‘You know what? I think you should do it first. After all, it’s really you whose life is going to change the most. Of the two of us, you’re the one I’m most worried will have second thoughts.’
‘I won’t have second thoughts, Eddy. I promise. I’m not going to say I’ll do it if I know I can’t.’ She recognised the magnitude of the commitment, but it didn’t faze her, because that’s how certain she was. Eddy was right. It was the eighties now. Couples split up. Families survived. There was no need for a child to get hurt. Neither of them would watch it happen. ‘I suppose we both have to take a leap of faith and trust each other,’ she said.
After some back-and-forth discussion, they agreed that she would leave Mark and fly back North before Christmas, then Eddy would break the news to Laura in the early new year. If Evelyn waited until January, she was worried her nerve might fail.
She dreaded to think how the meaning of Mark’s life would soft-focus when she left him. They knew a few divorced men who had lived it up like twenty-year-olds, enjoying the sexual advantage that their money brought them with younger women who would never have been interested in them years ago. It might have been a novelty at first. But eventually they craved the stability of a wife to come home to again – someone to see to it that their socks got washed, and that they remembered to visit their mothers. She couldn’t really see Mark applying Grecian 2000 and partying at Annabel’s, even though she didn’t doubt he could attract a much younger piece of eye candy. His ability to be part-lover, part-father and part-infant would be a comforting fit for a certain childlike siren character. Still, though, it was strange to be picturing his future knowing she wouldn’t be in it.
When they had come to the end of their conversation, Eddy surprised her by saying, ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For doing this. For me. I’ll never forget you left your good life for me, and I promise you, Evelyn, that even though I can’t give you much materially, I will give you all the love anyone can give someone. Every day of my life, my happiness will only exist if I know I’m making you happy. If I look at you and see the genuineness of it in your face.’
She thought that was the loveliest thing anyone had ever said to her.
She and Mark were one of a handful of couples dining on Saturday night in the small ivy-walled Italian restaurant, just off the High Street. Oddly, Mark looked up from his osso buco and asked her, ‘Do you think you’re ever going to put your mother’s house up for sale?’
She knew he was just making conversation, but it was timely, anyway. They weren’t waiting for the money. In Mark’s eyes, her family home was worthless. That wasn’t unkind on his part, just the way he valued things.
She met his eyes, trying to keep the regret out of her own. ‘Actually, I’m thinking of keeping it.’
He frowned. ‘Keeping it? Why?’
‘To rent it out and have some income.’
‘Whatever for? Why would you want to have tenants in a property that you can’t oversee because you’re four hundred miles away?’
She couldn’t bear his eyes. She looked down at her virtually untouched fettuccine Alfredo. ‘Maybe because it’s my family home. It’s all I have left of my heritage. I don’t want to let it go.’
He was disapprovingly silent.
‘Maybe it’s a silly idea,’ she said after a while. Tell him, a part of her was trying to egg herself on. But she couldn’t tell him in the middle of a restaurant. It was funny, but, until now, the idea of telling him had still borne an unreal, rather distant quality.
‘I think it is a silly idea. I think you need to sell it and put that place behind you, once and for all.’
That place.
‘You really don’t have to speak of my home like that.’ She was surer of her decision to leave than ever before now, even though she knew it was just anger.
He studied her as she sat there ramrod still, refusing to meet his eyes. Then he sighed. ‘Well, look, for God’s sake, if you need to go back again – for closure – if that’s what it takes to finally let go, then do it. I’m not going to stand in your way; surely you know that.’
He was unwittingly giving her the ‘out’ she needed, and yet it felt so wrong to take advantage of his naivety.
Can I tell him I’m going back for a visit and then leave him a letter? Or should I tell him when I get there that I’m not coming back? Just like Eddy said . . . Then another flaw in this plan dawned on her. Abandon him three weeks before Christmas! Why had I even thought of that? What kind of a person would be so cruel?
Suddenly, the logistics of leaving him bore down on her, her conscience crushing her until she could barely breathe.
Mark sighed and went back to his food. It didn’t help that he was giving her latitude. Although, if she was being unkind, Evelyn would have argued that in giving her options, Mark would never have expected she’d choose the one that he would have least approved of. Then he added, ‘If you do go, though, I’ll miss you terribly. You know that, don’t you?’
His words battered her. She could feel her thumb and index finger gripping her fork too tightly, tears trying to well up. He was rarely effusive with his affection. It was odd that he had chosen to be so now.
A few days later, after wrestling with all this, she walked into his study. He glanced up from his desk, looking happy to see her. ‘Mark, I’ve decided I do need to go back up North. Like you said. For closure. Just this one last time. And before Christmas.’ Her heart beat erratically. She was so unused to lying that she was convinced the truth must be telexing itself across her forehead for him to read.
Perhaps he need never know about Eddy. This thought suddenly landed on her. She could just say that she missed Lindisfarne too much, so she was going back there for good.
Her plan still kept changing, practically by the minute.