“Eve! You waited!”
Her body sagged with relief. She counted to three, looked up, smiled. “Of course I waited. Haven’t been here long myself.”
If he spotted the lie, he didn’t let it show.
“Babysitting crisis.” He pulled out the chair opposite and flung himself into it. “Inge couldn’t do it. Not for any amount of money. And we were talking telephone numbers by the end. She had a ‘long-standing engagement,’ which, I imagine, read hot date. In the end I called my parents.”
“Your parents?” Eve had hardly contemplated Ian’s parents since the morning she’d left. For the past month she’d been so lost in her own agony that she hadn’t given them a moment’s thought.
“Yes, they’re looking after the children. That’s why I’m late. There was an accident on the A3 and they got held up on the way.”
“They came from Chichester?”
“Where else?” Ian shrugged. “They know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. I was going to call you, but…” He looked abashed. “I’m not very good on the phone. And every time it matters, we seem to end up having an argument.”
“I bet my name’s mud with your mother,” Eve said after a waitress took Ian’s order. “She told me what she’d do if…well, let’s just say she made her position very clear in the summer.” Eve swallowed. “I imagine she feels very let down. I’ll prepare for hate mail.”
“Wouldn’t bother,” Ian said, his face serious. “You’ll probably get mail, but not the hate variety. It’s me she’s angry with, not you. She could hardly bring herself to speak to me to begin with. I had to eat serious humble pie to get her to come today at all. In fact, she only agreed to come for you. She said as much.”
“You? Why’s she angry with you?”
“I behaved abominably.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not. She’s right. I did. We were engaged, and I brought you into my children’s life. And then you were pregnant”—he leaned forward, lowering his voice—“with my child and I…I’m so sorry Eve, I was so blinded by what I thought was right for the children, I didn’t once think about what was right for you. My mother thinks I’m a fool and wasted no time in telling me so. My father wasn’t wildly impressed either, but you might have noticed he tends to leave the talking to her.”
Eve felt a flicker of comfort at Elaine’s support. But Ian looked shattered; his eyes were rimmed insomnia-red, and shadows hollowed his cheeks. She’d been so caught up with navigating the eggshells the day before that she hadn’t noticed how wretched he looked.
“It’s OK,” she said, reaching across to take his hand. Relief surged through her when he laced his fingers through hers. “I’m at least as much to blame.” She stared at their two hands intertwined, her pale fingers against his tanned ones. How could this be so painful?
“Can you forgive me?” She glanced up at Ian’s words. From the look on his face it was a genuine question. “Please?”
“Of course,” Eve said. “The question is, can you forgive me?”
“You’re crazy. There’s nothing to forgive you for. Please say you’ll come back. I miss you, Eve, the kids miss you. Let’s make this work.”
She’d never heard him sound so vulnerable; it had always been locked away inside where the children couldn’t see it.
“Ian,” she said, taking a deep breath, “I’d love to. I mean, I really want to, but there’s something I need to tell you. And then…well, then, when you know, then we’ll see if you still want me back.”
Euston Station was heaving. Hardly surprising, given the fact that it was Sunday lunchtime. Packed with people leaving loved ones, or returning to them.
Lily scanned the arrivals board. The twelve thirty-five from Manchester Piccadilly was thirty-three minutes late. It would arrive, when it eventually did, on platform twelve.
Great, Lily thought, wandering back to the end of the platform and leaning against a wall. What a perfect way to spend your Sunday off.
She didn’t mean that for a minute.
Despite the fact that she’d worked both shifts the day before, the prospect of Liam’s coming home from Manchester had gotten her out of bed early. She had been almost lonely since he’d left. That had surprised her, actually. That she’d missed him. Because the Liam she loved—funny, clever, spontaneous and, OK, more than a little irresponsible—had been missing for months.
Since Christmas he’d been unbearable; drinking too much, snapping at the slightest thing when they were together, which wasn’t often, since he was working every hour’s overtime he could wangle. When she would try to get him to tell her what was on his mind, he’d snap or storm out. Lily was close to the end of her tether. If this was the way he reacted to his ex-wife packing up and moving to Cheshire, maybe he still wanted Siobhan after all.
This was Liam’s first weekend with Rosie since the move. His first weekend staying over at a hotel in Manchester. Lily had offered to go with him, but her heart hadn’t been in it. It hadn’t mattered anyway, because Liam had refused without even appearing to consider her suggestion.
But today she had woken up feeling positive. The situation would either improve now, Lily thought, or it wouldn’t and she’d be looking for somewhere new to live by the end of the day. But somewhere inside she felt sure it would.
She saw his curly hair before he saw her.
“Hey!” Lily waved. “Liam! Over…” Then stopped. There was a darkness in his expression, something approaching…Was it dread? Lily pulled back and wrapped her arms around her body for self-protection. So, her good vibes had been wrong. This was it then, time to look for a new flat.
“Hi, Lily.” Liam stopped in front of her. “You didn’t have to come all this way. I wasn’t expecting you to.”
“Clearly.” Lily forced a smile and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. He kissed her back, but it was brief and he didn’t knot his fingers in her hair to pull her to him as he usually did.
The sick feeling growing inside her, Lily looped an arm through his and made to head off through the crowd. Liam stopped her.
“Let’s grab a coffee, shall we? Or something stronger?”
Something stronger? She tried to smile. “I’m not hitting the bottle in Euston Station, Liam! I may not have many scruples, but I’m not that big a wino just yet.”
“Really?” Liam didn’t return her smile. “I am.”
“So, how’s Rosie?” she asked, when they were sitting in a café overlooking the concourse, Lily nursing stewed coffee that no amount of sugar and UHT cream could save, Liam halfway down a flat-looking pint of lager.
“Good. She seems happy, actually. Loves her new nursery.” He looked animated for the first time, the smile softening the darkness in his unshaven face.
Lily felt sick. “And Siobhan?” she forced herself to ask.
“She’s fine. Happy too.”
“What’s he like? Her husband?”
Staring into his pint, Liam shrugged. “Seems like an all-right bloke,” he said grudgingly. “Obviously besotted with Siobhan.”
“And Rosie?”
“So I’m told.”
This was like getting blood out of a stone. If it was over, it was over, but Lily couldn’t take any more of this. Why didn’t he just put her out of her misery? “Come on, Liam,” Lily snapped. “Let’s get this over with, shall we? What is it? I mean…I know what it is. Siobhan’s taken Rosie to Manchester, but what else is it?”
Taking a long swig of beer, Liam drained his glass and placed it on the table. Then he looked at her. Dead straight, without guile. Lily didn’t think she’d ever seen that look in his face before. It made her nervous.
“Lily,” Liam said, “I’m sorry. Don’t hate me. I have to do this. I have to go. I’ve got a new job. It’s local, not national papers, but they’ve got an online push and…” He shrugged. “I’m going to Manchester.”
She was speechless. “You what!? How long have you…?”
“
Not long, really.” He looked, briefly, his old shifty self. “A couple of weeks, but I’ve been thinking about it since Christmas. I know I should have discussed it with you. But I couldn’t lay it on you. Your life is here. And mine. Well, it seems like mine just moved to Manchester without consulting me.”
“But…,” Lily gasped. “You and me, we…”
“Lily, my love, this isn’t about you and me. It’s about Rosie and me. I know I’m a crap dad, Lily, I’m not proud of that…”
“Liam…” Lily couldn’t take it in.
He shook his head. “Don’t deny it. You know it’s true. You’ve said it yourself often enough. You and Siobhan both, actually. Well, I need to sort it out—or lose my baby to her new dad.”
“Are you…are you going back to Siobhan?”
“No! You’re not listening to me. This has nothing to do with her. I love you. You’re amazing. I can’t believe you’re with me. Me and Siobhan were never like this. We’re history, and we should never have been anything else. Only we had Rosie, didn’t we? And now Siobhan’s gone and married someone else and taken her away. I don’t want Rosie to have another dad, Lily. She’s already got one. Me.”
“I’ll have that drink now,” Lily said. She needed time to think, to work out how she was meant to respond to Liam’s casually lobbed grenade. Except it hadn’t been casually lobbed, had it? One look at his face told her he hadn’t slept in days. Just as she hadn’t.
“I’m sorry to drop it on you like this,” Liam said when he returned with a fresh pint and a bottle of Becks. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it, but there was never a right time.”
“And this is?” Lily asked.
“No, of course not,” he said. “But now I’m all out of time. My new job starts next Monday.”
“So where does this leave us?” she asked. “Are you ending it with me?”
Liam frowned. He was looking at her as if she was a bit mad. Perhaps she was. “I didn’t think I’d be getting the chance, Lily,” he said. “I assumed when I told you, you’d be ending it with me.”
His scrambled eggs had congealed as she’d talked; Ian’s fork loaded with smoked salmon had gotten no further than his plate; and the fourth coffee Eve hadn’t wanted anyway had grown cold in its cup.
“Say something then,” Eve said. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her since she’d started talking, and his gaze was making her nervous. It felt like several minutes since she’d finished the whole sad, embarrassing tale and Ian hadn’t said a word, had just gazed at her, those cool blue eyes taking in every angle of her face, every freckle.
“Is that it?” he said eventually.
“What d’you mean, is that it? Isn’t that enough?”
Leaning across the table in Carluccio’s, he pushed a curl out of her face. His hand lingered on her cheek. “Oh, my love, I was expecting something awful…but that’s just a teenaged mistake. I’m not downplaying it,” he added, seeing Eve’s stricken expression. “It’s sad, and it must have been awful for you, but it’s in the past. I’m sorry, and I hate to think of you going through that alone…” He stopped, embarrassed.
Eve hadn’t thought of it like that. She’d thought she’d just been competent. Done what had had to be done.
“I just wish you’d told me before…” He hesitated. “Before all this. We could have…well, I hope we could have done things differently.”
“It’s not the kind of thing you drop into polite conversation, is it? I fucked up at nineteen, had an abortion without telling the father, dumped him and got on with my life.”
“True,” Ian said, and he grinned. “But I don’t recall all our conversations being that polite.”
Eve laced her fingers through his and smiled back. “Also true, but there weren’t that many conversations anyway, were there? Not those long, all-night conversations you normally have early on in a relationship. And we spent so little time alone once I met the kids. And then I moved in and there were the children again, and…”
“The rows,” Ian finished for her.
Eve nodded. “There were so many things we never talked about.”
Ian looked sad. “Like having children,” he said. “I’m sorry, Eve, I just thought we had plenty of time…”
“And then I got pregnant,” Eve said, matter-of-factly. “And I couldn’t tell you then, could I? What was I supposed to say? Ian, I’m pregnant. I’m sorry you’re furious, and I know it’s the wrong time, but I can’t get rid of the baby because I had an abortion when I was nineteen, and, for me, once is enough? Any anyway, if I’d done things differently, if I’d been more like Clare, my child would have been almost Hannah’s age, and…” She shook her head sadly. “How could I say that?”
Ian hung his head, maybe in exhaustion, maybe in shame. Catching sight of the tired-looking salmon on his plate, he pushed it away. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I should never have done it.”
“Done what?”
“Proposed.”
“Thanks!”
They both glanced at her empty left hand and looked away. The ring was in Eve’s pocket, ready either to put back on or hand back and walk away.
“No, I don’t mean it like that,” Ian said. “I just mean I shouldn’t have proposed when I did. I should have waited. I just got carried away. I loved you from the moment we met. And,” he smiled, embarrassed, “that’s never happened to me before. And when I saw you with the kids, how good you were with Alfie and Sophie. And my mother and father adored you. Everything seemed so right. But it wasn’t. I’m sorry…” He hesitated. “It was really selfish. I should have thought about what you wanted.”
Eve stared at him. “I’m a grown-up, Ian,” she said. “And I said yes. I said yes because I wanted—want—to be with you. But if…if you regret it, we can…I mean…I can collect the rest of my stuff…”
Ian looked up, his eyes wide with shock. “No!” He caught himself. “Not unless you want to.”
Eve shook her head vigorously.
“I just wish we’d done it differently,” Ian said. “Given it more time. What I’m trying to say is, you were right. I bulldozed everything.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but I did. I wanted our lives—mine and the children’s—to be exactly the same, just with you in it.”
Eve looked at the table. “Right down to the rugs,” she said. It was meant to be a joke, but Ian took it at face value.
“You’re even right about that. I asked you to change everything, give up everything for me and my children. And I was so obsessed with keeping everything the same for them that I wouldn’t change anything for you, not even a rug.”
“About that rug. Could you get it down for me?”
“Of course, where do you want to put it? We could get your china out too. And all your books.”
Eve laughed. “Just the rug for now. I want to give it to Clare. After a month in her living room, I can see it’s exactly what that room needs.”
“Can I ask you something else?” Ian said. Their arms were wrapped around each other as they walked toward Regents Park in the weak spring sunshine.
“Anything,” she replied. Eve felt so happy right now that nothing could spoil it.
“Hannah was with you that day, wasn’t she? The day she went missing.”
Eve nodded. “Not when you phoned me. If I’d known she was waiting outside my office I’d have told you. But afterwards, I went out for a coffee, and there she was. Frozen to the bone. She didn’t tell you?”
Ian shook his head. “No, I tried everything to make her. Threats, grounding, withholding pocket money, the lot. And that was on top of the detention she got from school for playing truant. But all Hannah would say was she’d gone to see a friend and she’d promised she wouldn’t say where she’d been.”
“Oh, God…I’m sorry.”
Ian nodded. “I was climbing the walls. I knew it had to be an adult. At least someone who could afford to pay her cab fare. And i
t wasn’t any of the grown-ups I knew. To begin with, I was terrified it was someone she’d met over the internet…” He looked sheepish. “I know. I shouldn’t believe everything I read in the papers!”
Eve smiled, hoping it hid the guilt she was feeling.
“And then you turned up at the zoo. And it dawned on me that no one could have invited you except Hannah. So that had to be where she’d been.”
Eve was silent.
There was no need to say anything.
“But what I need to know,” he said, “is did you tell Hannah? Did you tell her why we broke up?”
Why does he have to do this now? Eve thought bleakly. When everything is going so well? Why did Ian have to ask the one question that could puncture their fragile happiness? And then she caught herself. This had been their problem all along. If their relationship was to survive, they had to stop treating it as if it could break at any time.
She turned in his arms to face him, wind whipping her hair into their faces.
“Yes,” she said. “I did. I’m sorry, but we were talking for the first time, ever. Even when I was telling her, I couldn’t quite believe I was. So, yes, I told her everything. Because, until then, she thought my leaving was her fault. And even though I may be a crap stepmother, I’ve learned enough not to want her to carry that around with her as well.”
“Everything?” His arms were tight around her. “Even what you hadn’t told me?”
“Yes.” Taking a deep breath, Eve waited for him to pull away. When he didn’t, she exhaled.
“And what does she think of me?” Ian said. “Now she knows her father would do a thing like that?”
“What does she think of you?” Eve locked her arms behind him and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “The same thing she thinks of me.”
“Which is?”
“We’re a pair of idiots.”
“I don’t know about you,” he said. Eve felt him smile. “I think she’s right.”
Thirty-six
The Other Mothers' Club Page 35