Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [111]
‘Look, it’s true it went on a bit longer than I told you but I did end it, last June. Truly. She can’t deny that. She’s just angry and bitter. It’s you I want to be with.’
‘What - you finally decided that after four years. It took you a while to make that decision. And you were lying to me all that time. You said you’d ended it.’
‘I did end it…for a while anyway…but then she pursued me, saying we were meant to be together. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ protested Wendy.
‘I don’t know how it happened. It just did. Things weren’t going so well in our marriage at the time.’
‘Oh and keeping a mistress in another country is a good way to deal with those problems. And what about all the deception that went into it?’
‘I was trying to protect you. You were so hurt when you found out the first time.’
‘That’s not what he said to me,’ interrupted Wendy, who’d almost become a bystander in the whole event. She was crying by this time. ‘He said he no longer cared for you but first you were having the baby and then after the baby was born he said he had to wait until she got bigger.’
Till that moment I thought I was unshockable. ‘Are you saying that this all started when I was pregnant?’
‘I told you I made mistakes. I’m not proud of what I did but I want us to be together. It will never happen again. She means nothing to me. Please believe me Elle - it’s you I want. You have got to forgive me.’
‘Too late, too late - I can’t. I’m going to book the first flight I can out of here. And I’m taking Isabel with me. You’ll have plenty of time to reflect on where you went wrong.’
‘We can get still through this - counselling like we said.’
‘No, not after four years of lies - and when I was pregnant too - I don’t believe that. It’s goodbye, Anthony. Don’t forget to pay the bill before you go.’ Then I got up and walked away.
I’d got about halfway home when I heard footsteps following me. They were not my husband’s. They were the ‘clip, clip’ steps of a tiny bird-like woman. She ran up to me and grabbed my arm so that I had to stop. Sobbing, she tried to thrust something into my hands.
‘He is not telling the truth. He said he would marry me. He did. Look I have my diary and my emails. I don’t understand why he is being like this to me.’
She was appealing to me like I was the independent umpire!
I looked at her again. My first impressions had been wrong. The efficient flight attendant veneer had been chipped away and what stood before me now was a vulnerable and sad little thing. The destroyer of my marriage was not a conniving sexual predator, she was just a naïve young woman who had believed in her own version of the fairytales. The diary she had recorded her sexual trysts with my husband in was a Hello Kitty one, for goodness sake. The tall blonde pilot had been her Prince Charming, as he had long ago been mine. The trouble was he had publicly betrayed her, just as he had betrayed me. Wendy and I had more than one thing in common.
On the most important point, however, we were completely different. It was clear she still adored him and would have taken him back in a heartbeat; any hopes I’d had of renewing my love were extinguished when I heard about the four long years of deception.
‘Wendy,’ I said. ‘I believe you. I don’t need to read your diary. You should reflect on the fact that what you did was very wrong, but as far as I’m concerned if you’re stupid enough to ever take him back you are welcome to him. Now, can you go away please?’
The Year of the Pig is still a few days away, but I think we already know how it’s going to turn out for Tony and me. There was another clue I should have taken heed of. The Year of the Pig is the last year in