‘Oh my gosh, thank you! It’s beautiful. I’ll put my keys on it first thing in the morning. Now why don’t you take your bag into your bedroom while I say goodnight to Daddy?’
‘See you soon, soldier,’ Ian says, and then, when Adam’s wheeled his little Buzz Lightyear suitcase away, he smiles at me. ‘You’re looking good, Lou. Have you lost some weight?’
‘A bit.’ I’m glad he’s noticed, but although I may be looking slimmer, I’m not sure good is a word I’d have chosen for how I appear today. A night of no sleep while tossing and turning and thinking about David and Adele’s fucked-up lives, my own hurt heart and my self-pity, and my lack of a job, has left me looking washed out.
‘Ah, I probably shouldn’t have brought you these then.’ He holds up a bag. Two bottles of French red wine and several cheeses.
‘Always welcome,’ I say with a tired grin as I take it. I don’t tell him I’ve lost my job. That can wait for a while, and I’m going to have to make up some lie to cover it. There’s no way I can tell him the truth. I don’t want to make him think we’re now on some even moral ground. He cheated on me, and now I’ve slept with a married man. I’m definitely not giving him that. I’ll say my new boss had his own secretary or something. That’s the thing I’m learning about affairs. They breed lies.
‘You’d better get off, shouldn’t you?’ I say. ‘Lisa must be knackered in the car.’ Their delayed Eurostar has meant it’s nearly midnight. They should have been home by nine.
‘Yeah, she is.’ He looks momentarily awkward, and then adds, ‘Thanks for this, Louise. I know it’s not easy.’
‘It’s fine, honestly,’ I say, waving him away, ‘I’m happy for you. Really.’ I can’t decide if that’s a lie or not, and I find that it’s part-lie, part-truth. It’s complicated. I do want him to leave though. After the intensity of the past few weeks and days I don’t really have small talk in me, and this invading return of normality feels surreal.
When he’s gone, I get Adam into his pyjamas and squeeze him tightly, relishing the gorgeous smell of him while he sleepily mumbles tales of his time away, most of which I’ve heard on the phone. I don’t mind. I feel as if I could listen to his chatter all night. I put a big plastic cup of water by his bed and we talk for a little while as he gets drowsier and drowsier.
‘I missed you, Mummy,’ he says. ‘I’m glad I’m home.’
My heart melts then. I do have a life of my own. It might all be wrapped up in the package of this little boy, but I love him with all my heart, and that love is pure and clean and perfect.
‘I missed you too,’ I say. Those words don’t cover how I feel. ‘Let’s go up to Highgate Woods tomorrow if the weather’s nice. Get some ice creams. Have some pretend adventures. Would you like that?’
He smiles and nods, but he’s drifting off to his own world of sleep. I kiss him goodnight and watch him for a moment or two longer before turning the light out and leaving him.
I feel utterly exhausted. Having Adam back has calmed me, and now there’s just tiredness weighing me down. I pour a glass of the rich red wine Ian brought and it eases the final dregs of my tension until I can’t stop yawning. I try to let Adele and David float away. Adele has a phone. If she’s in any real trouble she can call. Unless, of course, she’s too smashed off her face on whatever concoction of pills David has given her. But there’s nothing I can really do. I’ve thought about calling Dr Sykes, but who’s he going to believe? And I’m pretty sure that Adele would lie to protect David – and herself. I can’t understand why she still loves him, which she clearly does, when it seems pretty obvious to me that he’s only there for her money. How much is she worth? How much has he spent? Maybe they’ve been together so long Adele is mistaking dependency for love.
It stings too, that Adele said David had a thing with someone where they used to live. So much for all his I don’t do this angst. It hurts, and I keep replaying how he was that awful night, so cold in what he said. A stranger. The other side to him, like Adele said.