Dot (Araminta Hall)

believed this with all his heart. Silver didn’t need any more convincing; Tony knew that she understood him better than anyone else when she turned and they walked away from the pub, back to her flat where they packed all her things, got into her rusty Renault 5 and drove out of the village. By that evening they were clinging to each other in a double bed in a dingy B and B in Cartertown, as Dot’s party finished and Alice went to bed, not thirty miles away, although they might as well have been in different universes.

18 … Tragedy
    Gerry had twenty minutes tops to make a decision about what to say to Sandra. What a prick! He replayed the drive home in his head and his stomach twitched with embarrassment so that he groaned like a dying man. He hadn’t planned it because what sort of fool would plan to make a pass at his wife’s best friend? Of course he’d noticed how absolutely gorgeous Alice was, you’d have to be a woofter not to, but he’d never considered anything happening between them. He’d never even wanted anything to happen between them, which was why what he’d done was so unfathomable, even to himself. Gerry liked to keep his dalliances totally separate from his life because that’s what they were. Stupid young girls, as he liked to think of them, with short skirts and red lips who made him feel better for a few hours and then disappeared from his life like a passing fog so that he could often pretend they had never existed. And he hadn’t even done anything like that for coming up to two years now anyway, not since Mavis had been born. He drew up outside his house and saw a light on in their bedroom. Mavis was still asleep so he allowed himself a cigarette as the car cooled down and the engine ticked over. He banged his hands hard on the steering wheel. He had to think fast because Alice might already be on the phone to Sandra, and the real, ugly truth of it all was that he couldn’t imagine his life without his wife, the woman he’d loved from the first time he’d knocked those books out of her arms outside the library in Kelsey.
    Gerry got out of the car and flicked his cigarette into the bushes, zipping up his bomber jacket to keep out the cold. The air was prickling and he could feel in his nostrils that it would be icy by morning. He lifted Mavis out of the back seat and hurried her into the house. The atmosphere inside was calm and still and he could hear the murmur of the radio from their bedroom. Sandra had not received any bad news yet, that much was clear. He took his daughter up to her bedroom, easing her little limbs out of her clothes. Her cheeks were sticky and she should of course brush her teeth but there was no way he was going to wake her now. He left her vest and pants on and tucked her under the pink duvet, kissing the side of her head and smelling the sugar and excitement still lingering on her. Her bright hair glowed in the light trickling in from the landing and he felt a surge of ownership for Mavis, a sense that she belonged to him. A life without her and the baby in Sandra’s stomach would be worthless, he realised, perhaps two hours too late.
    Gerry stayed by her bed for a minute, trying to organise his whirling thoughts. There was a chance that Alice might not mention it to Sandra but it was a slim chance and if he didn’t get in there first there wasn’t a hope in hell of her believing him. There’d only been one other time that he’d come this close to being caught, when a student had got a bit too interested and started sending him letters to his house, which he’d had to intercept on an almost daily basis for a few weeks. It was all so stupid anyway. He couldn’t understand why Sandra would care about these girls, who meant nothing to him. He wasn’t like that prick Tony who’d gone and fallen in love with Silver and had now run off; he had no intention of ever even liking them. What he did with those girls was no different to an evening spent in the Hare and Hounds with his mates on a Thursday. They were just a distraction, a way of passing the time, and they had absolutely no bearing on his feelings for Sandra.
    She was a little prick tease, that Alice, anyway. Come on, no one was really that innocent unless they were stupid. Gerry replayed the afternoon on fast forward in his mind and knew he hadn’t been imagining it, those big eyes and Lady Di smiles and infectious giggles. Come on. She’d just got cold feet and then gone all hoity-toity