I remember feeling so upset when he told me that, as a little boy, he couldn’t understand how his dad could have died so suddenly. His dad was a doctor. He saved lives for a living. Justin couldn’t understand how no one could save his.
He sits back against the cushion, extending his long legs, interlacing his fingers behind his head. I watch him as he stares and blinks at the ceiling.
‘Come home. We can make it work. I’d love your son, because he was an innocent little boy and because he was yours. Don’t you see, Dylan could have two families – one with his mum and one with us? He’d have three people who loved him. Can’t you look at that as a positive? If we adopted, he could even have siblings.’
I have never seen him appear more conflicted. He puts his head in his hands again.
‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’
‘But why can’t you?’
I already know the answer.
He looks at me now. ‘Because I want to be a proper father to him. I suppose for the rest of his life, whatever quality he’s got, I want to be there fully for him. I want him to know what it’s like to have a real family who love him. He deserves that. I don’t want Lisa marrying someone else and some other bloke raising my kid. Others mightn’t see that as a problem, but I do. I’m sorry.’
Echoes of everything he’s ever said about his unpleasant life with his stepfather come back to me. How he said there’s nothing worse than constantly trying to impress someone, trying to win them over to liking you, when you never can. Impossibly, it was as if everything he’s ever told me about his childhood was said to validate his decision now.
‘But you never wanted a child with Lisa.’
‘But I had one, didn’t I?’ Then he adds, ‘I’m sorry. It’s just something I have to do.’
It’s surreal. I can’t believe my ears. ‘So what about her, then?’ I say after a while. ‘Do you love her? I mean . . . you’ve moved in with her.’
‘I’ve been staying there for practical reasons. We’re not sharing a room. Trust me, sex is the very last thing on my mind. But do I love her? Well, I suppose, in some ways I still have feelings for her, because that’s the kind of person I am. I don’t get involved with people lightly. I don’t switch it on and off when it’s convenient. I’ve known her for a very long time. We had some good times and we had some less good times. She moved up North to be with me. And now by some crazy turn of fate she’s the mother of my son and she’s going through hell with this. I was never untrue to you about my feelings, Alice. Never. But life isn’t simple and cut and dried.’
It blows me over. It all does. I want to fight, but I have lost already. ‘So you think that because you’ve got a baby together, that you can be happy with her?’
He throws up his hands. ‘You know, Alice, I am thinking first and foremost of my son. Two weeks ago, he might have died. At the moment, he’s an unknown quantity. We’re just watching and waiting and praying. But as for love, well, you can love people in different ways, on different levels, and, in any case, those ways evolve over time, no matter how you start out. I once told you that I’m not unrealistic about how these things work. I’m not some starry-eyed teenager. And neither is Lisa.’
I can’t bear the words love and Lisa being uttered practically in the same sentence.
‘Sometimes, you get your life flung at you, and you have to get on with it and make the best of it. I have to try to make the best of it. For my son.’
We sit in silence for a while. I try to grapple with it all. Then he says, ‘Do you have something I can drink? A beer? Anything.’
‘Sure.’ I go to the fridge and pull out a beer. I am caught in that hellish place of disowning him and still caring about him: disowning him because I think he’s wrong, and frustrated that I can’t change his mind. I open the beer and hand it to him. Our fingers meet as he takes it. ‘Did you eat?’
‘Not since lunch.’
‘Do you want me to make you a sandwich?’
‘No. Thanks.’ He looks perplexedly at the printing on the can, and passes it between his hands as if it’s a foreign object. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you hearing all this. I am not proud of the way I handled this, and how you’ve been hurt in the process. You must believe that.’
I don’t know what to say, what response I can possibly make. ‘So what are you going to do, Justin? How do things proceed from here?’
He looks right at me, quite calm now. Calm, but distant again. ‘Well, I’m going to do what I have to do. I’m going to release you of me. I am sure you’ll meet someone else, and one day you’ll have a family with this person. And I’m sure in time you’ll realise this was for the best.’
‘But I don’t want to be released of you.’ Tears roll down my face. I fly my hand up, but can’t stop them.
‘I know. But you have to let me do what I think is right.’
I study him, wordlessly. There’s nothing more either of us can say.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Evelyn
London. 1983
‘What is it, Ev?’
Evelyn was lying on the sofa like an alabaster sculpture, with her head turned away from him. She was staring vacantly at the fire.
‘Look at you. You’re so pale.’ He hovered over her, stymied by the sense of his own helplessness. ‘You’ve got me very concerned. What is wrong?’
Mark always worried about his wife. Someone had once told him that happiness is something you feel only when you’ve given up focussing on its absence. But Mark wasn’t sure Evelyn could ever be happy. Mark was convinced that Evelyn was depressed and it had come to some sort of head.
She looked at him, without really seeing him.