Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

I’d confided in the woman I’d known as Bella Clooney, in as much as I’d ever confided in anyone other than, ironically, Robert. She had been the one I had turned to on the night my son died. She had helped me to take a bath. She had seen me naked. The very thought of it turned the blood in my veins to ice.

Robert arrived less than an hour later. I remained sitting at the kitchen table as I heard a vehicle pull up then drive away again. Another taxi, I supposed. It seemed to take him an inordinately long time to reach the front door, perhaps he was trying to think of what he was going to say. I’d put so much of the story together now that in some ways it didn’t matter a great deal any more. But that wouldn’t be the way he would regard it, and numb though I was, I did have a need to hear his version of events.

Somewhat to my surprise — technically this was still his home too — he knocked on the front door.

‘It’s not locked,’ I called out.

I heard the door open and shut, listened as he made his way along the hallway, and watched wordlessly as he stepped into the kitchen. His face was ashen. Again, his long black hair was unkempt and he needed a shave. There was despair in his eyes. He really didn’t look like my Robert at all. But then, he wasn’t my Robert any more.

It struck me suddenly that not only did I no longer love him — he had destroyed that in me — but I now hated him. I actually hated him.

I gestured for him to sit down opposite me. I didn’t offer him tea or coffee. I didn’t say anything, just waited for him to speak.

‘I don’t know where to begin,’ he said. His voice was trembling. So were his hands which he laid flat on the table before him.

‘Just tell me the truth, for God’s sake,’ I said, rather more sharply than I had meant to. After all, I didn’t want to put him off his stride. I didn’t want to say or do anything to stop him telling me everything. At last.

‘I presume that Mrs Brenda Anderton was your wife,’ I said. ‘And I presume that you were married to her before you married me. No long-lost wife in Australia. Instead, a current second wife, or should I say first, just up the A30 in Exeter.’

He nodded.

‘Well, don’t you think this might be the time to tell me about it?’ I suggested.

He nodded again.

‘But where, where do I...’ He seemed unable to finish formulating the question I knew he was trying to ask.

‘Where do you start? At the beginning would be good.’

‘Yes.’ Robert just stared at me. I could see tears welling up in eyes that full of pleading.

‘Please don’t try to play the sympathy card,’ I snapped at him. ‘It’s far too late for that. Just get on with it.’

‘Yes,’ he said again.

I waited. Eventually he did get on with it. Or after a fashion.

‘What I told you when you found out I was really Rob Anderton was all true,’ he began.

I raised an eyebrow.

‘Well, mostly. From the moment I met you I just knew I had to be with you. You were all I wanted in the world. I wanted to be with you and leave everything else behind. I should have told you about Brenda, of course. I should have explained. But I just couldn’t. It seemed easier to pretend I was a free agent. To carry on as if neither Brenda, nor our daughters, existed. Then I could be with you, in your world. That was the world I wanted. Your calm, middle-class world; a beautiful home, peace, warmth. Not the crazy place I inhabited with Brenda.’

He spat the last words out, bitterness oozing from every pore of him.

‘Brenda is dead, Robert,’ I said. ‘You seem so bitter. I mean, how do you feel about that? You have a twenty-seven-year-old daughter, it seems. You’d been together that long, far longer than we had. Are you not shocked? Are you not grieving for Brenda?’

‘Of course I am, yes. But the whole thing between us had become so dreadful, you see—’

‘Other people face up to bad marriages, and to new loves, to changes in their lives,’ I interrupted. ‘Other people separate and get divorced. They don’t just carry on with two families. Two lives. How on earth did you think you could get away with it?’

He shook his head. I spoke again before giving him the chance to.

‘But you did get away with it, didn’t you, Robert? For sixteen years. And you had a second child with Brenda years after our so-called wedding, years after our son was born. You bastard. My God, you’re a piece of work. I want to know how you did it, and why. All of it.’

I knew I was talking too much. I wanted him to do the talking. But I couldn’t stop myself.

‘It was the job,’ he said obscurely. ‘Working on the rigs. I realized it might be possible to juggle two families. I became sure I could do it. I told you I worked three weeks on and two weeks off. Actually, after getting my lottery money, I arranged to work two weeks on and three weeks off. That gave me one week out of five to spend with Brenda. I told her I had to work longer than average stints away because we needed the money, for the children, you see. And she accepted that. I didn’t think I would be able to pull it off for ever. Definitely not for anything like as long as I did. In the beginning, you see, I had a plan. When Laura was older, I was going to come clean. To get divorced. To tell you both. You and Brenda. Well, that’s what I intended, anyway.’

He let the sentence tail off lamely.

‘That’s a pretty familiar story, isn’t it?’ I said sarcastically. ‘The married man who plans to leave the missus when the children get older. Oh please, Robert.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘Make me,’ I snapped.

‘You don’t realize what a lovely little girl Laura was,’ he continued, a faraway look in his eyes. ‘Janey is too. Pretty as a picture. Just such a sweet child—’

‘Spare me,’ I said.

He seemed to pull himself together with a great effort of will.

‘I couldn’t leave Brenda when Laura was a little girl because of what I knew was going to happen to our child,’ he said. ‘Laura had juvenile Huntington’s. She was diagnosed at eleven. It’s rare but certainly not unknown for it to develop that young. You can have no idea what it was like to watch that lovely normal little girl turn into...’

He paused, brought his hands up to his face and fleetingly closed his eyes as if shutting out some unwanted picture. I’d half expected some sort of sob story, and been determined to remain unmoved by anything he might tell me. After all, with his track record, how would I even know if he was telling the truth? But surely even Robert would not lie about something like this. I was shocked in spite of myself, and did not trust myself to speak. Instead I waited for him to continue.

‘I don’t know what you know about Huntington’s,’ he carried on eventually. ‘It’s degenerative and incurable. It destroys muscle coordination and ultimately leads to the most serious mental disorder. Worst of all, perhaps, the younger someone gets it, the faster it progresses. It used to be called Huntington’s chorea, because... well, Laura very quickly began to lose control of her limbs. After a bit she couldn’t even feed herself properly. She started to slur her words. And then there was the mental deterioration. My sweet little girl became aggressive and disorientated. She couldn’t remember things. I will never forget the first time I went home and she didn’t know who I was...’

He paused and glanced at me. I guessed that even in the middle of this surely genuinely harrowing part of his story he was wondering if I had picked up on his use of the word ‘home’. I had. But I made no comment.

‘We’d only learned what was wrong with her a few weeks before I met you,’ he went on. ‘I will never be able to explain how I felt. I couldn’t cope at all. I thought maybe I would just take off somewhere, disappear, never come back. That was one half of me. But I suppose I knew I couldn’t just walk out on Laura. Nor on Brenda for that matter. Though God knows she deserved it.’