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taking care of him. He made me feel special and wonderful in a way that James no longer did.

Hey! Maybe this was all just down to my rampaging ego. James no longer made me feel good about myself. So I latched on to the next available man who did make me feel good.

But, in all honesty, I really didn't think that was it.

Adam was special.

Adam and I were special.

Although not anymore.

Adam despised me now. For my stupidity in buying James's crappy explanation. And for the speed with which I left his bed and went off with someone else. Even if that someone else was my husband.

It really hurt that Adam thought so little of me. Although I didn't blame him. I didn't have a lot of respect for myself either.

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thirty-two

After the conversation with Adam on Tuesday, I worked hard at forgetting him. Every time I thought of him, I blanked it out. I tried to think of nice things, like the buzz of London. And the comfort of getting back to my own apartment. And how nice it would be to see all my friends again. And how interesting it would be to think about getting back to work. And how pleasant it would be to be back in a city where every second shop sells shoes.

And things would work out with James. I should be so happy. I had been granted everything that I'd absolutely ached for in the first month or so after he had left.

My life was going to be made all better. As though James's little indiscre- tion had never really happened. Hopefully I could just edit out these three months or so and carry on as planned. Kate was going to have her daddy. I was going to have my husband. We would restart our old life. And, if I had to take care to be quieter and less giddy and more serious and solicitous of James's happiness and peace of mind, then that was a small price to pay.

I was sure that if I worked at it, it wouldn't be as awful as it sounded. I'd learn my new personality. It'd be good for me. And the dread that I was feeling would pass.

And, of course, some of the sadness that I was feeling was the wrench of leaving my family. Bad and all as they were, I'd kind of grown used to them over the past weeks. Their anarchic version of family life seemed in- finitely more desirable

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than the calm, ordered existence that lay ahead of me with James.

I'd miss them. I'd miss Mum, I'd miss Dad, I'd miss Anna.

Hell, I might even miss Helen.

But maybe not.

I was finding this difficult. I still got terrible surges of anger and feeling mistreated by James. It was hard to resist the urge to pick up the phone and tell him what a selfish bastard he was. That he had no right to make me feel as if everything that had happened was all my fault. That I wasn't a bad person. That I wasn't even a selfish person. Or an immature one. But then I envisioned how he would respond to my rage. He'd be all rational explanations and condemnations. And I would feel even worse. More frustrated. As if I'd let myself down even more.

The one thing that made me able to contain all this rage was the realiza- tion that somewhere, somehow--entirely inadvertently, mind you--I had been wrong. The words that he said that night in the Italian restaurant kept echoing in my head: "If I'd been happy, why would I have left you?"

So I had no choice. I had to accept that it was my fault. He wouldn't have left me, he wouldn't have taken the terrible step of having an affair, of thinking that he was in love with someone else, if it hadn't been my fault.

James was not a womanizer. James was not a frivolous person. James thought long and hard--too bloody long and hard, if you asked me--about everything. He didn't do foolish and disruptive things just for the fun of it. He must have had no choice. He must have been at the end of his tether.

Things would be okay. Eventually things would get back to normal with James. It would just take a bit of time.

I was doing the right thing.

I finally decided that I would return to London the following Tuesday.

That would give me enough time to pack. But more importantly, to prepare myself to let go of my resentment against James, to be positive about my attitude to him.

On Friday afternoon, after two frantic days of packing clothes into a suitcase and then later finding them hanging in the back of Helen's closet, removing them from the wardrobe,

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repacking them into the suitcase and then a few hours later rediscovering them under Helen's bed, repacking them, etc., I decided to call James at work to tell him what time my flight was getting in on Tuesday. It was very odd. He had called me at least once a day since Tuesday, making in- quiries as to when I would be getting back. He seemed almost...anxious to see me. As though he was afraid that I wouldn't return. Of course, the nasty cynical part of me decided that he hadn't had either sex or his washing done since he moved out of the place with Denise and it was no wonder that he was awaiting my return with some anticipation.

But at the same time, it was unusual to feel wanted or needed by him. After the dismissive and patronizing way he had treated me while he was in Dublin, when he had given me the impression that he was doing me a favor by taking me back.

Now, although he was doing a good job of hiding it, he seemed insecure and uncertain of me.

But he needn't have worried.

I was going back.

I might not want to. But I was coming back.

I called and got his office. Some man answered and said "No, I'm afraid Mr. Webster isn't in the office just now."

Now we all know what happens here. This is the part in the book when the disembodied voice continues and says, "No, Mr. Webster has gone to the abortion clinic with his girlfriend Denise" or "No, Mr. Webster has taken the afternoon off to go home and sleep with his girlfriend Denise silly" or something similar. And where I whisper "Thank you. No, there's no message" and hang up with shaking hands and cancel the tickets back to London.

However, nothing of the sort happened. The disembodied voice asked, "Who's calling please?"

I had to think about that one for a minute.

Who was calling? Then I remembered.

"Oh, er, it's his wife," I said.

"Claire!" exclaimed the man, being ultrajovial. Probably to hide his awkwardness. "How are you? George here. Great to hear from you."

George was James's partner. And his friend as well. And,

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I suppose, in his macho, beer-drinking way, he was a friend of mine also.

George was a nice man. If you took certain characteristics of George as given then you would probably get along very well with him. For example, I wouldn't malign the man by saying that he played rugby. But there was no getting around the fact that he did watch it.