I’m relatively calm, all things considered. Those ‘things’ being that my husband is a lying, cheating bastard who has fathered a baby with his ex-girlfriend and continued their affair throughout our marriage. That my father-in-law is hiding what he knows about the house where the bodies of seven children and two decapitated adults were found. And let’s not forget my snake of a mother-in-law who has tried to buy me out of my marriage and parenthood.
It’s only 6 a.m. but for the umpteenth time this morning, I pick up the iPad to torture myself by re-reading the newspaper story describing Finn’s secret life, word by word. They’ve printed a photograph of Emma, the woman they’ve branded my ‘love rival’, next to a child with a pixelated face riding a pink bike. Three other shots include her and my husband walking hand in hand and kissing on a doorstep.
Autopilot is how I’m functioning right now. I’ve had no sleep – not even a wink – and my empty stomach keeps gurgling like a drain. But I have no appetite. Even a mouthful of toast would make me sick right now. I do, however, have an insatiable thirst. I wonder if it’s because of how much fluid I’ve lost from crying. Is that even possible? I make a mental note to google it. Then I ask myself why I care. My brain is firing in so many different
directions right now that it’s struggling to settle on any one train of thought.
I’m actually a little grateful it’s behaving this way because, when I stop to take a moment, I’m reminded of ashen-faced Finn’s appearance in the bedroom last night. He was so ghostly that I thought he was going to tell me that something terrible had happened to Debbie. And I’ll be honest, I’d have needed to have pulled off an Oscar-winning performance to show even a little bit of grief now she’s shown me her true colours.
Instead, he asked me to sit down on the bed as he explained how DS Goodwin had been in touch to warn him that a newspaper had contacted the press office. It was planning to run a story with photographs about Finn and was offering him a right to reply. It involved his ex-girlfriend.
‘What photographs?’ I asked. ‘They’re of me leaving her house.’ ‘When?’
‘In the last couple of weeks.’ ‘How often?’
‘A few times.’
‘How many is a few?’
‘Half a dozen or so. Perhaps more.’
My heart sank. I wasn’t stupid. I knew where this was going. There’s only one reason why he would be at Emma’s house so often. ‘How long has it been going on for?’
He struggled to look me in the eye. ‘It never really finished.’
I had to process his words before I replied. ‘You’ve been having an affair with her for the last six years?’ He nodded. ‘Why?’ He shrugged. ‘Not an answer, Finn.’
‘I don’t know why.’
‘I repeat, not an answer. If you loved her more than me, why not just break things off with me? Why marry me? Why not marry her?’
He shrugged again and I dabbed at my glistening eyes with my sleeve.
‘There’s more,’ he continued, and this time, he couldn’t face me. He made his way to the window and spoke to the darkness of the garden. And that’s when he explained how Emma fell pregnant a year after he and I married and how they have a daughter, Chloe, together.
I did the maths. ‘So while I was in a fertility clinic having my eggs removed, while I was jabbing daily hormone injections deep into my body, making me feel constantly sick, while my moods were up and down like a yoyo, all for us to have a family, you’d already started one with somebody else?’
‘It wasn’t planned.’
‘Then why the hell didn’t you make her get rid of it?’ I regretted how cruel the words sounded as I said them, but I didn’t apologise. As Finn moved to the armchair with his head in his hands, I was up and about, pacing the bedroom like a chained circus bear and making a mental list of objects within reaching distance that I could hurl at him. But I held back. I didn’t want Sonny to be woken by the sound of his parents’ marriage falling apart. ‘Were you ever going to tell me about Chloe?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘And your affair? Did you plan to continue that indefinitely?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know much, do you? How long did you think you could play happy families with both of us for? I assume she knows about Sonny and I?’ He nodded. ‘And she doesn’t care that she’s having an affair with a married man?’
‘It’s not the ideal situation for her, no.’
‘Oh, poor Emma,’ I replied, my words dripping with sarcasm. ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to make life easier for the poor girl, she only has to ask.’ I thought of the countless times I’d scowled at Emma and Finn’s prom night
photograph in Debbie’s dining room, and how I’d tell myself off for being so petty. His past was no more of a threat to our relationship than the boys I’d dated in my teens. How naive I was.
We went back and forth throughout the night until my iPad chimed with a Google alert message an hour ago, set up to inform me each time our names appeared in the press when it was in relation to the house. I never considered it might be used for something else. Finn guessed what I was about to do. ‘Please don’t read it,’ he begged.
‘Why, are there more surprises in here?’ ‘No, I’ve told you everything.’
‘And you expect me to believe you?’ ‘Yes . . . no . . . I don’t know.’
It was the photograph of Finn and Emma kissing that made this nightmare real. I repeated the same questions over and over again to try and catch him out. His answers always remained the same, never faltering. Eventually, I believed there was nothing else the stranger in the room hadn’t told me. Because that’s what he is to me now. A stranger. Finn is not the man I married.
I find myself hating the newspapers for making me out to be a victim again, even if I suppose that’s what I am. I had enough of it when they exposed Ellis’s affair with his Strictly partner. Now history is repeating itself. What the hell is wrong with me? I thought I had picked the opposite of Ellis with Finn. It turns out they’re exactly the same. No, my husband is worse.
‘This fucking family,’ I said. ‘You’re as bad as each other. You’re all liars. Did your mum tell you she offered me money to leave you and Sonny behind and start afresh somewhere else?’
He looked at me blankly. ‘I don’t think she would have . . .’
‘I know exactly what I heard, so don’t you dare tell me I’ve misinterpreted her,’ I bellow. ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’
Half an hour of silence followed until I could take no more. Now, I lift a waking Sonny from his cot and leave the Annexe.
‘Where are you going?’ he calls after me. When I don’t reply, he follows me to his parents’ section of the house, where Debbie and Dave are already sitting at the kitchen table. She looks as if she’s had about as much sleep as me.
‘How long have you known?’ I ask.
‘I didn’t know until last night,’ she replies.
‘Who did you tell first, me or her?’ I ask Finn. His delayed response is its own answer. ‘And that’s definitely the first you knew about it?’ I ask Debbie. She nods. I glare at her for tell-tale signs that she too is a liar, but there’s nothing. She is as shell-shocked as me. The only saving grace in this whole mess is that Debbie is probably just as hurt as I am learning that her precious son has kept something so important from her. Not to mention she has been robbed of four years of being a grandmother. And I hope that it really, really wounds her.
‘Finn and Emma together is everything you wanted, isn’t it?’ I don’t give her a chance to reply. I return to the Annexe, Finn following me, head down, like a chastised dog desperate for its owner’s forgiveness. He isn’t going to get it.
My phone beeps – it’s a text message from Lorna, checking if I’m okay. She must have heard the news. I bet I’m all over the internet again. The only good thing to come from any of the mess that started the day we bought that house is that she and I are in touch again. I tell her I am alright, and that I’ll call her later.
‘You better get ready for work,’ I say to Finn. He shakes his head. ‘I’m not going in.’
‘You can’t afford not to. And I don’t want you anywhere near me today.’
‘Mia, we need to talk.’
‘No, we don’t. You need to leave me alone.’
‘But—’
‘If you have any respect left for me at all, that’s what you’re going to do.’
He opens his mouth but thinks twice about replying. Instead, he dresses and, without showering or cleaning his teeth, he leaves the Annexe, turning to look at me one last time, scared I might not be here when he returns. And the way I feel at this moment, he might be right.
