‘There are other ways,’ he says.
‘Like what?’
‘I’m going to spend more time with her. I’ll make her happy in the now.’
‘Yes, but …’ That’s not going to alter what’s happened. ‘Hey, don’t mess with Neeve.’ I’m afraid now that he’s going to burst in and build up her hopes, then disappear again as soon as he loses interest.
‘I’m not going to mess with her.’ He sounds astonished. ‘I’m going to make everything right, and I really want you and me to be friends.’
‘Why would we be friends?’ I pause. ‘I don’t mean that the way it sounds. But, seriously, why would we be friends?’
‘Because we were everything to each other once. Weren’t we?’
To my surprise, a memory flashes. Being with Richie was the first time I’d had a sense of home. After a perpetually uncertain childhood, it was thrilling to step away from the substandard family Fate had foisted on me and simply create a new one. I’d thought I’d found the secret to life. But I was wrong. My original family weren’t as substandard as I’d once thought when my new one imploded. ‘None of that feeling is left,’ I say.
‘So let’s start over. As friends.’
‘But, Richie –’ I’m struggling to say what I mean – ‘I’ve a policy of liking my friends and I don’t think I can make an exception for you.’
He laughs again, and again it’s not meant to be funny.
‘I’m going to make things right.’ He’s full of fierce conviction. There was a time when this would have made me die with joy. ‘I’m going to make everything up to you.’
‘No. Please don’t. Please, Richie, don’t.’
As soon as I arrive home, Neeve calls, ‘Mum, you owe me a hundred and twelve euro.’
‘For what?’
‘You bought a load of stuff from Korea?’
‘Oh, ah, one or two things. Essentials.’
‘There were Customs charges.’
There were? ‘They never said that on the site!’ I feel foolish and stung. I’d thought it was a nice site. Run by nice people.
‘He’s a laugh, George, the DPD man,’ Neeve says.
‘You know his name!’ Sofie says.
‘He’s here so often with Mum’s stuff, we’re practically engaged. Anyway, let’s have a look at what she bought.’
There are two boxes on the coffee table. Kiara, Sofie and Neeve crowd around as I open them. I can hardly remember what was in this consignment – it had been late at night and I might have been a bit drunk and I’m ordering so much stuff that it’s all merging into one and – Oh, it’s coming back to me now. Dresses, wasn’t it? I unfold one, a maxi in black lace, with an elasticated neckline. Or is it an elasticated hem? It’s hard to know which end of the dress is which because, well, it’s enormous.
‘What size did you get?’ Neeve asks.
‘Ten.’ My voice is faint.
‘It looks like a size thirty.’
‘Check the label.’
‘Yep, it says ten. But it’s totally not.’
‘Two of us could fit in it,’ Kiara says.
‘We could!’ Neeve is pulling it on, then Kiara is shimmying underneath it, before her head pops out next to Neeve’s. The elasticated neckline stretches around both sets of shoulders and they’re in convulsions. ‘Come on, Sofie, come on, Mum, there’s room for all of us in here!’
42
Sixteen months ago
‘Hugh, have you ever cheated on me?’
‘Wait! What?’ He twisted to look at me. ‘You even have to ask?’
‘Sorry.’ I shook my head. ‘I’m an eejit. Don’t mind me.’
It was the evening after the awards dinner in London where I’d propositioned Josh Rowan. From the moment I’d woken up that morning I was awash with shame.
How could I have done that to Hugh? Hugh, whom I loved with such fierce tenderness. Hugh, who was so good to me and so good to everyone. It wasn’t just the previous night I was ashamed about but the entire almost-month I’d been narky, barely present and spending as much time as possible in my head, thinking dreamy thoughts about another man. It was all so wrong.
I loathed myself. I was despicable. And, like, mad. Because I hadn’t even been that drunk when the invitation to Josh Rowan had tumbled from my mouth.
If I’d been Jekyll-and-Hyde, borderline-psychotic scuttered, it might be understandable that I’d propositioned him. You hear of people doing the maddest things when they’re that stotious – stealing JCB diggers and driving them along Oxford Street, offering lifts. But no way had I been that drunk.
What had it been about? I’d been playing a game, that’s what. Wondering if someone would fancy me. And that was contemptible because Josh Rowan was a person. He had feelings. And he had a wife.
By the time I’d got back to Dublin my shame had evolved into ecstatic gratitude that nothing had happened.
When Hugh had opened our front door, I’d walked straight into his arms and pressed myself against his comforting bigness, hugging him so hard and for so long that eventually he had to peel me off him. ‘What’s up?’ He was half laughing.
I stared up into his beloved face, his honest blue eyes, and gently touched the prickles of his beard with my fingers. ‘Hugh Durrant, you’re the best man on earth, do you know that?’
‘You’re scaring me now.’
‘I missed you. Am I not allowed to miss you?’
‘Yeah, but …’
In the kitchen, an atavistic urge to touch all my stuff came over me, to feel the solidity of my life.
I’d gone away and I’d come back and nothing was different – nothing. There was no tear in the fabric of my marriage and no shameful betrayal burning holes in my soul. I had the same elation you’d have walking away without a scratch from a crash that destroyed your car.
‘Something to eat?’ Hugh asked.
‘No … Okay, maybe.’ For the first time all day food was a possibility. ‘What have you?’
‘Your cheese. I picked it up from the sorting office. The poor bastards said they’d been breathing through their mouths for the past week.’
God, what a man! He’d gone out of his way to collect my cheese, the cheese that arrived every month, thanks to him buying me membership of a cheese club. ‘Okay, then, yes, please.’
‘Wine?’
I almost shuddered. ‘No wine.’
‘Last night was that bad?’
Then I did actually shudder. ‘Awful.’
While Hugh moved around the kitchen, gathering a plate, a knife, some crackers, bursts of panic started attacking me.
Me and Josh Rowan naked.
It didn’t happen.
Josh rearing over me, unrolling a condom along the length of his erection.
It didn’t happen.
Josh sliding himself into me.
It didn’t happen.
But what if things had gone differently? If I was sitting here now, in my kitchen, having had sex with another man?
Hugh would know, wouldn’t he? We were so in sync that he’d intuit something bad had happened, and the thought of having a secret from him, a secret that would destroy him, made me feel sick all over again.
But it didn’t happen. I didn’t do it. Thank you, God.
Mind you, who knew that being a cheater was almost as bad as being cheated on?
Then a little thought wormed in: maybe at some stage Hugh had cheated?
So I asked him and his response – ‘You even have to ask?’ – let me know how way off course I was.
‘But wouldn’t it be so hard …?’ I was thinking aloud.
‘What would?’
‘The guilt. You know, having to keep the secret from the one person you tell everything to.’
Hugh put down the knife he’d been using and he went very still. All that moved were his eyes, questions in them, as his gaze roamed over my face. ‘Is there something you want to tell me?’
‘No.’ Once again I was soaring with relief. So gloriously grateful that nothing had happened with Josh Rowan. I felt clean and ecstatic. ‘No, sweetie. No. Nothing. Hey, listen,’ I said. ‘Leave the cheese. Come upstairs with me.’
He gave me a hard look to see if he understood my meaning.