For Better for Worse

Cressy put down her glass. ‘Fern, for God’s sake, how much more of yourself do you have to give him? What the hell has he ever given you? You say he’s having an affair; well, I’ll bet it isn’t his first. He’s the kind of man who needs the constant ego-boost of entrapping another victim… Not for the sex. No, definitely not for that. You know, when you first knew him, I used to look at him and wonder exactly what it was you saw in him. He always struck me as being so sexually and emotionally cold… Although I must admit you had to admire the way he pushed Adam out of your life. Whatever did you see in him, Fern? And when you had Adam, who was so plainly the complete opposite, so very much everything that Nick wasn’t… I have to confess there were moments, more of them than I wanted to admit, when I actually found myself fantasising about what it would be like to go to bed with your Adam.’

‘He was never “my” Adam,’ Fern protested, ‘and you’re wrong about Nick’s pushing him out of my life. Adam was never anything more than a friend.’

‘A friend? I saw the way he used to look at you. Adam wanted you, Fern. Make no mistake about that.’

‘You’re wrong,’ Fern insisted. ‘He already had a girlfriend… Someone much older and far more experienced than me. Nick—’

‘Nick wanted you the way he’s wanted everything else in his life,’ Cressy interrupted her ruthlessly, refilling their glasses, but Fern knew it wasn’t just the wine that was making her so loquacious, so almost brutally honest. She sensed as she listened to her friend that Cressy was giving voice to things she had suppressed for a very long time, and she sensed as well that her motivation was purely that of friendship and concern for her.

‘He wanted you because he wanted to take you away from Adam.’

Fern felt her fingers curling protestingly round the stem of her wine glass. She could feel the blood draining out of her face, and the dizzying, disorientating shock of disbelief that filled the chasm which had opened up within her.

‘That’s not true. He wanted me… needed me…’

But even as she said it she knew that Cressy was right. In a sickening jolt of perception, the barriers of delusion she had used to protect both herself and her marriage suddenly came down and for the first time she saw her relationship with Nick for what it really was.

‘I’m sorry, Fern… I’m so sorry,’ she heard Cressy saying roughly. ‘I didn’t mean… I thought you must know… that you must have seen how bitterly jealous and resentful of Adam Nick has always been.’

Nick, jealous of Adam? The room, which had briefly slipped out of focus, spun round her dizzily. She blinked and forced herself to concentrate on the dresser against the wall, fixing her gaze on the primitive design of the unglazed jug in the middle of one of the shelves. Were the tribesmen on it hunters; were… those raised spears raised to kill their prey; were…?

She shivered tensely and turned her face towards Cressy.

‘All these years and I never knew… never realised. I thought Nick wanted me… needed me… but all the time he was just using me because he thought Adam wanted me. Is that really what you’re trying to say?’ she asked Cressy in revulsion.

‘Basically, yes,’ Cressy admitted huskily. ‘But there’s more to it than that. People like Nick are like… like plants such as ivy; like bindweed. They need a host plant to cling to, to draw their life-force from, to use and draw the strength from while they slowly smother and destroy it. And the stronger the host plant is, the greater the appeal.’

‘But I’m not strong,’ Fern protested.

Cressy came over to her, kneeling beside her chair and wrapping her arms tightly round her.

‘Fern, you’re so wrong. You are one of the strongest, most courageous, most moral people I’ve ever known. Why do you think it’s you I want here with me now, if not because I need your strength?’

‘You need my strength!’

Fern could feel her body starting to shake with the onset of semi-hysterical laughter. ‘But I’m nothing. I’ve done nothing with my life… seen nothing… been nowhere.’

‘You have compassion, love and understanding; people turn to you instinctively for help. You don’t know yourself, Fern. You don’t know your own value. Do you think anyone who was genuinely weak, who genuinely lacked the virtues I’ve just described, would ever have stuck by someone like Nick, never mind been attracted to him in the first place? I’ll bet you anything you like, despite this affair, he still won’t want to let you go. Oh, he’ll make you suffer… make you think it’s your fault… claim some lack in you is responsible for his infidelity, some need you haven’t fulfilled. Oh, yes, he’ll use it to manipulate and control you, but he won’t let you go. He can’t afford to let you go, Fern. He needs you too much to support his ego.’

‘But he’s the one…’ Fern started to protest and then fell silent as her brain observed the truth of what Cressy was saying to her.

‘Do you still love him?’ Cressy repeated.

Fern shook her head, unable to deny the truth any longer. ‘No.’

‘Thank God for that,’ Cressy said again, adding emphatically, ‘Leave him, Fern. You owe it to yourself.’

Leave him! How could she? And yet if Cressy was right how could she not? And Cressy was right, she knew that instinctively, and knew also that she had deliberately blinded herself to the truth.

Why? Out of fear? Out of guilt? Out of loyalty to her parents and the beliefs they had instilled in her?

* * *

They talked until the early hours of the morning, eating the chilli Cressy had made earlier, finishing the bottle of wine she had opened and then another.

Oddly Fern did not feel drunk, just more clear-headed and aware than she could remember ever feeling at any other time in her life.

As well as her marriage, they discussed