Chapter Two
“So, what’s wrong?” she asked when the waitress had finished setting down the tall latte glasses in front of them and silently slipped out of sight.
“Nothing,” Kimberley murmured unconvincingly, picking up her teaspoon to idly swish it round the frothy liquid. “Why does something have to be wrong?”
“Kimberley,” her friend smiled warmly back at her. “I know my youthful looks may be deceiving to you, but I wasn’t born yesterday. You get me out of recording to come and meet you for coffee. And then you show up with a face like a wet weekend. I know a distress call when I see one. So come on, out with it missy.”
“Oh Nadine, I’m sorry,” Kimberley instantly responded, intentionally stalling for time. “I totally forgot you were recording today.”
“No bother,” her Irish friend reassured her. “I needed a break or my voice was gonna up and walk out on me anyways. So...” she tapped the table to prompt Kimberley to cut to the chase.
“He’s back,” she offered quietly, not quite able to meet Nadine’s gaze.
“Who?”
Kimberley raised her eyebrows for emphasis as if there could only ever be one ‘he’ to cause her such distress and wasn’t it blindingly obvious whom she meant.
“Ashley,” she sighed at last.
“Ah,” said Nadine with a small nod, but offering nothing more.
“I just - we - weren’t expecting him back so soon.”
“Oh God!” the Irishwoman’s hand shot out to grasp Kimberley’s, her face incredulous, “He didn’t walk in on yous two?”
“No!” Kimberley let out a slight laugh, although she couldn’t really see anything funny about the situation. “No, Christ no, nothing like that. But, I just, we thought we’d have more time together, you know? We were going to have the whole week to ourselves and now…” she looked up at her friend, searching for some sort of reassurance to make her feel like she wasn’t behaving irrationally.
Of course she knew Nadine, and knew that the woman wasn’t there for placating words. That was Kimberley’s job. Nadine was far more pragmatic than that.
And on this occasion she did not disappoint.
“Well, it’s what you signed up for hun.”
“I know,” Kimberley replied ruefully, taking a large sip of her coffee as she did so.
“He is her husband.”
“I know,” she repeated, becoming a little more irritated at the stark truth of it all and her friend’s ability to present it in such black and white terms.
Secretly, of course, this was what Kimberley was hoping for. This is what Kimberley had always been hoping for when she first confided in Nadine. The sheer exhaustion she had experienced from keeping everything a secret, not being able to tell anyone, her family, her friends, the other girls, it had just compounded the pressure she was already feeling from the weight of her actions. Her feelings.
If she hadn’t been able to talk to someone about it Kimberley reckoned she would have quite simply gone mad. Gone mad and imploded. And Nadine seemed the logical choice for a confidant. The only person who truly knew both her and Cheryl and what they were to each other. What they meant to each other. The only person who might possibly be able to make any sense of their ridiculously exhausting predicament.
So she had sought out Nadine in the hope that it would lift the burden of the lies, all the lies, but subconsciously also wanting the woman to awaken her from her reverie, to give her the facts and make her see sense. To shake her until reality seeped back in and Kimberley no longer felt like she was swimming underwater with only glimpses of the surface before she was pulled down by the undertow.
