‘Do you know many English boys his age?’
Hayley narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘A few.’
‘How?’
‘Mum! Really! I have friends with brothers. There are guys at parties. Around.’
‘Anyone special?’ She tried to keep her voice casual, but she wasn’t sure she succeeded.
‘No one. I’d have told you.’
‘Would you?’ She sounded sharper than she meant to.
‘Of course.’
‘And your mates? Do they have boyfriends?’
‘Some, yeah. Why all these questions, suddenly?’
‘You’re growing up. Sometimes I don’t notice it because I see you all the time.’
Hayley looked quizzical.
‘Do you know how I found out you’d learnt to roll when you were a baby?’
‘No. How?’
‘You rolled off the bed. I was changing you, turned around to get something – a wipe maybe – and when I turned back, thud, you were on the floor.’
‘Wow.’
‘I was behind the curve. That’s the point I’m making. It’s kind of been that way ever since. I just don’t wanna be behind that particular curve.’
‘The guy curve?’ Hayley’s tone was amused.
‘The guy curve. I want you to be able to talk to me, to tell me anything.’
‘I will. I can. I said so to Ethan. When we were talking.’
‘And you think I’m being unfair to him?’
Hayley smiled. ‘Yeah. I do.’
‘Okay, then. I’ll try. For you.’
‘Good.’ Hayley proffered a spoonful of sorbet. Heather smiled and took it from her, just as Meredith skipped back from the loo.
As she stirred sweetener into her cappuccino, Heather looked from one daughter to the other. ‘How are you both doing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, how are you? Really.’
Meredith laughed. ‘So serious, Mom. I’m fine. I love Bea and Lila and Arthur so much. I want to see them all the time after the vacation. I really hope Nick will let me babysit them sometimes. I mean, we’re cousins, right?’
Heather nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘And Charlie is so nice. And Nick. And the house. I love the pool. All of it is cool.’
She had ice cream on her chin. Heather passed her a napkin, and turned to Hayley.
‘And you?’
‘It’s been way better than I thought it might be. It’s nice, feeling like you’re part of a family. We’ve never really had that. I didn’t know I missed it, but when you’re surrounded by it, and watching them – Scott and Laura and Nick – doing their sibling thing, and Charlie just loving everyone, it’s really nice. I like how they’ve included us. It feels good.’
Heather smiled.
‘You like them, right?’ Hayley seemed desperately keen for Heather to say yes.
She felt a pang. ‘I do. I really do. I mean, I love Charlie. What a sweetheart. Nick is funny. More like Scott than either of them think, I reckon.’
Hayley nodded. ‘Laura takes a bit of getting to know, but she’s not in a good place. And, yeah, they’re pretty great.’
Heather took their hands. ‘I love you, my girls. You’re brilliant, you know that?’
‘So can we go back to Zara and get that jacket I liked, if I’m so brilliant?’
48
It was late in the afternoon when Ethan sought out his mother. It had taken huge reserves of patience for Laura to give him space. She’d taken a book outside to read, but it lay unopened beside her on the bench. She’d laid her head back against a cushion, and closed her eyes, letting the late-afternoon sun warm her face. Her mind wandered back to the time she’d spent with Joe. It seemed much longer ago than it was, but the reminiscence was clouded by the persistent feeling that she should have been here. With Ethan.
He slid onto the bench beside her while her eyes were still closed, but she knew, with some inexplicable maternal instinct, that he was there. She waited for him to speak.
Eventually he did.
‘Been a shitty couple of days.’
She opened her eyes, and looked at her son. He was sitting forward, shoulders hunched, gaze fixed on the ground.
‘I was an idiot and nearly hurt Arthur. And then I was an idiot and made a right show of myself.’
‘Stop saying “idiot”.’
‘Mum! I. Was. A. Fucking idiot.’
‘Okay. You can say “idiot” about the pool stuff but not about the rest.’
He smiled tightly.
She sat up. ‘Can’t defend you on the pool. But it happened, and you’ve owned it, and you didn’t hurt Arthur. He’s fine, love. And no one thought you meant to do it, and everyone knows you’ll never, ever do it again. So park that.’
‘Okay.’ Ethan nodded slowly, decisively.
‘Okay? Really?’ She looked at him pointedly.
He nodded again.
‘Running away –’
‘Don’t say it like that. I’m not a kid. I didn’t “run away”.’
‘Sorry. I don’t mean to treat you like a kid.’ How on earth did a parent stop treating their kid like a kid? How had Mum and Dad made that change? Gradually? Reluctantly? Or was there always a single moment when you looked at your child and saw an adult – fledgling, maybe, but the unmistakable outline of a grown-up?
‘Sorry.’
‘What?’
Now he shook his head in something like despair. ‘I don’t know. The two things just sort of collided in my mind. I didn’t want to stay, because I knew everyone was totally pissed off with me. And I didn’t blame them. And I just thought that if I could talk …’
‘Talk to who? To Saskia?’
‘Oh, God, I don’t know. To Saskia. Her mum. Maybe even her dad.’
‘Oh.’
‘I wanted to explain myself. I was lying up in that bloody room in the eaves, pretty much hating myself, and I just got – got really panicked. About what he said to me about what he could do.’
‘Ethan …’ Her heart ached for him. She’d known, the second she’d seen Rupert’s face, what real danger he posed. Was she wrong not to have spelt it out to Ethan from the start? She’d been protecting him, but she couldn’t, could she? She hadn’t.
‘And something else, too. I just got afraid that he’d have persuaded her, you know, that I’d …’ He couldn’t say the word.
He was blinking hard now, and she knew he was trying not to cry. She didn’t want to scare him off but she couldn’t help herself: she put a hand on his leg. When he didn’t shrug it off or brush it away, she moved a bit closer.
And a dam broke.
His words were hard to hear, almost lost in the heaving sobs. ‘I couldn’t … I couldn’t …’
‘I know, Eth. I know you. I know.’
He almost collapsed onto her chest. He was too big, really, ungainly in her embrace. She felt winded by the weight of him. But she put her arms around him and held him as though he were a small child again, as if he’d scraped his knee falling off his bike, or woken from a nightmare, although this was far harder, and let him cry.