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Chapter Three: Grace

Grace’s silent scream was at the side of a Sunday morning football pitch whilst having a bit of mindless small talk with Charlie’s mum.

‘Oh bless, look at my Charlie, one of his socks has fallen down.’

‘Oh yeah. Yeah, look at him. Oh bless.’ Grace smiled and put her hands in the back pockets of her skinny jeans. She didn’t really know where to put them. She barely knew where to put herself.

That bastard! How could he do this to me?

‘At least they’ve got good weather for it. It was chucking it down yesterday.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. It’s cold, but it’s nice to see the sun.’ Another smile, another platitude. Grace didn’t really know what she was saying.

Cheat! Liar! I’m never going to let him come back. Ever.

‘Goal! Yes! Go on Charlie!’

‘Yay! Brilliant. Well done, Charlie.’

No man is going to hurt me like that again.

Grace grinned in what she hoped looked like happiness, or at least something that didn’t look like her soul had been wrenched from her body, and she and Charlie’s mum walked towards the brick changing rooms.

Anyone glancing at her would think she was a normal, contented football mum enjoying the bright, crisp January day, the white clouds scudding across a chilly marine sky and her son’s hat-trick. That the worst part of her day would be cleaning muddy football boots and scouring the freezer for what to cook for tea. To a casual onlooker, Grace knew she would look perfectly at ease.

Blimey, she was good at this, she acknowledged. She should maybe have been an actress, instead of someone who worked in a hat boutique. No acting required there. Well, maybe a bit. She sometimes had to tell old battle-axes they looked nice in their pink mother-of-the bride hats or anyone they looked good in a fascinator.

Charlie’s mum had certainly fallen for her act this morning. She had no clue that Grace’s husband of twelve years had admitted to her before football this morning that he was cheating on her.

Grace had kicked him out. Kicked him to the kerb. He’d talked to the hand ’cause the face wasn’t listening. They used to watch programmes like that together. Jerry Springer. At the weekends. They loved trash TV. They’d laugh smugly at all those pathetic people airing all their hilarious, dirty laundry in public. The affairs, the drama, the grubby awfulness. Awful Jerry. The terrible people with mullets and missing teeth. Those appalling beefed-up bouncers hamming it up and marching around. It was the sort of programme you could really enjoy for an hour or two, before it started making you feel ill.

She now felt really ill: sicker than she’d ever felt. A terrible, grubby drama had played out in her own kitchen and James’s dirty laundry had flapped everywhere like filthy pigeons’ wings, whacking her in the face and making her fight for breath.

He’d talked to the back of her head as he’d packed his bag. Each time he’d tried to wheedle his way out of things, she’d turned her body. Every time he tried to say it wouldn’t happen again, she’d edged further away. Eventually, she’d found herself in a corner of the kitchen, by the bin, facing the tiles and thinking they needed a good scrub.

She’d heard the front door close. She’d turned round to find James gone and Daniel standing by the fridge, with his football bag. Grace had to find a way to tell him.

That his father had done the dirty on her and wouldn’t be coming back.

Grace smiled again at Charlie’s mum and nodded at a story about the funny thing Charlie had said at dinner last night. Her silent scream was nowhere near loud or long enough.

The Wednesday before, at about half past seven in the evening, she had grabbed James’s phone to check the weather for Daniel’s district cross-country rally the next day. She needed to know exactly what to bring: fleeces or raincoats or both. (James wasn’t coming of course; too busy.) She wanted to get the bag of water and energy-boosting snacks packed and ready for the morning. She wanted to be organised.

Grace kept a pristine, and ridiculously tidy and organised home. Everything had its place. If things didn’t work or weren’t needed, they were gone. If there was a mess anywhere, it was eradicated immediately. Her friends always teased her and said that you needed to hold on to your handbag in that house; if you put it down on a table for longer than five seconds, Grace would chuck it out.

Her phone was upstairs. James’s was on the hall table. As she’d picked it up, she saw there was a thumbnail photo on the screen. It looked like a breast. A naked breast! She quickly clicked on the photo and made it full-size. Yes, a breast. A big one. Bigger than hers, certainly. With a really dark, erect nipple. It was just the one. Not a pair. Sender: work. The breast looked like it was lying on a bed, on its side.

Grace had been so startled. What the hell was this and who’d sent it? Work? That was a bit vague. She swallowed and threw the phone back down on the table. Oh God. Was James cheating?

‘What the hell’s this?’ she’d said, furious and unnerved, as James came out of the downstairs loo, fiddling with his tie. He’d looked at the phone and laughed.

‘It’s nothing,’ he’d said. He said a friend had sent it to him, that it was just a photo doing the rounds: one of those photos blokes pass around ‘for a laugh’. Hilarious, she’d thought. He did always think it all a laugh, that sort of thing – looking at girls on the street, gawping at Baywatch-type beauties on the telly. She’d catch him at it and he’d say, ‘What?’, all laughing innocence.

She accepted his explanation, but still, she wondered about it, after he’d slid his phone into his briefcase, kissed her fleetingly on the lips and left the house. He had a very important meeting that day: he was high up in oil. They’d met when he’d been further down in oil and Grace had worked in the millinery department at John Lewis in Oxford Street.

The photo wasn’t especially porn-y. The breast wasn’t edged in black lace or peeping out of red PVC. It didn’t look sensational enough to be something shared over and over, however pervy and childish the men were. It looked like a real woman’s breast, on a real woman’s bed; it looked personal. But, she’d really wanted to believe him. She liked a quiet life. Her, James and Daniel. The three of them. She was desperate to believe him and for life to carry on as normal.

So it had. For four days she’d bought it.

Until this morning. Way before her alarm was supposed to go off so she could wake Daniel for football, Grace had been woken by a random truck clattering down the road. She couldn’t get back to sleep so lay there for a while. James was sound-o. Over his sleeping body she could see his phone on his bedside table. He’d been a bit funny with that phone since the breast episode – protective. He’d even started taking it into the bathroom with him.

She’d got up and, careful to avoid all the annoying creaks in their new-build floorboards, had tiptoed round to his side of the bed and picked it up. She knew his password, tapped it in and swiped. There was a message on the screen.

Bleach!

Bleach? How strange. What did that mean? And who would send that? His mother? Why? James didn’t clean – and neither did his mother, actually. Was it a random message sent by mistake?

Then she saw it was from ‘Work’.

Her heart pounding, she clicked open the message thread. From the top of the screen, in their jaunty speech bubbles, the messages went like this:

Great night on Thursday!

Mmm. Great, great night! Thank u

Did you get that gravy off your blouse?

Blouse? When was I wearing a blouse? ;-)

At dinner, sexy!

Oh yes I remember! Briefly. Yes, I managed to get it off.

With a lot of scrubbing? Friction?

Funny. Ha.

Then in the same grey reply bubbles:

No.

Bleach!

James stirred in his sleep, made one of his little noises. Grace carefully placed his phone back on the bedside table, walked into the en-suite bathroom and quietly threw up.

When she’d staggered back into the bedroom, her face red, her eyes bloodshot, her hands shaking and an awful taste in her mouth, she’d paced, left to right, right to left. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening.

This was happening.

She’d sat on the bed, on James’s feet.

‘Ow!’

‘Wake up.’

He harrumphed, turned over and pulled the duvet over his head.

‘Wake up!’

‘What?!’

‘Wake up, NOW!’ She was hissing; she didn’t want to wake Daniel.

Reluctantly, James sat up. Grace shoved the phone and the messages in his face.

‘You’re having an affair.’

He actually snorted! It turned into a cough. He ran the back of his hand across his mouth.

‘What! You’ve well got the wrong end of the stick! That’s just a client I went out for dinner with. Just a random client.’

‘A random client you call sexy?’

‘For God’s sake. That’s just a turn of phrase! Business speak.’

‘Sexy is not a turn of phrase!’ she snarled, in a terrified whisper. ‘Come on, James! I’m not a bloody idiot! I suppose rubbing and friction is some business jargon, too! Was it an all-hands meeting? Did you have an ideas shower? She said her blouse was off! You’re shagging her!’

His head was lowered. He wouldn’t look at her.

‘That was her breast,’ she said quietly.

‘What breast?’

‘You’re unbelievable, James. The breast on your phone.’

‘Oh, that.’

‘Yes, that!’

He shrugged. ‘A tit’s a tit,’ he said. His hair was all sticking up and he had a five o’clock shadow. She used to find it endearing. Now she just hated him.

It was typical of the sort of thing he always said, with that cheeky, handsome smile of his. Tits are just tits; there’s no harm in looking; more than a handful is a waste (although considering the size of Work’s, he didn’t stand by this sentiment). She was appalled to realise that she actually used to find it funny when he spoke about women like that. Everyone did. He was a good bloke was James, a laugh. If he said things like that, people just shrugged and smiled. He could get away with it. He was a top man. The best.

Grace had had a lot of boyfriends; she was one of those girls who always had a boy waiting in the wings. They were all okay, nothing special. Not quite good enough for her. Then James had come along. He was special. Tall and dark blond and ridiculously handsome. Funny and brilliant and surrounded by adoring people – his mum, his brothers and sisters, his work colleagues. Everyone she met when she was with him told her what a great guy he was: she was surprised he didn’t receive applause just for walking down the street. She had thought, yes, at last. James was special. James deserved her; at last there was somebody who did.

That was all gone now.

‘A tit – God I hate that word – is not just a tit! I want you to admit it, James.’ James was ruffling his sticky-up hair like Stan Laurel, but he still looked unruffled, unaffected. ‘So I can kick you out. Have you been sleeping with someone: yes or no?’

‘What?’ He turned his baby blues directly towards hers. Those eyes with the eyelashes that were longer than hers. Those eyes she had stared into on their wedding day and seen everything in.

‘Yes or no? Tell the truth. I’ll respect you more.’

Another hair ruffle. Was he about to do the Stan Laurel whimper? Unlikely. He wasn’t the whimpering kind. He tried to turn on his age-old charm. He smiled his slow, sexy smile and narrowed his eyes. ‘If I tell you the truth would there be a chance I don’t have to go?’

‘Yes.’

He paused, then said, ‘Okay, then it’s true. I’m bang to rights. Sorry, Grace.’ And his winning smile became a pleading smirk, one that always made her stomach flip and made her forgive him anything. Not now. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut. She would have collapsed onto the bed next to him if she could bear to be that close. She would never put her body that close to his again.

‘I lied,’ she said. ‘You have to go. Now.’

She knew he would have loved to slam the back door as he left, but he chose not to let the entire neighbourhood know he was highly displeased. He was all about appearances, our James. And Grace had to keep up hers.

She’d had to swallow down the tears she wanted to cry her heart out with and take Daniel to Sunday football.

That evening, after the football kit had been washed and tumble-dried and Daniel had gone to bed with his iPad, Grace put love in the bin. Large cream, wooden letters that spelt L.O.V.E. to be exact. They used to sit on the mantelpiece in the living room, when love had meant something. Along with them she dumped a wooden plaque that said LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE and a slate heart that had hung in the kitchen on the wall by the fridge that said MR and MRS. It left a lighter, heart-shaped space on the paintwork. She frowned; she’d have to touch that up.

The lid of her posh, soft-close bin settled back into place and she opened the fridge and took out a bottle of wine. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but tonight she needed wine. She’d stopped off at the Co-op on the way home from football to get some while Daniel had waited in the car. A glimpse of herself in the reflection of the shop’s chiller door had horrified her. It was a catastrophic hair day. Really bad. The wind on the football pitch had whipped her thick, blonde curls into an unruly bush. A cowlick bounced on her forehead. James liked her hair; he always said it was cute. Bastard. Maybe she’d straighten it now; maybe she’d iron out everything James had ever liked about it.

She stood by the fridge and poured some of the bottle into the glass ready and waiting on the worktop, and her eye caught her calendar. It had three columns, one for James, one for her, one for Daniel. She used three different coloured pens for each of them, perfect and precise.

She quite liked it when her friends called her ‘Princess Grace’. They didn’t mean it nastily; she wasn’t princess-y: she didn’t have pouting hissy fits and expect people to bring her cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, on velvet cushions or anything, nor was she a J-Lo style demanding diva. But she did like kitten heels and pale pink nail varnish, cashmere cardis and pretty ballerina flats. She never overdid her make-up or wore tarty clothes. She liked small, delicate stud earrings. She would be horrified at anything remotely Pat Butcher. She was a princess but not princess-y: if she had the perfect life she had worked hard to get it.

She believed in morals. She believed people got what they deserved. Her favourite book, as a child, was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and she knew exactly what Roald Dahl was saying. Good children were given chocolate factories; awful children got what was coming to them. Follow the path; toe the line.

She took a pair of scissors from the kitchen drawer, carefully cut off James’s column from the calendar and threw it in the bin. The calendar was now lopsided so she took some Blu-Tack and glued the drooping corner to the back of the kitchen door. Then she took the green pen from her neat pen pot and threw that into the bin as well.

She was done. With James. With men. If James, the very best man of all, had turned out to be a traitor, a hurter, a destroyer, then there would be no more men for her. H.O.M.E as declared in big letters on the wall of her living room was now just about her and Daniel.

Men were a mistake. A big mistake.

And no man would ever hurt her again.