I remember where I saw that ring. Or rather, on whom.
‘Bella,’ I say softly. ‘Have you met someone?’
She nods.
‘Taylor,’ I say. ‘That’s what all this is about, isn’t it?’
She gulps and then nods again, and my heart aches for her. ‘Oh, Bell,’ I sigh. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I wanted to,’ she blurts. ‘But Taylor made me promise not to. Her parents are really strict, they’d totally freak. And … it’s complicated.’
How long has she been carrying this secret around? I’ve been so wrapped up in myself I haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on in her life. How could I have missed this? ‘Did you think I wouldn’t understand?’ I ask.
She shrugs, pleating the duvet cover with nervous fingers.
‘Bella, I don’t mind who or what you love, as long as it makes you happy,’ I say seriously. ‘You can bring home a polar bear, and it’d be welcome at my table.’ I pause. ‘Well, perhaps not at the table. From what I gather, polar bears aren’t particularly well mannered. But if you fall in love with a polar bear, we’ll find a way to make it work. Some sort of alfresco picnic, perhaps.’
‘Mum,’ Bella says, but she’s laughing.
‘Does Taylor know how you feel?’
She bobs her head.
‘But she doesn’t feel the same way?’
‘It’s not that. She was seeing someone else. Not anymore. But she thinks it’s too soon. She wants some space. It’s OK,’ she adds quickly. ‘I’d rather be friends than nothing.’
‘Is this why you’ve been so upset recently?’
‘Mostly. But not just that.’ She looks up at me, and then quickly away. ‘It’s Caz.’
‘You don’t need to worry about—’
‘I like her,’ she interrupts, startling me into silence. ‘I like it when she’s there at weekends and stuff! I don’t want her and Dad to split up. I don’t like it when it’s just Dad on his own. I want things to stay as they are.’
I take a moment to digest this. ‘What happens between your father and Caz has nothing to do with me.’
Bella pulls up her long legs and wraps her arms around her knees, pressing her face into them. ‘That’s not true, Mum.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know what happened with you and Dad the other night,’ she says, threading her fingers together unhappily. ‘It’s not fair, Mum. You blame her for stealing Dad and breaking up our family, but that’s not true.’ She suddenly looks straight at me, her eyes unnaturally bright. ‘I know about Tolly. I know my dad isn’t his dad.’
The room tilts and spins. My mouth gapes stupidly. I am literally speechless, unable even to breathe.
Andrew swore he’d never tell anyone; that was our deal. He’d keep my secret, he’d never breathe a word to Bella or Tolly or anyone else, not to Caz, especially not to Caz, and in return, I agreed not to contest the divorce, and to accept the financial pittance he offered me.
‘Mum?’ Bella says. ‘It’s OK. I get it. Dad had met Caz; he was cheating on you. I don’t blame you.’
I blame me.
I cover my face with my hands, choking on a sob. I’ve been running from this moment, from this truth, for nearly five years. Memory is a tricky thing. It doesn’t just recall the past; it remakes it, as we desire it to be. You can push an unwelcome reality to the back of your mind and bury it behind a wall of wishful thinking, and in time, you’ll forget the truth is even there. And then, when you least expect it, the wall is breached and you’re forced to face a truth grown far more powerful and terrifying for its long imprisonment.
‘Did you love him?’ Bella asks quietly. ‘Tolly’s dad?’
I look away. I don’t know how to begin to answer her. When I met Tolly’s father, I’d just found out Andrew was having an affair, and I’d wanted to get back at him: to even the score. Revenge at its most basic level. And I’d also needed reassurance I was still lovable, still desirable. I’d yearned for someone to see me in a way Andrew no longer did.
But our affair was so much more than that. From the first day we’d met, we’d shared something I’d never felt with Andrew, a connection that made me feel as if I had found the piece of myself I hadn’t even known was missing. Yet I’d barely known him. We weren’t even friends. I don’t know, even now: can that be love?
For a brief while, I was certainly infatuated with him. He was all I could think about. I got butterflies in my stomach every time he walked into the room. I created opportunities to run into him even when we’d only seen each other the day before; I made too many phone calls, sent too many texts. And I frightened myself. The intensity of what I was feeling had reminded me too much of Roger. I even went to his house one day, afraid he was lying to me and that he was married after all. I saw his elderly mother through the kitchen window, and she saw me, though of course she didn’t know who I was. She waved, the way people do when they think they’re supposed to know you, and I’d had a sudden glimpse of how she’d see me if she knew I was stalking her son. Because that’s what I was doing. At that moment, even I realised that.
I ran. Literally and figuratively. I broke it off with him, and focused all my energies on repairing my marriage. Andrew was the one I really loved, I told myself firmly. The one with whom I had a life, a history, a family. We’d shared a thousand moments, from the small and insignificant, to the life-changing and dramatic: the birth of a child, the loss of a parent, lunch on Sunday, feeding the cat. This was the stuff of life, this was what was real, not a romantic novella ‘connection’ with a man whose full name I didn’t even know.
And then the impossible had happened, the miracle that was Tolly, and I’d convinced myself it had to be Andrew’s child. Anything else was unthinkable.
‘Do I know him?’ Bella asks. ‘Tolly’s dad?’
I shake my head. That much, at least, is true.
‘How … how did you find out?’ I ask.
‘We had a Bio project about blood groups, and Mrs Lockwood told us to find out about our family. You were in London so I just looked in the file in your office.’ She looks up, flushing. ‘I wasn’t prying. I didn’t know it was private. I found the tests they did after Tolly was born, when you got so sick, and they thought it was some kind of Rhesus antibody reaction.’
I should have burned them. Or at least put them under lock and key.
‘Your blood group is A, and Dad’s is O, like me,’ Bella says. ‘Tolly is group B. Which means he can’t be Dad’s. That’s how he found out, too, isn’t it?’
I nod, blinded by tears. My daughter will never forgive me for this. How can she? I can’t forgive myself. It’s one of the many reasons my anger at Caz is so bitter and unrelenting. She didn’t just take Andrew from me: she destroyed my better self. I would never have betrayed my husband if not for her. I would never have betrayed myself.
I haven’t told anyone about Tolly, not even my mother, though I think perhaps she’s guessed. As he’s grown older, he’s started to look more and more like his biological father. Secrets have a way of finding their way to the light.