Chapter 1

Stand not upon the order of your going.

Macbeth Act 3, Scene 4

It was such a relief to close the cabin door behind me and flop onto the bunk. It was the first time I had been alone in four days; not that I am all that fond of my own company, but the axis of my little world had been tilted less than twenty minutes ago and I needed to decide what to do about it.

“Jen and I are going off together,” Geoff told me, appearing like a jack-in-the-box up the companionway just behind my right shoulder while I sat at breakfast.

Even though this was only the second morning of our anniversary cruise, we had already established an on-board routine. Geoff and Jen would meet on the upper deck to jog two miles before joining Iain and me for breakfast. The evening before we had decided to take the excursion around Corsica, our first stopping point on the week-long cruise of the Mediterranean. Geoff accepted Jen’s challenge to cycle around Ajaccio, while Iain and I opted for a coach tour. It was just like old times, the couples separating into active and passive pairs.

“Yes dear. You told me last night that you and she were spending the day on bicycles touring the inaccessible parts of the island. Iain and I are joining the tour of the scenery.”

Geoff had been standing between me and the rising sun but now he moved so I could see that he was wearing his pompous face. He only ever wears that expression when he has done something wrong and is about to confess it. Before I had time to wonder what he had done, he blurted it out.

“No Beth, it’s not just the cycle ride. Jen and I are a couple. She will be sharing my cabin from now on. I would be grateful if you will make other arrangements before we return from the trip.”

Iain reached across the table to squeeze my hand: “You’re most welcome to share my cabin, Beth. I mean, I’ve wanted you for years.”

So, there it was: the axis of my little world had been shifted. After years of living in the temperate zone I was being forced into some other climate; arctic or tropical, I could not yet tell, but certainly very different from my complacent expectations a few moments before. I am a fifty-five-year-old mother, married to Geoff for a month short of thirty years. My instinct was to throw things at my husband; pound him with my fists; shout obscenities at him, dredging up every slight he had put on me over the years.

I think it was Iain’s stupid suggestion that he and I complete the swap that brought back my perspective. Bad as this was it was nothing like as traumatic as the first time our son Robert had an epileptic fit. Both Geoff and I had been present; he stood helplessly wringing his hands and weeping, while I went into full mother mode, turning my baby into the recovery position and making sure his tongue had not gone back into his throat. I had to yell at Geoff before he collected his wits sufficiently to call for an ambulance.

I discovered that day an underused ability in myself to cope in a crisis. It is not simply that I remain calm and reassuring: my mind seems to sort out the priorities. All through the months when Robert’s condition was being assessed I was able to maintain objectivity. Geoff was too emotional to sit through the hours of tests and expert analysis by consultants, but I somehow kept my fears for the future at bay. In the end, the correct medication was found allowing our son to live a normal life.

“Off you go and join the peloton for your ride, Geoff. We can discuss the details over dinner.”

It only takes an instant for the brain to review memories, and I am sure that neither man noticed the delay in my answer while I remembered the trauma of Robert’s illness. Iain was still gently squeezing my hand, his big brown eyes pleading for a response. I wanted Geoff to leave before I took any action. He continued to stand silently watching me for perhaps a minute before he turned and went back down the companionway without uttering another word.

“You’re a good friend, Iain,” I smiled, although I think it may have looked more like a grimace. “And a good companion on holiday, but I have no interest in you as a partner or lover or whatever it is that you are offering.” I stood, collecting my purse. “I need a few minutes to redo my make-up. I’ll see you at the gangplank at ten-thirty.”

Dignity intact, I withdrew from the scene of my comprehensive defeat and retreated to my cabin. Lying on my side, curled into the foetal position, I let myself feel the shame and misery for a few minutes. Then I kicked myself hard on the bottom and set my mind to dealing with my new world. The immediate question was, what do I do about Geoff leaving me for another woman? To my amazement, my first response was to wonder if he was worth keeping. I had never previously doubted that it was my destiny to spend the rest of my life with the man I married.

It was certainly not my idea to destroy my world, but it was undeniably attractive to consider life without him. Such thoughts will have to wait until I have dealt with the immediate consequences. Typically, Geoff has claimed our cabin for his sordid affair, and he expects me to make other arrangements for myself. It is also typical of my former friend Jen that she would be absent when he threw the shit into the fan.

There was time before I met Iain to talk to the assistant cruise director, Paula. She had been at our table the previous evening, an elegant woman about my age. She and I had got on well from the outset. As women do, we exchanged confidences, so I knew that she was recovering from a nasty divorce. I was certain that she would help me to find alternative accommodation for my errant husband if she possibly could.

By the time I met Iain, my smile was genuine: dinner tonight was going to be interesting.

“Jennifer only told me last night after we got back to our cabin,” he began as soon as we met. “She swore me to secrecy.”

“And you felt that you owed her something despite her dumping you for another man?”

We were standing on a lower deck, the outer wall of which had been folded back to reveal a gently sloping walkway. It had canvas walls and ceiling, presumably so that nervous passengers would not know the moment they crossed the oily harbour waters separating the ship from the quay.

“Give me your keycard,” I demanded. Being married to Jen has conditioned him to obey simple orders so he handed over the oblong of plastic, not even commenting when I handed it to Paula, who had come to see us off on our excursion.

Iain looked like a pup that had just messed the floor, so I took his arm to permit him to guide me safely to the tarmacked surface of the pier. That simple gesture helped to restore his self-confidence. He is an amusing and informative companion, and I was glad to have him with me; he does wonders for my self-esteem.

There seemed to be hundreds of people milling about as we exited the canvas tunnel. The din was incredible, and it took some time to make sense of the melee. Three luxury coaches were parked close by with smartly dressed locals carrying clipboards demanding to see our excursion tickets. There were no other vehicles but there were dozens of men and women holding placards and all shouting at the tops of their voices. Many of the placards were crudely lettered ‘taxi’, but there were some more sophisticated banners advertising restaurants and souvenir shops in the town.

I was fascinated by the colour and vivacity of the scene. Ours is a small cruise liner with only about four hundred passengers and it appeared that at least three hundred of them were crowded onto the pier. We had signed up for a cruise to smaller ports that could not accommodate the larger ships.

“It’s ideal for people who have become jaded by the conventional cruises,” Jennifer enthused, when she was selling us on the idea of cruising to celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary, while Geoff and I sagely nodded our heads in agreement. The truth is that neither of us had been on a cruise before. Jen, in her role as manager of a local branch of a national travel company, was the expert and we accepted her recommendation without quibble.

Not that Geoff accepted her advice without reservations. Janet and Iain flew to Majorca to join the cruise ship First Class, while my husband chose to save money by travelling tourist class. As I am thirty centimetres shorter than he is, he suffered more than I did from the cramped seating. I wonder if he will try to talk Jennifer into tourist class for the return flight to Gatwick.

I was still holding Iain’s arm, content to let him find the coach we would be travelling on to view the island. Geoff always looked after that aspect of our holidays. He is an engineer who, both from training and temperament, seeks to reduce problems to their components before seeking the solution. I am easily distracted, noticing what is happening on the periphery. In the present case, the objective is to find our coach, identify ourselves to the guide and settle in our seats. I was happy to cede that task to Iain. He would, after all, have to accept the role if he was serious about being Geoff’s replacement.

Apart from making frequent, rather sheepish apologies, Iain had said very little. Indeed, the din of locals shouting to attract the custom of the passengers who were not boarding the coaches, made conversation impossible. I did what I always do in such circumstances: I conducted an inventory. It was a trick I learned when the children were little more than babies. I would plan and pack for an outing, then switch off from the clamorous excitement of our departure to run over again in my mind the preparations I had made.

“Mum’s off again!” Robert would grin as I stood in the kitchen or hallway deep in thought when the rest of the family was bustling around. “Where do you go, Mum?” Alice would ask with the little worried frown wrinkling her brow. “Don’t you want to come with us?” She was always the insecure one. Now she is married, she does checks of her own but, unlike me, she makes written lists.

This time, while I allowed Iain to guide me to a seat on the coach, I had to consider something rather more important than whether I had remembered to pack the swimming costumes. My husband had announced that he was leaving me, and I had to review the circumstances leading to that decision and to plan for a future without the man I married almost thirty years before. I was surprised to find that I was no longer greatly perturbed by his bombshell. He was certainly not alone in noticing that our marriage had lost much of its dynamism. I had been thinking more along the lines of sprucing up the existing relationship, but there is a part of me that is attracted by the idea of starting again from scratch.

Geoff will have reached his decision by applying his engineering training. It is a great pity that Newton and James Watt did not find equations governing human emotions. If they had, Geoff would be the very model of a husband. It is not that he is unemotional, it is simply that he despises his response as irrational, even shameful. His decision to leave me will have been based on some reasoning that seems logical to him at this moment. My problem is to decide if his conviction will last.

This is not the first time he has considered a future without me. On every occasion, I have recognised the signs before he has. Despising emotions, he makes very little effort to hide his appreciation of certain ladies he has met over the thirty years we have been married. Their attraction is chiefly intellectual although he always picks girls with curvy figures. I was training as a secretary when we met and fell in love and he has, quite properly, little respect for my reasoning powers. He was content, most of the time, to be the brains of our partnership, leaving me the duties of loving and caring; by default, I was landed with the task of introducing the children to culture.

Geoff was proof against the most alluring of secretaries; he had, in his opinion, a better one already hooked and landed. It was female engineers or high-flying business executives that got through his defences. I usually detected his latest crush before he himself was aware that his admiration had blossomed into something more. The first time it happened, I was devastated: how could I compete against wonder woman? I watched, helpless, as he smartened his appearance and reduced his involvement with me and his kids.

It was his certainty that intellect was paramount that defeated him on that first excursion into infidelity, and it proved equally fatal to his hopes on subsequent forays. He offered intellectual parity to women who were actually desperate to be loved not as brains but as warm, sensual people. His unemotional courtship sent them straight out the door, leaving my husband to return to his family, slightly battered and utterly confused.

Between them, the guide and Iain interrupted my musing. To be fair, the guide only spoke to draw attention to some interesting feature close to the road, but Iain decided to build on his success in getting us onto the correct coach to insinuate his suit for replacing my husband in my life. He made a fairly good case while he confined his pleas to the areas of art and classical music, but his attempts to express his feelings of admiration for my person were clumsy. It would have been better if he had honestly admitted to lust, but he carefully skated around any gambit that could end in my bedroom.

He did not stir in me the slightest spark of passion. It is true that Geoff and I had been living more like roommates than lovers since the children left the nest, but I know that he could still arouse me if he wished to do so. Once I had permitted that thought liberty it was impossible to exclude the realisation that I had not made myself particularly enticing in bed. I think the desire is still there, but I know that I have been putting barriers in his way when he has sought to arouse my former passion.

As so often seems to happen, I was still wondering whether I wanted to rekindle my romantic feelings for my husband or abandon ship to find someone new, when we stopped for lunch. We had to share a table with a couple of about my age who were on honeymoon. Mary and Bill were both enjoying a second run in the marriage race. When I replied to their query about Iain and me, telling them we were not married – at least, not to each other – Mary became quite giggly; she assumed that we were in the throes of an illicit romance.

“I’m really envious,” she moaned. “Bill and me got together in such an ordinary way.”

Their partners at the time had pressed them into becoming swingers to spice up their marriages. Bill and Mary were not enthusiastic about the idea of multiple sexual partners but both recognised that their marriages were stagnant, so they went along to a swingers’ club. After a few visits, they began to seek each other out, spending the evening in a quiet spot where they could chat the night away.

“We didn’t actually have sex with each other at the club,” Mary insisted. “In fact, we never even took our clothes off.”

Her partner was, however, outraged when she and Bill started to meet outside the club. That, according to him, was adultery and he would not tolerate such behaviour in a wife. That suited Mary perfectly but there was a complication when Bill’s wife decided that she wanted to end her career as a swinger and reconcile with her husband. He opted to move in with Mary and the resulting divorce was messy and took more than a year to become final. They had been on a cruise the previous year while they were still living in sin.

“I did love my hubby for years and years,” she insisted. “But we both changed such a lot, especially once the kids no longer needed us. I just don’t think it’s possible to love one man for the whole of your life.”

“I’m hoping you can manage forty years, babe. I’m fifty next year and I don’t suppose I’ll care very much if you leave me when I’m ninety.”

We were still laughing at that when Iain became serious: “Maybe we should limit marriages to twenty years. That’s plenty of time to break the back of bringing up kids. I can certainly look back with pleasure on my first twenty years with Jen but the last ten have been hell.”

After that, we were all quite glad to get back on the coach to enjoy more of the beauty of Corsica. The cyclists had not returned so Iain and I went for a drink in one of the ship’s bars. Thinking back to the flattering remarks Iain had been peppering me with all day, I had concluded that he was not as surprised as I was when he learned that Geoff and Jennifer intended to move in together.

“How long have you known or suspected that Jen had her claws into my husband.”

“I don’t really think that’s fair, Beth. Geoff wants this just as much as she does, you know. He told me the day we moved in that your marriage was pretty much of a joke. I told him mine was in the same state and we kidded about doing a swap.”

That certainly hit a nerve. The four of us had been fairly close friends a quarter of a century before when we lived next door to each other. Then Iain was promoted to a post in Scotland and the friendship dwindled to an exchange of cards at Christmas and the children’s birthdays. Their return to a house three along from ours just six weeks before the start of the cruise was an occasion for quiet pleasure rather than great rejoicing. The truth is that neither Geoff nor I liked Jen very much although we were both fond of Iain.

Clearly, Geoff had not disliked Jen as much as I did. Equally clearly, I had missed the signs that my marriage was in very serious trouble. I knew, of course, that it needed attention, but I thought it was rather like a garden that had been neglected for a few weeks but only needed a couple of days of hard work to restore its beauty. I also knew that the problem arose from my work commitments. While the other three had careers, I was a secretary when Geoff and I met, and I was happy to leave work to be a full-time mother.

Even after Alice was in school and I rejoined the working class, it was never more than a job. I was fortunate to be selected by Mark Anderson as his personal assistant. We both had trouble taking the new job description seriously; I still felt like a secretary. Mark and his wife Phoebe were in their sixties at the time, hiding their fondness for each other under a veil of insults. Geoff and Mark got on well together.

Phoebe and I played tennis, where she generally thrashed me although she is almost ten years my senior. Until suddenly she no longer beat me, losing energy after only a few games. After some persuasion, she consulted her doctor who diagnosed a rapidly developing cancer. She faced the near certainty of an early death with great courage, but Mark went totally to pieces. By that time, I had been his PA for ten years and I knew every aspect of his business. As Mark became less and less capable of doing his job, it seemed entirely natural that I should step in to cover his back.

For all our married life, I had made home a safe refuge for my husband and our two children. Whatever problems they were having at work or in school, I was always there with time to listen, knowledge to understand and empathy to help them to come to terms with their lives. When Phoebe became ill, I transferred those skills to the office. I was there for her and Mark, but I was also having to spend more time in the office completing the tasks that he ignored in his grief.

Of course, I explained everything to Geoff, and he gave me his wholehearted support. At first, I attempted to keep giving him the home life he had become accustomed to, but the truth is that at fifty-odd I simply did not have the energy to care for everyone. The children no longer needed me, and I thought that my husband would survive a few months of neglect. I remember being pleased that he responded to the sudden onset of Phoebe’s illness by deciding to start exercising. He joined a gym but quickly decided that he liked neither the atmosphere nor the company; after a week or two, he began jogging morning and evening.

Given his training and temperament, he drew up charts of times and distances, but he did the actual running alone, until Jen and Iain moved back into the neighbourhood six weeks before. I was still in bed when he left on his morning jog and had left for the office before he returned. I was getting home so late that I hardly ever saw evidence of his evening jog except when I cleaned the laundry basket. Sitting drinking coffee with Iain, I vaguely recalled a few grumbles from Geoff about Jen upsetting his schedule.

When we first met them as newlyweds, he and Jen did not bond. I think he astonished himself by falling in love with me, a secretary with a fairly ordinary intellect; he appreciated my other qualities and was prepared to overlook my intellectual deficiencies. Jen is certainly no smarter than I am and a lot less empathic, so she was not at all his kind of girl. I was not much more inclined to friendship until we became pregnant at the same time.

The boys had been the first to bond. Geoff, with his engineering skills was a master of do-it-yourself. Iain had no aptitude for household chores, but he had an almost magical touch with plants. He designed and planted our garden while Geoff was fitting wardrobes and putting up curtain rails in Jen’s house. We did not socialise much since we still had friends from before our marriages. At weekends, we had to clean the house, launder clothes and iron. Jen and I were polite to each other but distant.

All that changed when I was in the waiting room at the doctor’s surgery, early for my appointment as usual, when Jen burst in late for hers. We had coffee together afterwards since we were both too excited by our news to keep it to ourselves: we were both expecting our first child. From then on, we became inseparable, sharing every twinge and kick for the next nine months; later we shared the experience of caring for the babies.

Jen and I had very different views on almost every aspect of marriage and children. For a start, she could not wait to get back to building her career in travel and tourism, while I was perfectly content to stay at home with Robert, my tiny miracle. Paulie, Jen’s little girl, arrived two weeks early, but Robert and I seemed happy enough to wait. As a result, he is almost a month younger than his childhood friend. Jen gave up on breast feeding; she happily left Iain to prepare bottles and feed the baby while she went to work part-time in the travel agency. I, predictably, absolutely loved holding my son to my breast while he grew strong on the milk I provided.

Iain had stopped switching between praise for my character and figure with pleas for me to take his courtship seriously, but he was still looking at me like a dog with a marrow bone while I sat and brooded. I grimaced when I found my half cup of coffee was cold and bitter.

“The cyclists are back just waiting for the coach to pick them up to bring them back to the ship.” Paula appeared, bustling as usual. “Hans wants you two in his office while he interviews your significant others. Chop-chop, you two!”

Hans turned out to be Paula’s boss, the head of passenger welfare on our cruise liner. He planned to talk to Geoff and Jennifer in the outer, public part of his office suite while Iain and I lurked out of sight but within hearing range in his inner sanctum. Paula saw us settled and then excused herself, leaving Iain and me sitting not quite sure what we were going to witness. It was a couple of minutes before the outer door opened and a strange voice, presumably Hans, could be heard inviting Geoff and Jen in by name.

“I understand that you two wish to be considered a couple. Normally that would be no concern of mine, but I cannot stand by while your wife, an innocent party, is forced to find alternative accommodation so you may satisfy your lust.”

“Did she tell you she’s innocent?” Jen demanded. “If she had treated this poor man as a wife should, he might have stayed with her. She’s as much to blame as anyone.”

“Be that as it may,” Hans replied. “Mrs. Struthers will keep her stateroom, as will Mr. Brownlea. I am prepared to let you two share a cabin on another deck.”

“A stateroom?” Jen inquired. “My company does a lot of business with this shipping company, and they would not be pleased if I was not treated right.”

“I don’t think you realise how lucky you are to be offered a cabin. When I informed the captain, his first instinct was to put both of you ashore, as he is entitled to do under maritime law.”

Jen started to reply, but Geoff talked over her: “We will accept your offer under protest. I was wrong to demand that my wife find other accommodation, although I had been assured that she would be pleased enough with the alternative she was to be offered.”

The outer door opened and Hans, sounding relieved, passed responsibility for the lovers to Paula who would take them to their new cabin. Jen demanded that they be allowed access to their old staterooms to pack baggage. As their voices receded, I heard Paula assure them that their luggage had been packed, moved and unpacked in their new cabin. After the sound of their voices died away, Hans came into his office grinning at us.

“Paula and I have both suffered from cheating spouses; giving that pair some grief has made my day. The captain’s missus recently dumped him so he would like the pair of you to join him at his table for dinner tomorrow evening, just so your ex-es get the full message.”

“Will my wife make trouble for you? I mean, she does carry some weight in her travel company.”

“I shouldn’t worry about it. Her chairman sails with us once or twice a year. He and the skipper go on fishing holidays together when they’re both free.”

Hans excused himself and we left his office, arm in arm. It was now almost nine hours since Geoff had announced his bid for freedom, and I was suddenly exhausted. I had been nursing my anger and disappointment but now that I had everything except my loving husband all the starch had gone out of me. I wanted nothing so much as to lock myself in my cabin and wallow in self-pity. I think I would have done so if it had not been for Iain.

“I don’t think I can face dinner, Beth. Everyone is going to be looking at us, the losers. Jen is going to be so annoyed with me since I have the stateroom, and she doesn’t. She’s bound to make a scene, demanding that I swap with her and Geoff.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong, Iain. If anyone should be ashamed it’s Jen and Geoff. We will go to dinner and later we will have a few dances before we go to our separate cabins. Let them worry about public opinion!”

And that is exactly what we did. Bill and Mary joined us after dinner, so we stayed up later than I had planned. We were less than totally sober when Geoff and Jen appeared. They chose a table on the other side of the room, sitting glumly while Iain and I laughed and chatted with our new friends. It was almost eleven when I ran out of fuel and had to ask to be excused. Iain rose to escort me to my cabin but was easily persuaded to remain with Mary and Bill.

As I reached the door of the bar, Geoff took my arm and guided me outside.

“What are you trying to do to me, Beth? Jen and I weren’t going to make a fuss, but you have gone for the nuclear option. Is there anyone on this ship who doesn’t know our business? Just keep your mouth shut until we get home and can discuss things in private.”

“What can you offer me in return for my cooperation?”

“I would have thought that thirty years of marriage would have entitled me to some discretion, if not some understanding.”

“Funnily enough, I had the same idea.” I pulled clear of his hand and started walking to my stateroom. Just before I turned down the corridor, I turned: “You might want to use room service tomorrow, Geoff. Iain and I are dining at the captain’s table.”

I had left the party early to spend time alone in my cabin trying to bring some coherent thought out of the turmoil Geoff had started with his announcement at breakfast. His outburst at the door of the bar left me shaken and even more unsettled. It was no surprise that he had made his coldly practical decision to leave me, but he seemed to have expected that I would accept the end of our marriage unemotionally. Did he really think that I would support his defection?

Back in my stateroom, I threw myself on the bed and sobbed. I wondered, bitterly, which of Newton’s Laws of Planetary Motion had led my husband to conclude that he and I were finished. Which engineering imperative forced him into the arms of another woman? Wallowing in self-pity, I felt that I was weighed down by a suffocating load of guilt; all I had to offer Geoff was love and that has been rejected.

I woke with a start to find the cabin lights still burning. I was lying on top of the bed wearing the outfit I had put on for the coach trip round Corsica. The mirror reflected a caricature of a human face, with my make-up streaked and rubbed into grotesque patterns. The gargoyle grinned back at me. My self-pity had gone, leaving me more excited than troubled by the uncertainties of my future. As I was luxuriating under a hot shower, I realised that Geoff had liberated me.