After the Honeymoon

by Fraser, Janey

  ‘You don’t know how to share things, Winston.’ Her voice rang out clearly in the dark, as if she’d been practising the words. ‘You’ve been on your own so long that you don’t realise that some decisions – such as having your son to stay – need to be taken together.’

  ‘But—’ he began.

  There was the sound of her turning over. ‘I don’t want to talk about it now. I’m tired. Goodnight.’

  Nor did she want to talk about it the next day, or the day after that. So much for sharing!

  The following Monday, Winston waited until the kids had gone to school before telling Jack about the thing on his mind. ‘I’ve got to go somewhere after my class. Will you be all right on your own today?’

  The boy nodded. ‘Sure. I can do some gardening if you want.’ He looked out of the window. ‘Looks like it needs a bit of tidying up.’

  Great. Winston drove to his class so he could make a quick getaway. Luckily the traffic down to Devon wasn’t too bad and he was there by the middle of the afternoon. Don’t let Rosie be there, he told himself. And please don’t let Gemma (whose number he’d got from Jack) let on. ‘I don’t want anyone else to know,’ he’d explained when he’d rung to get the old man’s address.

  As he turned into the road, he recognised the bungalow in its neat row of similar properties, each with their lace curtains and tidy gardens. Poor Rosie. He could imagine her all too well, as he rang the front doorbell, a terrified seventeen-year-old, leaving home with a baby inside her. Where had he been?

  ‘What do you want?’ The old man at the door scowled. ‘Can’t you read?’ He pointed to the sign with his walking stick. ‘No cold callers …’

  Then his voice trailed away. ‘Hang on. You’re that bloke that used to be on the telly, aren’t you? The one that did those exercises. I used to watch you. Not that I could do them myself, mind you. You were good. Much better than that skinny kid they’ve got now.’

  Winston cut in. ‘Actually, I’m a bit more than that. I’m your grandson’s father.’

  The old man’s jaw dropped. ‘Yer what?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’ Winston held out his hand courteously. ‘How do you do, sir? We’ve never met before but I am aware that you’ve never approved of me. Perhaps we ought to start again. Mind if I come in?’

  TRUE POST-HONEYMOON STORY

  ‘My husband and I divorced within a year. Sometimes you need to get married to know it won’t work.’

  Anonymous

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  EMMA

  Tom was ecstatic when Emma’s pregnancy was confirmed.

  Ironically, he viewed ‘his’ honeymoon baby as a sign of his virility, strutting around with his chest puffed out with pride. ‘Shows we’ve still got it in us, doesn’t it?’ he announced to everyone, from the postman to his mates in the pub when they went for a Sunday lunch ‘celebratory’ drink.

  Emma felt as though she was going to be sick, and not just from the usual morning nausea.

  ‘Mummy, Mummy.’ Gawain’s little face stared urgently up at hers as they all sat in the family area, along with Bernie and her husband, plus some mates of Tom’s from the garage. ‘What’s a honeymoon baby? Does it come from the moon?’ He frowned. ‘Cos Granny says babies come out of eggs.’

  There was a burst of laughter followed by a round of clapping. ‘He’s a bright one, your lad,’ said Phil admiringly.

  ‘Me bright,’ repeated Gawain, beaming. The regression to baby talk didn’t show any sign of going away, Emma thought dejectedly.

  ‘Very bright,’ slurred Tom, on his fourth pint courtesy of his garage friends, who kept buying the rounds. ‘Takes after his dad.’ Then he added quickly, ‘And his mum too.’

  Hah! Emma caught Bernie’s sympathetic eye. She hadn’t been particularly bright over Yannis, had she? Nervously, she took a sip of orange juice. If only she had stuck to nonalcoholic drinks in Greece …

  ‘Do you have any idea whose it is?’ hissed Bernie when they both went to the loo together, Emma leaving Willow in her mum’s arms. (They’d invited her along as last night’s date had been a particular disaster. The man in question had turned out to have an ‘understanding’ wife who ‘didn’t mind’ him seeing other women. Mum had soon told him where to get off.)

  ‘No,’ Emma admitted quietly. ‘I’ve already told you. It could be either of them.’

  Bernie put down her packet of crisps to give her a quick comfort hug before anyone else came in. ‘Now don’t go all guilty on me and confess everything to Tom. Trust me. He wouldn’t understand. Don’t look like that, Emma. I know you’re not the deceitful sort, but …’

  Emma broke away, talking furiously to her reflection in the mirror. ‘What I did in Greece was unforgivable.’

  ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’ Bernie was trying to make it better, bless her. ‘There were reasons, weren’t there? You had too much to drink.’ She looked ruefully at the glass of vodka and coke in her own hand which she’d brought into the Ladies with her. ‘It makes you do things you shouldn’t.’

  It certainly did.

  ‘Want my advice?’ Bernie’s voice turned bright and sunny, suggesting this mess could be solved after all. ‘Forget about it. Pretend it’s Tom’s. After all, from what you’ve told me, there’s a fifty-fifty chance it might be his after all. Believe me, you won’t be the first not to know for certain. And you won’t be the last.’

  At that point, one of the other garage wives came into the Ladies, causing Bernie to stop suddenly. ‘You’ve been in here ages. OK, are you?’ She gave Emma a sympathetic look. ‘I had the sickness real bad with my fourth.’

  Four? ‘How on earth does she manage?’ whispered Emma to Bernie as they went back to their table.

  ‘She doesn’t,’ Bernie hissed back. ‘Despite that parenting class they run at school.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Mum, her spirits only slightly mollified by her second glass of Chablis.

  ‘We were just talking kids,’ said Emma quickly, aware that the loo woman’s husband was sitting opposite, soothing a grizzling baby and trying to stop a snotty-nosed toddler from nabbing someone else’s crisps. ‘Anyone seen our Kerry?’ he kept saying, looking wildly around. ‘And Josh too? They were here a minute ago.’

  Emma’s mother snorted. ‘On the slot machines by the Gents. If you don’t stop them, they’re going to smash that thing.’ She gave a meaningful glance at her daughter. ‘See what you’ve let yourself in for?’ she muttered. ‘I found it hard enough with just one.’

  Bernie put an arm around her shoulder. ‘She’ll have us to help, won’t she? Now my two are older, I’ll have more time on my hands. We’ll all muck in. Whoops!’

  Emma caught the glass just as Willow’s chubby little arm was about to knock it off the table. Mum was right. How was she going to cope? Not just because she’d have another little one to look after but because, despite Bernie’s reassurances, there was no way she could go through life not knowing if this baby was Tom’s or not.

  She’d just have to find the right time – and courage – to tell her husband the truth.

  Meanwhile, there was something else she needed to do. Something that had been preying on her mind, ever since they’d got back from Greece.

  If he hadn’t put his address on the letter inside the wedding card, Emma wouldn’t have known where to have found him. She certainly couldn’t have asked Mum. The word ‘Dad’ wasn’t allowed any more.

  But ever since she had been stupid enough to have gone with Yannis, Emma had begun to realise there were two sides to a story.

  Yes, she had been drunk at the time. If she hadn’t, none of that stuff would have happened. But if she was being truthful, maybe she’d allowed herself to be seduced because she’d been cross with Tom on so many different levels. She’d felt railroaded into marriage for a start. He’d known perfectly well that she hadn’t particularly wanted to have a wedding but he’d pushed her.

  Then there was the sickness thing.
Tom could be a bit of a hypochondriac. Even at home, if he had a cold, he claimed it was flu. And he could have made a bit more of an effort on their honeymoon after he’d stopped being ill.

  Did she need more excuses? Yes. Take the sun and all that sex going on around them. That’s right, Emma told herself. Sex. Might as well come clean about it. She’d felt as though she’d been missing out; something that Tom’s own pitiful performance at the end of the week had demonstrated.

  Emma shivered, hating herself. Why had her body been more aroused by Yannis – a man she barely knew – than her own husband?

  ‘Some women find it exciting to make love to a stranger,’ Bernie had said soothingly when she’d confided in her. ‘Maybe it was a release, too, after all that pressure of the wedding.’

  Possibly.

  The whole thing had got her thinking about what Dad had said, when he’d left Mum. ‘It’s not just because of Trisha,’ he had declared, referring to his fancy woman from the office.

  ‘I don’t want to hear,’ she had retorted, cutting him off. But now, after all these years, maybe it was time for Emma to find out what he’d meant.

  Should she have called to say she was coming? Emma had made the forty-minute drive from Corrywood and now she parked outside a tidy, semi-detached house and nervously smoothed her navy fleece jacket down over her bump.

  No. Why should she give him time to make up an up-to-date defence? Emma needed to see her father face to face, to read what was behind it.

  Dad worked nights. She knew that from Bernie’s dad, who worked at the same factory. So with any luck, she might just catch him in. She glanced at her watch. An hour. That was all she had. Then she needed to get back to collect Gawain from nursery and Willow from Mum’s. ‘I just need to get some more clothes now my waist is getting bigger,’ she’d fibbed when Mum had asked her where she was going.

  Another lie. It was scary how they could grow.

  Now, as she walked up the tidy stone path, she noticed the car in the drive – a very clean white Volvo with a newish registration. No shortage of money there, she noted, her lips tightening. Poor Mum was still struggling on benefits and the odd cleaning job. It wasn’t fair.

  A figure was looming towards her through the glass door. Emma felt her heart in her throat. What if it was her? Trisha. She hadn’t thought about that. Her mouth went dry. If it was, she’d tell her exactly what she thought of a marriage breaker. She’d …

  ‘Emma!’ The older man standing in front of her was so much thinner than she remembered. His hair was tinged with grey. He was slightly stooped, too. Yet despite this, he was still a good-looking man for his age. That look of pure delight in his eyes took her sharply back to the time she’d learned to swim with his help. There was no disguising it. He was thrilled to see her.

  ‘Emma!’ he repeated, tears shining in his eyes. ‘Is it really you?’

  ‘Don’t think I forgive you,’ she repeated. They’d been sitting in what he called ‘the sitting room’, rather than the lounge. (So he’d got posh, had he?) Him in a modern grey leather chair and her on the matching sofa. There was a glass-topped coffee table in front of them spread with women’s magazines. Trisha read the same ones as her mum, Emma noticed with a pang.

  On the mantelpiece was a collection of photographs. She’d taken a peek when he’d gone out to put the kettle on. Some of them made her cross, like the ones of Dad and Trisha on a cruise. He’d never taken her mum on one. The others, of her as a child building sandcastles on the beach, made her want to cry.

  There was even a framed cutting of her wedding report, which had come out in the local paper during their honeymoon.

  ‘Don’t think I forgive you,’ she said, once again. ‘I just want to know how you could have done it. Left us.’

  She glanced down at her bump. ‘I could never leave my kids, and I know Tom couldn’t either.’

  Dad’s eyes never left hers. ‘I didn’t want to go, love. Your mum made me.’

  That old excuse again! ‘She made you because you had an affair with Trisha in the office!’ Emma exploded.

  Dad smiled sadly. Then he stood up and went over to one of the pictures of her as a child. She must have been about six or seven then, thought Emma, glancing at it. She could remember that red scooter all right. It had broken after a few weeks but Dad had fixed it. He’d been able to fix anything, until he’d gone.

  ‘Did Mum ever mention Keith?’

  Keith?

  Slowly, the memory came back. ‘Wasn’t he our next-door neighbour? He was married to Auntie Jean.’

  She wasn’t a real auntie, of course, but she’d acted like one. When Emma was little, she’d been in and out of their house all the time, making toffee and Halloween decorations. Keith and Jean hadn’t had children of their own, so they’d liked it when she’d come round. Then Jean had died, and later, poor Keith had moved away.

  ‘He went because I found out about them,’ said Dad gruffly, putting the picture back on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Found out about them?’ she repeated slowly.

  Dad nodded. ‘Your mum confessed it had been going on for years, even when poor Jean was alive. They saw each other when you and I went swimming on Sundays. Said it was because I didn’t show her enough affection.’ His mouth twisted with pain. ‘Said I wasn’t as good in … in the bedroom as Keith.’

  No! Emma jumped to her feet. This couldn’t be true! ‘You’re just saying this,’ she stammered.

  Dad shook his head. ‘If you don’t believe me, ask her.’

  It didn’t make sense. ‘But Trisha …’

  ‘Trisha was a shoulder to cry on.’ Dad sat down again and tried to take her hands, but she was having none of it. ‘Please try to understand, Emma. I know you’re happily married to Tom, but imagine if you weren’t. Think what it might be like to be with someone who doesn’t show you any affection and who has been unfaithful. I’m not saying that what I did was right, but I want you to know the reasoning behind it.’

  Emma felt numb. If it wasn’t true, why would he invite her to ask Mum? Unless it was a double bluff. That was it. He was banking on her not telling.

  ‘I don’t believe you!’ she spat. ‘You’re just telling more lies like you did before. No, don’t say anything more. You’ll just make it worse.’

  She felt sick, hardly able to look at this man who had ruined all their lives. ‘Do you realise the consequences of your actions?’ she said sadly. ‘We could have been a proper family if you hadn’t left us.’

  ‘Don’t you think I haven’t told myself that every day?’ Then he looked down at her bump. ‘I would have loved to have been a grandad. A proper hands-on one. Don’t think I’m prying, but are you expecting again?’

  She nodded, unable to say anything.

  ‘That’s wonderful. You must both be thrilled.’ Then he leaned forward hungrily. ‘Have you got pictures of Gawain and Willow? See, I know their names through Bernie’s dad, but I’d give anything to meet them …’

  Wait. This was too much. Too fast. ‘I don’t know.’ Stumbling to her feet, she pushed past his embrace towards the door. ‘I need to think about this, OK?’

  Then, unable to look back, she rushed down the path and towards the safety of her car.

  ‘Mrs Walker, Mrs Walker! I don’t like peas. Can I have one without?’

  ‘Mrs Walker, he’s got more on his plate than me!’

  ‘Mrs Walker! My mum forgot to give me my packed lunch.’

  ‘Mrs Walker, why is water wet?’

  It was the week after she’d seen Dad but Emma still couldn’t get it out of her head. Nor had she found the courage to tell her mum what Dad had said about her and Keith. Besides, it was a lie, wasn’t it? Mum wouldn’t have done anything like that. It was Dad, trying to make excuses for his own bad behaviour.

  Instead, Emma had desperately tried to block it all out by concentrating on the kids and Tom and work – which was particularly busy this week, as the kitchen for the secondary school was
out of action and they had to feed extra mouths. Thankfully her morning sickness was dying down a bit, although they’d had to find her a bigger kitchen pinny to take in her expanding waistline. Everyone knew now. One of the teachers even asked if she was having twins.

  And still she hadn’t summoned up the courage to tell Tom the truth. She’d thought about it after the first scan but when she’d seen the look on her husband’s face as he held the black-and-white picture, she couldn’t find the words.

  Coward, she told herself. Just like Dad. Except that her sin was different, wasn’t it? She’d done something silly, just the once, because she’d had too much to drink. Dad’s was deliberate, long-term deceit.

  Was there a measurement for calculating degrees of infidelity? Or was she just kidding herself?

  ‘Excuse me, but is it possible to have a vegetarian dish?’

  Emma did a double take. This lad was a dead ringer for Rosie Harrison’s handsome boy in Greece.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ She took in his coffee-coloured complexion, which she’d put down to a tan at the time but could now see was possibly mixed race. ‘What’s your name, love?’

  ‘Jack.’ He gave her a handsome smile. ‘I remember you from the island.’

  So it was him! Emma recalled her conversation with Rosie on the phone. ‘Thought you were going to Devon with your mum.’

  The boy turned to look at a girl sitting beside him. Alice, Emma realised. ‘She’s there but I’m staying here for a bit so I can see my dad.’

  Of course.

  Emma felt a catch in her throat. What if Yannis had boasted about his ‘conquest’? Siphalonia was a small island. People were bound to talk. Jack might have heard something. He might tell Alice, who might tell her mum, who might tell someone else …

  Racing back to the kitchen, Emma grabbed Bernie, who was helping herself to a spare veggie burger. ‘That kid, whose mum owned the honeymoon villa, he’s here! What if he says something about you-know-who?’