Page 86 of The First Mistake

Forcing herself to take deep breaths, she walks slowly along the low-lit hallway, her heels sinking into the plush carpet. Just as she draws level with the door, it swings open and he’s standing there, his eyes wide.

‘There you are!’ exclaims Nathan. ‘I was just about to send out a search party.’

‘I got a second wind,’ she says, brusquely. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘Now you know howIfelt,’ he says.

‘Where have you been?’ Alice asks, as she steps out of her shoes. She can’t bring herself to look at him for fear she’ll see the truth.

‘In the bar,’ he says, without missing a beat. ‘But if I’d known you were awake I would have stayed here and carried on where we left off.’

He comes up behind her as she stands at the dressing table taking her earrings out.

‘You were incredible,’ he whispers into her ear.

Alice closes her eyes as he kisses her neck, imagining that it’s the man in the bar. When she opens them to see Nathan, she can’t help but feel duped.

34

By the next morning, Alice has made a decision. In order for her to go into battle, she needs to know who she’s fighting against. Nathan, Alice has decided overnight, isn’t going anywhere. Why would he, when his whole life is with her? He’d lose his home, his kids, his job, the lifestyle to which he’s become accustomed, for what? A sleazy bit of rough on the side? It’s easier for Alice to think this way, believing she’s in control, and can dictate the outcome. Because if she allows any other scenario to play out in her mind, she simply wouldn’t be able to function.

So she needs to find out who the threat to her family is, and once she does, she’ll know what to do about it. But in the meantime, she’s going to try her damnedest to be the wife and mother she needs to be to stop her world from going off-kilter. Though that doesn’t mean she’s going to give her all to her philandering husband; she slips out of bed just as he moves towards her with an outstretched arm.

She takes a quick shower and puts her hair up into a messy top-knot – there’s no point in doing anything else when the humidity outside turns even the sleekest style into a ball of frizz. She knows she’s trying to keep her mind occupied – to stop it from alternating between Tom and Nathan, asking the questions she so desperately wants to know the answers to.

But what will she do with the answers once she has them, if they’re not the ones she wants? Is Tom still alive, living happily with his new family? Had he set the whole thing up? But then why would he be so audacious as to continue using his real name? Who is Nathan having an affair with? Will it make a difference if it’s someone she knows? Will she stay if he promises it didn’t mean anything? Will it crucify her if he says he’s fallen in love? She can’t possibly say how she’ll react without knowing what she’s dealing with.

It pains Alice to admit it, but Beth had been right all along. She’d had a sixth sense that Nathan was cheating, probably because she’d had it happen to her and knew the signs to look for. But then Alice pulls herself up at the stark realization that, in fact, Beth’s partnerhadn’tbeen unfaithful to her. Tom was already married. It was Alice he was unfaithful to, not Beth. The intense fury that she’d tried so hard to contain was in danger of boiling over.

She remembers listening to Beth over and over as she’d relived their intense love affair, revealing their most intimate moments against the backdrop of its sudden demise.

‘How could he do it to me?’ Beth had cried as Alice held her. ‘I thought we were everything to each other. He told me he loved me and never wanted to be without me.’

Alice could even recall asking Beth if he might have been married.

‘There’s no way,’ she’d said abruptly, seemingly offended by the suggestion. ‘He used to stay over. How could he do that if he had a wife and, God forbid, kids at home?’

Alice stops buttoning up her shirt. He’d stayed over? So itcouldn’thave been Tom. But as fast as her brain wants to grab onto the tiniest semblance of hope, it removes itself from her grasp just as quickly, as she acknowledges that Tom had often been away with work. She laughs wryly at the memory of him going backwards and forwards to Dublin, in a supposed attempt to win new business. Had the client even existed? Had the whole set-up been an elaborate ruse to be with Beth?

She pictures Tom kissing her and Sophia goodbye at the front door, with his overnight holdall in his hand.

‘I wish I didn’t have to do this,’ he’d say.

‘So do I, but it’ll be good for business,’ Alice would reply. ‘So go make it worth our while.’

He’d look back at them forlornly, like a lamb going to slaughter, and Alice used to feel a little piece of her heart break each time. Now, she wonders, how long it had taken him to get his game face on and get round to Beth’s. She imagines it was only a matter of minutes.

Alice does all that she can not to blanch when Nathan takes her hand as they walk down to breakfast. He sits down and orders a coffee whilst Alice heads to the buffet that is laid out along one wall of the huge room. She’s debating between fruit or cereal when a male voice behind her says, ‘I missed you last night.’

Taking her time to turn around, assuming that whoever it is must be talking to someone else, her mouth drops open and a thousand words crowd the space in her brain as she’s faced with a uniformed pilot. He looks like the man from a dream she thinks she’s had.

‘I’m sorry ...’ she starts, without really knowing where she’s going with it.

‘Don’t be,’ he says, smiling. ‘It happens all the time. I get stood up by beautiful women every night of the week.’

Somehow, she doubts that. ‘I’m not here on my own,’ she says, feeling like a schoolgirl caught playing truant.

‘I know,’ he says, his eyes avoiding hers as he picks up what looks like granola in a glass pot. ‘I saw you walking in with your husband.’

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