“Enough silence!” yelled Eleanor, slamming her palm onto the kitchen table. “Ten years I’ve tolerated it, and now this!”
Charlotte sat opposite, eyes downcast. Her hands shook as she lifted her teacup to her lips. A crumpled hospital report lay between them.
“What do you want from me?” Charlotte whispered.
“The truth!” Eleanor sprang up and paced the worn linoleum. “I want the truth! Why did you stay silent? Why didn’t you tell me then, when you knew?”
Charlotte set her cup down heavily, tea sloshing onto the formica. “Because I was afraid,” she confessed. “Afraid you’d hate me.”
“And you’re not afraid now?” Eleanor’s voice trembled with fury. “Now that I’ve found out myself?”
A thump echoed from the flat downstairs, probably Mrs. Higgins objecting. Eleanor sank back onto her chair, trying to steady herself, but her hands still trembled.
“Tell me everything,” she demanded. “From the start.”
Charlotte dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief corner. “I didn’t know how to tell you. You seemed so happy then, newly wed…”
“Don’t dodge! Be straight!”
“I saw Simon with that woman. In that café off Piccadilly. By the window. Holding hands. She was pregnant.”
Eleanor felt the floor tilt. She knew about his infidelity. But not that someone had witnessed it so long ago.
“When?”
“Six months after your wedding,” Charlotte’s voice was barely audible. “Walking home from work, I spotted them by chance. Didn’t believe it was him at first. But then they stepped outside. No mistaking Simon.”
“And?” Caroline prompted.
“I nearly approached, but…” Charlotte faltered. “He kissed her. Tenderly, like you kiss someone you adore. Then he placed his hand on her stomach.”
Eleanor closed her eyes. Painful memories surged – that period when she dreamed of children, but Simon kept putting it off.
“So, he had a child with another woman even then?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. Eleanor, I truly wanted to tell you, but…”
“But you chose silence. Ten years!”
Charlotte flinched at her friend’s sharp tone. “I thought it would pass. That he’d come to his senses. You were so in love, planning children, buying little outfits…”
“Little outfits,” repeated Eleanor bitterly. “While he was raising someone else’s child.”
She stood and moved to the window. Children played in the council estate courtyard below, shouting, laughing by the swings. Eleanor had dreamed so fiercely of her own. Now forty-three, time felt scarce.
“Eleanor, forgive me,” Charlotte approached her. “I know it was wrong. But I couldn’t shatter your happiness.”
“What happiness?” Eleanor turned. “Happiness living with a liar? Spending your best years on a man who doesn’t love you?”
“He did love you! I saw how he looked at you.”
“Saw? When did you see? While he betrayed me with a pregnant mistress?”
Charlotte hung her head. Her friend’s words stung, but she knew she deserved them. “I thought I was doing right,” she whispered.
“Right?” Eleanor’s laugh was hollow with pain. “Right would’ve been telling me the truth back then. Maybe I wouldn’t have wasted ten years.”
The telephone shrilled in the hall. Eleanor went to answer it, leaving Charlotte by the window.
“Hello?” Eleanor answered wearily.
“Hi, it’s Simon. Working late tonight. Don’t wait up.”
Eleanor checked the clock. Seven PM. Work hours long over.
“Understood,” she replied flatly. “Goodbye.”
She returned to the kitchen. Charlotte sat crumbling the handkerchief in her hands.
“Him?”
“Yes. Working late again.”
“Eleanor, perhaps things are different now? Maybe he’s changed?”
Eleanor pulled several photos from her handbag, flinging them onto the table. “See for yourself.”
Charlotte leaned over the photos. Simon with the same woman, older now, beside a boy aged nine or ten.
“His son,” Eleanor explained. “Hired a private investigator yesterday. Simon’s led a double life for ten years. Officially with me, actually with them.”
Charlotte clapped a hand over her mouth. “Good Lord, Eleanor, I didn’t know…”
“Of course not. Because you were silent for a decade.”
“But if I’d told you then, would you have believed me?”
Eleanor paused. Would she? Or written it off as envy?
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Perhaps not. But I could have checked. Instead, ten years in the dark.”
Charlotte stood and flicked on the kettle, though tea already cooled in their cups. “What will you do now?” she asked.
“Divorce. What else is there?”
“Does he know you know?”
“Not yet. But he will.”
Eleanor gathered the photos, stashing them away. Her hands shook less, but a storm still raged within.
“You know the worst of it?” she said. “Not the cheating. It’s the lost years. Ten years I’ll never get back.”
“You’re still young. Meet someone else.”
“At forty-three? With my catalogue of ailments?” Eleanor gave a wry smile. “Doubtful.”
Charlotte poured boiling water into fresh cups, the tea steeping too dark. Neither noticed.
“Eleanor, I understand your anger. You’ve every right. But I but wanted the best for you.”
“The road to hell,” Eleanor quoted thinly, “is paved with good intentions. You wanted to preserve my happy illusion. Instead, you helped him deceive me.”
“I didn’t help him! I only kept quiet!”
“Silence can be betrayal too.”
Charlotte looked down. They’d been friends since university halls, weathered first loves, heartbreaks, joys. Eleanor decisive, Charlotte cautious, preferring to mind her own.
“Remember meeting our husbands?” Charlotte asked suddenly.
“At Olivia’s party.”
“You declared you’d marry Simon that very night. I laughed and said it was too soon.”
“And?”
“I’ve never had your courage. Maybe if I had… I’d have told the truth straight away.”
Eleanor considered this. “Charlotte, I don’t want this to end our friendship. But I need time to… digest things.”
“I understand.”
“Ten years,” Eleanor repeated. “Ten years deceived. Planning holidays, saving pennies, dreaming of children he was busy raising elsewhere.”
Charlotte nodded. She remembered Eleanor buying toys, glowing over Simon’s gifts, believing in their golden future.
“So what now?” Charlotte asked. “When will you confront him?”
“Tonight. When he gets home from his mistress.”
“Maybe wait until morning? Think things over properly?”
“No. Enough waiting. I’ve wasted too much time already.”
Eleanor stood, gathering her coat. Charlotte walked her to the door.
“Eleanor, ring me later. Please?” she requested.
“We’ll see.”
Eleanor left Charlotte’s flat and climbed slowly to her own flat on the fourth floor. Inside, silent and empty. Simon would be lingering with his other family, as usual.
She went to the bedroom, pulling old photo albums from the wardrobe. Their wedding, honeymoon in Cornwall, early years. She looked so radiant, so in love in those pictures.
And Simon? Eleanor scrutinised his face. Was that smile real? Or already dreaming of the other woman?
The phone rang again. Eleanor ignored it. On the fourth ring, she lifted the receiver.
“Yes?”
“Eleanor, it’s me. Be home very late. Don’t wait up.”
“Simon, we need to talk.”
“Can’t right now. Tomorrow.”
Helen stared at the door, her breath catching like fog on glass as the key finally scraped in the lock, turning the handle towards a decade of lies laid bare on the polished oak table before her.
