The Best of Friends by Alex Day (english novels to read .TXT) 📗

and trying to look normal – whatever that is. The handset is clutched in my sweaty palm and I replace it, slowly and deliberately. Then I turn towards the front door which is swinging wide open, no longer a barrier to the cold grey outside.

‘Are you still out there?’ I call to Dan. And then, as I feel the rush of frigid air billowing in, I urge him to get himself inside. I’m not mad with him anymore, not the way I was, not since the phone call. How can I be, when the sin I’ve committed is so great, so shaming, so unconscionable? If it ever came out, I’d need to garner every ounce of his forgiveness – and I’m not sure I could, or even that it would be enough. Oh, but it’s hard, pretending all the time that nothing’s wrong, that I am exactly who I seem to be. Sometimes I forget what, exactly, I’m pretending about. Confusion befuddles everything. All I can be really certain about is this. Dan can’t find out.

Ever.

All our marriage, I’ve been subordinate to him. He has made the decisions and I have fallen in line. I guess both of us had our reasons for liking it that way in the beginning. I saw the life of luxury that Dan could offer me and I thought that would make up for losing my independence. I loved him, for God’s sake. And I was young enough to believe, completely and utterly, that love is enough.

He saw a young, mouldable trophy wife who’d look good on his arm and always be there for him, the buttress behind the facade. And he loved me, I’m sure of it. Still does, quite probably. It’s just that he’s been so rich and so successful for so long that he believes himself to have risen above the standards – moral or otherwise – by which the mere mortals amongst us must abide.

Thinking back to the beginning though, it was always going to come unstuck at some stage. People have to kick back, don’t they? Everyone needs some autonomy. The more I found mine in the kind of way that other, saner people would look down upon, the more I felt I had to take a backseat in all other matters.

A kind of quid pro quo of unremitting acquiescence in return for my underhand exploits.

The crunch point came, though, when we were living in Kuala Lumpur and it was time to start thinking about preparatory schooling for the boys. Before I met Dan, I had no experience of the kind of life where you leave home to go to school whilst still in single figures and effectively never return. It’s a miracle he ever met someone like me, whose background couldn’t have been more different. Our meeting was a chance encounter at a party held by a friend of a friend of mine who just happened to be Dan’s cousin. I still can’t imagine why I was there, how I got invited. The truth is that I probably wasn’t. My friends and I were fairly adept at gatecrashing.

But I digress. Dan only understands one type of education. The exact same one he had: boarding prep school followed by boarding public school followed by Oxford. I didn’t understand it then and I’m not sure I’m any the wiser now. I put up so many arguments against following this route for my own children. The idea of the twins going off to England alone at such a young age appalled me. But Dan insisted and this insistence was unrelenting. He kept on and on and on at me until I gave in. And so it was that Jonny and Angus found themselves on a Heathrow-bound plane at the age of nine. Nine! The only concession Dan made to my sensibilities was allowing me to fly with them rather than handing them over to the school escort service at KL international airport.

But perhaps that only made the parting harder. It broke my heart to leave them. Hampshire was cold and rainy; though born in New York, we’d left before they were two so all they’d ever known was the steamy heat of the Far East – Hong Kong, Singapore, KL – and the riotous, relentless sunshine of Rio, Delhi, and Lima. When I said goodbye to them, I don’t think they had any concept of how long it was going to be before they saw me again. I did, and I hated it. I cried all the way back to Malaysia.

How long they cried for I’ve never asked because I couldn’t bear to know.

Thank God I managed to keep hold of Toby and Sam, but that was only because when Toby hit seven, we were on our way back to England anyway. I put my foot down and both the younger ones attend prep school as day boys. That was one of the many reasons I was so determined to buy this house; it is close enough to drive them to school (the one that Dan and all his family have attended since time immemorial) and back every day. But Toby will be starting at Rugby in September, and three years later, Sam will follow. I’m dreading it.

The result of losing my older boys so young is that I overdo it with them all. I mean, they’re absolutely not spoilt, not at all. But I shower them with love and attention and days out and specially cooked favourite foods, most of which they probably don’t appreciate, wearing myself out in the process. That’s not the point, though. The point is both assuaging my guilt and getting my fill of them in the time that I have, as if I can store up the contact with them so that it lasts when they’re gone.

This small rebellion over schooling is the only time I’ve insisted on getting my own way. In all other matters, I do what Dan wants. I argue with him about