Free Who Are You? by Elizabeth Forbes

That’s what you get for sticking your hand up my wife’s skirt. That’ll make him think twice in the future. That’s some kind of shit marriage they have.’
    ‘Hang on,’ Juliet says sharply, ‘you did what? You took her into a darkened room? You seduced her into taking her knickers off? You are having me on. You touched her?’
    ‘I just pinned her up against a wall – I certainly wasn’t going to kiss the woman. Oh no, my darling, this was sweet revenge. And then I started lifting her skirt and I simply asked her to get ’em off. And she did.’
    ‘Just like that? I don’t believe you … and even if I did it’s just so bloody unthinkable that you’d do something like that. I mean, can’t you see how that makes me feel? And what about Caroline? What’s she going to tell everyone? And Marcus? Is that going to help us settle in here? God, Alex, I just don’t understand you.’ She’s pulled away from him and she’s just staring at him with a look of loathing on her face. ‘I can’t do this anymore, Alex. I try. God knows I try. But when you go and do something like that! Just tell me you didn’t. Tell me this is all some kind of cruel joke. You didn’t, did you?’
    ‘Juliet, I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about. I sorted it, all right?’
    ‘No you didn’t, Alex. You didn’t sort anything. You fucked it.’ She stands up and marches out of the room. Alex hears her going upstairs. No doubt she’s going to see her precious Ben.
    He gets himself another whisky and as he pours it his hand starts to tremble. Bitch! What’s the point? Can’t she understand what he’s trying to do, to protect her from arseholes like Marcus Hunt? Christ, she complains about the fact that he’s the one who’s changed, but look at her and her insistence on acting like a bloody ice queen. No wonder he’s on edge. She’s the one who keeps telling him he needs help, but with a wife like her it’s no bloody wonder. Why can’t she be more supportive and sympathetic towards him; why can’t she try and really understand him? Call herself a wife? He empties his glass and pours himself another. The trembling has subsided; focussing on Juliet and her behaviour is making him angry, and anger is good. Why can’t she just let him love her for once instead of throwing it back in his face? Why else would he have taken it upon himself to sort out the business with the Hunts? Because he loves her, that’s why. All he wants is just to be able to feel normal again, to try and get back to the person he was … before. And you’d think that she’d understand that, that she’d be able to see how hard he’s trying to be a good husband and father. If she could only let him sort everything out in his own way then maybe they could move forward, or go backwards to rediscover the people they used to be. He drains his glass. He’ll have just one more.
    An hour or so later, alone in their bedroom, he undoes the top button of his shirt and removes the bone collar stiffeners, then unhooks the cufflinks. He places them neatly in a small leather gentleman’s stud box, which has his initials tooled onto the lid. Beside this he has a set of ivory-backed brushes, also engraved with his initials. He lines up the brushes so that they are an exact distance apart. Then he trains his ears and listens to the thick silence coming from Ben’s room on the floor below. He throws his shirt into the dirty laundry, lines up the folds in his trousers and drapes them over the chair arm. Then he uses the bathroom quickly, cutting short the two minutes on the electric toothbrush. Basically he just can’t be arsed. Instead of rinsing the evidence of spit from the basin, he leaves it there, and leaves the seat up on the lavatory. The little things that annoy Juliet. His anger is rising. He wants his wife. He deserves his wife. He could have had Caroline Hunt with a click of his fingers. But his wife … She should be grateful that he