Chapter Thirty-Seven

 

 

FOR THE REST OF THE night, I tell people I’m feeling woozy from the champagne, and instead of more bubbles, people start to bring me cups of tea. Everyone keeps an eye on me but leaves me to my own devices. I sit in my seat taking in the surroundings, watching as Hetty’s guests begin to thin and leave the building. The rails are emptied and it seems to have been a successful night for the shop.

Once it’s just me and Het, Joe and Sam left in the shop, Joe locks the front door and he and Sam get to work sweeping up. Het comes and lies across the couch, resting her head in my lap while she sups champagne sideways every now and again.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “Have you had a good night?”

“I’ve had a great night apart from you embarrassing me.”

“Meant every word,” she exclaims, sounding drunk.

“Well…”

I’m going to have to put on the performance of my life if I’m to convince everyone that I’m fine, when I’m anything but fine. To think that Gage decided that was his only way out…

Clearly, he didn’t just decide on the spur of the moment to take his own life. He must have thought about it quite a lot before that day. He would have needed to have had the pills stored somewhere secure, hidden in the house, maybe among his things where the kids nor me would find them. Warrick had walked in on the truth… and Gage knew that eventually, everyone else would find out. He’d made plans for a way out, because for some reason, he couldn’t bear the thought of people knowing about his sexuality. Or maybe it was the thought of his career taking a hit – being in love with his teammate and all. No wonder Marvin looks like a haunted man, every time I bump into him.

Was it society that failed Gage? Or was it bigger than that? The tragic thing is that we’ll never know for sure. All I know is that if I had known, I would have chosen not to have been married to a gay man whose last thought every day was whether his wife needed to feel loved. Not even lusted after. I just needed to feel loved, and I’m pretty sure having been with Sam for a while now, that Gage never even loved me, not even as a companion. I was just his prize cow and his cock was nothing more than a turkey baster.

Did he do this because he was a coward? Or because he was ashamed of himself? I suppose I can’t keep torturing myself like this.

“Have you enjoyed the evening, anyway?” I ask Hetty, stroking my fingers through her hair as we watch the men amiably clean up, cracking jokes as they do. Filling bags with paper plates and tags that have fallen off dresses, they also find a pair of knickers on the floor – and everyone laughs because who knows how they got there.

It’s clear that chatting to Warrick has lessened Sam’s load somewhat; he just has no idea that he’s shifted it onto me instead.

“Do you know what? I’ve loved every second of tonight,” she admits. “And that’s pretty amazing, considering I was nervous as hell.”

“I bet. It’s a brave thing you did, Het. I couldn’t be prouder.”

“Thanks, Liz. You know that means a lot.”

“I’m glad we’re talking again, but also, I think we needed the space, right?”

“I agree,” she admits, albeit reluctantly.

“I just want to put you on notice that I’m going to be writing again… so you never know… you may not have me forever.”

“Oh, you’ve changed your tune?”

Sam overhears and interjects, “She was talking to that really tall weird looking fella earlier.”

“Oh, Vernon?” asks Hetty.

“That’s him. Jules’ colleague, right? I bet he changed her tune.”

I tell everyone in the room. “He told me someone picked up my play out of some director’s waste paper bin and Vernon’s amdram group loved it… and performed it!”

Hetty’s the first to sit up and hug me. “Oh, that’s amazing!”

“It’s positive, right? Yeah?”

“I’d say so. Did you hear that boys?”

“Oh yeah, we’ll be seeing her on Broadway before long,” Joe says, “if what Hetty’s told me about you is true. She goes on and on about those stories you used to send to magazines.”

“Oh, she did not?” Those were meant to be a secret. The money I used to win from those we spent on materials, making dresses on Mum’s sewing machine. Hetty would never wear the dresses, she always let me have them, but I knew she enjoyed making them.

“I’m afraid she did,” Joe admits.

The wonderful thing about Joe is he’s a recognisable footballer, but still not too big for his boots that he can’t sweep his girlfriend’s floors. I reckon he’s going to be like Warrick and get even more good-looking with age. As for Sam, he’s perfect and cannot be improved upon.

Sam puts down his sweeping brush and makes a beeline for me. “If you don’t mind guys, I’m going to get this little one home.”

“Absolutely, and thanks to both of you,” Hetty gushes, “I really mean it.”

“Oh, thank you.” He and Hetty hug and it’s a sight I never thought I’d see – her actually being nice to someone she may have to share me with.

“Night, Joe,” I call, “don’t let her keep you up too late.”

“I won’t,” he laughs, while stacking the champagne glasses we rented for the occasion – minus one or two now, of course.

Sam steers me towards a nearby taxi rank and we jump in a cab going home. I’m shattered and fighting a plethora of emotions as I lie back in his arms on the backseat.

When we get home, the house is empty. What I could really do with right now is to hold my kids, but they’re not here. The emptiness I’m feeling in this moment is incomparable, like I’ve been scooped out, never to be whole again.

Sam and I do our separate ablutions before he climbs into bed behind me, switching off the light.

“Did you really have fun?” he asks, spooning up to me. “You seem… different.”

“Vernon’s revelation threw me through a loop,” I lie, sort of, kind of – a white lie evading the big black lie in the room. “It’s a lot for me to digest, being considered a proper writer and everything. It’s major.”

“I’m so proud of you,” he gushes, kissing my shoulder.

“Not tonight, dude. I’m exhausted. I feel like I’ve been put through the grinder by Hetty’s speeches and everything.”

“Let me just hold you while you fall asleep, then.”

“Hmm, that sounds perfect baby.” I reach back for him and kiss his lips goodnight.

However, while he drops off to sleep, I remain wide awake, imagining where Gage fucked Marvin and how. Who fucked who? Did they just suck each other off? What happened? Really, I want to know. But now I’ll never know.

Should I confront Marvin? What if he asks me how I found out? Will he go on the warpath?

I know how insane all this sounds, but I just don’t know where to turn for fear that everything will fall apart if I out Gage as having been gay all along. After all, he took his own life because of this…

Why? Why did he do it? I still don’t get it.

He’s broken my heart and I’m not sure if anything will truly fix this.

 

***

 

MONDAY MORNING ROLLS round and I decide to forgo meeting Hetty for coffee. She texts me back, admitting she’s still recovering from the weekend launch party, anyway.

Instead, I find myself meeting up with someone else.

It’s a drizzly day, one of those quintessential English wet-weather days when only sitting inside with a pot of tea and a list of chores to catch up on will do. And yet I find myself here… with this chore.

He’s waiting for me when I walk into Planet Coffee, where everyone hip hangs out after lectures at uni – except during the day when losers like me roll up, pretending to have no responsibilities still.

“Hey,” I announce, standing by the side of his table for two.

“Oh, hey.” He’s almost on his feet, when I pat his arm and seat myself.

He’s not ordered for me. I don’t even know if I want anything.

“Are you okay?” he asks, in that hugely attractive, deep voice of his.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why, you worried about me, or something?”

He tries to shrug it off. “Naw, man.”

He’s worried about why I got him here.

“Do you want anything?” he asks. “I’ll go up and get it for you.”

I feel like I should order something, but I just don’t know if I have the appetite.

I decide to get the nastiness out of the way quickly – and that way I’ll know whether I’m staying or not.

“I know,” I tell him, with my hands on the table in front of me, my eyes focusing on them, clasped together – because they’re about the only part of me right now that is together.

He doesn’t have a response for me, and I’m feeling awkward, but I can’t help but look up – needing his reaction.

“Know, what?” he asks.

As he stares at me, trying to figure me out, I realise I can’t find any appetite for food or drink – not while I’m awaiting the verdict. If I hear it from the horse’s mouth finally, I don’t know how I will react. It might be a physically ugly reaction, who knows. I can’t predict how his confession might make me feel.

“About you and Gage,” I manage, my bottom lip suddenly numb and refusing to sit properly beneath my top one.

There’s something different about his whole demeanour suddenly and the tough guy exterior fades, accompanied by a little twitch in his eye.

He knows he could sit here and lie to my face, but what would be the point?

Who am I going to tell about this? What would I have to gain from it?

What does he have to fear?

Marvin stares into the distance, fighting his shame? Disgust? Who knows. He looks tormented, that’s for sure.

“I swear, that morning, when I left him at yours, he was alive,” Marvin insists, as though imagining my only qualm might be to find out if Marvin aided my husband.

“Did you know he was tracking my phone?”

He squints, shaking his head, utterly baffled. “What?”

I form a steeple with my hands and stare through the hole, as if it might provide me with a plausible way out of all this – even when I know that a cure isn’t going to present itself – ever. I’m forever going to carry this pain because we shared children, and regardless of my own personal mourning or lack thereof, I will always mourn the loss of their father on their behalf.

“Gage was tracking my phone. Did he know about me and Sam?”

Marvin hunches over, and for a big guy to suddenly look so small, it’s a pitiful sight to see. Reduced by grief, he appears much weaker than he actually is.

“He knew you had a thing for someone, yeah.”

“And what did he think about it?”

Marvin stares into my eyes, disgusted by me. “Is that the reason why you got me here? So you can interrogate me about our private conversations? So you can relive this whole thing and put us through it, all over again?”

“Yep,” I respond, in a robotic way, but I can’t help it.

“You don’t give a shit about what I’ve been through.”

I stare him dead in the eye. “Are you going to argue that you didn’t knowingly, even willingly, partake of adultery?”

He gulps. I won’t be belittled, not by him – not by anyone. Hetty taught me that.

“Now, what did he think of me and Sam?”

Marvin looks royally pissed off. “He doubted you would actually go through with it, but he was still scared. He didn’t want to lose the kids.”

“Well, I did go through with it. The weekend before he did what he did.”

Marvin drums his fingers on the table. “I asked him so many times… it was always a no.”

“To leave me?”

“Yeah,” he admits, fighting tears.

I would feel sorry for him, but he’s partly responsible for all of this.

“I begged, over and over…” He hides his face from an intrigued audience nearby. “…about how attitudes were changing in the rugby world, how it wouldn’t affect the team, how they’d accept us… because it’s viewed so differently now than it used to be.”

“And he kept saying no? Why? I need to know, Marvin. I need to know why he trapped me. Why he even went to lengths to make people think he was shagging other women.”

“So that they wouldn’t think he was shagging me,” he said.

“Yeah, but…”

“Gage struggled to rein it in in the locker rooms, if you know what I mean. He started telling them it was because he wasn’t getting any at home from the missus. He was so paranoid thinking people knew… and that’s why he was on a mission to snog the faces off random bitches on nights out, to prove he was being kept in the cold by you, not that he was hard because of all the men around us.”

My face must burn scarlet, because the room suddenly feels cold in comparison, despite being ambient.

In the sporting community, nobody has secrets. Nobody. Nothing is sacred and everyone knows everybody else’s business. Gym banter and locker-room confessions you think will be kept in confidence always somehow get out. However, to use me in such a way, to hide his sexuality – he may as well have smacked me in the face. Claiming I was the one responsible for our crap sex life? How dare he?

I’ve been out in public with Hetty enough times, talking about my crap sex life. If some nosey parker had overheard us talking and pitched the story to some cheap rag, with a subsequent headline along the lines of Rugby Star’s Marriage on the Rocks … I would have been able to deal with that, but this? It’s just a desecration of trust. It proves to me that some people are just so vile, they can never be trusted.

“Why, Marvin? Why keep up the façade, really? Why?”

He taps his fingers on the table, then holds his chin like it might drop off if he doesn’t.

“His mum.”

“Nora? What about her?”

“She hates gays,” he admits. “Her dad was a racist homophobe and she fell in love with one, too. Runs in the family, so really, Gage never stood a chance. Gage’s dad ran off cos he owed money and was in trouble, but in Nora’s eyes, he could still do no wrong. He was a victim of circumstance according to her. But Gage? Holding down a job. Successful, and kind. None of that would’ve counted if she’d found out he was gay. I tell you something, Gage forgave Nora so much, even though she brought him up believing that who he was, deep down, was wrong – he still forgave her.”

“She never said anything out of turn in front of me; nothing to suggest she was a really nasty piece of work.” Nora’s always been quite polite around me, even though I gathered early on that she and Gage had battled wars together during his childhood – wars he never fully opened up about – wars that had bonded them, obviously. Still, some wounds never fully heal, do they? Especially psychological ones.

“That’s because she’s clever and knows you’re posh and all.”

I laugh. “Posh and all? You’re kidding. I grew up above a chippy for fuck’s sake.”

“Oh, you know what I mean. You seem posh to people like her cos you’re all educated and shit.”

There’s a slight thawing of the atmosphere, but then there’s the reminder of something else…

“He took pills,” I tell Marvin. “He’d had them in the house already, before that day. He wouldn’t have had time to go out and get pills before I got home and found him like he was.”

“Sorry, how do you know all this? How did you even find out about me and him anyway?”

I tell him a cock and bull story about me finding some previously unchecked security footage and discovering it contained images of them together. Then I tell him about the discarded anti-depressants, the coroner report, plus the state of my en suite bathroom and the note Gage left on his phone for me.

By the time I’m done unleashing it all, Marvin is quietly weeping, his cupped hands catching his tears as they roll down his face.

“Did he love me?” I ask Marvin.

He bites his lip, shrugs, looking anywhere but at me. “He admired you, but I couldn’t say. I don’t think so. I don’t think he loved himself very much at all, that’s the thing. He was a nasty bastard to me, you know? I guess I thought he’d change, one day… and I forgave because I knew where it all came from… a place of pain and hurt so deep. A fear of rejection.”

I don’t think Marvin can appreciate the scope of my pain right now. If he had any idea at all, he wouldn’t be pitying Gage – he’d be pitying the one left behind, dealing with the fallout.

“I’m going to tell you a few things, and then I’m going to leave right after, okay?”

Marvin nods, even though aggrieved. I should smack him, but I shan’t waste my energy.

I look him dead in the eye and tell him straight, “The suffering I’ve endured has been unimaginable. You cannot comprehend what it’s been like, not just since his death, but before that too. You think you were doing right by forgiving him while you were carrying on, but in actual fact you were an enabler – as good as an accomplice to abuse. You might think I’m talking in haste right now, or that I’ll regret it later, but no. If you or he had harboured even a shred of thought for me over the years, you would have enlightened me and released me from the self-doubt I’ve been crippled by for so long. Instead, I’ve been made party to this deception, and I’ve lost all my self-respect in the process. I don’t care if you’re Emily’s godfather, or if you’ve got money set aside for the kids. I want you nowhere near me, or them. Gage needed professional help and he might have got it, had you but come to me and told me the truth. You’re a terrible human being for allowing the lies to continue, and I never, ever want to see you again.”

I’m violently shaking by the time I’m done, the effort of speaking my mind so exhausting and draining, I can hardly even believe I did it – even when I knew it would hurt to.

I leave the table swiftly and I’m gone.

I get in my car, drive somewhere safe, and then cry.

Just cry.