Lost Innocence by Susan Lewis Page B

‘Think about the children. What am I going to tell them if you …’
    Alicia rounded on him in fury. ‘You should have thought about that before you dropped your trousers for that whore,’ she raged.
    ‘How dare you!’ Sabrina shouted.
    ‘Keep your voices down,’ Craig implored. He was deathly white now and more agitated than Alicia had ever seen him. ‘Sabrina, whatever excuse you use, you have to leave,’ he told her.
    Sabrina was staring at him hard. ‘Why don’t we just tell the truth?’ she replied. ‘You’re always saying you want to leave her, so isn’t this the perfect opportunity?’
    Alicia reeled again and stared at Craig with such bemusement and hurt that no words would come, no thoughts, no anything beyond the shock and pain.
    ‘Don’t listen to her,’ he said. ‘It’s not true. I don’t want to leave you.’
    ‘But you have been screwing her for over a year?’
    He shook his head. ‘No, I mean, yes, but …’
    ‘Mum! Are you up there?’ Darcie yelled from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Nat’s changing the music and Dad’ll go ballistic. Do you know where Dad is?’
    ‘I’m here,’ Craig answered, keeping his eyes on Alicia. ‘It’s OK if Nat …’
    ‘Get out of my way,’ Alicia seethed under her breath. ‘And don’t bring your whore back to the party or I swear I’ll tell everyone right away exactly how you’ve been celebrating your fortieth birthday.’
    Swinging her legs off the bed, as though to escape the sheer awfulness of that day, Alicia pushed back her hair and tried to block it out. But it was persisting, coming over her in wave after wave of torturous memory, reminding her of how, in the days and weeks that followed, Craig had continued to swear that Sabrina meant nothing to him. Nothing had happened in Italy, he told her. Sabrina had lied, and he had no idea why. No, of course he wasn’t planning to see her again. He swore on the children’s lives that he still loved Alicia, and that nothing in the world mattered more to him than keeping his family together. He was as convincing as any trained barrister could be, and Alicia even believed him for a while, but then she found herself doing something she’d never done before, checking his mobile phone records and credit-card statements. To her horror, it soon became evident not only that he’d been lying about how long the affair had been going on, but also that it was still far from over.
    ‘I don’t understand it,’ she raged when she confronted him. ‘What is it about her? Do you love her? Is that what’shappening? Do you want to leave us, break up our home and go to be with her?’
    ‘No, of course not,’ he cried. ‘You and the children mean everything to me, you know that …’
    ‘Then why are you doing this? It’s not as though we don’t have a sex life, or is it only me who finds it satisfying? It must be, because it’s only you who’s looking elsewhere. Does she give you more? Is she doing things …’
    ‘Alicia, stop,’ he pleaded, his handsome face haggard. ‘Nothing’s wrong between us. I love you as much now as I ever have, probably more.’
    ‘Then why ?’ she repeated desperately. ‘Explain it to me. Make me understand why you’re doing this.’
    His head went down as he shook it. ‘I wish I could,’ he replied hoarsely. ‘I don’t want to blame her, or to pretend I’m innocent … I just … It’s something …’
    ‘It’s what ?’ she shouted, wanting to punch and slap him as though to make him feel her pain.
    Still he was shaking his head. Craig Carlyle, the great orator, the brilliant barrister who’d found words to defend some of the lowest forms of human life, paedophiles, gangsters, serial killers, could find no words to defend himself.
    Alicia knew she should have made him leave then, or left herself, but she hadn’t, mainly because she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell the children what was happening. They adored their father, to them he was