Free How to Be Good by Nick Hornby Page A

now. Not easy as in comfortable, but easy as in logical, natural, appropriate, right, no jerky changing of gear: Tom knows that something is up, I may well have to say something at sometime anyway, David may well tell them himself as soon as he comes home . . .
    â€˜Tom! How many more times! And when are you going to get ready for school?’
    He gives me a long stare and then turns violently on his heels to convey anger without disobedience. I want to go to the surgery and work and work. I want the day to be as unpleasant and as demanding as any working day has ever been, just so that at the end of it I will have regained something of myself. I want to look at blocked rectums and oozing warts and all sorts of things that would make the rest of the world sick to its collective stomach, and hope that by so doing I will feel like a good person again. A bad mother, maybe, and a terrible wife, undoubtedly, but a good person.
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    On the way to work I have a sudden panic that Stephen will call the mobile, so I call him as soon as I get in and he wants to know what’s happening and I don’t want to talk about it and he asks to see me and I end up arranging to meet him and booking a babysitter.
    â€˜Where are you going?’ Tom asks when I’m getting ready to go out.
    â€˜To meet a friend for a drink.’
    â€˜What friend?’
    â€˜No one you know.’
    â€˜Your boyfriend?’
    Molly thinks this is one of the funniest lines she has ever heard, but Tom isn’t joking. He wants me to answer the question.
    â€˜What are you talking about, Tom?’
    Tom is beginning to give me the creeps. I feel that any momentnow he will be able to tell me Stephen’s name and describe what he looks like.
    â€˜What’s this friend’s name, then?’
    â€˜Stephen.’
    â€˜What’s his wife’s name?’
    â€˜He hasn’t got a . . .’ Tricked by a ten-year-old. ‘He hasn’t got a wife. His girlfriend’s name is Victoria.’ His girlfriend’s name is Victoria because there is a photograph of Victoria Adams and David Beckham on the front of a magazine lying on the kitchen table; if Tom had asked me this morning, when I wasn’t feeling very sharp, I would have told him that Stephen’s girlfriend’s name was Posh.
    â€˜Is she going?’
    â€˜I hope so. She’s nice.’
    â€˜Do you think he’ll marry her?’
    â€˜I’ve no idea, Tom. I’ll ask him tonight, if you want.’
    â€˜Yes please.’
    â€˜Fine.’
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    There is almost no point in talking about the rest of the evening, such is its dismal predictability. Stephen flatters me, I feel desired and stimulated, I see, as if for the first time, how unhappy my relationship with David makes me, and I go home wanting out. Oh and when I get home David is there waiting, and everything changes again.
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    I’m frightened when I see him sitting there, and initially the fear consoles me, because it surely means that my marriage is brutal, and that therefore the Archbishop of Canterbury will approve my divorce. But on further reflection I can see that brutality is a less likely explanation for my fear than other factors: the existence of Stephen, say, or my failure to talk to the kids about what has been going on, and I can feel the Archbishop’s approval vanish as quickly as it appeared.
    â€˜Did you have a nice evening?’ David asks me. He says it quietly, and I take the quiet as menace.
    â€˜Yes. Thank you. I went . . . I was out . . .’ For some reasonI’m trying to remember the name of Stephen’s girlfriend until I remember she was a whole other lie told to someone else for different reasons.
    â€˜It doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘Listen. I haven’t loved you enough.’
    I gape at him.
    â€˜I haven’t loved you enough, and I’m really sorry. I do love you, and I