Infidelities Read Free Page B

heat coming off her, Helen always felt, like a feeling of her daughter’s certainty, her little body so solid and fixed and sure of itself in the world.
    ‘Can John John and Barney come too?’ she asked. She peered down at the twins, made a face at them and they twisted with delight.
    ‘Of course,’ Helen said.
    ‘Okay.’
    Which was how Helen had done it, made it seem like the most ordinary thing that she would have to go back to the same place where she’d been that morning, just to stand there again. She’d had a bag with her to do some shopping if she wanted to, as though she might be going to the square for that reason, keeping her daughter with her as a sort of alibi, to buy her an ice cream or a bag of sweets – because where would she have been sometimes in that period of her life without Winnie and that sturdy little body of hers? Set beside her in the street or in a shop and giving her a reason to be there, giving her something to do? Like a daughter’s hand can always hold on to a mother’s hand to keep the mother safe. And where, Helen thinks, would she be without that hold, even now, where?
    She’d looked down at Winnie, to see if she’d thought it was odd that they weren’t going home straight away, but Winnie just stuck her thumb in her mouth and peered around Helen to wiggle her fingers at the boys as Helen pushed them along in the pram. The twins kicked and twisted again and let out little shrieks of laughter.
    ‘You know, he is like a real spaceman, Win,’ Helen said. ‘He’s wearing a yellow dress, though, so more like Jesus.’
    Winnie nodded, the thumb stayed in her mouth. Really, it was the time for her sandwich and a glass of milk andthen her afternoon nap, Helen thought. They should be going home. Still she swung the pram around and back towards the square, thinking that if she could just see him, the monk, one more time, just put him again in the line of her vision, have that feeling that she’d had before of calmness and of still, keep the image of seeing him with her like a photo – she wouldn’t even necessarily have to go up close … But when they got there the crowd was so thick around him that she couldn’t even a catch a glimpse of his yellow robe. Then one of the boys started to cry, John, and Winnie was saying, ‘I’m
hungry
. I’m
hungry
, Mummy’ – so Helen gave up on the idea and they went home.
    *
    That had all been in the morning, and then, hours later, there was Bobby, sitting in front of her telling her about it. The crowd gathering, who’d been there with the monk, who hadn’t, what they’d said. In a way, Helen had thought, looking at him, you could say it was quite lovely, his enthusiasm for the story, the way Bobby seemed so involved, but in another way she also knew exactly how much he’d been drinking by the look in his eyes.
    He grinned at her. ‘Not every day, is it? We get something like this happening in olde-worlde middle England? Middle Earth more like it. It must have given you a shock, darling. Didn’t it? When you’re the one who
saw
him, after all.’
    He’d fixed her with his eyes as he said that – his pretty, deep blue eyes with that dark, private look that no one else could see except her. Which showed his hours ofnights spent alone in the kitchen with a whisky bottle, or knocking back vodka miniatures before meeting clients for lunch … It was all part of the same story. Bobby’s story.
We’re in this together
, the look said.
You are the only
one
. Helen turned away.
    ‘But I’m talking to you,’ Bobby had said.
    ‘I know.’ She could hear it in his voice then, the change. If anyone were to come into the kitchen now, a neighbour, a friend, he’d be jolly and charming and he’d be able to stay like that for another couple of hours, but here on his own, with just her …
    ‘I
said
I’m talking to you.’
    ‘What, then?’ Helen stood up from the table.
    ‘I’m saying that I don’t care what you saw or didn’t