by Kate Field
I flopped back in my chair. The past had shifted again. I couldn’t believe that Leo had lied – but seeing the distress on Ethan’s face, as he relived those times, I couldn’t doubt it either. And now Leo’s eagerness to have a baby so quickly after our wedding took on a whole new slant. I’d believed it was a sign of commitment. Instead, it was to make good a lie to his brother. The shape of my life had been plotted and manipulated by these two men. And had either of them, at any point, paused to ask what I wanted?
‘Wasn’t I worth fighting for?’ I asked. ‘Did you not want me with another man’s child?’
‘It wasn’t just any man though, was it?’
‘So the brothers closed ranks and did a deal between themselves? I’m not a commodity. I was never yours to trade, and not his either. How do you think it feels to find out that the last twenty years weren’t the life I thought I’d chosen, but a ramshackle, fragile thing, hung together with secrets, lies, and a grubby pact?’ Ethan tried to speak but I was on a roll, and didn’t stop to listen. ‘Thank God for Audrey, that’s all I can say.’
‘Mum? What about her?’
‘She’s the one member of your family who has been true and loyal, and put me first – the only one who seems to realise that I’m a human being with real feelings. At least I can still rely on her. She would be horrified if she knew all this.’
Ethan didn’t answer. The lines on his face deepened, the footprints of the thoughts travelling through his head. Then he came and knelt beside me, and took my hand.
‘Forget the past. I’m here, I’m now, and I love you. Is that not enough?’
‘No. Words aren’t enough if they’re not supported by actions. My dad told me he loved me every day. On the day he left, he called me his Mary-bear, and said that he loved me more than anything in the world. But he was gone when I came home from school, and I never heard from him again. I’ve no idea if he’s alive. He doesn’t know if I am. He doesn’t know I married or that he has two amazing grandchildren. Words of love mean nothing if they can’t be trusted.’
‘Don’t do this, Mary.’ Ethan squeezed my hand. ‘It’s our time. It has to be.’
‘It’s not. It would be wrong – wrong in every way, and most of all, wrong for me.’
‘Tell me you don’t love me.’
Listen to my heart, Audrey had said – but how could I, when it was in a million tiny fragments? All I could go by was my head, and that was telling me to end this now, before I could be hurt even more. But looking into Ethan’s face, where grief replaced the usual smile, tears dulled eyes that were normally so bright and full of fun, I couldn’t imagine how there could be worse pain than this. Of course I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t love him. But nor could I risk the consequences of telling him that I did.
I leaned forward and kissed his forehead, breathing him in for the last time.
‘Have a happy life in New York,’ I said, and then I picked up Dotty and left.
Chapter 26
It was important to me that the Archers should feel part of the adventure with Alice’s manuscript as much as I was, and so after signing with the literary agent, I invited them out to lunch to celebrate. They weren’t keen, but eventually I found a wheelchair-friendly pub within ten minutes of their village, with a menu they approved of – proper Sunday lunch with mash and homemade gravy – and they graciously succumbed to my invitation. I asked Audrey along to make up numbers and to keep conversation and laughter flowing, but ten minutes into our journey, I began to think the unthinkable and wonder whether Mum might have been a more cheerful option after all. Audrey gazed out of the car window, in utter abstraction, responding to me in monosyllables, and she hadn’t said ‘marvellous’ once.
‘Is anything the matter?’ I asked, reaching across the car to touch her leg when she failed to answer for the third time. ‘Would you rather I took you home?’
‘Of course not. I’m here to support you, my darling.’ She rustled up a smile. ‘I shall be brimming with gaiety when we’re there.’ The smile drooped. ‘One message to say he’d arrived, and that’s all, in a week! I don’t suppose he …’
‘No.’ I didn’t need to ask who she meant. Ethan had returned to New York a week ago. I’d heard nothing from him since I walked out on him at Audrey’s house. I missed him more than I’d expected. His departure had created a gigantic sinkhole in my life, wide and deep and impossible to ignore. Who knew that an absence could be every bit as solid, every bit as disruptive as a presence?
Audrey sighed. Aware that she was studying me, I kept my gaze steadily on the road ahead.
‘I know your father hurt you a great deal, Mary, but you must be careful not to bottle up your feelings too tightly. One day someone may believe your act that you don’t care.’
I glanced at her in astonishment, but she had turned her head towards the side window again. It was the closest Audrey had ever come to criticising me, and an initial flare of resentment didn’t last long. She was right. I prided myself on my ability to block out my feelings. How else had I endured Leo’s defection, and sailed through a record-breakingly quick divorce? How else was I surviving Ethan’s absence? If I was surviving it. The days weren’t so bad: if I kept busy, kept moving, I could go for an hour or more without thinking about him. The nights were a different matter. Then I had too much time to wonder about what I had done, and to wonder how different my life would have looked now if I could have brought myself to say yes.
As promised, Audrey did perk up over lunch, although knowing her so well, I could tell it was a veneer of her usual liveliness, not the real thing. It was a good enough show to amuse the Archers: although at first they had appeared overwhelmed by Audrey’s exuberance, it was impossible not to love her, and within half an hour I’d even spotted a hint of gum as old Mrs Archer was lured into smiling. Then she turned her glittering eyes on me.
‘How’s it with that fella of yours?’ she asked through a mouthful of mashed potato.
A couple of peas dived off my fork and made a break for freedom across the table. I was tempted to follow. What had made her ask that now? Perhaps it was my fault: I’d introduced Audrey as my friend, fearing that the ‘ex-mother-in-law and rejected future mother-in-law’ introduction might bring on exactly this sort of question.
I coughed and drank some wine, and generally made a show of not having heard the question.
‘Mary?’ Audrey asked, when I’d run out of things to do. ‘You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend.’
Wide-eyed and droopy-mouthed, she looked so woebegone that I rushed to reassure her.
‘I don’t! You’d be the first to know if I did. Audrey is my ex-husband’s mother,’ I explained to Bridie and Mrs Archer. I hoped that they would have the tact to let it drop. They didn’t.
‘Ooh.’ For a moment I thought Mrs Archer was choking, as the noise gargled in her throat. ‘And mother of t’other.’
‘The other?’ Audrey repeated. Three pairs of curious eyes fixed on me.
‘Ethan.’ My heart knocked so loudly at the sound of his name that I was sure Audrey must be able to feel the vibrations through the settle we were sharing. ‘Bridie and Mrs Archer met him at the meeting of the Alice Hornby Society in July.’
‘He carried Mum up the stairs,’ Bridie said. ‘It made Mum’s day!’
‘He’s always been a kind and lovely boy.’ Audrey sighed and put down her fork. ‘I miss him terribly.’
‘He’s not dead, is he?’ Bridie asked.
‘No.’ Not even my exemplary blocking skills would allow me to stuff my face with Sunday lunch in those circumstances. ‘He’s returned to New York, where he lives. He was only here on a long holiday.’
‘But I hoped we might have been able to persuade him to stay,’ Audrey added. ‘He slotted back into our lives so beautifully, almost as if he’d never been away, didn’t he, Mary?’
‘Hmm.’ I didn’t want to be reminded how well he’d slotted into my life, or how it was my fault that he had
n’t been persuaded to stay.
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ Audrey murmured her thanks, although Bridie had been looking at me when she spoke. ‘Mum?’
Mrs Archer stared at me, in an intense and frankly terrifying way. It would have put me off my roast beef if my misery hadn’t already managed that.
‘Aye, happen she needs to see it.’
Urged on by this mysterious uttering, Bridie reached into her Cath Kidston shopper, which had been sitting on her knee like a spoilt lapdog throughout the meal. She pulled out a thick, A4 envelope and handed it across the table to me.
‘How marvellously mysterious!’ Audrey exclaimed, perking up and mercifully moving on from talk of Ethan. ‘What is it, Mary?’
I didn’t reply, because I was drawing out a pile of paper – the same cheap shiny paper that Alice’s manuscript had been copied on. Turning the pages print side up, I recognised Alice’s handwriting, but it wasn’t the closely packed writing full of crossings-out that I was used to from her manuscripts. This was a flowing, neat script, divided into dates …
‘This is Alice’s diary!’ I checked the first date again, hardly believing what my eyes were telling me. ‘This was written later than anything that’s been published so far. This is all new.’ I looked across at Bridie. ‘Did Florrie have this too?’
Bridie nodded.
‘It starts a couple of weeks after her sister’s death, and goes on until she finished the last book. There’s no more after that.’
‘Can I take this and read it?’ I didn’t wait for an answer: they would have to kill me to prise it from my fingers. ‘Do you want this to be published too? If the diary is about Alice writing her last book, it would be fantastic to launch them at the same time.’
‘Read it and see,’ Bridie said, glancing at her mother. ‘It’s personal.’
‘Read it and think,’ Mrs Archer added, in her usual mysterious way.
Luckily the children were with Leo for the weekend and not due back until after tea, so as soon as I arrived home, I let Dotty out into the garden – I don’t think she minded missing a walk, as it was pouring with rain – and settled down to read the diary. I had studied Alice’s diaries in detail, and expected to find more of the same: beautiful, stylish prose, full of warmth and wit, and clearly written with an eye on possible publication. It told Alice’s life, but wrapped in silk and ribbons, with always a layer between the reader and what really lay beneath.
This diary was different. It was beautifully written – I don’t think Alice could do anything else – but there was no silk or lace to cover up the truth. Bridie had said it was personal, and it was – personal to the extent that every thought, good or bad, was recorded here, leaving Alice exposed. And the truth was exposed too. I had thought Alice’s novel was heartfelt and the emotion so raw that it was like reading a diary, and now I understood why. Alice had been in love with her sister’s husband, just like in the book, and he had asked her to go away with him and live as man and wife.
But as I already knew, Alice’s story didn’t have the same happy ending that she gave her characters. Alice rejected her brother-in-law and returned to her parents, and he eventually married a widow to be a mother to his children. I cried so much as I read the last pages of the diary that the paper crinkled and began to tear in my hands. And then I read one of the final paragraphs, and my breath caught because it felt as though Alice was reaching out through the pages and speaking just to me.
‘Oh, that I had my chance again, and that my courage were as brave as my imagination! What should I care for the opinion of the world? My conscience would be my only judge, and love my only master. Why should anything matter, but what is in our hearts? Seize happiness, happiness at any price!’
I thought I must have imagined it when Jonas mentioned Ethan’s name later that night – as if my head was so full of him that he had leaked out.
‘What?’ I said, spinning round to look at Jonas. He glanced up from his iPad and managed not to roll his eyes, though I expect he was tempted.
‘Do you know when Ethan’s coming back? There’s going to be a half marathon around the village in March, and I thought he’d be up for it.’
‘Can Dad not do it with you?’
Now he did roll his eyes.
‘Dad couldn’t run 1k. I can pre-register now if you think Ethan will be back.’
I could feel Ava’s eyes boring into me.
‘He’s not coming back, unless he pops over to visit Gran. He still lives in New York.’ I struggled to keep my voice and expression neutral. ‘This summer was just a holiday.’
I’m not sure my neutrality was coming across, because Jonas gave me a sympathetic look – the sort of look I should use on him when he had trouble with girlfriends, not the other way round.
‘I’ll email him and ask,’ he said.
‘No …’ But he sloped off upstairs before I could say any more, leaving me with one more thing to worry about. What if he did email Ethan? What if Ethan thought I’d asked Jonas to do it? I turned off the television and picked up a book instead, hoping it might prove a better distraction. Ava was still watching me over the top of her phone.
‘Are you going to New York?’ she asked, after five minutes of silent glaring, during which time I’d read the same page twice without having a clue what it said.
‘No!’ I put down the book. ‘Why would you ask that?’
‘Because it’s what people at school say.’ Ava tossed her hair over one shoulder. ‘That you’ve been having a thing with Uncle Ethan for months and that you’ll move over there to live with him.’
‘And you believed it?’
‘Why not?’ She shrugged. ‘He’s not going to choose here over New York, is he? And Dad moved away without giving me or Joe a thought, so why wouldn’t you? You’re both as selfish as each other.’
‘Selfish?’ My screech woke Dotty, and she whimpered and scuttled over to Ava’s feet. ‘How dare you call me selfish? Everything I’ve done for the last twenty years has been for Dad, or Jonas, or you and the grans.’
‘Like when you went down to London to see that agent? Which of us was that for?’
‘Once! That was one thing I’ve done for myself, and even that’s not entirely for me, because if I earn any money, what do you think it will be spent on?’ I started counting on my fingers. ‘Mobile phone bills, horse-riding, internet, Netflix, your clothes and make-up, stuff for Jonas, a possible holiday next year if there’s anything left … I’m hardly going out every night having fun, am I?’
‘Er, Mum?’
I barely registered Jonas, who’d come back downstairs; my blocked feelings had burst open like a breached dam.
‘I have no life beyond this house, but I didn’t mind, because I wanted to make you all happy. So no, I haven’t been having any sort of thing with Ethan. I turned him down because I thought you would all be against it and I didn’t want you to be talked about. But if the gossip has spread already, and you hate me whatever I do, I wish I’d accepted him after all!’
I dropped my head to my knees, covered my face with my arms, and cried. What was I doing? I couldn’t shout at Ava like this. She might act like a bolshy young woman, but she was only a child – my child, the one I should love and protect, not screech at. I’d failed as a daughter and failed as a wife. Being a mother was all I had left, and now I’d failed at that too.
The sofa cushion shifted beneath me.
‘It’s okay, Mum,’ Jonas said, and he put his arm across my back and patted my shoulder. That made me cry even more. It was my job to comfort him, not the other way round.
‘So you do fancy Uncle Ethan?’ Ava asked.
‘I think it’s a bit more than that,’ Jonas replied.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ I raised my head and wiped my cheeks. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’
There was no way Ava would leave it at that.
‘Did he ask you to move to New York?’
‘No.’
; ‘Then what?’
‘He offered to move here.’
‘Here? Here as in England, or here as in this house?’
‘Either. Both.’
For a moment the confident mask slipped, revealing the young girl she had once been, wary of the unknown but unwilling to admit it. I crossed over to her chair, perched on the arm, and kissed the top of her head before she could recoil.
‘I’m sorry I shouted.’
‘Fair’s fair,’ Jonas interrupted. ‘She shouts at you often enough.’
‘You don’t need to worry. No one is moving into this house.’
‘It’s Dad’s house …’
‘He’s not coming back, Ave.’ Jonas perched on the other chair arm. ‘He’s married to Clark.’
‘I know, but …’Ava’s chin wobbled as she tried to hold in her tears. ‘We hardly see him now. And when we do, Clark’s always there, or Dad’s always talking about him. He’s not ours anymore.’
She lost her battle, and the tears rolled down her cheeks, though she swallowed her sobs and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. Is this what she had been doing, all these months? Bottling up her feelings, just like I did? I pulled her into my arms and she melted against me.
‘Is that what you were bothered about? Why you objected to the idea of Owen and Ethan?’
I felt Ava’s nod against my chest.
‘I don’t want you to change too,’ she mumbled into my jumper. I squeezed her tighter.
‘Dad hasn’t changed. He’s still yours. He loves you both as much as ever, but he loves Clark too. You can stay with him as often as you want, and you have the Christmas holiday to look forward to, don’t you?’ It tore my heart to say it, but what choice did I have? ‘And I promise you I won’t ask anyone to move in here.’
‘No need to go that far, Mum.’ Jonas grinned at me over Ava’s head. ‘You’re not past it yet. I think we can probably cope with you having a sex life.’
‘Urgh, gross,’ Ava said, but she lifted her head and smiled.