Eventually, after a long time, he was still, and calm. He sat back, still close to his mother, and rubbed his face with the sleeve of his shirt, his arm pushing his hair back from his forehead.
‘I know it’s over, by the way.’
She didn’t look at him.
‘I’ve known for a while.’
Laura had known, of course, almost from the minute Rupert had burst into her house, but she didn’t know that Ethan knew, too. Not really.
‘It’s ruined.’
‘Sweetheart …’
‘We couldn’t get past it.’
She didn’t want to tell him he was wrong.
‘But it wasn’t what he said. It wasn’t like he said.’
She pressed his hand. ‘I promise you I know it wasn’t, my love.’ She had to keep saying it. He needed to know she believed him. Believe that she believed him.
Some vestige of the old familiar rage that had been eating her for the longest time reared again in the pit of her stomach. How dare he – that ghastly man – how dare he do this to her boy, make him feel like this? Whatever had happened between Ethan and Saskia – and no one really believed they would stay together beyond A levels, or university, or into their twenties – their memories of their relationship should be positive. For the experience to be tainted by Saskia’s father wasn’t fair, and the injustice gnawed at her. She didn’t know how to fix it – how to reverse the effects of someone else’s careless words and agenda. But she would try.
She felt the lioness stir, and begin to prowl, within her. She felt strength returning. The steel in her spine she’d been aware of in the last little while was building volume. Rupert had better watch out. Claudia might have persuaded him to let it go, but if she hadn’t, Laura would fight him. This was her son – his future. Never get between the mother and her cub and threaten the young. Alex had better be careful too. For the first time in ages she almost relished the thought of getting home, getting back into the lawyer’s office, getting the divorce moving so that she would be free of him. Free. Strong. She’d got it wrong – moping about happiness. It was the wrong way around. Free and strong must come first. Joy would surely follow.
49
Joe was in the garden when Laura showed up, hoping he would be. The other night – before the Arthur stuff, and the Saskia drama – when he’d dropped her off, there had been a moment, she was certain, when he had thought about kissing her mouth, not just her cheek, and she had considered letting him. It hadn’t happened, but it had been in the air – the possibility of it.
It was odd – it had happened only two days ago. It felt like longer.
There had been a strange dynamic in the house. Maybe it was her. She was restless. She’d picked up a book, but read the same page three or four times and retained nothing. The kitchen was sparkling clean, much more so than hers at home. She tried a couple of yoga poses, but couldn’t settle to that either. Something was up between Heather and Scott, and she felt it had to do with Ethan, although no one had said anything. She and Heather had gone backwards: those moves towards closeness they’d made the other day, lying on the mats under the tree, seemed never to have happened. Heather had taken Hayley and Meredith out, and Scott was pacing around anxiously.
She should have been there. But she couldn’t quite feel guilty about the time she’d spent with Joe. And she was back now. This part was so much nicer than the other. Was it selfish to want more?
Today he kissed her cheek, lightly and swiftly, before either of them had time to think about it. It was platonic, except that it wasn’t.
There was no pretence this time that she had stumbled across him randomly, or that he just happened to be there. It was clear to both of them that they’d sought each other out. They sat side by side on the bench, not quite touching.
‘How’s it going?’
She exhaled sharply. ‘How long have you got?’ she half joked.
‘All day. If you like.’ He wasn’t joking. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nah. Not to worry. Parent stuff – don’t want to bore you.’
‘Okay. I won’t give you a cheesy line about how you never could. Bore me.’
She laughed. ‘For which I am duly grateful.’ He gave a small, ironic bow from the waist. She’d much rather talk about him than about her. ‘You said you were married. You never said whether you’d had kids.’
‘No kids. I would have liked some. One, even. It was Rachel, my wife. She said she wasn’t ready.’
‘Right.’
‘What she meant was she wasn’t ready to have them with me. She has three now. Two boys and a girl. Oliver, Archie and Amelia, if the Christmas card she sends me every year is to be believed. The first was born less than a year after we split up. Closer to nine months, actually.’
‘God, I’m sorry. That’s rough.’
‘It’s okay.’ He gave her a broad smile. ‘I’m glad she didn’t have them with me, if she knew it wasn’t right.’
Laura had the strange thought that she couldn’t imagine what had made Rachel think he wasn’t good father material. She couldn’t imagine someone wanting to cheat on him either. ‘It’s not too late.’
He looked amused. ‘For what?’
‘For kids. How old are you?’
He laughed. ‘Forty-three. And I know it’s not. The thing is, with me, it was never just an urge to have kids. It was always tied up to being with the right person to have those kids.’
‘And did you think she was? The right person?’ He looked at her sharply. She blushed. ‘I’m sorry. I’m being too personal.’
‘It’s fine. I like it. You’re direct.’
‘Nosy.’
‘Straightforward. I wish more people were. My tolerance for bullshit is very low, these days. I wasn’t sure she was. That’s the truth of it. Rachel and I met and married quickly. I was thirty-three or so, and all my mates were getting married, getting mortgages, getting serious. She was a few years younger, but she definitely drove it. Not to sound pathetic, but I let her. Like a lemming. Truthfully, I knew the day I married her that I wasn’t a hundred per cent in it.’
‘You did it anyway.’
‘Cowardly, I suppose. Church was full, champagne was on ice, honeymoon was booked. Then again, I didn’t know whether that was normal or not. I loved her. I just think you should probably only marry someone you can’t imagine living without. And I wasn’t there.’
‘You could be talking about me.’
‘Really?’ He turned to her.
‘I wanted to be married. I wanted desperately to be a mother. I think we differ there. Alex – my husband, my ex – I loved him. But on the day, when I was in the big white meringue of a dress, it wouldn’t have been true to say I couldn’t imagine living without him.’
She remembered being in the back of a Rolls-Royce with her dad on the way to the church. It had rained – nothing dramatic, just a persistent chilly drizzle that fell all day from a leaden sky. The photographer was conciliatory, telling her weather like that made a good light for photographs, but in truth it had felt, if not ominous, then slightly … dampening. Daphne had gone ahead, and her brothers were already on duty, showing guests to pews and handing out orders of service. Bridesmaids huddled in the vestry in their puffed organza sleeves. Charlie hadn’t trusted his voice – she’d appeared in the living room, and his eyes had filled with tears when he’d seen her, and the tears hadn’t been far away in the back of the car. He tried, several times, to say what she thought would be profound things to her, but each time emotion interrupted, so he was reduced to holding her hand tightly in his, patting it with the other, and smiling. Perhaps he’d been going to ask her if she was sure, if she could imagine a life without Alex, and if she had answered that she could, perhaps he would have told the driver to keep going, past the church where 150 people were waiting.