‘Geraldine’s upstairs,’ I whisper, wanting to cry. ‘And I’m . . . I’m not your girlfriend.’
‘I know.’ He swallows, thinking hard as our eyes remain locked. ‘I know.’
I am desperate to kiss him. Desperate to carry on as if none of what I said matters. Desperate to let him take me in his arms and to feel his lips on my neck all night. But I can’t.
‘Tom,’ I whisper, looking away. It nearly kills me. ‘We can’t do this.’
He holds his hand over his mouth, his face crumpled in distress. ‘I know,’ he nods. ‘I know.’
And as we wander, dripping and semi-naked, round the circumference of the hotel, I wonder what the hell we’re going to say to each other over breakfast.
Chapter 63
In the event, I never find out – choosing instead to lie in bed and skip the Sunny Runners farewell breakfast.
This is not just because I’m hung-over, look like crap and am struggling to move. This is an exercise in avoidance. Sooo . . . who’s on the lengthy list of those I’d rather slit my wrists than bump into this morning?
a. Tom (for obvious reasons)
b. Geraldine (for even more obvious reasons)
c. Oliver (also obvious – though a tête à tête with him is now infinitely preferable to one with either a. or b.)
d. Mau (whose radar is bound to detect something)
e. Janice (who’ll be trying to flog me an early-bird offer for next year)
Instead, I am going to lie here for as long as possible before dragging my sorry backside out of bed to begin packing for this afternoon’s flight.
I’m pulling the covers over my head, when there’s a knock at the door.
Oh God . . . I don’t want to face anyone this morning. I can’t even face myself. When I went to the bathroom an hour ago, looking in the mirror caused me physical pain – and not just because my hair’s so matted from chlorine and hairspray it could thatch a small mud hut.
There’s no other way to put this: I’ve done the dirty on Geraldine. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t actually kiss Tom. The fact is I wanted to. Desperately. And that’s before we even get onto the lengthy embrace beforehand.
What makes this so much worse is that, when I’m not busy loathing myself, I slip into a sweet, sexy replay of last night. If I breathe in and close my eyes, I can still smell him, taste him – and it’s the most glorious sensation in the world.
I open my eyes wide and shake my head – a move I regret instantly as the hangover makes me feel as if my brain has come loose. Abby: you simply cannot indulge in this fantasy. He’s 100 per cent taken. With a woman he’s been seeing for three years. A woman whom he said himself he loves. That particular replay makes my insides ache.
The knocking starts again and I drag myself out of bed and pull on my dressing-gown, ready to face Janice with her brochures. Only when I open the door, it’s not Janice standing in front of me. It’s Tom.
He’s wearing combat shorts and a dark grey T-shirt. I recognise it as the one he wore when I first bumped into him with his grandad. It’s so simple, but he manages to look spectacular in it. I wonder for a second how aware he is of his superhuman attractiveness. He gives the impression that he’s entirely oblivious, but how could that be possible? And wasn’t that what Oliver did?
Yet somehow I know Tom’s different from Oliver. I absolutely know it. That isn’t the problem with him – the problem is that he’s someone else’s boyfriend.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Hi,’ I reply. I feel an overwhelming urge to pull him to me and continue where we left off last night. I hate myself for it.
‘Can I come in?’ he asks gravely.
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ I manage.
‘We can’t talk out here.’
‘We shouldn’t be talking at all,’ I whisper.
He frowns. ‘Why not? We’ve done nothing but talk since we met. If anything looks suspicious it’s—’
‘Oh, okay,’ I sigh, suspecting he’s capable of more logic than me this morning.
I sit on the edge of the bed as he enters the room and shuts the door behind him. I am horribly aware of my appearance – surely the confirmation Tom’s looking for that he was motivated last night by beer goggles.
If that is the conclusion he comes to – that he doesn’t find me remotely attractive in the cold light of day – it will, of course, make things easier. Yet there’s a knot in my stomach that doesn’t want that to be the case. I want him to want me as much as I want him.
He sits next to me and I shift away nervously. His eyebrows flicker into a frown. ‘Um . . . last night,’ he begins, before trailing off.
‘I’m sorry, Tom,’ I say.
‘About what?’ He looks bewildered.
‘About the whole thing. I feel terrible. I feel terrible for Geraldine.’
He closes his eyes and rubs a hand over his face. ‘You’ve got nothing to feel terrible about. We didn’t even kiss.’
‘We nearly did.’
‘I’m the one who should feel terrible. I’m the one who shouldn’t have been – you know.’ He pauses and looks into my eyes. ‘I’m not that sort of bloke.’
‘What sort of bloke?’
‘The sort of bloke who does . . . you know. In swimming pools. In the middle of the night.’
I bite my lip. ‘I know. And your secret’s safe with me.’
He looks up. ‘That’s not why I came.’
‘Why did you come?’ I ask.
His eyes flicker across my face. ‘I don’t know.’
A shot of euphoria fires through my heart, followed by desperate hope. I force myself to get a grip on the situation.
‘Tom, can I make a suggestion?’ I say. ‘Go back to your room, find Geraldine and pretend last night never happened.’
‘But—’
‘Seriously.’
His expression tightens, tension rising in his face. ‘So you don’t . . . have any feelings for me? Not really?’
I have a vision of Geraldine downstairs, oblivious to this conversation. How would I feel in her shoes? Having my loyalty, support and love rewarded with this?
Doing the decent thing is never easy. In this case, the decent thing is so unpalatable that I feel sick just thinking about it. But as I look into Tom’s pained eyes, I also know I couldn’t live with myself if I did anything else.
‘We’re friends, Tom,’ I say, my words strangled and faint. ‘I was drunk last night but there’s nothing more to it. No, I don’t have feelings for you, other than as my friend. And as my friend, I value you very much. So let’s keep it that way. For everyone’s sake.’
Chapter 64
There’s only one thing to do when I get home. Confide in my best friend.
‘Let me get this straight,’ Jess says on the phone while I drive to Dad’s for dinner. My cupboard was bare when I returned and, rather than spend the evening over a ready meal, I decided to escape. ‘You slept with Oliver and snogged Tom. On the same holiday?’
‘Noooo!’ I protest. ‘No, no, no! I didn’t snog Tom. I didn’t even kiss him. I just . . . almost kissed him.’
‘But you ended up semi-naked in a swimming pool with your arms round him?’
‘It sounds awful when you put it like that,’ I sigh.
‘How else should I put it?’
She sounds very weird about this – almost disapproving. Though, on balance, I should have expected it; she’s known Geraldine for ages.
‘But you slept with Oliver, right?’
‘Yes,’ I mumble, as if she’s about to put me in detention.
‘So, which one of them are you in love with now?’
I’m silent for a second, ashamed to say Tom’s name.
‘It’s Oliver, isn’t it?’
‘No, actually,’ I reply. ‘You were right about him.’
‘Oh.’ She sounds surprised. ‘What made you finally see the light?’
‘Call me old-fashioned but I’d have liked it to be t
he start of something more than a series of casual shags.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘And . . .’ I think about telling her how strongly I feel about Tom, but I’m too ashamed to utter the words. ‘Oliver was clearly after that waitress – the one with the dark hair – the following night.’
‘Adriana? Great boobs and lovely eyes but a big bum?’
‘That’s the one,’ I say, but she doesn’t respond. ‘Are you there, Jess?’
I hear Jamie in the background and realise what’s distracted her. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go,’ she announces. ‘Are you at the running club tomorrow? We’ll chat properly afterwards.’
I put down the phone as I pull into the car park beneath Dad’s apartment block as a reminder flashes up on my phone that my new staff member Hazel starts tomorrow.
I’m actually looking forward to going back to work, which I know isn’t a common sensation after a holiday. But I want some normality back in my life. Besides, my big push on late payments before I went away has started to pay dividends – and now that we’ve got Hazel on board, the work can begin on the Diggles rebranding, which I can’t wait to get stuck into.
I jump out of the car and am heading up the stairwell when I see a gaudy macramé skirt and painfully bohemian sheepskin boots stomping down. Karen, Dad’s girlfriend, has a mouth on her that looks as if she’s been sucking a petrol-soaked rag.
‘Hi, Karen,’ I say brightly. ‘How was your conference the other week?’
‘Abby,’ she snaps, tossing back her hair. ‘I feel sorry for you.’
‘Oh. Er . . . do you?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ She crosses her arms huffily and I realise her eyes are red. ‘Your father has issues.’
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘And I’m leaving him.’
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘There’s no need to look so pleased,’ she frowns.
‘I’m . . . I’m not,’ I lie. ‘Honestly, I thought you were, sort of . . . good for him.’ Yeah, right.
‘Well,’ she says, stomping past and nearly knocking me out with the beads on her cardigan, ‘unfortunately, he didn’t. At least he never showed it.’
She spins round. ‘Abby, I think I’m going to have to tell you.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘Something about your dad. I’m sorry, but these things shouldn’t be kept a secret. It’s going to screw you up, but you’ve got to know.’
‘Have I?’ I wince.
‘Yes, you have. I think your father still has feelings for your mum.’
If Karen had any sense of the anticlimax of what she’s told me, it’d ruin her day. So I decide not to break it to her that I’ve known this for sixteen years and instead feign surprise and outrage on her behalf. Only she’d be thick enough to think it’s genuine.
As Dad opens the door, he looks slightly shaken, but tries not to show it.
‘Hi, love,’ he smiles weakly. ‘Come in. I haven’t started dinner, I’m afraid. Something came up.’
‘I met Karen on the stairs,’ I say tentatively.
‘Ah.’ A look of realisation crosses his face. ‘So you know.’
I nod.
‘I don’t think we were meant to be anyway,’ he mumbles.
We get a takeaway, which I know is supposed to be off-limits, but it was that or the dregs from his freezer, which amount to the world’s worst Ready Steady Cook ingredients: a frozen turkey from last Christmas and half a bag of peas.
After dinner, we settle on the sofa and chat, drinking cups of tea as I fill him in on the highlights of my trip. The edited ones, of course.
‘Sounds like a great holiday,’ he says. ‘I might come with you next time.’ Then he registers my expression. ‘Don’t worry, I was only joking.’
He takes my empty mug of tea and puts it on the breakfast bar.
‘Dad?’ I find myself saying, as though I’m about to ask if I can borrow his car.
‘Yes?’
‘Will you miss Karen?’
He looks shocked by the question – Dad and I have never been good with matters of the heart. Yet, he’s never had a girlfriend before, let alone been dumped by one. He returns to the sofa, saying, ‘I will miss her, yes. She wasn’t the love of my life, but I never wanted to grow old by myself.’
‘You make it sound like you’re a hundred,’ I say. ‘Besides, you won’t grow old by yourself. You’ll have me.’
‘You know what I mean,’ he says gently.
I stare at the television and suddenly feel a wave of longing for Tom. This time it isn’t in a sexy way, though. I just want to talk to him. And be held by him. I get a daydream I’ve been having for the last twenty-four hours: that I’m lying on the sofa with his arms wrapped around me.
‘Dad?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you ever think you and Mum might get back together?’
He is clearly surprised by the question. I don’t know why I feel the need to quiz him about this when I never have before, though the emotional whirlwind of the last few days might have something to do with it.
‘I guess I hoped we would,’ he replies reluctantly.
‘But Mum never wanted to.’ I struggle to hide my deep disapproval of her actions, not just when my parents split up, but subsequently.
He looks at me, frowning. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
I smile sourly. ‘Oh, Dad. Why are you still defending her after all these years?’
He looks bewildered. ‘Why would I need to defend her?’ It’s as if the idea that she did anything wrong has never crossed his mind.
‘I know you still love her, Dad,’ I continue. ‘She knows you still love her. God, even Karen knew you still loved her.’
‘Karen told you that?’ He’s even more shocked, but I can’t bring myself to regret this conversation.
‘Everyone’s right, aren’t they? If it’d been up to you, you and Mum would never have split up. You don’t need to worry, Dad. I know it was Mum’s fault, not yours.’
He looks up in a jolt, as if my words fired a bolt of electricity through his heart. ‘Your mum’s . . . fault?’ he repeats slowly.
‘Yes – that your marriage ended.’
His face drains of colour. He suddenly looks ill. ‘It wasn’t her fault, Abby. Not at all.’
‘Oh Dad, don’t give me the same crap that she does – about you “growing apart”.’ I make inverted commas with my fingers, rolling my eyes. ‘I know the score. I know Mum could’ve chosen to stay. I know—’
‘You don’t know anything.’ He interrupts so furiously that my words come to a sudden stop, as if someone’s slammed the lid on a music box.
‘Dad,’ I whisper. ‘What’s up?’
He rubs his hand on his forehead as he contemplates what to say next. ‘Is this what you’ve thought all these years?’ His face is a storm of emotion. ‘That it was your mother’s fault we split up?’
‘Dad. You’re forgetting . . . I was there,’ I point out. ‘I remember the day we left. As in – Mum made us leave. I remember the whole thing.’
Tears well in his eyes and seeing my dad’s emotions stripped bare shocks me to the core. ‘Fine, Abby. She left me. Is that the end of the story then?’ he challenges me.
‘What do you mean?’
‘What you’re missing out is why she left me. That’s the crucial question.’
‘Then . . . why?’
He looks out of the window, biting the knuckle of his thumb until it nearly draws blood.
‘Come on!’ I squeal. ‘You can’t say that and then not tell me. You can’t.’
‘Your mum always felt that there were some things a daughter should never know about her parents. It was she who didn’t want you to know.’
‘Know what? I’m not a child.’
‘But I can’t sit here letting you think it was all her fault while . . .’ He’s talking to himself, rather than me.
‘Dad,’ I say sternly. ‘Talk to me, will you?’
He tu
rns to me, eyes blazing. ‘I had a . . . thing,’ he declares.
Realisation punches me in the stomach. ‘An affair?’ I ask.
‘Not an affair – it was one night. It was . . . stupid. God, stupid barely covers it! We both regretted it – and have done every day of our lives since. But that wasn’t the point and—’
‘So you had a one-night stand,’ I bluster. I’m totally, utterly stunned by this news – but my fall-back position is to stick to my guns. ‘Couples get over that sort of thing. You still could’ve worked it through. She didn’t need to leave. She could’ve—’
‘Abby, stop!’ He looks up as the tears spill down his cheeks and his eyes redden with shame. ‘It was with your Aunt Steph. It was with your mum’s sister.’
Chapter 65
All families have secrets. But this isn’t just a bombshell – in one fell swoop, it has smashed one of the most fundamental assumptions I’ve ever made about my parents into tiny jagged pieces.
‘It was your mum who didn’t want you to know,’ Dad sighs. ‘You were only twelve when we broke up, and that in itself was hard enough for you to deal with. I think in the early days we told ourselves that one day – if you asked – then we’d be honest and tell you the reason. But you never did.’
‘I never asked because I thought I knew what had happened,’ I stammer. ‘Mum always said you’d just grown apart. She implied that it was all your little quirks, along with your being in the Army, that was behind it all.’
‘That became the easiest explanation. And, from my perspective, I suppose I tried not to think about it at all. What a coward I’ve been,’ he says, punching one hand into the other. ‘I was the one who’d caused all this pain, yet I went along with the myth that our divorce somehow happened by itself.’
I bite my nail. ‘Part of me wishes I didn’t know.’
‘Yes. But I couldn’t sit here listening to you blame your mother. I just couldn’t.’
I look at my hands and realise they’re trembling.
‘How did it happen?’ The words come out huskily as I struggle to find my voice.
‘I feel so ashamed,’ he whispers, his face ashen. Then he looks at me and tries to find his voice. ‘It was in the summer of 1995, when I was on leave. I’d been home two weeks when a friend, Thommo, called on his birthday to see if I could go out for a couple of drinks. I wasn’t even keen on the idea, but your mum urged me to go.’
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