The Forever Home by Sue Watson
Chapter Three
‘Carly! There you are,’ Lara was saying. ‘Someone told me you were at the bottom of the garden, so I walked down there – Mark had to rescue me. I didn’t realise these sandals would be so treacherous on soft ground, and I almost ended up in the sea,’ she laughed, opening her arms to hug me.
I hugged her back, grabbing a glass off a passing tray, and handing it to her as Mark trudged off.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked, as we sipped on our drinks.
‘Of course I am, why?’ she answered, a little sharply.
‘Because you just almost fell in the sea, and Mark had to rescue you,’ I said.
‘Oh… yeah, I’m fine.’ She took a huge gulp of champagne. ‘Ah, that’s better.’
I smiled at her, but she didn’t meet my eyes, and I couldn’t put my finger on it, but on that beautiful, balmy night in my gorgeous garden lit by lanterns and fairy lights, something wasn’t right. ‘Long day?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. Yeah,’ she said, too brightly, and grabbed a second drink from a passing tray. ‘This is wonderful, Carly,’ she noted, looking around, raising one of her glasses to a local couple we both knew. ‘Hope they don’t come over,’ she muttered under her breath, ‘so boring.’ Lara liked to choose her friends; she refused to be bothered by people who bored her.
‘You’re sure you’re okay?’ I asked again, wanting to get to the root of something I couldn’t quite identify. I’d hoped Lara arriving would be my salvation, but there was suddenly a chill in the air.
‘Yeah, bad day. I just need to get pissed.’ She took another gulp and began to look around as if for the next drink when she seemed to remember why we were there. ‘You having a good evening?’ she asked, but I could tell she wasn’t really interested.
I smiled. ‘Yeah, thanks. I’m playing my usual role as Mark Anderson’s accessory.’
‘Yes, and a bloody gorgeous, priceless one,’ she said loudly, and made a cheers gesture to a group of guests to her left, threw back her head, and downed the rest of her champagne from both glasses.
Lara was always confident, but tonight she seemed almost brash.
‘Stop looking at me, Carly, I’m fine,’ she almost snapped.
‘Okay, okay. If you feel like talking, I’m here. You know that.’
‘Yeah,’ she softened, ‘and it’s so typical of you to offer to listen to me at your party. You’re a kind and lovely friend.’ Her eyes filled with tears, and she must have seen the concern on my face because she edged away slightly, shaking her head. ‘No, I’m fine. Like I said, it’s just been a shit day.’ She gave me a half-smile, obviously not wanting to bother me with her problems tonight.
But it didn’t matter that this was my party, she was my friend and I cared about her. I was about to gently pursue the matter when the catering manager appeared at my elbow.
‘Mrs Anderson… the rest of the buffet… when would you like it?’
‘Oh. Now… now… please,’ I said absently. I’d been planning the menu with the caterers for weeks, and since Lara’s arrival I’d almost forgotten about it. I was suddenly consumed with the need to poke around in my own head and locate exactly what was bothering me about the way she was behaving. I watched as her gold hoop earrings caught the light, bright orange lips pursing as she gazed around at the other guests. I took a sly glance to her right where Mark stood, talking to the Yummies. Something was nudging its way to the front of my brain, but I still couldn’t touch it.
Even in the candlelit darkness, I could see Mark wasn’t on form; he seemed distracted, going through the motions. He kept putting his hand to his mouth in a comforting gesture, something I knew Mark always did when he was worried.
And then I thought about the fact that Lara had emerged from the bottom of the garden with Mark. No one else had appeared from the shrubbery, so was it them arguing? But what would Mark and Lara possibly have to argue about? They barely spoke at the best of times. What the hell? Oh God, he’d bought me something horrific for our anniversary and he’d told her and she was telling him he was ‘a bloody idiot’ for buying it. Then again, if he had bought me an anniversary gift, it would be the first time in years, but it was our silver wedding? I was still contemplating this when my cousin Lorraine and her husband wandered over to say hello, and Lara touched my arm and moved away. With both my parents gone, Lorraine was the only family I had, and I was pleased to see her and catch up.
‘You had such a lovely wedding breakfast,’ she said. ‘Ham salad, what could be nicer for a summer wedding?’
‘Thanks Lorraine,’ I said, genuinely grateful for her comment, and made a mental note to have her over more often. We continued to chat a little, then they wandered off to grab a drink, and after some small talk with people I hardly knew, I looked around to see where Lara was, and if she was okay. I couldn’t see her, and when another group of Mark’s friends called me over, I joined them to talk polite, smiley rubbish for too long, all the time trying to work out what was happening here.
Earlier, in the garden, I’d heard a heated exchange that had a feeling of intimacy, not the words themselves because I could barely hear them – but the tone. Yes, it was the tone of their voices that bothered me. But if it had been Mark and Lara, why didn’t she tell me? Why hadn’t Mark come up to me and complained about her interfering, or being ‘too much’, as he often did? I felt a flicker of uneasiness as the dead body of a pig was wheeled out and someone sliced into it.
‘Help yourselves,’ I urged our guests, reminding myself I was the hostess and must stop overthinking something that might turn out to be nothing. But where was Lara? And for that matter… where was my husband? Gemma and the other women he’d been talking to were now queuing for the buffet, and he was nowhere to be seen. I was uneasy, and aside from my more personal fears, the caterers would be bringing out the silver wedding cake soon. I’d greeted most of the guests on my own, but I was damned if I was cutting the bloody cake on my own too; how would that look? So, as everyone descended on the food, I went back inside the house to see if I could find him – and her.
First, I went to the downstairs bathroom and knocked on the door, but a male voice responded, and it wasn’t Mark. Then I headed for the kitchen, saw Phoebe, and contemplated asking her to cut the cake with me, but then thought that might seem even more odd than cutting it on my own. It would give out the wrong message, and in our world, before we knew it, someone would blab and we’d be in the news with rumours of marriage problems.
Walking from the kitchen diner through to the hall, I suddenly heard voices in Mark’s office. What the hell was he doing in there while we were celebrating our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary? Whatever was happening, I had to know, so I took a deep breath, gathered myself together and walked in.
What greeted me in the room was odd. Lara was sitting on an easy chair cradling a large glass of whisky, and Mark was leaning on his desk holding an equally large glass. This didn’t make any sense, the two of them only tolerated each other for me, and yet here they were drinking, alone. I looked from one to the other, confused.
‘You guys opened a private drinking club?’ I asked, half-smiling, but not sure quite what I’d walked into. I continued to walk across the room and stood near the desk, just a few inches from Mark. But neither of them seemed to acknowledge my presence; their lack of response was bewildering. Like I was invisible, a ghost.
I glanced over at Lara, the half-smile fading on my lips when I saw she’d been crying. Now my heart started thumping, strong and steady, gaining momentum in anticipation of what was about to happen here.
‘What’s the matter? What is it?’ I urged, panic rising.
Mark stirred, moving his legs but staying on the edge of his desk like he couldn’t leave.
‘Mark?’ I said, moving closer, looking into his face for a clue.
But he didn’t respond.
I turned to my friend. ‘Lara?’ My voice was shaky, unsure. ‘It was you two arguing at the bottom of the garden, wasn’t it?’
Lara looked away, so I turned to my husband, clutching his glass of whisky like it was all he had to hold on to.
‘Mark, what the hell’s going on?’
He took a deep breath, and lifted himself off the desk to stand up, and as he did, I reached out with one hand and rested it there to steady myself. The wood grain under my palm felt comfortingly real when nothing was as it seemed.
‘Lara and I have been… talking,’ he started.
‘Just tell her, Mark, stop being a bloody coward,’ Lara spat, without even looking at him.
I turned to Mark, my mouth dry.
‘Oh Carly,’ he said, taking another deep breath. ‘I don’t know where to start…’
‘Well, I’m not doing your dirty work for you,’ Lara hissed, ‘it’s time you stopped sneaking around and faced up to your mistakes.’
He didn’t even acknowledge her; he was looking at me, a pained expression on his face.
‘Is it money? You’ve been spending a lot lately, I haven’t said anything because I didn’t want to cause a row, but…’ The day before he’d taken five thousand pounds from our joint account, I hadn’t said anything at the time because I thought it might be for a silver wedding gift for me, maybe a deposit on that second honeymoon in the Maldives we’d often talked of. ‘If you’ve spent it in the bookies, or the pub or on something else, then I’m pissed off,’ I said, suddenly realising why he’d started putting love notes in the coffee jar. It was to appease me for whatever he’d been up to this time. ‘But don’t let it ruin the party Mark, we have safety money in another bank account…’ I didn’t want to say too much; it was humiliating for me to talk to him like his banker in front of Lara. ‘Is it that the US deal hasn’t come off and you feel you can’t tell me?’ It was the only thing I could think of, the only thing that would really upset him – his American dream collapsing. And when something like that happened to Mark, a visit to the pub, or to the bookies to put whatever money he had on a sure-fire winner at the races usually followed. ‘Give me something, Mark,’ I pleaded.
He was shaking his head. ‘No, the deal’s on, money isn’t the issue.’
‘TELL her,’ Lara yelled at him, making us both start.
‘Oh God! You’re having an affair… you and… Lara?’ I could barely say it. I’d left the obvious until now, tried everything else because I refused to believe that my husband and my best friend would do that to me. I was looking from one to the other, not knowing who had hurt me the most.
The colour had drained from Mark’s face, his flesh now yellowy rather than the usual tan.
‘Carly, I… I feel dreadful. I never planned for it to be like this—’
I put my palms on my ears. ‘I can’t hear this. Not tonight – not on our wedding anniversary,’ I heard myself say. Like it would have been fine to tell me any other night.
‘I love you, in my own way, you know that… always will. But she said if I didn’t tell you, she would,’ he said, glancing over at Lara, who looked so angry, so bitter, and at the same time like she was holding back tears.
‘Christ, there are 120 people in the garden waiting for us to cut bloody cake, Mark!’ I replied, irrationally, like the cake cutting was the issue here. ‘What do I do… go out there and tell them my husband’s having an affair with my best friend? Perhaps you two would like to cut the sodding cake?’
‘No, Carly!’ Lara’s voice was raised.
‘Darling, we can’t let this get out, if it does everything’s ruined,’ Mark was saying, as he walked over to me still leaning on the desk, shaking my head vigorously, like it would somehow knock out all the thoughts I was having.
‘Is that all you can think about?’ I asked, incredulously.
‘The tabloids would crucify me, we’d lose everything… the American offer would be off the table.’ He was pleading with me, pleading for his life, his future – their future.
‘You can’t keep this one quiet, you snake,’ Lara snapped. She looked like she wanted to punch him. Almost as much as I did. She stood up from the chair, finally able to face me. ‘It isn’t me,’ she was saying gently, trying to control the wobble in her voice. As she walked, her arms opened out to me as though I were a wild animal needing to be calmed.
I edged back, opening the door, about to run, when Mark spoke.
‘It’s Erin,’ he blurted, ‘I’ve been seeing Erin.’
I looked from one to the other. ‘Is this a joke? ‘Erin, who’s twenty-four, Phoebe’s friend? Your daughter Erin?’ I said to Lara, desperately hoping there was another Erin.
Lara nodded through tears. ‘Carly, I’m so sorry. I only found out myself this afternoon. She called me in a state, I went to see her, and… I had no idea,’ she said. ‘But I feel as bad as if it were me – and I wanted you to know, you should know. You have to—’
‘We can get through this, Carly,’ Mark moved in. ‘I love you and the kids and—’
‘I knew you were a coward, but this is weak even for you,’ Lara hissed. ‘Tell her!’
‘Okay, calm down, Lara, for God’s sake. Can’t you see how upset she is?’
He and Lara were staring at each other, neither giving way.
Mark took a step towards me, and I lifted up both hands.
‘No, you couldn’t, I don’t believe it – it’s obscene, she’s like a daughter to us.’
At this, Lara burst into fresh tears and stormed from the room, while Mark just kept repeating under his breath like a mantra, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’
I stared ahead, numb.
‘Go, Mark.’
‘I can’t just—’
‘GO,’ I yelled, still unable to sully my eyes by looking at him. How could he do this?
‘But… the party?’ he said, looking at the closed door of the office that Lara had slammed in her escape. ‘What will people think?’
‘That phrase will be written on your grave, Mark,’ I said, standing in the middle of the room, waiting for him to leave, but I could see he didn’t want to. I knew then, as he stood there weak and pitiful, that however deep I dug, I couldn’t find any more love for this man. Like a thief, he’d been stealing it from me for years, piece by piece, crumb by crumb, and now all that was left was a residue of hurt, a tidal wave of anger, and all the wasted years. I was finally done with him.
‘I don’t want to leave you,’ he tried.
‘You have to, I don’t want you here. It’s over, Mark, you’ve gone too far.’
‘Don’t say that, let’s talk.’
‘We’ve done all our talking. I want you out of my house and out of my life.’ I turned to him.
‘But the kids… what will you tell them?’ he asked.
‘The truth? But not tonight. I’ll tell them tomorrow, or perhaps you should?’
He visibly shrank. ‘I don’t know if I can.’
‘Coward,’ I spat, as I moved towards the door.
‘But what do I say?’ He was pleading for me to deal with this, like I’d dealt with everything difficult in our lives.
‘Tell them you’re leaving their mother for Erin, the kid they grew up with, who they always thought of like a sister. Tell them you’d now like them to think of her as their father’s girlfriend.’ With that, I walked out of the room, grabbed a glass of fizz off a passing tray and, for the next few hours, laughed and danced and drank so much until I almost forgot. Almost.