The Missing Husband Read online

  Kate remained rooted to the sofa digesting, thinking, disbelieving and then believing all over again. How had this happened? What had actually happened? Why hadn’t she seen it coming? What was she going to do in the morning? What should she tell the children? What should she tell their friends? She felt an overwhelming wave of humiliation. Everyone was going to be talking about this. Did people already know? Were they gossiping behind her back? Her thoughts and fears came thick and fast then, invading her mind with such force that she couldn’t shake them off. She sat there, immobile and trapped in her thoughts, unable to move or to see any light at the end of the tunnel in this situation.

  It was only when she heard the gentle hum of the milkman’s electric van on the street outside and the clinking of two bottles being put on her front doorstep that she realised a new day had begun without her. She had to sort herself out before the kids woke up. Dashing to the bedroom she quickly showered, brushed her teeth and changed.

  Lily and Maggie, ever the early risers, appeared soon after, clutching their teddies and grinding their little hands into sleepy eyes. They were so innocent and blissfully unaware of what had happened the previous day, and Kate looked at them and thought her heart was going to break. Instead, she forced herself into autopilot mode, an act that came easier than expected after years of practice, preparing their toast and peanut butter and supervising their washing and dressing, until Rachel, their lovely Australian nanny, arrived to gather them up and take them to school. Clearing up the discarded cups and plates on the table, Kate kissed them both, waved them off and waited for the front door to close with a slam. With relief, she sunk down onto a kitchen chair and considered just what the fuck to do now. Maybe she should be in tears, but she was too horrified to cry. Stuff like this didn’t happen to them – only it had and now she was left to clean up the mess with very little idea of how to go about it. She bit her nails nervously and grabbed her phone.

  Forty-five minutes later Kate still hadn’t moved when her phone bleeped with a message:

  what the actual fuck? I’m on my way.

  Erin was at the house in fourteen minutes. As soon as Kate opened the door her younger sibling barged in, eyes wide, hair unkempt, and said simply, ‘Start at the beginning and tell me everything.’

  ‘He didn’t come home last night,’ Kate began. ‘I found this note.’ She passed the note to Erin who devoured it, reading each word as if searching for a clue to a cryptic puzzle. Once she had finished the letter Erin looked up at her, mouth hanging open in shock. For a split second Kate thought she saw something else pass over her face – a fleeting response so quick that she almost missed it – as though the shock hadn’t quite reached her eyes. ‘You don’t seem that surprised? What do you know? What’s happened?’ she demanded.

  ‘I don’t know anything at all,’ Erin protested, holding her hands up in surrender. ‘I’m as shocked as you are that this has happened. He has everything he could ever need and he’s thrown it all away for someone who I can only assume is a twenty-something blonde bimbo with big boobs. He’s a selfish bastard.’

  Kate observed her sister. Perhaps she was being paranoid. She was, after all, sleep-deprived and out of her mind with worry. And right now, she needed an ally not a row, so she decided not to push it. She sat in silence for a minute or two, staring at the note and trying to think of something to say. On the other side of the table, Erin appeared to be doing the same thing. Finally, to her relief, Erin broke the silence. ‘Did he say anything to you yesterday morning? Did he seem different at all?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she replied, replaying the previous morning over again in her mind. ‘That’s what I can’t understand. We even had breakfast together, just the two of us, and he acted like everything was normal. He had plenty of opportunities to say something to me and he didn’t. He must have known the whole time what he was planning to do. I can’t decide if he’s a calculating bastard or just a coward.’

  ‘Where did you find the note?’

  Kate explained her middle of the night discovery to Erin, who raised her eyebrows when she heard that Pete had left his phone behind as well. ‘When he says he’s met someone else, do you have any idea who?’

  ‘I can only assume it’s someone from work or one of his clients,’ Kate answered. ‘He’s never anywhere else except at the office or at home so I doubt he’d have time to find someone else. It’s unlikely to be a mum at the girls’ school given that he’s been so busy at work he hasn’t done a school run in months. I guess I know why now. Not working after all. Shagging, probably.’ She started laughing slightly hysterically. Was this the first sign of madness?

  ‘I bet it’s a bloody PA,’ Erin said, ‘or a receptionist. This is a midlife crisis and he’ll be back with his tail between his legs within weeks, I’m telling you now. But the question is, would you have him back?’

  ‘I really don’t think that is the question. I think he’s gone. For good.’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Awful.’

  The women looked at each other, so many unanswered questions between them. Kate knew that Erin was itching to probe – to ask about the state of their marriage, were they happy, how were things in the bedroom? But now was not the time and they both knew it. That would all come, in the days and weeks to follow.

  ‘What have you told the girls?’ Erin asked.

  ‘Nothing, they didn’t ask where he was: they’re used to him being away sometimes in the week. I sent them off to school as usual.’

  ‘What are you going to tell them? Are you going to say he’s away on business like he asked you to?’

  ‘I think so – not for him but for them. They’ll be upset that he didn’t say goodbye before he left but then they’ll forget about it and it gives me some time to plan what I’m going to do next.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I have no fucking idea.’

  2

  Pete

  Pete looked at the French countryside stretching out before him and sighed deeply. He felt at once both utter contentment and nagging guilt over what he was doing. He took a sip of his ice-cold white wine and turned to look at Claire who was lying on the wooden recliner next to him. Her dark eyes were covered by a large pair of black designer sunglasses and she had wrapped a thin blanket around her like a cocoon to keep her warm in the unseasonably cool sunshine. She had never looked more beautiful.

  The B&B they were staying at in the South of France looked like something from a picture-perfect postcard. A stone-built gîte with powder-blue shutters and ivy climbing up the walls, its cobbled veranda spilled out on to the open countryside. From their vantage point they could see endless fields and beyond that, the tops of houses from a nearby village in the valley. The place was run by a friendly French couple in their fifties who had, of course, instantly assumed they were married. Monsieur and Madame Garland, they had called them when they arrived, tired and giddy, earlier that day. He knew Claire had been thrilled by this.

  On the little wrought-iron side table between them lay a pile of photos of a property not too dissimilar to the one they were staying in right now. It was going to be their new home and if you looked hard enough into the distance, you might even be able to see the top of its roof peeping out from below the hills. He glanced down again at the photos, feeling both excitement and disbelief, before catching Claire’s eye. She grinned at him and he grinned back, high on life. He felt like a lovestruck teenager embarking on his first trip away from home. But this was different because, if the plan came off, they wouldn’t be going home again.

  It was Claire who had first suggested that they move to France. Her dad had passed away a couple of years ago and had left her his house, a three-bed cottage which he had bought to enjoy his retirement in. But his plans had been cut short after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and the house had been untouched since he passed away. Claire told Pete that she couldn’t bring herself to return to it since the death of her beloved father. But
she had spoken so fondly of holidays there while her father was still alive, describing the short walk to the bakery in the village to pick up fresh bread each morning, the summer weeks spent paddling in the nearby river, a pace of life so different to the loud, dirty, chaotic, endless relentlessness of London. If you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life, wasn’t that the famous saying? Well, Pete was fucking knackered.

  Even so, the idea had seemed ludicrous at the time. It was one thing that he was fooling around behind his wife’s back with another woman but quite another to abandon his family entirely and move to another country. ‘I have the girls to think of,’ he had reminded Claire when she suggested it. ‘I can’t just up and leave like that.’

  ‘People commute from France to London all the time,’ she had assured him. ‘It’s so easy now. You could still see them at weekends and sometimes in the week too. And think of the amazing summer holidays they could have out here. They could come for the whole six weeks. They’d absolutely love it, you know they would.’

  ‘What about my job?’ he’d asked, still humouring her at this stage because the idea, while alluring in theory, was unrealistic and impossible.

  ‘What, the job you’ve been moaning about pretty much since we met? The one you’ve been talking about leaving for months?’

  ‘Yeah, fair enough, but I’d still need to work. How am I going to earn money holed away in the middle of the French countryside eating baguettes? It’s a sweet idea, Claire, but come on, be realistic.’

  And so of course, she had done just that. There was no denying that Claire liked to get her own way. When Kate was like this, buzzing around with a bee in her bonnet like the time she had made him buy that damn house, it annoyed him but with Claire he felt different, her gentle persuasion was somehow less offensive and more endearing. She had scoured job listings, looking for roles that could be carried out remotely with occasional travel for meetings and presented him with some frighteningly feasible options.

  ‘It’s becoming much more popular these days,’ she told him. ‘Lots of people work from home. You could go into London every couple of weeks for meetings and tie it in with seeing the girls. You can rent a little flat in north London and decorate one of the bedrooms for them so they can sleep over whenever you’re there. And then in the holidays they’ll come and stay with us in France. It would take some getting used to, I know, but we’d work it out and it could be absolutely amazing. Let’s escape the rat race, Pete. Let’s live the life that most people can only dream of.’

  At what point did this ridiculous idea start to make sense? When did he convince himself that he could actually do this? Was it when Claire persuaded him to apply for a couple of new roles which offered remote working and he thought there was nothing to lose? Was it when he started going for interviews, just to see what was out there, while still telling himself that it had nothing to do with going to France and more to do with furthering his career? Was it when a big tech firm offered him a role with a package far better than what he’d been expecting? Was it when Claire wrapped her long, slim legs around him, put her lips to his ear and whispered that he turned her on more than any man she’d ever known? Or was it when Kate turned her back to him in bed again and he realised he was no longer in love with his wife?

  Either way, just a couple of months after that first conversation when he had all but laughed at Claire for suggesting something so stupid, he found himself accepting the new job and handing in his notice at work. As he did it, he felt like he had temporarily slipped into someone else’s shoes and his life was not really his own anymore. He told his boss that it was time to move on, that he needed a new challenge and although he had worked at the company for years, she hadn’t batted an eyelid. She had simply accepted his resignation, shaken his hand and wished him well. After all, people moved jobs all the time these days.

  Only a couple of close friends at work knew the truth. They weren’t surprised to hear about Claire because they’d known about the affair for months, but they’d still been pretty stunned when he told them the plan, over a pint in the pub near the office one evening after work. He knew he shouldn’t have told them but he couldn’t help himself. He was like a little child with a secret he had to share or else he would burst. His colleagues had both met Kate a few times, but their loyalty was to him and he knew they wouldn’t breathe a word. Still, they had urged him to think about it very carefully.

  ‘You can’t come back from something like this,’ Dan, a happily married dad of three had warned him. ‘She won’t forgive you. And the girls, you’ll never have the same relationship with them. Just think about it really carefully. You’re risking everything for Claire. Are you sure it’s worth it? Is she worth it, mate?’

  Even Carl, a permanently single womaniser and not usually one for morals when it came to affairs of the heart, had told him to tread carefully. ‘She could turn the kids against you,’ he said. ‘You hear about it all the time; it happened to a friend of mine. He had to take her to court and the whole thing was a shitshow. Now he only sees them every other weekend and they act like they don’t want to be there half the time anyway. He’s absolutely gutted and I don’t think he’ll ever really get over it.’

  Pete had listened to his friends’ warnings, but they weren’t enough to deter him. He knew what he was risking and he knew what Kate’s reaction would be when she found out. Apoplectic was an understatement. But it was too late now – Claire was his drug and he was hooked, and he had already gone past the point of no return.

  But the doubt still niggled at him, despite his conviction, so for a while he had been thinking about a contingency plan where he didn’t give everything away at first. He would tell Kate what she needed to know, that he had met someone else, that he wasn’t happy and that he was going away for a bit to sort his head out. It was all true, after all, and it gave him a way back, he reasoned, if he got to France and realised it was all a big mistake.

  Obviously, Kate would be livid when he returned and he knew she might never forgive him – and even if she did it would be a long road back to reconciliation with endless bloody marriage counselling – but it didn’t feel as final as telling her that he was moving country permanently to be with another woman. She’d never forgive him for that. It would be game over and he wasn’t quite ready for that finality yet. Was he being a coward? Was he simply putting off the inevitable? He didn’t know but right now, living in this glorious moment, he didn’t care.

  Once he’d hashed it out in his head, he was fairly satisfied with his plan but there was one flaw – he knew he didn’t have it in him to lie to her face. They’d known each other for more than fifteen years and he’d collapse like a house of cards and give away his hand under her interrogation. So instead, he had thought of leaving a note for her which told her everything she needed to know for now, while he went to France and established if the fantasy lived up to the reality, if it was really over between him and Kate for good, and if he could live apart from the children long term. He knew these were big questions that he wouldn’t be able to answer until he had tried it for real. He was protecting them, he felt, from a horrible truth that they may never even need to know about. Yes, he told himself again, it was the right course of action.

  Next to him, Claire drained her wine and then leaned over and took his hand, squeezing it gently, signalling that she wanted him to refill it. He squeezed it back and reached for the bottle. It was easier for her, he thought, she had no ties at home and nothing to stop her from moving countries at the drop of a hat. She was still in her twenties and had that confidence and carefree abandon that everyone seemed to lose when they hit their thirties. All she needed was a toothbrush and passport and she was good to go. Even quitting London was straightforward because she worked as a temp and rented her flat. She never liked to stay in one place for too long, she told him, there was too much to do in the world, too much to see.

  He was intoxicated by her spontaneity but also terrified, fea
ring the day when she might get bored of him and move on to her next adventure. But when he confessed this to her late one night, whispering his insecurities into her ear as they lay in bed, she had showered him with kisses and assured him this was not the case – that he was the anchor she had been looking for. The problem was, she wanted to moor on the other side of the English bloody Channel. And now he had agreed to go with her.

  From what she had told him about her upbringing, he knew Claire had some money which had been left to her by her fairly well-off parents – her dad had been a self-made businessman and her mum a TV actress – and that safety net allowed her to live with a kind of frivolity that many people couldn’t afford. An only child, her mum had died when she was at college, leaving some money for her in a trust which had become available when she was twenty-one. Then when her dad had passed away, everything that was left had come to her, including the house in France that lay just a few miles away, waiting for someone to breathe life into it again.

  They’d talked a lot about how it would work. Claire had suggested staying in the B&B while they made the house, which had been untouched and unloved for two years, liveable. They’d get wifi installed, make sure they had the home comforts they were used to and then they’d move in. He would start his new job and she would begin work on converting the outbuildings on the plot of land into holiday lets. Between them, they had worked out that they’d have enough money to get by, even with the extra cost of a London flat. He’d go back home a few weeks after he had left and arrange to meet Kate, to sit down and have it all out with her, one way or another. She would have had time to calm down a bit by then and hopefully he would have had time to work out whether he’d done the right thing.