Jeff was already sprinting out of the double doors.
TRACY WALKED DOWN MARYLEBONE High Street with only a flimsy umbrella to protect her from the torrential rain, but nothing could dampen her spirits. It had been a long day but a wonderful one. She looked around for a cab.
It had been so long since she’d felt this happy, so long since she’d felt happy at all, that she almost didn’t know what to do with herself. There was a part of her that felt guilty about Jeff. Poor Jeff. He’d tried so hard to understand her grief over losing their baby. Tracy could see the effort he was making, but somehow that made everything twenty times worse. None of this was Jeff’s fault.
But it isn’t my fault either. I can’t help who I am. And I can’t stop needing what I need.
Alan understood. Alan got it, got her, in ways that Jeff never could.
Tracy had seen him again today. It had reached the point where simply being in the room with him had the capacity to make her happy, and hopeful for the future. Perhaps that was the key. Hope. Tracy had tried, she really had, but she’d felt so trapped in her married life with Jeff since they got back to London, so hopeless. Forty-five Eaton Square, the home that used to be her sanctuary, had become a prison.
No more.
Tracy was on her way home now to talk to Jeff. She was nervous, but at the same time she wanted to tell him. Needed to tell him, to unburden herself at last. Just the thought of peeling off her wet clothes, climbing into the shower and washing away the pain of the past year filled her with a profound sense of relief.
No more secrets.
It was time for the next chapter to begin.
THE LIGHTS WERE OFF when she got back to the house. Jeff didn’t usually get home till seven or eight and would probably be later tonight since he wasn’t expecting her back. Tracy hadn’t known what time she would leave Alan’s, so had made up a story about dinner with a girlfriend.
That will be the last lie I tell him, she resolved, climbing the stairs. From now on it would be honesty all the way.
She pushed open the door to the master bedroom and froze. For a moment, quite a long moment actually, time stood completely still. Tracy’s eyes were sending one message to her brain, but something—her heart, perhaps—kept intercepting the signal and sending it back. This is what I am seeing, her brain seemed to be telling her, but it cannot be true.
She was so silent and still, barely even breathing, that it took Jeff a few moments to realize she was standing there. When he did, and their eyes finally met, he was standing by the window, locked in a passionate embrace with an utterly oblivious Rebecca Mortimer.
They were both still dressed, but Rebecca’s shirt was half unbuttoned, and Jeff’s hands were on her back as they kissed passionately. When Jeff saw Tracy and tried to pull away, Rebecca grabbed him like a drowning woman clinging to a life raft.
Stupidly, Tracy’s first thought was She has an amazing figure. Rebecca was wearing spray-on jeans that she was clearly itching for Jeff to help her out of. It was as if the whole thing was a scene in an erotic play. Some sort of fiction, from which Tracy could detach herself. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
The real Jeff, my Jeff, would never do that to me.
It was only when Rebecca turned, saw Tracy and screamed that the illusion shattered.
“How could you?” Tracy looked witheringly at Jeff.
“How could I? How could you?”
Straightening his hair, Jeff walked toward his wife looking as aggrieved as it was possible for someone to look with lipstick smeared all over his face and neck.
“You started it!”
“I-I . . . what?” Tracy stammered. “You’re in our bedroom with another woman!”
“Only because you’ve been having an affair with your fertility doctor!”
Tracy looked at him first with bafflement, then with disgust.
“Don’t try to deny it!” Jeff shouted at her.
“You make me sick,” said Tracy. As if seducing his intern wasn’t bad enough, now Jeff was trying to turn this around onto her? “How long has this been going on?”
“Nothing’s going on.”
Tracy laughed, a loud, brittle, ugly laugh with no joy in it. This can’t be happening. She couldn’t bring herself to look directly at Rebecca. But out of the corner of her eye she could have sworn she saw a distinct gleam of triumph in the younger woman’s eyes. Wrapping her anger around her like a cloak, Tracy turned on her heel and fled.
“Tracy! Wait!”