“It’s honestly fine,” I assure her, assuming she’s worried about upsetting Leon.
“No, I can’t … I can’t pay you,” she says. “For an extra session.”
I smile and walk back to her. “This isn’t a session,” I say quietly. “This is a chat between friends.”
Her shoulders visibly relax and the corners of her mouth turn up ever so slightly.
I’d hoped that Leon would have made himself scarce, but he’s back at the dining table, finishing his dinner and, unbeknownst to Anna, making a point.
“This is Leon,” I say. “Leon, this is Anna.” He doesn’t even look up from his plate.
“We’ve met before,” says Anna, taking me by surprise.
“Oh,” I say, looking between them.
“He probably doesn’t remember,” she says, as if he isn’t here. “I don’t tend to leave much of an impression.”
Leon offers a tight smile and I will him to say something to prove her wrong, even if he makes it up, but his silence is deafening.
“So what’s happened?” I ask, clicking on the kettle.
Her eyes dart nervously toward Leon.
“It’s OK,” I say, reaching out to reassure her, but she recoils as if she’s in pain.
“Anna, are you hurt?” I ask, my voice high-pitched. “Has he hurt you?”
She averts her eyes, but she can’t stop them from filling up.
“Oh God,” I say, going to her and wrapping my arms around her. I can feel her tears instantly soak through the thin cotton of my T-shirt and hold her even tighter.
“Where are the children?” I ask.
She looks at me, as if in a daze.
“The children?” I say again, trying to ward off the alarm bells that are ringing loudly in my ears. I study her carefully, suddenly concerned for her and her children’s well-being. Her hands are trembling and she’s looking at me wide-eyed.
“They’re with friends.”
“So they’re definitely somewhere safe?”
“Yes,” she says. “I’ll pick them up on my way home.”
“OK, we need to get you all out of there.”
“I can’t go to a hostel,” she says, sobbing into my shoulder. “But I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
“It’s OK,” I say, rocking her as if she were a baby. “We’ll figure something out.”
As I look over the top of her head, I see Leon, his outline blurred as if in portrait mode, shaking his head slowly from side to side. He can read me like a book.
“Could I use the bathroom, please?” she asks, attempting to wipe away the mascara shadows that circle her eyes.
“Sure, it’s just up the stairs and straight ahead.”
She offers an awkward smile to Leon as she leaves the room, which I hope will assuage any incoming wrath.
“Don’t even think about it,” he says, as soon as she’s out of earshot.
“What?” I say, feigning ignorance.
“She’s not staying here.”
“It hadn’t even occurred to me,” I lie.
“I mean it,” he says, sounding as if he’s berating a child.
“But what harm would a couple of days do? It will give her the space she needs and time to get herself back on her feet.”
Leon’s shaking his head. “You know nothing about her.”
I laugh scornfully. “I know everything about her. There isn’t another person in this world who knows more about her than I do. I know where she’s from, what her upbringing was like…”
“Just because she comes from the same city as you doesn’t give you the inside track on who she really is.”
I wasn’t aware I’d told him she was a fellow New Yorker. He must be able to detect it from her elongated and high gliding vowels.
“I know her fears, her fantasies, the nightmare that wakes her up night after night,” I say, not sure whether I’m talking about Anna or myself.
“But she’s not your problem,” he says.
“So what am I supposed to do? Just abandon her?”
Leon sighs heavily and I go to him, wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing his cheek.
“Oh, sorry,” says Anna, through a strangled cough.
Feeling self-conscious and not wishing to make her feel excluded, I pull away.
“I need to go and run a few checks,” says Leon, pushing his chair away from the dining table and standing up.
I watch as he walks down the hall and turns to give me a parting glare, silently warning me to do the right thing. But is that the right thing by Anna, or him?
“Nick and I used to be like you two,” she says wistfully. “He wouldn’t let me pass by without giving me a kiss or telling me how much he loved me. Our friends used to tell us to get a room. Now we can’t even be in the same house as each other.”
I pull a chair out from the dining table and invite her to sit. “Do you want to talk about what happened?” I ask, sitting down on the still-warm seat that Leon’s just left.
Anna pulls out a tissue from her sleeve and blows her nose. “He didn’t come home last night, but it’s something he does occasionally, just to let off some steam, so I wasn’t particularly worried. But when he got in this afternoon, he was drunk.”
I shudder.
“He’s not had a drink in over a year,” she says. “Not since we lost Ben.”
“Right,” I say, knowing first-hand the difference alcohol can make to someone’s personality.
“He’s … he’s never gone for me before,” she says, biting down on her lip and staring through the patio doors to the garden. “But he was so drunk and so mad that he just couldn’t help himself.”
My stomach lurches. I knew a man like that once. At weekends, when he was away from work and the lure of the bars in the city, he was the man my mother married, and the father Jennifer and I loved with all our hearts. But on weekdays, when he was unable to resist the temptation of “just one more,” he’d become completely unrecognizable.
Despite trying hard not to, I’m suddenly transported back to my parents’ bedroom and the look on my mother’s face when we heard my dad crash through the front door that day. We’d been lying there, her and me on the bed, talking about the boy who’d just asked me out. He was in ninth grade and I’d had a crush on him for ages, so when he asked me to the cinema that coming Saturday night, Mom and I were excitedly planning my outfit.
“Why don’t you wear those denim overalls Aunt Meryl bought you for your birthday?”
“Mom,” I’d shrieked in faux exasperation. “I’m thirteen, not nine.”
“Oh, but you look soooo cute in them,” she’d said, laughing as she tickled me.
“Yeah, if I was in the Mickey Mouse Club.”
“You used to love that show,” she’d said.
If the truth be known, I still did, but so too did Jennifer, whose being four years younger than me made it decidedly uncool to watch.
“Go on, do that Britney routine you used to do,” she’d said, nudging me.
“Mom, stop it,” I’d giggled, protesting and reveling in her attention all at the same time.
I used to love that hour before bed, when Jennifer was asleep and Dad was invariably propping up a bar somewhere in town. We’d watch an episode of Friends under a comforter in the living room or lie on her bed, talking about school—or on that particular night, boys.
“What about my denim skirt and that red top you bought me last week?” I’d said.
“Well, as long as it’s warm enough,” she said, in typical motherly fashion. “And what shoes are you going to wear?”
“We-ll,” I’d said, dragging the word out. “You know we’re the same size now…”
Her eyes had narrowed and she’d looked at me suspiciously. Like most young teenagers, I always thought I was able to outsmart my mother, naively assuming that she didn’t have a clue what was going through my pubescent brain. But now I’m the age she was then, I can see that I clearly didn’t give her enough credit.
“Yes,” she’d replied, warily.
“Well, I thought your sneakers would look super-cute with it.”
“Which ones?” she’d asked, knowing full well the pair I’d coveted ever since she’d bought them six months previously. The pair she was wearing right now.
I’d rolled my eyes and smiled.
“Oh, you mean these ones?” she’d said, laughing as she lifted her feet in the air.
“Can I?” I’d pleaded, crossing my fingers.