The Accidental Woman by Jonathan Coe

Subsequently however, he had invited them both to dinner, and it was on that evening, an evening disastrous for other reasons (Ronny was a hopeless cook) that he and Martin had first conceived their fierce and mutual detestation.
    ‘I can’t eat any more of this,’ Martin had said, hurling his knife and fork into the fireplace. ‘It’s like trying to eat a plate of shit.’
    ‘It doesn’t surprise me in the least,’ said Ronny, ‘to learn that the sensation of eating excrement is familiar to you.’
    Maria looked helplessly from one to the other.
    ‘I like this wine,’ she said brightly. ‘Where did you get it?’
    ‘If you ask me, he pissed into the bottle,’ Martin quipped.
    ‘Your inability to distinguish between urine and Sauvignon ‘75 surprises me, I must say,’ answered Ronny. ‘May I ask where you were brought up? In a barn, I presume.’
    ‘At least I don’t live in a bloody barn, that’s more than can be said for some people. Where did you get this furniture, the local tip?’
    ‘Darling, please don’t be rude,’ said Maria. ‘Ronny will get upset.’
    ‘I shall never be upset,’ Ronny said, ‘by the guttural chatterings of a malignant baboon. When your charming husband utters a word of sense, then I shall respond accordingly.’
    ‘Fuck face,’ came Martin’s riposte.
    ‘Dick nose,’ Ronny countered.
    And yet the curious thing was, that Martin could be quite polite about Ronny in his absence. You have a letter from Ronny, I see, he would say at the breakfast table. Is he well? Read me out the interesting bits.
    But Maria would never read any of it out loud, because Ronny’s letters to her were usually along the following lines:
Dear Maria,
I hope you are well. I love you and want only to devote the rest of my life to your service. My only wish is to be near you, my only hope is to tear you away from the monster to whom you are wed and to lay myself at your feet. If ever you need me, my darling, I will be here, ready to follow your footsteps wherever they lead. Everyevening I sit by the telephone waiting for you to call.
Maria, divorce Martin and marry me. I worship you. I have always known that my only purpose in life is to bring you happiness. Be mine.
The car is at the garage again. The man says the plugs need changing.
Eternally yours,
Ronny.
    Once, Maria would simply have given these letters a cursory reading, and then consigned them to the pedal bin along with the bacon rinds and discarded scraps of fried bread. But now she always folded them carefully, replaced them in their envelopes, carried them up to her bedroom and locked them away in a secret drawer. A secret drawer, I should add, the existence and function of which were perfectly well known to her husband, who had long ago supplied himself with a spare key, and whose habit it was, whenever Maria was in the bath, to while away many a pleasant half hour in reading, and chuckling, over Ronny’s insane avowals of devotion. Thus it was, this morning, that he was able to say:
    ‘Of course, I have plenty of evidence.’
    ‘Evidence of what?’ said Maria, by now lingering in the kitchen doorway, longing to run upstairs, the tears glistening against her pale skin.
    ‘Evidence of your infidelity to me. Your adultery. Your obscene violation of our marriage contract.’
    ‘I have never been unfaithful to you.’
    At this moment Maria felt a peremptory hand on her shoulder, and she stepped aside to let a figure pass through the doorway into the kitchen. It was Angela, Edward’s nanny, a woman some two years Maria’s junior, whose services had been engaged during the long trip to Italy which Maria had made the previous year. Her presence absurdly gave Maria a new energy for argument. She believed that here she had a silent witness for the defence.
    ‘Who do you mean? Who have I ever betrayed you with?’
    ‘I’m talking, my dear, about your unchastity, your vile prostitution with your lover Ronald. Your old tumescent