by Helen Warner
Charlie pulled onto the paved driveway of the hotel and stopped the car slightly away from the arched entrance, so that the bell-hops didn’t immediately open the door. Jamie stared ahead at the expensive waltz being danced by the succession of top-of-the-range cars coming and going, fighting a desperate urge to punch Charlie hard in his handsome face.
‘Well, you don’t need to worry,’ he said at last, opening the car door. ‘There won’t be a next time.’
Charlie watched Jamie’s retreating back as he made his way towards the entrance of the hotel. Here he was with the world at his feet and yet he had never felt such jealousy and loathing as he did now for this house-husband from the suburbs. Yes, Charlie could have anything and everything his heart desired, but this guy had the one thing Charlie couldn’t have. He had Martha.
Chapter 34
Once they had taken off, Martha just wanted to get home. She leaned her forehead against the window as the plane climbed through the Californian sky and looked down on the sprawling white urban landscape, glinting in the incessant sun. She reached out and touched the window with her index finger, saying a mental goodbye to Charlie and the place that had been her sanctuary for the past week.
Beside her, Jamie picked up her other hand and squeezed it. Instinctively, she pulled it away, but immediately she reached out and allowed him to take it again, letting their entwined hands settle on the armrest between them. Jamie had a lot of work to do to convince her that their marriage was worth saving.
She looked away from the window and up at Jamie, who was watching her nervously. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked, his bright blue eyes creasing as if he already knew the answer.
‘Nothing really,’ she replied, running her thumb over the back of his hand. She had always loved his hands, with their long, tanned fingers and light smattering of pale golden hair. Now she could only think about what those hands had touched and they made her shudder with renewed revulsion. ‘I was thinking how good it will be to see the kids again,’ she said, folding her hands together in her lap while trying not to make it seem like a hostile gesture. ‘I just want this flight to be over.’ She rested her head against the seat back as the plane began to level out and twisted round so that she was looking at Jamie.
He closed his eyes for a second. ‘I feel the opposite,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s almost as though while we’re away . . .’
‘. . . we can pretend it didn’t happen. I know.’ Martha finished the thought for him. ‘But we can’t hide forever. And we need to get back to the kids.’
Martha had a physical ache to hold Mimi and Tom in her arms. She had been apart from them for longer periods in the past, but it was rare, and then Jamie would have been there for them. Along with all the other desperate emotions coursing through her body, she now felt consumed with guilt that she had deserted them by running off, and could only imagine how confused and upset they must both be feeling.
‘You should have gone in first class,’ Jamie said, stretching his long legs as far as they would go in the cramped economy-class seat. ‘I bet it was incredible on the way out, wasn’t it?’
‘Strangely enough, I wasn’t in any mood to enjoy it.’ Martha thought back to that surreal day and remembering with a horrible clarity how awful she had felt. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t let Charlie pay for my flight,’ she added, shaking her head. ‘He’s done so much for me already . . .’
She felt Jamie stiffen beside her as she mentioned Charlie’s name, and it occurred to her that it was more than a little ironic, given the circumstances, that it was Jamie who was feeling jealous. ‘Anyway,’ she added, keen to change the subject, ‘we need to talk about what happens next. With us.’
Jamie reached out and gripped her hand again and Martha had to quell her desire to recoil. ‘I know what I want to happen,’ he murmured. ‘But I’m in your hands now. I will literally do whatever you want me to do to put this right.’
Martha looked into his sincere blue eyes that used to laugh even when he didn’t, and thought how much they had both changed over the past week. They both looked older, sadder, and there was a shadow in Jamie’s expression that she knew was mirrored in her own.
The aeroplane levelled out and the captain switched off the seatbelt signs. Ahead, she could already see the cabin crew making their way down the aisles with a trolley serving drinks. She felt a sudden urge to get blind drunk but knew that she wouldn’t. She wanted to keep her head clear to try to make some sense of why and how her life had fallen apart so badly. ‘First, I want us to go to counselling,’ she said, trying to read Jamie’s reaction. He didn’t flinch.
‘Consider it done.’ He nodded emphatically as he spoke, as if he was making a mental list of things he had to do.
The truth was, she didn’t really want to go to counselling because she was scared of what it might bring out. But she had promised Charlie that she would go and she wanted to keep her promise. ‘And secondly,’ she continued, ‘you need to go and get . . .’ Martha hesitated, as the words threatened to choke her. ‘You need to go and get checked out.’
Jamie frowned. ‘In what respect?’
‘In whatever respect you think that men who’ve been sleeping around behind their wives backs need to get checked out,’ Martha growled back.
‘Oh Jesus,’ Jamie shook his head. ‘Listen, I always used—’
‘I don’t want to know,’ Martha interrupted him, as the bile rose in her throat. ‘But it’s non-negotiable.’
Jamie paused, then nodded. ‘I understand. And it’s fine. I’m serious about this, Martha. I will do anything to show you how sorry I am.’
By now the trolley was pulling level with them and Martha stopped to order an orange juice before replying. ‘If it happens again, things will be a lot more straightforward,’ she said, knowing that she sounded so much harder than she felt. ‘There’ll be no second chance.’
Jamie put his hand over his face. ‘I know,’ he whispered. ‘I won’t need any more chances, Martha. I have come so close to losing you that I will never, ever give you cause to doubt me again. You can trust me with your life.’
A ghost of a smile crossed Martha’s face. ‘That’s what I thought last time.’
By the time they landed, both of them were too tired to talk any more. They had slept sporadically and uncomfortably during the ten-hour flight, both of them tortured by unsettling dreams every time they managed to doze off.
Jamie drove as if on autopilot towards home, while Martha stared out of the window at the poppy-smattered fields that seemed to be every conceivable colour imaginable, and which seemed to be taunting her with their lush beauty. The contrast with the dusty scrubland and parched hills of LA was stark, and although the weather was almost exactly the same, the cloudless blue sky seemed somehow smaller and the sun less invasive than it had back there. It had been just a week since she had last travelled these roads but it felt like an eternity. The world had turned on its axis and nothing would ever be the same again. She wondered idly how she would feel in another week, another year, another decade.
They pulled into their driveway and Martha’s eyes immediately filled with tears as the door flew open and Tom came running out to greet them. He yanked open Martha’s door and flung himself into her arms.
Martha buried her face in his messy thatch of white-blond hair and hugged him to her so tightly that he yelped. ‘Oh my goodness, I have missed you soooooo much!’ she gasped, holding up his face and kissing his cheek.
‘You too, Mum,’ he said in a muffled voice.
Martha gently extricated herself from him and climbed out of the car, her legs and back feeling stiff and sore. She took Tom’s hand and guided him into the house, which smelt of coffee and fresh baking. She made her way through to the kitchen, marvelling to herself at the tidiness of the house and mentally thanking her mother, who she found bending over in front of the oven, removing a tray of scones. ‘Ah, so that explains the smell!’ she said, smiling fondly at Jane. ‘Hel
lo, Mum.’
Jane placed the hot tray down on the hob and took off her oven gloves. ‘Hello, darling,’ she said and reached out to embrace Martha.
Martha gratefully allowed her mother to hug her, wondering when she had last given her a cuddle. Jane wasn’t a particularly affectionate woman, but Martha had never doubted how much she loved her.
‘I made them in honour of you coming home,’ her mum said proudly. ‘I know how much you love them.’
Martha swallowed hard. This was Jane’s way of showing affection, baking scones just like she used to when Martha was young, and it was even more touching than her hug. ‘Where’s Mimi?’ she said, noticing for the first time that her daughter was nowhere to be seen.
Jane’s eyes clouded slightly. ‘She’s upstairs.’
‘I’ll go and find her,’ Martha said, already on her way out of the kitchen.
‘Martha . . .’ Jane called after her.
Something about her voice made Martha stop and turn around again. ‘Yes?’
Jane came out into the hallway and faced her. Distractedly, Martha wondered when Jane had become shorter than her. ‘She’s very upset,’ Jane said, sighing as she spoke. ‘You might want to tread a bit carefully.’
Martha blinked twice. ‘She doesn’t know the truth, does she?’ She cast around in her mind for who may have blabbed to Mimi and could only think of either Jane or Lindsay. Surely it wasn’t possible.
‘No,’ Jane shook her head. ‘She’s very upset about you . . .’ She tailed off, looking uncomfortable, as if she couldn’t bring herself to say anything disparaging about her own daughter.
‘Me?’ Martha gasped. ‘But I haven’t done anything!’
A look of relief swept over Jane’s face before she composed herself again. ‘No! No of course you haven’t. It’s just, well, the photos in the paper made it look as if . . .’
‘But I explained those photos to her.’ Martha was perplexed as to why Mimi would still be upset or angry with her.
‘You explained the first ones,’ Jane said, and Martha could tell that Jane herself had been nursing some kind of suspicion about her. ‘But there have been quite a few others. Of you in LA. With him,’ she finished.
‘With Charlie?’ Martha’s mouth gaped as she tried to think where they might have been papped.
‘Yes. I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent explanation,’ Jane said, but Martha could see in her eyes that she wasn’t entirely sure.
‘The innocent explanation is the only explanation, because it’s the truth,’ she sighed, suddenly feeling overwhelmed by weariness and misery as she headed towards the stairs.
At that moment, Jamie staggered through the door carrying both of their bags. ‘Everything OK?’ he asked, as if he sensed that there was already a problem.
‘I don’t know,’ Martha said in a flat voice as she trudged up the stairs to Mimi’s room, feeling as though she was about to meet her executioner.
Mimi’s door was closed and Martha could almost feel the waves of animosity floating through the pale painted wood. She knocked sharply. Mimi’s music, which as always was blaring out, stopped abruptly and the door swung open.
Martha almost gasped at the sight of Mimi, who seemed to have grown from a child into a young woman in the short week she had been away. Her blonde hair hung in rivers of golden silk over her shoulders, and her father’s blue eyes seemed larger in her once-chubby face, which was now more defined with high cheekbones and a perfect rosebud mouth, which was at that precise moment pouting sullenly at Martha.
‘Hi, darling!’ Martha tried to smile but the look in Mimi’s eyes caused it to die on her lips. ‘Aren’t you going to welcome me home?’ she said, feeling uncharacteristically angry with her daughter.
Mimi stared at Martha with such an accusing expression that Martha could feel herself quail. ‘I’m surprised you even bothered to come home,’ she said, her chin lifting defiantly as she spoke.
‘Mimi!’ Martha snapped. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
Mimi’s face crumpled instantly as she dissolved into tears. ‘I mean that you left us and Dad to bugger off to America with Charlie bloody Simmons!’ she wailed, heading back into her room and sitting down on her bed, where she leaned forward and put her head in her hands.
Martha stood rooted to the spot for several seconds before she could move, her emotions crippling her temporarily. ‘Mimi . . .’ she said. Finally, she followed Mimi into the room, where she sat down on the bed beside her, not knowing where to begin. Tentatively, she put an arm around her daughter’s heaving shoulders but Mimi shook her off with a violence that shocked her.
‘How do you think it made me feel . . .’ Mimi cried, though her voice was muffled by her hands and the sheet of golden hair that was covering her face, ‘. . . when all the kids at school kept talking about the photos of you . . .’ she stopped to take a gulp of air, ‘. . . with him!’ she snarled, looking up at Martha with blazing eyes that she could see were more full of sorrow than anger.
‘Oh sweetheart,’ Martha said, still feeling paralysed by fear. ‘There is nothing going on between me and Charlie. Didn’t Lindsay come round to see you to explain that?’
Mimi rolled her eyes and shook her head at the same time. ‘Yeah, because you sent her! And I didn’t believe her any more than I believe you!’
‘But I don’t understand why you wouldn’t believe either of us.’ Martha shook her head. ‘I’ve never lied to you, Mimi, and I’m not lying to you now.’
‘Really?’ Mimi sneered sarcastically, before reaching out and grabbing her school bag, which had been unceremoniously dumped on the floor earlier. She rifled through it aggressively until she found what she was looking for and snatched out a page from a newspaper. ‘Because this doesn’t look to me like there’s nothing going on!’
She thrust the cutting towards Martha, who took it, despite feeling a desperate urge to tear it into tiny pieces. She smoothed it out on her lap and gasped. The picture had been taken in LA and showed her and Charlie coming out of the restaurant he had taken her to. He had his arm around her shoulder and was kissing the top of her head. For a second, she felt a flash of anger with Charlie. He had assured her that the paps didn’t generally hang around that restaurant, but she knew it was unfair to blame him as anyone could have taken the photo. Even members of the public would snatch photos of him on their mobile phones.
Martha screwed up the cutting and threw it onto the floor. She looked at Mimi, whose expression was both hostile and vulnerable at the same time. She opened her mouth to speak, as she tried to think of a way to counter her daughter’s fury, but no words would come and she was helpless against the invisible wall of hostility in front of her.
Mimi raised her eyebrows expectantly. ‘See?’ she said, her little pink rosebud mouth forming into a sneer. ‘You’ve got no answer, have you? Because you’re a bloody liar!’
‘No!’ shouted Jamie, stepping into the bedroom just as Mimi was pressing her face towards Martha’s, who was experiencing an almost overwhelming urge to slap her. ‘Your mum is not a bloody liar! I am!’
‘Shut up!’ Martha stood up shakily and walked across the room towards Jamie, so that she could face her daughter from a safe distance. Mimi glanced up in surprise but then dropped her head into her hands again.
Martha looked at Jamie, whose eyes were almost bulging at what was unfolding. ‘Go,’ she said quietly. ‘I want to deal with this by myself.’
Jamie’s eyes moved from her to Mimi but he finally nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him.
‘Right,’ Martha said, aware that her voice was quavering. Aside from general nagging, she had never really fought with Mimi before and the experience was both a new and shocking one. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to tell you something that I think you need to know . . .’
Slowly, Mimi moved her hands away from her face and looked up. Her huge blue eyes were still wet with tears, giving them an almost turquoise hue.
Her cheeks were flushed pink and, for a moment, Martha had a flashback to her daughter at ten months old, looking piteously up at her from her cot, while her apple-shaped cheeks flamed red with the pain of the teeth that were beginning to push through her tiny gums.
‘What?’ Mimi said, a flicker of uncertainty making her blink quickly, causing any as-yet unshed tears to spill onto her long, sweeping lashes.
Martha hesitated. Mimi might seem like she was growing up fast, but really she was still just a little girl inside. Telling her the truth might absolve Martha from any wrongdoing in Mimi’s eyes, but it would wreck her opinion of her dad forever. Mimi and Jamie had such a strong bond, borne out of spending years together at home when it was just the two of them, before Tom came along and barged his adorable way into their little family unit. With just a few short sentences, she could destroy that.
‘Well, it’s just that sometimes, couples need a little time out from each other . . .’
Mimi’s eyes filled again instantly. ‘Oh my God!’ she whispered, almost to herself. ‘You and dad are splitting up!’
‘No!’ Martha said, more forcefully than she had intended, and she put her hand up as if to soften the impact. ‘No,’ she repeated, more gently. ‘We’re not splitting up. That’s my point. Sometimes, having a little time out can help you remember that you love each other and that you belong together. But Mimi, all couples have arguments . . .’
‘But you and dad don’t argue!’ Martha was gratified to see that Mimi’s tears had dried and the hostility was ebbing away, her young face softening again.
‘Of course we argue, Mimi. I’m glad that you don’t think we argue much, but I can tell you for certain that we absolutely do. And when we argued this time—’