boundary just got a bit blurred that evening. But, to answer your question, I wasn’t even there. It won’t surprise you that I’d “found a friend” and wasn’t at Ginny’s that night.’ He walked to his kitchenette and filled the kettle. ‘Look at it this way, if Ginny hadn’t got pregnant and hadn’t died, leaving you in charge of Victor, it wouldn’t feel like a big deal at all that your husband slept with one of your friends before you got together with him.’
‘All that proves to me, Cory, is how very skewed your moral compass is.’
‘Come on. I’ve slept with half of my female friends just to get that whole sexual tension thing out of the way so we can go back to being good mates.’
I looked from Cory to Patrick. ‘Honestly, when I read about blokes like you in the paper, I do a little shake of my head and think, “No, most men aren’t like that. They’re decent human beings.” But you’re not. What bloke sleeps with his wife’s best friend and doesn’t tell her?’ I paused, trying to get my head around the timeframe. ‘Then declares undying love, what, barely a fortnight later when her father’s just died and she’s vulnerable and – obviously – gullible? Then pushes it so far that he ends up marrying her, without ever feeling the need to mention that he and her closest mate have got properly up close and personal?’
Cory opened his mouth, but I wasn’t bloody finished yet.
‘And you, with the morals of a sewer rat, are stupid enough to stand there and try and defend him!’
Patrick seemed to shake himself out of his stupor. ‘Jo, I’m sorry. I should have told you, but I never found the right moment. There didn’t seem much point in making a big deal about it initially because I didn’t know whether our relationship would work out the way I hoped and I suppose I thought you wouldn’t give me a chance if I told you. Ginny begged me not to say anything to you because she saw how happy you were. And then she said she was pregnant by a Canadian, which was pretty big news, so my sleeping with her seemed rather insignificant.’ His voice broke. ‘I didn’t mean to lie to you. I didn’t want to hurt you. And when we got together it all moved so quickly that everything else seemed irrelevant. And I swear, I didn’t know he was my son.’
‘How could you not have known? Didn’t you do the bloody maths? Sex on New Year’s Eve, born 25 September. Even a ten-year-old could add that up.’
Patrick cracked his knuckles. ‘You know as well as I do that Ginny said Victor was nearly seven weeks premature. She was always joking that Victor was the result of too many Valentine’s Day Sex on the Beach cocktails. Or “Sex on a Snowy Mountain” as she used to say.’
I didn’t even want to hear Patrick make any mention of sex in relation to Ginny, cocktail-related or not. Though what he said was true, I could hear her now. ‘No cocktails for me. You never know where it might lead.’
I’d always felt that she’d been too forthcoming with some details surrounding Victor’s conception (the affair with the married man, the anywhere-and-everywhere sex and the drunken shagging resulting in her pregnancy) and far too sparing with others (who the hell the actual father was and why he wasn’t paying maintenance). And now, like a child pulling the beard off Father Christmas, the difference between what Ginny had told me and reality was only too clear. Victor hadn’t been premature. That little hospital bracelet had told the truth about his weight. That whole five pounds, eight ounces a total fabrication. She’d lied to me. Outright lied to put me off the scent. So had Patrick.
I had an overwhelming need to get away. The life I thought I’d planned so carefully, trying to do all the steps in order – job, property, marriage, baby – now resembled a pre-fab house thrown up in haste post-war, only to discover a decade later that the sewers and electricity supply were inadequate for the needs of the inhabitant.
‘I’m going home. Patrick, you stay here with Cory. You can have a good old chortle about what a mug I am.’
Cory put his hand out to stop me. ‘Jo, no one thinks that. Ginny kept it a secret because she didn’t want to cause trouble between you and Patrick.