‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Will decided. When he came back with tea, Mary was sitting at the dining-room table, with a dark blue album in front of her.
‘Did you remember my sweetener?’
‘I never, ever forget your sweetener,’ Will said, sitting next to Mary and placing the mugs down on the coasters, which were a permanent fixture on any flat surface in the house. ‘What did you want to show me?’
‘My wedding pictures. My first wedding pictures, that is,’ Mary said, sliding the book over to Will, who had absolutely no interest in seeing mementoes of the day that his mother got married to a man who turned out to be a monster. ‘Just have a look. Humour your old mum.’
With a tiny put-upon sigh, Will leafed through the first pages of Mary getting ready. Although she’d been twenty, she looked much younger. There was no contouring, microblading or any of the other things Sage and her friends did to their faces. Mary’s make-up was minimal, her fine blond hair centre parted and left loose, a radiant smile on her face as Mo adjusted her veil.
There were more photos of pint-sized bridesmaids and a surly looking pageboy. Bernie and Mary getting into a vintage Rolls-Royce and, as befitted the daughter of a florist, a hell of a lot of pictures of the bouquet (‘Pale pink amaryllis, white roses and baby’s breath, we wanted to keep it simple’), the church flowers and the table centrepieces at the reception.
It took a lot of flicking until Will came to a picture of Mary and Peter walking back down the aisle, just married. They were in motion: Peter stepping into a shaft of sunlight slicing through the stained-glass windows, so his face was obscured. Even so, it was enough to make Will’s stomach turn as if all the tea he’d drunk that day was sloshing about like a storm-tossed sea.
He had to force his fingers to turn the page to a photograph of Mary and Peter standing on the church steps, hand in hand. She wore a simple white dress, plain and unadorned. Peter was wearing a suit, flared trousers, and a shirt with shockingly big collars.
‘It’s amazing that anyone found love in the seventies, when you were all wearing such hideous clothes,’ he remarked.
‘Look at him,’ Mary demanded. ‘Take a good look at him.’
Will bit his bottom lip but bent his head and took a good look at the first photograph of his father that he’d seen in over twenty-five years. He could hardly focus at first, because he was seeing the picture of Peter that he’d had in his head all that time. Then he looked again, readjusting his memory, to take in this young man in his mid-twenties, smiling, eyes clear and adoring, as he looked at his bride.
He wasn’t even that tall. Mary was about five foot, six inches, and he was only a little taller than her, his figure slim. Not the burly monster of Will’s nightmares.
Will leaned in closer still to pore over Peter’s face. He had mid-brown hair, a truly spectacular pair of sideburns, dark eyes. Not stunningly handsome, not unattractive either. He was wholly ordinary. The kind of man you’d walk past in the street without even noticing him; though Will would have sworn that Peter’s face was imprinted on his mind forever.
Of course, a few years down the line, when Will had his first memories of his father, Peter’s face was puffy with drink, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, no easy smile on his face. Or was that just how Will had embellished his features so Peter looked more like the monster that he’d been?
Will stared intently at his father’s face, searching for clues. The way you might look at pictures of dictators and despots, serial killers and suicide bombers, looking for signs as to who they’d become. A deadness to the eyes, a twist of the lips, a dark shadow cast over them, but in this case, there was nothing.
‘He’s not at all like I remembered,’ he said to Mary, who’d left her tea untouched, her attention firmly on her son. ‘He’s just an average guy.’
‘Average,’ Mary repeated. ‘Less than average. But I didn’t know that then.’
‘Was he good to you at the beginning?’ Will asked though not sure if he wanted to know the answer, but Mary nodded.
‘He was always telling me that he loved me. Not just at the beginning, when I thought, hoped, that it was true, but right through to the end.’ She glanced down at the open photo album and covered Peter’s face with her hand. ‘Like love was a get-out-of-jail-free card. That his so-called love absolved him of all the terrible things he’d done. But I knew by then that he wasn’t capable of loving or being loved in return . . .’
‘That’s how I feel. That I can’t love or be loved,’ Will said quietly.
‘Which is bullshit, pardon my French, because you are loved, very much, and you love us back,’ Mary said, tapping Will sharply on the knee.
‘But I haven’t amounted to much either.’ Will felt like he was back in therapy, though Mary had a long way to go before she achieved Roland’s impassiveness, because her face was scrunched into a frown.
‘You might not have the fancy job anymore or the flat in New York with all the windows, but that’s not important. What is important is that you’re a good lad. Kind, caring. If Blossom was here, she’d agree.’ She smiled, which made Will smile though he didn’t feel like smiling. ‘You’re going to be all right, Will, but you have to let go of the past. I didn’t begin to heal until I could do that.’
‘Do you wish that you’d never met—?’ Will asked, but before he could even finish his question, Mary was shaking her head.
‘No. Absolutely not. If I hadn’t met him, then I wouldn’t have had you and Ro, and I love you both to death. But I also wish that you hadn’t had such a terrible childhood. There were so many times that I thought about scooping you both up and getting the hell out of there, but I was too weak.’
‘It wasn’t weakness, Mum,’ Will said, placing his hand over Mary’s hand, which was still covering Peter’s face. ‘We know better now. We have words to describe what he did: coercion, emotional abuse. You were caught in a bad situation with a bad man and Ro and I have never once blamed you for what happened.’
‘I blame myself, Will!’
‘No, you were just as much a victim as we were. More, actually.’ Will squeezed Mary’s fingers. ‘And now you’re living the life you deserve with a man who loves you even more than his bike . . .’
‘Almost as much as his bike,’ Mary said, but then she slipped her hand out from underneath’s Will’s so she could stroke it down his face. ‘Please don’t give him so much importance in your life; he’s not worth it. Look at him!’
Will looked again. This time he felt unmoved. He was looking at someone he hadn’t seen or spoken to in twenty-seven years and would never have to see or speak to him again. Peter Hamilton had always been a stranger to him. And vice versa. Peter had never known who Will really was. Not even as a child. Will had merely been a reflection of his own failures and disappointments.
But also, he knew nothing about the man that Will had become, so why was Will still giving his petty words such weight? Allowing this man, this stranger, to have so much power over him?
His whole life had been lived as if he was still seeking Peter Hamilton’s approval. The first-class honours degree. The jobs in Berlin, Paris, then those years in New York, earning more money than he knew what to do with, the apartment with all the windows, the latest gadgets, the designer clothes.