Claire Allan - Apple of My Eye

For a moment or two I wonder whether we can just forget it all. Brush it all under the carpet. Can I live with knowing what I know?

I’m afraid to ask him about the allegations. I’m afraid of the argument we’ll have. If he continues to deny it, should I believe him? If he admits it, should I leave?

The thought hits me in the stomach with the force of the kick from my baby that follows. This is not how we planned it. This is not how it’s meant to be.

I know I’ll make it home before him by half an hour or so. I wonder whether to stop and pick up a takeaway on the way home, like I often do on a Saturday night. But this is hardly any normal Saturday night. I’m going home to ask him again, only this time directly, if he’s having an affair. I need to see his face as he answers me. See if I can tell if he’s lying.

I shake my head – I won’t pick up a takeaway. I won’t act as if everything’s normal when it so clearly isn’t. Everything feels sullied.

As I pull out of the hospice driveway and turn left towards the Foyle Bridge, I’m glad my mother’s at home. I imagine Martin won’t feel as glad, even though the pair of them have always got along well. He’s been made aware of my mother’s interrogation techniques from the stories I’ve regaled him with about my youth.

We’d rubbed along quite nicely together. I’ve never given her much trouble, not even as a teenager. But there were a few memorable occasions – some missing vodka from one of the bottles in her drinks’ cabinet, to name one where she went full bad cop on me. I wondered, would she go full bad cop on Martin? Or would she play the good cop role while I lost control of my temper?

When I get home I find that my mother’s cooked a full roast dinner with all the trimmings and she calls to me that it’s almost ready as I walk into the house. The window by the door’s been fixed. It’s almost as if nothing has happened, but of course it has.

‘Mum, I’ll not be able to eat this, lovely and all as it is,’ I say, trying not to make her feel rejected.

‘Just eat what you can, pet,’ she soothes. ‘You’re just skin and bone and that bump. I don’t know how that baby can be getting everything she needs with you eating so little.’

‘The baby’s fine. The baby’ll take whatever it needs from me, even if I don’t eat much. It leeches it from my system like a little, well, leech, I suppose.’

I watch my mother shudder. ‘That’s a horrible way to think about your baby,’ she scolds.

I don’t think so. I’m pragmatic about these things. Logical. Perhaps it’s my medical training. I look at things differently sometimes. In a detached fashion. The life inside me is a parasite of sorts, after all; not that I’d say that to my mother. She’d be apoplectic with rage at my use of such a word. Even if I qualified it by saying she was a very cute parasite. Even if I don’t reveal just how scared I am that I don’t feel that all-encompassing motherly love so many women talk about.

‘You know I don’t mean it in a bad way,’ I say, smiling at her. ‘Let me go and freshen up. I won’t be long.’

Upstairs, I strip off my uniform and throw it in the laundry basket before having a quick shower. I still feel the need to look and feel more presentable for Martin.

I wonder if the police will have had any new information for him. Maybe I should’ve called myself and checked for updates. Asked if they were looking at any other leads. Mum’s told me that the SOCO team were very nice and understanding but not particularly forthcoming with any information about where the investigation was.

I brush my wet hair out and look at it hanging limply around my face. I need a haircut, I know that. I look in the mirror at the tired eyes looking back at me. They’ve been tired since I became pregnant. I’ve become pale and uninteresting. Could I blame him for looking elsewhere?

I jump when I hear the front door open and close. Hear his voice, muffled, call out a hello and my mother answer, telling him that I’m upstairs and will be down soon.

I sit for a moment, almost too afraid to move. I’m scared to see him.

Martin’s always told me that he knows me like no one else in the world knows me. I like to think I’m the same with him. I can read his facial expressions in seconds. I know the two-second pause that always happens when he’s caught out on a lie. Although, admittedly, in the past it’s been about trivial things, like spending too much money on some silly gadget we haven’t discussed or when some of the Maltesers I keep hidden in the back of the cupboard went missing. It has never before, in the ten-year history of our relationship, been about anything of any great seriousness.

My hand goes to my stomach, instinctively, I suppose. It still shocks me to find a bump there. To feel another being inside me. I glance back into the mirror, start to give myself a little pep talk, and I’m just turning to leave the room, when I hear him bound up the stairs. He always comes up the stairs two at a time like an excited teenager. Even when tired, he still gallops up. Before I know it he’s at the door, pushing the handle down and coming in, his face creased with concern.

‘Eli …’ he says as if he doesn’t know what to say next. Which he probably doesn’t. Life doesn’t prepare you for conversations like this.

I see his face and a mixture of every emotion possible rushes through me. Love. Fear. Betrayal.

‘You’re here,’ I state.

‘I am,’ he says, walking towards me.

I want to hug him. I want him to hold me, but I feel myself holding back.

He senses it. He looks wounded and I feel guilty, but I also feel torn. I shouldn’t be feeling guilty. I should be the one feeling wounded.

If it’s true.

‘I need to ask you to your face and I need you to understand why I’m asking. Are you seeing someone else?’ I blurt.

There’s no pause. Not even a minute one. The wounded look is multiplied. He sags.

‘You shouldn’t need to ask me that,’ he says.

‘I know,’ I say, tears pricking at my eyes. ‘But I do need to. For me. Are you having an affair, Martin?’

He takes a step back. Or maybe I do. I’m not sure.

‘Eli, I’ve told you, no. I’ve told you I never would. You can’t have believed it either, or you’d have mentioned that first note to me. It shouldn’t have been down to the police to tell me.’

‘It seemed so ridiculous at the time,’ I tell him, feeling defensive.

‘So what’s changed, Eli?’

‘Martin, someone threw a rock through our window in the middle of the night. They made specific allegations. They seem determined to make sure I know about it.’

He swears under his breath. ‘This is bullshit,’ he says.

I want so much to say ‘I know’ and to de-escalate this quickly. But I can’t.

‘I don’t know what to believe,’ I say.

‘You should. You should know me, Eli. You should trust me and trust us.’

I think back to when Rachel split from Ryan. How he’d told her the same thing. How she’d said she believed him out of a sense of duty until the evidence was so undeniable neither he nor she could deny their marriage was in tatters. She was so angry at herself that she’d let him fool her. Am I letting Martin, and my desire for us to be okay, fool me now?

But Martin isn’t Ryan. Martin’s one of the good ones – always has been.

He looks so genuinely wounded that I feel my heart lurch. I want to believe him. It’s easier to believe him. We’re about to have a baby, but I can’t ignore what’s happened. I doubt the person behind the notes would let me, either.

‘I want to believe you. I do … but … the rock through the window. Who does that, Martin? Who puts a rock through someone’s window? Especially ours. In the middle of nowhere. They had to drive down here and go to all that effort to make sure I saw it. Why would anyone do that if there wasn’t some truth in it?’