn’t think he was getting away with anything. She would talk to him tomorrow morning, before the children woke up.

She set her alarm for half an hour before she needed to get up, but when she went along to wake Mark the spare room was empty. He must already be up. Sancha ran downstairs, but he wasn’t there, either. He had left the house while she was asleep.

There was a note on the kitchen table. She snatched it up and read it hurriedly. ‘Had to get to work early. Mark.’

She screwed the paper up and threw it across the room, sobbing with pain and anger.

He was lying; she knew it. He had left to avoid facing her. He had sensed she was going to ask awkward questions and didn’t want to answer them.

But he was going to. Sooner or later he was going to have to talk to her.

Later in the morning she and Flora set off to the small neighbourhood shopping centre and were heavily laden by the time they ran into Martha Adams, the only neighbour who was really friendly with Sancha.

She stared, grinned. ‘You’ve had your hair done! Marvellous! You look years younger—suits you shorter.’

‘Thanks. I feel lighter, too.’

Martha contemplated Sancha’s three shopping bags. ‘Been on a buying spree?’

‘It’s just food,’ Sancha groaned. ‘The boys eat an incredible amount every day. Between them and Flora we went through half a box of cornflakes this morning alone. I can only just keep up with them.’

‘Come and have a coffee,’ invited Martha, and they walked across the street to the Victorian Coffee House, which had been built a year earlier to look around a hundred years old.

The waitresses were all young and pretty, and wore Victorian black and red print dresses with starched caps and aprons. The menu was couched in Victorian language, too. Sancha and Martha didn’t need to read it; they had been there before and knew the menu by heart.

Martha ordered what they always had. ‘Two coffees, two hot buttered muffins and hot chocolate with a marshmallow on top for the little girl.’

‘You got it,’ said the waitress, and vanished with a swish of long skirts.

Flora had spotted the Victorian rocking-horse which was one of the major attractions of the place for her. For once there was no other child riding it.

‘Want a ride, want a ride,’ she began to chant, trying to climb down out of the highchair Sancha had popped her into.

Martha lifted her out and carried her over to the rocking-horse. Flora at once began to gallop, crowing with delight.

Sancha watched her with fierce love; Flora was demanding, exhausting, but above all adorable, and Sancha would die to protect her. Yet by one of fate’s strange ironies it had been Flora’s birth that had driven Sancha and Mark apart.

It wasn’t that Mark didn’t love the child or hadn’t wanted her—more that by needing her mother’s full-time attention Flora had driven a wedge between her parents, had soaked up so much of Sancha’s time and care that there had been nothing left for Mark.

While Sancha watched her child Martha had been watching Sancha, her forehead creased.

‘Is something wrong?’

The question made Sancha start. Only then did she realise she was on the point of tears again. It kept happening since she’d got the anonymous letter. Turning her head away, she brushed a hand across her eyes.

‘No, of course not,’ she lied, forcing a smile as she turned back to face Martha’s intent gaze.

Just five feet tall, and built on a diminutive scale to match, with a slender body and short legs, Martha had a mobile, heart-shaped face and bobbed black hair without a trace of grey yet—although she was forty years old. She lived alone in the house across the street from Mark and Sancha and her home was a magnet for all Sancha’s children because Martha kept a cat and two dogs—sleek red setters, with gleaming manes and liquid dark eyes.

Her eyes shrewd, she refused to accept Sancha’s lie. ‘Come on, you know you can talk to me. I won’t repeat anything you tell me,’ she murmured, with one eye on Flora. ‘Having problems? Not Flora?’

Sancha laughed. ‘Flora’s always a problem!’

‘That’s true,’ Martha said, smiling. ‘But there is something wrong, isn’t there? Is it the boys? Or Mark?’

Her quick ears caught Sancha’s faint, quickly suppressed sigh.

‘It’s Mark?’ Martha deduced immediately. ‘He isn’t ill? Or is it his job? Is he having trouble at work?’

Sancha gave her a wry look. ‘What a little Sherlock Holmes you are! It’s nothing. Forget it.’

Martha studied her face. ‘You look terrible—did you know that? As if you haven’t slept a wink all night. You seemed fine last time I saw you—when was that? Couple of days ago? Nothing was wrong then. So what’s happened since?’

Sancha glanced at Flora’s small, wildly rocking body. Flora was oblivious of everything going on around her, could not hear their lowered voices, anyway.

It was tempting to talk to Martha, who had been the first neighbour to visit them when they had moved into the newly built house across the street from her, bringing a plate of home-baked biscuits and a bunch of roses from her beautiful garden. She had been a rock during the years since—had done the shopping for Sancha whenever she couldn’t get out, babysat, been ready to listen to Sancha’s problems with the children and given advice and practical help whenever she could.

Sancha had always felt very lucky to have such a good neighbour, and she, in her turn, had tried to be very supportive to Martha during her own time of trouble, when Martha’s schoolteacher husband, Jimmy, had run off with an eighteen-year-old he had been teaching at the nearby college. Their elopement had caused a scandal and the local newspapers had been full of the story; reporters had badgered Martha, waited outside her house for her to emerge, called questions through the letterbox, and photographers had rushed to get snatched photos of her if she came out.

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