Ross was gratifyingly shocked when Ed walked out on me for Carla and then demanded the house. ‘As for “unreasonable behaviour”, that’s ridiculous,’ he said when I’d gone round the following day, my face a mess, barely able to stop crying.
I’d shrugged, looking round at Ross’s place. The washing-machine door was off, lying on the side of the kitchen counter as if waiting for someone to call the repair man. The kitchen sink was stacked with several days’ worth of crockery and there was a pile of newspapers on the floor by the bin. Half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s sat on the side. Yet Ross himself was always impeccably turned out in a sharp suit and dapper tie. It occurred to me then, as it occurs to me frequently, that one never really knows a person properly. Especially ourselves. Every human is a melting pot of contradictions.
‘What grounds does he cite for this unreasonable behaviour?’ continued Ross.
‘Always working late. Not taking holidays. That sort of thing.’ I gave a short laugh. ‘Unreasonable behaviour can mean anything nowadays. I had a client who got a divorce because her husband dug up her vegetable garden without asking her permission first.’
My fingers gripped the side of Ross’s cream worktop. Imagine if Ed’s lawyers knew the truth … No, I tell myself. Don’t go there.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Ross. He was coming closer now. For a minute, I thought he might be going to give me a cuddle. Until then, we’d only exchanged brief ‘kiss greetings’ on the cheek. It felt odd. So I stepped backwards.
‘I don’t know.’ All I could think of was the geometric pattern on the terracotta floor. Since last night, small details seemed big. Maybe it was the mind’s way of coping.
‘I’ve got an idea.’ Ross was walking towards the window now and looking outside. His flat was in Holloway; the view wasn’t as pleasant as from our home in Notting Hill. An ‘our’ that would soon be a ‘their’.
‘Get out of London. Make a fresh start. Set up your own practice in Devon so you can be on hand for Tom. I seem to remember that you and Ed talked about this before.’
I winced at my husband’s name. ‘It’s a big step. What if my clients don’t come with me?’
Ross’s face conceded this was a possibility. ‘Suppose you suggest to the firm that you set up an offshoot in the south-west? Then they might encourage you to take some of their cases.’
I hesitated. Leave London? Go back to the place that I swore I’d never live in again after Daniel? Yet it did make sense. It would put distance between That Woman and myself. And, more importantly, it would take the pressure off my parents. Tom might be at school during the week. But I couldn’t expect them to carry on for ever at weekends.
So that’s what happened. Even now, as I wash up Tom’s special knife and fork and place them back on the table under his watchful eye, I wonder how we coped in those first few weeks. The firm had been very understanding: true to Ross’s suggestion, they were quite amenable to the idea of setting up a south-west branch. It helped too having my parents there, happy to welcome us to their home. Although it was weird coming back to my old room with its dusty maroon and royal blue Pony Club rosettes in the desk drawer. ‘Just until I find my own place,’ I said.
Yet once there, it seemed easier to stay; be cocooned by my parents. Protected. Hoping that Joe Thomas would now leave me alone in peace.
No one, I told myself, must know the truth.
The door knocker breaks into my reverie now as I stir the soup. Butternut squash. Soothing. Comforting. Devon in the winter months is much darker and colder than London, but I am slowly growing used to it again. There’s something about the determined way in which the tides go back and forth with reassuring regularity; it’s like a comforting grandfather clock.
I’ve always loved the sea. Tom loves it too. When he’s home at weekends, we spend hours walking up and down the beach, looking for driftwood. Mum has got him a dog too. A small schnauzer. The ones that look like old men with beards. Tom spends hours talking to Sammy. Like Daniel used to with Merlin.
Sometimes I find myself doing the same.
‘He’s here, he’s here,’ crows Tom, now dancing around. He never makes this much fuss about his father coming down, I say to myself as I walk across the hall. Then again, I try to make myself scarce when Ed pays his weekend visits. Since the decree nisi, our ‘meetings’ are more of a quick nod at the front door before Ed takes Tom out for the day.
I can only imagine what those outings must be like; it’s awkward enough for a single father to entertain his children outside the home environment. With a child like Tom, it would be even more of a challenge. How does Carla cope? I wondered. Hopefully not very well. Despite that engagement gossip piece in a tabloid that one of the partners had awkwardly shown me, there had been no announcement of a wedding date.
I am relieved about that, although annoyed with myself at the same time for such a reaction. It means, surely, that Ed isn’t certain. Carla, I am convinced, would jump at the chance to have a gold ring on her finger.
‘Forget him,’ Ross is always saying. ‘You’re far too good for him.’
I know he’s just being nice. But I appreciate it. Ross has become important in our new lives. Tom always loves his visits, not least because he usually arrives bearing enough gifts to suggest it’s Christmas, whatever the month. My parents enjoy his company too. ‘I can’t understand why that man has never got married,’ Mum keeps saying.
‘Hi!’ He’s beaming now on the doorstep, staggering under the weight of flowers and boxes. ‘How are my favourite friends?’
Tom frowned. ‘How can you have favourite in the plural? If you like one person best, it has to be in the singular. You can’t have more than one person as favourite because then they wouldn’t be your favourite, would they?’
It’s the type of pedantic question with a certain logic that I am tired of, however intelligent it is. But Ross merely grins. He makes as if to rub Tom’s hair, like a godfather might do to his godson, but then stops, clearly remembering that Tom hates his scalp being touched.
‘Great point.’
Mum appears beaming behind me. She’s taken off her apron and frowns at me, indicating I should have done the same. ‘Come on in. You must be starving after that drive. Supper’s almost ready.’
Ross gives Tom a wink. ‘Don’t tell anyone, but I stopped off for a burger on the way down. But I’m still hungry.’
Tom giggles. The conversation is a ritual, one they have every time. It’s a narrative that soothes me as well as my son. Indeed, it does the same to my parents. It helps to bring a normality to the house that is rarely there when it’s just the three of us, all trying to rescue Tom from himself, desperately making sure that what happened to Daniel will never happen to him. It’s the unspoken fear. The challenge that haunts us all.
No one, unless they have a child like this, can understand. I remember once, when Tom was younger, talking to a woman in a supermarket queue. Her son – about ten with gangly limbs flying everywhere – was in a wheelchair. People made way for her. They were sympathetic when he reached out to knock the tins flying from the conveyor belt.
Although I would never wish Tom to be in a wheelchair, I can’t help thinking that at least it would mean others would be understanding. When my son misbehaves in public – jumping on a wine glass in a pizzeria to see how many fragments he could ‘make’ is one recent example – I receive stares that say, Why can’t you control your teenager? Or even, That kid should be locked up. It makes my blood boil.
My research warns me that as Asperger’s kids get bigger and less ‘cute’, their melt-downs and challenging behaviour can turn others against them. The other day, there was a newspaper story about a cafe owner throwing an autistic-spectrum teenager out of his shop because the kid kicked up a fuss when given coffee with milk instead of without. The teen in question fell awkwardly on the pavement and broke his arm.