Jennie Ensor - The Girl in His Eyes

Her own future was as bleak, perhaps.

Suzanne lowered her head. With each second, her resolve was eroding. In its place, trepidation, and something else – beyond fear. It was like that cold panic she’d felt years ago on her only attempt at abseiling. The ground had been a mere fifty feet below, yet it could have been thirty miles.

She clenched the hand on her lap into a fist. Time to face him. It was going to happen; it was too late to call a halt to it. Soon, she would have to take that first step backwards off the cliff and pray that the rope would hold her.

Katherine pulled up outside number 31. The house peered back, its face unwelcoming. The hedge was badly in need of a trim – its straggly top almost obscured the lower windows. This meant, she realised, that Katherine wouldn’t be able to see into the living room. But her friend would be close enough, should anything happen. And they had both made sure to bring their mobiles.

‘Here you are, madam. That’ll be twenty pounds, please.’

‘Thanks, Kat.’ Suzanne unbuckled her seat belt, unable to raise a smile. ‘See you soon.’

‘Good luck, kiddo.’ Katherine’s hand warmed her own. ‘Remember to come out straight away if you feel unsafe.’

Suzanne glanced at her face in the rear-view mirror. She looked haggard, the skin around her eyes purple and puffy from lack of sleep. She reached for her handbag and stepped out of the car. As she did so, her last strands of courage strained to hold. What if Paul got angry with her? What if he tried to stop her from leaving?

His Porsche was parked across the driveway, as shiny as ever. She opened the front gate and walked down the path. A clutch of orange poppies in the flowerbed caught her eye, incongruously bright. She pressed the doorbell.

Paul opened the door. In just three days his face was thinner, his hair greyer, and the lines across his brow deeper. A thick layer of stubble sprouted from his jaw – he hadn’t been going to work, presumably. Nothing had ever got in the way of work before.

‘Hello, Paul.’

He was wearing the sweater she’d given him for Christmas – was he trying to win her sympathy? It wouldn’t work, if he was. This time, she wasn’t going to let him crawl back into her heart.

‘Suzanne, I’m so glad you’ve come.’ He sounded hopeful, even a little excited. Surely, he wasn’t expecting a loving reunion?

She gave him a warning look. ‘I’m not staying long. Katherine’s waiting outside, she’s giving me a lift back.’ She stepped into the hall and he closed the door. The house was silent.

‘I was having a beer. Can I get you anything?’

She’d become a visitor in her own home. ‘No thanks.’ She scanned the kitchen. ‘Where’s Marmaduke?’

He shrugged. ‘He was here earlier.’

‘Have you been feeding him?’

‘I put food out for him and he turns his nose up at it. I threw away the last lot after the flies got to it.’

Marmaduke would be missing her, she thought with a pang of guilt.

He opened the living room door. ‘Come and sit down. I need to tell you something.’

She sat stiffly on an armchair.

Paul, standing against the sideboard, cleared his throat.

‘You have to forgive me, darling,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry for what I’ve done.’

She stared at him. His voice sounded small.

‘I know what I did was wrong. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, every single day. If only you knew—’

‘How can you say that?’ It wasn’t enough, this hollow apology. He thought he could make everything right by saying the right words. ‘I’ll never understand how you could have done what you did. You really pulled the wool over my eyes, didn’t you? You fooled me into believing I could trust you. You fooled me about everything. I thought you loved me. When we made love, I thought it was for real. I thought—’ The words caught in her throat. ‘I thought it meant the same to you.’

‘Suze, I love you. I’ve always loved you. You must believe me. What happened with Laura and Emma. It was like something took me over. It was so strong, I couldn’t—’

‘You couldn’t keep your hands off them, could you?’ She spat out the words. ‘You don’t need to explain.’

He seemed to shrink before her. ‘I know, I disgust you. I have no right to ask your forgiveness.’

‘I can’t forgive you, Paul.’

He seemed not to have heard. ‘I’m asking for one last chance. I swear I’ll never do anything like that again.’

She had a vision of herself, in twenty years’ time, with sagging skin and aching joints, living alone in some cramped flat, waiting for the phone to ring and her children to visit. But it wasn’t enough.

‘I’m sorry, it’s too late. Our marriage is over. I want a divorce.’

He turned his head away to look out of the window; she couldn’t see his face. All she could hear was the solitary tweet, tweet, tweet of a baby bird in the front garden. When he turned back to her, his eyes glistened.

‘I love you, Suzanne.’

It took a few seconds before she was able to speak.

‘You love me? You have a funny way of showing it. You do those disgusting things to our daughter, and my friend’s daughter.’ Her voice faltered. She couldn’t draw in enough air. ‘Then you expect me to put it aside like everything else, and carry on as if nothing’s happened? Well, I can’t. I won’t.’

‘Please, Suzanne.’ Paul clutched his hands together as if he were praying.

‘I’ve made up my mind, Paul.’

His hands unclasped and his eyes fell away from hers. A muscle above his mouth moved. He seemed defeated. Finally, he spoke.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to stay with Katherine for a few weeks. I’ll go to a solicitor. We’ll have to sell the house, I suppose.’ Suzanne stood and walked towards the door. Her composure wouldn’t hold out. ‘We can discuss the details later. I’m going upstairs to pack some things.’

Their bed was unmade. Towards the middle, a single crumpled pillow. She slid open the wardrobe door and stared at the array of clothes inside, resisting the urge to flop on the bed and howl. Leaving Paul was like chopping off her own hand: there was no painless way to extract him.

When she came downstairs with a suitcase, he was waiting in the hall, and as she put it down he came towards her. She prepared herself for a last show of defiance.

‘I’m sorry,’ was all he said.

Katherine opened the car door for her. ‘How did it go, love?’

Suzanne stumbled inside and sat staring through the windscreen. She couldn’t look at her friend. So many emotions jostled inside her – relief, exhaustion and, most of all, disappointment. An acrid disappointment that made her throat ache. It couldn’t end like this. Paul had been everything to her. After twenty-five years together, it couldn’t end like this.

‘He wasn’t angry.’ She fastened her seat belt. ‘He said he loved me. I thought he was going to cry. He’s never cried, not in all the years we’ve been together.’

Shortly after they got back to Katherine and Jeremy’s house, she rang Laura to say that she had left Paul. But Laura’s home number was set to the answering machine and her mobile rang out.

Laura got off the Tube at Wimbledon station and walked towards the house. An uncomfortable sensation had taken over her chest, eroding the calmness she’d felt earlier. But that didn’t matter. At last she was ready to do it.

The streets of Wimbledon were busy with mothers and children on their way home from school. Trees and hedgerows spread their new green against a clear, pale blue sky. The sunshine was warm. It seemed like summer already – she wore a T-shirt and jeans, with her leather jacket over her shoulder. But she walked on steadily, looking neither left nor right, hardly noticing what was around her, aware only of what lay ahead.