Page 82 of A Secret Escape

She couldn’t find the words. Maybe there weren’t any words that would fix this because some of what he’d said was true.

Chapter20Milly

Milly stared at the door that Richard had just slammed behind him.

She felt shocked and shaken. What did that all mean? What had just happened here?

She was struggling to make sense of it, to turn the words and the looks into something she could comprehend.

Nicole had known about Richard’s affair. Nicole had confronted him. And she’d never mentioned it to Milly. Not then, and not in response to any one of the desperate emails and messages Milly had sent in her direction after Richard had left her.

She’d ignored her.

Milly walked to the nearest chair and sat down before her legs gave way.

She’d thought that Richard’s affair had been the lowest point, but now she was discovering it was possible to go lower.

And there was no point in asking whether what Richard had said was true, because she could see from Nicole’s face that it was.

The fact that Nicole had known intimate details about the state of Milly’s marriage even before Milly had was so deeply uncomfortable and humiliating that she wanted to curl up in a ball and hide.She felt like a fool, as if she’d missed something obvious that everyone else had known about. Being the last to know something was never a good place to be, especially when the topic in question was your marriage.

“Why didn’t you tell me? When you overheard Richard’s conversation on the terrace that day, why didn’t you come straight to me?” She couldn’t believe her friend had known all this time and hadn’t said a word. And there had been so many opportunities.

Eighteen months of opportunities.

And the last few weeks when they’d gradually healed their relationship, or so Milly had thought, Nicole still hadn’t said anything despite multiple opportunities.

The sense of betrayal was painful.

Nicole stood still, arms wrapped around herself. She hadn’t moved since Richard had walked out. “I didn’t know what to do.” Her voice was a whisper. “I didn’t know how to handle it. You were so happy on that vacation. You had so many plans for the future. You talked about Richard the whole time. It was obvious that you had no idea what was going on. Not even the vaguest suspicion.”

And she felt like a prize idiot. She’d trusted her husband, and she’d also trusted her best friend.

“And it didn’t occur to you that it might have been a good idea to tell me? Or was it fun to watch me humiliated?”

“Fun?” Nicole’s voice rose. “It was a nightmare, Milly. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to be the one to drop that bombshell and shatter your world. I didn’t want to come between the two of you and be the one who wrecked your marriage.”

There was a knot in her stomach. She tried to think back to that time, to work out what she’d been doing when Nicole had overheard that conversation. Had she been swimming in the pool with Zoe? Changing for dinner? Afterward there must have been tension between Nicole and Richard. Why hadn’t she spotted the shift in the mood?

Or had she simply not been looking, living her life in her own happy bubble,blinkered to the truth, trusting those around her because if you couldn’t trust your own family, who could you trust?

“So you gave him an ultimatum. You made him choose.”

She imagined Richard’s reaction, the panic of a cornered animal as he realized he’d been caught out.

How had he reacted to that ultimatum? Had there been any hesitation on his part? Had it crossed his mind, even for a second, to choose her?

How long would he have continued the affair if Nicole hadn’t confronted him?

The thought of it made her nauseous.

“I was trying to make him do what was right. Trying to make him see what he was risking. I didn’t think for one minute he would choose her. Why would I?” Nicole pressed her fingers to her forehead. Slim fingers with perfectly shaped nails. “You adored each other. You finished each other’s sentences. You were always touching. You’d been together forever. I envied your relationship. You had the perfect marriage.”

The perfect marriage. What a joke. “You mean apart from the fact he was having an affair.”

Nicole gave her a look of despair. “I thought maybe it was just a stupid midlife crisis moment. A mistake that he was already regretting. When I overheard him on the phone he and Avery were fighting. He was telling her not to call him while he was away with you. It didn’t exactly sound loving.”

“And if he’d chosen me? Stayed with me, what then? Would you ever have told me, or would you have let me carry on believing my marriage was fine? Would you have sat back and watched me humiliate myself?” Milly stood up and paced to the other side of the room. Her head was throbbing. She couldn’t think straight.

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