‘I see. Well, good for you!’ Nick rather hoped that drew a line under the conversation he rather wished he hadn’t started now.
‘That reminds me, how do you feel about pictures of your kids online?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, some people won’t show their kids’ faces or use their names, others do. Where do you stand on that?’
He stood some distance away from whatever the hell she was going on about. ‘I don’t really do Instagram or Facebook, all that stuff.’
‘But if someone else were to post them?’
Nick felt like he was being ambushed. ‘What did you have in mind?’
Heather shook her head dismissively. ‘Oh, nothing specific. I just mean, well, I’m going to be blogging and gramming a bit this week – it’s all so lovely here, it would be ridiculous not to. It’s an amazing opportunity. I’m just asking how you’d feel about your gorgeous babies appearing in some of my posts.’
‘I don’t know.’ He really didn’t.
Heather raised a hand. ‘No worries. No need to decide right now. I won’t post without your approval, okay?’
At that moment, Scott opened the front door, clacked in noisily on his shiny studded shoes, undoing his helmet and unzipping his Lycra suit.
‘Wow.’ Nick laughed. ‘All the gear and no idea!’
‘Up yours.’
‘You look like Mark bloody Cavendish, mate. Is that a padded crotch or are you pleased to see me?’
‘You can scoff, you slob, but I’ve just cycled …’ Scott sat down on a kitchen chair, and fiddled with his Apple watch ‘… thirty miles, and I’ve got the heartrate of a napping toddler.’
That wasn’t entirely true – his florid complexion betrayed him, and Nick smirked. ‘I’m just jealous.’
Scott widened his eyes at his brother. ‘Well, we’ve probably got the same size feet, Nick – always used to, didn’t we? You are so welcome to borrow the bike.’
Nick snorted. ‘No, you’re all right, cheers.’
Heather, at the sink now, filling a big glass with water for Scott, giggled. ‘I won’t go with him either. Terrifying. Once your feet are in the pedals, you can’t get ’em out, right? Want to play tennis, later?’
‘I might actually be more frightened of going up against you on the tennis court than I am of Scott’s bike, Heather.’ She looked pleased. ‘I’m more of a slow-jog kind of a guy. And there’s been precious little of that lately.’
‘Offer stands, mate.’
‘Mine too.’ Heather had a hand on Scott’s shoulder while he downed the glass.
The weird conversation about the kids had passed, for now, without him having to answer her. He really wasn’t quite sure what he thought about her, but looking at his brother now, he felt, as he had yesterday, a stab of pure envy so sharp it was almost like a physical blow. The casual touch. The easy intimacy. It hurt to watch it.
31
There was a missed call and a text from Alex’s number when she woke up: Please call me. Laura had switched her phone to silent before she’d gone to sleep, left it face down on the mahogany chest across the room from the bed. Everyone – almost everyone – she loved was here: surely she could stand down.
Apparently not.
She had only two bars on her phone in the house. Out in the garden it rose to four. She looked towards the vegetable garden, remembering Joe from last night.
She dialled Alex’s number. The dialling tone was the kind that meant the phone you were calling was abroad. He was on the Amalfi coast with the pert, bikini-clad Genevieve, no doubt sitting with her, sipping the first champagne of the day, in some swanky old-school hotel with waiters in cream jackets and black bow-ties. She and Alex had been there together, years earlier, for a tenth-anniversary trip. Ethan had stayed with his grandparents for a week, the longest they’d been apart from him since he’d been born. They’d hired a car in Naples and driven on the crazy winding roads to the staggeringly picturesque towns that clung to the rocks by the coast. She’d been carsick, and that had irritated Alex. She’d missed Ethan and that had, too. He’d accused her of being too attached to their son. When it started raining on day three, that had also pissed him off, but even he couldn’t find a way to blame that on her.
From the small balcony of the hotel they were staying in, you could watch weddings taking place in a small garden: she remembered seeing one get spectacularly rained off, the bride being hurried away under large umbrellas and the guests getting soaked by rivulets running off the hastily erected tarpaulin that wasn’t up to the task, while Alex lay, ignoring her, in the middle of their large romantic bed, watching a Premier League match on Sky. It was what she remembered most about the whole week, the bride’s peals of laughter, her joy undiminished by the weather, the groom’s tender care: watching that wedding disaster and contemplating her own marriage.
She wondered if he’d taken Genevieve to the same places, and whether Genevieve knew he’d already been there with her.
‘Laura?’
‘It’s me.’
An uneasy peace had broken out between them, unspoken. Ethan came first. Concern for her child – their child – suppressed resentment and rage, just for now.
‘Have you heard anything?’
No preamble. He was always like that. It was as if he was too important, too time poor, for the normal pleasantries. How are you? How’s Ethan?
‘No. If I had, I’d have told you.’ She bit back the sullen ‘wouldn’t I?’ And ‘idiot’.
‘I’m in and out of mobile service. And Wi-Fi. It’s a nightmare.’
She realized, with a jolt, that she didn’t envy Genevieve, for all the Negronis, the truffle tagliatelle and stripy sun-loungers facing the ocean the girl was experiencing.
Alex hated not being in control. And none of them was in control. Since the conversation in the café, when she’d begged Claudia to persuade her husband not to report Ethan to the police, they’d been in a hideous limbo. Claudia had made no promises. She clearly wasn’t in any position to do so: Rupert so obviously made the decisions in their household. Ethan hadn’t seen Saskia – at least, not to talk to. None of them had any clue whether Saskia’s parents were going to take it further or not. It was torturing all of them. As time passed, Laura let herself feel slightly more hopeful that nothing would happen – that his threats had been rage talking, that once he’d calmed down and thought it through, he would see that Ethan had no real charge to answer. That it wouldn’t be fair for Ethan to be punished for something that his own daughter had willingly, happily, participated in. Ethan wouldn’t talk about it. His misery was almost palpable. She wasn’t entirely sure he’d grasped the seriousness – the potential danger – and she couldn’t see why constantly going over it with him would be a good idea. There’d be time enough. She’d warned him of the importance of staying away from Saskia, since that was what her parents wanted. He’d heeded the warning. She was proud of the way he’d got through the exams. God knew what the results would be, but he’d stuck with it.