I would personally kill anyone if they hurt my son.
After dinner, Ross and I go for a walk with the dog. It’s another ritual. Sometimes Tom begs to come too, but it makes me fearful. The rocks on the edge of the beach are so high; it’s hard to check in the moonlight when he’s scampering on ahead that he’s not going to climb one and then fall. Tonight, to my relief, Tom announces that he’s tired. He’ll have a shower in the morning – he hates baths – and if his special Man United towel isn’t ready, we’ll all know about it. Bit by bit, I have got used to these ‘rules’, which are set in stone.
Difficult as he is, however, I find myself thinking that I am blessed in a manner that not everyone would understand. I might not have a conventional child. But my son will never be boring. He has a constantly enquiring mind. He looks at life in a way that others don’t. ‘Did you know that the average person produces enough saliva to fill two swimming pools during their life?’ he asked me the other day.
‘How are you managing?’ Ross now says as we walk under the overhanging cliff, gazing out at the lights flickering from boats on the horizon. It could be another world. One in which we live normal lives.
‘We’re fine, thanks. Tom’s school, touch wood, seems to be happy with him, and I’m building up quite a decent client base. I’ve also taken up spinning at the gym to give myself “me-time”, like you suggested.’
He nods. ‘Good.’
Something’s up. I can feel it. ‘What about you? How is work?’
‘OK, although to be honest, I feel there has to be more to life.’
‘I know what you mean.’
We stroll on, past a plump seagull pecking at a discarded bag of crisps. Past, too, a couple arm in arm who give us a meaningful nod. They think we’re like them, I tell myself. It makes me feel like a fraud; one who needs to put Ross at his ease so he doesn’t think I have any feelings in that direction.
‘I really appreciate the interest you show in Tom,’ I begin.
‘It’s not just Tom I care for.’
I hold my breath.
‘I’m worried about you, Lily.’
He takes my arm and I feel a slow warmth down my spine. At times, I tell myself that I’ve learned to live without Ed. Sometimes he seems like another life away. Sometimes he seems like yesterday. On those days, I want him here. Next to me.
‘There’s no need,’ I say. ‘I’m fine. I’ve moved on.’
My words are so clearly a lie that even the sea doesn’t believe me. It lashes angrily against the rocks. Liar. Liar.
‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you,’ says Ross.
As he speaks, a plume of spray leaps up. We run ahead – him pulling me – but it catches us anyway. I’m not one of those women who look good with wet hair.
Ross takes my hand and strokes it, like a parent trying to soothe a child.
‘Ed and Carla have set a wedding date.’
Did he really say that? Or was that the sea again? Shh. Shhhh, it’s saying now. Like a soothing lullaby.
‘I’m sorry?’
Ross’s face is looking down at me. How stupid of me. His expression is one of pity, not admiration.
‘Ed is getting married. To Carla.’
Ed. Carla. Marriage. Not just an engagement which can be broken at whim.
So she’s got him. Just like she gets everything she’s ever wanted.
‘That’s not all.’
I begin to shiver from the cold and the wet and the anticipation.
‘She’s pregnant, Lily. Carla’s expecting a child.’
In a weird way, Ross’s news is a relief. Just as it was when I found Ed and Carla outside the hotel. The shock haunts me still. Yet at least it was living proof that I hadn’t just imagined Ed’s behaviour towards me.
And now Ross’s early warning of a definite wedding date – soon to be heralded in the gossip pages – tidies things up. Shows me that there is no chance of Ed and I ever being reconciled, even if I wanted to be. Which I don’t.
That’s the other odd thing about a long marriage ending, at least for me. However bad it was, there were also good patches. And it’s those that I tend to remember. Don’t ask me why. I don’t dwell on the rows when Ed was moody or drunk. Or how he used to hate it because I earned far more than he did, and how he’d throw strops when I was home late from work.
No. I think of the moments in between when we’d lie on the sofa as we watched our favourite weekly drama. Or how we’d take long walks by the sea with our little boy, pausing to point out a particular shell or a crab scuttling under a rock.
The thing that really breaks my heart is that Ed now does these things with Her. I remember reading an article once about a woman whose ex-husband had married someone else. Two things had struck me. First, she’d been unable to say the other woman’s name, only referring to her as ‘Her’. ‘It’s because it sticks in my throat,’ she’d explained. ‘Makes her feel too real.’
I can see that.
The second was that this woman had been unable to comprehend how there was now another out there, bearing the same surname and sharing the same habits with the same man the first wife had once known intimately.
And that’s exactly how I feel. There’s something really odd about your husband having another wife. Carla will soon be Carla Macdonald. We will both be Mrs Macdonald. She will be my husband’s wife, because – even though Ed is technically no longer my husband – you can never really wipe away a marriage. A piece of paper is not a rubber or a bottle of Tippex. It can legally negate the ‘contract’ between two parties, as a lawyer might put it. But it cannot expunge the memories, the traditions, the patterns that spring up between a couple, no matter how good or bad the state of their relationship.
It hurts. Yes, it hurts to know that they too are building up traditions and patterns of their own. For all I know, she entwines her legs around Ed’s when they watch that new series on television that everyone is talking about. They now go for long walks along the sea with my son while I hide myself away at home, telling myself that it’s good for Tom to see ‘Daddy’. The thought of another woman playing ‘Mummy’ sickens me to the core. Tom is so gullible at times, quite capable of transferring his affection. After one of their recent visits, he talked incessantly about her hair. ‘Why isn’t yours as shiny as Carla’s?’ he asked me. ‘Why isn’t everyone’s hair like hers? What makes hair?’
The first question had run into thousands of others, like it always did with Tom. But I was still stuck on the first one. I don’t want to think about Carla’s hair or anything else about her.
But this – this hurts more than anything. A child of their own. A child who will be ‘normal’, no doubt. A child who won’t need watching twenty-four/seven in case he hurts himself, or worse. A child who won’t impose the same awful pressures on a marriage.
It isn’t fair.
After Ross’s revelation, I suddenly begin to feel the anger I should have felt – according to all the divorce self-help books – some time ago. Ed is the one who did wrong. Yet he’s come out top here. He’s found someone else. He gets to see the good bits of Tom, who is always hyper with excitement after his visits, which often means I have to change the sheets the following morning. (A new development. My research said it can be common in Asperger’s children, although it normally ‘dies out’ during adolescence. We can only hope.)
Nor does Ed have any of the problems that still haunt me.
Like Joe Thomas.
June
Months pass. For a while after moving down to Devon, I was on tenterhooks in case he contacted me. I even had to warn Mum, telling her I had a former client who had stalked me in the past and mustn’t be allowed in the house at any cost if he happened to turn up.