Kristen sat on her sofa huddled into a protective ball, wrapped in a self-pity that she knew she had to shake off eventually. The afternoon dragged on endlessly, pointlessly, as every day had done for the last few weeks. All she could do was replay the same events in her mind, try to work out what had gone wrong, what she could have done better. But no obvious answers sprung out at her.
What hurt her most was that she had guessed nothing; it had come out purely by accident, and it wasn't even her who uncovered it. A mistyped date in an email, her friend Pam swinging by the house to drop something off to her when she was already away, and an unexpected, grandstand view through the patio doors of Tony and one of his clients screwing on the very same couch she was curled up on. She wondered how many more times it had happened; for some reason, instead of pressing him for more details she had grilled Pam over what she saw, despite her obvious embarrassment. But then somehow she hadn't expected to get an honest answer from him.
Kristen wondered what it was about this woman that had proved so irresistible to him. She had met her in passing at his office months before, and she wasn't exactly some teenage bimbo. She had to be at least a decade older than Kristen, and mean and scrawny-looking into the bargain. No doubt it was that mean streak that Tony had been trying to cure during his long, extended meetings with her, those extra couple of hours he'd bravely put in once a week. What a sap, Kristen thought bitterly.
She flopped over onto her back and gazed up at the ceiling, wondering if all they needed was time apart, to come to terms with it and then find some common ground again. She knew deep down there was no real chance of that. Things had been going south for some time, and she realised that the thought of ending it had already occurred to her; no more than a faint possibility, but the wish had been there. Being apart now wasn't going to bring them any closer together in the long run.
She had also learnt quickly that she wasn't going to get much support, despite being the wronged party. That was the price she was paying for a circle of friends and acquaintances that were nearly all her husband's. Most of her friends and family were a long way away, while she was trapped in this very nice house which she knew she would have to fight to hang onto. That, again, was the price to pay for spending too long living off his money, for putting her own career on the back-burner as she had done ever since they got married.
There was still Pam, in whom she could confide all these depressing thoughts, but she could sense her reluctance every time they met up now. She clearly felt awkward at having discovered the affair in the first place and brought it out into the open. Unnecessary guilt -- the age-old female trait, Kristen reflected. Pam was the oldest friend she had, but she had spent too long around her and Tony as a married couple, chatting to them about bland, safe married things. She wasn't used to the kind of intimate, searching conversations that Kristen needed right now.
When they next met over coffee, Pam perched awkwardly at the kitchen table while Kristen slouched in her robe, feeling distinctly un-house proud. She nodded towards the refrigerator. "You see that? They spent the whole weekend here, and that bitch cleared it out and put her own stuff in there. Like I wouldn't notice!" She shook her head in disbelief.
"Look, you need to get out of here," Pam advised her, fingers worrying the handle of her coffee mug. "You won't be able to stop thinking about it otherwise."
"I know. But I mean, look at me. No,
listen
to me," Kristen declared, realising in Pam's face that she was getting a little sick of doing just that. "I'm a total misery.
I
don't want to be around me, so I can't see why anyone else would."
She had never expected herself to sound quite so self-pitying. She liked to think she had always been a relaxed person; she wasn't a nagger and she wasn't a worrier, at least no more than was healthy. When they were newlyweds, Tony had never tired of telling people that she was the most approachable person he'd ever met, that he'd felt at ease within minutes of their first meeting. So approachable that he could hardly get out of the house fast enough when the truth had emerged.
Pam gave a little sigh and put down her mug. "Look, everyone has ups and downs in life. You've got plenty of time to get back on your feet. You're still young."
"I'm thirty-two. If I was a Hollywood actress I'd be starting to panic already."
"You don't look it. How old were you when you married Tony, twenty-six?"
"Twenty-seven." Kristen thought of the fifth anniversary plans they'd made that would have to be scrapped - at least that would be a handy saving for both of them.
"You look exactly the same as your wedding photos. You always had a young face." Kristen murmured a thank you to her. She mused on those pictures of herself in her dress, the light orange hair, sharp cheekbones and dimples beaming out at the camera as she grinned from ear to ear. It was true she still had those looks, but she wondered if she came across as too much of a kid. At least she was no longer asked for ID like she had been through most of her twenties, but whenever she dressed down in jeans and a T-shirt she had the sneaking feeling she resembled a teenage boy.
"Anyway, it's not the looks. I feel old. Being with Tony put years on my life. Listening to him go on about how we were going to save up enough to move here, and then invest in this, and choose the right schools for our kids, blah blah blah. Didn't you get bored listening to all that?"
"He did like the sound of his own voice."
"Yeah, exactly. Everything had to be part of the big plan. I should have said something, told him that maybe I didn't want it all so quickly, but I never felt I could." Kristen gave a hollow little laugh. "And we're the ones who are forcing them to commit!"
"Well honey, if you wanted someone fun and spontaneous..." Pam shrugged. "He was never going to be that kind of guy. Lawyers like to read the small print before they do something wild."
"He was a little bit wild, when I first knew him. Dunno where all that went."
"Do you miss that, then? The reckless twenties?" All of a sudden Pam seemed interested again.
"I miss what I
should
have been doing back then. Not what I actually did, which was a whole lot of nothing." Kristen leaned forward against the table, a hangdog expression on her face. "I never enjoyed myself half as much as I should have. I was too busy looking at other people and wondering what their secret was, how I could be more like them." A thought occurred to her. "They were probably thinking the same thing about me, of course."
"Well, you've got a chance to get all that back again now. Nothing tying you down."
"Yeah, I just..." Kristen shrugged. "I don't know if I've got the patience to start playing the game again. Y'know, the dating rules, swapping numbers, waiting for him to make a move, all of that. And I certainly don't have the confidence to start hooking up randomly here and there."
"I don't think you have to worry about that!" exclaimed Pam. "You've got the looks to attract anyone if you felt like it."
"You think so?"
Pam shifted awkwardly on her seat as though she'd been caught saying something obscene. "Well, yeah," she said hastily. "I mean if you really wanted to pick up some guy, just to get it on, you could definitely do it. I'm not saying you would or anything, you're not the trashy type."
Kristen looked back at Pam, watching her finish her coffee, and let an awful lot of words go unsaid before she finally spoke. "So... did you have anything in mind, then?"
"Nope, but we could always go out together this weekend. Chris is out of town for a few days, so while the cat's away..." Her sentence died in her throat and her face contorted into a grimace. "Sorry."
Kristen smiled, pushed her chair back and stood up. "Come on Pam, even I can see the funny side to that one. Make sure he's still away if you're thinking of inviting a guy back home, won't you? You might be the one who gets lucky, not me."
Pam passed her empty coffee cup to her. "Don't worry, there's no danger of that. I'm definitely off the market. I'm allowed to look, though," she added with a tinge of defiance. "I can always do some scouting for you. We can go to that new bar in town that's just opened. I've heard they're so desperate for customers that they're paying young people to come in and glam up the place."
"Sounds good. They might even be desperate enough to let us in as well."
As Friday night drew closer, Kristen's cynicism was gradually replaced by excitement at the thought of meeting someone new. She realised she was feeling nervous at the prospect of it going well, rather than of it going badly, and that was a good feeling to have. When she got home from work that afternoon she wasted no time relaxing and went straight upstairs to prepare herself. Putting on the war paint after so long was tiring work, but she had to admit she felt ten times better once the effect was complete. By the time she slipped on her earrings and glanced at herself in the mirror, she was ready to go into battle.
She heard the doorbell ring and trod gingerly down the stairs in heels that she hadn't worn since her twenties. When she opened the door, she barely had time to look into Pam's eyes before they bulged wide and swept downwards across her entire body.
