‘It’s alright. I think I know who Sidonie is and I don’t care.’
‘Please, I need to explain—’
‘You don’t. I trust you.’
‘I know. But let me explain it to you anyway. I wanted to tell you earlier, before Tansy rang. Cathy, I feel that we’re getting somewhere and I hope you feel the same way.’
‘You know I do.’
‘And what I didn’t think you needed to know before I feel that you do now. I’ll be honest, I’ve had so many pointless dates that never went anywhere that I got sick of telling the story, so I stopped. But with you… well, I feel as if I need to tell it maybe only once more. At least, I hope so.’
‘OK,’ Cathy said, her emotions torn between warmth for his words, for his faith in what future they might have together, and trepidation about what he was about to tell her. She’d guessed at it, but what if it was a lot more than what she’d guessed? What if it was something that she wouldn’t be able to deal with?
‘Sidonie is my ex-wife. She’s French, and she moved back to France when we split up. It was a long and messy divorce and it took me a good few years to get over it. Tansy was very fond of her and they still keep in touch.’
‘And Beau?’
‘Sidonie’s son.’
Cathy frowned. ‘But not your son?’
‘He was two when we got together. I suppose, for all intents and purposes, I became his father because he didn’t see his own back in France. I was fond of him and eventually we decided I should adopt him so that we were an official family.’
‘Do you still see them?’
‘Not as often as I should,’ he said, the regret and guilt obvious in his expression. ‘It’s difficult. Sidonie and me… it was complicated and hard to be in the same room, which wasn’t Beau’s fault, of course, but it means that it’s also difficult to see him too.’
‘She doesn’t like you seeing him?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think she’d be that obtuse but it’s not that simple really.’
‘I suppose not,’ Cathy said.
He studied her for a moment. ‘So,’ he said finally, ‘where does that leave us?’
‘Exactly where we were,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter to me. Everyone has a past and if you tell me that’s where Sidonie is, then I believe you.’
‘I’m sorry you had to hear it from Tansy…’
‘It’s alright.’ Cathy wanted to say that she thought Tansy had rather enjoyed the way it had all unfolded and she suspected he thought the same, but that would give Tansy even more of a victory than if she pretended she didn’t care and it hadn’t been a big revelation at all.
But the fact was, part of her didn’t believe that. Not about Tansy’s enjoyment of her little game, but about not being bothered. Cathy shouldn’t have been bothered – Sidonie was in his past and there was no doubt he liked Cathy a lot – but why had everyone been so reluctant to tell her about Matthias’s ex? Did she buy Matthias’s reasons? And even if she did, why had Erica felt the need to hide it from her? Her friend had mentioned that women had let her brother down, but never that he’d been married or that he’d actually adopted his wife’s child, which, in itself, said a lot about how he’d felt about her. Was he still in love with Sidonie? And if he was, where did that leave Cathy? A consolation prize when he couldn’t have the woman he really wanted? Her rational thoughts told her no, and everything he said and did with her told her no too, but there was a part of her, that insecure, paranoid part, that kept asking the question.
‘While we’re on the subject of pasts, I should tell you something too…’
‘OK,’ he replied carefully.
‘Nothing terrible,’ Cathy said with a nervous laugh. ‘At least I hope not. It’s just… Jonas… the man we met at the theatre with his wife… well, Jonas is more than an old friend. In fact, we were engaged once. About five years ago, but still… does it bother you? I’m sorry I didn’t say something at the time—’
‘Of course it doesn’t bother me. I understand why you didn’t – for the same reasons I didn’t mention Sidonie straight away. We’ve all got a past and I wouldn’t have expected anything else. What matters is that we’re willing to move forward.’
‘I think so too,’ Cathy said, relaxing into a more natural smile now, glad she’d finally said something. It felt like the last secret and now that everything was wide open and honest they could really build something worth having here. Or so she hoped.
‘So we’re still good?’ Matthias asked, though he looked as uncertain of that right now as Cathy was.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course we are.’
Twenty-Seven
‘Cathy… I’m so sorry.’
Erica had called earlier that day to say that Matthias had told her about how Tansy had tried to stir up trouble by mentioning Sidonie. She had said, more than once, how sorry she was that she hadn’t told Cathy herself, how she’d felt it was for Matthias to tell her but now realised that she’d made the wrong call about it and hoped it wouldn’t affect their friendship or the way things were going with Matthias. She had also said that they’d both be having a stern word with Tansy (Matthias already had) and that Cathy really didn’t have anything to worry about. Then she’d asked if Cathy wanted to meet her at Ingrid’s to talk it over. Cathy had agreed, though she really didn’t think there was anything to talk over, only for them to sit down with their coffees and for Erica to say more or less the same things all over again.
‘Honestly,’ Cathy said. ‘It’s alright. Matthias was going to tell me himself before Tansy phoned to get him home. She didn’t do anything wrong.’
Cathy had been very careful not to draw attention to the fact that she thought Tansy had done it all on purpose because she didn’t want to offend Erica. It was hard to know why they persevered with a girl who was clearly so ungrateful and so resistant to their efforts. But Cathy understood that they must love Tansy very much and that it pained them to see what she had to put up with at home, always coming second to whichever man her mum had around at the time. The one way Cathy could make sense of their dedication to Tansy was comparing it to the way she felt about caring for her mum. It had been hard, often thankless as her mum never got any better no matter what Cathy did, and in the end, she’d done it because that was what families did. Both Matthias and Erica appeared to go out of their way to help Tansy and she did nothing to thank them – she only got more demanding and didn’t seem to recognise their kindness at all. Perhaps she was different when they were away from outsiders to the family, but Cathy couldn’t imagine it.
There was only one thing for it. The prospect was hardly appealing, but Cathy was going to have to spend a lot more time with Tansy. If she could get to know her, gain her trust, even perhaps get her to like her a bit more, then it would make life with Matthias a lot easier. The last thing she needed was Tansy constantly trying to drive a wedge between them, because, much as Cathy didn’t want to think so, one day she might just succeed, and Cathy was beginning to feel that what she might have with Matthias was worth too much to abandon when they’d only just begun.