My husband is ranting about a stylist he works with sometimes.
She’s messed up a job they did together. She’s single and her two cats are fed prime fish and drink mineral water. She has been to dinner parties at our house. We once went to lunch and confided in each other. He’s bitching, and I know that if I come to her defence he will shoot me down. Then he almost shouts: “You know she once made a pass at me?”
Is he serious? Or is this a ploy to make me hate her too? “Really?” I sound more curious than upset.
“Yes,” he says, “yes, she did.”
“Where?”
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“In the street,” he says.
“When?”
“About eight years ago.”
“Where exactly?”
“Near her office.”
“Had you been out to dinner?”
“No.”
For some reason I am convinced they must have had dinner. Why would someone lunge at someone else in the middle of the day? It seems odd.
Eight years ago my son was a year old. She made a pass at a man who had a baby, and whose wife was her friend. I wonder not at her disloyalty or even at her brazen behaviour but that my husband has kept this information secret for so long.
“What did she exactly say?” I ask, experiencing the first stirrings of outrage.
“Something about, if I was ever lonely . . .” I imagine her giving him a flash of her stocking.
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“Do you think it really was a pass?”
“Yes,” he replies vaguely, “I think so.”
I wonder if he has other secrets? Did he kiss her? I try to recall if anyone has made a pass at me and conclude, not for a very long time. There were flirtations before we got married, and a slight vibe with someone’s husband. But there hasn’t been a full-on flirt: secret texts, a stolen kiss, e-mails that should be deleted. I wonder what to do next? I realise that I don’t care about what this hussy said or did. I just want my own secret and I want it now.