Page 82 of The First Mistake

She can’t tell him that for almost ten years, it’s been Tom who’s been at the forefront of her mind. Wondering if he can see her, refusing to really let herself go, for fear that it will hurt him to see her give herself to another man.

She hates herself for only half loving Nathan all this time, because that’s what she’s done. Whilst she has been pining for a man who slept with another woman, fathered another child, she’d missed out on giving herself, in all entirety, to the man who deserved it most.

‘I’ve been such a fool,’ she says, as tears well up in her eyes. ‘Will you ever forgive me?’

‘For what?’ Nathan asks warily. ‘What have you done?’

‘Nothing, that’s the problem,’ she says. ‘I’ve not done enough.’

He looks at her quizzically as she pushes him against the back of the door, her hands reaching down to the zip of his trousers. It’s hardly surprising that he’s ready for her and his tongue responds, his own need for release evidently as urgent as hers.

‘What wasthatall about?’ he says afterwards, as they lie on the plush carpet.

‘That’s how it should have been all this time,’ says Alice, her own body still shuddering with the after-effects.

Nathan rolls onto his side to face her. ‘What’s changed?’

‘Everything,’ she says, honestly. ‘Everything feels different.’

His brow furrows. ‘Because of the deal? Or because you’ve been brave enough to come away?’

She almost expects him to say,I told you that the world wouldn’t end, and silently thanks him when he doesn’t.

‘I just think that this is the start of a new phase in my life,’ she says, relieved that the drunken fog is beginning to clear.

‘Well, this is a new approach I could grow to love,’ he says, smiling. ‘If it means sex like that ...’

Alice laughs. ‘I mean it, things are going to change. I’m not always the wife you deserve, the mother my children need or the businesswoman I know I can be.’

‘I think you do a pretty good job,’ he says, ‘considering.’

‘Considering what, though?’ she asks. ‘That I had a breakdown when my first husband died?’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘I know what you mean,’ she says, ‘and I agree with you. I don’t want what happened to define me. I’m sick and tired of being that person. Even when I pretend that I’m not, I know that deep down I still am.’

He nods.

‘So, I just want to say that I’m sorry, and from now on I’ll give myself to you wholeheartedly.’ She leans in to kiss him. ‘I love you,’ she says, before inviting him to take more.

‘I could get used to this new wife I’ve got,’ he says, as he lifts himself up off the floor. ‘But just let me go to the toilet first.’

Alice sighs and watches his naked body as he walks into the bathroom as if seeing him for who he truly is, for the first time. She’s lying, sated and content, when Nathan’s phone pings from the inside pocket of the jacket he’d thrown to the floor in his urgency to get his clothes off. She wouldn’t normally look, but it might be the girls trying to get hold of them. Forcing herself to stay calm, curbing any irrational thoughts that something must have happened to them, she reaches across to retrieve it.

She looks at the message, then looks again, her eyes blurring the words beyond recognition. She thinks she knows what it says, but closes her eyes, to give them a chance to unsee it.

I need you. Now xx

The blood that so recently felt warm as it coursed its way around her body turns icy cold. She scrolls up and down, looking for any evidence of who she’s fighting against in the battle for her husband’s affections. But there’s nothing, other than the anonymous phone number it’s been sent from.

She hears the toilet flush and needs to think quickly, but her heart is racing so fast that it’s making her hands shake. She fumbles to take a screenshot and sends it to herself, before deleting the message she had read and the one she sent. Nathan comes out of the bathroom just as she manages to put the phone back into his jacket.

‘Are you still on the floor?’ he asks, laughing. He holds a hand out to pull her up and it takes all her strength not to recoil. How could he profess his undying love? How could he swear that he’s not having an affair, when all along he’s been sneaking around, living two truths? How could he let her sign the deal today, knowing that he’d lied to make it happen? The thought makes her feel nauseous.

‘So how about we do that all over again?’ he breathes into her ear as he stands behind her, guiding her towards the bed. She can feel him, but her desire of just a few moments ago has been replaced by a rage so incandescent, so ferocious, that she fears she might do something rash if the wrong instrument should fall into her hands. She clenches her fists in an effort to stop herself tearing him limb from limb.

‘I’m tired,’ she manages, through gritted teeth.

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