investment. She was crucial to Phil. They spent so much time together, it was inevitable. They fell in love.’
In my head I scrolled back to Emma telling me this. She’d looked anxious, but hadn’t avoided my eyes. ‘When you’re doing deals like that,’ she explained, ‘working right into the night, it’s so hard.’
‘So hard,’ I murmured automatically now.
‘What? What is so hard?’ Jennie was on her feet.
I regarded my friend in Angie’s kitchen. ‘Working in such close proximity – the total absorption, handling huge sums of money, the stress, the excitement. It’s business, Jennie, you and I wouldn’t know. We’ve been out too long. Too steeped in children. It takes over their lives. And she knew I’d find out about her,’ I went on mechanically. ‘Knew, when the will was read, that she’d be revealed, because he provided for her. He told her so. So she came to see me first. And she doesn’t want anything, Jennie. Nothing at all, that’s what she came to say. Quite brave, really.’
I remembered Emma gazing up at me from under a pale silky fringe. Looking so frightened, unsure.
‘Little chit,’ spat Jennie.
‘Oh, no,’ I said, surprised. ‘No, she wasn’t like that.’
‘What d’you mean, she wasn’t like that?’ cried Angie. ‘She was sleeping with your husband!’
‘I mean – she wasn’t the mistress type. She was soft, vulnerable, even. Said Phil had been so lost. So sad. And she’d just comforted him originally.’
‘Lost?’ Jennie’s incredulous voice.
‘After Clemmie was born. Said I’d withdrawn into the world of my child. The world of babies. Excluded him.’
‘Just a bit …’ Emma had said nervously, hunched forward on my sofa. ‘You were a bit preoccupied, Phil said.’
‘And he’d felt left out?’ sneered Angie.
‘Well … yes. Yes, he had. And – I think that’s true.’ I turned to them. ‘I had been preoccupied.’
I thought back to Clemmie’s birth: my unbridled joy at having her, my darling daughter, my beautiful bright-eyed little girl, who’d brought so much joy into what was a rather dim world. Turned the light on in my marriage.
‘So Phil felt excluded and turned to a secretary at work,’ scoffed Angie.
‘Finance Manager,’ I told her.
‘Right, and this Finance Manager,’ she said, making ironic quotation marks in the air, ‘no doubt told you it wasn’t the sex that her new lover had missed, but the love and affection?’ She got up and began to pace around her converted barn kitchen. Her arms were tightly folded, chin tucked in her chest, like someone looking in the eye of a storm.
‘Yes. Yes, she did. And the thing is, Angie, if I’m honest,’ I was having trouble breathing here, ‘I did pour so much love into Clemmie, I was so consumed, that maybe he did feel rejected. Maybe he cast around helplessly for some affection –’
‘And maybe he got a stiffy in the office,’ Peggy said caustically, tapping ash into the aspidistra beside her. It was the first time she’d spoken. ‘Maybe his wife had had a difficult birth and he was a bit impatient on that front.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘but some men do need it. I mean, look at Dan and Jennie.’ I hadn’t stopped looking at Dan and Jennie since Emma had been to see me. Normal service resumed within a twinkling of Hannah’s birth. Hadn’t stopped thinking what a selfish cow I’d been.
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous,’ stormed Angie. ‘Jennie had two caesareans! Hers popped out of the bloody sunroof, not bursting through the engine room like you and me!’ Peggy, childless, crossed her legs and looked pained. ‘Don’t you be beating yourself up about that, my girl, that is no excuse!’ Angie wagged her finger.
‘I wouldn’t say “pop”,’ muttered Jennie stiffly.
‘And this Emma,’ went on Angie, still pacing. ‘She was no doubt dressed down, hm? In a sort of sweet peasanty top and flat sandals? No make-up? Freshly washed hair?’
I looked up at her, surprised. ‘Well … yes. As I say, she wasn’t the mistress type –’
‘Well, she’s not going to strut around to your house in her basque and fishnets, is she? Twanging her suspender belt!’
‘Oh, I’d find it very hard to believe she was like that.’
‘Believe it,’ snapped Angie, stopping suddenly to slap the palms of her hands on the table in front of me, making me jump. Her eyes were like flints close to mine. ‘You believe it, Poppy.’ They looked very fierce, these friends of mine. Very grim. ‘Don’t think she didn’t move seamlessly into mistress mode the moment your husband was in her bedroom.’