by Holly Miller
“No, Caleb,” Mum says. “You should hear this, too.”
God, she sounds very serious.
I glance at Dad. He’s looking down at the cup in his hands, and he’s sitting quite far apart from Mum. They’ve been doing that a fair bit recently, and it still looks weird to me. My whole life, they’ve always sat so close together, could never stop touching each other. I’ve lost count of how many comedy vomit faces me and Tash have made behind their backs, over the years.
Mum looks meaningfully at Dad. And then the bottom falls out of my world.
“We were at a marriage retreat,” he says. “That’s where we were, this weekend.”
“A marriage retreat? What’s that?” I say dumbly, assuming he’s going to say it’s somewhere you go to . . . what? Enjoy being married? Isn’t that what most of us call a dirty weekend?
“I don’t follow,” says Tash.
“We went to . . . try to save our marriage,” Mum says, slowly. “Our friends recommended it.”
“Our friends John and Roz,” Dad says, pointlessly. “You know—with the barge?”
I can tell you that John and Roz could wander in here with their barge right now and I wouldn’t even blink. I feel as though I’ve just had a knock to the head, that all the words I used to understand are no longer making sense. Maybe I inhaled more smoke than I realized last night. I glance at Tash, desperate for clues.
“What do you mean, save your marriage?” Tash says, like she’s trying really hard to be tactful but would actually quite like to upturn the teapot over both their heads.
Neither Mum nor Dad replies for a very long time, like they’re waiting for us to read between the lines. But it feels like we’re on completely different planets, never mind conversational planes.
Eventually, Mum takes a deep, dramatic breath. She’s fiddling with the silver locket around her neck, the one containing the photo of my grandparents. She’s had her hair cropped recently, shorter than I’ve ever seen it, and she’s wearing a pale pink lipstick with a frosted finish, which for her is a bold move. She usually complains that lipstick makes her look old. “We’re getting a divorce.”
I gape at her, then at Dad. He’s sitting very still, staring down at his knees like a drug smuggler at a press conference. He’s got a new hairstyle, too—but his is long and unkempt, almost like an act of defiance, a statement of something. I look back at Mum.
“What are you talking about?” Tash’s voice is skipping octaves now.
“The idea of the retreat was to try to find a way forward. It was a wonderful, very enriching experience, and the facilitators were incredible . . .”
For God’s sake. Mum sounds like she’s talking about the sugar crafting course at her night school.
“. . . but we’ve decided that the best thing for us is to go our separate ways.”
I stop just short of letting rip with every expletive she’s ever told me off for, plus a few new ones. “Why would you want to do that? You belong together. You’re . . . You’re meant to be.”
Next to me, Caleb squeezes my hand, a silent show of support.
Mum looks at Dad, and there is real sadness in their eyes. And for the first time ever, I’m forced to wonder if what I’ve been seeing all these years hasn’t, in fact, been a reflection of reality. If their fairy-tale love story is just that: an illusion. Something they’ve told us to make us feel better, or restore our faith in love, or worse—entertain us.
I look at Dad, the lingering smell of smoke catching the back of my throat. “I know you’ve been having migraines lately, and you’ve got all that redundancy stuff hanging over you, but surely this is—”
He shakes his head. “The migraines . . . we lied.”
Mum winces. “Sorry, darling. We needed to tell you something when . . . we’d fallen out.” She says fallen out like I used to say women’s troubles to my boss when I was pulling sickies at my first-ever temp job.
“But . . . what have you got to fall out about?” says Tash helplessly, as though she thinks people simply cease having feelings or any brain function at all once they hit a certain age.
“We want different things,” Dad says. “And our love life—”
“No!” Tash and I squawk in unison, putting up our hands to cut him off. And after that we all just sit in our little circle around the breakfast bar, staring down at it in silence like the world’s most dysfunctional group therapy session.
I’m struggling to remember a time when I’ve ever felt quite so blindsided by sadness. I tug at a loose thread on my cardigan, wonder if I could unravel the whole thing right here, if I just pulled hard enough. I feel Caleb glance across at me, and I wish we could be transported away suddenly, to a place where he could be wrapping me in his arms, telling me he loves me, whispering reassurance into my hair.
Tash is first to speak again. “You’ve been married for thirty-five years. You can’t chuck all that away because . . . you’re going through a rough patch.”
I think about Simon and Andrea, and about Caleb and Helen. And then I look at my mum and dad sitting in front of me, self-professed soulmates who we all thought were destined to be together.
They’ve been my role models my whole life. They made me believe in the kind of love that’s fated to last a lifetime. How can this be happening?
“Is there . . . anyone else?” I look between them, searching for telltale hints of sheepishness. The thought appalls me, but I have to ask.
“No,” Mum says, sipping her tea. “But of course we’ve discussed the idea that . . . there might be, one day.”
It’s so ageist and unkind, I know, but the thought of my fifty-something parents joining Shoreley’s dating pool makes me recoil far more than any of the PDAs they’ve subjected me to in the past.
“You always used to tell us you were destined to be together,” Tash says, like she thinks they might need reminding. “Was that a lie, then?”
“Of course not,” Dad says, glancing at Mum again. He’s hardly touched his tea. “I believe we were destined to meet, because wonderful things have come out of that: you, and Lucy, and building a life together. But now it’s time for a new chapter.”
Mum nods. “We don’t see it as the end, more as a fresh beginning. We’re choosing to look forward—not back. The retreat helped enormously with that.”
“Some marriage retreat,” Tash says, “where you come away planning to divorce. I assume you’ve asked them for a refund?”
And then, despite ourselves, we all smile, and soon we are laughing, and before very long we are wiping away tears of both mirth and sadness as we hug each other. I’m pretty sure we’re all already wondering exactly what our future will look like as a family now, since everything we thought we knew has gone up in smoke.
Go
I’m jolted into consciousness in the small hours of Monday morning. Max and I have only just gone to bed. A brunch in Battersea yesterday afternoon turned into an evening bar crawl that ended up in Belgravia via Chelsea. Olly was there, and Dean Farraday, and a couple of people from Max’s work. And Jools brought Nigel. They’ve been seeing each other for nearly six months now—almost since the day I moved out of the house—and they’re the kind of besotted where they’ll break off midsentence to kiss, and forget the rest of us are standing there, wondering how long we should wait before edging away. It’s been pretty special, watching Nigel fall in love with Jools. And the best thing is, he knows how lucky he is. I was able to stop worrying within days of her meeting him that he’d ever be the kind of guy to take her for granted.
Sal and Reuben tagged along too last night, and some Supernova folk. At one point, one of our group—Nicola, I think her name was, a senior associate at HWW—congratulated me on “bagging the most eligible bachelor in London.” Jools was standing next to me at the time, and we both just about kept our faces straight before turning to each o
ther with bulging cheeks as she started chatting to someone else, pulling that face people do when they’re trying not to throw up in public. But—much as she’d phrased it horribly, and I could never actually admit it out loud—I privately agreed with Nicola. Max is a catch: I’ve always felt that way, ever since we were students in Norwich and people flocked around him in bars like he was famous. He’s always just had that . . . aura about him.
Living with Max, just the two of us, has been everything I hoped it would be. Six months on, we’re still making each other late for work several times a week, unable to bear leaving the bedroom. We take showers together and pin love notes to the fridge and message each other to rush home. We eat our body weight in takeaway sushi and I’ve taught him to cook my famous paella crowd-pleaser. At first, I even joined him on the odd morning run, though my enthusiasm has slightly dropped off now. We’ve done so many of the tiny, trivial things we said we would over a decade previously, and every one of them has been worth the wait.
Perhaps it’s even better now than it would have been back then. Because maybe now is our time. Our careers are on an upward trajectory, we know who we are and what we want. This is the life we’ve chosen, not one we arrived at by accident.
And yet, somehow, I occasionally catch myself not quite recognizing the life we’re living—the show-home flat and our flashy jobs and increasingly expensive tastes. Maybe it’s because we broke up as students, and a part of me still thinks of us that way. Or maybe it’s ever since finding out about Tash, because nothing after that has turned out quite as I always thought it would.
But even if Tash hadn’t happened, and we’d stayed together all those years ago, I know we still might not have made it. Perhaps we’d have moved to London together, hearts full of hope, and parted ways six months later. Because life is complicated. Best intentions get buried beneath work, money, social lives. Love falls victim to circumstance.
“That yours or mine?” Max murmurs now. He’s spread-eagled on his front, face wedged between the pillows like he’s been dropped there from a height.
The sound of my phone is about as welcome as a pneumatic drill. I pick it up, praying it’s not Zara calling me to the office early for an emergency pitch meeting. I worked until midnight three days last week. I need a reasonable start time this morning.
“Hello?” I croak, alarmed to realize I sound as though I chain-smoked my way into bed.
“Lucy?”
I sit up. My hair is all over my face. I push it back. I need water and an open window, to breathe in some fresh dawn air. “Mum?”
“Oh, darling, thank God you’re okay.”
Dread spreads slowly through me like treacle. “What . . . What do you mean?”
“There’s been a fire.” Her voice cracks on the last word.
* * *
—
Max drives us to Shoreley, breaking every rule of the road, plus a few extra ones. The whole way, I can barely think, the guilt like a swarm of bees in my brain.
“It’ll be okay,” he keeps saying. He’s had his hand on my leg since we left London, moving it only to change gear or navigate a roundabout. Zara and Max’s boss Tim, both gave us today off when we explained about the fire. But a small, selfish part of me is so scared of what we’re about to discover that I almost wish they’d said no.
Mum had asked me to house-sit for the weekend. She and Dad were going away—three nights in Sussex—and they’re always so paranoid about burglars, and their cat, Macavity, starving to death. Tash and Simon were in Bristol with Dylan, visiting Simon’s brother, so I said we would, but on Friday night it was impossible to get out of London. The A2 was gridlocked—a seven-car pileup, apparently—so we turned the car around. Both Mum’s and Dad’s phones were switched off (I tried not to think too hard about why) so eventually I rang their neighbor, Paula. She’d been away all week herself, which I guess is why Mum didn’t ask her.
Straightaway, Paula suggested we stay in London, save ourselves the trip altogether. Everything would be perfectly safe until Monday, she said, and she’d be sure to pop in on Macavity. She promised to contact Mum and Dad to let them know.
I had her on speaker at the time, and Max was kissing my neck, his fingers slipping in between the buttons on my shirt. Say yes, he mouthed, and I very nearly groaned out loud on the phone.
We’d both been working long hours all week and were exhausted. What we really needed to do was spend the weekend between the bed and the shower and the sofa, eating proper food. Not that it worked out that way in the end, but our intentions were good, if slightly lust-fueled.
So I said yes to Paula, made a note in my iCal to send her some thank-you flowers, then promptly forgot about the whole thing.
And now, it seems, that split-second decision has cost my parents everything.
* * *
—
I shouldn’t have let Max come. It’s always so awkward now when he’s with my family: he and Tash studiously avoid eye contact, and my parents deal with the discomfort by pretending he’s not there. All of which only draws attention to the one thing we’d all rather forget.
We’re wrapped up in our coats, standing on the pavement across the road from the cottage, like mourners watching a funeral cortège. Above our heads, seagulls are sailing briskly on the breeze, like it’s an ordinary winter’s day. But it’s not, of course, because the fire service is still working on the slowly smoking wreckage of the cottage. The air smells noxious. Only the lower floor is still intact, and what’s left is ragged and charred, like blackened tree trunks in the aftermath of a wildfire. The ugly remains of it alter how the whole street looks, and passersby are stopping to stare. For a moment it feels as though this can’t be real—like we’re on the set of a film about our life, gaping at the plot twist they’ve seen fit to throw in.
“I’m so sorry,” I say again, my stomach grinding with guilt. I feel horrible not only about the fire but about the fact this is the first time I’ve visited Shoreley in three months. I’ve been so busy and loved-up, but that’s no excuse. Aside from anything else, I haven’t seen my nephew since his birthday.
Next to me, Max squeezes my hand. I know he’s desperate to reassure me, tell me none of this is my fault, but he probably feels he can’t—not out loud, anyway.
On my other side, I feel Tash glance at me, and for a moment I think she’s going to lecture me about how selfish I am, how I need to sort my life out, that I’m a terrible person and look what I’ve done. But she doesn’t. She just slips an arm around me, hugging me so close I can smell her shampoo.
* * *
—
By the time we’ve talked to Paula and the authorities and the insurance people, it’s midafternoon, so Max and I head back to Tash’s with Simon while Tash goes to pick Dylan up from school. Bizarrely, Mum and Dad took an unscheduled diversion to a coffee shop at lunchtime, and have been there ever since. Simon said we should leave them to it, as they’re obviously in shock. We figure they’ll join us back at the house when they’re ready, along with Macavity, who’s thankfully safe and currently gorging on copious quantities of tinned tuna at Paula’s.
“You can go if you want to,” I tell Max in the car, en route to Tash’s. “I can get the train home later.” We’re following Simon, who drives surprisingly slowly, like he’s about five decades older than he actually is. Either that, or he’s got six points on his license. He keeps stopping at roundabouts like they’re T-junctions, and I can tell Max is starting to find it quite funny.
“Go where?”
“Back to London.”
“Are you saying that because you think this is going to be awkward?”
I run my tongue over my teeth. I feel strung out and a little wired, like I’ve drunk too much coffee, even though I’ve only had a single cup today. I shake my head. “Just thought you might want to get off.”
“I’m not goin
g anywhere.”
Ahead of us, Simon dithers at a slip road. “You could be right about that,” I say, and Max laughs.
Simon inches into fourth gear on the dual carriageway, and finally we leave Shoreley in our wake. Everything I can see is the color of charcoal—the road, the sky, the fume-stained bark of the leafless trees.
I turn my head toward Max, taking in the sight of his hands on the steering wheel, the quick flick of his eyes between lanes and signs and slip roads and traffic, his freshly shaved jaw, the dark neckline of his jumper against his collarbone.
I switch my gaze to the road again. “I have no idea how I’m going to come back from this, you know. I’m not sure they’ll ever be able to forgive me.”
“Nobody in their right minds would blame you for this, Luce. It was an overloaded socket. Even if we’d been there, there was nothing we could have done.”
I frown, look down at my hands. I got a manicure yesterday afternoon, in a color called siren red, which not only seems now like the height of self-absorption but also cruelly ironic.
Max puts a hand on my leg, making me good-shiver, despite the somber mood. “Don’t you think it’s lucky we weren’t there? The fire service said your parents’ smoke alarm wasn’t working. What if we’d been asleep and not realized?”
“I still let them down.”
“No,” Max insists, his voice firmer now. He taps the brakes as, up ahead, Simon does the same for no reason. “I think saying yes to Paula on Friday might have been the best thing you ever did.”
I smile, faintly. “I’m not going to win this one, am I?”
“Afraid not. I won’t let you punish yourself for what’s happened.” He flicks on his indicator, moves into the outside lane. The car surges forward. “Right, are you holding on? I’m about to top forty.”
* * *
—
As it turns out, trying to buy children’s affection with expensive birthday gifts doesn’t work, because when Dylan gets home with Tash, he frowns when he sees us.