Mum and I jump, grabbing each other’s arms. It’s not just the cutlery which has flown off the table. It’s the plate next to it and a rather nice crystal wine glass which belonged to a wedding-gift set from all those years ago.
After Ed and I split and began dividing our possessions (which was nothing compared with the division in my own heart), I couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was that wedding presents could long outlast the marriage itself.
To my horror, I feel tears pricking my eyes. Tears which I usually ban on the grounds that they do no good. Besides, who wants an unfaithful husband? Good-quality wine glasses are far more useful.
‘Why did you do that?’ I shout, ignoring the warning look in Mum’s eyes. Don’t question Tom. Definitely don’t argue with him. You won’t win. During the divorce – a ‘quickie’, which had come through with indecent haste – Ed had claimed it was ‘useless’ arguing with a lawyer. People like me, apparently, never listen to others; they always have their own answers at the ready.
Maybe that’s where Tom gets it from. His ability to see his own point of view and no one else’s.
‘You touched my knife,’ he states factually, squinting through his new thick-framed black glasses. ‘I’ve told you before. I don’t like that.’
Bending down, I sweep up the pieces of broken glass. ‘You’re acting like a three-year-old,’ I mutter.
‘Shh,’ soothes Mum.
Normally I don’t make a fuss. Since coming back to look after Tom, I decided it was the best way. But every now and then, I snap. Something usually acts as a trigger. Today I suspect it’s the extra place setting at the table. A reminder of the life that ended on the night I saw Ed and Carla kissing outside the hotel off the Strand. Even now, I shudder if someone casually mentions the word ‘hotel’. It’s like a trigger point, shooting me back, churning my guts, making me retch like I did back then on to the pavement, in a mixture of betrayal and disbelief.
Strangely, after those first few raw moments, there was no anger. There still isn’t. It would be easier if there were. Mum says it’s because I still haven’t worked through my feelings yet. Maybe she’s right. But if so, when am I going to? It’s been months now since Ed and I split. Yet it still feels as raw as if it had happened yesterday.
I had spent the night at a professional organization which I belong to (the University Women’s Club, which had, by chance, a bedroom available) and called in sick the next day. There was no way I could face Carla, and I didn’t put it past her to prance into the office as though nothing had happened.
Then my mobile had rung.
Ed. Ed?
‘We need to talk,’ he said. Kindly. Without the defensive tone of the previous night. Was it because he was alone?
‘Is Carla there?’
‘No.’
So he could talk! Freely. Hope ballooned up into my throat. Ed wanted me back. Of course he did! We had a child together. A child who wasn’t like most other children. Perhaps now, in the sobering light of day, Ed realized we needed to stick together for Tom’s sake.
I didn’t have my spare set of keys on me, it struck me, as I reached the door. Instead, I had to ring the bell, feeling like a stranger on my own doorstep. Ed greeted me with a glass of whisky in his hand. It wasn’t even ten o’clock.
I launched straight in. ‘Look, I’m hurt about Carla. But I’m prepared to forgive you for Tom’s sake. Can’t we start again?’
Then, rather desperately, I added, ‘We’ve done it before.’
Ed patted my hand as though I was a little girl. ‘Come on, Lily. It’s understandable that you’re scared.’ As he spoke, there was a gleam in his eye. He looked like a kid himself, one who had been caught with his hand in the sweet jar but didn’t care. He was on a high, no doubt helped by the drink. Something I’d seen time and time again during our marriage. Before long it would be followed by a plunge of mood.
You see? I know him far better than Carla. How will she cope?
‘You’re young enough to start again, Lily. You make a great deal more money than me and …’
‘How can you talk about money!’ I stood up and strode into the kitchen towards one of his paintings. It was a picture of the hotel we stayed at during our honeymoon. A picture he’d once helped me to copy, to show how colours could be mixed to achieve that subtle combination of blue merging into green. I can still remember his arm guiding mine, his touch thrilling mine. ‘Not bad,’ he had said, admiring my efforts. And to show willing, he had actually put it on the wall. Next to his.
‘We need to talk about the practicalities,’ he continued. ‘I suggest that I keep the house and buy you out.’
‘How?’
Ed was always hopeless when it came to money.
‘I’ve got an exhibition coming up. Remember? You could find somewhere in town and then we can each take it in turns to go down to Devon and visit Tom at weekends …’
‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’ I said, appalled. ‘You and that Italian bitch.’
Ed’s face darkened. ‘Don’t call her that. You haven’t shown me any affection for years. All you care about is your work.’
That wasn’t fair. It’s true that I was exhausted at night after work, but isn’t everyone? And when I had made overtures on Sunday mornings, Ed always rolled away, declaring his back was stiff or that we would wake Carla, on the other side of the wall. How could I have been so stupid?
Once more, memories of a younger Carla came back to me. The little girl who had asked me to lie for her about that pencil case. The child whose mother was really seeing ‘Larry’ instead of working.
Like mother, like daughter.
‘What are you doing?’ yelled Ed.
I hardly knew myself. Later, I vaguely recall running at the kitchen wall, towards the pair of paintings of our honeymoon hotel. Picking up his, I threw it on the floor. Jumped on it. Then, pushing my way past Ed, I flew out of the house, weeping my way along the street.
The following day, I received a letter – hand-delivered at work – starting divorce proceedings on the grounds of my ‘unreasonable behaviour’.
But there’s something else. Something I’m only now allowing myself to think. If I’m honest, Ed and I weren’t right for ages. But I couldn’t leave him because of Tom. Is it possible that, unintentionally, I had ignored the signs of affection between our lodger and my husband? Had I, unconsciously, wanted something to happen between them to give me a justified get-out card from my marriage?
So maybe the ‘unreasonable’ wasn’t so unreasonable after all.
46
Carla
Every other weekend, for some months now, Carla and Ed had gone down to Devon to see Tom. At first she had been nervous. What if the boy refused to talk to her? She genuinely felt something for him: an understanding between two people who had never fitted in. But when Ed had picked him up from the house – they’d decided it was better if she stayed in the car while he did this – he had come running up to her all gangly-legged and toothy with excitement. ‘Carla,’ he had said, nodding. ‘You are here.’
She wouldn’t allow herself to think of Lily, who must be waiting inside. A mother forced to give up her son to another woman for the day. Lily deserved it, Carla told herself. She had neglected Tom so that she could follow her career. She had neglected her husband too. It was the only way Carla could cope with that little nagging voice in her head. The voice that had been reflected in the letter from her mother.
‘I hope you know what you are doing, my sweet,’ her mother had written. ‘Looking back, I regret the pain I caused Larry’s wife. Be very careful.’
And then, one Saturday morning when she and Ed had been lying in bed, came the note through the door. Luckily she had got there before him.
YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS.
That was all.