As perhaps Kenneth’s had done.
She dismissed the traitorous thought. Kenneth loved her. He wanted her. He would make her feel safe and protected… as Joel had once done.
She gave a small shiver. Some women were designed to be independent… needed to feel that independence; but she wasn’t like that. It hurt acknowledging this weakness within herself; she had always tried to keep it hidden from other people, ashamed of being so needy in a world where women were expected to be so much more than she had always felt she was.
Back at home, she went slowly upstairs to hers and Joel’s bedroom, walking like someone in a semi-trance.
The house was empty, as she had known it would be; Paul was at school and Joel was down at the leisure centre—where else? He had said last night that he would go straight from there to the hospital to collect Cathy.
The bedroom looked unfamiliarly tidy. Joel had made the bed before he left.
There was nothing particularly special about the room—there were thousands upon thousands like it all over the country, decorated in much the same way: a pretty floral wallpaper, enlivened by a matching border, a soft pastel carpet… matching bedlinen, the peach and grey colour-scheme designed to be warm and comforting.
She had been so thrilled when she and Joel had redecorated this room, she remembered as her hand smoothed absently over the pillowcase on Joel’s side of the bed, just as she had been thrilled when years before Joel had made the row of built-in wardrobes which housed their clothes.
Kenneth would hate this kind of bedroom, she recognised… His would probably look like those she had seen and felt repelled by in glossy magazines on her rare visits to the hairdressers.
Kenneth. She closed her eyes, squeezing back the tears she could feel threatening her.
Why was she crying when this was what she wanted? When she wanted to be with him… to go to him?
Like a sleepwalker she opened the wardrobe doors and then pulled open a drawer, carefully removing the underwear stored in it.
For her birthday the previous year the girls at work had bought her this delicate lacy set of bra, briefs and suspender-belt. She had never worn them. Wearing stockings was something that always made her feel slightly uncomfortable… not tarty exactly, but somehow sexually available.
She hadn’t shown the set to Joel, knowing how he would react. He used to love her wearing pretty, feminine underwear…
She showered slowly and carefully, not using the perfume which Joel had bought her for Christmas, but a different one which Daphne had given her.
When she slid on her stockings her fingers trembled violently. She avoided looking at her own reflection in the mirror.
She was doing what she wanted to do, she reminded herself. Making this commitment to Kenneth, taking this step that, once taken, meant that she could never, ever turn back, was her decision.
Giving herself sexually to Kenneth was crossing a chasm which could never be re-crossed; an act of symbolism and sacrifice…
Sacrifice? What was she sacrificing? A marriage that was just a hollow, empty sham, a family, children who had already outgrown her.
There could be no betrayal like this one… no greater way of destroying her marriage… not so much because of the sex itself but because she was giving to Kenneth something she had withheld from Joel; and something, moreover, that Joel had greatly valued.
But she wasn’t doing it to punish Joel, she was doing it because… Tears blurred her eyes as she stood up and reached for her dress. She was doing it because even now half of her was still afraid… still, like a coward, wanting things to change… to go back to the way they had been.
With Joel on the outside and her the one the children wanted, had Joel ever felt as she did, unwanted, alone… afraid…?
It was too late now to feel regret, to wish that… that what? That she had talked to Joel… asked him…?
What had happened to the sense of power, of control she had felt when she had gone back to work? When had it become resentment and anger and an awareness that it had not brought her the things she had expected; that feeling that as the only breadwinner she had the right to expect Joel to acknowledge that she was the one to impose her control of their relationship on him, to refuse him sex in much the same way as she had felt he had demanded it from her?
Kenneth would never impose that kind of subtle sexual pressure on her; he just wasn’t that kind of man. He would know, too, that in coming to him now, in giving herself to him, she was making an unchangeable choice between him and Joel.
She opened the wardrobe to remove her jacket, pausing as her hand brushed against one of Joel’s sweaters. It felt soft and warm, her touch releasing a faint scent of his aftershave… of Joel himself.
Fresh tears blurred her eyes.
What had happened to them… to their marriage? It frightened her, made her feel threatened and resentful that Joel had changed, adapted to their new way of life, deserting her almost, leaving her alone to face worries, carry burdens she just wasn’t able to manage.
The house felt silent… too silent… but it was a silence she would have to grow used to.
She went downstairs and walked to the back door, opening it slowly.