Past Secrets by Cathy Kelly Page B

was gorgeous, clever, and powerful within his sphere, all wrapped up in one package.
    Just not faithful.
    ‘I love you, Grey, I don’t look at other men,’ she said. ‘I don’t think about anyone else but you, I almost don’t see anyone else but you. If there was anyone else there, if Brad Pitt and George Clooney and Wesley Snipes and anyone else you can think of were there for the taking, you know what?’ She paused. ‘I’d still say no.’
    ‘I know, I’m sorry, so sorry.’ The long piano-player’s fingers ran through his hair again and for a flicker of an instant, Maggie thought of his hands running through the girl’s hair in the throes of passion, twisting it and pulling gently like he did with Maggie.
     
    ‘I love your hair,’ he’d mutter when they were naked together. Maggie almost never cut it now. Grey loved its length lying tangled on the pillow as he hung over her, cradling her face before he kissed her. He thought she was feminine and sexy, things Maggie had never felt in her life until he’d come along and made her feel them. Now he’d taken all that away.
    When her mother or Shona or other people said she was beautiful, she didn’t believe them. They loved her, they were being kind to her. But when Grey said it, she had believed him. He made her beautiful because she glowed from being with him.
    That he had so much power over her made her feel helpless now. Going back to the sort of woman he’d had before her made it a double betrayal a
    blonde with curves that Maggie would never have. She felt so hurt that she wanted to hurt him too.
    ‘You’re lying. You’re not sorry, only sorry I got home early and ruined it all. You screwed her. In, Our. Bed,’ she said slowly. ‘That’s not love and respect.’ She paused. ‘Were there others?’
    A strange look touched his face briefly, a look of sheer guilt, and it was gone so quickly that only someone who loved his face and knew it in every mood would have noticed. But Maggie was that person. She noticed.
    ‘No,’ he said. She didn’t believe him.
    The armchair seemed to rise up to greet her. Collapsing into it, she hugged her knees to her chest, a gesture that said ‘keep out’.
    There had been others, of that she was sure and she wasn’t strong enough to hear about them. Her mother was ill, crying and not coping. Her father was asking for her help. Maggie’s world was topsy-turvy ‘Just tell me, what’s so hard about fidelity?’ she whispered, afraid she knew the answer.
    It had to be her fault. This confirmed what she’d known all along. She’d always felt lucky to have Grey, astonished that he was with her.
    Someone like Grey could manage faithfulness with other people, with one of those icy blondes, but not with her. For one of those women, the right sort of wife for a man with a political future in front of him, he’d have got married. But Maggie obviously wasn’t the right sort of wife for him. She was an experiment between the Carolyn Bessette Kennedy types, the trophy women. She wasn’t worth giving up other women for. That was what this was all about.
    The demons of anxiety and the self-doubt she’d grown up with rushed back howling into her mind and it was as if they’d never been away.
    ‘I’m sorry, Maggie, I swear this will never happen again, never.’ He looked up at her but Maggie was away in her head, remembering the years when she’d lived with a permanent clench of anxiety in her gut.
    Sunday nights were the worst, when the weekend was careening to an end and Monday loomed, Monday with Sandra Brody and her taunting crew
     
    who’d made it their mission in life to destroy Maggie Maguire. Maggie had never done anything to them but that didn’t appear to matter. Maggie was the chosen scapegoat. Daily verbal torture and cruel tricks were her punishment. The self-loathing because it had to be her fault, hadn’t it? felt
    just like it did now.
    ‘I’m sorry, Maggie,’ Grey repeated. ‘I don’t know