Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [42]
I didn’t want to hear any of this.
Claire thought it would be a good idea for me to have a trial of antidepressants, so I went to my GP for a prescription. The tablets did succeed in numbing the pain and helped to put me on a more even keel, enough at least to allow me to function at work and as a mother. But whilst altering the levels of the ‘happy hormones’ in the brain is one thing, it did nothing to alleviate the central problem.
Tony needn’t have worried. I never did get around to telling my family his shameful secret. I couldn’t bear the thought of Mum and Dad knowing and judging him. And David - how bad would he have felt if he’d known what his friend had done to me? I wanted them all to still think well of my husband. But who was I protecting from their disapproving looks - Tony or myself?
For weeks Melanie had been lobbying me to go for drinks with her after work. I eventually relented just to shut her up and one Friday while Tony was away I arranged with my mum to pick up Issy a bit later than usual.
We went to a pub near work. Melanie appeared at the table with two glasses of wine, ‘So what’s going on between you and Tony?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s just that you used to talk about him all the time and now you never do - well not in a nice way, anyway.’
Melanie’s husband, Bruce, is a train driver. She is definitely the brains of the operation, but he’s a devoted husband and loving dad to their two little boys and she could certainly have done a lot worse. In the early days we used to think it was a coincidence that both our husbands were in transportation, but whilst she had continued to talk with affection about her husband, I must have unconsciously clammed up about mine.
‘Was it that obvious?’ I asked.
‘Well to me, ’cause I know you pretty well.’
‘He had an affair, Mel.’
‘The bastard!’
That one glass of wine turned into several and I rang Mum to ask if my daughter and I could sleep over that night.
Why did I tell Melanie and no-one else? I’m not sure, but I can tell you it was a blessed relief. A blessed relief to have a confidante who was prepared to listen to my mealy-mouthed justifications and say the things I wanted to hear: ‘I’m sure he still loves you. If you hang in there he will come around.’ She provided hope; Claire provided grim reality.
Over the following months I reassumed the role of wife. I let Tony back into our bedroom and started cooking meals again and appeared in public as his devoted other half and the mother of his child. There was one area, however, where things proved more resistant: sex.
Claire kept telling me to be kind to myself, to ‘love and nurture’ myself and to only agree to it when I was ready. In her view Tony was the cause of my problems so his needs were secondary. On the few occasions he had made a move I’d frozen up and been unable to proceed. My chest had felt all tight and constricted and my heart had raced and I’d ended up saying, ‘No sorry, I just can’t’ or something along that line. I was reminded of my high school days, when any girl who didn’t put out was labelled ‘frigid’ by the local boys. I was gaining a reputation for being frigid and was fearful my husband was beginning to lose patience with me.
This had been going on several months when I confessed to Melanie over a late night drink. She advised sagely, ‘Guys can go only so long without it, you know, and you’re going to have to push through - pardon the pun - otherwise he’s definitely going to go off and shag someone else.’
I don’t know that Claire would have approved of my secretary’s counselling methods but they did the trick. The next time Tony was home I let him know it would be worth trying again and loosened myself up with several glasses of wine. It was horrible. I couldn’t get that bitch out of my mind. She was there in the bed with us, a faceless creature in her immaculate uniform, complete with dark stockings and shiny court shoes. I was terrified he was imagining doing it with her, comparing me (unfavourably - there was no other