“You should never have been in the market for being tricked in the first place, my boy,” Carol points out. “You remember that, when you’re begging Rachel to take you back. And you’d better beg hard.”
“Your mother’s right, Gareth. You must have been off your rocker to risk your family for sex.”
“It wasn’t like that Dad?”
“Wasn’t it?”
Gareth doesn’t answer.
“So what happens now?” Richard asks.
“Can I stay here tonight? Rachel wants me to keep away, give her a little time to think. Her mother and Felix have taken the kids away for a few days.”
“No,” Carol says, coolly.
“No?”
“You heard me. You get yourself back down to Cardiff and you grovel to that girl. You’ve not got a moment to waste.”
“But I’m trying to respect her wishes.”
“Now’s not the time to be doing that. You get yourself down there and if she doesn’t let you in, you stay outside all night in the cold and dark until she does. She needs to know you’ve got sticking power. That you really mean it when you say sorry. That you won’t ever, not ever, let her and your children down again. That she is the most important thing in your world and always will be, whatever your John Thomas might have led you to believe for a short, stupid while.”
“What you waiting for?” his father asks. “Get going with you.”
“But what should we say to Davey? About who his father was and about Beverley?”
“You leave me to worry about that, son. You go and concentrate on what’s most important right now. Your family. Not Davey’s long lost one.”
Chapter 32
Gareth stops at Tesco on the way back. He buys a couple of bottles of wine and some cheese and biscuits. He hesitates at the bouquets of flowers and the boxes of chocolate but does not buy any. He makes a pact with himself. If Rachel forgives him he will buy her flowers every chance he gets, but tonight he won’t kid himself that what he has done can be made even the slightest bit better with supermarket gifts.
He doesn’t text her or call to say he is coming and as he pulls up outside their house it suddenly dawns on him that she might have gone out. Or that the house may be full of book club girls, helping Rachel drown her sorrows. He stops at the front door, his keys in his hands, but decides not to let himself in. Instead he rings the doorbell.
“Just a minute,” he hears her calling from inside.
“Oh, it’s you,” she says when she opens it.
“You sound disappointed. Who were you expecting?”
“That bloke with a scythe off Poldark. I rang him and asked him if he fancied a booty call. Said it would take him a couple of hours to drive up from Cornwall but he’d be here by teatime… I’m not expecting anyone. Least of all you. You’re meant to be in the Rhondda.”
“Can I come in?”
“I’m busy right now doing a major clear up of the kitchen drawers. Did you know we have a tin of chickpeas in the cupboard that turns out to be older than Iris?”
“I didn’t know that, no.”
Rachel doesn’t move aside to let him in.
“So can I come in?”
“If you really must.”
“I really must.”
*
Gareth follows her back to the kitchen and puts the wine bottles on the table.
“You brought wine. At least you’re good for something. I was all out.”
“Sit down and I’ll pour us a glass.”
“Make mine a double. It’s thirsty work cupboard cleaning. What are you doing here anyway? I asked you to stay away. Did you chicken out of telling your news to your parents?”
“I told them. They are bitterly disappointed and ashamed of me. Although nowhere near as disappointed and ashamed as I am myself.”
“Or as I am.”
“Or that. I’m here to tell you that I love you. Very much. And the children. And that if you give me a second chance I will never let you down again, not ever.”
“But that’s one of the worst things about this Gareth. I have never once doubted that you loved me and the children and that you would never let me down. I wouldn’t have married you if I didn’t feel like that. Wouldn’t have stayed married to you if you hadn’t made me feel like that every single day of our lives together. Only it turned out I was wrong.”
“You weren’t wrong Rachel. It’s only the past few weeks that I let you down. All the rest of the time it’s been like you thought it was.”
“So why did things change? I really need to understand that. If I’m to give you a second chance I need to know where we went wrong.”
“We didn’t go wrong Rachel. I did. I found someone else attractive and interesting and I was stupid enough and vain enough to follow it through. Believe me, I’ve never given anyone else a second look. Not once.”
“That just makes it worse. If I’ve been all you’ve wanted all these years, she must have been something very special for you to want her instead.”
“It wasn’t that she was so special, it was just that I stopped seeing how special you are.”
“Don’t talk crap Gareth. You met someone you fancied more than me. That’s correct isn’t it?”
“Now you’re the one talking like a lawyer.”
“Just answer the question.”
Gareth pauses. “I didn’t fancy her more. But I did fancy her, yes.”
“How was the sex?”
“Don’t Rachel.”
“I want to know!”
“It was good.”
“Just good? You risked our marriage for some good sex?”
“No. Yes. It was great sex. I risked our marriage for great sex. It felt like when you and I first met Rachel. Do you remember how that felt?”
“Of course I do. But no one can keep that intensity up. Not after four children. Not after just one child! It’s not real life!”
“It wasn’t real life, that was the point, I think. It was like someone had cloned me and the duplicate me was leading a different, fantasy life.”
“Get over yourself Gareth. All you did was have a sordid little affair with someone whose fanny you didn’t know as well as mine. One that hadn’t pushed out four children. Your children.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.”
“I want things to go back the way they were.”
“Things will never be the way they were.”
“That makes me sad.”
“It makes me sad too.”
They are both crying now. Gareth gets up from the chair and goes over to Rachel to comfort her. This time she doesn’t push him away. This time she lets him hold her and stroke her hair. Lets him tilt her chin and kiss her. Lets him lead her upstairs.
“You’ll have to wear a condom,” she says, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “I don’t want to catch anything.”
“You won’t catch anything!”
“You don’t know that!”
“She’s been in a relationship with the same woman for years.”
“So you say. But she’s a scheming liar. Or you are. Either way, use a condom. There’s some in my bedside table.”
“Why have you got condoms in your bedside table?”
“I bought them for Eloise.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“That makes two of us pretending we didn’t hear things we don’t want to know then.”
*
They fall asleep afterwards and when they wake it is after 9pm. Rachel is lying on her side facing away from Gareth. He strokes her arms and back for a long time.
“Shall I go fetch the wine we didn’t drink and the cheese I bought.”
“Yes please.”
“Anything else you want?”
“Yes, bring up the Scrabble board?”
“You want to play Scrabble?”
“Yes.”
“In bed?”
“Ye
s in bed, while drinking wine with my husband in a house with no children in it.”
“OK I’ll find the Scrabble. You always beat me at it though.”
“I know.”
*
They give themselves two days of this. They ring in sick at work, put their out of office on their emails and turn their phones off. There is more wine, more sex and more Scrabble. A lot of tenderness. They go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning curled tight into each other.
But on the third morning, the day the children and Francesca and Felix are due back home, when Gareth wakes up Rachel is already up. He finds her sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea.
“More in the pot if you want.”
He nods and she pours him a cup, hands it to him. They sip their tea in silence for a while before she puts her cup down and turns to look at him.
“I’ve reached my decision Gareth.”
He smiles and reaches across the table, takes her hands in his. She wriggles her hands away.
“My decision is this. You and I are finished. As a couple anyway. I could take you back – for the sake of the kids, the house, our parents, for an easier life. I could even enjoy it – it turns out, rather surprisingly, that we can still have good sex together, despite your betrayal of me. But I know I’d never forgive you. Not truly forgive you. It would just eat away at me – resentment of you would fester inside me and eventually I’d come to hate you and to hate myself.”
“Please, Rachel, don’t do this. Everything is still raw. We can make this work. I know we can. We’ve had twenty good years together. Don’t throw them away.”
“You did that Gareth, not me.”
“But these past few days together have been amazing. So…passionate. What was all that about?”
Rachel answers him in a level voice. “It was about saying goodbye Gareth. It was about giving our marriage a proper send off and finishing things on my terms. It was about making you realise what you had and what you lost.”
“Please Rachel, I won’t know what to do with myself without you and the children.”
“That’s not my problem. Take up cycling or something. Join the legions of sad, middle-aged men with skinny legs wearing lycra, zipping around Penarth looking ridiculous of a Sunday morning.”
“I’m being serious Rachel.”
“So am I Gareth. All these years of being with me and you didn’t work even this much out about me. You do not get away with fucking around and I will never be a victim. It’s over. Now get out.”
*
His mother makes up his old bedroom for him. It’s the smallest room in the house and used as a computer room these days but his single bed is still in there. The duvet cover is the same one he had as a teenager – chocolate and caramel stripes, faded now. Gareth has not seen that duvet cover in years and if asked would have been unable to tell you what it looked like but the instant he sees it again a high definition memory pops into his mind, like a memory card being inserted in a computer. He is 16 years old and he and Lynwen Davies spend the whole of one sunny Saturday afternoon pressed tightly together lying on top of this duvet cover, while his parents and Davey are out shopping in Cardiff. It is the first time he ever touches a bare breast. Or inside top as it is referred to at school.
Lynwen lived in the next street down. She was fun and pretty but not particularly academic. She hadn’t talked to him again after that afternoon, on account of being asked out by Terry Pritchard, captain of the local rugby team, who was generally considered by the female teenage population of the Rhondda to be both cool and fit. The last Gareth had heard of either of them they had moved away to live. Swindon, he seems to remember. Or maybe it was Slough? He feels a sudden pang of loss for Lynwen and their afternoon together. The way she had grown impatient with his lack of inclination and lifted up her own shirt for him, confidently taking his hand and plonking it for him on top of her breast.
“I feel like I’m stuck in a bit of a time warp, Mam, back here with you and Dad.”
“You and me both son. Don’t take this the wrong way because you know you are always welcome, but I’d really rather you didn’t have reason to be back.”
“Me too, Mam, me too.”
“Let’s go down to the kitchen and have a cup of tea. Your dad wants to talk to you about this Beverley Allen lady while Davey’s out playing bowls.”
Gareth sighs and follows his mother down the stairs.
Richard is sitting at the kitchen table. He has been making notes in pencil in one of the small leather bound notebooks his grandchildren buy him every Christmas and birthday. Richard likes to make notes. He has stuck the stub of pencil behind his ear. Gareth recognises this pencil – it is one from his old London law firm, given to his father many years ago. It is now no more than a couple of inches long. Gareth wonders if there are many other people out there who actually use a pencil up, write with it and sharpen it over and over again until it wears down to nothing.
Gareth takes a seat opposite him at the small kitchen table. His mother puts three mugs of tea down and a packet of Jaffa Cakes.
“So,” his father begins, in a formal voice Gareth has heard only a handful of times for making toasts at family events, “your mother and I have been talking about this whole sorry situation. We’ve decided that the right thing to do is say nothing to Davey.”
“Dad, the last thing on my mind right now is that lot over in Canada. I’ve got too much on my plate as it is.”
“If you’ve got too much on your plate, my boy, it’s because you were greedy.”
“That’s unfair,” Gareth bristles, “I didn’t choose to be misled. That was all their doing.”
“Listen now, you’re not the innocent party here. Davey is.”
“Oh.”
“Oh indeed, what with all your recent shenanigans, you appear to have forgotten about your grandfather in all this. And his sister.”
“Half-sister,” Gareth corrects.
“Same thing. Beverley Maddox. One of us.”
“Hardly one of us Dad. Doesn’t even use our name. Prefers Allen.”
“Gareth, stop being such an arse, as Eloise would say—”
“Good heavens Richard, watch your language,” Carol interjects.
“An arse,” Richard repeats. “I’ve been doing some research and Phil Davies from down the Naval has a niece who’s a nurse and works with leukaemia patients. Even if Davey were a match, he’s past being a donor. His marrow is just too old now.”
“You weren’t seriously thinking about suggesting to Davey he donate were you?”
“Of course I was. After all this heartbreak, all this distance between a family, don’t you want something good to come out of this fiasco? Like saving a life.”
Gareth pauses. “I suppose so.”
“Right. Talking sense at last. So your mother and I have agreed that we will tell Davey about Beverley having got in contact with the family but not tell him that Idris is his father.”
“Don’t you think Davey deserves the truth?”
“The truth is powerful stuff. It can hurt people. Who’s to say Idris was his father? For all anyone knows it could have been Tommy. And even if Idris was biologically his father, Tommy was his dad, just like he was my granddad. Davey’s 88, Gareth. He doesn’t need his world turned upside down at this stage.”
Gareth nods. “OK, Dad.”
“But you and I are going to be tested to see if we are a match for Beverley’s bone marrow.”
“You what?”
“You heard me. Get in touch with Beverley. Sort it out. Quick. Before it’s too late for her.”
*
When the results come back and neither Richard nor Gareth are matches, Gareth is surprised how disappointed they all are.
“It would have been a redemption, of sorts,” he says to Beverley over the telephone.
“Seems to me we were all in the wrong on this,” Beverley tells him. “Life’s too short to hold a grudge. Mine cer
tainly is.”
“I wish Rachel felt the same.”
“One day she might. Don’t give up.”
“I’m not.”
“Are you sure you won’t come to the wedding?”
“Positive.”
The full truth may not have been told in the Rhondda, but it has come tumbling out in Toronto, like a swollen, muddy, river bursting its banks. And far from being crushed by Cassandra’s infidelity and betrayal of her, Beverley had instead asked Cassandra to marry her and she had accepted.
Gareth is not having it as easy.
“You are a complete and utter tosser, Dad, and I hate you,” Eloise told him. Rachel had insisted Gareth Skype her and tell her the whole story, as close to face to face as possible. “And don’t think Liam and I are coming home just because you can’t keep it in your trousers.”
Eloise refuses to talk to Gareth after that. It is Beverley who calls him to break the news that Eloise has insisted on being tested too.
“She’s not a match, though.”
“I’m sorry Beverley.”
“Liam is.”
“Liam?”
“He went with Eloise to the hospital to keep her company when she was being tested and he got tested at the same time. Turns out he’s a good enough match. And he’s agreed to donate.”
“That’s great news, Beverley,” Gareth can feel tears gathering thickly in the back of his throat.
“It is, isn’t it? Thank you so much Gareth.”
Thanks for what? Gareth thinks. Cheating with your girlfriend? Having Eloise? Bringing her and Liam to you in Toronto? Making a complete and utter balls up of my own life?
Chapter 33
Gareth rents a little house in Penarth. It is on a modern estate, a little outside Penarth town centre, a squat, square box with rooms of tiny proportions.
“It’s like a dolls’ house,” Rachel comments whenever she drops the children off.
“Ha, ha,” Gareth says. It’s got four bedrooms for the children to come stay and it’s close to you. It will do.”
Rachel refuses to come in, though. And she has changed the locks on their house and not given Gareth a key.
Of the children, it is only Eloise who has not adapted to the new living arrangements. Although she will now at least go with her siblings to visit her father, she refuses to stay overnight with them at the rented house.
Thicker Than Water Page 30