‘There’ll never be anyone as right for me as she was.’
‘Of course you feel that way. But it isn’t true. It would be different.’
Nick’s eyes had filled with tears. Instinctively, unthinkingly, Charlie tried to hold him, although it was awkward on the side of the pool.
Bea, on one of her running walks from steps to deep end, saw the movement. ‘Are you okay, Daddy?’
Nick sniffed, pushed his father away, not unkindly, and pinched the top of his nose fiercely. ‘I’m absolutely fine, darling.’
Bea stopped and put a wet hand on his shoulder, peering at his face.
‘Hey, you’re getting me all wet!’ He diverted her with a theatrical shake. She giggled, and forgot.
‘Might have to get into my trunks and come in, now you’ve soaked me …’
‘Oh, yes! Come in! Come in! Please! You, too, Granddad!’
Charlie laughed.
Delilah added her pleas: ‘Yes! Granddad! Come in!’
Nick stood up, and helped his father stand on the pool edge. ‘I think we’d better do as they ask!’
The mask was back. It had slipped for just a moment.
Charlie had the clearest memory of Daphne, and music played in his head. She’d particularly loved a Nanci Griffith song – ‘Talk To Me While I’m Listening’. He could hear the refrain in his head now, hear Daphne telling him that was all you could do with your children – talk to them while they were listening.
52
Charlie had made a speech at the smart luncheon (they’d laughed at how putting ‘eon’ on the end of ‘lunch’ made it smart) he and Daphne had held for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. The speech had been short and touching and funny, and he’d spoken without notes, standing behind Daphne’s chair. He’d had a hand on her shoulder the whole time, as if she was a talisman, and at various points she’d put her own over it, patting supportively. Scott remembered it very clearly. He’d been impressed by his father’s ability to extemporize, reminded of the impressive man he’d always seemed to the outside world. The substance of his father’s words had been his own notion of what made a marriage work. Never go to sleep on a quarrel, he’d said. It wasn’t an original thought, he had acknowledged. His own mother had told them at their wedding a quarter of a century before, and she’d been told the same thing at hers. But it was good advice, he said. He made everyone laugh with a story about a fight they’d had as newlyweds, something about shoes and carpet squares. Scott didn’t remember the story but he’d always remembered the advice.
He and Heather hadn’t exactly gone to sleep on a quarrel, but they’d hardly been right either. They normally chatted while they undressed and brushed their teeth. He liked to watch her put hand cream on her elbows, and comb her hair back from her face – those intimate rituals were precious to him. She’d been quiet. She had put out her bedside light and lain down with her back to him while he was still reading, and when Scott had leant over and put one hand on her hip, she had patted it just once. He’d read more, listening to her breathing slow. When he was sure she was asleep, because she’d shifted position onto her back, he’d rolled towards her, to look at her lovely face, as if staring at her sleeping might provide him with answers, or move them towards reconciliation. They’d slept, at first, perilously close to their respective edges, an ocean of crisp sheet between them.
And in a way it did. Across the night, they’d migrated closer together without even meaning to, and he awoke with the dawn to find her pressed to him. He knew she was awake because her hand was moving gently through the thick hair on his chest. He turned towards her, and stroked her velvety smooth, soft back. She shrugged her shoulders a little, then made a familiar small sound, and put a leg across his thigh as his hand moved lower, slowly stroking each vertebra of her spine, until it got to the small hollow right at the base, and what was usually the point of no return with Heather.
That morning was no different. He loved the swift, lithe athleticism with which she tilted her narrow pelvis and was suddenly straddling him, her full weight on him, and he loved the way she shivered when he ran two hands, one down each of her slender flanks, his thumbs skimming the sides of her breasts, to cup her bum.
After she’d lain there just long enough to achieve the desired effect for both of them, Heather put the heels of her hands on his chest, and pushed herself up into a sitting position, raised and then lowered herself onto him in an easy, practised movement. She smiled, almost triumphantly, as though she’d won some prize, and began the almost excruciatingly slow, teasing rise and fall they both loved.
Part of him wanted to stop her – he needed to talk to her about what had happened. But not the greater part. This was better. Way better …
Afterwards, before they dozed back to sleep, because it was still very early, they did talk, and it was easier because of what had gone just before: some equilibrium had been restored.
‘I’m sorry, Scottie.’
‘I don’t think you’ve got anything to be sorry for. I didn’t know …’
‘And that’s what I’m sorry for. That part feels like a lie. Leaving that out when we were first …’
‘I don’t have the right to know every single thing about you, Heather.’
‘But I want you to. I trust you. I love you.’
He held her close to his chest. ‘I love you too. And I’m glad I know.’
‘I am too.’ Her voice was muffled. ‘And I’m sorry for being so hard on Ethan. That wasn’t fair.’
‘No.’ He wasn’t about to tell her it was. She’d misjudged Ethan, even if he knew what had motivated her to do it.
‘Hayley put me straight.’
‘She did?’
‘She put Ethan’s case. Very eloquently. Made me see I was getting him wrong. She doesn’t know, of course, why I flipped.’
‘And you didn’t want to tell her?’
‘Not yet. One day. So I’m sorry. I was wrong.’
He kissed her for an answer. She was so straightforward. He loved her for it. He was, still, a very lucky man.
53
Laura knocked on the door at Joe’s place, surprised by how jittery she suddenly felt. God. She almost turned around and walked back in the direction she’d come. She’d been so sure he wanted her to come. Now she’d forgotten why. Would he think she was tragic? He didn’t answer quickly. Maybe he was with someone … Maybe she was wrong about all of it, had stupidly misinterpreted everything. Panic set in. She took one, two, three steps backwards, and was on the verge of spinning and running away when he opened the door.
He’d showered. His hair was wet and water had made it darker. There were rivulets running down into the open neck of his white shirt, not tucked into the dark denim jeans. His feet were bare.
If he was surprised, he didn’t seem it. A less insecure woman might have noticed how his eyes opened wide and twinkled when he saw her, might have known that the broad smile signified genuine pleasure at her presence.
‘You came.’