Why I won't 捨てる my husband even after he 自白するd he had an 事件／事情／状勢 with our au pair while I was 妊娠している 16 years ago: JILL KENNEDY
The setting couldn’t have been more romantic. A tiny taverna at the water’s 辛勝する／優位, harbour lights twinkling in the distance. It was just the two of us on a quick 逃亡 to Greece in the middle of a hectic summer holiday juggling three teenage children. Some much-needed time together.
‘I need to tell you something,’ said my husband Rory, leaning across the （米）棚上げする／（英）提議する and taking my 手渡す in a わずかに ominous way.
Even in that moment I was oblivious to what was coming next, to the precipice he was 主要な us both に向かって.
‘Do you remember Natalia?’ he asked, 星／主役にするing intently at his plate.
At the mere について言及する of that 指名する, I was suddenly 警報, like a deer sensing 切迫した danger. Of course I remembered Natalia, the 26-year-old Romanian au pair who lived with us for a year when I was 妊娠している with our youngest daughter 16 years ago. She had been a 災害 for a multitude of 推論する／理由s that I never could やめる understand.
‘There’s something I should have told you years ago,’ he began.
As I 星／主役にするd at my glass of chablis, the fish going 冷淡な on my plate, I felt a slight squirm of panic.
‘Natalia and I had an 事件／事情／状勢 for six months while you were 妊娠している,’ he blurted out. ‘It carried on after Matilda was born. I want you to know because I don’t want lies between us any more.’ In the silence that followed all I could think was ‘Why now? Why are you telling me this now?’
‘Natalia and I had an 事件／事情／状勢 for six months while you were 妊娠している,’ he blurted out. ‘It carried on after Matilda was born. I want you to know because I don’t want lies between us any more’
I managed to stutter something like: ‘Did you love her?’ At which he shook his 長，率いる 熱心に. Then I 押し進めるd my 議長，司会を務める 支援する, left the （米）棚上げする／（英）提議する and walked along the promenade in a total daze. I remember thinking I should feel something ? anything. But the truth was I didn’t know what to feel or how to 答える／応じる.
It was nothing like the movies where I might have chucked my glass of ワイン in his 直面する before 叫び声をあげるing ‘You bastard!’ for the whole restaurant to hear. I was 簡単に numb with 不信, 自信のない how to 召喚する up 激怒（する）, jealousy and 傷つける for something that had happened my daughter’s whole lifetime ago.
A husband having an 事件／事情／状勢 with the au pair is such a terrible cliche that it’s ばく然と laughable. Except if it happens to you. And 特に, it turns out, if you only discover the infidelity nearly two １０年間s later.
It’s all the more difficult for the wronged wife because, 井戸／弁護士席, are you really going to leave a man for a 罪，犯罪 committed so long ago? If I’m 存在 冷笑的な, perhaps that was his 計画（する） all along. Wait long enough until it might no longer 事柄.
And yet the 苦痛 is the same ? worse even, considering the 二塁打 betrayal of lying for all those years.
It is strangely disempowering, too. By 否定するing me the tr uth at the time, Rory took away my 力／強力にする of choice ? I could have walked away at that point, perhaps going on to start afresh with someone new, someone who wouldn’t cheat on me.
It was last summer that Rory dropped this bombshell. I still don’t really know what 所有するd him to blow the roof off our marriage. All I know is that for the remaining days of the holiday ? and ever since really ? it has felt as if I’m 選ぶing through the 破片 of our 関係, trying to make sense of it all.
I’m not 傾向がある to overreaction or hysteria. I didn’t even cry at the time. I did, however, 爆破 him with question after question for days, pelting him until I could see he was emotionally drained and exhausted. I didn’t care. I 手配中の，お尋ね者 answers. And even though this was something that had happened years ago, he had better 血まみれの remember every tiny 詳細（に述べる）.
Once I’d 静めるd 負かす／撃墜する, I started to feel furious that he’d 自白するd at all. At one point he dared to say, ‘Wouldn’t you rather I was honest?’ This was the closest I （機の）カム really to losing my rag. Yes, Rory, 16 years ago. But not now, when I could have so easily carried on in ignorant bliss.
The actual 事件／事情／状勢 aside, this probably 傷つけるs more than anything else. We were 罰金 before he felt the selfish need to offload. 承認する, maybe not deliriously happy, but who is after 20 years of marriage? Still, we had 生き残るd the roller coaster of raising three children, now 20, 18 and 16. At that moment, in the Greek taverna, I felt we were having a happy hiatus.
It wasn’t until a few weeks later, sitting alone in my car in the Waitrose car park, that I had a serious 炉心溶融 and couldn’t stop crying. Was my entire 関係 with Rory a sham? It felt as if everything I knew to be true no longer was.
But, once the 涙／ほころびs had 沈下するd and I’d stopped hitting the steering wheel, I 軍隊d myself to 認める some painful truths. Our marriage had been in a very different place 支援する when Natalia （機の）カム into our lives.
My two sons were three and one, and I’d 設立する myself 突然に 妊娠している for a third time. There was hardly a moment to breathe. We had recently made the move from London to a 通勤（学）者 town in Berkshire. Rory was still travelling up to the City every day for his 職業 in 財政／金融. I had given up a lucrative 役割 in marketing to go freelance ? something I thought would 供給する an ideal work-life balance.
But I needed help. Nursery 料金s were cripplingly expensive and we couldn’t afford a nanny. Several school-gate mothers swore by au pairs.
‘They’ll look after the children and do the アイロンをかけるing,’ one told me. ‘It’s a no-brainer. You j ust need a spare bedroom.’
And so I 設立する myself trawling au pair 場所／位置s searching for someone to save my sanity. 明白に, I’m not an idiot. I swerved all the girls whose profile pictures looked too pretty and settled on Natalia, 26, from Bucharest, who had a friendly 直面する with an open smile. She was also a bit overweight which, I 人物／姿／数字d, was a good thing. Who needs a lithe 20-something-year-old frolicking around the kitchen in the morning ? 特に when you’re five months 妊娠している at 35 with stretch 示すs and varicose veins starting to show?
What I didn’t know ? and herein lies a word of 警告を与える ? is that it is 明らかに ありふれた practice の中で Eastern European girls wanting childcare work in the UK to send a photograph of someone いっそう少なく attractive than themselves because they know they are more likely to get the 職業. Which is how I ended up at Victoria coach 駅／配置する in central London to collect Natalia, watching, to my utter 狼狽, a jaw-droppingly beautiful girl walking に向かって me. In a 確かな light, she could have easily passed for a young Sophia Loren.
Her brunette hair was lusciously long, her 注目する，もくろむs 抱擁する, her lips pouty. And don’t get me started on her 人物／姿／数字. I took one look at her and nearly marched her straight to the ticket office for a return fare 支援する to Romania.
Yet 最初, she seemed like the answer to my 祈りs. And I 信用d Rory 暗黙に; as if he’d 落ちる into that pitiful stereotype.
We’d been married for four years and had known each other for ten after 会合 at an 投資 PR 会社／堅い in the late 1990s. We had 社債d over a passion for 引き上げ（る）ing in the mountains and he was the kindest, most 非，不，無-judgmental person I’d ever come across.
We’d married six years later in the Scottish Highlands 近づく his family home and spent our honeymoon climbing Ben Ne vis. Rory wasn’t a man for big gestures but I always felt utterly 安全な and 確かな he would never let me 負かす／撃墜する.
That is, until Natalia. With hindsight, I can see that it didn’t help that I was ひどく 妊娠している and 悩ますd. Natalia took to staying up long after I’d 崩壊（する）d into bed to 雑談（する） with Rory in the kitchen. He was a night フクロウ and so was she. I could barely stay awake past EastEnders.
I did think it 半端物 that she began putting on her make-up after bathing the boys in the evening, seemingly in 予期 for Rory’s homecoming. Then, one 週末, when Rory 始める，決める off for a run, she suddenly appeared in her trainers, limbering up on the doorstep, keen to catch him up. I remember standing at the window, 手渡す on my 妊娠している belly, watching them both jog off 負かす／撃墜する the pavement and thinking, ‘Mmm. Is that normal?’ Of course it wasn’t. But I didn’t want to be ‘that’ wife. Neurotic, untrusting. And she was good with the boys ? attentive and caring.
But, as my pregnancy 近づくd D-day, it felt as if I was becoming more and more invisible in my own home. Natalia relished taking over, cooking dinner, doing the laundry, even walking the dog around the 封鎖する. On paper, it was a dream シナリオ. I finally had the help I genuinely needed. With no grandparents living nearby, two small children and our busy careers, Natalia was keeping everything afloat.
But something felt off. I tried to talk to Rory about it. I wasn’t sure I 現実に liked Natalia, and I was 確かな she didn’t like me. She would often do the opposite to what I asked with the children. If I 手配中の，お尋ね者 them to have fresh broccoli with dinner, she would give them frozen peas. It often felt as if she was deliberately challenging me, while, at the same time, batting her eyelids at Rory whenever he walked into the room.
‘You’re 存在 neurotic,’ he would say if I raised the 問題／発行する. ‘She’s a f antastic au pair and the boys love her.’
It was true. They did. It seemed the only person in the 世帯 who didn’t was me.
I started to feel as if I was going わずかに mad. Then, one day, an envelope fell out of Natalia’s handbag as she left the house. It was a letter from her sister in Bucharest, returning a photograph of Rory. A photograph Natalia had 除去するd from one of our family photo albums that lined the bookshelves in our living room.
Why was she sending pictures of my husband to her sister? Even then, Rory 辞退するd to 収容する／認める this was 半端物. I remember crying in the bedroom, pleading with him to let me send her home.
‘It’s your hormones,’ he told me, in what I now know was an 行為／法令／行動する of shameless gaslighting.
In the 即座の 影響 of my daughter’s birth, once the brain 霧 had 解除するd, I became 納得させるd that something had gone on. I even challenged Rory 完全な. Finally, he 認める that, yes, Natalia had 自白するd to having a 鎮圧する on him but that he hadn’t cheated on me in any way and they were 簡単に ‘friends’.
Did I believe this? I certainly 手配中の，お尋ね者 to. Either way, I now had grounds to ask her to leave, and when Matilda was three months old I did so. I never heard from her again and, until last summer, I 説得するd myself that Rory and I had somehow 生き残るd this blip in our marriage.
I’m not 説 we 港／避難所’t had ups and 負かす／撃墜するs over the 続いて起こるing years but nothing that has ever made me question his 忠義. やめる the contrary. Rory has always been a 手渡すs-on, very 現在の father and an incredibly supportive husband. He was the 激しく揺する by my 味方する when my father died five years ago and I have always felt there is nothing he wouldn’t do for me.
It makes his 発覚 even harder somehow. As if he has deliberately chosen to 破壊行為 some thing I thought was precious and true.
And to what 目的? Was he somehow hoping to 少なくなる the 苦痛 of his infidelity by waiting so long to tell me? Has he been feeling 有罪の all these years?
にもかかわらず long, tortuous conversations where I have asked him 繰り返して to rationalise why he 自白するd when he did, all he has been able to say is that he didn’t want to spend the 残りの人，物 of our marriage with this hanging over him. But doesn’t that mean it was more about assuaging his 犯罪 rather than 存在 honest with me?
And then there’s the fact that it has made me 疑問 his fidelity in the 介入するing years too. If he was 有能な of sleeping with our au pair in our family home, I told him, there must have been plenty more indiscretions over the years. To which he broke 負かす／撃墜する, sobbing and pleading with me to believe that this was a one-off, ‘a moment of madness’. His words, not 地雷.
I wouldn’t 非難する him if he 悔いるs telling me now, although he says he doesn’t. Because I 港／避難所’t let it go, with endless questions that can pop up any time of day or night. Who ended it? (He did.) Where did they have sex? (In her bed, not ours, 明らかに.) Did he ever love her? (No.)
These questions いつかs feel futile and so utterly pointless. Why does it even 事柄? We’re still married. I know he does love me. I also know he’d very much prefer for all this to be water under the 橋（渡しをする）. But so what? He didn’t care about my feelings then. Am I supposed to not make a fuss just because it’s a historic 罪，犯罪?
Friends I have told have asked me how I can 耐える to continue with our marriage. My answer to that is always the same and has been since the moment I 設立する out; I don’t think I could ever leave Rory and upend everything we’ve built together. And I don’t want the children to know.
Also, woul d I 現実に be any better off 離婚d? I don’t want to be one of those women in my 50s who is 選び出す／独身, bitter and probably poor ? trying to get dates with men online while Rory probably finds a second wife in a heartbeat and 沈むs our 財政／金融s to 支払う／賃金 for his new family.
As happens with many couples, once children have 大部分は grown up, our lives had become ますます separate anyway. We both have our own work かかわり合いs, friends and 利益／興味s. And as for intimacy, that had already become pretty infrequent and for now, understandably, has ground to a 停止（させる）.
On the 加える 味方する, I’ve run out of questions to ask and, while Rory isn’t apologising every day any more, he has told me it is his 絶対の 優先 in life to 納得させる me of his love for me, that nothing else 事柄s to him.
I’m 肉親，親類d of amazed how 平易な it was just to 選ぶ up and carry on. It’s like marriage muscle memory. We know how to be happy together and it feels like a waste of time to dwell and stew on something that can never be changed.
But I think about Natalia often. Far more than I 現実に want to. It’s easier for me to pin my 怒り／怒る on her. Is she a mother now? Has she been 妊娠している with swollen ankles, 酸性の reflux and haywire hormones? Most probably. Then she will have some idea what she did to me. And from one woman to another, that I can never 許す.
- Jill Kennedy is a pseudonym. 指名するs have been changed.
