were pregnant. I knew what that meant to you. And Kate told me it was over between them. Promised me it was.’
‘Did you confront Rob?’
‘Yeah.’
That shocks me. ‘What did he say?’ I ask.
‘He cried.’ Toby snorts again. ‘Told me it was a big mistake, the biggest of his life. He told me some sob story about how you were pushing him away, tried to make out that it was Kate who’d made the moves on him and he was powerless to resist. And you know what? I can believe it. That’s Kate isn’t it? I mean, that was Kate. If she wanted something she went after it. I think we can probably congratulate her for keeping her hands off him for so long. She did try. In the end though, she couldn’t help herself.’
He’s right. That is Kate. I can picture it. She probably thought she deserved Rob as a reward for keeping her hands off him for as long as she did.
‘Rob begged me not to tell you. I said I wouldn’t so long as he never fucking saw my wife again. But to be honest, I knew Kate and I were over by that point.’
‘He only stayed with me because of Marlow. Because I was pregnant.’ It’s a sudden realisation, like a crack of lightning illuminating the truth. When I found out I was pregnant, when those two blue lines appeared on the test, I was shaking with joy and amazement and incredulity, and I staggered out of the bathroom to show Rob, holding the test like it was a winning lottery ticket. I remember he was stunned into silence by it. He couldn’t talk for five straight minutes. He just kept staring at the plastic stick. I thought at the time he was as overwhelmed as I was that our dream was finally coming true, but it wasn’t that. I see it now. He was coming to terms with the fact that now he couldn’t leave me. Those two blue lines were prison bars.
After the second attempt at IVF was unsuccessful, Rob worked so hard to convince me not to try for a third time. He pushed and pushed me to give up the dream of a child. We argued, even slept in separate beds for a time. He was in the middle of the affair then. Was he making plans with Kate to leave me? When I pressed ahead with the IVF he was angry, but I thought it was because we were having to spend out of our own pocket for it and because he was tired of the strain it was putting us under.
I was so stupid not to see the truth. He must have been hoping and praying it wouldn’t work so he’d be able to leave me, perhaps he could even blame the infertility and my depression, and then it did work and I got pregnant and all his plans fell apart. He couldn’t leave me after that, not when I was pregnant with his child.
I try to imagine what went through his mind. He would likely have been tormented. I know Rob enough to understand that deep down he isn’t a terrible man. This thing he’s done, this betrayal is terrible, and I will never forgive him for it, but I also know he isn’t a monster. He has some heart. He broke up with her.
They obviously stayed apart for a while, according to the text messages, but then, for some reason, they got back together again. Maybe they ran into each other. Maybe it was at Marlow’s christening. Maybe the sexual chemistry was too much or he was repulsed enough by me and my post-pregnancy body that he flew into her slender open arms like a magnet, repelled by one and drawn to another.
And now I come to think about it, didn’t I wonder where Rob was after the church service? He disappeared for ten minutes, told me he was taking a phone call. And Kate was there in her role of glamorous godmother, looking fabulous in five-inch high heels and a skin-tight dress more suited to a strip club than a christening. Didn’t she say she had to go and reapply her lipstick for the photos? And when she came back didn’t I notice that it seemed like she’d forgotten to reapply it?
‘If it makes you feel any better,’ Toby says, ‘I don’t think Kate ever meant to hurt you.’