Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [67]
When the evening came and Isabel was asleep in bed I marched up to him as he was packing the dishwasher and said, ‘Tell me to my face’.
‘Tell you what?’
‘You know.’
He stood up to his full and formidable height, looked me directly in the eye and, enunciating each word clearly and deliberately, said, ‘I am not having an affair.’ He raised his eyebrows defiantly, clearly pleased to be able to put me on the back foot.
‘By the way,’ he went on, ‘I knew it was you phoning the hotel, that’s why I didn’t answer.’
‘You could have called me back later.’
‘I didn’t feel like being sworn at again.’
And that was that. I found I had no stomach for further argument. Tony disappeared to the formal dining room, where he was now restoring the fireplace, and I sat in front of the TV, not taking anything in. Was he telling the truth or not? I honestly didn’t know. I felt so worn out, so drained, that it seemed almost easier to ignore the problem rather than confront it, and really I had no evidence, just a suspicion. My marriage was clearly in trouble with or without the prospect of infidelity thrown into the mix and not for the first time I began to wonder if the inexplicable creature mixing grouting in the dining room was the real Anthony Cooper and the man who’d inhabited those early days of my marriage had all the time been an imposter.
Each night that week I tried to summon the courage to confront him again but each night, in the end, I squibbed it. He was often out that week anyway, at the gym, or playing squash, but what really made me hesitate was the bravado behind that denial. Whatever his faults, Tony had never struck me as a particularly convincing liar. I’d never completely let my guard down after his earlier Hong Kong fling, but I’d found no evidence of foul play - no suspicious transactions on his credit card or unfamiliar numbers on his phone account - and he’d always let me pay these, which suggested he had little to hide. What was the alternative, that I hire a private detective to pursue him? If things had descended to that point I might as well just cut to the chase and issue the divorce papers. That’s how I justified my behaviour to myself, anyway.
Work was another matter altogether. It had lately been my refuge from a disintegrating home life and now that had all gone sour. How in the hell was I going to manage the Alex issue? His behaviour had been so out-of-the-blue, so apparently out-of-character, that I struggled to even comprehend how it had happened.
I fronted up to the office on Tuesday and tried to bury myself in work, in an effort to block out the swirling mass of contradictory thoughts that was messing with my head. Usually I would have seen Alex several times a day, but he had clearly decided to make a point of avoiding me and remained conspicuously absent all week. All his communications with me, businesslike and to the point, were via email or those yellow internal mail envelopes. Coward, I thought. Melanie clearly detected something was wrong, as my efforts to poke fun at the stupid team building weekend were half-hearted at best. I think she suspected things had deteriorated on the home front and, bless her, tried to make me feel better by bringing me coffee and mini muffins for morning tea. She would have been completely blown away if I’d told her about Alex.
About 4pm that Friday afternoon, Alex finally fronted up to my office. If he had stood any further away from me he would have been outside the door.
‘I need to apologise for my behaviour the other night. It was inexcusable,’ he said.
‘Yes it was,’ I replied, ‘But don’t worry, I’m not going to report you