Chapter Forty-Eight
"He did what?" I gasped, unable to believe my years.
"Tony and I, he... we... Oh, Mum!" she cried, her eyes unable to meet mine again.
My daughter Isobel had just blurted out the almost unbelievable news that shortly after his affair with fifty-one-year-old me had come to an abrupt end, my first, completely unscrupulous lover Tony had started fucking her instead.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, Tony had been a close family friend throughout most of her life and was the father of her most recent and most serious boyfriend, Jack.
What's more, for the last few months, that same Tony had been trying hard to get back into my own knickers again, less than a year after unceremoniously dumping me.
"Christ, Izzy! He's more than twice your age!" I burst out, amazed.
"I know!" she wailed. "I didn't mean it to happen."
"Did he force you?" I asked, horrified.
Izzy shook her head.
"It wasn't like that," she confessed. "He didn't give me much choice the first time but after that..."
"After the first time?" I exclaimed. "How many times did it happen?"
Izzy made to reply but I held up my hand to prevent her.
"No, don't answer that," I snapped, though I was desperate to know.
"We were both a bit drunk," Izzy, mumbled, her tears finally coming under control. "It was an accident; well, an accident the first time. Please don't tell Dad! Or the boys. Jack would dump me in a second and I'd die!"
"Of course I won't tell anyone. Trust me. Mutually Assured Destruction, remember?"
Izzy grinned wanly as the sound of a car engine starting then pulling away came from outside the window.
"Do you want to tell me how it happened?" I asked. "Would it help to talk about it?"
Izzy nodded. "I think so."
"Come downstairs. Your Dad's just gone to play golf."
Still snuffling, she followed me down the stairs to the large, bright kitchen. Pete had indeed gone out, so we had the house to ourselves. I put the kettle on.
"Tea?" I asked then thought again. "Unless you feel the need for something stronger?"
"Tea is fine Mum," she replied, perching on one of the bar stools and leaning heavily on her elbows. "And wine. I think we're going to need them both."
I messed around rinsing and putting tea in the pot, giving Izzy time to pour two large glasses of wine and calm down before the serious conversation started. The water took an age to boil, but I was patient and soon placed two steaming mugs of hot liquid on the breakfast bar then took my place on the other stool and looked closely at my daughter.
Her face was pink and puffy from crying, her body language somewhere between fearful and confrontational.
"So, when did it all happen?" I asked with as reassuring a smile as I could muster.
Izzy took one of her many deep breaths.
"After Simon dumped me. I wasn't in a good place for a long time, remember?"
I nodded. She had been in a bad state having first been caught cheating on her then boyfriend with Simon, then soon afterwards been dumped again when he had been sent a video of Izzy and Steve fucking.
It was one of a series of videos, some of which I had seen. At that moment I was using the threat of publicising them to make my daughter keep my own affair secret.
"I came home from Uni and needed a shoulder to cry on," she continued. "I wanted to talk to you, but when I got home, I found you and Dad were away. I'd come all that way on the train and needed to talk to someone I trusted, so I went to see my friends. I tried Julie's house but no-one was there so I went round to see if they were at their Dad's flat."
"And Tony was on his own?"
"Sort of. There was a lady there when I arrived, but she disappeared as soon as she saw me on the doorstep. Tony looked very unhappy at first, but when he saw how angry and upset I was, he let me in."
"What happened then?" I asked, dumbfounded.
"I asked where everyone was. He told me they had gone away for the weekend with their Mum. I started crying."
"How did he handle that?" I wondered.
Tony wasn't known for his sympathetic nature with the kids, but Izzy wasn't a kid anymore. Given her response, I had clearly misjudged him.
"Mum, he was so lovely," she said pleadingly, looking me in the eye. "I sat on the sofa, he poured us both large drinks and listened while I poured my heart out. He didn't judge me, he didn't interrupt. He just kept listening and making little comments that made me feel better."
I had experienced Tony's caring, listening side myself. It was at least partly genuine, but in my opinion the thought of conquest was never far from his mind. But maybe I was being unfair.
"You told him what had happened? That you had cheated on Steve and been dumped?"
She nodded.
"I just had to talk to someone, and he was the only one who would listen."
"Did you tell him why you got dumped the second time?"
She nodded again.
"I told him about the videos too. I must have been quite drunk by then because being honest seemed the right thing to do. It seems crazy now, but he was such a good listener and at the time, I felt much better having told someone."
"What did he do then?"
"He came and sat next to me on the sofa and held my hand. He put his other hand on my knee. I felt even better."
"What were you wearing?" I asked suspiciously.
"Just my normal skirt and top," she replied innocently.
I sighed. For my skinny, sporty daughter, a normal skirt was so short it barely covered her knickers and her usual top was skin-tight, revealing to the world the braless outline of the few pairs of boobs in Britain smaller than my own.
She was dressed that way now and thought nothing of it. Tony would have seen it as an invitation as, I suspected, would most men.
"Did he try to touch you?" I asked, suspiciously.